Nobody's Baby But Mine

Chapter Eleven

C al’s parents lived on a hilly residential street shaded by mature trees and lined with older homes. Vines that would soon bloom with clematis and morning glory clung to the mailboxes, and empty white latticework planters waiting to be filled with colorful blooms perched on front porches.

The Bonner house sat at the top of a steep slope carpeted with ivy and rhododendron. It was a graceful two-story cream stucco topped by a roof of curving pale green Spanish tiles, with the shutters and trim painted the same light green. Cal pulled the Jeep under the porte cochere off to the side, then came around the front to open the door for her.

For a moment his eyes lingered on her legs. He hadn’t commented on her soft, taffy-colored skirt and sweater ensemble, even though she’d rolled the skirt twice at the waistband so that a good three inches of thigh showed through her pale hose. She thought he hadn’t noticed and figured her thirty-four-year-old thighs weren’t any match for all those long-stemmed aerobicized legs he was used to, but now the flicker of admiration in his eyes made her wonder if she’d misjudged.

She couldn’t remember ever being so confused. Last night she’d felt as if she’d run through an entire gamut of emotions with him. When they’d talked in the kitchen, there had been a sense of companionship she’d never expected. There had also been laughter, anger, and lust. Right now, the lust disturbed her most.

“I like your hair,” he said.

She’d left it down, along with abandoning her glasses and taking twice her normal time to apply her makeup. The way his gaze slid over her made her think it was more than just her hair he liked. Then he frowned.

“No funny business tonight, you hear me?”

“Loud and clear.” She deliberately stuck a burr under his saddle so she’d stop thinking about last night. “Don’t you want to throw your coat over my head to make sure none of the neighbors get a good look at me? Now what am I saying? If any of them spot me, you can just tell them I’m the mother of one of your girlfriends.”

He grabbed her arm and steered her toward the front door. “One of these days I’m going to slap a piece of duct tape right over that smart mouth of yours.”

“Impossible. You’ll already be dead. I spotted an electric hedge trimmer in the garage.”

“Then I’m going to tie you up, toss you in a closet, throw in a dozen rats crazed from hunger, and lock the door.”

She lifted her eyebrow. “Very good.”

He grunted and opened the front door.

“We’re in here,” Lynn called out.

Cal led her into a beautifully decorated living room done almost entirely in white, with accent pieces in peach and soft mint green. Jane barely had a chance to take it in before her attention was caught by one of the most beautiful men she had ever seen.

“Jane, this is my brother Ethan.”

He walked forward, took her hand, and looked down at her through kind blue eyes.“Hello, Jane. We finally meet.”

She could feel herself melting, and she was so surprised by her reaction to him that she barely managed to acknowledge his greeting. Could this blond-haired, finely chiseled, soft-spoken man really be Cal’s brother? Gazing into his eyes, she felt the same swell of emotion she sometimes experienced when she saw a newborn baby or a photograph of Mother Teresa. She found herself sneaking a glance at Cal, just to see if she’d missed something.

He shrugged. “Don’t look at me. None of us can figure it out.”

“We think he might be a changeling.” Lynn rose from the couch. “He’s the family embarrassment. Goodness knows, the rest of us have a list of sins a mile long, but he makes us look even worse in comparison.”

“For very good reason.” Ethan regarded Jane with absolute sincerity. “They’re all the spawn of Satan.”

By now Jane had more than a passing acquaintance with the Bonner sense of humor.“And you probably mug old ladies in your spare time.”

Ethan laughed and turned to his brother. “You finally caught yourself a live one.”

Cal muttered something inaudible, then glared at her with a silent reminder that she was supposed to be alienating everybody, not buddying up. She hadn’t forgotten, but neither had she let herself think too much about that part of it.

“Your father had a delivery,” Lynn said, “but he should be back any minute now. Betsy Woods’s third. You remember; she was your first prom date. I think your father has delivered the babies of every old girlfriend any of you boys ever had.”

“Dad took over the practice from his own father,” Ethan explained. “For a long time Dad was the only doctor around here. He’s got help now, but he still works too hard.”

The discussion reminded her that she needed to find a doctor soon. And it wouldn’t be Jim Bonner.

As if she’d conjured him, he appeared in the archway. He looked rumpled and tired, and Jane saw an expression of concern flicker across Lynn’s features.

As Jim came into the room, his big voice boomed. “How come nobody has a drink?”

