Turning Thirty-Twelve (25 page)

Just one more day
.
He’ll know tomorrow.

I wanted to see if he thought I’d be one of those cool grandmothers who everyone tells she couldn’t possibly be old enough to have grandchildren. I wanted to laugh with him about how wonderful a grandfather he would be. I wanted to know if he wanted Nate and Kathy to have a boy or a girl. 

My thoughts darkened with the fear I’d been carrying around over how upset he would be when the kids told him tomorrow. He’d be angry with me for not telling him. That lingering dread had lent a note of desperation to my desire. Mark must have felt my need because his response was intense and passionate. As I lay there in his arms, entirely sated, I knew what he wanted from me.

But I just couldn’t say anything.

“Jackie? You asleep already?”

I shook my head against his shoulder.

“What’s wrong, babe?” Mark hugged me a little tighter.

“Nothing’s wrong, I’m just...tired.”

I don’t want to lie to you. Please don’t ask me anything else.

“You’re still worried about Kathy and Nate, aren’t you? They’ve got to work this out themselves. I can’t imagine how awkward it’ll be when they break up—at least for a while. It’s not like they can stay out of each other’s way.”

He chuckled, the sound rumbling his chest and tickling my ear. I wanted to laugh too, but I had nothing to laugh about.

Mark continued his dialogue. “I doubt they’ll be together much longer after that little show they put on earlier this week. What do you think? Maybe you and Carly and I should start a pool. Pick the date of their break up.”

“That’s a bad idea.”

“She
can
talk,” he said with a laugh.

I wanted to cry.

“Jackie, what’s wrong?”

The phone rang. I was saved by the bell.

Mark grabbed the handset. “It’s Nate’s cell.” He handed me the phone.

“Nathaniel? I thought you were going to the concert.”

“Mom, I need you and Mark to come down here. Now.”

“Why on earth would you—”

“Kat’s in the hospital.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Mark and I hurried into the waiting area of the Emergency Room. The nauseating hospital smell hit me instantly. Coupled with the eerie sense of foreboding, it was enough to make me want to turn around and run for the exit. Of course, simply getting to the hospital had been an ordeal.

The ride to Bloomington had been tense. He’d driven way too fast, and I’d worn out the imaginary brake on my side of the car because of all the times I thought he got too close to the cars in front of us. He’d fired question after question that I couldn’t answer, and I knew he was entirely fed up with my quiet.

My detective obviously didn’t deal well with the unknown.

The trip had seemed interminable as I’d silently stared at the passing cornfields and shrugged my shoulders to each of Mark’s increasingly loud questions. I was pretty sure I knew what was happening to Kathy, but I wasn’t about to blurt everything out to her father until we saw her. I’d made a solemn promise, after all. Plus, Kat could have a broken arm or hot appendix. Nate hadn’t been very forthcoming with details. He just told us she was going to be fine, but that she wanted us there. And I knew Nate needed us too, especially if the trip to the E.R. had anything to do with the baby. 

Trying to ignore the disinfectant smell, I looked around the waiting area and saw Nate sitting in a chair with his elbows propped on his knees, hands laced through his hair.

“Nate,” I said as we reached him, putting a steadying hand on his shoulder. “How’s Kat?”

My son turned his head to glare up at me with anger and hurt clear in his eyes. The shock was recognizing that he was directing both those emotions right at
me
.

He knew.

Nate shrugged my hand away. “Why in the hell didn’t you tell me?”

Damn it all anyway.

I should have forced Kathy to tell them both—but I’d made her a promise, and I hadn’t broken it. I just hoped Mark and Nate could understand and forgive me one day.

I stroked my son’s head.

He jerked away. His rejection hurt like a hard slap to my face.

“I promised her, Nate,” I said. “I promised Kat I’d let her tell you.”

“Tell you what?” Mark asked, clearly confused and already pissed off. His gaze shifted between mother and son, and I could tell he sensed a conspiracy. He narrowed his eyes at me. “What’s wrong with my daughter?” His voice had taken on a hard edge, and I couldn’t tell if he was yelling at Nate or me.

