One More Dance by Roxanne Rustand (best ebook reader for pc txt) 📗

holding this warm, feather-light bundle of soft blankets?

A perfect, tiny hand tightly clutched her finger, while those beautiful dark eyes were wide and fixed on her face, as if determined to memorize every detail of the one who’d brought her into the world.

Tiny, perfect toes, like small pink pearls, peeked out below the end of the receiving blanket.

Casey was the name she and Jared had agreed on if the baby was a girl, and the name seemed just right.

On a rush of emotion as swift and unexpected and overwhelming as a fierce summer storm, Kate’s hot tears came again, spilling down her face. Uncontrollable sobs racked her body, sending deep, physical pain slicing through her belly.

One pink and perfect child in her arms.

The other—their precious son, Collin—had grown cold within her embrace not two hours ago, his life slipping away on a faint, almost soundless sigh.

The highest, most unbelievable joy.

Then, in a heartbeat, that joy had shattered against the razor-sharp rocks in the deepest valley of grief.

The agony of it welled up inside her until she could barely breathe, and she lifted her arms to snuggle Casey closer to her chest, needing the child’s warmth as solace...though she knew nothing could ever replace the one who was gone.

“Do you want me to take her for a while?” Jared asked, his voice raw and his face so ravaged with grief that he was almost a stranger.

“No!” A keening wail rose in the room from a voice she barely recognized as her own.

He jerked back as if she’d slapped him.

“You aren’t the only one hurting here.” The sharp voice came from the open doorway and both of them startled at seeing Sylvia standing there, her face pale and strained, her mouth tight.

She’d actually come? In disbelief, Kate watched her mother-in-law come across the room to give Jared an awkward hug.

“You should have called me sooner,” she admonished him as she stepped back. “This can’t have been easy.”

“It’s been the best—and the worst—day of my life,” he said wearily. “I don’t know whether to celebrate or just sit down and cry.”

“Let’s take a look, then.” Sylvia turned and took the baby from Kate’s arms, pulling the blanket back to get a better look. “She’s lovely. She looks just like your sister, except for the eyes—and those are definitely yours.”

“But they’re so dark.”

“All babies’ are, but they’ll change. Just look at the shape, and those long, thick lashes. Most definitely yours.”

The aching emptiness in her arms made Kate want to launch out of bed and snatch her baby back.

“It’s such a terrible shame the other baby didn’t make it,” Sylvia continued, reaching out to rest a hand against Jared’s cheek. “I’ll bet he was just as beautiful. With a little more rest, less stress...well, maybe things would have turned out much differently.”

Kate blinked as the words registered, then sliced through her heart one by one, as neatly as any surgical blade. Less stress. More rest. Was it her fault that their son died?

She drew in a strangled breath as the implications settled inside her, threatening to crush her under a massive anvil of guilt.

Oh, God—what have I done?

COLLIN HAD SEEMED PERFECT in every way, and the autopsy revealed no specific cause of death...which compounded her guilt.

Had it been her lack of sleep?

Those endless, long hours of study?

The stress of striving for a top GPA?

The hours on her feet at the store, where she might’ve lifted too many heavy boxes, and maybe put some sort of stress or torsion on the umbilical cord, briefly depriving him of oxygen?

The reassurance of the labor and delivery nurses, her doctor, and later her best friends about not taking blame for Collin’s death did little to ease the piercing grief that dogged Kate month after month after month.

That dark, endless tunnel seemed to stretch onward forever, offering no hope of ever reaching sunshine. How could it, when nothing in this lifetime could bring her precious son back?

As the weeks and months passed, Jared grew more silent, more distant, more tentative when he spoke. He’d been lost in his own sorrows, too...though his highs and lows never quite paralleled Kate’s, so they retreated into themselves rather than turning to each other.

The first ten months had been terrible...yet they’d grown closer, too, in the dark of night, while sleeping wrapped in each other’s arms. But while loving Casey immeasurably, they’d struggled to keep up a happy front so she could experience normal family life instead of parents who were mired in grief.

Parents who looked into her sweet, beautiful face and also saw the son who was gone.

But now, with Casey’s first birthday tomorrow, Kate took her out of the bathtub for their nightly game of peekaboo with the bath towel and realized—with dawning surprise—that it had been a week since she’d had to turn away from her daughter to mask her tears.

Kate hid behind a corner of the towel, then popped out again, and Casey’s belly laugh washed over her like a healing balm. “Are you Mommy’s best girl?”

Casey threw herself into Kate’s arms, laughing and planting damp kisses on her cheek.

“Looks like fun,” Jared said, his low voice filled with amusement. “Wish I could play.”

“You and I can play later,” Kate teased. “When Miss Giggles goes to bed. But if you’d like to take her right now, it would be a huge help. Eight or nine storybooks would just about give me enough time to straighten up this bathroom and finish the dishes.”

He stepped into the room and hunkered down next to Kate as she dried Casey with the towel, then rose to use the changing table to put on her diaper and soft cotton jammies.

Even without looking at him, Kate could feel his warmth and catch the faint scent of his aftershave, and she felt a familiar tingle of love spread through her.

The moment she set Casey loose, the little girl raced to her toys in the living room, her chubby bare feet slapping against the