Fixer-Upper

by Linda Seed

  Martina thought so, too. Cooper House rarely got used by groups of people—at least, by anyone other than Alexis—and the house clearly had been made to provide hospitality, to accommodate large groups for social occasions. Martina looked around with satisfaction as Russo relatives and Sofia’s friends talked, drank, and mingled contentedly in front of the fireplace.

  Martina went to Sofia to check on her.

  “Oh, my God, thank you. I can’t believe it. You really saved the day.” Sofia’s eyes were glimmering with unshed tears of happiness. “When Patrick told me about Neptune—”

  “We didn’t want you to know until you had to know,” Martina said. “We thought you’d freak out and say it was a sign.”

  “I would have,” she admitted.

  “Well, it is a sign,” Martina said. “It’s a sign that whatever comes up, we can handle it.”

  “You can. Thank you so much.” Sofia gave Martina a big, tight hug before going to greet some guests who had just come in.

  Martina made the rounds, checking on everything and seeing things were under control. She popped her head into the kitchen to ask if there was anything she could do to help with the food.

  “Everything under control in here?” she asked.

  “Yes.” Bianca’s face looked tight as she stood over a pot of sauce, stirring and tasting.

  “Are you sure?” Martina frowned. “You don’t look so great.”

  “Thanks. That’s flattering.”

  “That’s not what I mean. It’s just ... You don’t look like you feel that great.”

  “I’m fine,” Bianca said. “Could you check on the garlic bread?”

  The rest of the event went well. Guests from out of town found Cooper House without incident, no one got into an accident on the rainy roads, no one got excessively drunk, and the food was excellent. Sofia opened her gifts, exclaiming over the crystal candlesticks, the Italian linens, and the occasional off-color gag gift suggesting what Sofia and Patrick might or might not get up to on the wedding night.

  Sofia glowed, not just because she was beautiful—which she was—but because she was happy. Patrick made her happy.

  “I’m glad she’s marrying you.” Martina gave Patrick’s arm a squeeze as they watched Sofia open the gifts. It wasn’t traditional for the groom to be at the wedding shower, but Patrick had wanted to share in the excitement, and who was going to tell him no?

  “I’m glad, too,” he said.

  Halfway through the gift-opening, when the lunch dishes were being cleared away and the cake was being set up on the table, Martina looked around the room and frowned.

  “Where’s Bianca?” she asked Benny.

  “When she finished cooking, she said she needed to lie down for a bit. I think Chris put her in one of the guest bedrooms.”

  There were so many of those, Martina thought, it could take all day to find her.

  “Is she okay?” Martina asked. “Earlier, I thought she looked a little pale.”

  “She cooked for thirty while carrying around eight pounds of unborn baby. I’d be pale, too.”

  Fair enough. Still, Martina was worried, and she left the parlor to poke around a little, looking for her sister.

  She didn’t find Bianca, but she found Chris in his study.

  “Hey.” She waggled her fingers at him from the doorway.

  “Oh. Hi. How are things going out there?”

  “Great.” She went to where he was sitting at his desk and lowered herself onto his lap, putting her arms around his neck.

  “What’s this for? Not that I’m complaining.”

  “Thank you.” She kissed him. “You saved us. Really. You might even have saved Sofia’s wedding. You didn’t have to do all of this, but I’m so glad you did.”

  He lowered his eyes, looking embarrassed but also pleased. “You’re welcome.”

  “By the way. Have you seen Bianca? Benny said she wasn’t feeling well, and you let her use a guest bedroom.”

  “Yeah. She said she was tired and needed to lie down. I showed her to the downstairs bedroom next to the gym.” His brow furrowed. “Is she okay?”

  “Oh, I’m sure she is. I was just looking for her, that’s all.”

  Martina checked the bedroom Chris had mentioned. She found that the bedcover was mussed, as though someone had been lying on it, but Bianca wasn’t there. Well, maybe she’d felt better and had returned to the party.

  Martina checked there, but again, no Bianca.

