CHAPTER NINE
Scott
I felt as if I had just been slapped. I had been, more or less. I stared at Jackie, not quite sure I’d heard right. Then I sighed, realizing I couldn’t really expect anything else.
It serves me right. I was a bastard. I behaved like a pig. Now she’s married and she has a baby and I’m too late even to say sorry.
“I am a bastard,” I said softly. “I know that. But all the same, I hope you’ll be very happy.”
I turned away, but couldn’t resist the temptation to glance back at her. I had forgotten how she affected me: the soft curve of her cheek, the fluffed smoothness of her hair. The angelic gray eyes. I wanted to kiss her.
She was looking back at me with the oddest expression. It was part outrage, part total confusion. I would have laughed except that it was so desperately serious.
“That’s a fine thing to say!” she shouted after me. “Is that all you can say? That you wish I’ll be happy?”
Her voice broke. I couldn’t keep walking away, knowing she cried. I turned around.
“Jackie,” I said softly. “I mean it. I know…what I did was unforgivable. So I don’t ask for forgiveness. All I can say is, I’m glad you found someone who can make you happy. Someone you deserve. Better than me.” I closed my eyes a moment, my throat tight, swallowing my hurt.
When I opened my eyes, she hadn’t moved. She was looking at me. Her eyes widened and now the expression was entirely surprise, the anger disappeared in a quiet incredulity.
“Scott,” she said. “What the hell are you talking about, someone else? Don’t you know? Don’t you…Stella is yours. Your child.”
I stared. I felt as if someone had poured treacle down lungs: I couldn’t breathe. Did what she just said make sense? Could it be? I struggled for a gasp, then another, as my brain tried to understand this.
“Your daughter,” I said slowly, my brain rising up through a fog of wonder and amazement. “Your daughter is my daughter? We had a baby?”
“Yes!” She was smiling, then. Smiling and crying. I went to her and threw my arms around her. This was the most remarkable moment ever. I was a father! I had a daughter. Jackie and I had a baby.
I still couldn’t really make sense of it all. I held her close, breathing in the warm musk scent of her I missed so much in the last months. It had been months. Exactly enough months, if I thought about it, for a baby to be born. This was all true. This was my daughter.
“I…Jackie!” I was laughing, and crying and I held her against my chest, disbelieving and awed at the same time. “How is this possible? What? When? You’ve made me so happy. So, so happy.”
She sobbed. “Scott. I’m so glad you think that. So glad you’re here. I…oh!”
I held her while she cried on my chest. My hands stroked her back and I whispered words into her hair, saying her name, how much I’d missed her, how she meant the world to me. I don’t know if she could hear me but she eventually stopped crying. Looked up at me.
“Meet your daughter,” she said gently. She moved out of my arms and reached into the car. Lifted a small blanket-wrapped bundle out of a cot on the rear seat. Passed her up to me.
I couldn’t quite believe it. I was looking down into a tiny, scrunched face. It had perfect, tiny eyelids, a nose like a little pixie. High cheekbones and a knob of chin. Under the cap I could see soft blond hair. This was my daughter. Stella?
“You named her Stella?” I asked. My voice was hoarse. I could barely talk. I looked down at the little face, sleeping so blissfully, and felt my heart ache with love.
“Yes. Stella Mae. After my mom.”
“Oh.” I swallowed hard. I watched the little face wake and look up at me. Her eyes were uncertain gray—they looked like Jackie’s eyes. She regarded me with a level stare. I wanted to cover her in kisses and keep her safe forever. I swallowed hard and handed her to Jackie, who lowered her into the carry cot, making little crooning noises to her.
I shook my head. None of this made sense. The only part I could focus on right then—besides the growing fireworks of sheer celebration that were going on in my chest—was the thought of what she had been through. How had she faced all nine months of that, and the birth, and the illness and worries and pain and Heaven alone knew what else, alone?
She had my daughter without telling me. I felt so sad that I couldn’t have shared in that.
“Jackie,” I said quietly.
“Yes?”
“You didn’t tell me. You never said. Not a word.”