“I have a pitcher of margaritas waiting in the kitchen.” Lynn’s forehead smoothed, and she moved toward the door.

“We’ll come with you,” Jim said. “I can’t stand this room, not since you and that fancy decorator ruined it. All this white makes me feel as if I can’t sit down.”

Jane thought the room was lovely and found Jim’s remark uncalled-for. The four of them followed Lynn into the kitchen, whose warm pine and tasteful accessories gave it a cozy country charm. Jane wondered how Cal could stand their own garish house after being raised in such a comfortable place.

Jim shoved a beer at his son, then turned to Jane. “Would you like a margarita?”

“I’d rather have a soft drink.”

“Baptist?”

“Pardon?”

“Are you a teetotaler?”

“No.”

“We have some nice white wine in the house. Amber’s made herself over into something of a wine expert, haven’t you, honey?” His words sounded like those of a proud husband, but their bite told a different story.

“That’s enough, Dad.” Cal’s voice held a touch of steel. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I want it to stop.”

His father straightened, and their eyes clashed. Although Cal’s posture remained relaxed, the hard glint in his eyes warned his father that he’d stepped over the line.

Jim obviously wasn’t used to having anyone challenge his authority, but Cal didn’t show the slightest inclination to back down. She remembered that only yesterday he’d denied that anything was wrong with his parents’ marriage.

Ethan broke in with a request for a beer and a casual remark about a town council meeting. He must be the family peacemaker. Tensions eased, and Lynn asked Jane about her morning with Annie. Jane heard the coolness in her voice and knew she must be wondering why her new daughter-in-law had so much time to spend helping her mother put in a garden but refused to spare a few hours for sightseeing with her.

Jane glanced at Cal. She saw an expression of resignation in his face. He didn’t expect her to keep her word.

She felt a moment of sadness, but it did no good wishing for the impossible when she knew she owed him this. “It’s been a bother, but don’t tell her that. She simply doesn’t understand that every hour she pulls me away from my research is an hour I can never regain.”

There was a moment of strained silence. Jane refused to look at Cal. She didn’t want to see his relief as she embarrassed herself in front of his family. With a sense of dread, she turned the screw. “I know her garden is important to her, but, really, it hardly compares with the work I’m doing. I tried to explain that to her, but she’s so… I don’t mean to imply she’s ignorant, but, let’s be frank, her understanding of complex issues is limited.”

“Why the hell does she even want you there?” Jim barked.

Jane pretended not to pick up on his belligerence, which was so like his son’s. “Who can account for the whims of an old lady?”

Cal broke in. “I’ll tell you what I think? Jane’s got a cantankerous nature, just like Annie’s, and I think that’s why Annie loves having her around. The two of them have a lot in common.”

“Lucky us,” Ethan muttered.

Her cheeks burned, and Cal must have sensed that she’d gone as far as she could because he turned the conversation to a discussion of Ethan’s skiing trip. Before long they were all seated at the dinner table.

Jane did her best to look bored while she drank in every detail. She observed the easy affection between the two brothers and the unconditional love Jim and Lynn had for their sons. Despite the problems between her in-laws, she would have given anything to belong to this family instead of the distant father she’d grown up with.

Several times during the meal the conversation turned toward Jim’s work: an interesting case he had, a new medical procedure. Jane found his descriptions too gory for the dinner table, but it didn’t seem to bother anyone else, and she concluded they were all accustomed to it. Cal, in particular, kept pressing his father for details.

But Jane was most fascinated by Lynn. As the meal progressed, she spoke of art and music, as well as a reading group discussion she was leading on a new novel. She was also an excellent cook, and Jane found herself feeling increasingly intimidated. Was there anything this former mountain girl didn’t do well?

Ethan nodded toward the table’s centerpiece, a crystal vase holding an arrangement of lilies and dendrobium orchids. “Where’d you get the flowers, Mom? Since Joyce Belik closed her shop after Christmas, I haven’t seen anything like that around here.”

“I picked the arrangement up when I was in Asheville on Thursday. The lilies are getting a little limp, but I’m still enjoying them.”

For the first time since they’d begun to eat, Jim addressed his wife directly. “Do you remember the way you used to decorate the table right after we got married?”

She was still for a moment. “It was so long ago I’ve forgotten.”

