Mistletoe Baby

by Tanya Michaels

  He used to hug her whenever she’d had a bad day, cajole her into a better mood. Cheer up, he’d say, you still have me. If he tried to embrace her now, would she stiffen and pull away?

  “How was the dress fitting?” he heard himself ask. Inane small talk as if he were killing time on an elevator with a casual acquaintance.

  His wife turned in his direction but didn’t quite meet his eyes, addressing one of the light-stained wood cabinets just past his left shoulder. “Lilah will make a beautiful bride.”

  “Tanner’s a lucky man.”

  She nodded, her fingers trembling a little as she tried to get the lid off the aspirin.

  “Let me.” He walked toward her, palm extended.

  She recoiled. “I can do it.”

  “Dammit, Rachel-” Her vulnerable expression quelled the reactionary anger that had been rising in him.

  She looked somehow both harder and more fragile than the woman he’d once known. Her eyes were shadowed, and there was a chafed spot on her bottom lip. She had a bad habit of chewing on her lip when she was upset. He glanced up in sudden realization that he was staring at her mouth and she’d caught him doing it.

  Defensiveness made his tone gruff. “You look like hell.”

  Her normally warm gray eyes were the color of cold steel. “Thank you so much.”

  “I didn’t…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I just worry about you.”

  “That’s not your responsibility anymore,” she said with an attempt at a smile, as if she was trying to point out a positive.

  His pride-his heart-stung. “I guess we can’t all just turn off our emotions and walk away from vows so easily.”

  For a second, he thought she might throw the aspirin bottle at him. Instead, she turned toward the counter, dismissing him with her body language.

  He clenched his fists at his sides. He’d known this woman for years. Laughed with her, loved her, said things to her he couldn’t imagine sharing with another person. Yet the prospect of beating himself upside the head with one of the pots hanging over the kitchen island seemed less painful than a three-minute conversation with her. How had they come to this?

  “I’m sorry,” he said. He rarely lost his temper, and he needed his composure now more than ever. “That was uncalled for.”

  “You’re entitled to your anger.” With an audible pop, the lid finally came off the bottle. “It’ll be easier when I’m at Winnie’s. I’m supposed to go over tonight to spend time with the animals and look over all the instructions with her.”

  “Yeah, she phoned to say she was in for the evening and any time was good with her. And your sister called. That’s what I came in here to tell you.” Probably he should have led with that rather than You look like hell. “She said it was important, but not bad news.”

  Considering the massive heart attack that had threatened Mr. Nietermyer’s life the year David met Rachel, and the two lesser cardiac episodes that had followed, urgent messages from home tended to make her nervous.

  “Thanks.” She washed down two pills with a gulp, placed her cup on the counter, then turned, clearly ready to take her leave of him.

  He didn’t move aside. “Did you grab a bite with the ladies?”

  “No, Lilah had dinner plans, and everyone else went shopping. I didn’t feel up to it.”

  “I’ll fix you something. You should-”

  “David.” She smiled tiredly. “Thank you, but I’m a big girl. I’m capable of opening my own aspirin and cooking my own meals.”

  Of course she was. He was just so desperate to do something. For most of his life, he’d enjoyed a sense of purpose. His mom had raised him with the notion that he could do anything he set his mind to, and for nearly thirty years, that had held true. Then there’d come the infertility problems, which had made him crazy because there was nothing he could do to help Rach, and then her announcement that she was leaving. He’d been so dumbfounded, so struck by the unfamiliar sensation of being out of control, that he’d just let her go.

  Part of him-if he were being brutally honest-might even have been relieved by the time apart, but only as a stopgap measure, not as a permanent life change.

  “When you call your sister back, you aren’t going to tell her about us, are you?” It sounded autocratic even in his own ears, a demand. He couldn’t bear anyone knowing that his marriage had failed. Every person who found out would be one more severed tie cutting him adrift.

  Rachel glared, exasperated. “I don’t know. I agreed with you that this is a special time for Lilah and Tanner, the whole Waide family, and I didn’t want to ruin it. But don’t you think I deserve a friendly ear? Someone to talk to?”

  Why hadn’t she tried harder to talk to him? He’d always listened, always offered suggestions and attempted to soothe the problems away. “Rachel. You know that if it were in my power to-”

  “I know.” She surprised him by reaching out, brushing her hand over the arm of his long-sleeved T-shirt. Then she passed by, not looking back as she added, “But it’s not.”

  BECAUSE a chilly December rain had started to fall, Rachel drove to Winnie’s on the other side of the subdivision rather than walk. When the windshield wipers did nothing to clear her view, she realized the spots blurring her vision were tears. This was ridiculous. Separating was her decision, yet she’d cried every day since she’d told David that they didn’t belong together.

  Despite what logic and intellect told her, on some level she felt she’d failed by not getting pregnant. Why couldn’t her body accomplish what some teenagers achieved unintentionally? When she’d suffered a first-trimester miscarriage last spring, it had devastated her, yet she’d tried to see it as a sign that at least she could conceive. But month after month, hope waned. As did her and David’s tenderness with each other. She could admit that there had been some hormone-triggered mood swings on her part and that she’d been difficult to live with. He’d been patient at first, but no sooner had she lost a child than he began touting adoption as the reasonable solution. His seemingly “just get over it” attitude trivialized everything she’d experienced and made her feel alone even when he was holding her…which was less and less.

