“Why don’t you go get your lunch and come back and eat with me? No sense each eating by ourselves.”
“Sure. I’ll be right back.”
When she returned a few minutes later, Amy discovered that Jessa had waited for her. “Guess it’s kind of quiet up here.” She set her plate and glass down on the nightstand and pulled a chair closer to the bed.
“Yeah. There’s only so much TV I want to watch and so much surfing I can do. Guess I’m going to catch up on all the reading I haven’t had time for over the past couple of years.”
“I can give you some recommendations if you’d like. I love to read and have several favorite authors.” Amy took a bite of her sandwich.
“I’d like that. I’m sure that my favorites don’t have enough out there that I haven’t read yet to last until the baby comes.”
“How are you feeling today?”
“Less stressed now that you’re here.” Jessa smiled at her. “I really do appreciate you dropping everything to come. I couldn’t believe it when Cami said you were willing to help us out.”
“Not really much to drop,” Amy assured her. “It’s nice to be back in Collingsworth. I’ve always enjoyed my visits here.”
“Did you talk to Will?” Jessa asked.
“Not too much. I had a longer conversation with his daughter.” Amy knew that Jessa was unaware of her teenage feelings for Will. “She’s a beautiful little girl.”
“Yes, she is,” Jessa said. “And the spitting image of her mother,”
“It’s been a while since I’ve seen Delia, but I noticed the resemblance right away. And it seems she’s got a daddy who spoils her.”
“She does have that,” Jessa said, but her brow furrowed. “You were able to tell that from the short time she was withyou?”
Amy laughed. “Not from her behavior. I asked if her daddy would let her have one of your cookies before lunch, and she informed me that he let her have anything she wanted.”
Jessa sighed. “That’s how Will loves her.”
“That’s not too surprising, is it?” Amy was a little confused by Jessa’s reaction to how Will spoiled Isabella. “She seems like a nice little girl in spite of being spoiled.”
“Oh, she is, but since the day she was born, Will has seemed to struggle with how he feels about her. Showering her with gifts and anything she asks for is his way of ‘loving’ her.”
Amy swallowed the bite of sandwich she’d taken. “I’m sure it must be difficult to deal with the birth of a baby and the death of a spouse at the same time.”
“Isabella was born a month premature. For the first two weeks after she was born, Laurel, Violet, Lily and I were the ones who stayed with her in the hospital. Once Delia’s funeral was over, Will disappeared for a week.”
CHAPTER TWO
Amy hadn’t heard much about what had happened during that time. She hadn’t asked, and Cami hadn’t volunteered any information. The less she’d heard about Will back then, the better.
“I would happily have taken Isabella home, but in the end, Will said she was his responsibility. He was the one who had wanted to have a baby. Delia hadn’t.”
“Really? Why was that?” Amy felt a bit like she was opening a can of worms. What she had assumed was grief on Will’s part seemed a whole lot more complex now.
“She was adopted,” Jessa said. She took a bite of her sandwich before continuing. “Apparently her biologicalmother died giving birth to her. The couple who adopted her were missionaries in the Philippines and found her in an orphanage over there.”
Amy had just assumed that Delia had been someone Will had met on one of his mission trips. Which was what had happened, she just hadn’t realized that Delia had been part of an American family. “So she was scared she’d die in childbirth, too?”
Jessa nodded. “Will tried to reassure her that it was different here than it had been in the Philippines with her mom. More medical advancements and such, but right from the start Delia struggled with the pregnancy. She was sick almost from day one, and it never stopped. By the time she was seven months she had a hard time moving around because she was so tiny, and her belly was so big. She was miserable. The day Will called to tell us that Delia...” She took a deep breath and blew it out. “She’d called to tell him that she was feeling really bad and was more sick than usual. He left work to go to her, but by the time he got to their apartment, she was unconscious. She never regained consciousness after that. They kept her on life support for a couple of weeks, but then had to deliver Isabella because Delia wasn’t doing well.”
“I’m sorry your family had to go through that,” Amy said, her appetite long gone. “I didn’t know the details of what happened. Isabella seems like a remarkably well-rounded girl, everything considered.”
“We try our best to shower her with the love that Will can’t seem to. Sometimes I want to just slap him in order to wake him up to what he’s missing. But as Isabella’s gotten older and turned into the spitting image of her mother, I wonder how he can get through each day. Delia’s death changed him so much.”
Amy nodded. “I could tell that right away. I’d only seen him a few times, but as soon as he walked in today I saw the changes in him.”
