Rosie sank onto the sofa.
“We had a big lunch,” Eddie continued. “So we aren’t really hungry for dinner.”
Instantly Rosie’s suspicions were aroused. “Lunch?” she asked, nearly biting her tongue in an effort to keep from asking about Janice Lamond.
“Dad took Allison, Chris and me to an all-you-can-eat pizza place.”
Rosie smiled benignly through her outrage. Chris was Janice Lamond’s son and if he was over at the apartment, it went without saying that his mother had accompanied him.
“I need to go out for a while,” Rosie said, struggling to keep her voice even.
Eddie glanced away from the television screen and asked, “Are you going to buy a ham for Allie?”
“Yes,” she said, although the idea hadn’t occurred to her until Eddie mentioned it. Her destination was Zach’s apartment—so she could give him a piece of her mind. On the way home, she’d stop at the Albertson’s store to pick up a small canned ham in order to appease Allison.
Rosie felt as if she might explode before she reached Zach’s building. Normally she left this sort of unpleasantness in her attorney’s capable hands, but this couldn’t wait for Sharon Castor.
No soldier marched with stronger purpose than Rosie did as she made her way from the parking lot to Zach’s apartment. She braced herself, thinking Janice Lamond might be with him that very moment. She certainly wouldn’t put it past him. The two of them might even be in bed together. The thought sickened her, but she didn’t stop to analyze why.
When Zach opened the door to her fierce pounding, he looked stunned to see her. “Rosie! What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk,” she snapped.
“Now?”
“What’s the matter, Zach, do you have company?”
He moved aside, letting her into the apartment. Rosie stepped in and her stomach twisted with an expected knot of pain. His new place was sparsely furnished, but what there was had come from their home. Her husband had brought this other woman into his apartment to sit on furniture Rosie had shopped for, to use the very dishes she’d purchased and cherished and been forced to release.
“What do you want?” Zach asked, his voice guarded.
“As a personal favor to me,” she said carefully, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t entertain your girlfriend while the children are here—at least until the divorce is final.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Zach glared at her with such ferocity that she barely recognized his face.
“Janice was with you this afternoon.”
“What did you do, drill the children about my activities?” he demanded.
“No, I did not. Eddie said he didn’t want dinner because of all the pizza he ate at lunch with Chris.”
“And your point is?”
“I believe I’ve made that abundantly clear. If I need to bring up this matter with Sharon, then I will.”
“Go for it,” Zach said, a smirk on his face. “Make an even bigger fool of yourself than you already have. Personally, I couldn’t care less.”
Rosie refused to stand there and exchange insults with him, but it wasn’t beneath her to get in one last parting shot as she turned and started for the door. “I’d have to go a long way to top you.”
Zach slammed the door after her and she went back to the parking lot. Climbing into the car, Rosie found that her hands shook so badly she had to calm herself before driving.
Holding the steering wheel tightly, she squeezed her eyes shut in a desperate effort to keep from dissolving into tears.
Maryellen stepped into the A-line skirt and raised it over her hips only to discover she could no longer fasten the button at the waistline. She wasn’t even six months pregnant, and her normal clothes had already stopped fitting. It was all too clear that she needed to buy a few maternity outfits.
“You want the whole town to know, don’t you?” she said to her baby, placing a hand over the slight mound. Her doctor was paying special attention to this pregnancy because of Maryellen’s age. At thirty-five she was older than most of Dr. Abner’s first-time patients.
It wasn’t only her wardrobe that was about to change, but her entire life. She glanced around her home and envisioned what it would be like in a year’s time. Where her bookcase stood now there’d soon be a baby swing or a playpen; she didn’t know which. She’d need to find room in her compact kitchen for a high chair. Her second bedroom, which she now used as an office and craft room, would become the baby’s.
A sense of excitement filled her, unlike anything she’d ever experienced. This was her baby, her very own child. This time she’d do everything right. This time there wasn’t a man standing in the way.
High on enthusiasm, she reached for the phone and dialed her sister’s number. She felt closer to Kelly than she had in years. The weekend getaway had brought them together again, all three of them. How wise her mother had been to arrange it.
“I didn’t get you up, did I?” she asked when her sister answered.
Tyler bellowed in the background. “That’s a joke, right?”
Maryellen smiled. “You doing anything special for lunch?”
“Nothing in particular. What do you have in mind?”
“Can you meet me at the Pot Belly Deli?”
“Sure.”
Kelly had the luxury of being a stay-at-home mother. Paul and Kelly had waited years for this baby and were determined to make whatever sacrifices were necessary. That option—staying with her baby—wasn’t available to Maryellen. She’d have to find quality day care and wasn’t sure where to even start.
Just before noon, Kelly arrived at the gallery, pushing Tyler in his stroller. At nine months, the little boy sat upright, waving his chubby hands, cooing happily and directing the world from his seat.
“Let’s grab some soup from the deli and eat down by the waterfront,” Kelly suggested. It was a lovely spring day after a week of rain, and the fresh air would do them all good.
“Sounds like a great idea,” Maryellen told her. Practical, too, since it would be easier to amuse Tyler at the park than in a crowded restaurant.
