The Marriage Wish (10 page)

“Is it just a wrong impression, or does Scott work too hard?”

Heather considered the question carefully. “He’s the first one in our family to reach such an important position, I don’t really have a reference to say what is normal for a position such as his. I know he doesn’t relax easily, that the job is always there weighing on his mind. He has to continually struggle to have a life away from his job.”

Jennifer nodded thoughtfully. “Thanks, Heather.”

“Sure. Scott tells me you recently finished another book?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve read all of your books. You’re a very good writer, Jennifer.”

“Thank you,” Jennifer said, caught off guard.

Heather grinned. “Don’t be so modest. I envy you your talent. One of these days, we need to go to lunch together. I would love to hear what it’s like to be a writer.”

Jennifer laughed. “I would like that.”

They joined the two men in the living room. Jennifer smiled for Scott’s benefit as she joined him on the couch. The fact she had survived a trip to the nursery was her biggest accomplishment in weeks. She was very relieved to have the experience over, but also very glad she had agreed.

The evening ended shortly thereafter. It was late. Without anything being said, Scott knew his sister was tired. Frank was sent to the greenhouse to bring back two beautiful violets. Jennifer gracefully accepted the gift.

Goodbyes were said without being drawn out.

Jennifer leaned her head back against the seat as Scott pulled the car out of the drive. She let out her breath in a deep sigh of relief.

“Was it that hard?”

Jennifer didn’t bother to soften her answer. “Yes.”

Scott looked over at her, curious, wishing she would explain. Everything he had seen said Jennifer and Heather had hit it off, were already on the way to becoming friends. Jennifer’s assessment did not match his observation. “Why was it hard?” Scott asked, feeling the need to push for an answer.

“She’s pregnant,” Jennifer finally replied.

“That’s a problem?”

She nodded.

Scott looked over at Jennifer, needing answers. Her expression stopped his next question. She was seriously hurting. He reached over to grasp her hand. This is the issue Lord, isn’t it? “Talk to me, Jennifer. What’s going on?”

It was time to tell him. She abruptly changed the subject. “Could we go for a walk on the beach? Could you handle another late night?”

Her request surprised him. “Sure, if you would like to.”

“Please.”

E
ven with her coat on, Jennifer found the night air too cold to walk far, and her shoes weren’t made for walking on sand. At Scott’s suggestion, they went back to his place. He built a fire. With all the lights off, the living room took on a soft glow as the flames flickered around the logs, the only sound an occasional loud snap and sizzle as the sap in the wood burned.

He pulled her down on the sofa beside him and tucked her gently against him. Her head cradled against his shoulder, Jennifer watched the flames in silence for some time. She could feel Scott breathing, even hear his heartbeat. His arms around her waist were strong and solid. It felt so good to be near him. It felt safe.

“I lost a baby girl,” Jennifer said softly into the silence.

She felt Scott’s reaction. The sudden stillness as his breathing stopped. “When, Jennifer?”

He understood her pain. It was in his voice, in the way he was suddenly holding her. He understood her pain and was sharing it. Somewhere inside Jennifer a glimmer of hope began to form. She had taken such a risk in saying those words. Letting Scott see a memory that was still raw and unhealed. He could hurt her so badly with just a wrong word.

She was crying. She had been so afraid Scott would be angry that she had not told him earlier.

Scott looked down at the face of the most important woman who had ever been in his life and had to close his eyes at the pain he saw. His arms tightened around her. “Honey, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” He was not able to think of anything else to say. He rocked her gently in his arms and let her cry. He felt a few tears slip down his own face as well. She had been holding the memory inside all this time. So much now made sense. Her anger at God. Her hesitancy to really talk with him. Scott groaned. Her reluctance to be around young children. How could he have missed seeing something so desperately wrong? She was a lady fighting a battle with grief so severe it had been crushing her heart and he had not understood. “Jennifer. Honey, it’s going to be all right.” He gently wiped away the tears streaming down her face. A baby. She would have made such a wonderful mother.

“Jennifer, tell me what happened.” He needed to know. Please, Lord, help her to tell me.

There was a long silence as she tried to stop the tears. Scott waited, stroking her arms lightly, feeling the occasional tremor that ran down her back. She was in so much pain.

“I couldn’t carry her to term. She was born badly premature.” She let out a shaky breath. “She was so beautiful, Scott. So awful tiny. She only weighed two pounds, two ounces. Her feet were less than an inch long, her fingers
couldn’t even circle my little finger. She was less than eleven inches long. She was the most beautiful baby I had ever seen.” She took a deep breath and let it out on a sob. “They said she wouldn’t live. Her lungs were not developed, and the stress of having to breathe before she was physically ready to do so was such a crisis for her. But she was born, and alive, and she was going to live. You could see it in her blue eyes. She was such a fighter.”

