Series: Snapshots of the Past

Series: Snapshots of the Past

Story: Father of Daughters

Chapter 12

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1

Previously: An emergency at the hospital left Jed to prepare for Ellie's 11th birthday party without Abbey; Abbey's mother, Mary, forced her to confront the real reasons she wants another baby

Summary: Abbey opens up to Jed and admits they may not be ready for adoption

- - -


The weekend before Halloween signaled the beginning of a congressional recess and gave Jed and Abbey a chance to regroup without their daughters. Abbey had left New Hampshire on Friday night so that she and Jed could spend the weekend alone and attend the congressional costume party on Sunday afternoon. Husband and wife were planning to return home together in time for Halloween.

Standing in the kitchen of their Porter Street apartment cooking together - something they used to do before Jed ran for congress - Abbey quizzed Jed about the end of the session and the bills and proposals that were left dangling until January. It was Saturday and they were making an Italian casserole for dinner. Neither was a gourmet chef, but both had learned to cook early in their marriage and soon discovered that cooking for one another was fun and cooking together was even better.

"What's the story with Rogers?" Abbey asked, whacking a garlic clove to add to her special Marinara sauce.

"He didn't get his school construction bill so he attached an amendment to the federal crime package." Ordinarily, Jed had great respect for Jonathan Rogers. He was a smart, compassionate, and capable congressman from Rhode Island, but he was also a crafty manipulator who knew how to use the system to get what he wanted.

"Saying what?"

"Imposing limitations on Affirmative Action."

"He went after Affirmative Action? Why would he do that?"

"Democrats buried school construction in committee so this is his way of wielding his power against us."

"He didn't get his way so he's throwing a temper tantrum," Abbey translated.

"Basically. I sometimes wish I could put him in time-out like Zoey."

"He has to know it's not going to work."

"I'm not sure he does. And we've got Pete Olson challenging him, which muddies the water even more. Olson's a lightbulb short of a marquee, you know what I'm saying?"

"What can be done?"

"I really don't know. If the Speaker can't talk him down, it's a clear victory for Seaver and the Republicans on Appropriations."

"How so?"

"They didn't want the crime package in the first place." Jed set a bottle of red wine and two wine glasses down on the counter, as Abbey had asked him to, and noticed her quick glance in his direction before she went back to her sauce. "What?"

"You used to be able to talk to Rogers. Why can't you talk to him now?"

"He doesn't want to hear from me."

Abbey guessed why. "Where did you stand on school construction?"

"I'm all for school construction, you know that. But it was a poor bill. There wasn't enough money and he thoroughly underestimated the cost."

"It's a pro for urban education."

"And I'm behind that 100 percent. But I'm an economist, Abbey. The bill he drafted would have put a paralyzing strain on education in neighboring districts. You don't take from one to give to the other. It wasn't a good plan. I told him that his legislative team needed to rework it. He decided to go ahead anyway."

"And it failed."

"His problem was he went too large. Had the bill stipulated a little less, it might have been passable. I couldn't support it the way it was and neither could the others and now we're in this mess."

"Well, at least you won't have to deal with it for a while. That's a comfort, right?"

"No, it's even worse. It's going to be on my mind through the holidays." He drained the pasta while she continued to brown the garlic in olive oil.

"I'm sure we can come up with something to take your mind off it." She gave him that flirty eye thing he loved.

"You look at me like that once a day for the next two months, hot pants, and I'll be saying 'Olson who'?" He set the pasta strainer on a plate. "When are you going to be ready for this?"

She had just added the peeled tomatoes. "Sauce should take another 20 minutes."

Jed retrieved a baking dish from the cupboard. "Anyway, there's nothing like leaving things like this unresolved to go back to district work. Don't be surprised if I'm called back to Washington for a special session by Christmas. By the way, before this weekend's over, I'd like to pick your brain again about stem cells."

"Does it bother you that the only place we can have sex anymore is in Washington?" Totally out of the blue, but Abbey couldn't help it. It had been on her mind all day and she had to tell him. Jed stared at her blankly, both stunned and speechless. "Well, does it?"

"What?"

"Does it bother you? Every time we try to steal some time alone at home, the girls barge in or there's some kind of emergency."

Jed coated the dish with cooking spray and laid out the first layer of pasta. "I haven't..." She'd never buy that he hadn't noticed. "Yeah...I guess it does seem...inconvenient. But that's what goes along with having three kids."

