The Offering (26 page)

From the moment he left me, I wanted that baby like a thirsty woman wants water. Though I couldn't understand why I suddenly needed that child, if I'd been stronger I would have rolled out of bed and snatched him from Simone.

A suffocating sensation tightened my throat at the thought of watching the Amblours carry him away. I covered my face with trembling hands and wept, overcome by the agony of loss.

I had lost too much in the last twenty-four hours: the love of my life, my daughter's father, and the child my body had been unwittingly loving for the past nine months.

“Mi querida hija,”
Mama Isa crooned, pushing my wet bangs away from my face. “It is okay. You will be okay.”

“Will I?” My voice trembled, tears choking off all the things I wanted to say.

I had lost the opportunity to have another child with my husband. The little boy we had always wanted would never exist. Marilee would never know a brother.

I would never grow old with Gideon. I would curl back into myself, just as I had after I lost my beloved father. Venturing out hurt too much.

Choking back a sob, I lowered my hands and forced myself to look across the room. Simone was stroking the baby's chin as Damien cooed, a nurturing, womanly sound I never expected to hear from him. Oblivious to my suffering, they would go home as a new family, and their lives would never be the same.

I had changed, too, but not in the way I expected. Marilee and I would go forward as a family, but I would go home a widow.

An orderly wheeled me to a room on a quiet floor away from the obstetrical ward. I knew they wanted to avoid reminding me of the child I'd just surrendered, but I wouldn't have cared if they put me in the morgue. Without Gideon or the baby, I felt hollow.

Somehow I slept, waking only when someone slipped a cuff around my arm. “Sorry about that,” a nurse whispered, taking my blood pressure in the semidarkness. “Are you awake? Because there's someone outside who'd like to see you.”

I glanced at the clock on the wall—6:30 a.m., so unless my visitor was a doctor, he or she was ignoring the rules about visiting hours. But since my visitor could be Marilee or one of the relatives, I raised the head of my bed and tried to clear the cobwebs from my brain.

Natasha Bray strolled into the room, a congratulatory grin on her face. She tempered her expression when she realized I wasn't smiling with her.

“Amanda.” She stood next to my bed and tentatively touched
my shoulder. “I was so sorry to hear about your husband. A terrible tragedy for the nation, but especially for you.”

A lump rose to my throat and fresh tears stung my eyes. I was leaking again, teetering on the verge of a crying jag, but Natasha hadn't come here to talk about Gideon.

“I wanted to thank you for your service to Simone and Damien.” Natasha patted my shoulder as if I were a small child who had correctly solved a mathematics problem. “The baby is beautiful. Eighteen inches, five pounds, two ounces. Ten fingers, ten toes. A perfectly gorgeous little boy.”

I swiped my tears away. “Have—have the Amblours left the hospital?”

“They're waiting for the birth certificate, so they'll be around at least until the records office opens at seven. After that, I'm not sure what their plans are. I think they're going to stay in Florida a day or two, then return to France. They're eager to show off their baby, of course.”

Were they? I blinked as confusing memories warred in my brain. At some point—last week or last year, or maybe in another lifetime—I had heard that they wanted to stay for some time. Something about newborns not flying because of the risks of exposure to the potentially harmful air on an airplane.

I sat up straighter, glimpsed the hospital wristband on my arm, and shook my head. “I need to go home.”

“Don't you want to rest? You deserve it.”

“I want to go home. I'm not sick, and Marilee needs me. I have things to do.” Tears to weep. A daughter to comfort. A funeral to plan.

Natasha's brows flickered. “But are you sure you're ready? How are you feeling?”

“I'm a little tired and sore, but I'll be fine.”

Natasha bit her lip, then nodded. “I'll see if I can page Dr. Hawthorn. She was still here a few minutes ago, and I know she'll have to sign you out. But let me get ahold of her.”