“Why would I have?” she said defiantly. “Not much point, right? You walked out. Didn’t stay to say anything. Didn’t say goodbye, even.”
She was crying now, hot tears that ran down her cheeks. I held her and she sobbed against my chest, real sobs that shook her shoulders and sluiced my shirt and made a wailing noise. I shivered.
“Jackie,” I whispered into her hair. “Jackie. Forgive me? I am so sorry. I know it’s unforgivable. I am so, so sorry.”
She sobbed some more, shoulders heaving. Then she looked up at me.
“I wanted to share it,” she said. “But I was so, so mad at you. I’m sorry I shut you out.”
I looked into her eyes, disbelief warring with joy in my heart. “Jackie!” I laughed aloud. “That’s nothing. How can you ask me for forgiveness? I’d ask you, except I know I don’t deserve it. I was such an ass.”
She laughed. “Kind of. But I do forgive you, Scott. I am just so glad you’re here.”
I sighed. That was the sweetest thing I ever heard. I drew her into my arms.
“I am so glad I’m here too, sweetheart. So, so glad. I can’t tell you how happy you made me today. Impossibly happy.” I laughed.
It was only when she looked up at me with those big gray eyes so gentle and caring that I realized that was the first time I had actually called someone sweetheart.
“Oh, Scott.”
We stood where we were on the pavement in front of the store, beside her VW Golf. I could see Stella on the back seat, asleep again. I wanted to look at her forever, fill my eyes with the sight of my baby daughter.
She will want for nothing. I will keep her safe. Fill her life with everything she could ever need.
I was surprised by the breadth and strength of how I felt. At that moment, I would die without a second thought for that small, beautiful human being. I would do anything, without thinking about it. She was the most precious being.
She and Jackie both.
“Jackie,” I said cautiously.
“Mm?” she looked up at me and this time her gray eyes were gentle and warm. I felt my heart flip over as I looked into her gentle face.
“I can’t just go away. I need to talk. Can we go home and talk now? Please?”
She smiled at me. “Okay.”
It was a Saturday, which meant I could go back with them. I was so pleased. I smiled at her.
“Let me just move my car, quickly. It’s probably better if we go in yours.”
She laughed. Pulled a face at me. “Don’t be so sure. You’ve never seen me drive. And you probably don’t know much about the VW Golf. Mister fancy pants.”
I roared with laughter. I missed her so much. “Thanks,” I said wryly. “But let’s take your car. It will be a new experience.”
I went across to my car and moved it into a real parking place. It was difficult. I couldn’t bear not being with them now that I’d found them again. My daughter. Jackie.
I jumped out of the car, pressed the button to lock and ran to them. Jackie was standing where I’d left her, a soft smile on her face. She turned when she heard me coming.
“Let’s go,” I said enthusiastically. She smiled.
“Okay,” she cleared her throat, authoritative. “Hop in. I’ll drive.”
I slid into the passenger seat and looked sideways at her. She was grinning wildly, her face flushed and happy. She fiddled with the ignition, balanced her foot on the gas and played it, coaxing the engine to start. Then she headed out into the street.
I couldn’t help glancing back at Stella as we endured the bumpy, bad-suspension ride back to her apartment block. The baby seemed oblivious to the jolts and foibles of the car and slept blissfully on. Jackie was laughing.
“What?” I said.
“Relax!” she said, grinning at me. “Last person I saw sitting so uncomfortably had a rod up his ass. Sorry,” she added, shaking her head and closing her eyes; pained. “I have no manners. Did I mention that fact to you earlier?”
I laughed. “I love your manners just the way they are,” I said, before I’d really thought it through. We both stopped and looked at each other then, aware suddenly of the moment of what I’d just said. I did love her.
I think I always had.
I smiled at her and she smiled back. Her hand moved from the steering wheel to my knee and I bit my lip, wincing as scalding blood poured through my veins and to my loins, making me gasp. I had forgotten how easily she could make me want her. I looked out of the window, trying to concentrate on something other than how close by she was.
“Here we are.”
She stopped the car and got out. I followed. Together we went around to the back and slid the seat out with Stella still sleeping in it. She opened her eyes just then and saw us. Her sleepy expression changed from bliss to surprise and then to sadness. She wailed.