“Well, I haven’t.” He turned toward his sons. “Your mother’d pick dandelions out of somebody’s backyard, stick ’em in an old pickle jar, and show ’em off to me when I came in from class like they were some exotic flower I’d never seen before. She’d get as excited about a jar full of dandelions as other women get about roses.”

Jane wondered if Jim had intended to embarrass his wife with this reminder of her humble roots, but if so, his strategy backfired. Lynn didn’t seem at all embarrassed, but his own voice had deepened with an emotion that surprised her. Maybe Jim Bonner wasn’t as contemptuous of his wife’s humble roots as he pretended to be.

“You used to get so annoyed with me,” she said, “and I can’t blame you. Imagine. Dandelions on the dinner table.”

“It wasn’t just flowers she used for centerpieces. I remember one time she scrubbed up a bunch of rocks she thought were pretty and set them in a bird’s nest she found.”

“You very rightly pointed out that a bird’s nest on the kitchen table was disgusting and refused to eat until I threw it out.”

“Yeah, I did, didn’t I?” He rubbed his fingers on the stem of his wineglass and frowned. “It might have been unsanitary, but it sure was pretty.”

“Really, Jim, it was no such thing.” She smiled, cool, serene, unaffected by the currents of old emotions that seemed to have claimed her husband.

For the first time since they’d sat down, he met Lynn’s eyes straight on. “You always liked pretty things.”

“I still do.”

“But now they have to have labels on them.”

“And you enjoy those labels much more than you ever enjoyed dandelions or birds’nests.”

Despite her promise to distance herself from the family, Jane couldn’t bear the idea of witnessing any more unpleasantness.

“How did you manage in those first years after you were married? Cal said you had no money.”

Cal and Ethan exchanged a glance that made Jane wonder if she’d stumbled on a forbidden topic. She realized her question was overly personal, but since she was supposed to be obnoxious, what difference did it make?

“Yeah, Dad, exactly how did you manage?” Ethan said.

Lynn dabbed at the corners of her lips with her napkin. “It’s too depressing. Your father hated every minute of it, and I don’t want his dinner spoiled.”

“I didn’t hate every minute of it.” Jim seemed pensive as he leaned back in his chair. “We lived in this ugly two-room apartment in Chapel Hill that looked out over an alley where people’d throw rusted bedsprings and old couches. The place was hopeless, but your mother loved it. She tore pictures out of National Geographics and hung them on the walls. We didn’t have any curtains, just two window shades that had turned yellow, and she made tissue-paper flowers out of pink Kleenex to pin across the bottoms. Things like that. We were poor as church mice. I stocked grocery shelves when I wasn’t in class or studying, but she had the worst of it. Right up until the day Cal was born, she got up at four in the morning to work all day in a bakery. But no matter how tired she was, she’d still find time to pick those dandelions on her way home.”

Lynn shrugged. “Believe me, working in that bakery wasn’t nearly as difficult as the farm chores I’d been doing on Heartache Mountain.”

“But you were pregnant,” Jane pointed out, trying to imagine it.

“I was young and strong. In love.” For the first time, Lynn looked slightly ruffled. “After Cal was born, we had medical bills on top of everything else, and since I couldn’t work in the bakery and still take care of him, I began experimenting with cookie recipes.”

“She’d start baking as soon as she’d given him his two o’clock feeding, work until four, then go back to sleep for an hour or so until he woke again. After she’d fed him, she’d wake me up for class. Then she’d wrap everything up, load Cal into an old buggy she’d found in a junk shop, pack the cookies around him, and walk to campus where she’d sell them to the students, two cookies for twenty-five cents. She didn’t have a license, so whenever the campus cops came around, she’d cover up everything but Cal’s head with this big blanket.”

She smiled at Cal. “Poor thing. I knew nothing about babies, and I nearly suffocated you in the summer.”

Cal regarded her fondly. “I still don’t like a lot of covers on me.”

“The cops never caught on,” Jim said. “All they saw was a sixteen-year-old mountain girl in a pair of worn-out jeans pushing a dilapidated buggy with a baby everybody figured was her little brother.”

Ethan’s expression grew thoughtful. “We always knew you had it tough, but you’d never tell us any of the details. How come?”

And why now? Jane wondered.

Lynn rose. “It’s an old and boring story. Poverty’s only charming in retrospect. Help me clear the table for dessert, will you, Ethan?”

To Jane’s disappointment, the conversation shifted to the much less interesting topic of football, and if Jim Bonner’s troubled gaze kept straying back to his wife, no one else seemed to notice.

