Though the nights would not fair so well, Amy fell into a sound sleep that late morning not long after climbing beneath the cool sheets that smelled freshly of fabric softener. Well, at least they washed the linens beforehand. She had no idea whose room it had been before being given to her. Maybe just a spare bedroom for company, but Amy hadn't taken the time to snoop and find out, just wanting to lie down and rest, but most importantly ponder a course of action. Though try as she might, she found it hard to convince herself that her dad would change his mind within the next few hours, or days – even months - call her up, and say she was welcome to come back home. That everything would be fine and they'd figure her "situation" out, as he'd described it.
It would have been a great deal easier if Amy would have agreed to make it go away. She even got as far as the front door of the clinic before the guilt overwhelmed her and she ran cowering back to her car, sending a whole series of unfortunate events into motion that landed her there in the middle of nowhere. But no matter how badly she wished things were different and wanted to go home, she wouldn't have changed her decision to make it happen.
She resented her father for sending her away and regretted the course of events that led her there to Hudson, but did not regret her choice to keep her child, rather than dispose of it like unwanted trash. It was true she wasn't ready to have a baby, but that didn't mean she didn't want it. It was a part of her, living and growing inside of her own body. It both fascinated and terrified her as she felt the changes that began to take place in her body and started to see the physical ramifications as well.
When Amy woke up some time later, not having realized she even fell asleep, she rolled over onto her back and pulled the sheet from her head. The sun was still bright outside and a stuffiness had settled into the house as the midday sun beat high overhead. Brushing her hair from her face, Amy let her hand rest low on her abdomen that was no longer as soft as it once was, feeling a new firmness to her skin as her uterus began to shift and expand toward her waistline to accommodate for the growing fetus inside of it.
"It's just you and me now." She lowered her eyes and spoke softly to her belly, rubbing her hand over the baby. Or where she assumed the baby was. It was kind of hard to tell at the moment, but she humored herself by thinking he, or she, was aware of her touches and her voice. She knew that eventually it would be, if not right at that moment.
Sighing, Amy let her fingers continue to stroke her stomach as she took her first real look around the room she'd been assigned to. The walls were a forest green with some dark-stained wood bedroom furniture and a closet with sliding doors that were securely shut. There were no photos or any real décor aside from the maroon curtains that were drawn back to allow light to filter in. Through the windows Amy could see pieces of the yard between the branches of shrubbery. It reminded her again of where she was and the people that she was inhabiting this place with. People she knew nothing of beyond their names.
The house was still quiet as far as Amy could tell. She could hear the faint ticking of a pendulum clock somewhere in another room and distant shouts of men from the yard. A horse whinnied as Amy swung her legs out of bed, another answering its call as she stood up and went to drag her suitcases in from the hall. She stared at them a moment, debating if she was ready to admit defeat by actually unpacking them or if she could continue to live in denial by living out of them for a while longer. The indecision on that front left them untouched for the time being while she found her way back to the kitchen where she'd left her other duffel bag.
As she shuffled down the hall to fetch it, was unaware that a man was lounging in an old leather chair with a newspaper and mug off coffee until her back was already to him.
Jack glanced up from his reading to peer at the young woman over his glasses that sat on the bridge of his nose. "You must be Amy."
His deep voice shook her, making her jump and spin around to find where it had come from. Every nerve in her body stood on end as her spine went rigid and her eyes widened while her breath seized in her lungs.
Pulling off his glasses, Jack folded the paper over and sat it on the arm of his chair as he stood. "Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you."
Swallowing, Amy took a moment to calm her racing heart. "No, I… I just didn't realize anyone was in here." She took a deep breath and forced herself to relax. "You're Jack?"
Jack nodded. "That would be me." He began to approach and Amy felt herself start to tense again, her eyes dropping down to his hand as it began to extend to offer a proper welcome.
