Chapter Seventeen
B ayleigh Sutherland sat down on the edge of the bathtub and looked at the plastic stick in her hand with disbelief. She was seeing her OB-GYN next week to discuss menopause; the test was simply so she could answer the anticipated question definitively.
Well, she had an answer, all right.
She was pregnant.
How was that possible? They’d used condoms. Mostly, at least. His stamina was shocking, and pregnancy was the last thing on her mind, so maybe they’d been a little careless. God. Make that stupid. Ted had been right to lecture her. She’d never live this down.
She unwrapped a second test and pulled down her pants again and set the timer on her watch. The tests were probably outdated, useless, inaccurate.
The seconds ticked by interminably.
This couldn’t be happening.
She’d wanted another baby for so long, tried and tried. That door was closed. She’d made peace with it.
She jumped when the timer dinged and looked at the indicator.
As positive as positive can be. Just like the first.
Pregnant.
Her bladder was almost empty, but the third test showed a plus sign anyway, bright and clear, as if mocking her disbelief.
Tears, which lately seemed always just under the surface, sprang to her eyes. It was about two months since Lucas had returned to his life in Colorado and he had more than enough to keep him busy there with his benighted business.
After he left, she’d searched his name online and was stunned at the pages that came up. An AITA (am I the asshole?) post on one forum, with someone posting from his point of view, resulted in hundreds of responses. (Overwhelmingly, commenters determined that yes, he was the asshole.) He was being attacked for everything from his business name (“too self-aggrandizing”), to his not knowing about Tanya’s epilepsy (“it was his business to know!”), to his providing accessible tours in the first place. “Gimps shouldn’t lead gimps,” said one particularly nasty blogger. These people seemed to feel that people with disabilities were, at best, an inconvenience to the rest of the world.
The cruelty made her sick to her stomach. Lucas had been carrying so much; no wonder he had a chip on his shoulder. No wonder he’d been cautious about meeting Brade and Leila.
No wonder he wanted to keep things casual with her.
So casual that he’d returned to Grand recently and hadn’t even let her know.
Yesterday, while she was in the barn with Sawyer, checking out a new horse, he’d mentioned that Lucas had arrived the night before and that he and Leila were off to Chinook in search of their birth mother.
Bayleigh had managed to hide her reaction until she reached the house and what BS was that? She had no claim on him, no right to hurt feelings, no reason for disappointment.
Now her crying jags made sense.
She got to her feet and dashed the tears off her cheeks.
This changed things. Didn’t it? She typed his number into her phone.
I heard you’re meeting your birth mother. I hope it goes well. She’ll adore you guys. If she doesn’t, you don’t need her.
It wasn’t a passive-aggressive move. But if she didn’t let him know that she knew, it would seem that way. Also, she needed to keep the lines of communication open between them while she figured out how to handle this.
She leaned over the mirror, covering the redness around her eyes and applying foundation to bring her pallid complexion to life. She had to think. The parameters of their affair had been set out early and clearly. A short-term thing, for mutual satisfaction, with no demands going forward.
She stared into her own eyes. This definitely changed things.
She wrapped the sticks in tissue and threw them in the trash. What was she going to do?
She hadn’t lied to Lucas; pregnancy truly hadn’t been on her radar. She and Jeremy hadn’t been able to have another child, and her endometriosis was the assumed cause. Jeremy hadn’t even been tested. But what if he’d been part of the problem? She’d never considered that before. All the years of therapy, all her own education and yet she still hadn’t fully silenced the early conditioning that whispered from deep in her subconscious that it was always the woman’s fault. If you get pregnant when you weren’t planning to, well, you should have kept your legs closed. If you didn’t get pregnant when you wanted, well, there must be something wrong with your system.
“Fuck the patriarchy,” she muttered. She’d spent too much time and energy crawling out of that mindset; she wasn’t getting sucked back in. The whole idea of fault was flawed. Everything changed when the conversation moved from fault to responsibility. It shifted people out of shame, where they only withered, into accountability, where they could grow strong. With accountability came power.
She went into her office and pulled up her daily planner but had trouble concentrating.
Pregnancy changed everything. Could she handle a baby? Now? She had a brand-new business to grow, staff to hire, clients to woo, publicity to manage, a reputation to build. And what about Ted? She’d preached sexual responsibility to him endlessly and when he’d preached it back to her, she’d waved it away. So, this would be a life example of dealing with the unexpected, instead.
The screen door slammed, and she jumped.
“Hey, Mom,” Ted called from the kitchen. “I’m starving. Can I have the leftover tuna casserole?”
Her stomach lurched.
“You sure can, sweetheart,” she called.
Then, panic hit. Taking out the garbage was Ted’s chore.
She rushed to the bathroom, fished the pregnancy tests out of the trash can and brought them into her bedroom, where she tucked them safely into her underwear drawer.
“Wow, Mom.” Ted looked up from shoveling food into his mouth as she returned to the kitchen. “You sick or something?”
“No.” She didn’t realize he’d noticed. “I must have eaten something that didn’t agree with me. What’s up with you today?”
As predicted, the question ignited a firestorm of chatter from her loquacious son. She listened with half an ear to his plans for training Mr. Darcy to get beer from the fridge, to the new place he and his friends were biking at, to the track he wanted to build out behind the last barn.
“As long as you’re keeping up with your workload.” She needed to get back to work herself.