As boorish as his behavior had been that afternoon, Jane was no longer quite so eager to pass judgment. There was something sad lurking in the depths of his eyes that touched her. When it came to Cal’s parents, she had the feeling that nothing was quite what it seemed.

For her, the most interesting moment came when Ethan asked Cal how his meetings were going, and she learned what her husband was doing with his time. Cal had been enlisted by the local high-school principal, an old classmate of his, to visit county businessmen and persuade them to get involved with a new vocational program for high-risk students. He also seemed to be giving Ethan a considerable amount of money to expand a drug program for county teens, but when she pressed for more details, he changed the subject.

The evening dragged on. When Jim asked her a question about her work, she patronized him with her explanation. Lynn issued an invitation to join her book group, but Jane said she had no time for ladies’ social gatherings. When Ethan said he hoped he’d see her at Sunday services, she told him she wasn’t a believer.

I’m sorry, God, but I’m doing the best I can here. These are nice people, and they don’t need any more heartache.

It was finally time to go. Everyone was rigidly courteous, but she didn’t miss Jim’s frown as he said good-bye or the deep concern in Lynn’s eyes as she hugged her son.

Cal waited until he’d pulled out of the driveway before he looked over at her.“Thanks, Jane.”

She stared straight ahead. “I can’t go through that again. Keep them away from me.”

“I will.”

“I mean it.”

“I know that wasn’t easy for you,” he said softly.

“They’re wonderful people. It was horrible.”

He didn’t speak again until they reached the edge of town. “I’ve been thinking. What say the two of us go out on a date sometime soon?”

Was this to be her reward for humiliating herself tonight? The fact that he’d chosen this particular time to extend his invitation made her waspish. “Do I have to wear a paper bag over my head in case somebody might see me?”

“Now why d’you have to go and get all sarcastic on me? I asked you out, and all you have to say is yes or no.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. How about next Wednesday night?”

“Where are we going?”

“Don’t you worry about that. Just wear the tightest pair of jeans you’ve got and maybe one of those slinky halter tops.”

“I can barely button my tight jeans, and I don’t have a slinky halter top. Even if I did, it’s too cold.”

“I imagine I can keep you pretty warm, and don’t worry about buttons.” The deep timbre of sexual promise she heard in his voice made her shiver. He glanced over, and she felt as if he were stroking her with his eyes. He couldn’t have made his intentions any clearer. He wanted her, and he intended to have her.

But the question remained, was she ready for him? Life had always been serious business for her, and nothing could ever make her a casual sort of person. Could she deal with the pain that would await her in the future if she let down her guard with him?

Her head had begun to ache, and she turned to look out the window without answering him. She tried to distract herself from the sizzling undercurrents that vibrated between them by turning her thoughts to his parents, and as the Jeep passed through the silent streets of Salvation, she began sorting through what she’d learned about them.

Lynn hadn’t always been the reserved, sophisticated woman who had entertained so graciously tonight. But what about Jim? Jane wanted to dislike him, but all evening she’d caught glimpses of yearning in his eyes when he’d looked at his wife, and she couldn’t seem to work up a good solid dislike for a man who had feelings like that.

What had happened to the two high school kids who had once been in love? she wondered.

Jim wandered into the kitchen and poured himself the last cup of decaf. Lynn stood at the sink with her back to him. She always had her back to him, he thought, although it didn’t make much difference because, even when she faced him, she never let him see anything more than the polite mask she wore for everyone except their sons.

It was during her pregnancy with Gabe that Lynn had begun transforming herself into the perfect doctor’s wife. He remembered how he’d welcomed her increasing reserve and the fact that she no longer publicly embarrassed him with bad grammar and overexuberance. As the years passed, he’d grown to believe that Lynn’s transformation had prevented their marriage from turning into the disaster everyone had predicted. He’d even thought he was happy.

Then he’d lost his only grandson and a daughter-in-law he’d adored. Afterward, as he’d witnessed his middle son’s bottomless grief and been helpless to cure it, something inside him seemed to have snapped. When Cal had phoned him with the news that he’d married, he’d finally begun to feel hopeful again. But then he’d met his new daughter-in-law. How could Cal have married that cold, supercilious bitch? Didn’t he realize she was going to make him miserable?

