Page 69 of A Secret Chance
He held the door open for her and watched as she jogged down the heated walkway to her little car. “Bye.” He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong, he just didn’t know what. All he knew was that he had just had the best night of his life, and he would do anything to have more nights like that with Lauren.
Chapter 25
NO MOTHER LIKES TOpick up the phone and hear the anguished cries of their daughter. She knew that she had to tell Baxter about Tabitha and had planned to do it that morning, but Tabitha was sick. That super hard conversation she had been avoiding would have to wait for a few more hours. Even though she knew it was wrong, she was relieved to put it off a while longer but was terrified of what was going to happen when she told him about his daughter. She sped into town, worrying about Tabby and trying to figure out how to tell Baxter the truth about her.
What they had was real. There was no denying it. And after Monday, they wouldn’t have the development dividing them like a brick wall. But once she told him... She shook her head; she couldn’t worry about how he was going to react. Her priority was Tabitha.
Tabitha’s face was pale when she came to the door behind Julia’s mom, Charmaine.
“Hi, sweetie.”
“Hi, Mom.” Tabitha’s voice was quiet, but she let Lauren hug her in tightly.
“Are you okay?”
“She must have the flu or food poisoning or something,” Charmaine said. “She threw up this morning, I put her pajamas in the laundry.” She handed Lauren Tabitha’s overnight backpack.
Back at home, Lauren tucked her daughter into bed and heated some chicken noodle soup up on the stove. She left a big bowl of it beside Tabitha’s bed, along with the trash can in case she got sick again. Once she was sleeping soundly, Lauren curled up on the sofa with a book, but her eyes kept reading the same paragraph as she tried to figure out what to tell Baxter.
Throughout the afternoon, Lauren monitored Tabitha’s temperature and as the day wore on her bouts of vomiting tapered off. She hated when Tabby was sick. It was such a helpless feeling as a mother, and she would give her right arm to trade places and be sick for her.
As the afternoon turned into evening, the color started coming back to Tabitha’s cheeks, and she was able to keep the soup down. Lauren knew that she had rounded the corner when she asked for her favorite – a grilled cheese sandwich.
Lauren made them both a sandwich and the two of them cuddled up on the sofa and ate their lunch. Lauren’s phone pinged and she knew before picking it up that it would be Baxter. She had promised to come back to him, but there was no way she could leave Tabitha right now.
Still coming over?the text read.
She set the phone down and cleared their plates. She poured Tabitha another ginger ale and herself a glass of wine. Once settled back on the sofa, she typed and retyped her message to Baxter, deleting it and then re-writing a similar version. She finally settled with, ‘not feeling great.’ It was the best she could come up with, and technically it wasn’t a lie.
“Is all of your homework done for school tomorrow?” Lauren asked.
Tabitha nodded. “I did it on Friday.”
“Of course, you did.” Tabitha was Lauren the book nerd’s daughter after all. Lauren smoothed out Tabitha’s hair and kissed her on the top of her head. “Do you want to watch a movie?”
Tabitha nodded and she handed her the remote. Lauren didn’t see any of the movie as she was lost in thought while she absentmindedly stroked her daughter’s hair. She was periodically brought back to the present whenever Tabitha giggled at the TV. “Mom, could I have some more ginger ale please?”
