“What do you want to know?”
“What were you going to do when it was time for you to deliver?”
“I was going to deliver at home. I had been reading a lot on the subject. Once I had an idea of what the process would be like, I started bringing stuff from the hospital over to the house. I knew I would never make it there when the time came. Besides, the hospital, as you discovered, is somewhat spooky all big and empty. The halls echoed. The shadows were far too long. Sorry.” Eve’s description had brought Lydia’s goose bumps back.
“Do you think you could deliver my baby?”
“Huh...” Eve stared at her in amazement. “I mean, yeah, I could. I guess. I think. If you wanted me to.” The question threw her off balance.
“I was thinking we could set up some kind of delivery room in the family room, I guess. It is the biggest room in the house. It also has nearly floor to ceiling windows. It should be the most comfortable room. I mean, if that was all right.”
“Yeah, I guess.” She was still too stunned by the request to give a better response.
“Are you sure? I mean…”
“I’m not saying I won’t be sad, but it’ll be all right. I’ve become very resilient these last couple of years.”
“Thank you,” Lydia said in near tears as she pulled Eve into a hug.
“You’re very welcome.” Eve hugged her back a little reluctantly. “Tell William that I’m going to need help moving the equipment very soon. You look like you are going to explode.”
“Thanks. I do feel like I’m about to burst.” She laughed as she rubbed her large, round belly. Eve laughed with her, trying to sound like she meant it.
When they got back to Vera and Caleb, Vera was eyeing them suspiciously. Will called out their names before either one could explain, not that either one looked like they were about to.
That night, as they were getting ready for bed, Vera broached the question. She had waited long enough for Eve to tell her. The suspense of it was annoying.
“So, what did Lydia want talk to you about today?” Vera was pulling back the blankets on the bed, while Eve occupied the bathroom.
“Huh?” Eve’s confusion was genuine. She had purposely forgotten about the conversation she had had with Lydia earlier that day.
“This morning. At the Lowe’s. You, Lydia, secret conversation?”
“Oh. She wanted to know what I had planned to do if I had gone full term. I told her I was going to deliver here, at home. I had read as many books as I could possibly read on the subject. She then asked me if I would deliver her baby. Of course, I had to say yes. Well, I didn’t have to say yes, but I felt I should say yes. Speaking of which, I need to talk to William about that tomorrow.” She came out of the bathroom at that moment, ready for bed.
“Are you going to be all right doing that?” Vera asked, walking over to her, standing close but not touching her. She was waiting, watching for an emotional reaction.
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, it won’t be easy, but I think I can put my personal feelings aside and do this for her.”
Vera heard the slight tremor in her voice, the cue she was waiting for. She lightly put her arms around Eve in comfort.
“You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. You could teach me everything you know.”
Eve hugged her back, and said, “I know, but I want to. Either way, I have to teach you; I need some help. William won’t be in the right frame of mind to be of any kind of assistance. And I don’t actually know what I’m doing. Reading a book is much different that actually doing it.”
The two pulled away from each other, though Eve left her hands on Vera’s upper arms.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For staying with me. For just being here this last year.”
“I should be the one thanking you. You let me stay.”
“I know, but still, thank you.” She leaned in, lightly kissed Vera on the forehead and hugged her again.
-----
Two weeks later, Lydia was in labor. Her water broke around three-thirty in the afternoon. By two in the morning of the following day, she was ready to start pushing. An hour later, a beautiful little girl came into their tranquil little world. She had lovely thick, black hair and big, blue eyes. William and Lydia named her Cordelia, but settled on calling her Delia for short.
After she had cleaned the baby, Eve handed her over to her mother for feeding. “When she is done feeding, she needs to go under the heat lamp. When her temperature is high enough, bathe her, then put her back under the lamp. In the morning, I will come and give her shots. I’m going to wake Vera now. She is going to sit with you in case you need any help while I get some rest,” Eve instructed, trying not to fall on the floor from exhaustion.
“Poor thing. She tried to sit up for this. Caleb too,” Lydia said, remembering watching Vera nod off to sleep in one of the recliners Eve and Will had brought into the room. Caleb had long been asleep in her lap. Around one, Eve had woken her and sent her to bed with promises of waking her when the baby got there.
“Well, if you hadn’t taken so long to dilate, she might have been awake for the birth. But no you had to take nearly twelve hours to do this.” Eve and Lydia broke into laugher.
The next day, around noon, Vera and Caleb woke Eve. Caleb having no clue that she had been the one who had delivered the baby, bounced on the bed saying, “Aunt E, Uncle Will and Aunt Lee found a baby.”
“I know, honey,” she said, stretching as he snuggled up with her. He was nearly ready for a nap himself, but he was too excited to go down peacefully.
“Caleb has been so cute around her,” Vera told her, sitting down beside her on the bed. “He has spent the whole day watching her every move.”
After a round of tickling, Eve got up to clean up then she followed them downstairs.
“How are we today?” she asked Lydia, sounding very professional, very doctor-like. She nearly laughed aloud at herself.
