19. Chapter Nineteen #2
“Are you finished?”
“With the apology, yes. Not with being responsible for what I did.”
She bent and opened her purse. Hunter expected another document about Vesper Hill. Instead, Wendy took out an envelope and held it up for him.
“There’s something you don’t know,” she said.
“Okay,” he said carefully.
“I was pregnant when I left you.”
Joy struck him before thought did. Bright, wild, impossible joy.
Then he saw her face.
“I lost the baby,” she said. “At about ten weeks.”
Hunter gripped the folding chair. Wendy wasn’t going to steady him through this.
“We had a baby?” The words broke on the way out.
“For a little while.”
His vision blurred, then the tears started falling.
Wendy’s eyes filled again. “I found out after I came home. Two tests. Then I went to an appointment with Mom. The baby measured about seven weeks.” Her thumb moved across the closed envelope. “There was a heartbeat.”
Hunter dragged in air that hurt. He wanted to ask why she hadn’t called, but he knew why.
“You don’t have to defend not telling me,” he said.
Wendy looked at him sharply, as if she’d prepared for a different answer.
“I made myself unsafe to tell,” he continued. “I’m so sorry you had to carry that without me. I’m sorry you had to lose our baby without me.”
Her chin shook. “I knew you’d want the baby.”
“I would’ve.”
“I knew you’d come. You would’ve come that minute, and I wouldn’t have known if you were choosing your wife or answering an obligation to your child. I couldn’t let the baby decide our marriage. And I couldn’t take care of your hope while I was trying to understand my own.”
“You shouldn’t have had to.”
“I wanted to tell you.”
Hunter closed his eyes for one beat. “I wish I’d been someone you could tell.”
Wendy made a broken sound and covered her mouth.
He didn’t move toward her. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
“I think I need to.”
“Then I’ll listen.”
She told him about rinsing a mug after dinner. The first cramp. The pain in her back. Bright-red blood. Her mother arriving with one shoe loose and her father driving while Wendy lay across the back seat with her mother’s hands around hers.
She told him she’d begged the heartbeat to stay. She’d promised to call Hunter if the baby survived. At the hospital, her father handled the forms while her mother stayed beside her. The doctor checked twice because Wendy asked her to. There was no cardiac activity.
Hunter cried without asking Wendy to help him through it.
“They told me it wasn’t anything I did,” Wendy said. “Not work, not stress, not leaving you. I know that. Most of the time, I know it.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“No.” Her voice cracked. “But knowing isn’t the same as not wishing I could’ve saved the baby.”
“No,” he whispered.
“Lily stayed on the phone. Mom and Dad brought me home. Dad handled my follow-up call. Mom changed the sheets.” She looked down at the envelope. “They took care of me.”
“I’m grateful they did.” The words scraped his throat. “And I’m sorry I made it impossible for you to ask me to be there.”
Wendy opened the envelope. A hospital wristband lay folded around a small black-and-white image. She lifted the image but didn’t offer it yet.
Hunter looked at her, not the picture. “May I see?”
She crossed the space between their chairs and placed it in his open hand.
The image was so small. He could make out the pale shape Wendy had watched while a fast heartbeat filled the examination room. Their baby had existed in a world Hunter hadn’t known was there.
“Our baby,” he said.
Wendy nodded. “Our baby.”
He bowed his head over the image and imagined Wendy smiling in that dark examination room with him beside her. Then he let the false picture go. Her mother had been there and held her hand. That was the truth Wendy had survived.
He returned the image carefully. Wendy slid it inside the envelope with the wristband.
“May I sit closer?” he asked.
She nodded.
Hunter moved his chair next to hers but left space between their knees. The distance felt small enough to cross and too important to assume away.
“Do you want me to hold you?”
Wendy’s answer came as a whisper. “Yes.”
He opened his arms. She moved into them.
Hunter held her without making the embrace fragile.
Her forehead pressed under his chin, his hand settled at the center of her back, and her fingers twisted into his shirt.
When his grief broke loose, he turned his face against her hair.
He didn’t ask her to say he’d have been a good father or promise there would be another baby.
There had been this baby.
Wanted. Loved. Gone.
“I was angry at you for not knowing,” Wendy said against his chest. “That wasn’t fair, but I was.”
“You can be angry.”
“I’m angry that I couldn’t call you. I’m angry that you were only a few miles away and didn’t know I was in the hospital.”
“I’m angry too.” Hunter tightened his arms only when she held him harder. “Not at you.”
“I don’t want the baby to become another punishment.”
“The baby isn’t a lesson for me.” He drew a rough breath. “Our baby deserves to be grieved because we loved it. Not because losing it proves anything about our marriage.”
Wendy began to cry again. Hunter stayed with her through it, his own tears damp against her hair. When she finally leaned back, he released her. They remained close.
“This doesn’t mean we’re repaired,” she said.
“I know.”
“I didn’t tell you because I wanted grief to push us back together.”
“I know.”
“What you did before you knew matters to me. So does what you said today.” She wiped her eyes. “I want to keep seeing you. I want to find out whether we can build something new. I can’t promise where that ends.”
Hope rose in him, but he held it without placing its weight on her.
“You don’t have to promise,” he said. “Slow is okay. Uncertain is okay. I’ll answer what you ask, and I’ll keep doing the work whether the answer at the end is yes or no.”
Wendy studied him, then nodded.
The light beyond the tasting-room windows had faded by the time they stood. Wendy tucked the envelope back into her purse. Hunter was silent as he walked beside her through the old inn and out to the gravel lot. At her car, he stopped far enough away to let her choose the last distance.
Wendy reached for his hand. She lifted it and pressed his palm against her heart. Under his skin, her heartbeat felt steady and real.
“I want to keep trying,” she said. “Slowly. Honestly.”
Hunter closed his fingers gently over hers. “That’s what I want too.”
She let go first. He waited until she was inside her car, then stepped back.
They left Vesper Hill in separate vehicles, carrying the same grief for the first time.