  “I can’t find her,” she told Benny in the living room as Benny stood with a plate of cake and a fork in her hand.

  “Who, Bianca?”

  “Yeah. Chris said he put her in a guest bedroom to rest, but she’s not there.”

  Benny shrugged. “Maybe she’s in the can. Pregnant women have to pee a lot. So I’m told.”

  “Maybe.” But a quick check of several downstairs bathrooms yielded no Bianca.

  Martina dug her cell phone out of her purse and called her.

  “What?” Bianca answered. Her voice sounded tense, and Martina could hear traffic sounds in the background.

  “Where are you?” Martina asked. “I’ve been looking everywhere. Are you even still at Cooper House?”

  “No, I am not.”

  “Bianca—”

  “Don’t you dare tell Sofia this,” Bianca said, “but I’m on my way to the hospital to have the baby.”

  “What?!”

  “The contractions started when I was in the middle of making the meat sauce. I held off as long as I could, but then my water broke.”

  “Oh, my God. You’re not driving, are you?”

  “Of course not. I’m not an idiot.” Bianca made some kind of gasping sound that made Martina’s pulse race. “I called TJ. He picked me up.”

  “Holy shit. Where are you now?”

  “We’re”—she groaned—“We’re on the 46 headed for the hospital in Templeton. I swear to God I will kill you with my bare hands if you tell Sofia and ruin her party. We’ve—oh, shit, this hurts—we’ve got this under control.”

  “Let me talk to TJ.”

  “Martina—”

  “Let me talk to TJ right now.”

  TJ came on the phone, his voice tense but businesslike. “Yep.”

  “TJ, is she okay?”

  “I think so. We should be there soon.”

  “All right. Do you need anything? Is there anything I can do?”

  “Not unless you can teleport here and get us there faster.”

  She couldn’t do that, obviously. In fact, she was hard pressed to think of anything helpful she could offer at this moment.

  “Are you sure we shouldn’t all come out there? Not everyone, obviously, but me, Sofia, and Benny?”

  “No!” Bianca yelled from the background. “TJ, tell her no. Finish the party, then come out.”

  “You heard her,” TJ said.

  “Oh, God.”

  “Look,” TJ said. “There’s nothing you can do. We’re almost at the hospital. It’s going to be fine. Just get here when you can.”

  Keeping her mouth shut about Bianca was one of the hardest things Martina had ever done. She didn’t even tell Benny, because she was pretty sure Benny would have an even harder time being quiet about it than she would.

  When the last gift was opened, the last piece of cake was eaten, the last cocktail was finished, and the last guest had been thanked and ushered off to her home or hotel room, Martina turned to her sisters, Patrick, and Chris, who had come downstairs when things began to wind down.

  “Okay, do not freak out when I tell you what I’m about to tell you.” Martina tried to remain calm and matter-of-fact, her voice steady. “Bianca is on her way to the hospital. Her water broke. She’s having the baby.”

  “Ha, ha. That’s a good one.” Sofia, still glowing from the triumph of her party, laughed.

  “Oh, shit. She’s not kidding,” Benny said.

  A certain amount of pandemonium broke out in the wake o
f the announcement. Everyone started talking at once, and people were running around looking for their coats and purses so they could rush out of the house.

  “Wait. Wait!” Martina held up her hands to get everyone’s attention. “I talked to TJ, and he said everything’s okay. Of course, he was speeding to the hospital while he said it, so, grain of salt.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? You should have told me!” Sofia ran her hands through her hair, looking panicked.

  “Bianca didn’t want that. In fact, she said, and I quote, ‘I will kill you with my bare hands if you tell Sofia.’ So.”

  “We have to get to the hospital! We have to go!” Benny said.

  If Martina had predicted who was going to emerge as the leader in this scenario, she might have said it would be Benny, who was a take-charge person in general, or Patrick, who managed to control a classroom full of undergrads on a daily basis.

  She would not have predicted it would be Chris, who had come down to join the group when Martina couldn’t find her sister.