“Tired.”
“Is she eating well?”
“Oh, yes.” Lydia lightly rubbed her sore breast.
Eve did a quick check up on mom and baby. Vera made lunch. Afterwards, they proceeded to make little Delia very mad by getting her prints and giving her shots. The shots actually upset Caleb more than they had the baby. Though, oddly enough, the only time he acted the least bit jealous was when Will had Delia.
Will was the only male Caleb remembers being around, so he saw him as a father figure. When Will had her, Caleb would kind of stand there looking at him. You could see the frustration in his eyes. He wanted to be upset with Will, but he loved Delia so much that he couldn’t be.
“What’s the matter, little man?” Will asked him as he slowly rocked Delia to sleep, as Eve checked on Lydia.
“I don’t think he likes you giving so much attention to the baby,” Eve said, eyeing Caleb curiously.
Readjusting Delia in his arms, Will called Caleb over to sit with them. With some hesitation, he crawled up into Will’s lap. There the three of them sat until Delia got hungry again.
-----
As the weeks went by, Eve, Vera, and William finished Lydia’s home for her. Delia grew, changed, and became the center of their world. At first, Eve worried about how Caleb would react to William giving all of his attention to the new baby, but he seemed to be dealing with it. Every once in a while she could see the jealousy in his eyes. This jealously didn’t last long, fortunately. Once Lydia and Will had moved into their own home, he became the center of the world in Eve’s home again, and all the jealousy left him.
Adjusting to having neighbors wasn’t hard for any of them. They were comforted to have actual people in the neighborhood. Sooner than they thought, they all fell into a new routine with each other and life went on.
Part III: Life After
So much time was lost.
So many opportunities
thrown away.
It is all my fault.
I neve
r stopped to listen,
To calm down,
To seize the moment.
I let it all just die away.
Now I am left with fading memories.
Memories that are blurred watercolors
I wish I had held on to.
---Memories
I – Airplane
By the end of that first year the Sizemores arrived, the Village of Richardson, a title Eve gave the once-booming city shortly after Delia was born, had started to grow. Just as Eve, Caleb, and the rest were getting used to having people other than themselves to speak to, the distant sound of an airplane broke through the silence of the world around them.
Vera and Will were working in town cleaning on the day the plane landed in Kingston. Will had been obsessed with cleaning up the city ever since his daughter had come into the world. Lydia told Eve that it had something to do with him not wanting Delia growing up seeing the world the way it was. Eve and Vera usually swapped days helping him, and on this particular day Eve was with Lydia and the babies working at home. Will and Vera heard it before they did though.
“Do you hear that?” Will asked, loading a body into the back of a garbage truck. He looked around the neighborhood first thinking the noise was coming from one of the houses, but as it grew louder, he looked toward the sky.
“Yeah, I do. What is it?” Vera asked, looking around in every direction unsure of what the sound was or where it could be coming from.
“It sounds like a...”
“But it cannot be. Can it?” She followed his gaze skyward, straining her eyes to see something, anything.
At the same moment Will and Vera were looking into the sky, searching for the reason behind the new noise, Eve and Lydia were carrying the kids outside to play. The two women didn’t register the noise right away, but the baby began to whine and Caleb latched onto Eve’s leg, shaking with fear.
“What is it Aunt E?” he cried.
“What is what?” she asked, looking around confused because there was nothing unfamiliar in the yard to cause him to be scared.
“Eve, listen,” Lydia whispered lightly, grabbing her arm to stop her from stepping off the porch.
“Is that an airplane?” Eve whispered back, squinting her eyes toward the sky.
“Yeah, I think so,” she raised her voice though still not seeing the plane.
“What is it E?” Caleb cried, trying desperately to climb up her leg.
“It is an airplane, baby. Like the ones in your picture book.” She picked him up before he could pull her jeans off her and turned to go back to the house to get his book.
“Sounds like they are flying kind of low, doesn’t it?” Lydia craned her neck into odd angels trying to get a good view of the midmorning sky and the plane.
“I don’t know. I haven’t had many experiences with planes.” Eve turned back around forgetting about the book when she didn’t see it lying out on the coffee table in the family room.
“I think they are. Isn’t there an airport nearby?”
“Over in Kingston. Do you think we should drive over there?”
“Not with the kids. We should radio Will and Vera and have them go.” Lydia had just turned to go back into the house to the CB radio when they heard Will’s truck turning onto their road.
“Lydia, wait. I hear the truck.” Eve grabbed her arm to stop her from going into the house.
A few seconds later Will and Vera were pulling up in front of the house. Unfortunately, by the time they arrived the sound of the plane had dissipated.
“Did you guys hear it?” Vera shouted, practically falling out of the truck in excitement.
“Yes. I’m guessing the two of you did as well,” Eve said, meeting them halfway down the front walk.
“Not only did we hear it, we saw it.” The excitement in Vera’s voice outweighed the terror that trembled there as well.
“We think they may have been headed for the Kingston Airport,” Will said, pulling off his coveralls and hanging them over the porch railing. “I was thinking that we should head over there and check it out.”
