Forever and a Day

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Who was he?” Hope asked as they rolled their sleeping bags out, side by side, within six feet of the fire. Some of the other people had small tents, but most were stretching out under the stars.

  “Who?” Carly countered, hedging. She didn’t know whether talking about Mark would ease her heartache or get her started on another crying jag.

  “The guy who left you with that puppy-loose-on-a-freeway look in your eyes, that’s who.”

  Carly sat down and squirmed into her bag. “Just somebody I used to work with,” she said. And sleep with, added a voice in her mind. And love.

  Hope was looking up at the splendor of the night sky, her hands cupped behind her head. Her voice was too low to carry any farther than Carly’s ears. “You’re going to have his baby, aren’t you?”

  For a moment the ground seemed to rock beneath Carly’s sleeping bag. Her hands moved frantically to her flat abdomen, and her mind raced through the pages of a mental calendar.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered, squeezing her eyes shut.

  “Sorry,” Hope said sincerely. “I thought you’d already figured it out.”

  Carly sank her teeth into her lower lip. The nausea, the volatile emotions—she should have known.

  “What are you going to do?” Hope asked.

  “I have no idea,” Carly managed to say. But there were things she did know. She was going to have the baby, and she was going to raise it herself. Beyond that, she couldn’t think.

  “You should tell him, whoever he is,” Hope said.

  “Yeah,” Carly agreed halfheartedly. Mark had a right to know he was going to have another child, but she wasn’t sure she had the courage to tell him. He might think she was trying to rope him into a relationship he didn’t want, or he could hire lawyers and take the child away from her. After all, he’d planned to sue Jeanine for custody of Nathan.

  Hope was quiet after that, and Carly lay huddled in her sleeping bag, imagining the ordeals of labor and birth with no one to lend moral support. After a long time she fell asleep.

  She woke with the birds, went off to the woods to be sick and began another day.

  That morning her raft overturned, and she and Hope and eight other people were dumped into the icy river. As Carly fought the current, her mouth and nose filled with water, her eyes blinded by the spray, she prayed. Please, God, don’t let anything happen to my baby.

  She made it to shore, half-drowned and gasping for breath, and so did everyone else who’d been spilled out of the raft, but their sleeping bags and backpacks were gone.

  A camaraderie had formed between the travelers, though, and the others pooled their extra clothes to help those who’d lost their packs. Rambo had spare blankets in the lead raft.

  “This is going to make one hell of a story,” Hope said as she stood on the shore beside Carly, soaking wet, snapping pictures as the overturned raft was hauled toward the bank.

  Carly could only nod. When she got back to the office, she was going to ask Mr. Clark for a nice, easy assignment—something like skydiving, or jumping over nineteen cars on a motorcycle.

  For all of it, she was sorry the next afternoon when the trip ended and pickup trucks hauled the exhausted, exhilarated rafters back to the original camp.

  Since Carly had lost everything but the clothes she’d been wearing when the raft tipped over the day before, she was spared the task of packing her gear. She and Hope stood by her car, talking.

  “Be sure you send me those clippings, now,” Hope said as the two women hugged in farewell.

  Carly smiled and nodded. She was never going to forget what a good friend Hope had been to her on this crazy trip. “Take care,” she said, slipping behind the wheel of her car.

  That day’s spate of morning sickness had already passed, and Carly was possessed of a craving for something sweet. She stopped at a doughnut shop and bought two maple bars that were sagging under the weight of their frosting.

  “Here’s to surviving,” she said, taking a bite.

  The drive back to Portland was long and uneventful. When Carly arrived, she staggered into the bathroom, without bothering to look through her mail or play her telephone messages, and took a long, steaming-hot shower.

  When she’d washed away the lingering chill of the river and the aches and pains inherent in sleeping on the ground, she ate another maple bar, brushed her teeth and collapsed into bed.