He cradled the coffee mug in his hands and looked over at his wife’s slim, straight back. Lynn was shaken to the core by Cal’s marriage, and both of them were trying to come up with a reason why he’d chosen so badly. The physicist had a subtle sex appeal that he’d seen right away, even if Lynn hadn’t, but that didn’t explain why Cal had married her. For years they’d both despaired over his preference for women who were too young and intellectually limited for him, but at least all of them had been sweet-natured.

He felt helpless to deal with Cal’s problems, especially when he couldn’t even deal with his own. The conversation at the dinner table had brought it all back to him, and now he felt the passage of time ticking away so loudly he wanted to shove his hands over his ears because he couldn’t go back to fix all the places where he’d made the wrong choices.

“Why haven’t you ever said anything about that day I bought the cookies from you? All this time, and you’ve never said a word.”

Her head came up at his question, and he waited for her to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about, but he should have realized that wouldn’t be her way. “Goodness, Jim, that was thirty-six years ago.”

“I remember it like it was yesterday.”

It had been a beautiful April day during his freshman year at UNC, five months after Cal was born, and he’d been coming out of a chem lab with some of his new friends, all of them upperclassmen. Now he didn’t remember their names, but at the time he’d craved their acceptance, and when one of them had called out,“Hey, it’s the cookie girl,” he’d felt everything inside him turn cold.

Why did she have to be here now, where his new friends could see her? Anger and resentment turned to acid inside him. She was so damned hopeless. How could she embarrass him like this?

As she’d brought the buggy with the wobbly wheels to a stop, she’d looked thin and ragged, barely more than a child, a raw mountain girl. He forgot everything he loved about her: her laughter, the way she’d come so eagerly into his arms, the little spit hearts she’d draw on his belly before she’d settled beneath him so sweet and giving he couldn’t think of anything but burying himself inside her.

Now as he watched her come closer, every poisonous word his parents had said shrieked in his ears. She was no good. A Glide. She’d trapped him and ruined his life. If he ever expected to see a penny of their money, he had to divorce her. He deserved something better than a roach-infested apartment and a too-young mountain girl, even one so tender and joyous she made him weep with love for her.

Panic welled inside him as his new friends called out to her. “Hey, Cookie Girl, you got any peanut butter?”

“How much for two packs of chocolate chip?”

He wanted to run, but it was too late. His new friends were already examining the cookies she’d baked that morning while he slept. One of them leaned forward and tickled his son’s belly. Another turned back to him.

“Hey, Jimbo, come on over here. You haven’t tasted anything until you’ve tried this little girl’s cookies.”

Amber had looked up at him, laughter dancing in eyes as blue as a mountain sky. He could see her waiting for the moment he would tell them she was his wife, and he knew she was savoring the humor of the situation as she savored everything about their life together.

“Yeah, uh… okay.”

Her smile remained bright as he walked toward her. He remembered that her light brown hair had been pulled into a ponytail with a blue rubber band, and that she’d had a wet spot on the shoulder of his old plaid shirt where Cal must have drooled.

“I’ll take the chocolate chip.”

Her head tilted quizzically to the side-You goof, when are you gonna tell ’em?-but she continued to smile, continued to enjoy the joke.

“Chocolate chip,” he repeated.

Her faith in his honor was infinite. She waited patiently. Smiled. He slipped his hand in his pocket and drew out a quarter.

Only then, when he held out the money, did she understand. He wasn’t going to acknowledge her. It was as if someone had turned out a light inside her, extinguishing her laughter and joy, her faith in him. Hurt and bewilderment clouded her features. For a moment she only stared at him, but, finally, she reached into the buggy for the cookies and held them out with a trembling hand.

He tossed her the quarter, one of four she’d given him that morning before he’d left for class. He tossed her the quarter as if she were nothing more than a street corner beggar, then he laughed at something one of the other guys said and turned away. He didn’t look at her, just walked away while the cookies burned in his hand like pieces of silver.

It had happened more than three decades ago, but now his eyes were stinging. He set the coffee on the counter. “What I did was wrong. I’ve never forgotten it, never forgiven myself, and I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted.” She flicked on the faucet, putting a deliberate end to the subject. When she turned off the water, she said, “Why did Cal have to marry her? Why couldn’t they just have lived together long enough for him to see what kind of woman she is?”

But he didn’t want to talk about Cal and his cold wife. “You should have spit in my face.”

“I just wish we’d met Jane ahead of time.”

