All the Pretty Poses (26 page)

“Is what ready?” I ask.

They look at each other and smile, but
neither answers me. Reese simply takes my hand and says, “Come on.
I’ll show you.”

We walk down the hall, discussing the new
additions of art and rugs and knick knacks here and there. Reese
didn’t want to get rid of his uncle’s things, so much as rearrange
them or add to them. We both love all the antiques and history-rich
pieces in the house. We both grew up seeing them and feeling like
this was our “true” home, so neither of us wanted to change
much.

It’s when we get to the room that has always
been Tanny’s that Reese stops just outside the door.

“I ordered a few extra things for this room,”
he says, his lips hinting at a smile.

“For Tanny’s room?”

“Errr, not really. Tanny is taking one of the
big suites in the other wing.”

“Then what’s going in here?” I ask.

“Why don’t you go see for yourself?” I see
satisfied mischief in his eyes and it makes my stomach twitter in
anticipation.

I push open the door and I can’t stop the
gasp that bubbles up in my throat any more than I can stop the wash
of tears that fills my eyes.

Before me, Tanny’s room is nowhere to be
found. This room looks like it’s ready for the arrival of a baby.
The walls are painted a cheery yellow and the floors have been
re-stained to look like warm honey. There are fluffy white rugs
scattered about and a white crib sits at the bay window, flanked by
two brand-new, padded rocking chairs.

“It’s a nursery,” I whisper, my heart
fluttering in my chest. “Oh, Reese,” I exclaim, turning into his
always-waiting, open arms. He curls them around me, tucking me
warmly and safely against his wide chest. “Just when I think I
can’t be any happier…”

“You might as well expect things like this.
As long as I’m alive, I’ll always want to make you happier.”

“The only thing that could make this more
perfect would be having some family here to share it with. I hate
that Malcolm couldn’t see this.”

“I do, too. He would’ve approved one hundred
percent. But at least we still have Tanny.”

I turn shining eyes up to his. “I bet she was
giddy with excitement, wasn’t she?”

Reese grins. “Yeah, she was pretty damn
happy.”

“Why don’t you go get her?”

I walk around the room, ooo-ing and ahh-ing
over all the tiny details until Reese returns with Tanny. She
stands in the doorway with shining eyes and looks around what used
to be her room.

“Think you’ll mind having a little one around
here, Tanny?”

“I can’t think of one single thing I’d love
more.”

“I was just telling Reese that everything is
perfect. Just perfect. And we get to share it with you.”

Tanny covers her trembling lips with one hand
as she struggles to compose herself. After a few moments, she pulls
something from behind her back. It’s a wooden box, about the size
of a shoe box, covered with beautiful carvings.

“This is for you,” she says, handing it to
me. “And for you, Harrison.”

I raise the heavy lid and there, lying in the
pale pink velvet interior, are the birth records for Mary Elizabeth
that Hank had told me were lost. I take out the white paper with
her tiny foot print on it and I stroke it, my thumb so large beside
it, even through my blurry vision.

“Where did you find these?”

“After Hank died, I cleaned out the
groundskeeper’s cottage and found them hidden under a loose board
in the floor.”

I don’t try to stop the tears that spill down
my cheeks. “I named her after the only people that I’ve ever cared
about. Mary for Malcolm’s wife. He loved her so much. Elizabeth for
you. You were like the mother that I never had. And Spencer.
Because…she was. She’ll always be.”

Reese walks around behind me and wraps his
arms across my chest, setting his chin on top of my head. Just
showing me his love and support, letting me feel his presence.

“I’m sorry I never told you, Tanny.”

She waves me off. “It was none of my
business.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want you to know.
It’s that I felt like I couldn’t.”

“Why?”

I turn my head to glance up at Reese. He
nods, agreeing that we should tell Tanny the whole story. She’s
like family, even more so than
actual
family.

I’m calmer now as I revisit the events that
took place all those years ago. I’m not surprised when Tanny cries.
She cries for me and for Reese and for the baby that never had a
chance to live and fight.