"Even our date nights haven't been working out. Last weekend, you couldn't come home, the weekend before we had Lizzie's dance team competition in New York, and the week before that was Ellie's birthday party."

"I couldn't help it last week." He lowered his voice and gave her a more flirty tone. "I made it up to you last night, didn't I?"

"I'm not just talking about the sex, Romeo." She couldn't help but blush. Their lovemaking the night before had been pretty spectacular. "We promised months ago that we'd make time for us. Those weren't empty words, were they? Because they weren't to me. With you in DC half the time, I want every second of us we can get."

"Is this about me running again?" he asked more seriously now. The last time they talked about his running for re-election, she sounded supportive. Was she changing her mind, he wondered.

"No."

"Then what is it?"

Abbey added salt and crushed peppers to the boiling liquid, then let it simmer as she moved away from the stove, wiped her hands on a towel, and poured herself a glass of wine while Jed spread a thin layer of pasta and shredded cheese in the dish, waiting to mix in Abbey's sauce before adding the chunks of grilled chicken they had prepared. Jed had wanted miniature meatballs, but Abbey insisted there was too much red meat in his diet already.

"You know that conversation I had with my mom during Ellie's party? It was about our plans for adoption."

"Uh oh. Did she upset you?"

"No, because she didn't say anything I wasn't already thinking. What if I'm not so sure anymore, Jed?"

He turned from the counter to look at her as she took a seat on a bar stool near the other side. He knew she had been having doubts for weeks and had been waiting for her to open up about it. "Then that's something we have to talk about."

"Lets." She poured him a glass of wine, a gesture to encourage him to join her.

"Okay." He wiped his hands before accepting the wine glass. "You first."

"I thought it was the right thing. It felt right at the time. Lately, though, I've been thinking maybe I was just trying to heal my broken heart, like you said from the beginning."

"You denied it."

"To myself as well as to you. I can't keep doing that. And you can't let me. I feel like I'm jerking you around and that's not fair."

"Are you saying you don't want another baby?" He held his breath waiting for her answer. Abbey's maternal instincts had been buzzing strong ever since their wedding night, when she told him, for the first time, that she was pregnant. She had only found out that day.

"I'm saying I want you."

"You've got me." He was standing in front of her stool now, between her legs. His glass was on the counter and his arms were gripping her at the waist. "Now what?"

"Why don't you tell me what you want? Did I force this down your throat?"

"No, Abbey, you didn't. If I can be honest with you, I knew after Zoey was born that we were going to deal with the question of having more children at some point. We never talked about it, but I knew it had to come up sooner or later. The miscarriage was the catalyst, not the cause."

"So why weren't you prepared for that conversation?"

"How can anyone prepare for it under the circumstances? Three of the best days of my life, after our wedding day, were the days that Lizzie, Ellie, and Zoey came into the world. Adding a fourth day to the calendar would have been a dream. But had we sat down and talked about whether or not we wanted to get pregnant again, I would have expressed concern after what we went through with Zoey. It took us a long time to heal and the fact that you were five years older would have added to my worry. To tell you the truth, I wasn't prepared because I dreaded the thought of that conversation."

"Because you thought I'd disagree?"

"I didn't want to break your heart and I thought if I laid it all out for you like that, I would."

"You have a fair point. But we've crossed that bridge already and the topic is no longer another pregnancy."

"It's adoption."

"Yes. You had the right idea, Jed. I would have feared carrying another baby too."

"Adoption is a great plan..."

"If we had another 30 hours in the day," Abbey finished for him.

He stared at her adoringly, sweeping her hair off her face. "I know you had it all sketched out as a little girl. You wanted the big house, the big family, a bunch of kids, and a nice career. That's what you wanted, and it's what you got."

"A nice career - check. Three fabulous daughters - check." As a child, Abbey always wanted girls. "And I also wanted a wonderful, handsome husband. The jury's still out on that one."

Jed lowered his finger slightly to pinch her hip. "Don't press your luck, doll face. This husband could use himself as bait for all the other fish in the sea."

"He wouldn't dare!" Abbey grabbed his arms before he could let go of her and soon, they were back in position with him in front of her stool with his arms around her. "I think something went haywire with my childhood fairy tale."

"No, it didn't."

