The Foster Girls #3: Elizabeth

Chapter 17: Elizabeth

I did the additional two weeks of bed rest, but my blood pressure still concerned my doctor, so bed rest continued. During that time, Harper came to see me one afternoon, Dante alongside her because he couldn't stop hovering over his pregnant wife.

Harp came to sit next to me on the couch. She had an adorable little tummy at seven months but she still looked a bit green from the morning sickness that plagued her throughout her entire pregnancy.

She put her arms around me and we just held each other for a minute, her warm familiarity making me want to just rest in her arms indefinitely. After a minute, Dante came over and kissed the top of my head.

"Hey, Bet. You doing OK?"

I smiled at him and nodded.

Harper took over. "Dante, remember that little tea shop we passed on the way here? Could you go get us some tea? And maybe some biscotti? Oh! And croissants, and if they have any maple-iced donuts --"

"You got it, Princess. Call if you think of anything else." He pressed a kiss to her lips that was somewhere between PG-13 and R. I also knew that he would buy everything left in the display counters just to tempt his wife's appetite. Harp could be ravenously hungry one minute and then be swept by a wave of morning sickness in the blink of an eye, so when she asked for food, he moved on it.

Once we got past playing catch-up, Harper gave me the look. 

"What?"

"What's going on with you and Rig?"

I grinned at her because I knew she'd interrogate me. "I don't know, Harp."

"He called you out on TV as the woman he loved."

"Yeah. And he seems to be serious about me, about the baby, but I just don't know if this is a permanent change."

"He seems pretty serious to me, Bet. Willow told me about running into him after you left for London. Even back then, he was torn up about you disappearing from his life."

"So he says. So she says."

"About Will," Harp said, and I'd been expecting this discussion. "Fin and I tag teamed her and laid into her pretty bad right before she left for England. We both told her she'd broken the Foster girl code. I told her she'd disappointed all of us and she'd had no right to contact Rig."

"She didn't," I said softly.

"Yeah, she got that message loud and clear from you, then from me and then from Fin. She feels awful and doesn't know how to make it right, but she wants to."

"So I just forgive and forget? She put my child at risk, Harp. I don't know that she can make it right."

"I know. And I'm not pretending to know how I'd feel if she'd put me in a situation like that. But I do know she regrets it. And, in talking to her, I think her background factored into her decision to contact him. She never knew her dad because her mom didn't let him know she was pregnant, whether it was because her mom didn't want him involved or her mom didn't know how to contact him. Either way, it haunts Will that her father is out there somewhere and she will never know him. It still wasn't her call, no way and I'm still pissed about it, but I'm able to understand where she was coming from. If you can understand, maybe that can lead to forgiveness."

"I'm working on it," I told her honestly. "If Rig doesn't make a play for my child, then I think that will help."

Harper just looked at me. "Bet. That man is making a play for you and your child. He's coming at you hard." She looked at the ceiling for a minute. "Forgiving Dante was one of the hardest things I've ever done. But in the end, I had to because I didn't want to live without him, plain and simple, and he worked hard to make things up to me -- and one day, he did something that just melted away the last of my resistance."