of getting back together. Making a lame attempt to be a husband and father again against his better judgment wouldn’t do Emma and the baby any good. He would only prolong the emotional fallout of his failed marriage. The baby was better off with her.
He dusted off his hands and went inside. Emma was still his friend. He could at least send her flowers. Or even better, take them to her in person.
Even though it was the middle of the afternoon, he locked up the pub and hung the closed sign on the door, something he hadn’t done since Holly’s funeral. At the local florist he picked out an arrangement of yellow roses and pink carnations and drove to the Frankston Hospital.
Holly had been born here. Stepping off the elevator onto the maternity ward he was hit by déjà vu so overwhelming and painful he wanted to turn right around and go back to the pub.
Instead he clutched his bouquet tighter and walked around to the nurses’ station, peering into rooms as he went. Some mothers were sleeping, their babies in a bassinet at their bedside, others were holding court with family and friends. So many mothers, so many babies.
Emma’s laughter rang out from a room two doors away. He stopped and listened, drinking in the sound of her happiness. For a moment some of her joy found its way into his heart. He’d done that for her, given her the baby she so desperately longed for.
He paused outside the doorway. Emma was sitting up in bed, her hair tied back in a ponytail. Her eyes shone as she chatted with Alana, who was perched on the bed. Dave, holding Tessa, stood with his back to the door. A nurse stood next to him—Emma’s friend Sasha, probably, judging from her shoulder-length blond hair—and he recognized dark-haired Barb in a black skirt and red jacket at the foot of the bed.
There was no bassinet. The baby must have been taken to the nursery. The tightness in his chest eased a little. Was that relief that he didn’t have to see his son?
He raised his hand to knock and then paused as Emma made a quip about some get-together they’d all obviously attended in the recent past, and everyone laughed. Darcy lowered his hand. He didn’t belong here. He wasn’t part of her life anymore. He didn’t know what she was talking about, and quite likely none of these people would welcome him. Alana had been openly hostile to him when he’d run into her at the grocery store not long after the divorce. He didn’t know what Emma had told her, but she clearly regarded him as the enemy.
He didn’t want to make Emma uncomfortable by barging in and ruining her party. Darcy spun on his heel, wanting to get away before they saw him. At the nurses’ station he passed over the bouquet of flowers. “Give these to Emma Lewis, thanks.”
As he walked off he realized he’d automatically given her married name. He had no idea if she still used it or had gone back to her maiden name. Hopefully there weren’t any other Emmas on the ward.
Where were the damn elevators? All the corridors looked the same. He came to a junction and went right. He found himself in front of the floor-to-ceiling glass walls of the nursery filled with rows of bassinets.
He picked up his pace to hurry past then found himself slowing. And stopping. With his fingers pressed against the glass like any doting father, he looked in, scanning the sleeping babies for a head of thick dark hair. One look to satisfy his curiosity, and then he would go.
There, was that him? No, the name tag on the bassinet indicated the baby was a girl. A nurse came into the nursery and moved through the rows. She wheeled away a bassinet near the window.
And there he was, in the bassinet behind. William James Lewis. His son, bearing his name. Even though he’d been warned, seeing the name tag threw his emotions into unexpected turmoil.
She should have consulted him before she’d used his name. William. They’d planned to call Holly that if she’d been a boy. Back then he’d wanted a boy so badly. Then Holly came along and instantly he hadn’t cared a jot that she was a girl. He didn’t think it was possible to love another human any more than he’d loved his daughter.
To have a son now, when his marriage had broken down