Beginning of Forever (Heaven Hill #7) (21 page)

The technician laughed and had a seat. “Then we’ll get this done as quickly as possible, and I’ll do my best not to press too hard on your stomach.” She looked over at Tyler. “Can you grab those lights for me?”

They were bathed in darkness as she turned the machine on and they heard the steady thumping of the baby’s heart.

Meredith and Tyler gripped their hands together tightly as they heard that sound. It was the most welcome sound ever.

“We have a good, steady heartbeat,” she said as she moved the apparatus around on Meredith’s stomach. “Everything is looking very good. I read your report, and all your test results came back A-okay. So, before I tell you, do you two want to know what the sex of baby Blackfoot is?”

“We most definitely want to know,” Meredith answered for the two of them.

“Congrats, Mom and Dad…you’re having a boy.” She indicated the male anatomy and looked over right as Tyler’s face went white and he slid of the chair and went down flat on his back.

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Chapter Twenty-Five

“O
h my God, Tyler. Are you okay?”

He came to with Meredith and Ashley standing over him. He was lying in the floor, his back pressed against the hard tile.

“Did you hit your head?” Ashley asked, as they helped him sit up.

“No, I’m good,” he did his best to reassure them, but he still felt a little faint.

Meredith did her best to keep the smile off her face. “You’re good? You passed out.”

It all came back then, they were having a boy. He wasn’t sure why that affected him in such a way, but the room swam again, this time not as a bad. “It was a shock,” he tried to explain.

“This isn’t unusual,” Ashley explained to the both of them. “Let me go get you some peanut butter and crackers, you’ll feel better once you have something in your stomach.”

They were left in the room alone as the technician went with her.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Meredith asked as she had a seat on the examination table. “You went down like a pile of bricks.”

“Yeah.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve never, not once, in my life passed out. You should be proud that you had a hand in it. I’ve always managed to keep my shit straight.” He breathed out a long breath, thankful that his heart was no longer pounding in his ears, he no longer had tunnel vision, and his hands weren’t shaking.

“Even if you’re worried, I’m excited to be having a boy.” She placed her hand on her stomach and gazed at him with so much love. “I hope he’s just like you.”

That almost made him sway again. “We’re never getting any sleep for the next eighteen years; I was a hellion.”

She grabbed his hand. “I told you, this baby is not defined by what you did as a teenager. We’ll be fine because we will teach him what it means to have two loving parents and a loving family. History is not going to repeat itself.”

As Ashley came back in the room, thrusting a package of crackers at him, all he could do was hope that Meredith was right.

*

An hour and a half later, Meredith was at CRISIS, sitting at her desk, going over some of the paperwork that would make her life easier. She’d had a discussion with one of her workers the week before and told her that she was cutting back in a big way. The board that dealt with the government regulations on the entity had approved Meredith going part-time and moving Jennifer into the role of the day-to-day operations manager. Now, Meredith was going through files—purging, organizing, and showing Jennifer the ropes.

“Do I have to file these every month?” Jennifer asked as she pulled incident reports from a temporary holding folder.

“They should be,” Meredith told her. “But with the pregnancy and all the stuff going on, they’re backed up. Let me take a look through them, and then we’ll see what we need to do.”

Jennifer handed them over and Meredith glanced through, skimming a few of them, until she came to someone that she’d completely forgotten about. “There was an incident report on Stephanie when y’all confronted her about the drug use?”

“Yeah, I thought Christine told you.”

Christine had apparently kept that secret well. It led Meredith to wonder why she had. “No, she never told me about this. Why don’t you tell me what happened.”

“It was a while ago, and I don’t remember everything, but when we confronted her, she went crazy. She said that she was sick of everyone telling her what to do, and no one could be as perfect as you.”

If someone had thrown cold water on her, it would have shocked Meredith less. “As me?”

“Yeah, she said some really weird things about you, but I figured she got fixated. You know how some women come in here, they see someone who’s gone through a lot and they have their shit together, and they get jealous. I figured you were the one she got jealous of.” Jennifer shrugged. “We haven’t heard from or seen her since she left.”

