Beverly was overreacting, she had mentioned to the pediatrician the symptoms Beverly had noted. The pediatrician had taken Beverly’s observations seriously enough to run a few tests—and the next thing she’d known, Laurel had been sitting in the Portland General Hospital waiting room while Tyler was rushed to specialists.
She had tracked Jackson down on a construction job he was supervising. He had dropped everything and hurried to join her. And suddenly they were facing open-heart surgery.
It had all happened so fast that Laurel’s head seemed to be spinning. No wonder little Tyler was confused.
She heard Jackson asking a string of questions of the patiently helpful nurse, but she didn’t try to monitor that conversation. She figured Jackson would tell her later what she needed to know. For now she focused on her child.
“I’ll be back at five with your dinner, Tyler,” said the nurse, whose nametag identified her as Ramona. “Do you like spaghetti and applesauce?”
Tyler nodded, then added, “Like ice cream, too.”
Ramona flashed a smile. “I’ll see what I can do about that.”
Left alone, Laurel and Jackson studied each other over Tyler’s head. More at home in the chaos of a construction site, Jackson looked restless and uncomfortable in the sterile and studiously cheery setting of a hospital pediatric room.
“I should probably go get my parents,” he said, glancing toward the door.
Laurel’s arms tightened spasmodically around her son and words of protest rose instinctively in her throat, but she swallowed them and nodded. Jackson had every right to want his parents with him, just as they had a right to be close to their grandchild. She was being selfish to want to keep Tyler all to herself until this whole ordeal was over.
It was just that once the close-knit Reiss family was together, Laurel always felt like the outsider. Changing her surname to theirs hadn’t made her one of them.
It wasn’t that they had ever treated her badly. They had been nothing but politely gracious to her, just as they were to everyone outside the family. She knew much of the problem was hers. Since she hadn’t been raised in a family like this, she had never quite known how to behave with them, resulting in her being a bit guarded around them.
Though adept at making small talk and swapping repartee with others, she’d turned stilted in the presence of Jackson’s parents. Jackson, for one, had certainly noticed. He had accused her almost from the beginning of not liking his parents, and the more he had pushed her, the more defensive she had become. Especially when it came to his paragon of a mother.
Laurel had fifteen minutes alone with her son, and she savored every one of them. Though his vocabulary was limited, he managed to tell her about the people who had looked at him and done so many things to him. Laurel and Tyler had actually been separated for just over an hour, but it had seemed much longer to both of them. Tyler admitted he had rather liked nurse Ramona, but he was glad to be with his mommy again.
Snuggled into her arms, he stuck his left thumb into his mouth and allowed himself to relax, his eyelids getting heavy. Laurel rested her cheek on his silky blond hair and closed her own eyes, desperately wishing—
“There’s my sweet baby.” Donna Reiss rushed into the room on a wave of floral perfume and grandmotherly concern. She knelt beside the rocking chair and rested a trembling hand on Tyler’s arm. “Gammy’s here, darling, and so is Gampy. We’re all going to take very good care of you.”
“Gammy,” Tyler murmured with a sleepy smile. But it was Laurel’s heart he nestled closer to as he drifted into a restless nap.
It was almost eight o’clock that evening when Jackson convinced Laurel to leave the hospital room for a short break. Reminding her that she had missed lunch, he persuaded her to join him in the hospital cafeteria for a quick dinner. Tyler was sleeping, and Donna and Carl said they would stay with him until Laurel returned. They had already eaten, Carl having almost dragged Donna out of Tyler’s room for forty-five minutes earlier.
Laurel had tried to talk Jackson into joining his parents then, but he had refused to eat until she did. Though she wasn’t hungry, and she hated to leave her son even for that brief time, Laurel finally conceded because she knew Jackson needed the break.
The serving line closed at eight, so there weren’t many diners left, and not much food, either. Laurel ordered a bowl of soup, Jackson a sandwich.
They carried their trays to a small table next to a glass wall that looked out over a beautifully landscaped courtyard bathed in soft lighting. Because she knew he would insist, Laurel forced herself to take a few bites of the soup.
“How is it?” he asked, looking up from his food.
“Rather cold,” she replied with a shrug. “But it tastes fine.” At least, she assumed it did. For all the attention she had paid to the soup, it could have tasted like wet sawdust.
Jackson finished his sandwich while she made a pretense of eating, both of them lost in their own thoughts. And then he pushed his plate aside, leaving the chips and pickle untouched. “I guess I wasn’t as hungry as I thought.”
Laurel set down her spoon. “Neither am I.”
“You barely touched your soup. You’ll need to eat to keep your strength up. We’ve got a tough time ahead.”
“I’ll eat. I’m just not hungry now.”
He nodded and looked down at his hands, which were gripped together on the table in front of him. “This has all come up so fast that we’ve hardly had time to think about details. We’ll have to talk about what we’re doing for the next few days.”
“I’ll be staying here with Tyler, of course. I’ll take an indefinite leave of absence from work. It’s a bad time for the agency, with all the rumors and investigations going on there, but they’ll have to manage somehow without me.”
Jackson raised an eyebrow. “Are you sure they can?”
Because her work had been such a sore subject between them for so long, Laurel immediately went on the defensive. “Regardless of what you so often imply, I have always put Tyler’s needs ahead of my job.”
He held up a hand, his expression suddenly weary. “I’m not trying to start anything. I know Children’s Connection depends on you, that’s all.”
“Yes, they do, but Tyler needs me more. I’ll call Morgan first thing in the morning to arrange for my leave.”
He nodded. “I’ll need to check in on the job site a few times during the next few days, but I won’t have to spend much time there.”
Laurel bit her tongue, but her expression must have revealed more than she had intended. This time it was Jackson whose defenses went up. “I’ll be here as much as I need to be, but I can’t afford to lose my job now. I’m the one who carries Tyler’s health insurance, remember? Your job isn’t going to pay the medical bills, especially with you taking a leave of absence.”
Laurel looked down at her lap and shook her head. “I’m not trying to start anything, either. I didn’t say anything about your work.”
“You always make it clear enough that you think I spend too much time working. Even though you know we need the money.”
“And you make it just as clear that you’ve never wanted me to work at all, even if it helps with the money.”
His eyes narrowed. “I’ve never needed help supporting my family.”
It was an old argument, and one Laurel doubted they would ever settle. When it came to family roles, Jackson’s attitudes were straight out of the last century—the early part of the last century.
Carl Reiss had taken such pride in the fact that his wife—a hardworking, financially strapped waitress when he’d met her—had never had to work since he’d married her. Jackson had always believed