“Lydia and I were just talking about that.”
“Not all of us should go. Someone should stay with the children.” Lydia carried Delia over to the playpen on the front porch then turned, looked at Will, and continued, “This is me saying I don’t want to go.”
He smiled and nodded at her.
“I’ll go if Lydia will watch Caleb,” Eve volunteered.
“I’ll watch him. He may not want to stay with me, but I will watch him.”
“He’ll stay with me. I really don’t want to go either,” Vera said, taking a sleepy Caleb from Eve. All of her excitement was gone now and the reality had settled in, letting the fear take over.
“We should go armed,” Will said, going into the house to collect a few rifles.
The drive to the airport took them fifteen minutes. Eve noticed that the road was clear all the way to the airport. She was surprised, though; she hadn’t been this far east in nearly two years. Another team had had this section of town, and she hadn’t needed to come in this direction for a number of years.
The parking lot of the airport was nearly empty as well. In the front lot there were a few rental cars parked along the southwest fence. As they drove around to the back of the airport, they saw a few fuel trucks, four large jet engine airplanes, and two small cargo planes. All four large planes and one small plane lined perfectly the field past the runway.
“Is that the plane do you think?” Will asked, pointing to the second cargo plane parked at the end of the runway.
“I’m not sure. I haven’t been here since the…I haven’t been to Kingston, let alone the airport in years.”
“Do you want to check it out with me or wait in the car?”
“I’ll get out. I have protection, granted I haven’t used it in a while,” she noted, pulling up her pants leg to remove the gun she had holstered there.
“Just be careful that you don’t shoot yourself or me.”
“I’m not that rusty.”
Cautiously approaching the plane, William read the name on the side, Cessna Caravan. When he got to the front, he put his hand over where the engine should be. “This is the plane. The engine is still hot.”
“Then they are probably inside. Let’s go back around to the entrance. We’ll check the terminal to see if they are still here.”
Back in the front parking lot, Will pulled into a parking spot a little ways away from the front entrance. As they got out of the truck and were turning to go inside, they saw three men, young, probably mid to late twenties, standing in the doorway to the entrance of the airport. Everyone stood in silence staring at one another. No one moved. No one seemed to even blink for fear that the others were an illusion and would disappear.
Finally, Eve took a few steps forward. “Hello. Welcome to Kingston,” she greeted them, nervously gripping her gun, half-aiming at the men, half not. She was mentally chiding herself for such a stupid greeting.
The group of men moved closer together and begun whispering amongst themselves. All three men were about the same height and had roughly the same dark brown hair. At first glance, from this distance, someone might have thought the men were brothers.
After a few bits of conversing between them, the man in the middle started to walk toward Eve and Will. Eve raised the gun and this time took aim at the approaching man. He raised his hands up above his head. The others behind him released their weapons from their holsters just as William did.
“Hold it,” the guy walking toward Eve shouted over his shoulder. He continued to make his way to her.
Eve began to lightly tremble. Mustering all the control she could, she tried to steady her hold on the gun while swallowing down the acidy vomit trying to crawl up her throat.
“I’m not armed,” the brown haired guy walking toward her announced.
“I am,” she replied, trying to sound calm. She was scared. Despite how ruggedly good
looking he was, and she was shocked she registered this fact at that moment, there was no telling how dangerous he was.
He nodded his head as if to say that he could see that.
“My name is Weston Kiel. Wes for short.”
“Eve. Eve McPeters. That’s William Sizemore,” she said, nodding backwards over her shoulder at Will who was at that moment walking toward her.
Turning slightly around, Wes motioned for the others in his group to come to him.
“How did you know to come here?” Eve asked, eyeing his body and trying to convince herself she was doing it to see what kind of weapons he had on him and not to actually check him out.
“We didn’t. We were just flying over when we saw smoke,” he said, giving her a devastating smile.
“The dumpster,” Eve and William said in unison.
“The what?” he asked, looking back and forth between the two.
“Dumpster. We keep a fire burning in a dumpster near my house.” When Will and Lydia moved in, they agreed that they needed to move the dumpster, so they had picked it up with the garbage truck and drove it to the end of the street, half-blocking the only entrance to their cul de sac.
He nodded, unsure if he truly understood what she was talking about. When the other guys reached him, he introduced them. “This is Loui Raines and Antonio Marona. Guys, meet Eve McPeters and William Sizemore.”
Seeing the men up close Eve wondered how she could have thought they were brothers; they looked nothing alike. The one named Loui was over six foot tall with nearly black hair and a pale white complexion, and Antonio was just under six foot with dark brown hair and skin a golden brown, a natural tan.
“Will, is everything all right?” Lydia’s voice came crackling from the truck’s CB radio and breaking into the silence that had befallen the group after the introductions where made.
Not turning his back or his gun on the three men, William back stepped toward the vehicle.
“Yeah honey, we’re all right,” he said reassuringly into the CB when he got back to the truck.
Alone Page 20
