No one needed to ask, for the liquid puddling at her feet was explanation enough. Lacey’s water had broken. These babies were not going to wait until their scheduled C-section to be born.
Julia jumped up so fast Joey awoke with a jolt. April helped Lacey sit down then darted to the house to get a towel and her phone.
Julia stayed with Lacey, who moaned out loud, for her contractions were coming hard and fast. Very hard and very fast. Having been rudely awakened, Joey was crying, and April nearly ran headlong into Cole who was coming out as she was going in. “Call 911!” she said.
“What’s happened?”
“Lacey’s babies are coming.”
He swore under his breath then whisked his phone from his back pocket. After what seemed like forever but was actually a matter of minutes, sirens blared in the distance. Lacey’s contractions were coming with little time in between.
Hearing the commotion, Will and Kristy and all the kids came running. Joey wailed on Julia’s hip. Lacey was moaning; April was talking to Lacey’s doctor on her phone. Julia was talking to her husband and he was already trying to reach Noah, who was test-piloting a Piper Cherokee some five thousand feet above Orchard Hill.
On the line with the 911 dispatcher, Cole told Lacey, “The ambulance’s ETA is five minutes.” He listened to the person talking him through this on the phone then turned back to Lacey. “They want you to stay calm and breathe through your mouth like you were taught to do in birthing class.”
“I was on bedrest then, and didn’t take a birthing class. I’m supposed to have a C-section so I didn’t think I needed to know how to breathe through hard labor.”
April and Julia demonstrated for their friend.
Lacey doubled over in pain.
It was official. Pandemonium had erupted at 404 Baldwin Street.
And if that wasn’t enough, there was no doubt in April’s mind now that she was indeed in love.
Chapter Eight
The ambulance came charging into April’s driveway with its lights flashing and sirens blaring. Joey stopped crying at the commotion, and Gracie and Violet started.
Three paramedics swarmed out. In seconds, they surrounded Lacey and lowered her onto a gurney. They took her vitals and did a quick oral history of pertinent information such as her age, who her doctor was, when her babies were due and when the contractions had started.
How they made sense of anything was a mystery to April, for everyone seemed to be talking at once. The paramedics were obviously accustomed to working under such conditions, for one of them, a large burly young man who looked strong enough to lift cars off people, calmed the spectators while pressing them back, thus giving Lacey a little privacy while the other two worked on their knees on either side of her. One monitored the babies’ heartbeats and the other, a woman who seemed to be in charge, draped a sheet over her.
April felt helpless. Julia looked as pale as a ghost, and Will’s newborn son was wailing hungrily from Kristy’s arms while Will tried to draw his other two little boys and his nieces’ interest to an intricate spiderweb on the arbor by the garage. The ploy had little success, for what child chose an everyday spider over flashing lights and three uniformed paramedics?
“You’re at six centimeters. Let’s get you to the hospital,” the woman in charge said to Lacey.
She started to hyperventilate. “I want Noah!” She twisted her head around until she found April.
April rushed to her friend’s side, the girls on her shirttails. “Julia talked to Marsh,” April said, wincing beneath Lacey’s grip. “He’s already called Tom Bender,” she said, referring to the owner of the airstrip north of Orchard Hill. “Tom radioed Noah. Your husband is coming in for a landing as we speak. He’ll be at the hospital shortly after we get there. You’re going to meet your babies soon, Lacey. Think about that. Two healthy baby girls who might look like you and have personalities as wild and free as Noah’s.”
“Are you trying to scare me or make me feel better?” Lacey asked. But the distraction worked, and she smiled, for a moment at least.
The paramedics secured Lacey to the gurney, and then lifted her into the ambulance. Suddenly Julia wasn’t the only one looking as pale as a sheet. “Come with me?” Lacey whispered.
April nodded. Turning, she searched the small crowd, which now included neighbors, too. Julia, who had spent far too much time in hospitals this past year and a half said, “I’ll grab Joey’s diaper bag and meet you there.”
“We’ll keep the girls with us until you get back,” Kristy told April.
“No!” Gracie and Violet wailed.
“It’s okay,” April crooned to her daughters. “Mama is going to ride in the ambulance with Auntie Lacey. I’ll tell you all about my adventure when I get home. Soon there will be two more twin girls for us to visit. For now you can play with Garret and Tyler at Uncle Will and Aunt Kristy’s.”
“Noooo! We wanna come, too.”
“Girls, come with us,” Kristy said.
“We wanna go with Mama.”
Out of the clear blue came Cole’s deep, steady voice. “What if they stay here with me?” Cole said.
Everyone except Lacey and the paramedics looked at Cole. He hunkered down at eye level with Gracie and Violet, and then he said, “We’ll look in on the rabbits again just to make sure their mother is feeding them enough. Later we’ll draw chalk lines on the floors upstairs so you can see exactly where your new doorways, closets and everything in the bathroom will be.”
The girls stared into his eyes as if determining something vital. After a few seconds, Violet turned toward her mother and said, “Are you coming back, Mama?”