Probably both.

“She’s having a miscarriage.” Nate got to his feet and stared down at me with so much condemnation in his eyes I wanted to weep in response.

“A what?” Mark shouted. “She’s having a
what?
” I watched the emotions play across my husband’s face. Shock. Confusion. And then rage.

“A miscarriage,” Nate replied. “She was pregnant, and she lost the baby.”

Mark moved so fast, I didn’t even have a chance to stop him. Grabbing a couple of fistfuls of the front of Nate’s shirt, he pinned my son to the closest wall. “You son of a bitch. What did you do to her?”

“Don’t call my mom a bitch.” Nate managed to reply in a flat voice that seemed a bit peculiar considering the fact he’d just been slammed against a wall.

He wasn’t fighting back, which told me that he was angry with himself for what Kat was going through. He blamed himself, and he probably thought he deserved a good smack or two. He was evidently going to let Mark provide the punishment.

I put myself between them, wanting desperately to get Mark to let my son go. “Mark, stop it.” I tugged at his arm. It was like trying to move an anchored steel beam. “Not here. Please, not here.”

His arm remained straight as an arrow, but his gaze shifted from Nate to me.

I deserved
some
of fury flowing my way, but not
all
of it. I’d done the right thing by Kat when she had needed me most. When Mark got over his shock, surely he would see that.

“She was going to tell you tomorrow,” I insisted.

“But you already knew, didn’t you?”

I stood there, trying not to fight back and feeling the prying stares of everyone in the waiting area.

“
Didn’t you
?” he shouted loud enough to make me flinch.

“Just for a couple of days.”

“And you didn’t tell me? You didn’t think I needed to know my own daughter was pregnant? Damn you, Jackie.”

I wanted to shout right back at him. I wanted to tell him I had been helping his daughter, damn it. My own anger was quickly rising in response to his, and those suppressed defensive shields—the ones I had tucked away when I married Mark—were slowing creeping back into place.

He shouldn’t be
yelling
at me. He should be
thanking
me. I’d taken care of his daughter when she really needed someone. I’d done all the right things to help her through this. And what did I get in return?

Damn me?

Damn
me?

Damn
him!

“Let Nate go.” I grabbed at his arm again. He didn’t budge an inch. “Let go of my son!”

A security guard was taking long strides to reach us, and Mark was going to be in a world of hurt if he didn’t get that temper under control pretty damn quick.

“Look, I know you’re pissed, but this isn’t the place for us to talk. Let him go, Mark,” I begged as I tugged at his arm. “Let him go. Now.”

Mark snarled and pulled his hands away from Nate’s chest.

Nate slowly eased away from the wall.

“Everything okay here?” the rent-a-cop asked when he reached us. He bore that air of self-importance that people who had no real power often sport. I could tell the guy irritated Mark as much as he did me.

“You all right?” The uniformed man looked Nate up and down.

“I’m fine,” Nate replied, giving his shoulders an exaggerated roll and straightening his shirt.

The security officer eyeballed us for a few more moments. “If I let this here go, I won’t have no more trouble from you folks?” He gave Mark a stern glare I figured was supposed to intimidate him.

Mark scowled right back at the man. I could see the carefully contained fury in my husband’s eyes and hoped the barriers would hold for a little while longer. For my part, all I wanted to do was correct the guard’s abhorrent grammar and send him on his way, figuring there was a vending machine waiting somewhere in the hospital where he could get himself another snack and add another inch or two to that enormous waistline.

“No more trouble,” I replied. “Emotions are just running a little hot. That’s all.”

The security guard nodded at me. Then he hiked up his sagging pants and walked over to the reception desk. He said something to the lady sitting behind it—probably telling her to call him if the white trash he’d just expertly handled got rowdy again—and he left the waiting room.

“Stay here. I’m going back to see my daughter,” Mark said as he walked over to the reception desk.

I followed, trying to control my annoyance at having been dismissed like some child. “Maybe I better go back too.”

