Rosewood Lane (Cedar Cove #2)(50)

Her mother’s voice fell to a whisper. “I was a senior in high school when I discovered I was pregnant with you.”

Maryellen swallowed hard. The details of her birth hadn’t ever been openly discussed, although she’d figured out in her early teens that her mother had gotten pregnant in high school.

“I told Dan, and we had no idea what we were going to do. It was important that we wait until after graduation before we told our parents, but my mother knew. I never had to tell her about you, and do you know why?”

Maryellen’s eyes filled with tears and she picked up her napkin, crumpling it in her hands. “Because you were so pale?”

Her mother nodded. “I was anemic, too. Young and healthy though I was, the pregnancy drained me and I looked deathly pale. It wasn’t a severe case, just enough for me to need a prescription for iron tablets.” She didn’t say anything else, didn’t press Maryellen or throw questions at her. Instead she waited.

“Then you know,” Maryellen said after a moment, fighting hard not to weep openly in public.

“The father?”

“Out of the picture,” she said, not wanting to mention Jon’s name.

“Oh, Maryellen…”

“I’ll be fine,” she said, putting on a brave front, “really I will. Mom, I’m almost thirty-six years old. I can take care of myself.”

“But…”

“It took some adjusting, but now that I’ve accepted this, I’m happy.” The joy was decidedly absent at the moment with tears making wet tracks down her cheeks.

“We always had this connection, Maryellen,” her mother said. “I knew. Somehow I knew.”

“We didn’t always, Mom.”

Grace looked up at her. “What do you mean?”

“If we had this special connection fifteen years ago, you would’ve known then, too.”

Her mother stared at her with wide, disbelieving eyes.

There, it was out—a piece of the truth that she’d assumed would remain forever buried. Her sin, her pain, the guilt she’d carried with her for all these years.

“You were pregnant before?”

The lump in her throat was so big, she could only answer with a nod.

“Leave it to you to wait until the last minute to put up a tree,” Olivia teased Jack as he took the first package of decorative balls from a shopping bag. Actually, Olivia thought it was rather a sweet gesture on Jack’s part. Eric had briefly moved out but was back, much to Jack’s relief. He’d bought the Christmas tree in an effort to lift his son’s spirits over the holidays and Olivia had agreed to help him decorate it. This had entailed buying lights and decorations, since Jack hadn’t bothered much with Christmas since his divorce.

Eric had grown progressively more depressed at the approach of Christmas. Jack had done what he could to pull his son out of his melancholy but to no avail. Two days before Christmas, he invited Olivia over to decorate a Christmas tree while Eric was out. They hoped the surprise would jolt him into a more cheerful frame of mind.

“I kind of like this pitiful tree,” Jack said, stepping back to examine it. The branches all seemed to be bunched on one side, while the other side was almost bare.

“It’s a Charlie Brown tree for sure.” In Olivia’s opinion, this was the sorriest-looking evergreen in the lot, but she agreed it held a certain appeal. She’d brought some leftover ornaments, along with a CD of Christmas music, and they were in business.

Andy Williams’s voice crooned as a small fire blazed in the fireplace. “So?” Jack asked, rearranging the string of twinkling white lights. “Are you doing anything special after this?”

“I was thinking I’d let you take me to dinner.”

“The Taco Shack?”

Olivia sighed. Nine times out of ten, that was the restaurant Jack chose. “Do they still owe you for advertising?”

“I can eat there for another twenty years.”

“I was afraid of that.”

Jack hung a plastic gingerbread man on a drooping tree limb. “You like Mexican food, don’t you?”

“Sure—but I enjoy the company more.”

Chuckling, Jack grabbed her around the waist, preparing to kiss her. Olivia certainly wasn’t objecting, but then the door opened and Jack stopped abruptly. He loosened his grip and Olivia nearly fell to the floor, catching herself just in time.

“Eric,” Jack said, sounding startled. “I didn’t expect you for a couple of hours.”

His son walked into the room, looking about as gloomy as a man can get. He didn’t appear to notice that Olivia and Jack had been in the middle of a kiss.

“You picked up the mail?”

Eric nodded.

“What happened?” Olivia asked. The boy seemed to be in shock.

Eric slouched forward and dropped the mail on the coffee table. “I heard from Shelly.”

“She wrote you?” Jack seemed encouraged by this development.

“No…” Eric covered his face with his hands. “She sent me a picture.”

“A picture?” Jack frowned. “Of what?”

“The baby,” Eric supplied. Then he straightened and looked them both full in the face. “Correction, babies. Shelly’s having twins.”