Miracles of miracles, they’d stopped crying, though April nearly started in herself. Her daughters had few memories of their father anymore, but they remembered that he’d promised he would return. It was a promise he’d been unable to keep.
“Of course she’s coming back,” Cole declared. “The hospital is what, eight blocks away? Your aunt Lacey will rest there for a few days with her babies but they won’t let your mom stay.”
It was settled. Gracie and Violet would stay here with Cole. And their mother would return to them as soon as Lacey’s babies were born.
“Bye, Mama!”
“Bye, sweet peas.”
She glanced up at Cole.
“I’ll guard them with my life,” he said.
Staring into his eyes much the way Violet and Gracie had, she said, “I know you will.” She hugged her daughters then climbed into the back of the ambulance. One of the paramedics immediately closed the doors. Looking through the glass, April waved to Violet and Gracie, who stood on either side of Cole, each of them holding one of his hands. He held her gaze until the ambulance pulled away, out of the driveway and into the street.
She felt the way she imagined Noah would be coming in for a landing. Her breath caught in her throat, her heart took turns speeding up and slowing down and her stomach felt as if it was flattened against the ceiling. None of it was due to the blaring sirens or how tightly Lacey squeezed her hand. It was love. The eternal kind. The kind that had scared her to death a few days ago, and still did scare her, but also made her glad to be alive.
Meanwhile, the neighbors wandered back home, Julia changed Joey’s diaper then buckled him into his car seat and Will and Kristy told Cole to come over if he needed anything. At the airstrip north of Orchard Hill, the Piper Cherokee Noah was piloting touched the ground.
By then Lacey had been admitted and was settled in a bed in a brand-new birthing room in the new wing at the local hospital. Julia arrived with Joey. Marsh Sullivan came next, and although he didn’t say it, April believed he’d left the orchards at the onset of the busiest time of the year as much to offer emotional support to his new wife as for Lacey.
April didn’t leave Lacey’s side. When she wasn�
�t counting contractions, she gave serious thought to her friend’s advice.
Despite all the risks and potential for heartache, she’d fallen in love again. She hadn’t meant for it to happen, but love wasn’t something she’d been able to prevent.
Lacey had insisted April needed to make her move. The more April thought about it the more she knew it was advice she wanted to take.
* * *
“Is Noah here yet?” Lacey had been in her hospital room for twenty minutes, and had asked that question too often to count.
“He’s in the parking lot,” Julia answered, looking at Noah’s most recent text.
A nurse bustled into the room. She studied the dials and printouts monitoring the babies’ heart rates and Lacey’s contractions, and periodically checked the first baby’s progress. Lacey’s ob-gyn and the pediatrician were en route.
Poor Lacey was in agony. April bathed her face with a cool cloth and she and Julia took turns gripping her hands. Both mothers themselves, they spoke to her only when she was resting during those brief interludes between contractions. They all wagered guesses as to how much the first baby was going to weigh: four and a half pounds, five and Lacey’s droll prediction, fifteen.
“Oh, no, not again, not already,” she groaned at the onset of yet another contraction.
Just then Noah bounded into the room so like one of the Shackleford horses Cole saw in him. Wearing a hospital gown covering his jeans and shirt, he sidled to his wife’s bedside, swept her hair from her face and took her hands.
When the contraction was over, he was decidedly paler than he’d been when he’d arrived. “I never landed a plane so fast from five thousand feet. I was so afraid I would be too late. I’m here now, baby.”
The nurse returned with the ob-gyn in tow. It was time for Lacey to push.
Julia and April quietly left the room, giving the couple the privacy such an intimate experience deserved. Marsh took Joey to the cafeteria, and April and Julia found a bench at the end of the hall.
“Who was with you when Joey was born?” April asked, noting the darkening circles beneath Julia’s beautiful blue eyes.
“My sixteen-year-old sister, Annie. She runs like the wind and plays the violin like an angel, but she’s been a handful ever since she came to live with me. I swear having her there with me was the best birth control lesson she’d ever had.”
They shared a smile.
And Julia said, “Marsh said he’d keep Annie if—” Her voice trailed away. Trying again, she said, “I was hoping—” She cast the most loving smile at her husband and son, who were stepping off the elevator at the end of the long corridor.
“What were you hoping?” April asked.
With a deep sigh, Julia said, “I thought, if the worst happens, you and Marsh might—”
“We might what?” April asked. And then, with a dawning realization, she said, “You thought if you die Marsh and I might one day fall in love?”
Julia whispered, “You’d have my blessing. You’re wonderful with children. You’re kind and quirky and funny and strong. I can’t think of anyone I’d feel better about leaving Marsh, Joey and Annie with than you, April.”
April knew she had only one chance to say the right thing. How many times had someone told her that Jay was in a better place now, or that the first year was the hardest, or that he was watching over her and the girls, or that it had simply been his time, or that God needed him in heaven? Though well intended, those words always left her feeling hollow inside.
Today, she wanted to insist that Julia wasn’t going to die, but that wasn’t what her friend needed right now. Cancer was a snide, sniveling enemy. A snake in the grass, it could lay hidden for weeks, months, even years, lulling people into a euphoric sense of hope before randomly rearing up and sinking its deadly fangs deep into flesh and bone.