Maryellen phoned in their order and her sister trekked down to grab a picnic table. Several other people had the same idea, but she’d secured a table for them by the time Maryellen got there.
Sitting across from her sister, Maryellen opened her container of chicken rice soup and stirred it with a plastic spoon. Cantankerous seagulls circled overhead, squawking for a handout, but Maryellen and Kelly ignored them.
“I wanted to ask you a few things about being pregnant,” she told her sister. “If you don’t mind.”
“Fire away.” Kelly licked the back of her spoon, looking childlike and mature at the same time. She removed the plastic wrap from her oyster crackers and gave them one by one to her eager son, who instantly stuffed them in his mouth.
Maryellen didn’t know what to ask first. For years she’d watched her friends marry and raise children. They all seemed so relaxed about it. So natural. She felt none of that. While excited and exhilarated about the prospect of motherhood, she shared none of their confidence. Kelly had waited years for a baby; surely she understood.
“Were you…afraid?” Maryellen asked.
“Terrified,” Kelly admitted. “I read every book I could get my hands on.”
“Me, too.” Her mother had raided the library shelves and given Maryellen a constant supply of the most recent books regarding pregnancy and birth.
“What happened when you brought Tyler home from the hospital?”
Kelly laughed and shook her head. “Go on to the next question.”
“Why?”
“Because Paul and I couldn’t agree on anything.”
Maryellen reached for a small cracker and chewed it. “I won’t have that problem.”
“Exactly. How are you doing for clothes? I have the cutest maternity tops. Would you like to borrow some?”
Maryellen nodd
ed.
“I’ll bring them over this weekend.”
“That would be great.” Maryellen’s heart warmed toward her sister.
“What about day care? You need to start thinking about that, especially with being single and all.”
That was, of course, another pressing concern. She had to think seriously about interviewing prospects and checking out centers.
“Listen,” Kelly said, leaning her elbow on the picnic table. “I could do it for the first couple of years.”
Maryellen was speechless. When she could talk again, she whispered, “You’d do that?”
“I need to check with Paul first, of course, but I don’t see why not. Another baby couldn’t possibly be that much extra work and I’m home, anyway. I’d like to help you, Maryellen. What are sisters for?”
Maryellen’s eyes filled with tears. This offer was completely unexpected. She looked away, not wanting her sister to know that she was fighting back emotion.
“You know what I realized the other day?” Maryellen asked when she was certain she could keep the tears out of her voice. “I was sitting in my kitchen, reading a magazine Mom recommended, and it dawned on me that…I was happy.”
Kelly reached for her hand. “I see it in you, too. I feel it.”
“I want this baby so much.” She pressed her palm against her midriff and closed her eyes. Lowering her head, she whispered, “I wanted my first baby, too.”
Her words were met with stunned silence.
“Your first baby?” Kelly asked, also in a whisper.
“I…I was pregnant when Clint and I got married. Oh, Kelly, I was young and incredibly stupid. It was an accident, but we should have known it would happen because we were so careless. Still—it was a shock.”
“What happened with the pregnancy?”
Maryellen looked out over the choppy blue waters of the cove. “Clint wanted me to have an abortion. He swore he loved me, but he wasn’t ready to be a father.”
“How could he even suggest such a thing?”
Maryellen’s throat grew thick, making speech almost impossible. “I couldn’t believe he’d want to get rid of our baby, but at that time in our lives, he felt a baby was…a nuisance.”
“You still married him.”
Maryellen nodded, feeling sick with guilt and with regret for what she’d done. “I…I loved Clint, or I thought I did. I told him I couldn’t have an abortion and that it didn’t matter if we got married or not. I was going to have my baby. In retrospect, I think he was terrified of having to pay child support and so he…he suggested we get married.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He’d marry me if I agreed to terminate the pregnancy. That was his way of proving his love, of showing me he was serious about our relationship. He insisted there’d be other pregnancies, other children.” She didn’t add that Clint had forced her to decide between him and the pregnancy. Either she married him right then and had the abortion, or he’d break off the relationship completely. Even now, all these years later, Maryellen couldn’t bring herself to tell anyone how she’d allowed herself to be manipulated.
“So you agreed?”
Maryellen nodded, her long hair falling forward over her shoulder. “I didn’t want to do it, but I loved Clint and I believed he loved me. So we ran off and immediately after a justice of the peace performed the ceremony, we drove to an abortion clinic. The whole time, Clint kept telling me this was for the best and that we were making the right decision.”
“Oh, Maryellen, you must’ve been so torn.”
“It wasn’t the right decision for me, and even while I was at the clinic, I knew that, but I went through with it, anyway. I kept telling myself I wouldn’t have the baby, but I’d have Clint.” Not much later she’d realized what a poor choice she’d made. Clint was controlling and manipulative, and before her marriage was a year old, Maryellen knew she had to get out.
“I never liked Clint and now I know why,” Kelly said, still holding tight to Maryellen’s hand.
