Robyn Carr - Moonlight Road

“Very well organized,” he said. “I’m not surprised at all.” He touched her nose. “Did you tell them?”

“More or less. I told Aiden on the phone while Luke was sitting across the room from him. That should catch them all up. I mean, I had told them I was thinking about it, but no one took me seriously.”

“How’d Aiden take it?”

“Very well, as a matter of fact. But then Aiden was the one to lecture me when he heard I’d brushed you off last fall. He said I shouldn’t assume my life couldn’t ever again include a man. In a romantic way.”

“Ah,” George said, rolling his eyes skyward. “God bless him. I’ll leave him my entire fortune.”

“There are five of them, George, and they’re as different from each other as day is from night. I know you’ve met them, but you haven’t spent any real time with them. There’s no way I can adequately prepare you.”

“I understand completely. Let’s start carting boxes and pack up. The sooner we can get to that champagne dinner, the better I like it.”

“I’d like to see the bedroom now,” she said. “Have you chosen your drawers and closet space? Your side of the bed?”

“No, sweetheart. I’m waiting for you to decide.”

She put her arms around his waist. “I’m so lucky to have found you.”

Mel, local nurse-practitioner and midwife, had an appointment with a friend of hers she didn’t often see professionally. Darla Prentiss had been in the care of a fertility specialist in Santa Rosa for the past several years, so her women’s health needs were handled by him. But Phil Prentiss had called Mel and said that he was bringing his wife in because she complained of a cold and sore throat. “That’s not what it is, though,” Phil had said. “She waits for me to leave the house or fall asleep, then cries her heart out for hours. She needs someone to talk to. We just suffered our seventh miscarriage.”

“Oh, good heavens, bring her. But wait—isn’t her doctor supporting you through this?”

“Aw, he’s all about the big score,” Phil said. “He might have the best track record for getting people pregnant in three counties, but his bedside manner sucks. Darla’s crushed.”

“Bring her to me,” Mel said. “But don’t lie to her—tell her you know she doesn’t have a cold. I’ll do what I can. Phil—I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“This one,” he said, “was eighteen weeks. We named him and buried him.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Thanks,” he said.

Mel’s heart was in tatters. Instead of seven miscarriages, this wonderful couple should have had seven children. Phil owned and operated the family farm, a vast acreage committed to dairy, pork and silage. It was a wonderful, fun, healthy place and the Prentisses were a positive, beautiful, loving couple. They’d been married quite a while—ten or twelve years—trying most of that time to grow a family. It was so wrong, when the people who could do the best by children had such trouble getting them. It was a miracle the pain of their loss time after time hadn’t ripped their marriage apart, yet Phil and Darla were devoted to each other, as in love as the day they met.

When Darla arrived with her husband, Mel just hugged her long and hard. “I’m sorry,” she said. “God, I’m so sorry. You’ve been through so much.”

That’s all it took for Darla to let the tears loose. Mel took her by the hand and they went into the office to talk for a while. Mel had told Darla a long time ago that in her first marriage, she and her husband had struggled with infertility issues, but for some unknown reason when she got together with Jack—instant pregnancy. Could be coincidence, could be some medical reason she didn’t quite understand.

“I can’t do it anymore, Mel,” Darla said tearfully. “I’m sorry to be such a crybaby, but I think that last one did me in. A little boy…”

“Seven miscarriages is too much for anyone, Darla. Remember when we talked about a surrogate? Someone with a sturdier, proven uterus?”

“I know it’s a good option for people like me and Phil, since I have trouble conceiving and carrying. My younger sister, who’s a mother of three, even offered. But, Mel—oh, God, I know this makes me sound so shallow and self-absorbed—but I don’t think I can watch her carry our baby and stay out of her business. I’d be examining everything she puts in her mouth. I’d burn with jealousy that I couldn’t carry the baby and feel it move inside me. We talked about hiring a stranger. I know it works a lot, but I don’t think we can…”

“Keep an open mind. It’s a good solution for couples who have everything they need but a womb,” Mel said.

Darla was shaking her head. “There’s a message in here somewhere. I’m not sure what it is, but one thing I know for sure—I’m not meant to have a baby of my own. That was the first one we actually buried. Mel,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “I really can’t do that again.”

“I understand,” Mel said softly. “Tell me how I can help you now. Do you think a good antidepressant might help?”

“With losing your child? No,” she said, shaking her head. “I need to cry about it awhile, feel my husband’s arms around me and ask God what his plan is for me. It’s not like I’m the first woman who couldn’t have her own children. After all, how many women have as much as I have? The most handsome, wonderful, loving man in the world? Poor Phil, his heart must be breaking, too, and I’m only thinking of myself.”

“Just reach out for him while he reaches out for you, sweetheart. Then call your doctor’s office and tell them you could probably use a little counseling to get you through this last miscarriage.”

“But I don’t think I want to keep going with this…this crazy desperation to get pregnant and carry a child to term…”

“That’s not the point,” Mel said, shaking her head. “Whether you keep trying or not, you need a little help getting through the loss. This was a big, hard one for you two. You’ve paid that doctor tens of thousands of dollars not covered by insurance—he must have counseling staff or at least people he can recommend. You don’t have to promise to risk more heartache to get yourself a good counselor. Get some help.”

“Maybe we’ll see our pastor.

“See someone, Darla. Please? I just don’t want you to hurt. I never had a miscarriage—but I failed to get pregnant every time and I remember the pain and disappointment of that alone. I just can’t imagine how hard this must be for you.”

Darla was quiet a moment. Then she wiped off her cheeks and said, “I think seven is enough.”

“I don’t blame you,” Mel said.

Every couple of weeks Luke had to drive over to Eureka to shop at the Costco warehouse for stock for his house and cabins. He bought large amounts of toilet paper, bar soap, paper towels, cleaning supplies and sometimes had to replace things like bath towels, washcloths, bath mats, and so on. While he was there, he shopped for some groceries for his own home; there was plenty of frozen fish in the freezer out in the shed next to the house, but they could always use chicken and red meat. Shelby kept a running list of items she was willing to keep in bulk, from ketchup to canned tuna. Now that her nursing-school program was on hiatus for the summer and she was hugely pregnant, her stop-offs at the grocery store on the way home were few. That made Luke’s trips to town more frequent.

He didn’t have to tell Art when they were going. Art started asking at least a couple days ahead of time. “We going to Costco yet, Luke?”

“Two days,” Luke would answer. Art, an adult with Down syndrome, whom Luke had taken on as a helper around the cabins, was Luke’s fairly constant shadow and had his own little cabin next to Luke and Shelby’s house.