Greer looked at Candace, who simply nodded, turned, and walked over to the bar. She grabbed two bottles and started back toward us.
Arabella wrapped her arm around my shoulder. “I think we should sit down.”
I sat down on an outdoor love seat, with Arabella next to me and Candace to my left. Greer turned on the outdoor heaters, and I took off my jacket.
Candace set a bottle of whiskey down, along with a bottle of vodka, while Greer took the seat opposite me.
Glancing around at the three of them, I drew in a deep breath and slowly exhaled. “Before you say anything, I need to tell you both something.”
Candace started to stand. “I can leave.”
I reached for her hand. “No. I can’t keep hiding it forever. Please stay, Candace.”
She sat back down and gave me the sweetest smile.
“I’m guessing that Bishop never told you the main reason I left,” I said.
Greer and Arabella both shook their heads.
I glanced down to see that I had been pulling at the bottom of my sweater. I forced myself to stop and looked back up at them. “About a month before I, um…well, before I left…I had a miscarriage.”
Greer brought her hand up to her mouth and Arabella instantly teared up.
“We hadn’t told anyone about the baby yet, because I wanted to wait until I was out of the first trimester. We were supposed to tell everyone that very night, at a barbeque dinner we had planned for everyone. But I ended up going to the hospital instead.”
“I remember that night,” Greer whispered.
Looking over at Arabella, I said, “I was going to tell you before the dinner, since you had declined the invitation.”
She wiped a tear away. “Bishop called later, said you had food poisoning or something and were terribly sick.”
My jaw ached from trying not to cry. Lord, was this going to be my life from now on? Fighting not to cry?
“I asked him not to…” I sniffled and suddenly a napkin appeared in front me, then Greer, then Arabella. Candace had gone and gotten them for each of us. “Thank you, Candace.”
All she did was nod and sit back down.
Attempting to regain some composure, I went on. “I asked Bishop not to tell anyone. For some crazy reason, I thought it would be better. That if no one knew, they wouldn’t ask me anything about the baby or if I was okay. I was eleven weeks along.”
Arabella took both of my hands in hers.
“The first week, all I did was cry. Bishop was, of course, right there by my side. The second week, I was so angry. Then it switched to utter shame, because I blamed myself.”
“What?” Greer gasped.
“No,” Arabella said, squeezing my hands.
“Bishop had asked me not to move these pallets of fertilizer we’d gotten in. He said he’d take care of it. I did it anyway. I…I moved them, and then a few hours later, I started to have the pain. Then…then came the blood and…I called Bishop, and he rushed me to the hospital, but it was too late. They couldn’t find a heartbeat.”
The only thing I could hear above the light roar of the gas heaters was their sniffling.
“Anyway, that was why I blamed myself. If I had only listened to Bishop. The third week, I was so confused. All Bishop wanted to do was be there for me. He wanted to talk about the baby, and that was the last thing I wanted to talk about. He kept saying we could try again. He went to a counselor and begged me to go, too, but at the time, I couldn’t talk about it. I could hardly stand to think about it.”
I lifted my chin and found three pairs of teary eyes staring at me. Slowly, I shook my head.
“I…I don’t know what happened, but something inside of me panicked. The thought of doing that again, falling in love with this little person and then getting Bishop’s hopes up, as well as mine, only to…to have it happen again? I couldn’t do it.”
Candace reached for my hand. Her warm, dark eyes instantly calmed my pulse. “First, I want to tell you that it wasn’t your fault, Abby. Most of the time when a miscarriage occurs, it’s for reasons you have absolutely no control over. When you lose a child before the twelfth week, fifty percent of the time it’s because of a problem with the baby’s chromosomes. There’s nothing you can do to prevent chromosomal problems, but it doesn’t mean it’ll happen with every pregnancy. They usually don’t happen again in future pregnancies. Have you seen your gynecologist since? Has he or she given you any indication that they see an issue?”
“N-no, I haven’t been back to see her,” I said, sniffing again.
Candace squeezed my hand. “Then I highly suggest you do. For one, you need to go every year.” She glanced around to all of us. “Everyone does.”
“How do you know about this?” Arabella asked.
Candace and Greer exchanged a look. “I was on my way to becoming a doctor. I was actually in medical school when I moved to Boggy Creek. Well,” she said with a laugh, “I had been in medical school, until I quit.”
“Why did you quit?” I asked.
Candace looked down at our joined hands and then back at me. “Medical school was my father’s dream for me. Watching Greer follow her dream made me realize that medical school wasn’t mine. So, I quit. When Greer found out, she called me and begged me to move to Boggy Creek to help her with the bookstore.”
“Wow,” Arabella said. “I have to ask, Candace, what is your dream?”
She chewed on her lip. “Baking. I love to bake.”
“And she’s so good at it!” Greer added.
Arabella sat up straighter. “No way? How am I just finding this out now?”
Candace shrugged. “It’s more of a hobby, but someday I think I’d like to dive further into it. Right now, I make cakes and cupcakes for my family.”
Arabella pointed at Candace. “We seriously need to talk. I like to bake, but I’m not very original when it comes to decorating. I’d love to have a baker for the apiary café.”
“Wait, you are not stealing her from me!” Greer stated.
I nearly laughed at the fake shocked expression Arabella had on her face. It was so good to see her happy and carefree like this. “I would never!”
Greer huffed. “You would. I know you, Arabella. I see the wheels turning in your head right now.”
Candace cleared her throat and they both looked at her. “Ladies, not that I’m not totally digging the fact that you’re both fighting over me, but I believe we were in the middle of a rather hard conversation.”
“It’s okay,” I said.
Greer scrunched up her nose. “No, Candace is right. I’m so sorry, Abby. The one thing I think you need to do is talk about this.”
“Keep talking,” Candace urged.
“Well, like I said, Bishop mentioned us trying again, and I freaked. All I could think about was how he wanted a baby and how I had failed him. The thought of going through that again scared the hell out of me—it still kind of does, if I’m being honest.”
I looked at Candace. “I met someone in Boston. She’s a therapist…a couple’s therapist. We met as friends and she never pushed me to talk about Bishop and what happened. Piece by piece, it came out over time, and really over the last year, she’s helped me to see that all I’ve been doing is hiding. I told her about the baby eight months or so ago, and I cannot even begin to tell you guys how much it helped to talk to her about it. I started to see how foolish my reasons were for leaving, and started to realize I’d been hiding in Boston because I was afraid of what would happen if I came back to Boggy Creek.”