to claim me as his wife.”
He gave a slight, anxious grin that put her on edge. “We only allow one family per amnesiac.” His gaze grew as intense as any of her family’s. “I wish I could prepare you for this news, but I must say it quickly before someone else comes in. You’re pregnant, and I’ve been unethical.” He patted her good leg. “What a relief to say it out loud at last.”
Cate grabbed her bed rails as the world seemed to open up beneath her. “I’m pregnant?”
“Just over sixteen weeks.” He went on, as if they should both be ready to talk facts. “You were spotting when you came in. By the time we could leave you to speak to Alan, he should already have asked us about the baby. When he didn’t, I began to worry you hadn’t told him and that you had a reason for not telling him. I asked Imogen for your gynecologist’s name.”
Words escaped her at first. “How old am I again?”
“Thirty-eight.”
Pregnant, thirty-eight, with a son of eighteen, and she hadn’t told anyone about the new baby. Why?
She slid her hands over her stomach. It was round all right. She hadn’t thought to ask why. An unexpected protectiveness caught her by surprise, and she accepted a new first priority. “Is the baby all right?”
“Yes. Your bleeding was light, and you stopped within a few hours. I still would have told Alan if I hadn’t tracked down Dr. Davis.”
“My obstetrician?”
“Right. She said you’d decided not to tell Alan yet, so I followed your wishes. However, Dr. Davis needs to see you, so you have to decide how to tell Alan. She’ll never make it in here and out again without being ambushed, considering the way your family guards that door.”
Cate’s large family overwhelmed her, too. She couldn’t see their constant, well-meant surveillance as a joke. “No one else asked about the baby? Not my sister or my aunt?”
“I wish they had.”
“Did Dr. Davis explain why I’ve kept the pregnancy a secret?”
“She doesn’t know, and I can’t promise Imogen hasn’t talked to Alan since I asked her for your OB’s name.” Dr. Barton patted her forearm. “Try not to worry. I expect Alan would have exploded by now if Imogen had told him.”
“I need to talk to Alan. What was wrong between us?”
“I’m not sure anything was wrong.”
Cate pushed her fingers through her hair. “Dr. Barton, tell me the truth.” She pressed her palms together, trying to look self-possessed. She didn’t want or need a gentle bedside manner. “Will I ever know these people again?”
He hunched his shoulders beneath his wrinkled lab coat. “All I ever say to you or Alan is ‘I don’t know.’ And I don’t. Because shock, rather than a head injury, caused your amnesia, I’d say your memory will trickle back.” Grinning, he popped his glasses from the top of his head onto his face, where they magnified his weary eyes. “Trickle. That’s a technical term.”
Cate tried to smile, but his nonanswer made her head ache. She lifted her hand between them, turning it from side to side. “I must have seen my fingers millions of times, but I don’t recognize them. I scared myself to death when I looked in a mirror and saw my sister’s face. My son makes me feel anxious, because he’s at an age where he won’t even say if he feels let down. I’m responsible for him, but I don’t feel that he’s my child, and I’m more comfortable talking to you than to my husband.”
“These are the facts. You can’t balance them with what you feel, because all your emotions are tied up in your memory loss.” Dr. Barton folded her fingers between his weathered hands. “I don’t know why you’d hide a child from Alan, but he cares about you. He stood a vigil at your bedside no matter how many times I begged him to go home. I thought we might end up having to treat him. That man didn’t stay all this time because he felt it was his duty.”
Good. She didn’t want a dutiful marriage. She wanted passion and commitment, a love that made a thirty-eight-year-old woman want to tell her husband they were having a second child.
Might she have hidden her pregnancy from Alan for a more obvious and insidious reason than a marriage that had wound down to duty? “What if Alan isn’t the baby’s father? Would you have heard rumors if I was having an affair?”
Dr. Barton sat back as if someone had tried to yank his chair out from under him. “The Talbots have a bad habit of making destructive decisions, but not you, Cate.”
“Talbots?” She found no comfort in his vehement support.
“Your father’s family. Your Aunt Imogen and Uncle Ford. Before you, the Talbots have tended to live by their own reckless rules, but you’ve broken that mold, Cate. I’ve known your family a long time, and I’ve seen you make healthier choices than the others.”
“Explain, please.”
“No. You speak to Imogen or Caroline.” At his nervous glance, she imagined redheaded women who ran with wolves and men who sought the company of sinners. “You need to rebuild your relationships with your aunt and uncle and sister, not with me.”
“You’re not hurt because I can’t remember you.”
He held up both hands. “You have to jump off this cliff. Think of me as a parachute if you jump and you need help getting to the ground, but talk to your family.”
Outside her room, a woman’s voice paged another doctor over the PA system, and some sort of heavy equipment rolled down the hall on squeaky wheels. Still, Dr. Barton waited for her to behave the way she always had.
Cate covered her face with her hands, but then flattened her palms at her sides. “I can’t lie here and wait for my life to happen to me, can I?”
He slipped his hands in his pockets. “I’ll arrange for Dr. Davis to see you. Figure out what to tell Alan about the baby.”
Memory must shape a person’s sense of self. When she tried to think how she should approach Alan, she faced a mental blank. “I think I’ll try the truth.” She winced a little. “The truth as we know it, anyway.”
ALAN DIDN’T go home and sleep. Instead, he asked Dan to join him in an early round of golf at the country club they’d belonged to since Dan had begun to show unexpected talent for the game.
Alan kept waiting for the right moment to ask his son why he was avoiding Cate. Since his golf skills didn’t measure up to Dan’s, searching for lost balls usually made them talk. Today Dan helped him scour the primordial, South Georgia forest in uneasy silence. He grunted one-syllable responses to Alan’s opening gambits. Finally, after they turned in their cart, Alan suggested lunch in the club’s excessively Victorian grill room.
After they ordered, Dan sprawled in his wide wooden chair with a look that anticipated a firing squad. “What do you want, Dad?”
His sullen question surprised Alan. Normally, Cate handled these types of conversations. He didn’t know where to go when Dan was clearly saying he didn’t want to talk.
“Are