When Jed waltzed into her life like Prince Charming on New Year's Eve 1965, Abbey's whole world changed. Her medical school aspirations, still alive in her heart, were postponed so she could follow him to the London School of Economics. They waited until the summer after their college graduations to marry and going to London afterwards was Abbey's idea. She knew Jed wanted to study at LSE as much as she wanted to study at Harvard. They were young with nothing holding them back, so they reached a compromise before they tied the knot - four years in London and then they'd return to the States so Abbey could pursue medicine. But Elizabeth was born and Abbey was torn between motherhood and entering a demanding field that would eat up her time for much of her daughter's childhood. She thought she could survive the juggling act and to some extent, she was right, but occasionally, she missed her mark and she felt that sometimes, Lizzie still held it against her. It was hard to blame her from Abbey's point of view since in some ways, she still held it against herself.

Elizabeth didn't resent Abbey. She just wished now and then that her mother didn't have such a time-intensive career. It would have been easier if Abbey had wanted to be a school teacher - just as noble a profession without all the crazy on-call hours that came with medicine. Of all the girls, Abbey's professional commitments were the hardest on Lizzie because for the first several years of her life, she was her mom's shining star, the center of her universe, along with her father. Even through the first two years of med school, Abbey managed her studies without losing too much quality time with Liz. During her third year, when Liz was 5, it was a little more complicated and at the start of residency, when Liz turned 7, everything changed. Ellie was less than a year old Abbey's first month of residency so she didn't know any better and Zoey wasn't even born until Abbey was almost finished with her training. Liz was the one who knew how it felt having her mother to herself those early years and though she realized it was selfish, she missed it.

"You're right on-course and this fairy tale will end in a happily ever after," Jed went on. He was always such an optimist. "This is how life is supposed to be. It's supposed to have ups and downs and what-ifs and should'ves and could'ves and would'ves. If we had always done everything, made all the right decisions, and followed the one and only path available to us, we'd have nothing to talk about."

It was a way to make her smile and it worked. "That's what I'm getting at. Cynical realities - real or imagined - aside, I think I drew us into adoption for the wrong reasons. I'm seeing that now, slowly but surely."

"Let me ask you something. Last year, when we found out that you lost the baby and you wanted so badly to have another one, you looked me in the eye and told me you weren't trying to make up for the past. Was that for my benefit?"

"It was true for the most part. I mean, I also told you that I wanted to experience motherhood at this point in my life, remember? That was where my head was at. Now that I had some control over my schedule, I thought it would be easier, more laid back. I felt that I could do it right, whatever that means. I even flirted with the idea of closing up my practice and being a stay-at-home mom for a few years."

"Come on."

"I'm serious. When I found out I was pregnant, Jed, I was so excited thinking that this time, it would be perfect. I didn't have any real obligations. Why couldn't I close up shop?"

"Of course you could, but there are a truckload of reasons why you wouldn't." That was a thought Jed couldn't take seriously. Abbey had told him a thousand times that it took many years to build a decent practice. Giving hers up at this stage wouldn't have been practical. She might have entertained staying home with the baby, but she would have soon realized that she was at her happiest when she could be a mother and a career woman all at once.

"You're right. I wouldn't have been content, especially without you around. What I'm getting at is that as unreasonable as it was, the only thing that put a dent in the grief of the miscarriage was my fantasy of raising another child - undistracted, without the commitments I had when our girls were little."

"Why did that help?"

"Because it gave me an answer to the question 'why did we lose our baby?' The miscarriage wasn't in vain if it was God's way of telling us it was the right time to have another child. It sounds silly, I know. It even sounds silly to me right now."

"It doesn't sound silly." Jed struggled for a response. "I've gotta be honest with you, sweetheart, you kinda caught me off-guard. I didn't expect to have this discussion today."

"I needed to get it out. It's been eating at me for weeks. My wanting another baby - now - wasn't the right decision. And it wasn't for the right reasons, on either of our parts. I know you only went along with it for me."

"I'd do anything for you, but having another child...it's not like that was going to be my gift to you. I love our children. I'd have ten more if we could."

"It's just not the time for another one." He shook his head in agreement as she sipped her wine. "Now that I'm hitting you with all this, there's something that's been bugging me for a while and I haven't wanted to bring it up because I figured you dealt with it in your way and I have no right to judge."

"Spit it out."

"Why didn't you cry?" He didn't say anything. "When we lost the baby, you didn't cry. I cried...a lot. Why didn't you? Did it not seem real to you because you had just found out?"

