Chapter Six

She was just getting into her nightgown and wrapping herself in a bathrobe when Keith walked into the bedroom.

“You’re going to bed already? I thought we could talk.”

“Just wanted to get comfortable. Can we talk in bed?”

His smile was immediate and wide. “I like the idea of that. But given your scare last week, I think we should wait until you’ve been fully examined by the doctor.”

“I have my doctor,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “I need you to hold me. But I think you’re right. We should talk.”

His expression collapsed. “Then maybe we shouldn't be doing it in bed.”

She walked to the bedroom door and followed him into the kitchen.

“Do you want a cup of hot chocolate?” she asked. “You can have a beer or wine if you prefer. But I'm having hot chocolate.”

“Nothing.”

Keith went to the cabinet and pulled out one mug for her hot chocolate. So she just made one helping for herself. She needed something to warm her after standing in the cold for so long.

“Do you want me to make a fire?” Keith asked.

“It's kind of late. And I probably won't be awake long enough to enjoy it.”

“You're really getting tired from this pregnancy?”

“Excruciatingly so.”

A flash of guilt crossed his face. “Then maybe you should just get some rest. We can talk in the morning.”

“I told Maddie that I’d go shopping with her for Alex and Keith. She told me she was challenged and didn't know what boys nearly seven-years-old liked. I don’t know what made her think I’d know.”

Keith smiled. “It’s easy. Anything with a million parts. Preferably something that turns into a robot or Godzilla.”

Reggie laughed as she stirred her mug of hot chocolate. She brought the mug with the spoon with her into the living room and settled herself down on the sofa. Then she turned her body so she could face Keith rather than have him hold her the way he always did when they were enjoying a fire.

“I know you're confused,” she said. “I am, too.”

“Good. I thought I was in this all by myself.”

“You definitely aren't. I'm not exactly sure how to explain what I’ve been feeling since I found out I was pregnant.”

“Just say it. Try me. Anything is better than nothing, and letting my brain run wild with ideas I don't want to even entertain.”

She reached across the couch and took his hand, giving it a squeeze. “I'm not going anywhere. And I’m not looking to have an abortion or wishing for a miscarriage. I would never do that. You don’t have to worry about that.”

He took in a slow breath and then he swallowed. “Then tell me what I do need to worry about.”

She searched her mind and tried to put the words that had been jumbled up in her head for days into some kind of order that made sense. They didn't. None of them did. The unsettled feeling that had taken over her was all-consuming and foreign to her. In the end, she decided it was just better to let it out, and let Keith help her sort through her fears.

“My mother left when I was very young.”

When Keith didn't interrupt her, she found the courage to say more.

“When I think of my mother, I don't think of her as a bad person. I don’t remember her that way. She wasn't an awful mother either. She was there when she was there. Just like my father was there for me when he was home and not on a tour.”

“I know that was hard on you.”

She shrugged. “What made it worse was when my father left and that I didn't have someone at home that was my anchor. You know, someone I knew who would always be there no matter what. My mother was that before she left. But then she was gone and I didn’t have that anymore. My dad would always say that my mom left because of him. But she didn't just leave my dad, she left me, too. And I never knew why. I still don't know why I wasn't good enough for her to stay.”

“I don’t know the reasons any better than you do, Regis. But I do know it wasn’t something you did. Whatever her reasons, they had something to do with her.”

She hated how vulnerable she felt and yet she knew she was safe with Keith. And he was right. She’d told herself those very words over the years when she’d become an adult and understood more about relationships. But what she feared the most was that somehow Keith would minimize her feelings and try to push them away or pretend that she wasn't going to make the same mistakes her mother made.

“Have you ever tried to contact your mother?” Keith asked.

She frowned, surprised that he’d even asked. He’d never asked her that before. “No. I'm not really sure where she is right now. She didn't have a lot of family, and the few people that my father mentioned are people I've never met. At no point in my life did any of them ever try to contact me.”

