At Close Range

Brian sat up on the couch. “If you think—”

Raising one hand, Hannah shook her head. She didn’t need him to tell her the deaths weren’t her fault. She’d already been over the facts a thousand times.

“I know they didn’t die because of me.” She wanted to make that quite clear. “I mean, I could hardly be responsible for Jason’s cancer when he was diagnosed before we even met. But he was in remission when I met him. His prognosis was the best it had ever been. There was honest-to-goodness hope.”

Brian stared at her. “And?”

For a second, she’d forgotten she was talking to a doctor. A pragmatist. When she’d first known Brian, he’d been an undergrad at Arizona State University slightly full of himself, and a little fonder of partying than she was.

“I wore him out,” she said. “He wanted to make love all the time and I knew it wasn’t good for him, that the doctor said he had to take it easy, give his body a chance to build the antibodies it needed…”

“I don’t think he’d have put it quite like that,” Brian said. “And while there’s a lot to be said for rest, there’s even more to be said for the power of the mind in combating some of these diseases. You being there with Jason—making him happy—probably gave him months he wouldn’t otherwise have had.”

Brian was a very sweet man. A good friend. The best.

“And I’m guessing, from everything you’ve told me about him, from everything Cara said, having you there in the end—an end that was inevitable—made those days priceless for him.”

“I made it hard for him to go,” she said now, remembering when Jason had lain in her arms, weak and in excruciating pain, in tears because he was going to die and she would have to face a life without him. In the end, the dream that he’d reiterated time and again, that he wanted her to fall in love, have a family, be happy, had fallen apart and he’d begged her to swear she wouldn’t give another man what she’d given him.

Wanting to calm his panic, she’d made the promise they’d both known she wasn’t likely to keep.

That had hurt him, too.

“And we both know that you took excellent care of Carlos.”

“Jason and I tried to have a child,” she said. Something she’d never told anyone before. “Our whole marriage. That’s why he wanted to make love so often.”

“You sure it didn’t have anything to do with the fact that he had a beautiful woman he adored in his bed?”

She might’ve been embarrassed if she hadn’t felt exhausted. If this had been someone besides Brian.

“I wanted so badly to be able to have his child. I think it would’ve comforted him to know that whatever life I built would always include a part of him.”

“It will anyway,” Brian said, his face serious. “The best part. He taught you how to love fully.”

Maybe. Probably. “Still, such a simple thing, getting pregnant, and I couldn’t even do that.”

“I’m sure the doctors told you that Jason’s medication made him sterile.”

“There was a slight chance he could still…”

“Very slight. Miraculously slight. Like a vasectomy reversing itself.”

“It happens.” Or maybe that was just an old wives’ tale.

“Your lack of conception had nothing to do with you, Hannah.” Brian’s voice was firm. “And neither did Carlos’s death.”

“I laid him on his tummy.”

Brian’s sigh spoke volumes. They’d been through all this before. Carlos had been sick to his stomach and she hadn’t wanted him to spit up and choke. That night, the risk of SIDS seemed far less than the risk of asphyxiation. That’s what Brian had told her several times over the past months.

But she needed to say this.

“And look at Callie,” she continued, her case gaining strength as she presented it. “What kind of caregiver gets so involved in her own life, in a trial, that she doesn’t notice her declawed and completely cowardly cat slipping out the door with her?”

“You’re human, Hannah. And we don’t know for sure that’s how it happened.”

“If we’re going to believe there was no foul play, which everyone seems to, then we have to assume I let her out.”

His sigh, this time, sounded more resigned. “Like I said, you’re human. She’s never slipped out before has she? From what I’ve seen, she ran and hid whenever you picked up your keys.”

“She did. She hated riding in the car.”

“And you had her eleven years.”

She nodded.

“So having her slip out would be the last thing you’d expect. Or even watch for.”

“Parents have to be on guard at all times. They have to expect the unexpected.”

“And you did. I’ve never seen a more involved, conscientious and yet fun parent as you.”

Being Carlos’s mother had been fun. She’d managed to keep both promises she’d made to Jason—she had a family and was happy, but had fallen in love again, too—albeit differently.

And then one morning, it hadn’t been fun at all. She’d gone in to check on her sleeping son before her shower and found him oddly still….

“I should’ve known.”

How could she have been blissfully asleep when her baby was dying across the hall? How could she have lain in bed for five minutes after she finally woke, stretching, anticipating the day ahead, with a dead baby in the next room?

“There’s no way you could’ve known—”

“Instinct.” She pounded on the one thing that no one could ever prove to her. Or disprove. “Motherly instinct,” she clarified. “I don’t think I have it. I don’t know how to nurture.”

“Bullshit.”

Hannah blinked. The Brian she’d known in college might have said that. Not this one.

“Think about it, Brian. Think about where I came from. The first three months of my life I wasn’t held, fed, changed on a regular basis. By the time Child Protective Services got me, I was suffering from malnutrition and God knows what kind of skin conditions. I knew my guardian ad litem better than some of my foster families. I missed a vital part of my emotional education.”

“The learning to let others take care of you part, maybe.” Brian’s concession was dry. “Not the learning to care for others part.”

“My lack of nurturing instinct is what makes me good at my job,” she continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “If I were a nurturer how could I possibly face an eighteen-year-old kid and make decisions that might help get him a death sentence?”

“Because what he did was heinous and to let him live would put other lives at risk.”

“He’s little more than a child.”