Currant Creek Valley - By RaeAnne Thayne Page 0,97
the world’s best tree house for him.
You made poor choices but you didn’t kill your child.
The words seemed to seep inside her, finding all the dark, ugly corners she didn’t want to explore. She had been young, not nearly as sophisticated and urbane as she had wanted to pretend when she took off alone to Europe. She had grown up in a tight-knit family, in a small, conservative town. She had made really stupid choices but she didn’t know anybody who couldn’t say the same.
The doctors afterward had told her that even with the proper medical care and attention, the placenta had been weak and might have abrupted anyway. She hadn’t wanted to believe them. It was easier to blame herself but now, a dozen years later, she could view that young woman she had been with a little more compassion.
“In the end,” she whispered now, “when I woke up after the surgery and the doctors told me what had happened and that the baby was dead, I...finally I wanted him again. So much.”
The tears began to fall and she couldn’t seem to stop them and she stopped trying. She hadn’t cried in forever and now, here in the darkness with Sam, she cried for her empty arms and a young woman’s shattered dreams and all the chances she had lost along the way.
Sam swore and rose from his chair. Before she could protest, he sat beside her on the porch swing he had hung and pulled her into his arms.
In some corner of her mind, she knew she should protest but he felt so wonderful—strong, steady, solid—and she couldn’t resist. He held her for a long time while she wept and she was vaguely aware of a light pressure as he kissed the top of her head softly, as he might a child who had come to him with a bad dream.
The moment was almost unbearably tender.
“You need to forgive yourself, Alexandra,” he said, his voice low. “Take it from a man who went through a pretty rough time after a few missions, where I second-guessed decisions, my own and others. People make mistakes. You can either let it eat away at you from the inside until you’re hollowed out and have nothing good left. Or you can learn to accept that none of us can change our past. All we can do is move forward and make something better out of the rest of our days.”
His words resonated with truth. She had blamed herself for too long. It was time to let go, to embrace what she had done with her life in the years since and the person she had become.
Sam had moved forward. He had come from a rough childhood and had made something of his life by serving his country. He had fallen in love, married, then had lost his wife tragically.
Many men might have become bitter and railed at fate, yet Sam had this core of goodness in him that made him push past the disappointments and sadness and seek out something better for his son than he had experienced.
To a man like him who had known both the horrors of war and a tumultuous personal life, the quiet streets and quaint houses of Hope’s Crossing must represent unimaginable peace.
She couldn’t let him leave this place he already loved. She didn’t want to go, either, but how could she stay?
“For a long time, I thought the fact that I can’t have more children was punishment for my mistakes.”
“I hope you know better now.”
“I think some things just happen. Not for a reason, not as some punishment from a higher power, not as part of some master plan. They just are.”
“You can still be a mother, you know.”
With his arms still around her, he shifted so she could see his face, and in the pale light on the porch, he looked serious and intense. “I know a certain seven-year-old boy who could use someone like you in his life.”
“Sam.” She clamped down hard on the wild joy fighting to flutter through her again at the implication behind his words.
“No. Listen to me. You keep telling me how you’re not what I need, what Ethan needs. Let me tell you all the reasons I think you’re wrong.”
She couldn’t bear this. How could she possibly push him away again when everything within her wanted to stay right here in his arms?
“You make me laugh,” he said. “I haven’t laughed in so long. Even before Kelli got sick,