"Abbey..." He let go of her, stunned by the direction of the conversation for the second time.

"That's what I kept telling myself. I had known I was pregnant for days while you only found out several hours before. Plus, people deal with loss differently and you've never been much of a crier. Even when your mom died, you held it in. You didn't let go until the day of her funeral, but this time..."

"Stop," he said. "What makes you think I didn't cry? I didn't cry in front of you, no. I had to take care of things, to take care of you. But that doesn't mean that I didn't shed private tears when you weren't around."

"When?"

"When they took you into surgery, I went to the hospital chapel and I lit a candle for the...for our child. I cried. I cried in the shower, in the car, when I was alone."

"Why not around me?"

There was no other way to say it. "You were consumed by grief. When I took you home after the procedure, you were inconsolable. You needed to mourn in your own way. The last thing I wanted was you worrying about me."

"But it would have helped."

"I can't imagine how it would."

"I wanted to know that you were feeling what I was feeling. I know you, Jed. I know that the man I love would have been as devastated as I was. But you kept it all in and I didn't understand why."

"I wanted to be there for you."

"You were there for you."

"I mean really there, without my own crap getting in the way."

"Are you kidding me?" Looking into his eyes, she cupped the back of his neck. "You were there for me in ways I'll never forget. You comforted me, you held me while I sobbed, you even took me away to the Poconos to help me heal - emotionally and physically. I wouldn't have made it through without your patience. You were my rock, Jed - then, now, always."

"I did what any husband who loved his wife would have done. I did what you would do for me." Modest to a fault.

She stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. "Every day you find new ways to remind me why I'm blessed to be married to you."

That drew a smile out of him. "Do you remember when you told me you were pregnant the first time? I was petrified. But you weren't. You said that it was going to be the most incredible adventure. That's when I knew, without a doubt, that you didn't know what the hell you were talking about." She laughed. "You were right though. And over the years, there have been moments when one of us has veered off-track and it's been up to the other to take over for a while. It's like a pendulum swinging back and forth. Sometimes you need me, sometimes I need you. That's what this was - you needed me and I had to be there. That's how it's supposed to be. It's gonna happen again, we know it is. Next time, it'll be my turn."

"And we'll get through it, like we always do." She framed his face with her hands, still looking him in the eye. "No more hiding your feelings for my sake. We tear down our walls around each other - or at least, we should."

"We do most of the time."

"Let's try for all of the time."

"You're on."

Abbey threw her arms around him as Jed moved in to kiss her.

"So, what do you say?" she asked after they pulled away. "I'll call the adoption agency on Monday and tell them that we're not ready for an addition to our family just yet."

"I'd prefer to wait. It's not the end, it can be something we consider in the future. Or not. We'll figure it out one way or another."

"I can live with that. If it feels right later, we'll do it. If not, it'll just be the five of us."

"Yeah."

"And who knows, maybe once the girls grow up and leave the nest, we'll find that we like the peace and quiet."

"Yeah, right." Not much chance of that, he thought. Abbey was born to mother someone and if it wasn't the girls, it would be - much to his chagrin - him.

"Excuse me?" She feigned being offended. "You think I'm going to mother you, don't you? Go ahead, call me a nag, I dare you."

Jed slid her wine glass away before she drenched him with it. "Boo boo, you're the sexiest nag I know!" That didn't stop her from tossing the dish towel at his back as he turned to check on the casserole. "If I don't get this thing in the oven, we'll have to skip dinner."

"Don't touch my sauce! I'll do it myself."

"Did you or did you not abandon it on the stove?"

"For a minute. I'm back now."

"And as protective of it as ever I see."

"You would be too." She dipped her spoon into the saucepan and pulled it back out, covered with her thick and delicious marinara. "Here, taste."

"Mmm." Savoring it, Jed closed his eyes. "That's incredible."

"It's all in the herbs." She stepped in front of him to stir a bit more.

"And the chef," he said from behind her as he leaned forward to plant a kiss on her cheek.

- - -


After an early evening dinner, Jed and Abbey had to get ready for their night on the town. Jed had managed to score two tickets to see the National Symphony Orchestra perform at the Kennedy Center. They enjoyed the top-tiered Boston Symphony and visited Symphony Hall or Tanglewood whenever they could back home, so they were looking forward to hearing the highly respected and closely ranked National Symphony in person for the first time.

