Page 23 of Bluebell Promises

But it was one Wren couldn’t use. She couldn’t. Oh, her thoughts were racing now, and her palms poured sweat. She got to her feet and wiped the dew from her brow with the back of her hand.

“I would never do that,” she whispered.

“Of course not,” Celia said, standing beside her. “We know that.”

Celia gave Ivy a very dark look that meant, lay off.

But Ivy continued to glare at them in her classic Ivy manner. Yes, she often thought the worst of people. But that didn’t mean she was always wrong.

“You know that’s what Mom wanted,” Ivy said under her breath. “She didn’t want to be a mother. She wanted to be free of us. She…”

“That’s enough,” Celia shot.

Ivy squeezed both of her hands into fists, then turned and walked up the stairs and disappeared into her bedroom. Wren collapsed back on the sofa and looked down at her feet. Celia went to the kitchen and returned with two glasses of water, one for herself and one for Wren.

“I’m sorry about that,” Celia murmured.

Wren shook her head and squeezed the glass of water with her thighs. “I haven’t told anyone yet. Not anyone except the doctor.”

Celia’s eyes were wounded and filled with curiosity. “Oh,” she said. “I mean, not even…” It was clear she wanted to ask who the father was but was too frightened to.

Wren knew almost exactly what both of her sisters would say about her “baby daddy.” She decided not to give them any information. She didn’t want to hear any of it.

Eventually, Wren’s nausea returned, and she went upstairs and got back under the covers. Pierre fell asleep soon after, the tip of his nose tucked under a pillow at the far end of the bed.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” she told the dog. But even as she said it, she felt a deep, unending sadness, because she knew that soon, the dog’s owners would discover his whereabouts and take him away from her.

It was for the best, she knew. She wasn’t stable. Ivy knew that, too.

Why had Wren thought she could have a child?

Years before, when their father had died, and they’d all come back to Bluebell Cove, and Celia had discovered their mother’s old journals, they’d learned more about Margaret Harper’s complicated inner life. They’d learned about her dissatisfaction with her marriage and her chaotic feelings about motherhood and about how desperately she’d wanted to be free. From the pages of her journal, it seemed clear that Margaret was always about a meltdown away from leaving their family behind.

Wren closed her eyes and tried to imagine herself a year or two from now. By then, she was sure, her travel photography career would be back on track. Maybe she’d be in Lima, Peru, or the Maldives or somewhere in India. Maybe she’d be invited to a grand party filled with some of the most powerful people in the world. What would she do with her baby? She supposed she could get a babysitter. Babysitters were all over the world, and you could get good ones if you paid well enough. But it wasn’t like she could get a babysitter every night.

For the next eighteen years, give or take, her needs would dictate her entire life, and the wants of the baby growing in her stomach would be her only concern. What about school? Could she homeschool? But that added another complication, especially as Wren didn’t want to spend much of her day inside, relearning algebra so that she could teach it to her child.

Wren kept herself awake for hours, panicking about everything she hadn’t thought of thus far during her pregnancy. Ivy’s fears became her own. Around two in the morning, she snuck out of her room and went to the office downstairs, where she knew Ivy kept their mother’s journals. Wren hadn’t looked at them in years, but she now craved reading her mother’s thoughts. She hoped there was a kernel of wisdom, a truth that she could cling to.

Unlike the others, she’d never really been able to know her mother. She didn’t have a single memory.

Ivy kept the diaries on the top shelf, next to the old Russian novels Wren would never get around to reading. She opted for the last two—the year during which Margaret was pregnant with Ivy and the years leading up to her death. With them tucked under her arm, she went upstairs, then burrowed between her sheets and pored through her mother’s words.

It is something that I can’t hide from this time: the fact of my pregnancy. It’s the worst nausea I’ve had so far in any of them. It’s like I can’t keep anything down. At night, I have nonstop nightmares about bringing another baby into this world, into my marriage. I can’t believe that we weren’t careful, that we didn’t think about what we were doing, that we threw caution to the wind. James is certainly no more pleased about the pregnancy than I am. We’ve fought about it nearly every day this week. He accuses me of not taking care of myself. He accuses me of being unable to care for another child. I accuse him of hating me and locking me into a world that I no longer care for. And around and around we go.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of human the baby will turn into, later on. I hope he or she won’t feel the anxiety and self-directed anger I feel upon waking and going to sleep. I hope in twenty or thirty years that James, this fourth baby, and I can go out to dinner and laugh about how he or she “wasn’t planned,” as they say, but that he or she is secretly our favorite child. “Don’t tell Celia, Ivy, or Juliet!” I’ll beg this child, laughing. I’ll tell him or her, “You brought our family together. You made everything perfect! We couldn’t have done it without you.”

I have to believe in that kind of future, somewhere in the roots of me. I have to believe that we can escape all this darkness we’ve created. I have to believe that I can be a better mother than I ever was before, and that Celia, Ivy, and Juliet will remember more of the good days than the bad. I don’t know why I must always fixate on the bad.

13

A few days after the Harper family party, Ben was at the vet clinic, finishing up a report on a recent cat surgery. It was nearly closing time, and he had plans to meet Landon after this for a beer and maybe a baseball game. He was looking forward to it, at least tentatively. He didn’t want to be the kind of guy who grew unhappier just because of his brother’s total, uncompromised happiness.

Ben finished his report and headed into the lobby to check on his secretary, Sammy. Right before he reached her, the door opened with a jangle. A walk-in, he assumed, but when he looked over, the older woman entering had no animal with her, nothing in a cage and nothing on a leash. The older woman was very small, no taller than four feet eight or nine, maybe, and she shook as she walked with a cane. Her hair was almost translucent, but her eyes were a lively and penetrating blue that made Ben think she’d once been a gorgeous beauty.

“Evening,” Ben said, coming over to the woman to help her into a chair. Why didn’t she have a wheelchair? Why was she here by herself? “Can I help you with something?”

But it was clear that the woman had exhausted herself, maybe with her walk from wherever she’d come from. As soon as he helped her to a chair along the wall, she began to shake and gasp for breath. She dropped her cane and pressed both hands over her chest. “Please,” she breathed. “Please, I need help.”