“Oh, I think you’ve caused enough trouble,” Mark sneered before he asked the receptionist where Kat was. He listened attentively, and then he leveled a glare at me. “Take your son and go home.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m not going anywhere,” I replied with a condescending wave of my hand that didn’t help cool Mark’s anger.

I was every bit as anxious to see Kathy as he was, and I wasn’t about to leave her with only her father to lean on. His temper was getting the better of him, and right now she probably needed some TLC. I doubted her enraged father could provide much.

“Neither is Nate,” I insisted. “Look, I know you’re angry, but—”

“Angry?
Angry?
I’m so far past that...” He stopped, huffed a few breaths out of his flared nostrils, and drew his lips into a grim line. “You’re a piece of work, lady. You know that?” He turned to go.

I grabbed his arm.

He stared down at me, throwing daggers with his eyes aimed right at my heart.

“Kat made me promise. She was going to tell you and Nate, but she just wanted to think it all through first. She was scared—scared to tell Nate and scared to tell you. Please don’t shout at her when you go back there.”

“I think getting parenting advice from
you
is a colossal waste of time.” He pulled his arm away and jerked his thumb toward where Nate stood. “I mean, look how great your son turned out.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“He goes and gets some innocent girl pregnant and—”

“They were both there, Mark. It takes
two
people to make a baby.”

“I’m going back to see my daughter.” He punched the big button, and the double doors opened. He strode through them and disappeared in the treatment area.

“I’ll be here if either of you need me,” I called after him, hoping he would hear.

Nate was sitting with his head in his hands again when I went to take a seat next to him. I put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

He sat up and brushed it away.

“Nate, I’m sorry. I know this is hard. You’re both so young...”

“What would you know about how I feel?” he scoffed.

Because I was nineteen when I got pregnant with your brother, Nate. Remember?

I reined in my sarcasm. “Think about that for a minute.”

He stared over at me for a few moments. “Fine. Maybe you
do
understand.”

The anger seemed to ebb right out of him as it was rapidly replaced with hurt. I felt entirely helpless, only able to watch him and listen.

“You know what sucks?” he asked. “She didn’t trust me enough to tell me. I love Kat so much, and she wouldn’t even tell me she was pregnant with my baby.”

“She was going to—after the concert.”

I saw the flicker of hope in his eyes. He loved Kathy and wanted to believe she loved him in return. “Really? She was going to tell me?”

I nodded. “Right after the concert. Then she was going to come home with you tomorrow and tell Mark. What happened tonight?”

He put his elbows back to his knees and rested his forehead against his hands. He might as well have been talking to the carpet. “We were eating at The Chuckwagon, and she just...doubled over and started crying. Then I noticed that...” Nate turned his head away, obviously embarrassed.

“She was bleeding?”

He nodded. “I drove her right here. She wouldn’t even let me call an ambulance. When we got here, I stayed with her for a couple of minutes, but then she told me to leave. She didn’t want me with her.”

“Nate, I’m so sorry.”

His head snapped up, and our gazes locked. Nate looked like he was drowning—like a young man who was being pulled down by a relentless undertow and was tired of fighting it. “I want to come home. I hate it here. I hate classes. I hate the profs.” Nate got up and started to pace. “I hate the dorm. I hate not having you around when I need something. The only thing I had here was Kat. And now she... she...” He shook his head.

I heaved a sigh, feeling entirely inadequate to help my son. He wasn’t a child anymore. I couldn’t fix this for him. It was time for him to put some starch in his spine. “College can be rough, but you’ve got to tough it out. Finish the year here, then we can talk about transferring somewhere else—somewhere a little closer if you want.”

“Rough?” Nate shook his head again, this time adding a rueful laugh. “I’m in the ninth circle of Hell.”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at the exaggeration, and a hesitant smile twitched on my lips. Nate always liked his melodrama, and his usual personality was starting to assert itself.

He would be all right.

I refused, however, to indulge him in any pity. “We need to take things one step at a time. Let’s help Kat through this, then we can talk about everything else.”

“She won’t let me help her through this. I want to be back there with her, but she doesn’t want me.”