Amy backed away from it, turning to retrieve her duffel, leaving Jack hanging. "I just… came for my bag." She carried it with both hands, both of them ignoring her odd behavior as Jack lowered his hand as if he never held it out in the first place.
Amy had every intention of dragging the bag back to her room and shutting herself away again, but Jack seemed to sense it and positioned himself in the doorway that made her pause. "Safe journey?" He asked, studying her carefully.
"It was fine, thank you. I'm just tired from it." She tried to be polite, but she really just wanted to get away from the inevitable prying questions that would come the more they became acquainted. Obviously, Jack was aware of what he needed to be, but there was a great deal that Amy preferred to keep private for her own sanity.
"I hope my grandson didn't put you off too much. I intended to come myself, but got a little caught up here." Jack apologized for Ty, Amy figuring he either got an earful about their strained journey or knew his grandson well enough to know he wasn't the most personable.
"It's fine," Amy said with a slight shake of her head. "At least he managed to show up eventually," she finished, subtly digging at Ty's tardiness that left her feeling unwelcome from the very moment she stepped off the bus.
Amy shifted her bag in her hands when it started to become heavy from the time she was left to hold it, hoping Jack would take a hint and step aside. If he did, didn't bother to act on it. "If you're hungry I think there's some stuff for sandwiches in the fridge." Jack offered, nodding behind her. He wanted her to stay rather than go and hide away in her bedroom, not wanting her to feel like she was just a burden shifted from one shoulder to another, more capable one. He was curious to know the rest of the story Tim neglected to divulge, feigning ignorance to pawn off his daughter and then get off the phone. But Amy had no interest in even idle chit-chat and her lack of direct eye contact for more than a few seconds told him she in no way trusted him yet. They had a long way to go before those loaded talks could even be toed.
Amy shook her head in response. "I ate on the bus." She was a little hungry, but lately her appetite was delicate. She could be starving but then hours after satisfying her seemingly insatiable hunger she was painfully unloading it all rather ungracefully. She wasn't about to put herself into that delicately compromising position, drawing attention to her not-yet-blatantly-obvious condition. It already felt like people were staring at her, silently judging her and forming their own rumors and tall tales to fill in the gaps of information.
"When my first wife, Lyndy, was pregnant she never stopped eating." Jack smiled, taking himself back to the memory, but the word only made Amy's gaze shoot away from him again. That word made her uncomfortable because it was just so in your face and letting it slip cracked the rumor mills wide open no matter the context. People turned heads upon hearing the word, honing their suddenly supersonic hearing into a conversation that might be none of their business to see what juicy details could be ascertained. A planned and consensual pregnancy wasn't nearly as interesting as one that wasn't and even less so than one that came with a dramatic tangle of paternity. It was why pregnancy plots were so cliché, yet still engaging, in soap operas and supposed reality television shows.
Amy felt like she was living one of those now as Jack continued to tell her about his wife's late-night trips to the fridge and the long midnight drives into town to satisfy one craving or another. The stories were sweet, but all they did were make Amy feel even worse about herself because that was never something she'd have. No one but her loved this child so much that they'd spend hours engaging with her belly or drag themselves twenty miles into town just to make its mother happy because no one but her wanted the child to exist. The baby's father was completely out of the picture and Amy didn't care if she ever saw him again because he didn't give a shit about either one of them.
"If you don't mind, Jack, I'd really like to just go to back to my room," Amy said in a low voice, not even realizing she cut him off because she'd tuned him out when his adoration for his once pregnant wife became too painful for her to continue listening to.
Jack stopped his walk down memory lane and became serious again. "You know it's not going to do you any good spending all of your time locked away. I can understand how you must be feeling scared for a number of different reasons, but the only way you're going to grow to accept this new living arrangement is by actually giving it a chance."
Something in Amy began to sizzle when Jack claimed he could understand how she felt. He had no idea how she felt and how dare he try to pawn off life advice on her when he didn't have a clue. "Maybe I don't want to give it a chance," she snapped before she could stop herself. "I didn't want to come here in the first place."