I couldn’t bear it. I looked at Jackie. She smiled.
“She’s hungry,” she said succinctly. “There, there. It’s okay. Rockabye, bay-be…”
She sang the lullaby in a flat monotone as we went through to the hallway where, months before, I had kissed her. I felt my heart tighten on those memories as I followed her into the lift. This was so surreal. With all the memories of the past, as if they’d been yesterday, it was clear nine months had past. Almost ten months, in fact. We had a baby with us.
“There, there,” Jackie was saying as Stella fretted. “It’s okay. Almost there.”
“Can I hold her?” I asked. I was half-afraid to do it. What if I messed up? What if I didn’t know what to do? If she was distressed and started screaming, the way I had heard some babies do before? All the same, she was my daughter. I couldn’t not help Jackie out. She had done nine months alone.
“Okay,” she said. “Here. You have to support her, like this. Put your hand under her head, so…” She positioned my hands, her own long-fingered, pale, and firm. I felt the sweet weight of the baby in my arms. I swallowed.
“Hello, Stella,” I said quietly. “Hello, beautiful, beautiful girl.”
She blinked. The sound of a new voice seemed to confuse her for a moment. She stopped crying. Jackie looked at me and grinned.
“Magic. I wish I had you around more often, I tell you. It would be so much easier…” she trailed off. I blinked.
“Jackie,” I said softly. “I want that too. You and Stella are everything to me.”
“I don’t want anything from you,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean for you to know. I don’t want…” she trailed off, sighing. “I’m not the kind of person who likes to chain people. If I thought you felt obligated to stay with me, I’d leave. You don’t owe me care.”
I sighed. “Jackie.”
I followed her into the apartment. She had gone from sad and then angry to busy. She was putting down the cot, hanging up her coat, setting her keys by the door. She was angry with me and trying not to show it.
“Jackie?” I said. I was still holding Stella, who was starting to get uncomfortable. She wriggled and made a little noise, as if distressed. I made shushing noises and tried to comfort her.
“What?” Jackie snapped as she came to take her daughter from me.
“I don’t feel obligated,” I said softly. “I care about you. I love you.”
She stared at me. Her face softened in an instant. She didn’t say anything. Didn’t do anything. Just looked into my eyes.
She mumbled something and took Stella from my grip. I drew a breath to speak.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Jackie…” I said gently.
“I said, I love you too.”
She said it in a rush, then looked up at me. Her gray eyes cleared, seeing the expression in my own. I couldn’t be sure what that was, except that if it matched the feeling in my heart it must have been glowing like a furnace.
“Jackie,” I whispered. “Oh, Jackie.”
I tried to hug both of them together, but I didn’t want to hurt Stella, so I resorted to putting my arm around Jackie’s shoulders, kissing Stella’s soft hair.
The baby made a few fretful sounds, then started to cry again.
“Hell, she really is hungry. Excuse me, Scott.”
She took the baby and sat down in the chair. Unbuttoned her shirt and fed her. I was speechless.
I was standing in an apartment across town, watching my daughter be fed by the most wonderful, most amazing woman I had met. Who was also her mother.
I shook my head.
“How can I be so lucky?” I whispered. She smiled at me. Stella was getting drowsy and she whispered, not to wake her.
“I’m not sure if you’re lucky, dear. But I know I am. I am.”
I felt her words brush down my spine like tendrils of gooseflesh. She had never called me dear before. I smiled.
“Well, sweetheart, I am lucky. Extremely lucky. The luckiest man on earth.”
I meant it. I really was. I had a family! At that moment, nothing else mattered. What this would mean to my future, to the present, to my parents…none of that occurred to me. This was my moment: mine, Jackie’s and Stella’s. We had just met, finally. And we were in love. All of us. Whatever happened next would grow out of that.
Which meant it had to be a good thing, I reckoned, coming and sitting beside Jackie, my arms wrapped round her, holding her close as I looked down into the face of my sleeping daughter. Anything that came out of such a happy time couldn’t help but be a happy future.