  Arriving at the paper the next morning, she immediately shut herself up with her computer and started outlining her article. She barely raised her eyes when Mike Fisher, the photographer who’d been sent on the trip with her but kept mostly to himself, brought in the prints.

  Carly flipped through them, smiling. Her favorite showed her crawling out of the river with her hair hanging in her face in dripping tendrils and every line in her body straining for breath. And for her talent, ladies and gentlemen, she thought whimsically, Miss United States will nearly drown.

  She made a mental note to ask for a copy of the photograph, then went back to work. Almost as an afterthought, she asked Emmeline to send her clippings to Hope in San Francisco.

  A full week went by before Carly allowed herself to dream of moving to California and joining the staff of one of the most successful magazines published on the West Coast. When Hope called and offered her a job at an impressive salary, Carly accepted without hesitation.

  Maybe she couldn’t have Mark Holbrook, but nobody was going to take San Francisco away from her.

  CHAPTER TEN

  JANET GAVE CARLY a tearful hug in the parking lot behind their building. “Be happy, okay?” she said.

  Carly nodded. Happiness was a knack she hadn’t quite mastered yet, but she had the baby to look forward to and the challenge of another new job in another new city. “You, too,” she replied. Janet was dating Jim Benson regularly, and things looked promising for them.

  The two women parted, and Carly got behind the wheel of her car and began the drive to San Francisco. She would live in a hotel until she found an apartment, and her dad was breaking all precedent to fly out for a short visit.

  Carly wanted to tell him about the baby in person.

  As she wended her way out of Portland, she considered his possible reactions. After all, in Don Barnett’s day women just didn’t have babies and raise them alone—they married the father, preferably before but sometimes after conception.

  Mentally Carly began to rehearse what she would say. By the time she drove into San Francisco two days later, she had her story down pat.

  When Carly checked in at the St. Dominique Hotel, she was told that her father had arrived and wanted her to call his room immediately.

  He met her in the hotel lobby, looking like a real-estate agent in his black slacks, white shirt and blue polyester sports jacket. His graying brown hair was still thick, and his skin was tanned. Carly was pleased to realize he’d been spending a reasonable amount of time out of doors, away from the filling station.

  She hugged him. “Hi, Dad.”

  Don kissed her lightly on the forehead. “Hello, doll,” he answered, and his voice was gruff with emotion.

  Carly was tired from her trip, and she wanted to have something light to eat and lie down for a while, but she knew her dad had been eagerly awaiting her arrival. She couldn’t let him down. “How was the flight out?” she asked as she dropped her room key into her purse.

  He grinned broadly. “Wasn’t bad at all. In fact, there was this cute little stewardess passing out juice—”

  Carly laughed. “They call them ‘flight attendants’ now, Dad. But I can see that you’re up-to-date on your flirting.”

  He smiled at that, but there was a look in his eyes that Carly found disturbing. “For all this success you’re having,” he said as they gravitated toward one of the hotel’s restaurants, “there’s something really wrong. What is it
, button?”

  Tears were never very far from the surface during these hectic days, and Carly had to blink them back. She waited until they’d been seated in a quiet corner of the restaurant before answering. “Dad, I hate to be so blunt, but it wouldn’t be fair to beat around the bush. I’m pregnant, and there’s no prospect of a wedding.”

  Don was quiet for a long moment, his expression unreadable. But then he reached out and closed a strong, work-callused hand over Carly’s. “That character with the Pulitzer Prize?” he asked. “I knew I should have blacked his eyes.”

  Carly couldn’t help smiling at her dad’s phrasing. “That’s him,” she said. Her eyes filled, and this time there was nothing she could do about it.

  “Does he know?”

  “Not yet. I’ll send him a registered letter after I’m settled.”

  Her father looked nonplussed. “That’s what I like to see—the warm, human touch.”

  Carly averted her eyes. “It’s the best I can do for now. I’m taking things one minute at a time.”

  “You in love with him?”