Placing her hand over Julia’s cooler one, she said, “I’m honored, and so very touched. I promise you, if the worst happens, I will do everything I can to help Marsh with Joey, and Annie, too. I’ll be a friend to all three of them, the way you’ve been a friend to me this past year.”
“But?” Julia asked.
“I’ve known Marsh for seven years. He was single for a long time before he met you. After you left Joey on his father’s doorstep, Marsh was frantic to find you. He never stopped trusting you or believing you would return the instant you were able. I’m pretty sure he’s a one-woman man, Julia. That said, I have to tell you I think you’re going to live to be very old.”
Julia stared into the distance without smiling. “What about you? Will you take Lacey’s advice?”
April considered the question then asked, “What did you do when you came back for Joey?”
Watching her husband swing their beloved toddler onto his shoulders, Julia said, “I had every intention of returning to North Carolina with my son.”
“What changed your mind?” April asked.
“Marsh did.”
“How?”
Julia’s gaze locked with her handsome husband’s from twenty feet away. “He opened his arms and I walked into them.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be that easy with Cole.”
“Then you’re going to have to make sure you make it even more difficult for him to tell you no.”
Hmm. April hadn’t thought of it that way. What could she do to make it impossible for Cole to walk away? If he loved her, that is.
Her breathing hitched. She’d just discovered the place she needed to begin.
* * *
She and Julia went back to Lacey’s room with Marsh and Joey. Lacey had been pushing for a long time, but the voices had grown frighteningly faint on the other side of the door. While they waited in the hall, Joey ate a cookie and everyone else held their breath. And then there came the faint mewling cry of a newborn baby.
There were murmurs from inside the room and smiles and tears outside. After a time, they heard the doctor say, “Well, Lacey, are you ready for round two?”
Lacey called her physician a colorful name, and then she called her husband a few as well. Ready or not, it started all over again. By 8:22 p.m., she’d proven three specialists wrong, for Lacey had conceived against all odds, and in a style that was all her own, she’d carried and delivered not one but two small but healthy babies.
When they were finally able to see her, Lacey looked tired and undeniably ethereally beautiful. Though three weeks early, the babies weighed slightly over five pounds and had strong lusty cries. Holding a new daughter in the crook of each arm, Noah was over the moon. The sight of a newborn baby never failed to move April. The sight of two filled her with wonder.
After congratulating his brother and admiring his new nieces, Marsh took his wife and son home to his beloved apple orchards. April held each tiny bundle and marveled at their wispy dark hair, perfect bow lips and tiny fingers and toes.
Looking more serene than April had ever seen her, Lacey said, “Miracles happen, April. Go get yours. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“There isn’t anything you wouldn’t do,” April laughed.
“My point exactly.”
With a promise to return tomorrow with Gracie and Violet, April rode down in the elevator and walked outside where dusk had turned into darkness. She’d ridden to the hospital in an ambulance, and although there were friends and relatives she could have called to take her home, she decided to walk the eight blocks to her place.
She’d made up her mind what she was going to do. Only time would tell how Cole would take it, and what he would do in return.
* * *
It didn’t take April long to reach the sidewalk in front of her house. She paused for a moment, for she didn’t often take the time to view her home from this perspective.
It was only ten o’clock, but it felt later. A silver quarter moon was rising i
n the east and a smattering of stars twinkled overhead. It was Saturday night. Someone was having a party down the street, and yet there was a waiting stillness about her house.
There were no outside lights on, and the light from the streetlamps on either corner didn’t reach this far. Her gaze was drawn to the soft glow of lamplight coming from inside. Normally, she closed the blinds, but they were wide-open tonight, allowing her a glimpse through her own windows. She could see Julia’s amazing watercolor over her sofa. On the dining room table was a vase filled with the dandelions the girls had picked yesterday.
Lights were on upstairs, making the Cape Cod house seem complete in a way it hadn’t been until now. It was as if it had been waiting to be finished. It truly was the right time for this project. She prayed it was the right time for her and Cole, too.
Following the sidewalk to the side door, she stopped and sniffed the air. “Cole?”
“I’m out here, April.”
She peered into the shadows and saw that he was sitting in the dark at the patio table. “Do I smell cigar smoke?” she asked.
He rose to his feet and she was pretty sure he shook his head. “Will lit one up before he went home a few minutes ago. He came over under the guise of offering me a cigar leftover after the birth of his last baby, but I’m pretty sure his wife sent him to make sure the girls were all right.”
She smiled, for that sounded like Jay’s younger brother and his wife. “How were Gracie and Violet?” she asked.
“They were good, although I don’t know how you keep up with them. They’re asleep on the floor upstairs. It was Grace’s idea. I hope it’s okay.”
“It’s more than okay,” she said. “Lacey and Noah’s babies arrived.”
“I heard. Will saw it on Facebook. Everybody’s doing okay?”
“There wasn’t time for a C-section. And there was no need. She delivered them naturally without any complications. I’m surprised you didn’t hear her.”
A Man 0f His Word (Round-The-Clock Brides Book 4) Page 13
