Moments in Time: The Complete Novella Collection Read online

  Heat’s breathing became labored and he shifted. Next thing Melisa knew, she was on her feet and so was he. In his eyes was a volcano on the verge of exploding. But she waited, and it didn’t. Not immediately. First he walked over to the bed and sat on the edge with his eyes closed. “You’re fuckin’ kidding me, right?” His eyes flew open again. “Tell me this is all a stupid joke.”

  Melisa shifted to a nearby wall and leaned on it for support. “I’m so sorry.”

  Heat shot to his feet and crossed the room to where she stood. He hovered over her. “You’re sorry?” His voice was louder now. “Really? Fifteen years and all you can say is sorry?” He raked a hand through his hair and turned away from her. When he faced her gain, his eyes sparkled. “My son is being raised by strangers and all you can say is sorry?”

  “I couldn’t offer him anything. I was a teenager, for goodness sake, and I had a terrible example of a mother. And you…”

  “Never gave me a chance. I grew up without a father. I would have given up everything for my child. Had I know he existed.”

  Sudden anger swirled inside Melisa and she moved toward him. “I know now that I made a big mistake… not telling you. But I made what I thought was the right decision for him at the time. The right decision for his future. He deserved to grow up in a home with two parents who loved each other. How was I to know you loved me then? How could I have been sure you would want the child?”

  Heat fixed his gaze on her face and the words that came out of his mouth were as ice cold as his eyes. “You would have known if you had told me. Instead, you made yourself the only parent in the equation—” He stopped midsentence. “Wait a minute. Did you think having a baby now would replace the one you gave away? Would that have washed away your guilt? How long did you plan to keep this secret? Forever?”

  “I…” Melisa’s knees buckled and she perched on the edge of the bed as tears streamed down her cheeks.

  “What kind of person would do that? I can’t believe the woman I love did this to me.”

  “Heat,” Melisa clutched at quickly disappearing straws. “Please try to understand. Let’s work through this.”

  “Not now,” he said through clenched teeth and strode to the wardrobe. “Right now I need time to myself. You stay here. I’ll go.”

  “For good?” How ironic. A few minutes ago she was the one planning to leave.

  “I’ll call you when I know,” he said simply. Ten minutes later, he’d packed a bag and showered, but didn’t bother to shave. Before he walked out the door, he peered back at her. “Do you know his name?”

  “Boy. Ben is his name.” It was the only information the adoption agency could give her years ago.

  Heat walked out.

  Melisa wanted to run after him, to beg for his forgiveness. But her feet wouldn’t move. Maybe because her heart and mind warned her not to go after him. He needed time, not only to digest information she should have given him years ago, but also to decide how to deal with it. Of course it terrified her; his decisions might not please her, but at this point, she was ready to deal with the consequences of her actions.

  There was only one thing to do. She would try to lessen the blow the best she could.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Melisa paced the room for a long time, rubbing her temples. “I messed up. I messed up,” she said over and over. “I need to find a way for him to see Ben… He’s our son,” she said to Carlene, who, after she called, showed up at Melisa’s doorstep with chocolate chip ice cream.

  “Wouldn’t that make it worse?” Carlene asked, handing Melisa a spoon.

  Melisa scooped out a portion of ice cream and ate it while gazing into space. “I have to do something,” she said finally. “The secret is exposed; there’s no way for me to cover it up again. I can’t ignore what happened. I need to make things right. I need to find Ben, or a photo of him, so Heat knows what our son looks like.” Even if it would tear both of them apart to see Ben and not be able to call him theirs.

  Carlene placed sleeping Daria inside her Moses basket and pushed herself up off the couch. She went to place her hand on Melisa’s arm until she calmed down and came to sit down again. “Beating yourself up about what happened won’t change anything. Let’s talk about how you can make it better.”

  Melisa perked up. “You’re so right,” she said. “What do I do?”