“Your father must have kept something of your mother’s. Something for you to remember her by.”

The pain in her heart was sudden and something she hadn't felt long time. “Sadly, he didn't. We moved so often that I'm sure it must've been unintentional. I can't imagine that he would've wanted me to erase her from my memory completely. What little memories I do have, and I do have a few, are nice memories of her brushing my hair and reading books to me. But again, I was so young.”

“There are ways to track down lost family members,” Keith said. “We could do that. We could give it a try and maybe you could track down your mother if it’s important to you.”

“I'm not really sure it is.”

She thought for a few minutes. The silence dragged on but Keith let her to work things out in her mind like he always did.

“It's not so much that I want to see her. All these years, she's made it more than clear she didn't want to be a part of my life just by her absence. I guess being pregnant made me think about her more. Is that normal?”

“Sure.”

She wasn’t sure if Keith was just agreeing with her and it didn’t really matter.

“If my mother had wanted to, she could have taken me with her instead of leaving me with my father who she knew would have to place me with military families everywhere we went around the world when he was on a tour. When she left, she wanted to leave both of us behind.”

“I’m so sorry, Regis.”

“I'm not angry with her. At least, I don't think I am. I just don't understand it. Maybe I never will, and I'm trying to grasp at something that will help me understand.”

“Is this what’s been bothering you?”

“I'm afraid.” She said the words aloud. Just two words. But saying them made them more real than having them float around in her mind.

“It's normal to be afraid when you're pregnant. This is a new experience for you. It is for me, too. My brothers have gone through this, but this is all new to me. I imagine lots of women want to lean on their mothers during this time. Knowing you can’t must be difficult. But think of it this way. You have a lot of support around you.” Keith chuckled. “And let's face it, my mother's enough mother for ten people.”

Reggie chuckled as tears sprang to her eyes. “Thank God, for that.”

“Really? Most of my life I was afraid my mother would smother any woman I ever met.”

Reggie shrugged. “Some of us need smothering. I never had it. But your mother's not like that. She's just loving.”

“That she is.”

Keith was trying to help. Reggie knew that. He would give her the world if he could and she loved him for it. But how could he understand the empty place she felt in her heart from a mother that was never there for her? How could he understand the fear she felt about the mother she’d become if the mother she remembered found it so easy to leave her?

“My mother wasn't a bad person, Keith. I remember making cookies with her once. I just remembered that. I remember one Christmas standing on a chair at the kitchen table and pouring sugar and Lord knows what else we put into that bowl. I got it all over the place, and she never yelled at me. We just left the sugar on the floor and kept making cookies. Yes, I remember they were sugar cookies,” she said as the memory became clearer. “I remember putting pink frosting on them, and my mother telling me it was Christmas so we should make them with green frosting. But I wanted pink frosting, so she let me do what I wanted.”

Keith smiled. “That sounds like a nice memory.”

“It is. It's one of the few really nice memories I have of my mother because I was just too young when she left. I remember her packing. I don't know why I didn't remember it before.”

Reggie thought back to when she was little. It must've been a year or so before her mother had left. She could barely remember. But she did remember her mother crying. Her mother not wanting to move again. And she'd been angry. Reggie had wanted to take some toys with her to their new home. But her mother tried to convince her to keep them for the next little girl who would stay in their house. Reggie ended up having a tantrum that still embarrassed her today. She didn’t know why. She’d been a child.

When it was over, her mother had picked her up and put her on her bed and told her to stay there until she was done packing. She'd fallen asleep on the bed. And when she woke up her father was home, and she'd heard her parents arguing again.

Had that been the beginning of the end? Reggie didn't know. It was too long ago and she wasn't privy to the adult conversation between her parents. She was certainly too young then to understand the dynamics.

What she did remember was when they got to their new house, her favorite doll was sitting in her toy box. It was a doll her father had given her when he'd come home from a tour he'd been on. Thinking back on it now Reggie wondered if her mother had purposely wanted to leave it behind because her father had given it to her.

