Chasing Rainbows A Novel - By Long, Kathleen Page 0,80

could see me now.

I laughed in disbelief just as the voice of the second caller cut through my happy oblivion.

“Bern, it’s David. Diane’s water broke. Ashley’s with me at the hospital.”

I was in motion, slamming down the phone, grabbing for my purse and keys, running, breathless, not waiting to hear the rest of David’s message.

As I backed out of the drive and pressed down on the accelerator, I flashed back on the last urgent message from David. The one that came shortly after I’d emailed the second article to the paper.

Had there been other messages on the machine that day? I tried to picture the flashing light and how many times it had been blinking.

Had I missed Jim Barnes’s call?

Chances were, I had, but I could worry about that later.

I smiled.

Right now, the newest Snyder was about to make his or her arrival and I didn’t plan to miss a single second of the blessed event.

o0o

When I reached Labor and Delivery, Diane and David were nowhere to be found. Diane had been whisked to surgery for a C-section and David had gone with her.

I found Ashley sitting alone in the waiting room, pale as a ghost, frightened eyes huge.

“Aunt Bernie.” Relief oozed from her words as I gathered her into a hug.

“Any word?” I asked.

She shook her head against my chest, and I stroked the length of her smooth, long hair.

“Everything will be all right,” I whispered against the top of her head. “You’ll see.”

And then I prayed, with all of my might.

The nurse had told me the baby’s heartbeat had been dropping with each contraction. The doctor’s call had been to get the baby out.

Ashley and I waited for what seemed like forever, but in reality was no more than an hour.

When David finally appeared, the happy news splashed across his face.

Ashley pushed to her feet, and her father grinned. “You’ve got a little brother.”

She launched herself into his arms. I kept my distance as they laughed and hugged. Sometimes I worried I took my place within their family for granted. Truth was, maybe they merely tolerated me.

My fears were squashed when David held one arm out to me, gesturing for me to move closer. I wrapped one arm around his back and another around Ashley, joining in the celebration of the newest Snyder’s arrival.

“What are you going to name him?” I asked.

“Junior.”

“Junior?” Ashley and I repeated at the same time.

“I’m kidding,” David teased. “We don’t know yet. If he’d been a girl we were going to name her Bernadette, but one of those is probably enough.”

Call me crazy, but I thought he and Ashley laughed a little too hard at that moment.

I glanced at Ashley as we headed toward her mother’s room. Her forehead puckered with concern, and she’d apparently forgotten to smooth her eyebrows in the rush to get to the hospital. The new hairs were long now and zigzagged across the space above her blue eyes like out of control caterpillars.

She caught me staring. “What?”

“Nothing.” I shook my head.

As we stepped inside, a nurse was tucking Junior Snyder into his mother’s arms. Tears of joy slid down Diane’s cheeks.

David gently wiped the moisture from Diane’s face then dropped a kiss first to her forehead, then to his son’s.

There were many years in which I would have never thought this, but Diane was lucky to have him. Hell. Look how lucky I was to have him--to have all of them.

I remembered the moments before Emma’s birth and how badly I’d wanted to keep her inside me where she was safe. Those days seemed forever ago when I thought about how life went on without her, and for a time, without me.

Emotions welled up inside me and I choked on a mixture of joy, sadness and hope. I hiccupped and all heads turned toward me.

David left Diane’s side long enough to reach for me. “You okay?”

Genuine concern glimmered in his eyes. I may have once fantasized about putting this man’s head in an oven, but he’d turned out to be the real deal. A keeper.

I nodded. “I just thought of the perfect gift.”

“Gift?” David’s forehead puckered, a slight vertical crease marring his forehead.

“For Junior’s crib,” I said, picturing the blue elephant from Emma’s room.

They’d come in a set of three. The pink hippo. The blue elephant. The yellow bear.

We’d carried the bear to the NICU, setting it next to Emma in her incubator. We hadn’t known whether or not she could hear until the moment the bear played