  Carlene lifted her legs onto the couch. “Maybe Heat does need to see Ben. Is that at all possible? I mean, I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do, but it could help give him closure.”

  “Or it might remind him of what he’s missing.” Melisa had always thought it best not to meet him; if she did, she’d go crazy not being allowed to hold her son. “Anyway, it won’t work. The adoption agency might not be allowed to tell me where Ben is.”

  “You’d never know unless you try. There are always loopholes.”

  “Thing is, I did try. When Scott died, I thought I’d lost everyone I loved. Then one day I realized I hadn’t. I still had Ben, and I was at the point in my life where I could afford to give him a home.”

  Carlene hugged her knees and rested her chin on them. “You wanted him back? Was it even a possibility?”

  Melisa shrugged. “I didn’t think about that. I just wanted my baby. So, I contacted the adoption agency. Of course they refused to give me any information.” She sighed. “It hit me hard, and the next thing I knew, I started to drink.”

  “That’s what pushed you over the edge?”

  “It was as if with Scott’s death and the miscarriage, a bubble had formed. When the adoption agency refused to help me see my son, it burst. I pestered them for weeks but always got turned down.”

  Carlene gathered Melisa into a hug and whispered to her, “I’m so sorry for what you went through. Maybe your son will come looking for you one day.” When Carlene drew back, her cheeks were stained with tears.

  Melisa smiled bitterly. “Maybe he’ll somehow get to read my letters. I begged the agency to send them to him. I’m not sure they did, though. I sent letters to that agency every year while at Oasis.”

  “You never know. So, do you want to try again? I’m here if you need the support.”

  “Yes, I want to find a way for Heat to see our son, even from a distance.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The orphanage in Madison was uncooperative this time as well. Melisa didn’t blame them. The woman who had promised to pass on her letters a few years ago no longer worked there, and the one they talked to had only been working there for a month and knew nothing about any letters. Without bothering to check, she kept insisting it had been a closed adoption, even though Melisa knew very well it had been semi-open. Ben’s adoptive parents had allowed her to write him a letter every year on the condition that the adoption agency would be the one to transfer the letters, and there was no guarantee of a response.

  The woman talked to Melisa and Carlene for five minutes, then shoved them out the door. In her short time there, she probably had to deal with these kinds of situations often. Mothers who willingly gave up their children, had a change of heart, and begged to see them or have them back.

  “Maybe the letters still managed to reach him and he knows how you feel about him,” Carlene said later in the Chinese restaurant where they were grabbing lunch before heading back to Serendipity.

  “I doubt it. Even if the old employee forwarded the letters to the family, I find it hard to believe the adoptive parents would give them to him. I didn’t really believe Ben would get them, I just had to do something.” Melisa sipped her grape juice. Her hands were shaking slightly and her eyes were blank, empty. She had lost everything. Or had it never been hers? Could it be some people weren’t meant to have a happy ending? Maybe she was one of the unlucky few who were allowed only a small slice of happiness before it was snatched away from them.

  Carlene swept aside the unopened fortune cookies and reached for Melisa’s hand. “Don’t lose hope. You never know w
hat the future holds.”

  Melisa sprinkled soy sauce over her duck fried rice and sighed deeply. “Too late. I’ve already lost it. I’m so sorry to drag you away from Daria all for nothing.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m sure Nick is enjoying having her all to himself, taking care of her without me looking over his shoulder to make sure he’s doing things right.” Carlene stopped. “Anyway, I wanted to be here with you.”

  “You’re an amazing friend. Thank you.” Melisa forced a smile. “Now that I’ve lost my son forever, I guess I’ve lost Heat too. Anyway, I still have Mel’s Delights.”

  “How’s the business going, by the way?”

  “It’s going so well that I need to hire two people to help out instead of just one.”

  “Why two? How about Josie?”

  “She’s moving on. She wants to something different. She and her five sisters want to start a wedding planning business.”

  “That sounds like loads of fun.”

