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  During the second week of August Danica drove back to Boston to see the doctor as ordered on a monthly basis. His report was good, and that pleased her. What didn’t please her was the fact that Blake wasn’t there. He had left several days earlier to spend time in Washington before going on to the convention in St. Louis. It hurt her that he hadn’t wanted to meet her doctor, much less ask him questions that most prospective fathers would have. While Danica had read any number of books on the subject of pregnancy and childbirth since her pregnancy had been confirmed, Blake, to her knowledge, had read nothing. When she asked him if he wasn’t even the slightest bit curious about what his child looked like at that moment or would look like a month, two, three months hence, he simply smiled that winning smile of his and said that nature would take its course whether he knew its intimate details or not. She realized then that it was her baby, literally and figuratively.

  What bothered Danica most, though, was that during the two days she spent in the Beacon Hill town house, she missed Michael more than she did Blake. It was with relief that she finally returned to Maine and to the man whose excitement at seeing her again warmed her heart.

  The convention began, and since she hadn’t wanted a television in her own house, she spent every evening watching the proceedings with Michael. She sensed a part of her future lay in the outcome, and she was tense. Though Michael did what he could to alleviate that tension, it was never more apparent than at the moment that Jason Claveling mustered enough votes to secure the nomination.

  When the floor erupted with sign-waving and cheering, she closed her eyes and let out a long sigh.

  “Well, that’s it,” Michael announced. “Looks like your men are going to be a happy lot tonight.”

  “Are you pleased?” she returned. She would certainly classify him as one of “her men.”

  “We could have done worse. Claveling’s the one who stands a good chance of unseating Picard, and I’m all for that.”

  “You won’t be running around during the next three months trying to get the deed done.” She moaned. “And I thought the past three months were bad.”

  Michael understood. He knew how much she resented the time Blake spent on the campaign. “Maybe it won’t be as bad as it’s been. The nomination was the hardest part, given four contenders. In a two-man race, things are simplified.”

  “I know you’re trying to make me feel better, but you’re talking through your hat, Michael Buchanan. I’ve seen my father in situations like these. More accurately, I’ve read about him in the papers, which was about as close as I was able to get. If he’s busy under normal circumstances, during a campaign—be it his own or that of someone he’s supporting—he’s doubly busy. And this time around, Blake will be busy right with him.”

  “Then that’s all the more time you’ll have for me,” Michael teased, eyes glinting in response to the scowl Danica threw him. “Come on, sweetheart, it won’t be so bad. I’ll keep you busy.”

  They both knew she would be returning to Boston in September, but Michael was determined to make good on his word at least until then. When she remained mildly depressed over the next few days—in some part due to the blatantly hurried phone call she received from Blake upon his return from St. Louis—he set a date with the McCabes.

  The Sunday they all spent together was a smashing success. Without any of the initial trepidation Danica had felt upon meeting the media-minded Cilla, she found Greta and Pat to be equally as likable. They were fun, unpretentious, and took great joy in relating stories of Michael in his younger days. The baby stole her heart. By the time she and Michael left with promises of a return engagement, Danica was looking forward all the more to having a child of her own.

  Four days later, though, she wasn’t feeling quite as well. She had had an uncomfortable night and was dozing on the sofa when Michael rang the doorbell. Groggy, she pushed herself to a sitting position, then up to her feet. When she opened the door, Michael was quickly alarmed.

  “What is it, Dani? Aren’t you feeling well?” She was wearing her long robe and looked frighteningly pale.

  She grasped the doorknob and leaned against the door. “I didn’t sleep well. I’m sorry, Michael. Do you think we could drive to Freeport another time?”

  “Of course. L.L. Bean isn’t going anywhere.” He took her arm and guided her back to the sofa. When she was seated, he propped a hip beside her. “Morning sickness?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t had any of that. I’ve really felt terrific until now.”

  He put a hand on her forehead. “Maybe you have the flu. You feel warm.”

  “I’ll be okay.” Slipping her legs behind him, she curled into the corner of the sofa. When she closed her eyes, Michael worried all the more.

  “You didn’t get a call from Blake, did you?” That seemed a sure thing to upset her. But she shook her head. “From your parents?” Again she shook her head.

  “I’ll be okay. I think I’ll just rest.”

  It wasn’t like her, he knew. There was something she wasn’t saying. He gently rubbed her thigh. “Can I get you anything?”

  “No. I’ll just lie here for a while.”

  Michael studied her for a long time, then finally got up and wandered through the house. The sheets on her bed were in a tangle. He made the bed, then returned to living room to find her lying with her arms crossed over her stomach and her knees drawn up close. Sitting down by her side, he smoothed the hair from her cheeks. She opened her eyes, but she didn’t smile.

  “What is it?” he pleaded. “I want to do something.”

  “Just stay around,” she said. Her voice was as weak as the rest of her looked, he decided, and the knowledge added to his concern.

  He spent the morning with a book in his lap, though he hardly read a word. His eyes wouldn’t focus on the open page but kept going to Danica’s face. By noontime she was looking more pale than ever.