He hated her easy dismissal of his wrong, especially when he suspected she hadn’t dismissed it at all. “I want you back, Lynn.”

“Maybe we could have changed his mind.”

“Stop it! I don’t want to talk about them! I want to talk about us, and I want you back.”

She finally turned, and she gazed at him out of blue, mountain sky eyes that revealed nothing. “I never left.”

“The way you were. That’s what I want.”

“Youare in a mood tonight.”

To his dismay, he could feel his throat closing up, but even so, he couldn’t be silent. “I want it the way it was at the beginning. I want you silly and funny, imitating the landlady and teasing me for being too serious. I want dandelions back on the dinner table, and fatback and beans. I want you to start giggling so hard you wet your pants, and when I walk in the door, I want you to throw yourself at me like you used to.”

Her forehead crinkled with concern. She walked over to him and rested her hand on his arm in the same comfort-place she’d been touching for nearly four decades.“I can’t make you young again, Jim. And I can’t give you back Jamie and Cherry and everything the way it used to be.”

“I know that, dammit!” He shook her off, rejecting her pity and her suffocating, never-ending kindness. “This isn’t about them. What happened has made me realize I don’t like the way things are. I don’t like the way you’ve changed.”

“You’ve had a hard day. I’ll give you a back rub.”

As always, her sweetness made him feel guilty, unworthy, and mean. It was the meanness that had been driving him lately and telling him to push her so far, to hurt her so badly, that he’d destroy the icy reserve and find the girl he’d thrown away.

Maybe if he gave her some evidence that he wasn’t as bad as he knew himself to be, she’d soften. “I’ve never screwed around on you.”

“I’m glad to know that.”

He couldn’t let it go at that, giving her only the part of the truth he wanted her to see. “I had chances, but I never went all the way. Once I got myself right to the motel door-”

“I don’t want to hear this.”

“But I backed off. God, I felt good about that for at least a week. Smug and self-righteous.”

“Whatever you’re doing to yourself, I want you to stop it right now.”

“I want to start over. I thought maybe on our vacation… but we hardly talked to each other. Why can’t we start over?”

“Because you’d hate it now just as much as you hated it then.”

She was as unreachable as a distant star, but he still needed to touch her. “I loved you so much, you know that, don’t you? Even when I let my parents talk me into agreeing to a divorce, I still loved you.”

“It doesn’t matter now, Jim. Gabe came along, and then Ethan, and there wasn’t any divorce. It was all so long ago. There’s no sense in stirring up the past. We have three wonderful sons and a comfortable life.”

“I don’t want to be comfortable!” Fury exploded inside him, fueled by frustration.“Goddammit! Don’t you understand anything? Jesus, I hate you!” In all their time together, he had never once touched her in violence, but now he grabbed her arms and shook her. “I can’t stand this any longer! Change back!”

“Stop it!” Her fingers dug into his upper arms. “Stop it! What’s wrong with you?”

He saw the fear on her face, and he jerked away, appalled by what he’d done.

Her icy reserve had finally melted, leaving rage behind, an emotion he’d never until that moment seen on her face.

“You’ve been torturing me for months!” she cried. “You belittle me in front of my own sons. You poke at me and jab me and draw blood in a thousand ways every day! I’ve given you everything, but it’s still not enough. Well, I won’t put up with it anymore! I’m leaving you! I’m finished!” She raced from the kitchen.

Panic welled inside him. He started to run after her, but then stopped just as he reached the door. What would he do when he caught her? Shake her again? Christ. What if he’d finally pushed her too far?

He drew a deep breath and told himself she was still his own Amber Lynn, sweet and gentle as a mountain afternoon. She wouldn’t leave him no matter what she said. She just needed time to calm down, that was all.

As he heard her car peel out of the driveway, he kept repeating the same thing to himself.

She wouldn’t leave him. She couldn’t.

Lynn’s chest was so tight that she had to gasp for breath as she raced along the narrow, winding road. It was a treacherous piece of highway, but she’d been driving it for years, and not even her tears made her slow down. She knew what he wanted from her. He wanted her to open her veins again and bleed with love for him the way she once had. Bleed with love that would never be returned.

She struggled for breath and remembered that she’d learned her lesson years ago when she’d been little more than a baby, naive and ignorant at sixteen, utterly convinced that love could conquer the enormous gap between them. But that naïveté hadn’t lasted. Two weeks after she’d told him she was pregnant with Gabe-Cal had only been eleven months old-her innocence was shattered forever.

