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Another Way Home: A Chicory Inn Novel - Book 3

By Deborah Raney

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Chapter 1

Danae Brooks buttoned her shirt and slipped on her shoes, trying desperately not to get her hopes up. The dressing rooms in her doctor’s office were more like something in an upscale spa—heavy fringed drapes curtained private alcoves decorated with framed art prints, and flameless candles flickered on tiny side tables. Soft strains of Mozart wafted through the building. Of course, for the fees her obstetrician charged—or rather, her “reproductive endocrinologist,” as his nameplate declared—the luxuries felt well-deserved.
She gathered her purse and continued to the window at the nurse’s station.
Marilyn—she was on a first-name basis with most of the nurses by now—looked up with a practiced smiled. “You can go on down. Dr. Gwinn will be with you in just a minute.”
Danae had quit trying to decipher the nurses’ demeanor. So far, month after month, every smile, every quirk of an eyebrow, every wink, had meant the same thing: she wasn’t pregnant. Still.
She walked down the hall to the doctor’s sparse office and was surprised to find him already sitting behind his desk. She forced herself not to get her hopes up, but she’d always had to wait for a consult before. Sometimes twenty minutes or more.
“Come on in, Danae.” He looked past her expectantly.
“Oh. Um…Dallas isn’t with me today. He…couldn’t get off work.” Of course he could have if he’d really wanted to.
“I understand. No problem. Come on in and have a seat.”
She started for the duo of arm chairs in front of his desk, then realized the door was still open. He usually closed it behind him when he came into the room. She put a hand on the doorknob. “Should I close this?”
“If you prefer.”
She closed it partway and sat down, feeling a bit adrift without Dallas beside her.
Dr. Gwinn scribbled something on the sheaf of papers in front of him, then slipped them into a folder before looking up at her. She knew immediately that there was no baby.
“Well…” He pulled a sheet of paper from the folder he’d just closed and slid it across the desk, pointing with his pen at an all too familiar graph. “Nothing has changed from last time. Your levels are still not quite where we’d like to see them, but we’re getting there. I’m going to adjust the dosage just a bit. Nothing drastic, but you might notice an increase in the side effects you’ve experienced in the past.”
“It hasn’t been too bad.”
He steepled his fingers in front of him and frowned. “That’s good, but don’t be surprised if the symptoms are a little more marked with this increase.”
Dr. Gwinn wrapped up the consultation quickly and suggested she call his office if she experienced any problems on the new dosage.
For some reason, his warning encouraged her. Maybe this boost in meds would be the thing that finally worked. As quickly as the thought came, she tried to put her hope in check. Almost every week there was something that got her hopes up…only to have them dashed again.
But Dr. Gwinn sounded so hopeful this time. Of course, they’d all been hopeful. For more than three years now, a string of clinics had offered endless hope—and had happily accepted their checks for one fertility treatment after another. But despite test after test, a string of doctors in a string of clinics could not seem to find any reason she and Dallas could not have a baby together. “Unexplained infertility” was the frustrating diagnosis. They’d done just about everything but in vitro. Or adoption. And though Dallas was adamant they would not take that route, Danae was beginning to think it might be the answer. The only answer.
At the reception desk, Danae slid her debit card across the counter. Another three hundred dollars. She dreaded Dallas seeing the amount in the check register. She wasn’t sure how long they could keep draining their bank account this way before her husband said, “Enough.”
The woman handed her a receipt. “We’ll see you in two weeks, Mrs. Brooks.”
“Thank you.” She forced a smile and sent up a prayer that next time she wouldn’t have to endure the shots and medication—because she’d be pregnant. But it was getting harder and harder to be optimistic. And she wasn’t sure how long she could hold up under repeated disappointment.
She shoved open the door as if shoving away the discouraging thoughts. Or trying to. The late September air finally held a hint of autumn, and she inhaled deeply. As she unlocked the car door, her phone chirped from her purse. Dallas’s ring. She fished it out of the side pocket. “Hey, babe.”
“Hey yourself. How’d it go?” The caution in his voice made her sad.
“Same ol’ same ol’. But he upped my dosage a little.”
An overlong pause. “It’s not going to make you bonkers like the last time they did that, is it?”