Abbey was giving herself the once-over in the floor-length mirror when Jed walked into the bedroom.

"You're gonna stop traffic in that thing," he said, watching his wife shimmy the sexy black number over her hips. It was a Tadashi cocktail dress with a cut-out at the waist that was covered with sheer see-through black mesh. It had a sweetheart neckline outlined with a string of Swarvoski crystals. The sleeves were long and cupped at the wrist and like her waist, they too were done in sheer black mesh. It hugged her in all the right spots, from her breasts to her hips to her rear. She was gorgeous.

"You don't look so bad yourself," she replied. He was always dashing in his tux, but tonight, he had a particular glow about him. And his piercing blue eyes were so playful, it was hard to resist not yanking his chain. "I've worn this dress before by the way."

"No you haven't."

"Of course I have. I'm delighted that you noticed it this time."

"Abigail, I'm telling you, if you had worn that dress before, I'd know it. And so would you because it would have holes in it from where I ripped it off your body." He closed the space between them. "Which is precisely what I want to do now."

"Yeah?" If only the concert started an hour later.

"Why are you giving me a bad time?" He reluctantly brought himself back down to earth to finish getting ready.

"Because it's fun." With her dress on and her make up finished, Abbey ran her brush under her thick mane of hair. Under so that she wouldn't disturb the soft waves that tumbled slightly past her shoulders. She had already run her fingers through them to get out any tangles, but she didn't want to ruin the curl with a brush. "Is it possible I'll be ready before you?"

"Highly unlikely." He held his ground though he was still searching for his silver cufflinks.

"Why?"

"Some things are so predictable, they should be law."

He had a point. In 20 years, not once had she been ready before him - until tonight. Jed's tux fit beautifully, but as he flipped his jacket over his head, he tore the seam and had to wait for Abbey to sew it for him. She needled him about his 'universal law' philosophy and overconfidence, pointing out the irony over and over again. Jed had been a good sport about it, but he made it clear that her ribbing would be dealt with later, when he had more time to give her a taste of her own medicine.

Once Abbey was finished sewing, she handed him his jacket and this time, she held it out for him so he wouldn't risk another tear and then, she straightened his bowtie as she always did when he wore his tux and after Jed wrapped her black cocktail jacket over her shoulders, they left their apartment, arm-in-arm.

- - -


"Well, they're okay, but they're no Boston Symphony," Jed said as he and Abbey stepped onto the sidewalk outside the Kennedy Center. He wouldn't have dared mention it inside the concert hall, but when they were out of the building, he couldn't help comparing the National Symphony to his hometown orchestra.

"You could tell the difference?" Abbey was used to Jed favoring everything New England - from sports teams to syrup to symphonies.

"You couldn't? The National Symphony doesn't have a very deep bench in the string section. You can clearly see that the last desk string players here aren't nearly the artists that we have in Boston."

"Right." She looked straight while they crossed the street. "You're a snob."

"Couldn't you hear the thinness of their brass section compared to the full, rich, organ-like tone of our Boston players in the chordal sections? Thank goodness they weren't playing Bruckner!" He gestured to the line of taxicabs. "You think I'm a snob?"

They were heading to a trendy French café in Georgetown. His staff had told him that it catered to the after-theater crowd and after hearing about it, he was sure that Abbey would love it. They decided to take a cab rather than navigate crowded DC parking garages on a Saturday night.

"Yes." She looped her arm through his and teased him further. "When it comes to New England - and New Hampshire - you're a bit of a snob. If New Hampshire had a baseball franchise, they'd be ranked higher than the Red Sox if you had something to say about it."

"It's called pride in where you come from, my love." He would have gone on with that thought, but he saw a vendor on the corner and he uncoiled their arms to approach.

"Jed." Abbey watched as he paid the man and returned to her with a single long-stemmed rose.

"And where I come from isn't the only thing I'm proud of," he said, handing her the flower. "You look so beautiful tonight."

She brought it to her nose, taking in the scent and beaming at her romantic and considerate husband. "Did you set that up?"

"It was completely spontaneous."

"Always quick on your feet."

"I have to be with you, sweet knees." He opened the door to the cab for her, then walked around to the other side to slide in beside her. "You like to keep me on my toes."

They gave the address to the driver and joked and laughed together all the way to the café.

TBC