Tanny comes to fold her arms around us,
giving us all the comfort that she’s capable of. It’s when she
leans away that I suspect her tears run much deeper than just our
story.

“You two have been through so much, but you
finally have each other. You’re finally healing and moving on from
the past. That’s why I want to tell you something. Because I know
that you’re strong together, stronger than your father, Harrison,
and stronger than your past, Kennedy.”

Reese still holds me as Tanny walks through
the room, stroking the baby bed and the rockers, letting her
fingers trail over the letters on the wall that spell “baby.”

“I was just a few years older than you were
when you met Harrison, Kennedy when I met him. I met a man who was
just as handsome and dashing, just as charming. It didn’t take me
long to fall head over heels in love with him. But like most of the
men in his family, he had a drive in him, an ambition that couldn’t
be stopped. Not for any
one
or any
thing
.

“I got pregnant and it wasn’t until I told
him about the baby that he told me he was set to marry a girl from
better stock, one that could bring good blood into the family line.
I was heartbroken, of course, but as long as I had my baby, I knew
I’d be all right. It wasn’t until I, too, gave birth that I got my
last visit from Henslow Spencer.”

I drown my gasp with a hand to cover my lips,
but nothing drowns Reese’s. I feel it as much as I hear it. He
stiffens all around me, hugging me tighter to him.

“My father?”

With sad eyes, Tanny turns to us and nods.
“Yes. Henslow Spencer, your father. The father of my son. That was
when that I learned he could be as ruthless as he was charming. He
gave me two choices that day in the hospital. I could either never
see my baby again or I could see him Henslow’s way.

“He’d filed papers declaring me an unfit
mother and he’d put the full weight of the Spencer name behind it,
which was considerable even back then. He had been granted full
custody. He told me that if I ever wanted to see my baby again,
that I must never tell anyone he was mine. He’d gotten me a job
with Malcolm and Mary where I would work as a housekeeper so that I
could see my son when he came to visit them. Henslow assured me
that he would bring him here often. And he did. It was either that
or never see my child again. And I knew I couldn’t live with that.
So I went along with him and, until today, I’ve never told another
living soul that I’m the mother of his firstborn.”

Reese has stopped breathing behind me. I can
feel a light tremble in the arms that hold me and I know his world
has just been rocked…again. Only this time with gentleness and
love.

“I wanted you to know because I don’t want
you to go forward in your life not knowing that there has always
been someone in this world who would give up everything she has for
you. Who
did
give up everything she had for you.”

Reese’s arms fall slowly away from me and I
feel his body heat recede as he moves around me toward Tanny. As I
watch the scene unfold with fresh eyes, with
aware
eyes, I
see for first time the shape of Tanny’s eyes echoed in Reese’s. I
see the square set of her shoulders in the strong ones of her son.
And I see the special light shining in her face for what it
is—love. Maternal love. It’s been there all along, watching
quietly. Waiting. Steadfast and true, like a mother’s love.

As Reese gently folds his strength around the
frail form of his mother, I realize that our world has come full
circle. That, for all the pain and suffering, for all the lies and
deception, that everything is as it should be. That the journey
doesn’t dictate the end.
We
do. Our choices determine the
shape and path of our life.

Reese’s strength and goodness has led him
here. Finally. Just like his mother’s. And just like mine. We all
defied the odds and did what needed doing for those we loved and,
in the end, it all worked out. In the end, love won.

It always does.

And it always will.

I needed rescuing. Even when I thought I
didn’t, I still did. We all do in some way or another. And Reese
was my Superman. He was my hero before he even knew it. And maybe I
was his. Maybe I got to rescue him right back. Maybe we’ll rescue
each other every day of forever. And if we do, that’s all right by
me.

EPILOGUE- Reese

Like everyone else, I’m breathless as I watch
my wife spin, her long, graceful body twirling like she’s on a
string. She’s mesmerizing to behold. She was born to dance. And I
was born to watch her.

