at him. But he felt a need to answer it anyway. ‘I’m sure there are a lot of people who would take Hope in a second. She’ll get a lot of love.’
‘I hope so.’
‘There’s no chance that her mum will come back and want her later?’
‘It’s been over two weeks. She knew that Hope was born with a heart defect. There’s always a chance, but if she’d wanted to find her, surely she would have come back to the hospital by now?’
He nodded. ‘What do social services say?’
‘That if her mum doesn’t return, she’ll be placed in a foster home and then put up for adoption.’
That brought up another point. He took his hand off the cot. ‘You’ve never thought again about adopting?’
That had been another sticky subject towards the end of their marriage. She’d refused to even entertain the idea.
‘My sister’s experience made me afraid of going that route. But after spending so much time with Hope, I’m more open to it than I was in the past. Not every case ends in heartache, like Mallory’s did. I don’t know if I’d be able to adopt Hope, but surely they would let me consider another child with special needs. I love my nieces and nephews, but...’ She stopped as if remembering that she had a very ill nephew.
She withdrew her hand, staring into the special care cot.
‘But it’s not the same. I get it.’ He wanted to make sure she knew that there was nothing wrong with wanting someone of your own to love. He’d once felt that way about Anna. That she made his life complete in a way nothing else could, not even his work in Africa, as worthy as that might be. But in the end, his dream had been right about one thing: she hadn’t wanted him to stay.
‘You’ve probably seen plenty of needy children in Africa.’
‘Yes. There are some incredible needs on that continent. I’ve sometimes wished...’ He’d sometimes wished he could give a couple of kids a stable home without poverty or fear, but with the way his parents had been... Well, it wasn’t something he saw himself tackling on his own.
Then there was the unfinished business with Annabelle. It didn’t lend itself to making a new start. Especially when the previous chapter was still buzzing in the background. It was another thing his dream had got right. Annabelle was out of reach. She had been for a long time. He needed to sign those papers. Only then could he move forward.
He’d been thinking more and more along those lines over the last several days. She was here. His excuse of old was that he wasn’t quite sure where to find her. But that no longer held water.
He couldn’t have hired a solicitor to track her down back then? Or have gone through her parents?
Probably. But he’d believed if she wanted that divorce badly enough, she would find him.
‘You’ve sometimes wished what?’
‘That I could make life better for a child or two.’
She swivelled in her chair, her face turning up to study his. ‘You once told me you no longer wanted children.’
Yes, he had. After her last miscarriage, he’d told her that to protect her health and to save what was evidently unsalvageable: their marriage. So he’d told a lie. Except when he’d said the words, they hadn’t been a lie. He’d just wanted it all to stop.
And it had.
‘I was tired of all the hoops we had to leap through. Of all of the disappointment.’
‘I’m so sorry, Max.’ Her face went from looking up at him as if trying to understand to bending down to stare at the floor.
What the hell?
Realising she might have misunderstood his words, he knelt down beside her in a hurry, taking her chin and forcing her to look at him. ‘I wasn’t disappointed in you, Anna. I was disappointed for you. For both of us. I wanted to be able to snap my fingers and make everything right, and when I couldn’t... It just wore me down, made me feel helpless in a way I’d never felt before.’
‘Like Jessica must feel right now with Nate.’ Her eyes swam with moisture, although none of it spilled over the lower rim of her eyelids.
‘She has a great support network in you and the rest of the family.’ Something Max hadn’t felt as if he’d given to Annabelle. He’d withdrawn more and more of his emotional support, afraid to get attached to a foetus that would never see the light of day. And towards the end, that was what he’d started thinking of them as. Foetuses and not babies. And he’d damned himself each time he’d used that term.
‘She does. Her husband has been her rock as well.’
Unlike him? His jaw tightened, teeth clenching together in an effort to keep from apologising for something that he couldn’t change.
Her eyes focused on him. And then her hand went to his cheek. ‘Don’t. I wasn’t accusing you of not being there, Max. I was the one who pulled away. You did what you could.’
‘It wasn’t enough.’
Her lashes fluttered as her lids closed and her hand fell back to her side. ‘Nothing would have been enough. I was a mess back then. I’m stronger now.’
She was. He saw it in the way she cared for Baby Hope and the rest of her patients. She’d called Jessica’s husband a rock. She could have been describing herself.
‘You were always strong. They were just difficult days.’
Baby Hope stirred in her cot, one of her arms jerking to the side until her fingers were pressed against the clear acrylic of the incubator. Annabelle touched her index finger to the barrier separating her from the baby. ‘This is the strong one. I’m envisioning a bright future for her.’
‘She has a great chance.’
Annabelle sucked down a deep breath and let it out in a rush. ‘Thank you for all you did to help her.’
‘She did most of the work. She stuck around until we could find a donor heart.’
‘Yes, she did.’
Max stood up and held out his hand, the ominous warning of his dream fading slightly. ‘Let’s let her get some rest.’
‘Good idea. I need to get to work and then check in with my sister.’ She took his hand, their gloves preventing them from feeling each other’s skin, but it was still intimate, her grip returning his. He found himself continuing to hold her hand for several seconds longer than necessary. ‘You’ll let me know if there’s any change in her condition, won’t you?’
‘You know I will.’ He paused, not sure how she would feel about what he was about to say. ‘You’ll let me know about Nate, won’t you? I know I’ve never met him, but I care about your family.’
He had loved her parents and siblings, had liked seeing what it was like to be part of a large and caring family. It had had its downsides as well, the births of her nieces and nephews seeming to