Natasha left the room. Fully awake, I pushed the tray table out of the way. Someone had stashed my clothing in a closet by the window, so I climbed out of bed and pulled out my things, eager to get away from everyone involved with the surrogacy. Like a dog that runs home after being hurt, I wanted to crawl into a quiet corner and lick my wounds for a while.

I found my purse at the bottom of the closet and pulled out my cell phone. Amelia wouldn't enjoy being awakened before sunrise, especially if she'd been here when the baby was born. But she'd come get me if I asked. She was family.

A few minutes later I was buttoning my blouse when a footstep snapped against the tile floor. “Amanda? Are you up?”

“Up and dressed, Dr. Hawthorn.”

My doctor stepped around the curtain and lifted a brow. “Well. I suppose you
are
ready to go home.”

“No sense in waiting around, is there?”

“Maybe not, but someone might want to see you before you go. Would you like to have a look at your baby before you take off?”

I stared out the window and considered the risk to my heart. Why not go see the little guy before I had to face my new reality? He was probably in the nursery, one sleeping infant in a row of identical bassinets. Seeing him in that clinical environment might not rip open a recent wound.

“Okay. I'll see him.”

“Good.” Dr. Hawthorn turned toward the hallway. “You all can come in now.”

Before I could object, Damien and Simone entered, the baby sleeping in Damien's arms. I was so stunned by the ambush—why weren't they asleep somewhere?—that I couldn't speak.

“Dear girl.” Simone hurried forward and wrapped me in an embrace. “You have done a wonderful job. Such a beautiful boy, and you made it look so easy!”

A trembling rose from somewhere at my core as I forced myself to meet Simone's gaze. The sounds of the infant—the gasps,
snuffling, and grunts unique to a newborn—were enough to threaten my composure. I didn't dare look at him.

“You are so brave, so generous!” Simone went on, gushing like a fire hydrant. “You have done so much for us we can never begin to thank you. And after such a personal tragedy.” She stepped away and gave me a sympathetic look that threatened to shred my heart. “You are precious to us,
mon amie.
Damien and I will never forget you.”

I swallowed as words formed a logjam in my throat. If I tried to speak, my voice would break and I'd end up blubbering, so perhaps I shouldn't say anything at all.

Simone gestured to the baby. “Would you like to hold him?”

Hold
him? When he was wrapped in a blanket she had purchased and wearing clothes she had provided? Then again, maybe it would be easier to hold him while he was wearing something other than my life's blood.

I held out my hands. Damien stepped closer, never taking his eyes off his son, and placed the infant in my arms.

My heart pounded as an unwelcome glow flowed through me. A blush heated my face as I peered at the creature that had so recently lived inside me.

I had never held an infant so tiny. I kept my gaze fixed on his shiny tender head until the baby lifted fringed eyelids and looked straight at me. His eyes were dark and deep, just like Marilee's, and the tip of his nose turned up at an adorable angle. He wriggled his little fingers and worked his rosebud mouth as I bit hard on my lip, torn between laughing with delight and sobbing at the heartbreak I was about to feel all over again.

“You'd better take him.” I turned to Simone as my self-control wavered. “I'm a little out of practice.”

Damien took the child, probably realizing that I was about three seconds away from tossing him to the nearest pair of arms.

How much loss could one woman endure in only a few hours? How many good-byes could I be expected to say in a single day?

“Are you going to keep in touch?”

I startled at the sound of Amelia's voice. Grateful for the distraction, I turned to see my cousin watching the Amblours with a cold expression, her eyes dark and faintly accusing.

“Do you
want
us to keep in touch?” Simone's brows arched. “I don't remember what we decided—”

“A picture on his birthday might be nice.” Amelia moved from the doorway into the room. “After all, Mandy might want to see how the kid's growing up. Since she gave him his start and everything.”

“A birthday card, of course.” Simone smiled at me. “And a Christmas gift. It is the least we can do for our friend. We will look forward to sending you something every year, and we will pray for you every night.”

“Please—no gifts. I don't need presents from you.” My gaze traveled again to the baby. That sweet little pineapple-honeydew had slept inside me, grown inside me, fed and kicked and hiccupped inside me.