Scott gently brushed the hair back from Jennifer’s face, watching her expression, the pain, seeing the incredible intensity of love she had felt for her daughter. He could feel the crushing pain inside his own heart at what was coming. God, why?

Jennifer smiled at a memory from the past. “But she did live, Scott. And she finally learned how to suck and she started to gain weight and she got stronger, and they even began to talk about miracles happening. I started to make her little clothes so she would have something to wear when she came home. I would spend my days at the hospital holding her and talking to her and telling her about her dad and she would smile at me with those vivid blue eyes.”

There was a very long silence and Scott did not disturb it. He couldn’t.

“She was ten weeks old when she got the cold. In the last week when she no longer had the energy to move, she would lie in the incubator and watch me with her vivid blue eyes and blink at me as I talked to her. She struggled so hard for each breath. I got my hand inside the incubator around all the tubes and slid my finger under her hand and stroked the back of her arm, and I prayed a very simple prayer. Lord, she needs another breath. And when she breathed, I would say thank you and I would pray again. We were a team. I prayed and God answered and she breathed.”

The words stopped. A heavy shudder shook her frame. “At 10:02 p.m. on Wednesday, December 10, I prayed, and God didn’t answer, and my baby didn’t breathe.”

Oh, God. How could You crush someone’s faith so callously? Of all the ways the baby could have died, why did you destroy Jennifer’s faith in the process? Scott had never felt such anger before in his entire life. Never at a person. Never at his God. But it erupted full blown as he heard what Jennifer said.

“What was her name, Jennifer? What was your daughter’s name?”

“Colleen.” She said it on a whisper. “Colleen Marie St. James.”

He didn’t often call his sister in the middle of the night, but Scott picked up the phone at 2:00 a.m. when he got back from taking Jennifer home and dialed Heather’s number. He had to talk to someone. She answered the phone on the third ring. “Twig.”

“What’s wrong, Scott? Mom?” There was alarm in her voice.

“No, all the family is fine. I need to talk about Jennifer.”

There was silence for a minute as she woke up and regrouped. “What’s wrong, Scott?”

“I just found out Jennifer lost a baby girl, Twig.” He drew a deep, shaky breath. “I was okay when she told me, now I feel like I’m falling apart. I don’t know what to do. She’s been bleeding inside with grief because she lost a daughter.”

“Oh, Scott. If I’d only known. I spent the evening talking about my pregnancy, showing her the nursery.”

“You didn’t know. Neither of us did. I should have put the pieces together earlier.” He took another deep breath, fighting to stop the tears that wanted to come from deep in his
gut. “Jennifer was pregnant when Jerry died. Did her best to keep herself together for the baby’s sake. But the strain was too much, Colleen was born over two months premature. She beat the odds and made it through the first few days, apparently began to improve rapidly, after two months there was talk of letting her go home. Then she got sick and took a turn for the worse. She was three months old when she died.

“Jennifer has been blaming herself for the child’s death, that it was her fault the child was premature. She could barely talk tonight, she was hurting so much.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know how to help her, Twig.”

“Give her time, Scott. At least she’s grieving. That’s better than denying the pain of what happened.”

“Without meaning to, I could really hurt her right now. Should I talk about it now that I know? Try not to talk about it?”

“Does she have any family in the area?”

“Her brother and his wife. Jennifer seems close to both Peter and Rachel.”

“Then let her set the pace, Scott. From what you said, she’s been fairly open about her late husband.”

“Yes.”

“She’ll reach the point she can talk about Colleen the same way. It will just take time.”

“Thank you, Twig. I’m sorry I had to wake you up.”

“That’s okay, Scott. I’ll pray for you both. You can handle this. Please, try not to worry tonight. Try to get some sleep.”

“I’ll try.”

He put the phone down slowly after saying good-night. Time. His concept of how long he thought she needed had just been overtaken by a new reality. “Jennifer, I’ll give you
all the time you need. I promise you that,” he whispered. “But I’m not going to let you retreat back into a shell now. Not after you have finally begun to face the pain. We’ll get through this together. I’m not going to let you be alone in your grief anymore.”

He lay awake for hours that night, fighting God over the senseless way Colleen had died, angry at the pain, angry at the brutal fact such a simple heartfelt prayer had not been answered. The anger did not change the circumstances, but he found in himself an intense willingness to go toe to toe with God to at least ensure Jennifer got an answer to the question of Why. She was going to be his wife. His God could not leave her like this. He had to at least heal the pain.

You’ve left her torn apart for three years, God. That makes no sense. I know You. You don’t act this way. You don’t rip apart and walk away. Why haven’t You helped her? Why haven’t You intervened? This isn’t like You. You have to get back in this game and ease her pain. Is not one of Your names Comfort? I don’t see love here, or comfort. Does it give You pleasure to leave her trapped in grief? How could You do this to the woman I love?

