In a strange, sad way, going home was sacred.
On the final isolated stretch of highway, zipping past the landscape of scattered gums and kangaroo grass, she selected a favourite CD. But even cranked up urban couldn’t drown out the concerns that had tumbled through her mind since the weekend’s astounding run of events.
Her gaze drifted to her left hand holding the wheel. The setting was dazzling, any girl’s dream engagement ring, a cushion-cut single white diamond of who knew how many carats. Alex had been so persuasive about her wearing it. In hindsight she’d never stood a chance of refusing him. His reserves of sex appeal and charm exceeded any man she’d met or was ever likely to meet in the future.
Truth was she was attached to Alexander, hopelessly drawn to his intensity, as much as air was sucked into a fire or rain was absorbed by the sea. More and more he consumed her, but he also made her feel…connected.
As a smile touched her lips, a ray of morning sun caught the rock and the diamond flashed, shooting a stab of light back from the steering wheel. Squinting, Natalie shielded her eyes at the same time a truck roared up out of nowhere, its monster horn blasting as it passed.
Instinctively she yanked the wheel. The car swerved, fishtailing and skidding to the shoulder of the road. Foot to the floor on the brake, she pictured her heart hammering in her chest as every speck of mortal strength rushed down her rubbery legs and the car jolted to a stop. Dumping a head-tingling breath, she dropped her forehead on the wheel.
Remarkably she didn’t think about her near collision. She could think only of the incredible moment Alex had slipped that ring on her finger.
Alex cared for her. He sincerely wanted her to be the mother of his children. But he didn’t know anything about her. Didn’t know she could never give him a legitimate heir. On top of that, his marriage proposal had a side agenda: publicly recanting the engagement might do his dealings with Mr. Zhang more harm than good.
Then again, she’d had a side agenda, too—a baby who might someday, in some measure, look upon her as a mother.
Dragging her brow off the wheel, she studied the stone on her third finger again. Today May Wilder would learn that her daughter had agreed to marry, and that her fiancé hadn’t the faintest idea about her past.
Was she leaving it too late to pull out?
Releasing a shaky breath, she rolled her tense shoulders and swung back onto the highway. Thirty minutes later her Rav 4 veered into her mother’s drive, on either side of which sat a sagging chain mail fence.
May must’ve heard the engine. By the time Natalie walked from the cracked cement drive to the house, May was standing on the porch, wiping her hands on a red-striped tea towel.
A heartfelt smile lighting her face, her mother flipped the towel over her shoulder and extended her arms. Relishing the comforting warmth, Natalie burrowed her face in her mother’s shoulder, wishing her father were here, too.
After a long moment, May pulled back, her grey eyes glistening with unbridled love and pride. “You look so well, Tallie.”
Natalie smiled. “So do you.”
But in truth her mother’s hair looked frizzy and her shoulders were slightly stooped. In her mother’s eyes Natalie recognized again what she’d seen last visit. She was lonely. When her father died, she’d asked May to come live with her but she’d stoutly refused. This is where her life with Jack had been, May had said. She wouldn’t leave, no matter what.
Now with her usual brave face, May linked an arm through her daughter’s and swung open the screen door. “I put a roast on for lunch. The potatoes are browning.”
Natalie stepped into the tidy living room. Fresh snapdragons fanned from a vase on the TV, the same washed out landscape paintings hung on the wall. The surroundings were reassuring yet unsettling, too.
Memories in every corner.
Bringing herself back, Natalie nodded. “A roast sounds great.” Smelled great, too.
“Was it an easy drive from Sydney?”
“A breeze,” Natalie fibbed as May crossed to flick on the air-cooler and she sank onto the couch.
“I have your room ready in case you’d like to stay over.”
“Sorry. Can’t. Work tomorrow.”
“Well, the invitation’s always there.”
Crossing back, her mother’s gaze landed on her daughter’s hand, on the ring, and she hesitated before folding down beside her. Natalie had purposely kept the ring on so she couldn’t back out of confessing. But now her stomach looped in guilty knots. She was not looking forward to this talk. It reminded her of a past conversation, only this time she wasn’t the girl who’d got in trouble.
Smoothing down her skirt, Natalie siphoned in a steadying breath. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“About Alexander Ramirez?”
Natalie’s brows hitched. “The story made the local paper?”
May’s smile was wry. “We do get the city paper way out here in the sticks.”
“As far as I remember, you weren’t interested in either.”
“My neighbors are.”
“Of course. I should’ve seen the smoke signals spreading the news when I drove in.”
Despite Natalie’s sarcasm, her mother smiled and held her hand. “He looks very handsome.”
“He’s…” Natalie swallowed the word nice, then decent. They didn’t seem to fit.
“He’s very good to me.”
“I’m sure he is.”
“He’s what’s known as a venture capitalist. They invest in other people’s ideas.”
“There was a small write-up about that, too.”
Natalie nodded, stalling, trying to find the right words. Her mother wouldn’t bring up the other information contained in that article, the claim that another woman was pregnant with Alexander’s baby.
May Wilder would stick by her daughter under any and every circumstance, but Natalie couldn’t bear to think about the added stares and whispers her mother would endure from this town’s population after this. Whispers about that Wilder girl getting herself into strife again.
Natalie rearranged her hands in her lap.
“You know it’s not certain that Alexander’s the father of that child,” she finally said, and her mother blinked several times.
“Oh? The reporter seemed sure.”
Natalie huffed. The reporter was a slimeball.
“Alex has a friend, a doctor, who says paternity can be determined quickly.”
May tipped closer. “I want you to remember, this isn’t your fault. You wouldn’t have agreed to marry him if you’d known.”
At a twinge of shame, Natalie dropped her eyes. “It’s a little more complicated than that.”
But how could she explain? How would it sound?
I am wearing a man’s ring when he knows nothing about my past, that I can’t bear his children. I know I have to tell him and when I do that will be the end. But I can’t help thinking about that baby, about giving her the love I wasn’t able to give my own.
Natalie’s nose stung at the threat of tears at the same time May’s arms wrapped around her.
Her mother didn’t speak for the longest