  “Maybe I should call a doctor,” he suggested quietly. He knew she wasn’t sleeping. She shifted from time to time, gingerly, he thought, and when her eyes weren’t closed they focused blindly on the rug, the coffee table, the glass slider.

  “Wait a little longer,” she murmured. “I’m sure I’ll pick up pretty soon.”

  She didn’t. Rather she grew more uncomfortable. Michael reached his limit when she opened her eyes once again and they were filled with tears. He was up like a bolt and on his haunches before her.

  “Damn it, Dani, tell me. Is it the baby? Do you think something’s wrong?”

  The tears hovered on her lids and she swallowed hard. “I don’t know. I’ve felt weird since last night. I woke up with a backache.”

  “I have a heating pad at my place. Should I get it?”

  “I feel cramps every so often. They were mild at first and I hoped they’d just go away, but they’re not doing that.”

  Michael forced himself to remain calm. “Are they getting worse?” She nodded and met his gaze. He realized that she was terrified. “It’s okay, sweetheart.” He pressed a warm kiss to her forehead. “You stay put. I’m going to call the doctor.”

  “He’s in Boston. I can’t drive—”

  “I have one here.”

  “Not an obstetrician.”

  “He’ll give me the name of one. The best in the area.” Squeezing her arm, he headed for the phone. When he returned, he squatted down. “A Dr. Masconi is waiting for us in Portland. Do you want to put on some clothes?”

  Nodding, Danica tried to push herself up, but Michael was quickly lifting her and carrying her into the bedroom, where he set her gently on her feet. He turned toward the dresser. “Tell me what you want.”

  “I can do it,” she breathed shakily. “You go wait for me. I’ll be right out.”

  “Are you sure? Will you yell if you need me?” When she nodded, he left, but he was right outside her door waiting when she appeared moments later. She had thrown on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved summer sweater. But she was crying.
When he reached for her, she grabbed his arm. “I’m bleeding, Michael. I think I’m losing it. Dear God, I don’t want that!”

  Trying to contain the fear he felt, he lifted her up and made for the door. “I don’t want it, either, sweetheart. Neither does the doctor. He’s an expert. He’ll do everything he can.” Her arms were around his neck and she was holding him tightly, as if that might help save her baby. He felt more helpless than he ever had before. All he could do was to try to keep her calm and get her to the hospital as soon as possible.

  The drive was an agony for them both. Danica sat curled beside Michael, holding his hand, wondering if she was being punished for feeling so much for him but needing his strength nonetheless. Michael tried to soothe her fears with gentle words of encouragement, praying that the baby would be all right, praying that she would be all right, that she wouldn’t blame herself if something did happen.

  The hospital wasn’t the most efficient of places. The doctor had to be paged from somewhere in its labyrinthine midst, and in the meantime Danica was left on an examining table in one of the emergency room’s small cubicles. Once she had undressed, Michael stayed with her for all but those moments when he angrily stalked to the nurse’s station to demand to know what was keeping the doctor.

  When the doctor finally arrived, Michael was relegated to pacing the emergency-room floor. He was allowed to see Danica for a brief minute as they were wheeling her upstairs. She had been sedated, but she saw him clearly. He had to be content with that until the time, much later that evening, when she was wheeled back to a private room.

  He rose quickly from the chair in which he’d been seated, it seemed for days, and waited until she was settled in bed. She was still pale, but she was awake. He took her hand and smiled gently.

  “Hi. How’re you doin’?”

  “Okay, I guess,” she whispered. Her lower lip quivered. She bit down on it.

  Settling beside her, he brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. Her fingers were limp, her skin chilled. He lowered her hand to his chest and pressed it there in an offer of warmth.

  “I feel so tired,” she murmured.

  “It’s the anesthesia. It’ll take a while to wear off. Why don’t you try to sleep. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”

  Without argument, she closed her eyes. He watched her until he was sure she was asleep, then carefully left the bed and stood staring out the window until he heard her stir. He was back at her side by the time she opened her eyes.

  “What time is it?” she whispered.

  “Nearly midnight.”

  She nodded and closed her eyes again, but he knew she wasn’t sleeping. He took her hand and held it gently between both of his, sensing that she was mourning, wishing there was something he could do. If that small part of him had once upon a time regretted she was pregnant, it now felt her sorrow with the rest of him.

  “Michael?” She didn’t open her eyes. “It hurts up here.” She raised her free hand to her head and he knew just what she meant.

  “I know, Dani. I know.”

  “I wanted the baby so badly. It was going to open up new doors for me.” A single tear, then another, trickled down her cheeks.

  Unable to keep any distance when he felt her pain so intimately, Michael gently lifted her into his arms, holding her while she cried quietly, knowing she needed the outlet.

  “I wanted…the baby…”

  “I know. It’ll be all right.”

  “But I don’t…know what went… wrong,” she sobbed. “The doctor couldn’t…say.”

  “He doesn’t know. Nobody knows. The only thing we can guess is that the baby wasn’t well. Something may have been wrong right from the start.”

