Her Last Wish Read Free

I cared about him, and I didn’t want to
fight. I also didn’t want to give him any leverage to try to sway my decision
in any way. It was hard enough to tell him no the first time.
    “Perhaps,” he decided
carefully, “we should go elsewhere today. If you want me on my best behavior, there
should probably be more people around.”
    “Okay.” However, I
never understood why he would need supervision in order to control himself. Why
was it so hard for him to just understand?
     
     
    Chapter Two
     
    Connor
     
    As I sat in the coffee
bar at the university, I couldn’t help but think about how much better the
coffee was when one of my British Lit students worked behind the counter. She
didn’t water it down like her heavyset, bearded coworker companion. It seemed I
never really noticed how much I missed her being there until she wasn’t. I just
wished I remembered her name so I could compliment her coffee skills properly
next time she happened to be there. At the same time, I supposed she’d have a
name tag. Beardy did, though it was scratched up and lopsided. Likely from a
combination of just tossing the thing wherever he felt like it once his shift
was over, plus an obvious general state of not caring how he looks.
    In comparison, my
coffee girl always looked pristine, no matter where she was. Perhaps that was
why I always had higher expectations of her. Fortunately, I was never
disappointed by the expectations that I had set for her. For two full
semesters, she’d put forth the same amount of effort into her papers as she’d
put into everything else. Ugh! What was her name? I knew it started with a “c.”
Candace? Christine? I’d know it when I saw it …
    I didn’t usually
remember many of my students, anyways. I figured the slight memory of even one,
no matter how small, was proof that I wasn’t as hopeless as I felt. I hadn’t
seemed to notice or care about the identities of any of my students since …
Elizabeth. It had been a little less than three years, but it was still so
painful to think about her, as if it had just happened the day before. I wasn’t
sure I’d ever get over the pain or her. I didn’t want to.
    I’d spent those years
trying to hold tightly to any piece of her that I could. I hadn’t changed much
in the house that we had shared. Her clothes were still there, waiting for her
to try on six outfits before she finally decided on one for the day. The
blankets on her side of the bed were always turned back, waiting for her to
climb in and put her ice cold feet on my leg. The book she’d been reading sat
exactly where she left it on the nightstand, the bookmark still firmly marking
her place. The only things missing were all her pictures. I had packed them
away, simply because I couldn’t bear to look at them every day instead of her.
They were a poor substitute, and they taunted me with memories of what I’d lost.
    Although it always
appeared as if she could walk in the door any minute, it just wasn’t enough. I
finally decided that in honor of her memory, I needed to continue with her
biggest wish, the last one she ever made: to have a baby. Sure, I could have
found someone else, settled down again, had children naturally … But that
wouldn’t have been her child. And let’s face it. Emotionally, I was too
far gone to have anything bearing any resemblance to a healthy relationship. I
didn’t want anyone else. I wanted her . But since I couldn’t have her,
raising our child would be the next best thing. I was convinced.
    So how would a man have
a baby on his own? Well, he couldn’t. Obviously. I had access to Elizabeth’s
eggs. They’d been frozen due to her IVF treatments. Because I was not the one
with fertility issues, I could easily have those eggs fertilized. I had a
doctor willing to help me, the same one that tried to help her. I just needed
someone to carry the result. I called several surrogacy agencies, hoping to
find one to help with that part. So far, I had no