The Baby Promise. Carolyne Aarsen

he was done, he straightened and a jolt of pain clutched his hip. He clenched his teeth, riding it out. Maybe cleaning her walk wasn’t the smartest thing to do.

      As he took a long, slow breath, he looked around. His eyes followed the contours of the fields, softened by snow. A cluster of brown dots broke the white expanse beyond the cattle feeders. Some of the more adventurous cows had moved away from the corrals where they were fed and out into the field.

      Nostalgia drifted over his mind at the scene. His parents’ ranch had been nestled along a lush river valley between two mountain ranges. The fields were long and narrow, rather than open and spread out, but it created the same feeling in his soul.

      A yearning for a time when his life had purpose and a center. A time when he had a family.

      He tried to laugh away the melancholy feeling as he shouldered the shovel and limped slowly back to the ranch house. It was better this way. When he talked to other men in his unit, men like Jim who had families, they always had the extra worry of wondering what would become of their people if something happened to them.

      He had no attachments and no concerns. Today he was heading back to Calgary. Maybe he would rent a motel room there for a couple of nights. Then he’d be off to Vancouver to visit an old friend.

      Or not. At any rate, he was leaving today.

      “Nick. Nick…”

      Nick paused, listening. Was that Ellen’s voice he heard over the running of the tractor?

      She sounded scared, and he started running.

      He hurried past the house, cursing his limp as he rushed toward the corrals and the sound of Ellen’s voice.

      “Nick, please help.”

      He clambered over the fence and saw Ellen on her knees, Bob lying on the ground beside the tractor.

      “These look really good, Beth. Just beautiful.” Shellie laid the cards out on an empty table in the back room of the craft store.

      Beth clenched her hands behind her back. “I’m sensing a ‘but.’”

      Shellie pushed her long red hair back from her face and sighed. “Why are you insisting on keeping yourself so busy?” Shellie glanced down at Beth’s stomach. “I mean, you’re going to have a baby.”

      “But I need to keep busy,” Beth said.

      “Can I give you some advice?” Shellie put her hand on Beth’s shoulder. “Jim’s been gone less than three months. You’re nearly eight months pregnant and you’re still coming here and working. You need to let yourself grieve. This silence of yours isn’t healthy.”

      Beth grew cold and taut as Shellie spoke, then turned away. “I don’t want to talk about Jim,” she said as she sorted through her cards.

      “I know how much this must hurt.” Shellie continued, ignoring Beth’s comment. “And you don’t have to try to be so strong all the time. You are allowed to cry. Jim’s mom and dad are worried about you. They say you haven’t shed a tear since the funeral.”

      “I’m okay,” Beth insisted. “I’m probably still in the denial stage of grief.”

      “Maybe you are. I still think you need to talk about Jim.”

      Beth pressed her lips together, holding back the words that at times demanded to be spoken.

      Beth had learned the hard way that words didn’t change things. Would Shellie believe her if she told the truth about Jim? Would his parents? Dear Bob and Ellen Carruthers whose eyes would drift to her stomach whenever they came to visit, as if to reassure themselves that part of their son lived on in the child that Beth carried.

      The child she would take away from them.

      Beth knew she could never tell them about Jim. Part of her reluctance was knowing nothing would be gained by taking those memories away from them.

      The other was her own shame. She had taken Jim back twice and he had cheated on her a third time. She didn’t want anyone to know that.

      Thank goodness Nick would be gone by the time she got off work. At least she wouldn’t have to face him and hear his stories about how much Jim missed her.

      Beth pulled a few more cards out of her briefcase. “I thought if you carried these, people would be interested in finding out how to make them, so I was thinking we could maybe have a Saturday craft class.” She slid two cards toward Shellie. “This one,” she said, lifting up an intricate card. “I’d love to do a video tutorial on this one. For a potential blog.”

      As she laid out her plans she could almost feel Shellie’s impatience with her reticence washing over her.

      “Beth, honey, we have talked about this before. I don’t think people would come to the classes. I don’t want to do a blog and I highly doubt video tutorials are going to make any difference for us. You’re reaching too far.”

      Ever since Beth started working for Crafty Corners, she had plans and dreams for the store well beyond Shellie’s. Her boss had taken the store over from her mother when it was just a hobby store and seemed content to keep the store what it was—a small craft store that sold products for local crafters.

      She wasn’t sure herself why she bothered trying to persuade Shellie to change the focus of the store when she was leaving. It was just that Beth knew the place had so much potential and it bothered her to see it go to waste.

      When Shellie guessed Beth wasn’t saying anything more, she turned back to the cards. “I guess I could sell these,” Shellie said, picking up some of the Valentine’s cards. “And you can stick around for a bit this morning because you’re here already, but I want to see you leaving here at noon.”

      Beth put the rest of her cards back in her briefcase and set it on the ground. “I’ll sort out the new inventory,” she said, stifling a sigh. She trudged to the back room where the new shipment of supplies had come in, a gentle hope extinguished. She didn’t know what she really wanted. For Shellie to be ecstatic about what she had created? For her to be excited?

      Because if she had seen any encouragement from her boss, Beth might believe in herself a bit more. Might believe there was a way she could channel her passion for cards and paper crafts into something that could augment her widow’s pension. She poured so much of herself into her craft. The cards had started as a way of putting feelings she couldn’t express into words, into pictures, into colors and patterns. Her family may not have listened to her, but they did pay attention to her cards.

      She gave cards to teachers, to friends, to her family and slowly it became the one constant in her life. The one constant as she followed Jim from one army post to another all over Canada.

      Beth had fought the move back to the Carrutherses’ ranch, but Jim had been adamant. He wanted her around his family before he shipped out to Afghanistan.

      In retrospect, Beth was sure Jim had ulterior motives for the move, but at the time she agreed with it to keep peace.

      Mostly she agreed to move because the move didn’t affect the plans she had been slowly putting into place.

      She was leaving him, moving away and starting out on her own. She had made this decision a week after he shipped out and a week after she found out Jim had cheated on her—again. But she couldn’t leave while he was overseas. So she waited until his return so she could tell him to his face.

      But Jim didn’t come back and she was unexpectedly pregnant and all that lay ahead of her was the uncertainty of motherhood as a widow.

      As Beth finished sorting the paper, a feeling of self-pity loomed, like a huge black hole ready to draw her in. A hole she could not edge toward because there was no one to pull her back.

      She was alone. She had to be strong for herself and the baby.

      Her hands slowed as she stared out the window of the shop,