Alexander by Kathi S. Barton Page A

Bethany was the older of the children. Then Alex and Charles, Bethany’s brother, then Wills. The children had played together all their lives.
    Then one summer, Bethany announced she was in love with Alex. Alex had just turned nineteen and Bethany had been three years older. She’d told them all, including Alex, that they’d be married the following summer. Everyone was deliriously happy for them.
    Alex was in love. Any fool could see it. His mother had commented on it almost daily how happy he looked. But she didn’t think it was the smartest of moves that they wed. At least so young, she’d told them.
    Alex and she had fought and the closer the wedding came, the more depressed Candace became. She had tried to talk to him, tried to convince him to wait, but the more she tried, the harder he dug in. It wasn’t two weeks after the wedding that he’d come home upset and needing to talk to them.
    “ Bethany is pregnant,” he’d told them. “And it’s…I’m not the father. She knew this before we married.”
    Candace didn’t say anything as she held their son. She simply held him as he poured the entire story out.
    “ She was sick on our honeymoon. Every day. I kept asking her what was wrong and she said it was the flight, or the different food. I believed her. I was a fool.”
    “ You weren’t a fool,” his mother said. “You were in love. I’m so sorry, baby. I know this hurts.”
    “ Are you sure it’s not yours?” They both looked at him when he’d asked. “I’m sure you didn’t remain celibate before you were married, did you?”
    “ No, sir, but… Well, I used protection when we had sex. I didn’t…kids are not in the picture right now. I’m trying to get this business going with Brick and we…I didn’t want a baby just yet. I thought she understood.”
    They fought, Bethany and Alex, bitterly and long. When years later Alex had told them, long after the accident, neither he nor Candace could believe it. Bethany wanted to continue on with her affairs and she could see no reason for Alex to be upset about it. Then the accident.
    Charles and Bethany had been driving back from the airport after dropping off their parents. Bethany was about six months then, her belly rounded and full. Charles was just to turn sixteen in a few weeks. He had been driving.
    The police said that his inexperience had caused the accident. He’d over compensated when he’d hit a slick spot on the wet road. The car, a compact, had hit the guardrail several times before it had stalled in the road only to be hit broadside by an oncoming tractor trailer. Charles was killed instantly, his neck broken, as was most of his body. Bethany had been alive when they reached the hospital, but the baby had been lost. But it was the last thing she’d said to Alex that had hurt him, killed something inside of him that day.
    “ You were nothing to me,” she’d said. “Nothing but a means to an end and even in that you failed me. I never loved you, never liked you most of them time. I’m glad the child wasn’t yours.”
    There had been more, more biting remarks, more recriminations, and more of her telling him what a failure he’d been. And he’d taken it all from her, taken every word she’d uttered. When they’d wheeled her to surgery, Alex left the hospital.
    It was several hours before they found him to tell him she was dead. A hemorrhage that they’d not found until it was too late had caused internal bleeding and she was simply gone.
    The Sheppards had wanted to blame Alex, but they couldn’t with him not even in the car. And it wasn’t until the funeral that they’d found out that her parents knew about the child and that Alex wasn’t the father. They had not spoken to them since.
    Edgar watched his son pace and wondered if this woman, this baker, could be the one to make him love again. He wanted to talk with the girl, and her son, and see their worth.
    “ Did she give you a reason for her…offer, I guess?