Part 17 (1/2)

Brian's child. Instinctively Bev laid a hand over the life she carried.

She'd wanted so desperately to give Brian his first child. That wasn't

to be. Yet every time she felt resentment, she had only to look at Emma

for it to fade. How could she resent someone so utterly vulnerable?

Still she couldn't bring herself to love, not as unquestioningly, as

automatically, as Brian loved.

She didn't want to love, Bev admitted. This was another woman's child,

a link that would forever remind her of Brian's intimacy with someone

else. Five years ago or ten, it didn't matter. As long as there was

Emma, Jane would be a part of their lives.

Brian had been the first man she'd slept with, and though she had known

when they'd become involved that there had been others for him, it had

been easy to block it out, to tell herself that their coming together

had been an initiation for them both.

Dammit, why had he had to leave now, when everything was in upheaval?

There was this child slipping around the house like a shadow. There

were workmen hammering and sawing hour after hour. And there was the

press. It was as ugly as Brian had warned her it would be, with

headlines screaming his name, and hers, and Jane's. How she hated, how

she detested, seeing her picture and Jane's on the same page of a paper.

How she loathed those nasty, gloating little stories about new wives and

old lovers.

It didn't fade quickly, as she had prayed it would. There was

speculation and questions about the most personal areas of her life. She

was Mrs. Brian McAvoy now, and public property. She had told herself

countless times that because marrying Brian was what she wanted most,