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“Well, some of the other girls and I were working on the shower for Holland.”
“Oh fun!” Delia said. “I hadn’t gotten myself together enough to get one planned for her, but I’ve been meaning to. Could I invite a few non-Cody folks?”
Pamela grinned. “Of course!”
I was watching them both smile and nod, feeling like a secondary part of this whole plan, until Pamela turned to me. “I don’t want to force the idea on you, Holland. Is this still something you’d like? It’s just . . . the girls up in the office were so excited about the idea—there’s been a lot of sadness around here for a long time. And lately, things have been so much better—thanks to you.”
Was she talking about me and Oliver? I shook my head to stop her. “The shower is still fine,” I said. “It’ll be be really nice.”
She clapped her hands in a small show of excitement. “I’ll email with potential dates, okay? Delia, do you have an email so we cancoordinate?”
Delia grabbed a pen and a notepad off my desk and scribbled her information, handing the note to Pamela. “Thanks for planning, Pamela.”
“I love babies,” Pamela said, her eyes fogging for a minute as she smiled at us. “And this gives me an excuse to buy adorable tiny shoes!” She turned and walked toward the door, but then spun back around. “Do you know the sex yet?”
I shook my head and Pamela left.
“That’s amazing,” Delia said. “Something to look forward to, right?”
I tried to smile, but my heart still felt empty. I hoped I’d be able to find a smile by the time this baby was born.
The next months were some of the worst of my life. My back and hips had begun to ache and I wasn’t sleeping well. The doctor assured me all my complaints were perfectly normal, but by the time I reached the middle of my seventh month, I was ready to be finished with pregnancy. I wanted my well-behaved and predictable body back, I wanted to sleep again. I wanted to be able to sit at my desk for more than ten minutes without having to get up to go to the bathroom, and eat without heartburn. I hadn’t realized how good I’d had it before I’d invited another human being to share my body.
My heart felt like a lead weight in my chest, and seeing Oliver at work made it feel like someone was twisting my guts around inside me. I’d bumped into him in the coffeehouse once. He’d walked in as I sat at a far table, and I’d watched him stand in line and order after glancing around. I waspretty sure he’d seen me, but he didn’t look my way again until just before he left, coffee in hand. Then he stood in front of the door, his whole body turned toward me, and his eyes on my face. I felt myself flush under his gaze, and when he raised a hand and waved, I dropped my gaze. I couldn’t wave at Oliver. We weren’t casual acquaintances. His absence from my life only made me feel my love for him that much more acutely, and the feelings hadn’t dissipated with the passage of time.
When the MLB deal was finally signed, almost four months after our April meeting, Cody Tech hosted them at a local restaurant, and all the key executives attended. Before the MLB people showed up, Oliver and Rob made toasts to the Cody Tech employees who’d been fundamental to making the deal.
“This would never have come to pass if it weren’t for our Director of Analytic Application, Holland O’Dell.” Oliver’s eyes found me at the back of the private room we’d rented for the occasion where I sat sipping water. He raised his glass my way and I raised mine back—the closest we’d come to conversation in months. He talked about how I’d developed the idea on my own, how I’d gotten the meeting with MLB, how the work had brought the board’s confidence back and saved the company. His words glowed with praise, and under any other circumstances, I would have been thrilled. It almost made it feel like I really had achieved all that myself, but having Oliver’s attention on me in this way just made me want to run.
Once the MLB executives joined us, I shook theappropriate hands and then slipped out. I didn’t want to be social with Oliver, it was too hard. And I wasn’t excited about the idea of him getting too good a look at the way my body had changed since we’d been together. If he’d been attracted to me before, there was no way he could be now. The pencil skirts had been swapped for loose-fitting pants, and the fitted tops had been abandoned long ago for flowing tops that didn’t pinch or cinch. I felt like a growing hippo, and the last thing I wanted was to let him evaluate the changes in my physique with those dark eyes. Under normal circumstances, if a man had hurt me the way Oliver had, I’d make a point of looking incredible every time he saw me, to help remind him what he’d been stupid enough to give up, to prove I was fine without him. Though I had no doubt he’d made a mistake and that he’d regret it, the less-confident part of me wondered if Oliver was breathing a sigh of relief when he saw me waddle from the party.
I drove home wishing again that I’d never met Oliver, and then wishing he was still in my life.
With Oliver’s money, I’d rented a two-bedroom apartment in my building, and Carl and Delia had helped me move.
Delia stayed over sometimes now, and I spent a lot of time sitting in the glider in the new nursery. Life was bittersweet. I was on the brink of the most joyful event I’d experienced so far in this life, and my heart was wrung out as a result of the greatest loss I’d felt at the same time. I had begun to wonder what might have happened if I hadn’t pushed Oliver away, if I hadn’t been the one to put so much spacebetween us in the first place. I felt an overwhelming regret at the same time as I was feeling an increasing joy over the impending birth of my child. Torn between the two extremes of emotion, I spent most of my time in silence, waiting for things to pass, waiting for my heart to heal, waiting for my body to finish its metamorphosis from woman to mother.
CHAPTER 25
Oliver
Iwatched Holland for months across rooms and through conference room windows when she didn’t know I was there. I watched her body change, her skin begin to glow, her amazing breasts become even more perfect. I still thought of almost nothing but her . . . and increasingly, of the baby. I knew now with certainty that it was mine. The time apart, and Holland’s frugal use of the money I’d set aside confirmed to me that she’d never been out to manipulate me. I hated myself for ever thinking it.
Pamela handed me itemized receipts each week from Holland, a strict accounting of what had been spent out of the account. Besides the apartment rental and a crib, most of the items were small and monetarily insignificant. She wasn’t trying to use me. I got the impression she was doing everything she could to avoid letting me help at all.
During the months I spent outside Holland’s orbit, I accomplished a lot. I pulled the company back together afterhiring a new lead counsel and announcing the MLB deal officially just in time to reassure the board members who’d still been thinking of selling. I appointed a new chairman in Adam’s place—Burton Pax. I was certain he could keep the board’s favor on our side. More than anything, I’d proven to myself that I was a competent and capable CEO. I’d doubted it when I left, believed that I was just a figurehead, that Adam was coddling me. But now I had to give him credit—he knew I could do it, and maybe I had been doing a good job before. I had just been too confused to see it.
Even in the face of my success, I felt torn apart and empty. I lay awake nights, replaying the last conversation I’d had with Holland—and the one with Pamela that preceded it. I’d never been less sure of a decision. In college I’d been too arrogant to bother thinking much about what I did. I just did things. And lately I’d accepted the possibility that after starting my company Adam may have been the one to gently steer the ship, though I’d always thought I was at the helm. I’d grown into my responsibilities, and before my parents died, I had been firmly in command at Cody Tech—though Adam had always been that calm, guiding presence when I’d needed it. But now? I was on my own.
At work. At home. In my head. In my heart. I was alone. And it was possible I’d made the biggest mistake of my life in letting Holland go.
“You did the right thing,” Pamela said, leaning against the edge of my desk one late afternoon. “If you couldn’t be there one hundred percent, you couldn’t be there at all,” she said. “Right?”
I spun my chair to face her, pinching the bridge of my nose between my fingers before I spoke. “What do you mean, ‘right?’” I’d spent a good amount of time blaming Pamela for my misery and wondering if I should ever have listened to her. Even in my anger, however, her words made sense. How could I be a father? How could I be part of a family when my own had turned out to be such a sham?
“I’m just asking,” she answered. “Oliver, just because I said that to you doesn’t mean I was right.”
I shook my head. My emptiness wasn’t her fault. “No, you were right.”