  “But why? Why me? Everyone…else has healthy babies.”

  “Shhhh. It’s okay, sweetheart. Shhhh. There’ll be other ones coming along.”

  “I don’t think…so. Oh, Michael, I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t say that. The doctor saw nothing at all wrong that would prevent you from conceiving again and carrying the baby to term.”

  “That’s not the point! Oh, God…”

  She was crying again. He held her until the tears slowly eased, thinking all the while about what she’d said, wondering exactly how bad things were between Blake and her.

  “Dani, I called Blake when the doctor gave me the news.”

  Her body went very still. “You called him?” she whispered against his chest.

  “I had to.” It had taken three calls, one to the town house, one to Blake’s office, finally one to the men’s club where he had met with success.

  “What did he…did he say anything?”

  “He was upset.” He was actually relatively calm, perhaps stoic, or simply well controlled, but Michael saw no need in telling Danica that. “He wanted to know how you were. When I told him that the doctor said you’d be fine, he was relieved. He said to tell you that he’d be up tomorrow…uh, today.”

  If he had hoped the news would cheer her, he had miscalculated. She started to cry again, making soft, grieving sounds that tore at his gut, and he could only hold her, rock her gently, smooth back her hair. Eventually, inevitably, exhaustion crept up. She quieted but made no move to free herself from his arms.

  “I wanted…our baby,” she murmured as she drifted off. “Oh, Michael, I wanted our baby…”

  Perhaps because he had wanted the baby to be his from the start, Michael could have sworn from her words that she agreed. But she was doped up and had spoken ambiguously, he reasoned; of course, the “our” she spoke of referred to her and Blake.

  He had no way of knowing that she hadn’t been that far gone. He had no way of knowing that, in her way, Danica had thought of the baby as hers and Michael’s. He had no way of knowing that on the night the baby had been conceived, she had been loving him—not Blake, but him.

  Blake arrived from Boston late that afternoon. Danica, who had been discharged from the hospital in the morning and had slept most of the time since then, was sitting on the sofa in her robe, covered by the light shawl Michael had insisted on, drinking the tea Michael had steeped. She was pondering the tag in her hand which read, “The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it,” when the sound of a key in the lock caught her ear.

  Her gaze flew to Michael, who was already headed for the door. Heart thudding, she held her breath. The meeting of these two men was something she had assumed would happen eventually. She had never anticipated it taking place quite this way.

  She watched them shake hands and exchange brief words, Blake’s in appreciation of Michael’s help, Michael’s in praise of Danica. As unobtrusively as possible, Michael excused himself then, leaving Danica alone with Blake.

  He approached and pressed a light kiss on her head before taking a seat across from her. Having come straight from the office, he was wearing a suit. It added to the formality that seemed to yawn glaringly between them.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked quietly.

  “Pretty good.”

  “I spoke with your doctor this morning.” He proceeded to outline the conversation, which told Danica nothing more than the doctor had already told her himself, nothing more than she and Michael had already discussed. “He says that you shouldn’t be worried.”

  “I’m not.”

  “He wants you to get lots of rest over the next few days.”

  “I haven’t been able to do much else. Michael wouldn’t let me move.”

  “He seems like a nice fellow.”

  “He is. I’m grateful he was here yesterday. I wasn’t sure what to do.”

  “I knew you shouldn’t have been alone here,” Blake charged. “If Mrs. Hannah had been with you—”

  “It’s all right, Blake. I’ve survived.” Not my baby, though. Are you sorry?

  “The doctor said that the problem started the night before. What took you so long to get to the hospital?”

  She closed her eyes, then opened th
em with a sigh. “It wouldn’t have helped. Even if I’d gotten there sooner. I didn’t do anything here that they wouldn’t have had me do there. According to the doctor, it was just destined.”

  “I know. And I didn’t mean that as criticism.”

  Then why did you say it? she argued silently. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m sensitive.”

  “That’s to be expected. You’ve been through an ordeal.”

  Not you, though, she thought. Still not a single word of regret that she had miscarried. It was obviously her loss, not his.

  “Well,” she sighed, bunching the crocheted shawl beneath her fingers, “it’s over.” She looked up again. “Thank you for coming. I know how busy you must be.”

  In an apparent attempt to cheer her up, Blake proceeded to tell her exactly how busy he had been in the nearly four weeks since he’d seen her last. He spoke of work and his stay in Washington. He elaborated on the excitement of the convention, of the jubilation of the victory parties afterward, of the Claveling campaign’s strategy for the weeks ahead.

  Danica listened quietly. Blake had to have said more to her in that hour than in the past thousand. Yet not a word had been of a personal nature, at least none that directly concerned Danica. She recalled similar monologues she had heard on those rare occasions when her family had gathered together for dinner. Her father would ask her about school, then after hearing her initial response, would nod and launch into a dissertation on a subject not remotely related either to Danica or to school. She wondered if Blake enjoyed hearing himself speak as much as her father did, and was appalled at how much more alike the two men were than ever.