  “Yes, and it’s good for my business too, because they’ll be sending the future brides my way.” Melisa’s cell phone vibrated and she glanced at the screen, then rejected the call. Her mother should really take a hint. Melisa had enough to deal with and didn’t have enough energy to take on her mother’s problems right now.

  “Perfect.” Carlene gazed at Melisa for a long time. “You know something?”

  Melisa shook her head as she chewed her food, which she didn’t even taste.

  “When you reach rock bottom, the only direction you can go after that is up.”

  “That’s encouraging. I just hope there aren’t different levels of rock bottom.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  On the day that marked one month since Heat walked out on her, Melisa closed the bakery. She spent the day cleaning every surface and corner until she was able to breathe easier again. The last few days she’d called Heat dozens of times, but her calls always went to voicemail. Two weeks had gone by and she missed him terribly. Sometimes she called just to hear his recorded voice. It kept her going day after day, along with cleaning and baking.

  After she finished cleaning, she went into the kitchen and tied her apron around her waist. The next few hours were spent preparing the cream batter, pouring it into three round cake pans, and baking. Her favorite and most relaxing time of day was late in the evening, when she frosted the three-tier cake with buttercream frosting and decorated it with edible roses. The snow white and dusty pink wedding cake she’d been asked to bake for Sally Neely, the librarian at Serendipity Community Library, who was getting married in two weeks, was done. And Melisa, though her heart was still heavy, could breathe freely again, at least for one more day.

  She put her creation in the fridge and switched off the lights. As she stood on the sidewalk and turned the key in the lock, she heard a voice from behind her, a voice she knew before she could even talk. She spun around.

  “I see you have your bakery back,” Melisa’s mother said. “I’m glad.”

  Her mother had been angry when Melisa had opened up Mel’s Delights using the small inheritance her grandmother—the only woman who had ever shown her what love was—had left her, with the instructions that she use it to follow her dreams. Her mother was furious because she got nothing.

  “Mom, what are you doing here?” Melisa kept her voice firm but controlled. She wondered how long it would take for an argument to break out. Melisa had to admit, her mother did look better than the last time she saw her. In the evening light, her eyes, which used to be bloodshot ninety percent of the time, where white. Her curly hair, the same shade of red as Melisa’s, hung loose on her shoulders, and it didn’t look greasy. Could she have changed after all?

  Her mother lifted her hands, palms facing Melisa. “I didn’t come to fight. I came to ask for your forgiveness. Please give me a moment of your time.” She blinked as if trying to fight tears.

  Melisa pulled the key out of the lock and dropped it into her bag. “Mom, too much damage has been done. Let’s not dig up the past.”

  “Just one minute, please, Mel.”

  Melisa felt suddenly dizzy and lightheaded. She had been on her feet all day, working on no food, and she was starting to feel the effects. “I’m exhausted and hungry and really not in the mood to listen to what you have to say.” She walked away, but as she approached a traffic light, her mother’s hurried footsteps came up behind her.

  “Mel, I’m sorry for everything. I know there too many things to forgive.” She sounded like she was crying, but Melisa kept right on walking.

  “For all it’s worth, I do believe you now… that Henry tried to… rape you. I’m sorry I didn’t before.” She was close to Melisa’s back now.

  Henry had been her mother’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. A disgusting pig, who had tried on more than one occasion to come on to Melisa.

  Melisa slowed and when she wheeled around to face her mother, tears streamed down her face. “I was thirteen years old, and you believed him instead of me. Your daughter. What if I hadn’t fought him? He’d have raped me and you’d still defend him.” Melisa wiped off the sweat beading on her forehead. Being in her mother’s presence, reliving painful memories on an empty stomach, was literally making her sick.

  Her mother was crying too as she stood facing Melisa, tears glistening on her cheeks. “I’m so, so sorry. I want to make up for it.”

