The Pregnancy Plan

Dermid turned to Jack. “Do you want to stay on, on your own?” The child never had before.

“Sure! Thanks, Dad! Thanks, Aunt Felicity.” And without further ado, Jack tore off and yelling to his cousins, “I’m staying!” he plunged into the water again.

Smiling, Jordan turned to his brother-in-law. “So Lace will drive you to the ferry, whenever you’re ready.”

Dermid’s eyes met Lacey’s. His were cool. “Thanks,” he said, “but I’ve called a cab.”

Lacey lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. “Fine.” What a boor the man was!

“Well, guys, I’ll have to go now,” Jordan said. “Thanks for coming over, Dermid. I know this isn’t your kind of ‘do,’ but Fliss and I have always appreciated the effort you’ve made to keep Jack in close touch with his cousins.”

“We know it must have been hard at first, coming here without Alice.” Felicity patted his arm. “But I hope it’s become easier, with time.”

Dermid said, “Alice would have wanted it this way.”

“You’re right, she would,” Jordan said, giving Felicity a warm kiss goodbye. “Okay, folks, I’m off. Bye, all!”

Once he’d gone, Dermid stood chatting with Felicity for a few minutes, until they heard the toot of a car horn.

“That’ll be your cab.” Felicity turned to Lacey. “Will you see Dermid out, Lace? I don’t want to leave the children alone in the pool.”

“Not necessary,” Dermid said quickly. “I can see myself out—”

“Oh, but I insist!” Lacey said, with exaggerated graciousness. “My list of faults is long enough without adding bad manners to it!”

And with her nose in the air, she led him into the house and out through the foyer.

As they passed the hallstand, she noticed, sitting on it, the bag containing whatever it was that Dermid had bought at the Caulfeild Mall. He’d set it there when he’d come in that morning.

She indicated it, and said, “Is that for Felicity? Did you forget to give it to her?”

He paused in the open doorway. “It’s for you.”

“For me?”

Frowning, she scooped up the bag and looked inside and saw a lovely box of very expensive Belgian chocolates.

Taken completely by surprise, she said, “Thank you, Dermid! I have such a weakness for chocolate and these are my favorites!” So, the man had a soft spot after all. Teasingly she said, “What is this? A peace offering?”

His eyes were beautiful and unique in color—the whisky brown of a Highland stream, Alice used to say. But those same eyes which had glowed with love when he looked at his wife, now flattened with denial when he looked at his sister-in-law.

“It’s a thank you,” he said curtly. “For picking me up at Horseshoe Bay.”

He could have slapped her and she wouldn’t have felt more wounded. Or humiliated. But gritting her teeth, she swiftly rebounded from his nastiness.

“Of course,” she said. “I should have known. I feel sorry for you, Dermid McTaggart. What a petty mind you do have! What I did was a favor. And a very small one at that. But could you accept it? Oh, no. No way. It would never do for the almighty McTaggart to be beholden to anyone, and certainly not to me. Well, I’d like to take your fancy Belgian chocolates and shove them…well, you can guess where. But I won’t. Unlike you, I do possess some of the social graces, and I do know how to accept a gift!”

Before he could stop her, she reached up on her tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek.

Then standing back, she said, “Maybe that’s not the way it’s done where you come from, McTaggart, but that’s the way it’s done here. A smile, a thank you, and a friendly kiss. You know the old saying: while in Rome, do as the Romans do. I hope you’ll remember it in future!”

With that, she whirled away, leaving him to see himself out…and good manners be damned!

Clouds had drifted in from the west and when Lacey returned to the garden, she felt a drop of rain on her arm.

Felicity said, “We’re going to have a shower! I’ll put Todd down for a nap and the other children can watch TV in the den while you and I have our talk.”

By the time she had settled the children, a cloud had crept over the sun and the rain was sprinkling down.

“Let’s sit on the patio,” she said. “I’ll roll down the awning.”

As she rolled it down, she said, “It was too bad Sarah and the others came down with ’flu this week. They were looking forward to coming over for the party today.”

“You’re so lucky to have Sarah. And Gigi,” she added, referring to Felicity’s other sister, both of whom lived on Vancouver Island. “I miss Alice terribly. She was more than a wonderful older sister, she was like a mother to me—brought me up, as you know, after Mom died. And she was also my best friend.”

“Dermid’s best friend, too—I don’t think I’ve ever seen two people so devoted to each other.” She sighed. “Which brings me to what I have to tell you.” She crossed the patio and sat down on one of the lawn chairs.

But when she gestured to Lacey to do the same, Lacey shook her head. She felt too restless to sit down. “Before you start, Fliss, I have to confess that I may not be totally in the dark about what you’re going to say. This morning, I accidentally eavesdropped while Dermid and Jordan were talking and I heard Dermid refer to a family matter and a decision Dermid had to make, and he asked Jordan for his support.”

“Poor Dermid. With his Scottish pride, and his fierce independence, it couldn’t have been easy for him to ask Jordan for anything! As for eavesdropping, I’m afraid I’ve been guilty of it, too. You see, after I set up the baby monitor at the pool, while I was giving Todd his lemonade I heard Jordan and Dermid talking. They were in the nursery, Jordan apparently checking on Verity—and he and Dermid were talking quietly…although it obviously didn’t occur to either of them that they could be overheard.”

“I should tell you, Fliss, Dermid made it clear to Jordan that he didn’t want me involved in the situation.”

“He may not want you involved, but I do think you ought to know. Alice would want you to know.”

“Fliss, if you don’t come to the point—”

“Sorry. Okay, here goes. You know that Dermid had a bout with cancer a long while ago, just after he and Alice were married, and that before he underwent radiation treatment, on the oncologist’s advice he had some of his sperm frozen because it was possible the treatment would render him infertile…which, unhappily, it did.”

“Yes, of course. And I know that later on, Jack was born from a frozen embryo.”

“Do you remember, Lacey, that Dermid and Alice had a second embryo, cryogenically frozen, and stored at that same clinic in Toronto—the embryo of a girl baby—and that Alice and Dermid looked forward to one day having that child—”

“But Alice died before they could.” Lacey’s throat felt suddenly tight. “I often think of that little baby who’ll never be born…I find it so sad, and it would have broken Alice’s heart…” Her voice trailed into silence.

All around, the rain was lashing down now. Lacey hadn’t even noticed it getting heavier, and the afternoon had become bleak and cool and very dark.

She blinked away threatening tears, and saw Felicity rise from her seat. Her sister-in-law crossed over to her, took her hands and held them tight.

“Lacey, Dermid’s been having nightmares. Alice has been coming to him, begging him to let her rest in peace. She wants closure. He wants closure, too. So…he’s finally going to do the thing he’s been putting off doing ever since Alice died. He’s going to contact the fertility clinic in Toronto this week, and tell them he no longer wants the remaining embryo preserved.”

CHAPTER THREE

“HE SHOULD have told me!” Lacey glared at her brother. “Alice was my sister, too, I had every right to know what he was planning to do. He had no right to shut me out!”

Jordan made a placating gesture. “Honey, this has been very difficult for Dermid—”

“Of course it has, I’m not denying that. It must be breaking his heart, knowing that Alice’s baby is there, just waiting for a chance to be born. But now she never will be!” Lacey felt her anger dissipating as sorrow took over. “Oh, Jordan, why does life have to be so cruel?”