“Hi,” Scott said quietly when she opened the door. He wished he had worn his sunglasses, taken more than the three aspirins, done something more to ease the pain radiating behind his eyes. He was at her door as early as he thought safe. He didn’t want to have their first conversation be over a phone. He knew how the grief was going to hit her, and the last thing he wanted was distance between them when they talked. She looked awful but he didn’t care. He felt as bad as she did.

“Hi,” Jennifer replied softly, not meeting his eyes. She opened the door for him and Scott stepped inside. She felt
very self-conscious this morning. She didn’t know what to say after last night. She knew she looked a mess, and that didn’t help any.

“I brought these for you.” He took a ribbon-tied set of three roses from behind his back, one red, one peach, one white.

“Thank you, Scott,” she said, fighting tears. Why did he have to be so nice? “They are beautiful.”

Scott watched her as she carried the flowers into the living room and added them to the vase on the end table. He frowned. “Jennifer, did you sleep at all last night?”

She brushed away a tear as she wearily shook her head. “I thought I was over these crying jags months ago, Scott. Last night, every time I closed my eyes I was back in that hospital lounge, waiting for word about Colleen, or wearing that awful green gown I always had to wear when I was around her, trying to hold her despite all the machines around her”—she grimaced—“remembering what it was like when she died.”

Scott crossed over to join her, his hands lightly touching her shoulders, turning her toward him. “Look at me, honey.”

She finally did.

He hated the look in her eyes. They were dying again. “I am glad you told me. I know how hard it was. I’m angry with God for how Colleen died. She was your daughter, and you shouldn’t have had to suffer the loss of both your husband and your daughter. But you have to deal with the grief and get beyond this, Jennifer. You’ve got no choice. You will have other children someday.” It was the only thing promising that he had been able to find last night. She would have other children. God willing, they would be his. She was afraid of the idea right now, afraid of having more children, he knew it, he could feel it, but given time, her grief would eventually heal.

Jennifer didn’t say anything. She blinked a couple of times, and he couldn’t tell if she’d even heard him. She turned away to walk to the window, wearily rubbed the back of her neck, and he wondered how bad her headache was. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner,” she said. “Several times I have wanted to talk about her, but I could never find the right words.”

The wall he had feared was up between them. He wasn’t going to be getting close to her grief today. She had pushed it and the pain too far down to be touched. Scott closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Now was not the time to push. She desperately needed a break. The crisis the morning he had met her was nothing compared to the crisis that was coming, unless she got some help. She wasn’t going to make it through this pain. She hadn’t slept, and her emotions were becoming deadened. Mentally, physically, she didn’t have the reserves to deal with what had happened. And if he wasn’t careful, she was going to see his presence as adding to her pain. He knew about the prayer, he knew the details of her crisis of faith. And her brother, Peter, didn’t. He had realized that sometime during the night. She had never told Peter and Rachel about praying for Colleen to breathe. It had remained her private battle with God. The fact he knew made him dangerous to her now. If he wasn’t careful, she was going to push him away, just as she was trying to push away the pain.

In an insight that seemed to come directly from the Lord, he asked, “Would you like to go out on the lake for a couple of hours? It’s promising to be a relatively warm, sunny day. We could even do a little fishing if you like. It’s peaceful out on the water and you don’t have to think about anything, just watch your bobber. It might help you sleep. The wind and water always have that effect on me.”

She turned to look at him—the quiet, calm, studying look she’d given on the pier the morning she had come back to the beach. It was radiating out from the strength inside, reserves he’d seen her tap that very first morning when she’d been so tired it had been hard for her to walk a straight line. “You’re taking the day off work?”

“I figured you might like some company.”

It earned him a soft real smile. It disappeared too quickly, but it gave him hope. She crossed back to his side, squeezed his hand. “Thank you, Scott. I really appreciate that. Yes, let’s go out on the lake for a bit. I like to fish. Should I pack us a lunch?”

“I’ll pack a cooler with drinks to take along. If we catch anything, we can fix them for lunch. If not, there is a restaurant built out on the lake down at the harbor. We can eat there,” Scott replied, improvising everything.

She seemed willing to let him. “I’ll just get changed and be back in a minute.”

Jennifer changed clothes, her movements heavy and forced. Her reserves were gone, she was weary beyond words. She had already decided she was going to lean on Scott to the literal extent he would allow her. She was tired of fighting God. Tired of caring. Tired of coping. Today she was going to leave all the misery here at the house and ignore it all for as long as she could. It had been such a long, painful night. There were no more tears to shed. She had ended up standing in the doorway to the room that had once been prepared as her daughter’s nursery, and she had sobbed there until she’d thought her heart would break. But her heart had stayed intact, and the hours had passed, and she’d eventually, wearily, headed to the kitchen to fix coffee and toast as the sun rose.