  “Okay, listen up,” he said, suddenly commanding the attention of everyone in the room. “My SUV is big enough for all of us. I’m the person least likely to lose his shit in this situation, so I’ll drive.”

  Martina looked around. “But your house.” The place was a shambles, with used plates and glasses, torn wrapping paper, and the detritus of the party littering the space around them.

  “I’ll have the caretaker deal with it.”

  “He has a caretaker,” Benny remarked, smirking.

  “You want to offer some sort of social commentary, or do you want to get there before the baby’s in grade school?” Martina said.

  “Good point. Where’s the car?”

  The drive to Templeton didn’t usually seem like a long one—just thirty minutes over a scenic highway overlooking rolling green hills with the Pacific Ocean lying still and blue in the distance—but today, it seemed to take forever.

  “Can’t you make this thing move faster?” Benny prodded Chris from her seat in the back.

  “I can, but I assume we want to get there in the SUV and not in the back of an ambulance.” He was already going eighty.

  “Good point,” Patrick said.

  Martina had called TJ, and he’d reported they had arrived safely and Bianca was in a delivery room.

  “Have they at least given her an epidural yet?” Martina wanted to know.

  “They told her she can’t have one. It’s too late. She knew it would be—she’s a doctor—but she still didn’t take it all that well.”

  TJ must have been right there in the delivery room, because Martina could hear Bianca in the background. “I didn’t want to do it this way!” she moaned. “I wanted the goddamned drugs!”

  “Oh, boy,” Martina said.

  They got to the hospital, and Chris pulled up in front of the front doors. Everyone poured out of the SUV and ran inside while Chris parked the car.

  They were directed to the labor and delivery unit, where Benny ran up to the nurse’s station and accosted a woman in light blue scrubs.

  “Where’s my sister? Bianca Russo.”

  “Ah. Dr. Russo.” Of course they knew her here—Bianca had privileges at the hospital and came in from time to time to check on her pediatrics patients, including the occasional newborn. “She’s in recovery, down the hall.”

  “Recovery?” Martina said. “We’re too late?”

  “Too late for the screaming,” the nurse said, “but right on time if you want to see the baby.”

  31

  When they entered the room, Bianca was in bed looking exhausted and cuddling her son, and TJ was standing by looking both stunned and thrilled.

  “That was some way to get out of cleaning up after the party,” Benny remarked, looking down at the red, pinched newborn in Bianca’s arms. “You could have just said, Hey, I did the cooking. You take care of it.”

  “Very funny.” Bianca smiled up at her sister. “Look at him. Isn’t he beautiful?”

  “He’s gorgeous.” Martina felt the sting of tears in her eyes as she looked at the baby.

  “Where’s Owen?” Sofia asked.

  “He’s with his mother this weekend,” TJ said. “I called him to tell him the news. He’s over the moon. He’s always wanted a little brother he could lord it over.”

  “I’ll bet he can’t wait to meet ... What’s the baby’s name?” Martina asked.

  Bianca and TJ had chosen a name months before, but either out of superstition or a desire not to have their choice second-guessed, they’d decided not to tell anyone the name until the birth.

  “Everybody, meet Aldo James Davenport,” Bianca said. “We’re going to call him AJ.”

  “Oh, my God. You named him after Dad.” Tears spilled out of Sofia’s eyes.

  “And he’s got my middle name,” TJ said proudly.

  “Congratulations, man.” Chris extended a hand to shake TJ’s, and TJ, who barely knew Chris, took the hand and pulled him into a hug. It was that kind of day.

  “Seriously. Congratulations to both of you.” Patrick hugged TJ, too, then stood with his hands in his pockets, smiling, clearly pleased. “I can’t wait for Sofia to have our first baby.”

  “Our first?” Sofia gaped at Patrick. “How many do you think we’re going to have? We talked about one.”

  “I’m just keeping my options open,” Patrick said.

