It was harder than I thought.
Even if I told them, even if all three of them showed up on my doorstep tomorrow ready to claim this baby and build a home around us, what did that look like in Clover Hill? A child born to a woman and three men, out of wedlock and being unable to prove paternity without a test, would bring even more disapproval than what I’d experienced.
Nope. No thank you. Not doing that to my child. I could not–would not–put my baby in a position to feel the things I’d felt.
I no longer leaped and gasped, my heart in my throat every time my phone rang, hoping it was one of them. I’d told them it was over, and they respected that.
I’d done this. I’d walked into that town and fallen in love with three men who never stopped treating me with anything less than absolute love and adoration. I’d walked away from that for my own sanity. I didn’t get to call them back and hand them a consequence they might not want.
We hadn’t talked about kids. Hell, we hadn’t talked about a future at all beyond the next day, the next batch of gossip that tore at me.
I would raise this baby. I would do it here, in Boston, in a city large enough that the circumstances of a single woman’s pregnancy didn’t raise eyebrows. I’d find a bigger apartment, negotiate with Diane, who was pragmatic enough to make it work if I had a plan I could show her.
I splayed my hand over my stomach. “Hi.” My voice came out tinny and tight, fear and hope and love mingling together. “I’m your mama, and I’m going to figure this out.”
I sat there a while longer, my hand on my stomach as I read until my eyes blurred and I’d drank two glasses of water. Then I started a list of everything I needed to do before my delivery.
34
RONAN
Time changed when waiting. I’d been through it before when I lost my wife. I hadn’t expected to experience the same kind of gnawing grief all over again, except it was almost worse. I’d lost Bree because she chose to walk away. I understood, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
The woman at the flower shop smiled at me as I passed. “Afternoon, Ronan.”
“Afternoon, Terry.” I spoke on autopilot. The flower shop’s display of white lilies stopped me in my tracks. My wife had loved lilies. Bree had put a single one in a vase in the pub the week before she left. She never mentioned it, and I hadn’t asked, but she’d only done it once I admitted to her in a late-night conversation that the smell reminded me of her. And now I couldn’t walk past a flower shop without the two of them colliding. I almost plucked one of the lilies from a bundle, but when Terry tried to entice me closer to the bouquets of roses stacked in the wooden risers on either side of her door, I turned and crossed the street.
Not that it was any better over there. Green shamrocks hung from every window, along with green hearts and flowers. A few went a little too cliche with pots of gold and dancing leprechauns, but no one here minded. Most believed the more garish the better the party.
“Hey, Ronan, you ready for the St. Patrick’s Day party over at the pub? I hear Declan has something special cooked up.” Bert, the older guy who ran the hardware store stood next to the bench beside his door with his hands on his hips.
I ground my teeth and swallowed the instant retort before managing a nod. “It’ll be great.” He might have said something else, but I’d lost interest in every conversation. The pub wasn’t the same without Bree. More so for Declan, Finn, and me, but it had lost its sparkle in general. The regulars still visited, but the conversations were duller, quieter. They drank less and left earlier.
Declan had been closing up by eight at night. We all knew why, but no one mentioned Bree’s name. She’d become the heart of the pub, and without her, it all fell apart.
Finn had stopped coming as often after his shifts. When he showed up, he sat at the bar, drank his Guinness, and made Declan laugh, but the ease had gone out of it. We were all running on autopilot, waiting for that moment when we could finally breathe again without falling apart.
The lightness Bree brought into a room wasn’t something I could manufacture and add to the pub. It was gone. She was gone. We all noticed the absence but couldn’t talk about it for more than a minute.
My steps slowed when I reached the pub. I gripped the handle tight in one hand and braced for the feel of her, the impact that punched me straight in the chest, tearing out my heart all over again.
I should stop coming here. All it did was hurt more.
But I couldn’t leave Declan to suffer alone.
Nine months.
Nine fucking months since we’d seen her. Heard her voice, her laugh.
I’d driven past the pub early on, my head always pulling upward to look at the windows. It had taken me a month to train myself out of it. Declan kept the lights off, said he couldn’t stand to turn them on and see the empty rooms. I understood that. I’d done the same thing after losing my wife. Took me four months to be able to even look at her side of the closet.
I’d taken all the plants from Bree’s apartment and redistributed them throughout my house and the patio at the back of the pub, determined to keep something alive.
I yanked the door open and stepped through before I crumbled on the sidewalk.
The smell slapped me in the face first, hops, grease, and smoke. My head snapped up.
Empty. My heart kicked into overdrive. I’d gotten used to the thinning crowd since Bree left, but to see the whole place completely empty rattled me to my core.