She should have seen it coming, but of course she hadn’t. When she’d told him she was pregnant, she’d bubbled over with happiness even though Cal wasn’t yet a year old, and they were barely managing as it was. He had sat frozen as she’d babbled on.

“Just think, Jim! Another sweet baby! Maybe it’ll be a girl this time, and we can name her Rose of Sharon. Oh, I’d love to have me a girl! But a boy’d might be better so Cal’d have somebody to roughhouse with.”

When his expression didn’t change, she’d started to get scared. “I know it’ll be a mite hard for a while, but my baking business is goin’ real good, and just think how much we love Cal. And we’ll be real careful from now on to make sure there ain’t no more. Tell me you’re happy about the baby, Jim. Tell me.”

But he hadn’t said anything; he’d just walked out the door of their little apartment, leaving her alone and frightened. She’d sat for hours in the dark until he’d returned. He hadn’t said a word. Instead, he’d pulled her into bed and made love to her with a ferocity that had driven away her fear.

Two weeks later, while Jim was in class, her mother-in-law had come to see her. Mildred Bonner had told her that Jim didn’t love her and wanted a divorce. She’d said he’d planned to break the news to her the same night Lynn had announced that she was pregnant again, but now he felt honor-bound to stick by her. If Lynn truly loved him, Mildred said, she would let him go.

Lynn hadn’t believed her. Jim would never ask for a divorce. He loved her. Didn’t she see the evidence every night in their bed?

When he came home from studying at the library, she told him about his mother’s visit, expecting him to laugh it off. Only he didn’t. “What’s the use of talking about it now?” he said. “You got pregnant again, so I can’t go anywhere.”

The rose-colored world she’d built shattered at her feet. Everything had been an illusion. Just because he loved to have sex with her didn’t mean he loved her. How could she ever have been so foolish? He was a Bonner and she was a Glide.

Two days later his mother came to the apartment again, a fire-breathing dragon demanding that Lynn set her son free. Lynn was ignorant, uneducated, a disgrace to him! She could only hold him back.

Everything Mildred said was true, but as much as Lynn loved Jim, she knew she wasn’t going to let him go. On her own, she could have managed, but her children needed a father.

She found some hidden reservoir of strength that gave her the courage to defy his mother. “If I ain’t good enough for him, then you’d better fix me up so’s I am, because me and my babies ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

It hadn’t happened easily, but gradually the women had formed a fragile alliance. She’d accepted Mildred Bonner’s guidance in everything: how to talk, how to walk, what food to fix. Mildred insisted that Amber sounded like a white trash name, and she must call herself Lynn.

While Cal played at her feet, she devoured the books on Jim’s English reading lists and exchanged baby-sitting with another woman so she could sneak into some of the larger lecture halls and lose herself in history, literature, and art, subjects that fed her poet’s soul.

Gabe was born, and his family loosened the purse strings enough to take over Jim’s school expenses and her medical bills. Money was still tight, but they were no longer desperate. Mildred insisted they move into a better apartment, one she furnished with Bonner family pieces.

Lynn’s transformation was so gradual that she was never certain when Jim grew aware of it. He continued to make love to her nearly every night, and if she no longer laughed and teased and whispered naughty words in his ear, he didn’t seem to notice. She grew more restrained out of the bedroom as well, and his occasional approving glances rewarded her for her self-control. Gradually, she learned to keep her love for her husband locked away where it would embarrass no one.

He finished his undergraduate work and entered the grueling years of medical school, while her world was defined by the needs of her young sons and her continuous efforts at self-improvement. When he finished his residency, they returned to Salvation so he could join his father’s practice.

The years passed, and she found contentment with her sons, her work in the community, and her passion for the arts. She and Jim had their separate lives, but he was unfailingly considerate of her, and they shared passion, if not intimacy, in the bedroom. Gradually the boys left home, and she found a new serenity. She loved her husband with all her heart and didn’t blame him too much for not loving her back.

Then Jamie and Cherry had died, and Jim Bonner had fallen apart.

In the months that followed the deaths, he’d begun wounding her in so many countless ways she sometimes felt as if she were slowly bleeding to death. The unfairness left her reeling. She’d become everything he’d wanted, only now he didn’t want that. Instead, he seemed to want something that she no longer had within herself to give.