Nearly a year ago, I gave her the news of my
latest investment.

“
Would you stop cleaning and look at me?”
I asked in mock exasperation. “Babies don’t have to have a
completely sterile environment, you know.”

She stopped scrubbing the rails of the crib
and looked up at me, that ever-present twinkle in her eye, her hair
mussed from her vigorous cleaning. “Why? You got something else
you’d like me to do with my hands?” She held up her gloved hands
and wiggled her fingers, her tongue tucked into one corner of her
curved lips. For a second I actually forgot what it was that I was
going to tell her.

I let my eyes run over her beautiful face,
over the extended curve of her pregnant belly and I was reminded of
the gift, the gift I’d gotten her for the birth of our baby. The
gift of her last unfulfilled dream.

“
Maybe I should just wait and tell you
after they induce you tomorrow,” I teased.

She tore off one glove and slapped me with
it. “Don’t you dare!”

She hopped up and came to plop down in my
lap, like she’d done a million times as we sat in the rocker in the
baby’s room, imagining what it would be like to rock him to sleep
there.

“
Well, since you’re gonna get all ugly
about it…” I winked up at her and she grabbed my face and gave me a
rough peck.

“
Tell me or risk the
consequences.”

“
Fine,” I said with an exaggerated sigh.
“I never told you what I planned to do with the money I made from
the sale of my businesses.”

“
You mean other than shower me with things
that I could never have a need of?”

“
Yes, besides that.”

“
Then no, you didn’t.”

“
Well, I had a friend who was open to the
idea of an investor. You might’ve heard of him. Chance Altman.” I
watched Kennedy’s eyes go wide and her mouth drop open into a
perfectly round O. “I thought you might know the name. Well, he was
pretty keen on the idea of having a partner, as well as having a
troupe based in Chicago. I was also able to give him the name of an
extremely talented dancer that I happen to know. There was even an
opening at the Steadman Theater that some charming and resourceful
man was able to procure for the shows. Three nights a week,
starting this summer.”

After staring at me for at least sixty full
seconds, Kennedy leaned her forehead against mine and I watched the
tears—her “happy as hell” tears as she calls them—drip from the tip
of her nose onto the front of my shirt.

“
I didn’t need anything else in life to be
happy, to be complete, Reese.”

“
But I needed to give you this. I want to
see you dance, beautiful. I want to see you dance until your dream
isn’t to dance anymore.”

She lifted her head and gazed into my eyes
with her big, teary green ones. “You are my dream. He is my dream,”
she said, touching her belly with one palm.

“
But
you’re
mine. And I know you’ve
always wanted this. And I wanted you to have it.”

That was followed by some pretty rigorous
lovemaking, especially for a pregnant lady. It turned out to be a
good idea, though, because she didn’t have to be induced after
that. Malcolm Harrison Spencer came along just fine on his own.

I can remember with absolute clarity the way
it felt to hold him in my arms—my child, a part of me and a part of
Kennedy, together in the most perfect baby I’ve ever seen. I didn’t
think many moments in life could compete with the moment that I
stood across from her and watched her lips move when she said “I
do” in the front of the church, but holding our son for the first
time was right up there with it.

Every day since then has been just about as
ideal as I could imagine life being. We’ve fed him together, bathed
him together, watched him take his first steps and say his first
words together. I wouldn’t change a single second of it.

It’s been ten months to the day since I
witnessed the miracle of our son’s birth. Now I get to witness
another incredible event—the first day his mother got to dance the
dance of her dreams, on a stage for the whole world to see.

The smile she’s wearing as she twirls and
bends takes my breath away. And the satisfaction I get from knowing
that I helped put it there…priceless.

I’m living a life I never thought I’d have,
happier than I ever thought I could be. My son is at home with my
mother. My wife is on stage where she belongs. And my empire is
being expanded for our children. I couldn’t ask for one more thing
out of life.

But if I could, I might ask for a little
girl.