  Carly sighed. “Yeah,” she admitted after a long moment. “But I’ll make it through this, Dad.” She paused, thinking of that photograph of her crawling out of the Deschutes River. “I’m a survivor.”

  “There’s more to life than just surviving, Carly. You shouldn’t be hurting like this—you deserve the best of everything.”

  “You’re prejudiced,” Carly informed him as a waiter brought menus and water.

  Don studied his choices and chose a clubhouse sandwich while Carly selected a salad. During the meal they discussed the latest gossip in Ryerton and Carly’s prospects of finding an apartment at a rent she could afford.

  “You need money?” her dad asked when they’d finished eating and were riding up in the elevator.

  Carly shook her head. “There’s still some from the endorsements I did,” she answered.

  “But a baby costs a lot,” Don argued.

  She waggled a finger at him. “I’ll handle it, Dad,” she said.

  At the door of her room, he kissed her forehead. “You go on in and take a nap,” he ordered. “As for me, I’m headed over to take the tour at the chocolate factory.”

  Carly touched his face. “We have a date for dinner, handsome—don’t you dare stand me up.”

  “Wouldn’t think of it,” he answered. “It isn’t every day a fella gets to go out on the town with a former Miss United States on his arm.”

  With a laugh and a shake of her head, Carly ducked inside her room and closed the door.

  There were a dozen yellow rosebuds waiting in a vase on the desk. The card read, Welcome aboard, Carly. I’m looking forward to working with you. Hope.

  Carly drew in the luscious scent of the roses and made a mental note to call Hope and thank her as soon as she’d had a shower and a brief nap. When she awakened, though, it was late, and she had to rush to dress and get her makeup done.

  Wearing a pink-and-white floral skirt and blouse, Carly met her father in the lobby, bringing along one of the rosebuds for his lapel. They had dinner at a place on the Wharf, then took in a new adventure movie.

  The next morning Carly called Hope first thing, thanked her for the flowers and made arrangements to meet for lunch. Hope said she’d had her assistant working on finding an apartment for Carly, and there were several good prospects for her to look at.

  “You’re spoiling me,” Carly protested.

  “Nothing is too good for you, kid. Besides, I want to hook you before you find out what a slave driver I am.”

  Carly laughed, and the two women rang off. Three hours later they met at one of the thousand-and-one fish places on the Wharf for lunch.

  “I can see where Carly gets her good looks,” Hope said to Don when the two had been introduced.

  Don blushed with pleasure, and Carly reminded herself that he was still a young man. Half the single women in Ryerton were probably chasing him.

  Lunch was pleasant, but it ended quickly, since Hope had a busy schedule back at the magazine’s offices. Carly promised to report for duty at nine sharp the following Monday, then accepted the list of apartments Hope’s assistant had checked out for her.

  She and her father spent the afternoon taxiing from one place to another, and the last address on the list met Carly’s requirements. It was a large studio with a partial view of the water, and it cost more to lease for six months than her dad had paid to buy his first house outright.

  Carly left a deposit with the resident manager, then she and Don went back to the hotel.

  She was exhausted, and after calling the moving company in Portland to give them her new address, she ordered a room-service dinner for herself and Don. They had a good time together seated at the standard round table beside the window, watching a movie on TV while they ate.

  “You going to be okay if I go back home tomorrow?” Don asked when the movie was over and room service had collected the debris from their meal. “I hate to leave you way out here all by yourself. It’s not like you couldn’t find somebody in Ryerton who’d be proud to be your husband—”

  Carly laid her index finger to his lips. “Not another word, Gramps. San Francisco is my town—I know it in my bones—and I’m going to stay here and make a life for myself and my baby.”

  Respect glimmered in her father’s ice-blue eyes. “Maybe you could come home for Christmas,” he said.

  “Maybe,” Carly answered, her throat thick.

  Her dad left then, and Carly took a brief bath, then crawled into bed and fell asleep. She didn’t open her eyes again until the reception desk gave her a wake-up call.