Come to think of it, Travis had never given her a full report on Stephanie—even when she’d specifically asked him to. She’d meant to confront him about it when they’d gotten back from their vacation, but things had been crazy then. What the hell did Travis and Christine know? What were they hiding from her? “Is Stephanie’s stuff still here, or did she take it?”

Walking over to one of the lockers, Jennifer leaned in. “She left this bag, and she’s never been back to get it. I didn’t want to tell you then, but I don’t mind telling you now—she kinda gave me the creeps. It was like when she looked at any of us, she was walking on our graves. It was that kind of creepy.”

Meredith took the bag and had a seat on the carpeted floor. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to get up, but there wasn’t enough room on her desk to go through the contents of the bag. Opening the drawstring, she dumped it out. “Why wouldn’t she come back for these things?” she asked as she saw a journal, some receipts, and a picture album.

“Maybe she’s planning to,” the other woman speculated as she started going through the receipts.

Drawn to the picture album, Meredith picked it up and placed it in her lap. She turned the first two pages, seeing pictures of Stephanie with another girl who looked familiar, but she couldn’t place her. That wasn’t unusual though; pregnancy brain was in full effect for her at this point. Turning the page, her heart stopped. There in hot pink and black was a birth announcement for a baby by the name of Addalynn. The date of birth was right, and looking at the baby picture, Meredith knew it was Addie. Stephanie was Addie’s biological aunt. She knew it without anyone having to tell her.

“Shit,” she cursed as she tried to get up.

“Hey, don’t hurt yourself,” Jennifer told her as she leaned over and helped the other woman up. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure.” Meredith was breathing heavily, trying to control it. “But I think Stephanie is related to Addie.”

“That can’t be right, y’all did an extensive search and nothing turned up. Besides the adoption is legal and binding. Don’t freak out about it now.”

Meredith knew Jennifer was right, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was going to come of this. Since Stephanie had come to be at the center, she’d had an odd feeling about her; that was why she’d taken the picture of the plates and had Travis run them.

That was it, the plates. Meredith had to know what he’d found out, and she had to know now. “I’ll be back, I have to run to the shop,” she told Jennifer.

“Are you sure you should be driving? You seem a little high-strung.”

“I’m fine,” Meredith assured her. “Don’t you dare call Tyler. I’ll see him in a few minutes; he’s working at the shop today.”

Grabbing her purse, she made her way out of the building and got into her SUV. It was lucky on her part that Tyler was working today, because when she came in there like a bat out of hell questioning Travis, Tyler would not let it go. He would demand answers, and as the VP, he had a right to those answers.

Her mind raced a mile a minute as she made her way down Louisville Road towards the shop. There were so many questions she had. Number one was where was Stephanie now? Was she still a threat? Something told her that they hadn’t seen the last of the woman, and perhaps she’d just been biding her time, waiting until they forgot about her. It had worked, because Meredith hadn’t thought of her in months, not until the incident report today. Had Travis been keeping an eye on her, or had Christine? Anger coursed through her body. How dare they keep something like this from her? This involved her daughter.

She couldn’t tell anyone how she had gotten to the shop. Within minutes, she looked up and there she was. As she parked, Tyler was coming out of one of the bays, wiping his hands on a grease rag.

“You okay, babe?” he asked as she got out of the car.

Her gaze honed in on Travis, and even from a distance, she could see his mouth move and see the
oh shit
. “I’m fine,” she told him, her voice strong. “But he’s not.” She pointed at the communications officer, aware that they had drawn a crowd. Everyone had abandoned their post, including Roni, who normally sat in the office.

“Mer,” he started.

She held up her hand. “Don’t. You have some serious explaining to do.”

Tyler looked back and forth between the two of them before he stood next to his wife, putting his arm around her. “And I have no idea what the fuck is going on, so you better be flapping some gums. Otherwise, I can’t promise what’s gonna happen. When it comes to her—I hit first and ask questions later.”

Travis glanced at Liam, silently begging for help, but knew at this moment he was on his own. He’d made decisions, and now he had to stand behind them.

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Chapter Twenty-Six