LYDIA QUINCY OPENED her eyes. Memory rushed at her with
the menace of an oncoming tornado. She remembered walking
out of the elevator at the courthouse construction site. A
woman had come around a stack of bricks. She'd never
forget that woman's mouth, stretched in a grin of pure
malice. Lydia's muscles clenched as she tried to duck
again. That woman had swung a piece of rebar straight into
Lydia's stomach.
The moment replayed like a loop of film.
She tried to breathe.
Staring around the unfamiliar room, she saw blank tan
walls and mountains of hoses, wires, tubing. A machine
that screamed with blinking numbers. A shapeless beige
curtain and hard plastic rails on her bed.
One more breath brought nausea so strong she had to
escape. She struggled to sit, but an IV stung her arm.
Oxygen tubing pulled her head back. "Lydia?" Evelyn, her
mother-in-law, spoke to her in a sleepy voice. How could
she be here? She lived four hours away. "Lie down, honey."
Evelyn leapt to her feet, sending a metal chair screeching
across the tile floor.
Lydia slumped against a flat pillow and it crackled
beneath her head. She pushed both hands down to her
stomach, but bone deep, she already knew what had happened.
The physical pain was nothing, compared to her grief. She
drew her knees high, clamping her hands to her belly. She
felt only emptiness. Not life. Emptiness.
"My baby." She let her hands sink to her sides.
"My baby," she cried in anguish more animal than human.
Evelyn grabbed her arm. Tears washed her glasses and
spilled over her lined cheeks.
"I'm sorry." She peered toward the door, as if she hoped
someone would show up and save her.
"Where's Josh?" Lydia half expected he'd stayed at work.
Evelyn had been reaching for the call button at Lydia's
side, but drew back. "He wanted to be the one to tell you,
but I can explain —"
"I know. Don't say it out loud." The second someone did,
her pregnancy would be truly over.
All that hope, so futile now... She couldn't stop loving
her son just because she'd never have him.
"Lydia, honey..."
She pushed at her mother-in-law's thin shoulders. "No, no,
no."
"Shh," Evelyn whispered, putting her arms around Lydia
anyway. "Shh."
Lydia sobbed. "I want my baby." He'd died, but somehow she
hadn't. "Why am I alive?"
Evelyn moved away, grimacing. "I know how you feel, but
you can't — you have to live."
A nurse hurried into the room and nudged Evelyn
away. "Mrs. Quincy, I'm glad you're awake." The woman
checked the machine's readouts and threaded the IV tubes
through her fingers. "Mrs. Quincy?" she repeated as if she
needed Lydia to answer.
"I'm all right." Lydia nodded at the nurse, but reached
for her mother-in-law. Her hand fell through air to the
sheets. "Is Josh in court? How did you get here first,
Evelyn, when his office is only a few blocks away?"
"Your husband?" the nurse asked. "He's here. He passed our
station a few minutes ago."
"He left?" Typical, but still it hurt. Things had begun to
get better during the twenty-two weeks of her pregnancy,
but before then, they'd spent much of their five-year
marriage pulling in opposite directions, unable to speak,
unable to explain why they couldn't. Once they'd learned
the baby was coming, they'd both wanted him so much they'd
pretended nothing was wrong.
"Josh has been here whenever they let us in," Evelyn
defended her son. "But you know how he is. Impatience and
anger go hand in hand, and add worrying about you — he
needed a walk."
Lydia knew Josh better than his mother did.While she could
hardly hear above the pain screaming in her own head, Josh
had no doubt taken refuge in calls to his office. That was
Josh. If he couldn't fix his private life, he turned to
maintaining his reputation as the best public defender in
Hartford, Connecticut.
"I —" She wanted to be angry. God knew, she'd had
practice, but she needed her husband. He'd lost their
baby, too.
"What?" Evelyn asked. "What can I do for you?"
"Do?" No one could erase the instant or the memory. Sun
glinting off a green truck's hood had blinded her as she'd
walked around the bricks. One of those bricks had grazed
her arm. She turned her elbow, trying to see the scrape,
to see anything except that woman.
Her unborn son had probably died the moment the rebar hit.
She covered her mouth. "Try not to think about what
happened. Let me call Josh."
