Cathy McDavid - Baby's First Homecoming

“So is Jamie,” Clay said. “My family.”

They both looked at their son.

He’d grown bored with his pretend cave beneath the table and had crawled out. Before he could interest himself in an electrical outlet or a lamp cord, Sierra rose from the couch, located a ring of keys on the counter and gave them to him. Thrilled, he sat on the floor between the kitchen and living room and proceeded to investigate his new toy with avid concentration.

“I’d have taken care of you and Jamie,” Clay said.

“You would have.” His sense of duty was nothing if not strong. Unlike his father’s. “Jessica, I was pretty sure, might have objected to you having a child with another woman.”

He didn’t answer, letting her know she was right.

“I refused to be responsible for ending your marriage before it even began.”

“That was my decision to make. Not yours.”

“Blame the hormones. I was confused and—” she decided to be honest with him “—hurt. I wasn’t thinking entirely clearly.”

She’d also been depressed. Deeply depressed. Enough that her obstetrician had become concerned and prescribed private counseling along with a support group. Sierra’s health insurance didn’t cover counseling, and she wasn’t earning enough money to pay for it out of pocket. She did attend a support group. Three meetings. Talking with other single mothers in similar situations had only made her feel worse, not better.

Chronically sick, hormonal and at an all-time emotional low, she’d been an easy target for someone with a personal agenda. Like the Stevensons.

“I didn’t intend to hurt you, Sierra. Those two weeks we had together were wonderful.”

“Not wonderful enough, I guess.” The wound he’d left her with ached anew.

“You were going back to San Francisco. My job was here. If I led you to believe we had a future—”

“You didn’t.”

Sierra had been the one to hope for the impossible. Clay and Jessica had dated for years. Six, no, seven. They were constantly breaking up, only to reconcile days or weeks later. Sierra had been a fool to think he wouldn’t run back to Jessica the second she snapped her fingers.

“What made you decide to come home?” He’d gotten around at last to asking the second-toughest question.

She took her time, watching Jamie push the keys across the floor instead of answering Clay. It required all her willpower not to dash into the kitchen and grab Jamie. She didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be having this conversation with Clay. What had made her think returning to Arizona was the solution?

“Sierra?”

“My brothers’ wedding, of course. And I realized I needed help. Raising a child alone isn’t easy.”

“Are you home for good?”

“I…” Here was another chance to fib, but she couldn’t. “I think so. I haven’t discussed it with Dad yet.”

“You weren’t planning on telling me, were you? Not ever.”

“I thought it best to get settled in first. Give my family time to adjust.”

“Bullshit!”

“I told you, I thought you were in Texas.”

“You could have found out easily enough if you’d bothered asking.”

She shot to her feet. “You have no right to lecture me!”

“And you have no right to hide my son.” He stood, too. “What was it? Revenge? Because I hurt you?”

“God, no!”

He snorted. “Right.”

Jamie began to wail. One glance informed Sierra he was responding to her and Clay’s escalating argument.

She went to him. Clay didn’t object when she lifted Jamie into her arms. Patting his back, she murmured soothing phrases until he quieted. Before too long, he wanted down again.

When she released him, he toddled over to the cabinet under the sink where there was probably bleach, dish soap and a multitude of potentially dangerous cleaning products. Sierra opened an overhead cupboard and found some plastic cups and mugs. Sitting on the rug in front of the sink, Jamie proceeded to bang cups against mugs in a noisy symphony.

“You’re good with him,” Clay observed when she sat back down.

“I’m learning. Every day is a new experience. A new lesson.” Many of them hard.

“At least you’ve had the opportunity these last, what? Fourteen months. I’ve missed out on everything.”

She swallowed. Now that the moment had come to reveal the whole, horrible truth, she was having second thoughts. Clay was already angry with her. He might try to obtain custody of Jamie by proving her to be an unfit mother. He might win for, in her mind anyway, she was indeed the worst mother on the planet.

Lying to Clay and everyone else was the only way she could protect herself. Protect Jamie.

Her mind in a whirl, she opened her mouth, ready to blurt some concocted story. Clay’s eyes stopped her cold. They were no longer ablaze with anger but filled with sadness and grief.

He truly regretted those missing fourteen months with Jamie.

Sierra’s own heart shattered. Could she have been any crueler? She’d done to Clay exactly what the Stevensons had done to her—stolen a child from his parent.

“I’ve missed out on everything, too.” Tears pricked her eyes, and she brushed them away. “Except for the last three weeks.”

“What are you talking about?”

There was no easy way to say it, no way to soften the crushing blow she was about to deliver. “I gave Jamie up for adoption when he was born. Last month, on January twenty-third—” she’d remember that day always “—he was returned to me.”

His expression darkened. “I don’t understand.”

“I gave him up for adoption. His…caretakers—” she refused to use the word parents, even with adoptive in front of it “—changed their mind and returned him to me.”

“You gave him up?” Clay recoiled in disbelief.

To Sierra, it felt like a slap.

“Why? How could you?”

Good question, and one she’d asked herself a thousand times.

“I was ill all during my pregnancy. Really ill. Day and night.”

“That’s no reason.”

“I was also an emotional wreck. I took the news of your marriage hard.” Boy, that was an understatement. “Maybe because I was pregnant, things overwhelmed me. I was alone. I didn’t think I could confide in my family. My job didn’t pay that well, had minimal benefits, and I was required to travel ten days a month. I wanted Jamie, truly I did. I just didn’t know how I was going to manage everything.”

“So, you decided not keeping your baby was easier.”

The disgust in his voice cut her to the bone and echoed her own feelings about herself. This was why she hadn’t come home before or confided in her family.

“It didn’t happen like that. I was vulnerable, physically and emotionally weak. Confused and scared. I don’t remember when my boss Ken first approached me about adopting Jamie. He was subtle, dropping tiny hints here and there, letting me get used to the idea slowly. The next thing I knew, I was in my last trimester and meeting with him and his wife and their attorney in order to finalize the adoption.”

“You had to understand what was going on.”

“I did understand.” Sierra shoved her fingers through her hair. She’d gone over this again and again in her head, tried to justify what she’d done. So far, she hadn’t. How could she expect Clay to understand? “They were very persuasive and nice. Or so I thought. Ken and Gail had been married twelve years and spent most of them trying to have a child. I was sure they’d be good parents, give Jamie a better life than I ever could. They helped me, supported me, paid my medical bills. I believed they wanted what was best for my baby. I didn’t realize they were manipulating me.”