The Sweetgum Ladies Knit for Love - By Beth Pattillo Page 0,18

felt tears spring to her eyes. “Oh, Jeff—”

“Lots of kids go to day care. Just because none of ours have so far—”

“But—”

“Merry, you know I wouldn’t ask if there was any other way.”

She didn’t know what to say. She felt nauseated. And she couldn’t look down at Hunter or she would burst into tears for sure. “Jeff—”

“There’s no other solution, Mer. Believe me, if there was, I’d have thought of it.”

She knew he hadn’t been sleeping well lately but had figured it was the practice that kept him up.

“I’ll work longer in the mornings. Hunter will be fine with me. And he doesn’t bother Mitzi.”

Jeff shook his head. “That’s not fair to Hunter, Merry. And the day care is excellent. You know that. He’ll be in good hands.”

But he wouldn’t be in her hands. Merry looked at Jeff then Hunter, then at her husband once more. How could Jeff ask her to choose between them? But he wasn’t asking. He was practically ordering. Resentment welled up inside her.

“You could have discussed this with me.” She picked up the knife and whacked at the lettuce on the cutting board. “I thought we were a team.”

“We are.” He ran a hand over his face, rubbed his chin. “I promise you, Merry, if there was any other way—”

His shoulders dropped even further, his head dipped low. The movement snapped her out of her self-pity. Jeff had always taken his responsibility for their family seriously. He wasn’t a man to make frivolous requests. The bankruptcy had taken a toll on his confidence, on his belief in himself as a provider.

She scraped the lettuce off the cutting board into a waiting bowl. Tears stung her eyes. Jeff was right. She didn’t actually have a choice. They both had to do what was necessary to provide for their family. She reached for a tomato.

“Just give me some time to get used to the idea.”

Jeff’s head lifted, and his shoulders straightened just a notch. “You sure?”

Merry smiled through the tears that formed in her eyes.

“No.” She laughed in spite of herself. “But I know you wouldn’t ask for something that you didn’t truly need.”

Jeff’s eyes were misty too. He reached for her, drew her close. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered in a choked voice.

“No.” She kissed his cheek, his mouth. “Don’t you even start.”

“It’s not forever.”

Eugenie had asked them last Friday what love was, and Merry had said she found it overwhelming. But that was only part of the truth. Because for her, love meant setting her own wants and needs aside for the sake of her family’s welfare. Even when it caused her as much distress as leaving Hunter was going to do.

“We’ll figure it out,” she assured Jeff. In the bouncy chair at their feet, Hunter gurgled happily and slapped at the toys suspended on a bar over his head. Merry looked down at him, an almost physical pain slicing through her.

How in the world was she going to find the strength to leave her baby that first day? Or any day after, for that matter?

She had no idea. She only knew that she didn’t really have a choice.

“Hannah! Wait up.”

Josh’s voice carried the length of the senior hallway. Hannah dropped her chin and shoulders and kept walking as if she hadn’t heard him, although Josh’s baritone might as well have been a bullhorn.

“Hey.” A hand grabbed her sleeve and slowed her flight. “C’mon, Hannah Banana. I run enough wind sprints at practice.”

She flinched at the old nickname but recovered by shaking his hand off her arm. “I’m late for class, Josh.”

She’d managed to avoid him after honors English by bolting for the door the second the bell rang. She’d eaten lunch on the steps behind the school so she wouldn’t run into him in the cafeteria. But now, on the way to her last class of the day, her luck had run out.

At her brusque reply, Josh’s fingers fell from her sleeve. She risked a glance at him and then wished she hadn’t. The confusion in his eyes made her chest ache. Better to amputate now, she reminded herself, curling her right hand into a fist. She’d heard the gossip in the girls’ rest room earlier, the information Kristen had held back in an attempt to humiliate Hannah.

“From geek to god in just a few short years,” a freshman girl had said behind Hannah while she was washing her hands. “Evidently he was the star quarterback at his middle school in Birmingham. They say