"Don't go." She didn't trust herself to think on her own
yet.
Evelyn squeezed her hand but turned to the nurse. "My
daughter-in-law's lips are cracking. Can you get her
something?" Her voice rasped as if she'd been yelling.
"How long have you been here?" Lydia had assumed this was
the same day, but her mother-inlaw looked tired and worn.
"I'll bring you both something to drink." The nurse gave
the machines a last look as she backed toward the
door. "Mrs. Quincy, you're in good shape. Your doctor will
be in to see you — well, I can't say for sure when — but
you don't need to worry."
Not worry? She had to be nuts. "What happened after she
hit me, Evelyn?" Josh's mother splayed her fingers into
short red curls that were flat on one side from her long
stint in the chair. "I'll tell you what we know."
Weariness veined her eyes. She stole a glance at her
watch. "Unless you want me to find Josh," she said again.
This woman who never cried on the principle that tears
were weakness had cried a lot. Lydia brushed a teardrop
off her own cheek. "He's not here. Explain what happened
to my baby. I remember being at the courthouse." An
architect, she'd been hired to help restore it to
eighteenth-century splendor. She'd visited that day only
to discuss a change with the contractor. "I was leaving."
At a new wave of sorrow, she pressed her palms to her
stomach again. "How long have I been here?" How many days
had she been alive instead of her son, who'd never had a
chance to live?
"Three days." Evelyn wiped her face with the hem of her
cotton shirt. "You've been awake now and then."
"I don't remember." But bursts of pain and light and that
damn machine bleating ran through her mind. "Who was she?"
"Vivian Durance. I lost her husband's case." Josh's voice,
thick with sorrow, made Lydia and Evelyn look toward the
doorway. He stood, frozen.
His words didn't register. She drank him in, desperate,
because he was the only one who could really understand.
Tall and aloof-looking — as always, when he felt most
emotional — he stared at her, guilt in his brown-black
eyes. Tight dark curls stood on end as if he'd yanked at
his hair to punish himself.
"I'll wait outside," Evelyn said, and she passed Josh
without looking at him.
He stepped aside to avoid his mother's touch. After the
door closed, he crossed to the bed, unsure of his welcome.
Lydia held out her arms. With a sigh, his eyes beginning
to redden, he caught her, his arms rough. She flinched.
"I'm sorry." He eased up a little, but when he buried his
face in her shoulder, his breathing was jagged. "I'm
sorry."
His remorse forced the truth to sink in. "Vivian Durance
is married to one of your clients?"
She'd been afraid of this, a low-grade fear, like a fever
she'd never managed to get over. About two weeks after
their wedding, the first threat from an unsatisfied client
had arrived in the form of red paint thrown across their
town house's door. The client's father had also slipped a
red-stained note through the letter box. "If my son goes
to prison, you die," it read, and it was written with so
much rage, the words almost ripped the paper.
Josh had repainted the door, chucked the note away and
reassured her that all attorneys, even public defenders,
occasionally received threats. Two years later another
client had met him on the courthouse steps. Everyone who'd
seen the man on the stand knew his own testimony had
sealed a guilty verdict. Nevertheless, the man had blamed
Josh, screaming until the cops had dragged him away.
Three more years had passed, but Lydia had never again
felt entirely safe.
"Did you know she was coming after us? What did she say to
you?" Lydia tried not to blame him, but the words begged
to be said.
"Nothing." He leaned back. "She screamed at the court in
general."
"What aren't you telling me?"
He shook his head, but his eyes were blank. He was hiding
something.
Furiously, she bit down on the words, but she couldn't
help herself. "Third time's the charm, I guess. Someone
finally got to us."
"That's what I was afraid of," he said, his calm
dignified — and infuriating. "That you'd blame me."
"Our baby didn't have to die."
"I am sorry." His lips barely moved. She'd loved his
mouth, full, moist, capable of giving her pleasure that
was almost pain. That was the physical part of their
marriage. Nothing else about living together had come
easy. "I'm not hiding anything," he said. "The truth was
bad enough."
She stared, unable to speak. He was in shock, too, which
exaggerated his guilt. It couldn't be all his fault.