The Single Dad's Family Recipe by Rachael Johns

Author:Rachael Johns [Johns, Rachael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2017-11-16T19:06:46+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Not anymore. What on earth did that mean? For a moment, Lachlan wondered if, like Linda, Eliza had abandoned a kid to her ex, but he found himself unable to believe such a thing of her. His heart rate slowed as a number of other possible scenarios ran through his head.

“What happened?”

“I lost him,” she whispered as a tear snaked down her cheek.

Lost? “You had a stillbirth?” he prodded gently.

Again she shook her head and another tear followed the first. “His name was Jack. He was fourteen months old and he was beautiful.”

Every bone in Lachlan’s body turned to ice. Fourteen months wasn’t a stillbirth. That would have been bad enough, but this...this was so much worse than he’d imagined. He had no words, but in his head, he swore.

“One day I took Jack to visit a friend and her new baby. I was cuddling the newborn, talking to my friend...” She sniffed again, but it didn’t stop the flood of tears down her cheeks.

He grabbed his jeans off the floor and dug in his pocket for the handkerchief his mom had made him carry from an early age. He held it out to her and when she took it, their fingers touched, but the current that usually flowed beneath them was different now.

“Thanks.” As she wiped her eyes, Lachlan quickly pulled on his jeans, not wanting his nakedness to make her uncomfortable.

“Jack was playing quietly with some toy cars on the floor behind us and we didn’t hear him wander off. As it was my friend’s first child, their house wasn’t fitted with all the usual child-safety devices yet, and somehow Jack let himself out the back door and into their yard.” She took a long breath. “They had a fishpond.”

Shit. He could see where this was heading and almost could not bear to listen. He wanted to put his hands over his ears but if he couldn’t bear listening, how much worse must it be for her to be relating this nightmare to him? Instinctively, he reached out again and took her into his arms.

As he pulled her close, her tears already soaking into his shirt, he whispered, “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me any more.”

But she did.

She pulled her head back and looked up at him, her dark eyes wide with anguish. “I should have been watching him. If I’d been paying attention, I would have seen him leave the room and I would have followed him outside. He loved water... He was just being curious.” Again, her face crumpled. “I don’t know how long he was there, his little face under the ripples. Did he know what was happening? Did he wonder where I was? Why I wasn’t helping him?”

Although she kept talking, her words blended together in her distress, becoming almost impossible to decipher. But he knew the gist. She blamed herself for the death of her child and he honestly couldn’t comprehend how anyone could ever get over that.

He felt compelled to say, “It was a terrible accident.

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