Beneath a Southern Sky - By Deborah Raney Page 0,102
the muddy garden.
“Nathan, I’m sorry. Of course Natalie is your child. But please don’t blame Cole. He had no idea—neither of us knew that you were alive!”
“I said I don’t blame you, Daria. That’s not the issue here.”
“What is the issue?”
“I think you know very well what it is.” He looked down at Natalie and continued softly, “Natalie is my child, and I want to be part of her life, Daria. I want us to be a family, the family God meant us to be.”
“Oh, Nate, I wish it was that simple.” She had to tell him the truth. They couldn’t have this discussion when she was withholding the fact of her pregnancy. Her stomach was in a knot and her head pounded, but she knew she must tell him.
She opened her mouth, not sure how to begin. “Nathan, there’s something I have to tell—”
At that moment, a sharp pain sliced through her back, and it was all she could do to keep from crying out. She excused herself and started down the hall to the bathroom. By the time she reached the door, the cramping was excruciating. She had thought she was feeling ill because of the emotional distress of this day, but now she knew something else was terribly wrong. The cramps felt too much like labor contractions. She locked the door behind her and was horrified to realize that she was bleeding. She began to tremble, terrified that she was losing the baby. “Dear God, help me, please,” she prayed.
What an awful way for Nathan to find out the truth. She reached for the door and started back to the kitchen, leaning on the wall at intervals for support.
“Nathan,” she croaked, as another contraction swelled. “Nathan!”
He met her in three long strides, took one look at her face and put a supporting arm around her. “Daria, what is it?”
Daria blurted the cruel words out on a sob. “I’m pregnant, Nate.”
“You’re…you’re pregnant?” The words hung stagnant in the air between them, and Nate’s mind spun out of control at the ramifications.
She was trembling and completely unaware, he was certain, of how her announcement had affected him. How it had taken away his hope in one moment.
He looked at her now and wondered how he had missed the fact that she was pregnant. The thick corduroy shirt, which she wore unbuttoned over a long-sleeved T-shirt, concealed the fullness of her figure, but still, it should have been obvious to a physician.
“It’s too early, Nate! I’m only seven months along,” she breathed. “Something’s wrong. Oh, dear God, I’m so scared. What should I do?”
A thousand thoughts went through his mind, but when they’d all sifted through his subconscious—long after his physician’s instincts should have kicked in—one thought remained principal. And it horrified him.
He held a terrible power in his hands. The child Daria was carrying was the one thing that tied her to Colson Hunter. This unborn child had the potential to keep him from Daria and from his own precious daughter—the daughter he already loved with a father’s heart, the daughter who stood wide-eyed now watching them.
He knew he should call an ambulance. Daria was continuing to have contractions and seemed on the verge of hysteria. If she didn’t get to the hospital quickly, she would almost certainly give birth prematurely. And if she was no further along than she said, the baby’s chances were not very good. But if they could stop the contractions, they might very well be able to stave off labor long enough that the infant would have a chance. Medically these things sometimes happened for a reason—because the developing fetus was malformed or blighted or because the womb could not adequately support the pregnancy. Couldn’t it be for the best to simply let nature take its course? Perhaps this was God’s solution.
He stood there, looking into Daria’s eyes, seeing the depths of fear in them, seeing in her gaze that she trusted him to help her. And he felt as though he existed in another dimension, as though all time waited while he made his choice. He was aware of standing on that mental precipice between prudence and justification. The rationalizations to do nothing were coming at him hard and fast, and he knew he was but a half-step from plummeting into an abyss where wisdom would not be found.
It took every ounce of will to back away from the desires of his basest self.