  “I don’t know if you can.” Melisa turned away again and instead of waiting for the traffic lights to turn green, she stumbled into the road. There was a loud screech; she turned to the direction the sound came from and bright lights blinded her blurry vision. Her heart almost stopped when she saw a car speeding in her direction. There was another screech, a scream, and then everything went black.

  ***

  Melisa opened her eyes and lifted one of her hands. She looked at it from side to side, then let it drop again. It was too heavy.

  “Ma’am, can you hear me?” a man asked. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Her eyes took in the interior of the ambulance, and her heart started beating fast. Oh, God, what had happened to her? As she formed the words in her mind, she remembered her mother, the car, blacking out. The car had hit her. It had been too close to miss her. Maybe she was paralyzed. Why else would her body feel so numb? She parted her lips to speak, to ask the paramedic questions, but all she felt like doing was sleeping. She closed her eyes.

  She was still drowsy when they arrived at the hospital, which she knew was just a five-minute drive from Mel’s Delights. When she opened her eyes, the man from earlier wasn’t there anymore. She had been handed over to nurses who now wheeled her into a room that smelled of antiseptic and bleach. She flashed back to the day of the fire. She wanted to get away from this place.

  When the nurses helped her onto the bed, she sighed with relief; even if her body still felt limp, all her body parts were intact. And her brain was clearly functioning just fine. “I’m okay,” she said as she grabbed on to the metal bedrails. “I’m okay.”

  A nurse with very grey hair tied in a bun on the top of her head smiled as she positioned the pillows behind Melisa. “Yes, sweetheart, you are fine. But we do need to run some tests to find out what caused you to faint.”

  “A car was about to run me over. What happened?” Melisa couldn’t help asking.

  “Looks like you were lucky. We were told that when you were found, the street was empty, apart from you and the woman who called nine-one-one. She said she is your mother. “

  “My mother called nine-one-one?”

  “She did. She’s in the waiting room right now. She can come and see you after the doctor sees you. I just need to ask you a few questions.”

  The other nurse sat down at what looked like a computer near the window and typed as her colleague asked Melisa for her personal information, what she believed could have caused her to faint, and her medical history.

  Melisa answered her questions as accurately as could re
member, hoping that if she cooperated, she would be allowed to go home sooner. “I’d been working all day at my bakery and hardly had anything to eat or drink.”

  “Well, that might explain it. But let’s see what the doctor says.”

  Melisa swung her legs over the edge of the bed, feeling suddenly very strong and alert. “I don’t think that necessary. I had a long day, that’s all.” And seeing her mother had just pushed her over the edge. “I’m fine. I just need to eat something and get some rest.”

  The nurse smiled and walked out and the doctor—John Garver, the same doctor who’d treated Melisa after the fire—walked in.

  “Ms. Bergfeld, it’s nice to see you again.” He gazed at the computer monitor. “I see your surname has changed. Are congratulations in order?”

  Melisa pursed her lips. She should be overjoyed to announce to anyone who would listen that she had married the man of her dreams. Only problem was, she wasn’t sure whether he was still hers. In the last month, she’d only spoken to him twice over the phone for less than two minutes at a time. The first time he’d called to ask if the repair guy he’d sent over to fix the leaking bathroom tap had shown. The second time he’d simply said hi and nothing further. As if what he’d wanted to say refused to be said. “Yes,” she said to the doctor. “I’m married.” For how long that statement would hold true, she had no idea.

  Dr. Garver stepped over to her bed and shook her hand. “Congratulations, Mrs. Dane.” He paused and regarded her for a moment. “I didn’t think you’d be back here again so soon. How are you feeling?”

  “I feel fine. I think I fainted from not eating all day.”

  Dr. Garver asked her a few more questions, jotting down her answers on a notepad. “From what you’re telling me, the signs point toward hypoglycemia, a low blood sugar condition. To know more, I’d like to run some blood tests. Do I have your consent?”

  “Do whatever tests are necessary to find out what’s wrong with my wife.”