Free Texas…Now and Forever by Merline Lovelace

first week in September, when the reason for her continuing lethargy finally sank in.
    She was pregnant.
    It took two trips to the pharmacy and three home-pregnancy kits before she could bring herself to accept the possibility. A visit to a women’s clinic converted probability into fact.
    She was pregnant.
    Haley walked out of the clinic into bright September sunshine. Dazed, she made her way to the small park a few blocks from her flat. Pigeons fluttered and cooed from the statue of some forgotten general on his rearing charger. Leaves rustled inthe oaks fringing the park. Bit by bit, the hard shell around Haley’s heart cracked and fell away.
    She was pregnant!
    With a joyous whoop that earned her curious stares from passersby, she hugged her middle. She wouldn’t be alone anymore. She wasn’t cut off from her family any longer. She hadn’t left Luke Callaghan behind forever.
    She’d have his baby. Their baby. A new life to fill the void of her old. For the first time since Frank Del Brio had shoved that diamond on her finger, Haley’s spirits soared high and free.
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    In her joy and eagerness, she welcomed the minor inconveniences and major physical changes that came with pregnancy. She also reestablished contacts with the small circle of friends she’d begun to make in London.
    The days and weeks sped by. She spent hours converting the spare bedroom in her flat to a nursery. More hours with one of her married coworkers, shopping for the astonishing number of items a newborn evidently required. October brought gray skies. November, icy drizzle. December blew in cold and snowy, but Haley hardly noticed the weather. Happy and by now well-rounded, she thrilled at every twinge or kick that gave evidence of the life growing inside her.
    January brought the first small indications that the nest she’d built for herself and her child might not be as safe and cozy as she thought. She let herself into her building, her cheeks rosy and her breath steaming from the cold, and noticed what looked like scratches around her mailbox lock. Frowning, she ran her gloved fingers over the faint marks. When she inquired of the doorman, however, he shrugged.
    â€œCan’t say how those scratches got there. Might a been workmen. We had a crew working in the lobby a few days ago. I’ll check on it for you.”
    â€œThanks.”
    When the doorman’s inquiries returned no information about the marks, Haley shrugged them off, until a week later when she retrieved her mail and could have sworn that one of her letters had been opened. It was only a form letter, reminding her of her next dental appointment, but the joyous cloud she’d been floating on for months began to dissipate.
    The hang-ups and wrong numbers began in late February, just weeks before her projected delivery date. The first two or three annoyed her. By the fourth or fifth, she had begun to feel distinctly nervous.
    She didn’t dare go to the police. She’d entered the country on a false passport, was living withforged identity papers. Nor could she contact her one rock. Carl Bridges didn’t answer either his phone or the e-mails an increasingly worried Haley fired off. He’d told her he had some business to attend to and might be incommunicado for a while. But why did it have to be now? Just when she needed him.
    In March, worry sent her into labor a week early, but she delivered a healthy, beautiful baby girl. She had her father’s silky black curls and, Haley saw with a sob, his eyes. They were the color of a summer Texas sky. She named her Lena, after her mother’s mother, Helena.
    The next day she brought her baby home to the nursery she’d decorated so lovingly and prayed she’d be safe there.
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    Eight weeks later the taxi carrying Haley and Lena to the baby’s two-month checkup took a wrong turn.
    â€œThis isn’t the way,” she informed the turbaned Sikh driver.