  After a while, Bianca consented to let her sisters hold the baby—after everyone had washed their hands. Sofia went first, probably because she was the most likely to have the next baby, and then Martina.

  Martina held AJ as though she were afraid he would shatter into a million pieces if she did something wrong. The baby lay in her arms with his little eyes squeezed shut, his lips pursed. He made sounds—a kind of mmf mmf mmf—as his lips worked. He was probably remembering his last meal and the various joys it had provided.

  “Oh, my goodness,” Martina cooed, looking down into his tiny face. “You’re so beautiful. Oh, AJ. Your mommy and daddy love you so much. And your Aunt Martina does, too.” She was lost in the sensation of holding the warm bundle, smelling his delicious baby smell, feeling his weight in her arms—and imagining the day when she’d have one of her own.

  Then she did something that, in retrospect, she wished she could take back. In fact, she wished she could go back in time and sew her own lips shut to save herself from this moment.

  “Could you ever imagine yourself having a little one like this?” she asked Chris, so enveloped in bliss that she’d, apparently, lost her mind.

  “Oh, hell no,” he said.

  All chatter in the room died.

  “No?”

  “Well ... no.” He rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “It’s not something I can imagine, actually.”

  “Oh, boy,” Benny said in the same voice one might use to say, There’s a deadly asteroid headed toward Earth.

  “What?” Chris asked, as though he didn’t realize he’d just stepped in a pile of metaphorical shit so deep and foul that he might never extract himself.

  “Here. You’d better take him.” Martina gave AJ back to Bianca because she didn’t want to dissolve into tears in front of everyone. “I just have to ... to go use the ladies’ room.” Then she fled the room before anyone could ask her if she was okay.

  When Chris had said what he’d said, he hadn’t thought there was anything wrong with it. No, he couldn’t imagine having a baby. Was that so wrong?

  Then, at everyone’s reaction, he suspected he had somehow made a terrible mistake.

  “Oh, God,” he muttered, looking awkwardly at Martina’s family, all of whom—except for the baby—were looking at him with undisguised horror.

  “I’m guessing I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “Gee. You think?” Benny smirked at him.

  “But ... we’re new. It’s new! I’m supposed to be thinking about babies?” It was all incomprehensible to him—especially the speed with whi
ch things had gone from good to complete shit.

  “No, you’re not supposed to be thinking about babies,” Sofia said. “Not in any concrete, planning-for-the-immediate-future kind of way.”

  “Then ...”

  “But you’re not supposed to act like she’d suggested handling plutonium with your bare hands,” Benny supplied.

  “I didn’t do that. Did I?”

  “Dude, you kind of did,” TJ said.

  Benny put a hand on Chris’s arm—a gesture friendly enough to make him grateful they hadn’t all turned on him. “You were great today. Really great. So I’m going to take pity on you and tell you what you did wrong.”

  “I’d appreciate it.” It was like a lifeline, like someone pulling him out of shark-infested waters.

  “Martina doesn’t want to marry you and have your babies, so you don’t have to worry about that. But with how things have been going with the two of you, she’s starting to wonder if she might, someday, want to start thinking about marrying you and having your babies. Some day in the future. And what you said to her, with your ‘Oh, hell no,’ was that you not only aren’t thinking that way, but you’re determined to never think that way, not ever, even if the two of you should turn out to be the last male-female pair alive on an otherwise desolate planet.”

  Was that really what she thought? That not only was he not serious about her, but he would never, under any circumstances, even consider becoming serious about her?

  “I didn’t intend it that way,” he said. “At all. It just ... popped out.”

  “But did you mean it?” Bianca asked. “About never wanting kids? Because if you did, that’s something you two need to talk about sooner rather than later.”

  “But why?” None of this was making sense to him. “We’re just dating. We’re not engaged. We’re not even living together. We’re not there yet.”

  “Right. But if going there eventually is never going to be on the table for you, you need to tell her. She’s in her thirties, and the clock is ticking. She doesn’t have forever to find someone. And she does want kids,” Sofia told him, not unkindly.