  Carly and Don had breakfast together, then he kissed her goodbye and set out for the airport in a cab. Even though he’d obviously been reluctant to leave her, he’d been eager, too. The filling station was the center of his life, and he wanted to get back to it.

  At loose ends, Carly went to the offices of Californian Viewpoint to tell Hope she’d found an apartment.

  Hope was obviously rushed, but she took the time to show Carly the office assigned to her.

  “You didn’t forget,” Carly began worriedly, “that I’m pregnant?”

  Hope shook her head, and her expression was kind and watchful. “I didn’t forget, Barnett. And your dad told me who the father is—I must say, I’m impressed. With genes like yours and Holbrook’s, that kid of yours is going to have it all.”

  Carly laid her hands to her stomach and swallowed. “I should skin Dad for spilling the beans like that. When, pray tell, did he manage to work that little tidbit into the conversation?”

  Hope smiled. “When we were having lunch and you went to the restroom. Does Mark know you’re here in San Francisco, Carly?”

  “No,” Carly said quickly. Guiltily. “And he doesn’t know I’m pregnant yet, either, so if this is one of those small-world things and he’s a friend of yours, kindly don’t tell him.”

  Cocking her head to one side and folding her arms, Hope replied, “It is a small world, Carly. I went to college with Mark.”

  Carly sighed. “I suppose that means I’m going to be running into him a lot,” she said.

  Hope was on her way to the door. “Worse,” she said, tossing the word back over one shoulder. “I want you to interview him about his new play.” With that, Carly’s new boss disappeared, giving her employee no chance to protest.

  There was no escape, and Carly knew it. She’d signed a lease on an expensive apartment and she needed her job. She was going to have to face Mark Holbrook, in person, and tell him she was carrying his child.

  All through the weekend she practiced what she would say and how she’d say it. She’d be cool, dignified, poised. Mark could have visitation rights if he wanted them, she would tell him. If he offered to pay child support, she would thank him politely
and accept.

  Despite two solid days of rehearsal, though, Carly was not prepared when she rang the doorbell at Mark’s town house at ten-thirty Monday morning.

  Nathan answered, and his freckled face lit up when he saw who’d come to call. “Carly!” he cried.

  She smiled at him, near tears again. “Yeah,” she answered. “Learn any good card tricks lately?”

  The child nodded importantly and stepped back to admit her. “You’re here to see my dad, aren’t you?” he asked, his voice and expression hopeful. “He’s really going to be surprised—he was expecting a reporter.”

  He’s going to be more surprised than you’d ever guess, Carly thought, but she smiled at Nathan and nodded. “Where is he?”

  “I’ll get him,” Nathan offered eagerly.

  Carly shook her head. “I’d rather not be announced, if that’s okay with you.”

  The boy looked puzzled. “All right. Dad’s in his office—it’s up those stairs.”

  Carly drew a deep breath, muttered a prayer and marched up the stairway and along the hall.

  Mark was sitting at his computer, his back to her, his hands cupped behind his head.

  Carly felt a pang that nearly stopped her heartbeat. “Hello, Mark,” she said when she could trust herself to talk.

  He swiveled in his chair and then launched himself from it, his face a study in surprise.

  All weekend Carly had been hoping that when she actually saw Mark, she’d find herself unmoved. The reality was quite the opposite; if anything, she loved him more than she had before.

  His expressive brown eyes moved over her, pausing ever so briefly, it seemed to Carly, at her expanding waistline. “What are you doing here?” he asked, his tone lacking both unkindness and warmth.

  Carly shrugged. “I’m supposed to interview you for Californian Viewpoint.”

  “What?”

  “I work there,” she explained, wondering how she could speak so airily when her knees were about to give out.

  “You’ve living in San Francisco?”

  She nodded.

  “Oh.” Mark looked distracted for a moment, then said abruptly, “Sit down. Please.”