“That’s the reason I’ve avoided being around children. That’s why I was the first one in any group to make disparaging remarks about kids. I pretended I was too sophisticated and mature to want anything to do with them when my heart ached the whole time for what I’d done. What I’d missed…”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’ve carried this guilt and shame all these years.” No one else knew, not her mother, not anyone. Maryellen had successfully hidden her ugly secret.
The child she carried now was as unplanned as her first, but this time she wasn’t going to repeat her mistakes. She wasn’t going to involve the baby’s father. Jon didn’t want the child. He’d made that plain before Christmas, when he’d asked her about the possibility of a pregnancy. She’d seen the relief in his eyes when she assured him everything was all right. This time she was protecting her unborn child.
Jack sat at his desk late Thursday afternoon, reviewing an article submitted by Charlotte Jefferson for the Seniors’ Page. It seemed to him that her opinions were becoming more and more political. Ever since her surgery, Charlotte had been on a mission to get a free health clinic in Cedar Cove. He had to hand it to her; she found a way to mention the need for such a clinic in every issue.
With his pencil in hand he started making the changes, cutting words, rearranging phrases for clarity and adding polish to the piece. Charlotte wasn’t a natural writer but her skills had improved dramatically in the last year.
His phone buzzed and Jack absently reached for it. “Griffin,” he said.
“Dad, I want you to sing into the phone.”
“You want me to what?” His son had made some unusual requests over the past few months, but this was one of the strangest.
“Sing. Remember how you used to sing to me when I was a kid?”
As though Jack could forget. He’d sung to Eric when the boy was strapped to a hospital bed, incredibly weak from the devastation of his disease. The drugs had been experimental at the time, but they were Eric’s only chance to beat leukemia.
“Just sing! We’re desperate.”
Jack could hear the two baby boys wailing in the background and grinned. Glancing around to make sure no one was listening, he started humming a little ditty he’d learned as a boy. “Two Irishmen, two Irishmen…”
The cries increased and Eric got back on the line. “You’re no help.”
“What are you doing in town?” Jack demanded.
“Shelly needed me.” Tedd and Todd, too, from the sound of it. “You have no idea how much work two babies can be.”
“Shouldn’t you be in Reno?” His son had agonized over the decision about following through with the transfer to Nevada. As soon as his twin sons were born, Eric wanted to be with them and Shelly. He used some of his vacation time, and for two weeks he’d stayed at the apartment with Shelly and the babies, but he couldn’t delay starting work any longer. Now he flew back each weekend for two days. At Shelly’s insistence, the twins had gone through DNA testing, and what had been obvious to Jack the minute they were born was now official. Eric was the father.
“Dad!” He shouted to be heard above the crying twins. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here,” Jack assured him.
“Do you think you could get Olivia to marry me?”
“Just a minute, son. If anyone’s marrying Olivia, it’ll be me.”
He smiled at Eric’s laughter. “So, you and Shelly have decided to get married?” he said.
“Yeah,” Eric replied. “It’s about time, don’t you think?”
“About ten months later than it should’ve been, but you didn’t ask my opinion.”
“Shelly’s getting ready to move to Reno with me.”
Jack hated the thought of being separated from his son yet again, hated the thought of missing out on his grandchildren, but he very much approved of Shelly. “So you’re going to take my grandsons away from me.”
“You can
visit anytime you want.”
“Count on it,” Jack told him.
They ended the conversation a few minutes later, after Jack agreed to ask Olivia about performing the ceremony for Eric and Shelly. Actually, he was grateful for such a good reason to see his favorite judge. They’d been spending a lot of time together lately, and that was a trend he wanted to continue.
As soon as he could leave the office, he headed for Olivia’s house. He found her working in her rose garden in the backyard. She’d recently planted a row of bushes, which she pampered to a ludicrous degree—in his opinion, anyway. But then, he believed in plants that looked after themselves. “Like weeds?” she’d asked scornfully when he’d shared his gardening philosophy. Today she wore a large straw hat that shaded her eyes, a pair of faded jeans and a worn man’s shirt. Jack stopped to admire the view of her bent over the rose bushes.
“I wish you’d spoil me as much as you do those roses of yours.”
“Hush,” she chastised. “I’ve just planted these and they need my attention.”
“So do I,” Jack complained.
“Stick around and I’ll feed you dinner.”
He grinned, glad of the invitation. His relationship with Olivia was complicated. If the twins hadn’t decided to make their entrance into the world when they did, he might have coaxed her into bed with him. But when he’d returned from the hospital, she’d had time to think, time to assess whether this was the right step for them. Her decision was that, yes, eventually it should and would happen—but unlike Jack, she wasn’t in a hurry.
In the weeks since, he’d done his best to shower her with love, much as she did those fancy roses she’d planted.
“I heard from Eric this afternoon,” he told her. “He asked if you’d be willing to marry him and Shelly.”
“Of course.” Olivia reached for a large watering can and sprinkled the freshly fertilized earth. “Did he tell you when they’d like to do it?”
“No, but that’s a minor detail, don’t you think?”
“Seeing how long it’s taken him to get to this point, I can’t help agreeing.” She raised her hand to her face to brush away a stray hair and in the process smeared dirt across her cheek. Jack looked down to hide a smile.