Ted assured her that he was the rock star of Belle Vista and then thundered out the door. According to Sawyer, her son was doing a great job and she shouldn’t worry, but worrying was a mother’s prerogative.
She went back to her office but couldn’t settle down at her computer. How would Sawyer react? She couldn’t afford to lose him, but if she had to take time off to be with a new baby, he couldn’t carry the full load. He managed everything to do with the livestock: feed, bedding, farrier, veterinary care, barn maintenance, pasture rotation, overseeing the ranch hands. In addition to her counseling clients, Bayleigh was busy hiring therapists, applying for grants, and purchasing specialized equipment. Once they were fully operational, that list would include liaising with medical professionals, scheduling classes and one-on-one sessions, leading the mental health program, and on and on. How would she juggle that with another child?
It would take a lot of work.
Then she remembered Sawyer’s warning. Sue Anne Nylund represented a population that valued more tightly defined gender roles, but she was only one voice. Some people in Grand might have concerns about a single woman running a ranch, and those people might also believe that her having a baby on her own proved their point. She could hear the arguments now. If she was dumb enough to get knocked up by a visiting cowboy, how could she be smart enough to run Belle Vista?
But those weren’t the parents she’d met at the school event. There was diversity in Grand, Montana, in ethnicity, sexual orientation, family structure, ability. And diversity forced people to broaden their thinking, to see people in the street, to talk to them in the grocery store, to meet them as individuals, rather than unknown—and therefore feared—caricatures.
She got up and stood at the window, looking out at the neatly railed corrals and rolling hills that made up Belle Vista. All her savings plus a sizable bank loan had gone into this place. She’d only been here a few months and already she loved it.
She could be branded a failure before she’d even had a chance to shine. By a few people. She could lose it all if she had this child. If she listened to them.
Then she straightened up.
“Enough BS, Bayleigh Sutherland,” she muttered. “You run your life. Nobody else. You.”
She was pregnant.
She didn’t have to stay pregnant, but that wasn’t a choice to be made lightly, and for her, not a choice at all. She wasn’t a woman trapped in a desperate situation, forced to choose between bad and worse. She had a home, an education, a future, financial stability more or less, and if she didn’t have a partner to help raise this child, well, she’d gotten Ted through the past few years on her own, hadn’t she? This pregnancy might be a surprise but that didn’t make it an accident.
She had a sudden flashback to the day of Ted’s birth, how that small, warm bundle had felt in her arms, how his tiny mouth had opened and closed, the way he stuck his little tongue in and out as if tasting the air.
The smell of that wispy hair; the soft cheeks, the tiny fingers and toes. She felt bubbly inside, her stomach dancing like the birthday helium balloons she’d bought every year when Ted was small.
Could she raise an infant by herself? The snuggles and joy came with diapers, colic, and sleep deprivation. She also recalled standing at the crib in tears, unable to calm her screaming son.
Jeremy had helped of course, but they’d fought so much in those early years, mostly because they were broke and frustrated and to be honest, they didn’t know each other that well. He had tried his best, but parenting an infant baffled him, despite his best intentions.
Would it be different now?
She might be alone, but she was mature. She knew herself.
She could do this.
But at almost forty-two, there were risks. What if the baby wasn’t okay?
She shook the fear out of her mind. She’d cross that bridge when she came to it. Disabilities didn’t scare her and she knew more about them than most. Humans were so varied, with a wide range of abilities. It was how others reacted to them that made the difference.
Sawyer rarely talked about his daughter’s developmental delays. Piper would almost certainly outgrow whatever deficits she had now, thanks to being surrounded by people who loved and supported her. She was a sweet girl.
Bayleigh pressed a hand to her chest, her eyes welling up again. What if she had a daughter this time? A little girl to play peek-a-boo with, to teach to ride, to read stories to.
Or she could have another son.
Another little boy to chase around Belle Vista, to cuddle and play ball with.
A brother or sister for Ted. Never mind that this child would be closer in age to his own children, should he decide to have some.
She was doing this, she realized.
But here was the question: What about Lucas? He’d gone home to Colorado, to his nomadic life free of attachments, provided his company was still afloat. His casual comments about bringing Landry Adventures to Grand were just talk, probably to appease Brade and Leila.
She squeezed her eyes shut. Lucas had never lied to her. But she’d grown attached to him anyway.
Did he have similar feelings for her?
Not likely.
If he knew about the baby, would that change anything?
She didn’t know.
How would she feel to have him reject her and their child?
Horrible.
How would she feel if he took responsibility, if against his will, he either stayed with her, or left but sent money for the next eighteen years, his resentment growing with each passing year?
Worse.
But there were other considerations. If he came back to Grand to visit his new-found relatives, they would probably meet up again.
If he saw her pregnant, or saw her with a baby, wouldn’t he know it was his? And then wonder why she hadn’t said anything?
Would it be better to contact him immediately?
She got to her feet. It was too early to make any decision now anyway. At least one out of four pregnancies ended before the second trimester, as she knew only too well; she couldn’t be certain this baby was here to stay, not for several weeks.
She touched the slight curve of her belly, smiling.
She hoped this baby would stay, but there was no point in telling Lucas about it now.
Decision made, she walked back to her bedroom and looked again at the tissue-wrapped sticks she’d hidden in her underwear drawer like little precious artifacts.
“Urine-covered plastic,” she muttered with a laugh.
Or the keys to a whole new world.