Despite Amy's anger toward him, Jack remained calm. It wasn't in his nature to fight fire with fire. He learned long ago that it only fueled the rage. "Maybe not. But you're here now, so to me that means you want to at least give your child a chance. That says a lot more about you than you might realize, or care to admit."
The fire in her was dampened as quickly as it had been ignited, knowing Jack was right. She was doing all of this for her child. To try and give him or her more of a life they deserved instead of growing up in a situation that might not be healthy, or even safe for either of them. Amy hadn't known where she would have ended up had she taken the alternate route and despite having no idea what kind of people lived at Heartland, at least she knew she would have some place to go.
"Why did you do it?" Amy had to ask. "You don't know me or my situation. But you still offered to take me in even with all the baggage I'm carrying. Why?" In the beginning, Amy believed it was a completely self-serving reason. Like she was being traded in order for her father to pay off one of his many debts, but she wasn't stupid enough to look around this house and at the old weathered cowboy before her and still believe that to be true.
It didn't take more than a moment for Jack to answer. Like he didn't have to think about it at all. "The same reason you got yourself on that bus."
Amy was quiet for a moment, letting it sink in as she looked up at Jack. She found it hard to wrap her mind around the idea that a total stranger was compassionate enough to want to do some good by her and her unborn child. That they too wanted to provide some kind of good future to them when her own flesh and blood was ready to throw her out on the streets to fend for herself. "But why did my dad call you?" That was another thing Amy didn't understand. To her it was like Tim just opened up the phone book to a random page, closed his eyes, and pointed. Where his finger landed was where she went.
Jack shrugged. It had been a surprise to him as well to receive that phone call from Tim Fleming after not even hearing the name for almost two decades. "We knew each other years back, before you were born. He must have thought I could help."
"How did you know each other?" That seemed strange to her considering she couldn't recall a Jack Bartlett ever being mentioned. Yet, she was beginning to realize her father held more than a few skeletons in his closet he seemed adamant about not sharing with her.
"I think that's something you need to ask him." Jack told her, not feeling it was his place to breach Tim's privacy. He obviously neglected to fill Amy in on their affiliation and while Jack disagreed with that, Tim must have had a reason for it that only he could explain.
Amy saw that response as a dead end and figured she was just going to have to accept being kept in the dark about a lot of her father's decisions. "I doubt he'll tell me. We haven't spoken to each other since he told me I was coming here. I don't think he wants anything to do with me anymore."
Jack frowned. "What makes you say that?"
Amy shook her head. "Isn't it obvious? I'm here. And he sent me here so he didn't have to look at me anymore. I disappointed him and shamed him. When I told him I couldn't… that I wouldn't…" she paused and let out a slow breath, biting down on her cheek to fight off the prickle that erupted behind her eyes then started again. "When I said I wanted to keep the baby it took him not even an afternoon to find a way to get rid of me."
Jack felt for this girl. He really did. He didn't quite understand how her father could do what he did either, which was another part of the reason why he agreed to let her stay at the ranch. But he just couldn't have her thinking her father no longer loved his daughter or hated her because she made a mistake and instead of taking the easy way out, she decided to live with the consequences. "I'm sure there's more to it than that. You shouldn't jump to conclusions before knowing the whole story. I bet you feel the same way." His eyes lowered to look at her belly, to which Amy shifted her bag to block it. She hated when people stared at her like that. It made her feel violated and like some kind of a sideshow.
"Maybe if you knew the whole story, you'd think differently, too." She shot back, finally hoisting up her bag and using it to push Jack out of the way so she could slip by and once again lock herself in her room where she did not come out again until she saw the transport van to the prison load up and disappear for the night. She was starving by then, but remained stubborn even through the haunting aroma that began to waft in from the kitchen. By then she couldn't stand it anymore and was about to venture out to make an appearance when there was a knock on her door.
Author's Notes: I answered some of your questions in the reviews.