He had progressed from blastocyst to newborn with Marilee's music in his ears. He'd heard me read to him and felt the pressure of Gideon's protective arm. He might be only an infant, but he'd spent the last nine months as part of my family.

And as much as I wanted to deny it, I loved him. Handing him over—

Good things usually hurt.
Yes, they did.

“What did you name him?” My voice emerged as a rough croak.

“Julien,” Simone said. “Julien Louis Amblour.”

I nodded. “It's a nice name. Very French.”

“We like it,” Damien said. “My grandfather was also Julien Louis.”

We stood there, silence stretching between us, until I couldn't bear the quiet. “He's so small,” I said.

“Not a big boy.” Damien smiled with confidence. “But he will grow. We will make him stout with fresh foods from the garden.”

The sound of quick steps broke the heavy silence as Natasha, her cheeks pink, came back into the room. “How fortunate to find you all still in one place. We were lucky—since we had a prebirth order, the records office printed this without any trouble.” She pulled a manila envelope from her briefcase and handed it to Damien. “In there you'll find your son's birth certificate, on which you are named the father and Simone the mother. Your baby will have dual citizenship—American, by virtue of being born here, and French, because of his French parents.”

She had taken care of everything.

“Mandy?” Amelia gave me a pointed look. “Are you ready to go?”

Through tears, I told all of them good-bye.

“The more you sweat in training,” Gideon often said, “the less you bleed in battle.”

The day of Gideon's memorial service, I revised his axiom:
The more you cry in private, the less you weep in public.

For reasons I didn't want to consider, I wasn't allowed to see Gideon's body. His remains were flown to Dover Air Force Base, then transported to Washington and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Someone from Special Operations Command invited me to fly up to the graveside service, but Dr. Hawthorn advised against my traveling so soon after giving birth. So I stayed home to help Elaine and Tumelo memorialize their only son.

At the memorial service, a representative from Gideon's unit stood before a display of bright poinsettias and said my husband died a hero and saved several lives with his unthinking sacrificial action. “Gideon Lisandra was the epitome of the word
warrior,
” the man said. “He had the courage to defy fear, the sense of duty that allowed him to throw the gauntlet down, and the honor to scorn compromise in the face of death. Gideon was one of the most noble and brave souls I have ever had the honor of knowing.
If not for his courage”—the man looked straight at me—“ten other families would be holding funerals today. He is a shining example for the rest of us.”

I smiled, appreciating his statement, but his words did nothing to explain how or why my husband died.

Snake Billings filled in the details. He showed up at the house hours after the memorial service, after Marilee had gone to bed and the family had gone home.

I let him in without a word. We stared at each other for a long moment, two pairs of wet eyes exchanging wordless pain and sympathy, then I stepped into the circle of his arms. His embrace felt nothing like Gideon's, but I took comfort from knowing he had been with Gid on my husband's last day.

“Snake”—I finally managed to whisper—“what can you tell me?”

He released me and together we walked to the couch. We sat, both of us erect and facing the opposite wall, then he took off the old baseball cap he always wore when out riding in his truck.

“We were going in to rescue a hostage,” Snake said, staring at my silent television, “and we were creeping along this bushy creek bed. We'd surveilled it during the day and it was clean, but someone must have come in and planted the IED right before we moved forward. Gideon was on point. He saw the device and stopped us, but then this little girl from the village comes walking along from the west, and when Gid sees her she's about two feet from the trip wire.”

I closed my eyes, intuiting the end of the story.

“The kid—” Snake's voice broke.

“Stop.” I dropped my hand on his arm. “You don't have to say any more. And I know you probably shouldn't have told me that much.”

“Just know this,” Snake said, unshed tears glimmering in his eyes. “I loved Gid like a brother and he will always have a place in my heart. If you need anything, Mandy, don't hesitate to call me. I will never forget Gid, and I will never let you down if you need something.”

I thanked him, gave him another hug, and walked him toward the door.