“You're someplace far away. Come back to me, Regis,” Keith said in a gentle voice. He reached his hand across the length of the sofa until he was touching her shoulder. The distance seemed too far and yet part of her wanted to run and hide in her bedroom like the small child she’d been when her parents had argued.

“I don't know if I can be a good mother,” Reggie said. “I don’t want to end up being like my mother.”

“You’re going to be a great mother,” Keith said, reassuring her.

“How does anyone ever know? My mother left me, but she wasn’t a horrible person. I think I forgot that all these years. I think I wanted to forget all the nice things because it was easier to think that she didn't love me.”

Keith frowned “Why would that be easier?”

Reggie shrugged. She felt like a little girl giving him a little girl's response. “Because then I would have a reason for her leaving. If she didn't love me, then why would she stay? Of course, she would leave if she didn't love us. But I know she did love us. She loved me anyway. And that's what I’m afraid of.”

“Why does that make you afraid?”

“Because I already love this baby. What if in a few years from now I end up being like my mother? I can’t live with that.”

Keith shook his head quickly. “I know you, Regis. You have the biggest heart of any woman I've ever known. You work tirelessly to help other people. Why would you just up and leave. I've never seen you back down from any challenge.”

“How can I be sure? How is anyone sure? I asked your mother, a woman who seems to have it all, if she always knew she wanted to be a mother and she said yes. No question, no second-guessing, and no hesitation or regret about her life.”

“Do you love me?”

“Of course, I do” She hated that her insecurity was making Keith question her love for him. “I think I loved you from the very moment I met you.”

“Then it's going to be okay. Because I love you more than anything else in the world. And I can love this baby just as much. You will too.”

Tears filled her eyes. “That's my whole point. I don't want this child to go through the pain of being abandoned like I did. My father was there. But nothing is gonna take away the fact that my own mother, a woman who loved me, walked out the door one morning and never returned.”

Keith seemed to tread carefully. “You may be like your mother in many ways. You said once that you had hair like hers, but your eyes were like your dad’s. You said you loved to travel. But you’re not her, Regis. We’re sitting here with two years of loving each other behind us. You're pregnant with our child. I know you're nervous.”

“I am.”

“But I know you. You would never abandon your child. Ever.”

“I wish I could be sure. I want this baby more than anything. I'm not afraid about today. I'm afraid of next year or the year after that or the year after that. I'm afraid of destroying this child's life because it won't be enough or I will get restless or I'll end up being too selfish like my mother was. Because no matter what happened, she was selfish. She had a choice to at least contact me or find out where I was or how I was doing. She never did. She never wondered about me? I would wonder.”

“That's what makes you different. That's what makes you special, and why I love you. Because you would wonder. Look, things happen. I'm not foolish enough to think that everything is easy because I've seen just how difficult it can be for some people. I have single mothers coming into the clinic all the time wondering how they're going to pay their rent because the child’s father has taken off.”

She shook her head. “I never worry about you, Keith. You're going to be a wonderful father. I worry about me and how much influence my mother had on me. I don't remember enough about her, and my father never really spoke too much about her after she left for me to know. Did she want something different in her life? Did my father always know that and she resented being dragged all around the world? Why didn’t she think that taking me with her was an option when she knew my father would have to leave me with strangers?

“I don't have the answers to those questions, and I never really thought about them until I looked at the pregnancy test and was confronted with the possibility of having a child of my own. I never thought that perhaps there was something in her, a restlessness, that could be in me.”

Keith was upset. He leaned back on the sofa and took in her tirade of emotion.

“I know you want to be happy about this.”

His eyes widened. “I am happy about this. I just don’t know how to make you happy about it.”

She reached out and grabbed both of his hands in hers. “I need time. I'm afraid that even if I have the time to think about it I'm going to come to a realization I don't like.”

He bit his bottom lip and then glanced at her. “Time for what? Because I've got to be honest with you, Regis, I'm afraid of what that means.”

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