and mine if we don’t get on back.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Lemon
Eighteen years old
Four days after I left the hospital, I’m sitting in my room alone when Mama comes to get me cleaned up. I haven’t moved from my bed since I came home. It isn’t the pain of my salpingectomy keeping me here. I have no desire to do anything. I’m lethargic—and while my body aches—on the inside, I’m numb. Yet, I can’t stop crying. I didn’t even know it was possible for one person to produce so many tears.
Daddy’s been good about giving Colt time off to grieve and take care of me, but I don’t know what to say to him, so I push him away by telling him I’m tired. It’s not a lie. I am exhausted. We should be grieving the loss of our baby, but I’m grieving the loss of so much more than that. With one surgery I’ve more than halved my possibility of ever falling pregnant again and the truth is, I felt both relieved and saddened by that news. I’m eighteen years old. I’m not ready for a baby, yet one was coming whether I was ready or not. Now that I’m no longer pregnant, I have so much guilt, so much pain, and so much anger.
What kind of person is relieved when her pregnancy is ectopic? What kind of person cries for the baby she lost one minute and is grateful for the weight that was lifted off her shoulders the next?
And Colt? Colt is so broken, so unsure. I’ve never seen him this way, and I realize things were so different for him. Sure, he wasn’t expecting to be a dad at twenty-two, but he took it in his stride. I could see his love for me and our unborn child growing by the second, and all I could think was that I was never going to get off this ranch. I was never going to see the world and go to school in New York. I was never going to amount to anything more than someone’s wife, someone’s mother.
I let my mother fuss and preen over me as she helps me shower and blows out my hair. The truth is, it’s nice to have someone pamper me when I’m still so fragile. “Mama?”
“What, baby girl?”
“Am I a bad person?”
“Honey, no. Why would you say that?”
“Because, as much as I would have loved that little baby, a part of me felt relieved when I realized I was losing it,” I admit on a sob. “I wasn’t ready to be a mama. I could never be what you are to me and the boys.”
Mama squeezes my shoulder tightly. “Oh, honey. No mother has it all figured out ever, and you’re barely eighteen. No one would blame you for not being ready.”
“Colt was ready, and now I don’t know if I can ever give him that again. I don’t want to try again, at least not now, maybe not until I’m thirty.”
“Sweetheart, Colt loves you.” She gives me a wistful smile. “You didn’t see him when they rushed you into surgery. He was terrified for you. No one is expecting you to want to try again. Maybe someday, when the two of you are married, there’s still a chance you could get pregnant without medical intervention. If that’s what you want.”
“What if I can’t ever give him that?”
“Lemon Emersyn,” she coos as she tucks my hair behind my ear. “The only things certain in life are taxes and death, but I do know this one thing—you and Colt are forever. Whether you choose to have children down the road or not, that boy would follow you into the fires of hell if he thought it would make you happy.”
“He shouldn’t have to settle because I only have half my baby-making organs.”
“Honey, only a foolish man would believe a life with you was settling, and that boy of yours has all his wits about him. Trust me on that.” She chucks me under the chin. “Now come on. Put on a nice dress and your church boots.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“I know, but you’ll never forgive yourself if you miss this.”
Colt drives so slowly it would almost be quicker to walk, but every bump his truck goes over pulls at my insides. It’s agony, and a part of me relishes the pain because it’s better than this numbness I’ve felt.
My family are gathered around our tree, all dressed in their church clothes, and I