The Baby Arrangement

Chapter 72: Waste of an Effort

Chapter 72: Waste of an Effort

"Daryl?" His silence grows greater and Beth growls. "You've been lying to my face this whole time!"

She scolds him quietly so not to wake Teddy.

"I didn't not not lie. I asked you to not question it." He speaks truthfully and she glares at him.

"Yer such an asshole! I can't believe you'd lie to me." Standing up, she hands Daryl the baby, who wakes up and begin wailing as she stomps out of the room and out the front door. He can't even go after her. He knows she's right and he deserves this treatment, but at the same time, was he truly wrong in his act?

"Shhh, Teddy...yer alright buddy. Shh." It takes him a while to calm the child before he's able to put the resting baby in the pen in the living room. Kensi finds Daryl sitting on the porch, but doesn't go to him. This has been her life too. Mommy getting angry at Daddy and leaving them without warning. For a two year old she picks up of the anger and lies. In her mind, this is how life will always be, and or that reason she clings to Daryl. He's never abandoned her. Never has he left her to carry the pain of someone else.

Sitting in her truck facing out at the same suburb Daryl took her and Kensi too a long time ago, Beth just cries and wipes her eyes as she tries to understand this aching, bursting feeling in her chest. It feels as if she had saw her mother take her last breath again. She was only seven years old at the time and it's a memory that will always stay with her until she sees her mother again. Cancer bursts holes in families- so does the little lies out loved ones tell.

Sure, Daryl never actually lied to her, but he did at the same time. He knew when Teddy was born. He knew a lot about him from Rick. He knew where he was from, his parents, and things that have been put on his records at the hospital. So Daryl lied a lot. True it was to make her feel better and for her to be happy, but this doesn't feel like happiness. It feels like destruction.

A knock on her window pulls her from her sorrowful thoughts.

"Excuse me, Ms. Are you okay?" A tall, handsome gentleman with brass hair and a nice beard comes up to her window with an umbrella.

"Yeah..I'm just...I'm just having a shitty two days. To be totally honest" She says as she lowers her window.

"Well, ironically I'm a therapist, if you wanna talk." His grey eyes captivate her and she can't ignore that he is very good looking by nature.

"How do I know yer a therapist?" Reaching in his wallet, he pulls out a business card for a therapist by the name of Dr. Benjamin Cane. Smiling she gives him a slanted eye and raised eyebrow. "How do I know this is real?"

"Well shit, take my wallet." He literally hands her his wallet and everything has his name and face on it. "That suffice?"

"Yes, I suppose so...you can sit in my truck."

"Or you can come to my home office." Questioning this, Beth eventually agrees to his office and soon finds herself parked in the driveway of a gorgeous yellow house and soon sitting on a cliche black leather couch, as Ben sits in an armchair examining her. "So, yer name?"

"Beth Greene."

"Age?"

"26." She says and he chuckles. "Wh...what?"

"Nothing, it's just we're the same age. I never treated a patient that wasn't older than 17."

"Yer a child therapist?"

"Well that's mostly the range I work with yes. But I can speak with adults, Ms. Greene."

"Just Beth...."

"Now, why don't you lay back and we can begin." He takes out a notebook and she's hesitant, but soon lays down when he clicks his pen.

"Where should I start?"

"Where ever you feel will help you the most."

Where does she even begin? She wonders to herself and sighs.

"I guess I should start off with why I'm like this...and work my way to here...if you have time."

"Take as long as you need, that's what I'm here for. For you to find a better understanding to yerself."

"Well, I guess it really started at 7 years old..." She goes on to tell him about how her mother got cancer and passed away and later how her brother Shawn passed away on deployment to Iraq. She cries and screams at points when she feels overwhelmed and tired of this feeling of grief. When she first mentions meeting Daryl, Ben isn't phased by his presence, not until she gets to the arrangement. "So that's why I'm here..."

"What I'm hearing is pent up stress and a slight self esteem issue. You refuse his care for you because essentially it makes you feel better than you ever had and that scares you....does that sound correct?"

"Well...yeah...a bit. I guess I'm really just upset with losing Carter and the baby before Kensi. I mean, two babies...thats like cutting off my arm and... I want Daryl to understand that pain, but not have to feel it. I don't want him to just go out and adopt a baby, I want him to want to make a baby with me and to love me...That's selfish, isn't it?"

"A bit, but everyone has that right to it, when it's important. If you love this guy and want to have another baby with him, marry him, whatever- you need to let him know that and let him in. Instead of running away from him."

Just like that, her life was out back into perspective.