It Takes Three

“No, but—”

“I do,” he interrupted. “It’s damned scary. And everyone has an opinion about what should happen. My parents. Her parents. On top of that, she and I couldn’t agree on what to do.”

“What did you do?” Thea couldn’t stop herself from asking. Just because she had a hang-up about sharing nonessential personal information didn’t mean she wasn’t curious about him. If he had a problem with it, he could tell her to mind her own business.

“I married her,” he answered.

“Most people would call that doing the right thing.”

“The right thing?” His handsome features turned harsh.

“No one could call your daughter ugly names or tease her about being born outside of marriage.”

“Yeah, at least I prevented that.” He smiled, but there was no humor in the look.

“And it can’t have been all bad. You had a second child together.”

He folded his arms over his chest. “Kendra wasn’t planned. We were still too young and, I thought, perfectly happy with one child. Then we were careless. I was all of twenty-two when she came along.”

Thea thought about her own struggle to become a mother. Ever since she was a little girl, she’d wanted to have a baby. When she’d married, she’d ached to know what it was like to feel a life growing inside her. She felt it now, mostly because she was tired and nauseous. The point was, she felt different, important. After the heartbreak of two miscarriages, she yearned to bring a healthy baby into the world and would do everything possible to make that happen. Now Scott was telling her his second child wasn’t welcome.

She didn’t try to hide the irritation and disapproval she suspected were visible on her face. “Some people would say having two children makes you lucky.”

“I am. And very grateful they’re normal, healthy kids. I love them more than anything. But the fact is I missed out on a lot. I hardly got to be a kid before I had two in two and a half years.”

“But isn’t it the tough times that forge the bonds in a relationship?”

“Not ours. That second pregnancy was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“What do you mean?”

“When Gail was seven and Kendra five, she decided the girls and I were cramping her style. She didn’t want to be a mother and she left.”

“She abandoned her children?”

“Define abandoned. Every once in a while she turns up. It was worse when they were little and all their emotions were stirred up. Now the girls have her pegged. They’re polite but cool if she drops in.”

“It must have hurt them a lot.”

“They’re better off without her.” He shrugged. “They got over it.”

Did they? And were they really better off without her? Thea wondered. Through no fault of their own or Scott’s, Kendra and her sister hadn’t been raised by Ward and June Cleaver. And Thea sensed ripples beneath the surface in the Matthews household. Sensed, heck. She’d seen for herself the tension between Scott and his daughter. Kendra was still hurting.

“Were you better off when your wife left?” she asked him. Again she wondered if he would answer. In his shoes, she wouldn’t. But everything she’d just learned had her curiosity sparring with her better judgment.

He sighed. “That’s not an easy question to answer. It was tough doing it alone. I still had to work to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. But I had two little girls depending on me when they got sick. Child care was a constant worry. And it’s expensive. There was no one to share the responsibility.”

That gave Thea a pang. Her plan of having a baby had always included sharing the experience with her baby’s father. And the plan had always involved sex with said father. She’d never envisioned that the love of her life would get sick. That he would simply donate sperm and medical science would take care of the rest. She was having a baby. And she would be doing it alone. But in her case, she would never know what having help and support felt like, so she wouldn’t feel the absence of it. But Scott had known.

“Did you miss her? Or was it just parenting alone that was a problem? I’m sorry,” she said, before he could answer. She held up her hand. “That’s really none of my business.”

What was it about Scott Matthews that made inappropriate questions pop out of her mouth?

“Actually, the fact that I don’t mind you asked is an answer in itself. Yes, I missed her. And not just because raising those two girls alone was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

He’d cared and then he was alone. She related all too well. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

“I don’t need sympathy. Raising kids is also the most wonderful, rewarding thing I’ve ever done.” He blew out a long breath. “I’m not exactly sure why I told you all that.”

“Maybe because I happened to be here when you found the stick?”

He frowned. “That damn pregnancy test.”

“Sometimes it’s easier to confide in strangers. Someone who doesn’t have an emotional stake in any of this.”

“Yeah,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. “I don’t usually spill my guts. But then, it’s not every day I find out my daughter is sexually active.”

“Shock will loosen your tongue.”

He glanced at the evidence beside him. “I can’t believe this. I don’t want my daughter to be a mother while she’s still a child herself. I don’t want her to repeat my mistakes.”

“I hate to think of children as mistakes,” she said, a tad sharply. “They’re a consequence of an action. A fact of life.” Or in her case, combining her egg with her husband’s sperm in a petri dish. In vitro fertilization was the miracle that had produced her fact of life.

“You’re splitting hairs. I don’t want them to do the same things I did. And now I find this.”

“You were right when you said I’ve had no experience in this area. But you’re obviously upset and I feel compelled to offer something. If Kendra is pregnant, it would be an experience that will take her down a different path. It doesn’t have to mean failure for either of you.”

“Hold on—”

“Think about it,” she interrupted. “Can you honestly tell me you can imagine your life without your children in it?”

Hostility crackled in the air between them. Then the corners of his mouth curved up. “Actually, yes. I’ve been imagining Kendra going off to college.”

“She’ll still be in your life,” Thea pointed out.

“I was kidding. She thinks I’m against junior college. Truthfully, I have mixed feelings about her going away. You’re right. I can’t imagine never having my girls. They’re my reason for getting out of bed every day and putting one foot in front of the other.”

Boy, in her current condition, she could really relate to that. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him about her pregnancy, to share it with him. To bond. But she swallowed the temptation.

“Look, Scott, has it occurred to you that the test might not even belong to her?”

His face brightened. “Actually, no.”

“You’re obviously a glass-is-half-empty kind of guy,” she said wryly. “It’s always possible that it belongs to a friend who didn’t want to take the test at her house. And Kendra was just being supportive.”

“Way to put a positive spin on this.”

His sudden smile had a very weird effect on her. She felt the force of it through her whole body. Her stomach dropped as if she were riding an elevator that suddenly plunged toward the basement. And her heart fluttered as if powered by a horde of humming birds’ wings.