“No.” She hadn’t meant to sound so irritated. She’d kind of forgotten the incident Dallas referred to—like the worst PMS in the history of the world according to her husband. Which was funny given she’d never really experienced PMS, so how would he know? It was probably an apt description though. “That wasn’t even the same drug I’m on now, Dallas. And even if it was, everything went back to normal as soon as they cut my dosage back again. Remember?”
“I know… I know.” His tone said he was tiptoeing lightly, trying not to start something—and trying to hard to make up for not coming with her to today’s appointment. “So, do you want me to pick up something for supper on my way home?”
“No, I’m making something.” No sense adding expensive take-out to the financial “discussion” that was likely to happen after he saw the checkbook. “Maybe scalloped potatoes? It actually feels like fall out here today.” She held up a hand, as if he could see her testing the crisp air.
“I need to go, Danae. We’ll talk tonight, okay? But you did remember I’m going to the gym with Drew after work, right? Can I invite him to eat with us?”
“Dallas—” She gave a little growl. “It’s Tuesday. You know we’re going to my folks tonight.”
“Oh, yeah… Sorry, I forgot.”
“Did you think we were only having scalloped potatoes for supper?”
“I didn’t think about it. Sorry. Well, I’ll invite Drew another night then. We can—” A familiar click on the line—the office call waiting signal—clipped his words. “Hey, I’ve got to take this. See you tonight.”
“Sure.” She spoke into the silence, feeling dismissed. Sometimes she thought Dallas preferred his brother’s company to hers.
She climbed into the car and buckled up, imagining the day when she’d be buckling a precious baby into a car seat first. Please, God. Please. After three years, this shorthand had become the extent of her prayers.
Pulling out of the parking lot, she was tempted to drive out to her parents’. Tuesday usually wasn’t a busy day at the inn, but she and Dallas would be going out there tonight for their weekly Tuesday family dinner. She’d almost come to dread them for fear of all the questions about their quest to have a baby. But the truth was, her family had grown weary of the subject and had quit asking. And maybe that was just as well.
She rarely volunteered information to her parents and her sisters now that it had become obvious they’d run out of encouraging things to say month after month.
For the first year after they’d started seeking medical treatment, Dallas hadn’t even wanted to tell anyone. But she convinced him that she needed someone else to confide in. Once tests had confirmed that the fault was hers alone, and that Dallas was fully capable of fathering a child, he had been more willing to talk with friends and family about their issues. But she sensed he was losing interest in the whole subject as well.
She turned toward home instead. Home. It still felt a little odd to turn into the new neighborhood. The divided, stone entrance was an elegant introduction to the upscale development. She and Dallas had traded houses with her sister in August—almost two months ago now—and she still felt like she was going to visit Corinne and Jesse whenever she pulled into the driveway. They’d traded houses, and she and Dallas had traded a paid-off mortgage for a house payment. They’d put a nice down payment on the house and they could afford it, but it had definitely made thing a little tighter than they were used to. And made writing checks for the fertility treatments even more painful.
She pulled into the garage and pressed the remote to lower the door. She loved Corinne’s house—their house—and she was slowly getting her own touches added to the decor. The trade of homes had been a real blessing to Corinne and Jesse, and Danae had no regrets. She and Dallas had been looking for a house big enough for the family they hoped to have, and this place was perfect. But she hadn’t counted on the tension it’d created with her sister.
Corinne had given up a lot to make it possible for Jesse to go back to school and get a teaching degree. Danae felt for her sister. She couldn’t imagine Dallas suddenly deciding to switch careers after almost a decade of marriage—and three kids. And now Corinne’s family of five was crammed into the little two-bedroom house she and Dallas had owned. And yet, they seemed happy. She sensed it was still hard for Corinne to see someone else in the house that had once been her dream home, and it had strained the sisters’ relationship, but Danae thought time would take care of that. Hopefully Jesse would have a teaching job in a couple of years and things would get back to normal for all of them.
And hopefully, hopefully, she and Dallas would have a baby by then. Because if they didn’t, she wasn’t sure she could go on believing in a loving, caring, fair God.

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