  David liked to tell people what course of action they should take, whether it was customers at his family’s store, his newly returned brother or councilmen at town meetings. Almost everyone valued his input; Rachel herself had sought his opinion in the early days of marriage. It had taken her until this year to realize how aloof he could be when people didn’t follow his advice. She hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that he didn’t view her as an equal partner.

  Tonight was one example of how an endearing habit could turn grating. She’d once found it charming that he would remind her to eat or do little things to take care of her, but lately his suggestions had begun to sound slightly condescending.

  Her heart rate kicked up suddenly, her pulse pounding in her ears so loudly that she couldn’t hear her own thoughts-not an altogether bad thing considering their dark tone. Her vision swam. What the hell? Fingers clenched on the steering wheel, she hurriedly parked at the curb. Then she waited, taking deep breaths.

  Was she being melodramatic, or had she just almost fainted? She’d never passed out in her life. Though her headache remained in full force, her pulse slowed enough that she could walk to Winnie’s front door and ring the bell without worrying that she looked like a deranged escapee from the nearest hospital.

  Winnie Brisbane, receptionist for the town veterinarian, was one of the softest-hearted people in the county. Her two lab mixes had been with her for years; a three-legged cat named Arpeggio and a lop-eared rabbit were more recent additions. Winnie had been negotiating with local pet-sitter Brenna Pierce to care for the menagerie when she’d found an abandoned puppy in a November storm. Though she’d placed a poster in the vet’s office, most people were too preoccupied with approaching holiday chaos to take on a gangly puppy with a nervous bladder and no obedience training. By T
hanksgiving, Winnie had named the mutt Hildie.

  Short of Winnie canceling the cruise she and her cousins had been planning for over a year, having someone house-sit seemed the only sensible solution. Brenna’s client schedule was too full for the constant care a puppy required, not to mention how much the extra professional visits would stretch Winnie’s modest budget. She’d laughingly told Rachel that she’d blown this year’s mad money on cruise wear and was making up for it with peanut-butter-sandwich lunches and macaroni-and-cheese dinners.

  “The dogs are officially eating better than I am,” she’d admitted when Rachel offered to puppy-sit.

  As Winnie ushered her into the house, Rachel had a twinge of guilt over the woman’s outpouring of gratitude. Though there was no good way to explain it to sweet-natured, freckle-faced Winnie, who blushed when David so much as smiled, Rachel had taken the house-sitting gig for selfish reasons. Tonight it had hit home how impossible it was for her to be under the same roof with her husband and not just because their exchanges deteriorated into sniping or unproductive regrets.

  When he’d walked into the kitchen earlier, she’d been overwhelmed, out of the blue, by the sandalwood scent of his shampoo. Her sense of smell seemed abnormally strong, maybe because of the headache. She’d read about people with migraines having heightened sensitivities. Whatever the cause, she’d had a nearly visceral memory of him washing her hair once, the feel of his hands across her scalp, the rich lather of the shampoo, his soapy skin sliding against hers as they leaned together for a kiss, the water sluicing over both their bodies.

  “Rachel? Are you okay?”

  Good heavens, she’d completely forgotten about Winnie sitting across the table, summarizing pet routines that were written in a spiral notebook.

  “Sorry.” Rachel swallowed. “I got a little…overheated for a moment. Can I trouble you for a glass of water?”

  Winnie made a sympathetic noise. “Those medications, I expect.”

  One of the positives of living in a small town was that people cared-when they asked how you were doing, they wanted an honest answer, not a rote “fine, thanks.” Susan Waide, strongly in favor of becoming a grandmother, had asked for prayer support among her friends at church on David and Rachel’s behalf. The OB’s office staff knew Rachel by name and were all pulling for her. Sometimes, having everyone within shouting distance knowing the details of her life and cheering her on was nice.

  This was not one of those times.

  So she kept it to herself that she wasn’t even taking the drugs anymore; she’d emptied her last prescription just prior to Halloween. The doctors had warned then that potential long-term dangers of the hormones were starting to outweigh the possibility of conception. They’d broached the subject of in vitro procedures, but she’d decided against it pretty early in the discussion process. It was expensive, offered no guarantees, and frankly, her relationship with David had cooled so much by then that she wondered if it would be fair to bring a baby into their home.

  Home. Glad Winnie stood at the sink with her back turned, Rachel surreptitiously wiped away tears. When David had surprised her late in their engagement with the key to the brick house two streets over, she’d thought it was her dream home. Now it stood as a museum of their disappointments and mistakes.

  The sooner I get out of that house, the better. She found herself reciting the mantra several times a day. She just wished she could convince herself it was true.

  WHEN Rachel returned from Winnie’s, David was hunched over his laptop in the front living room, no doubt working on files for the store. The Waides had owned a supply store in Mistletoe for generations, but it had really grown under David and Zachariah’s partnership. In the spring, Zachariah Waide had gone into partial retirement, handing over the bulk of daily management to his oldest child. David had thrown himself into the job with gusto, seeming happier when he was at the store than he did when he was with her.

  Careful not to disturb his work now, Rachel tiptoed past, stealing one undisciplined peek at his chiseled profile, bathed in blue from the monitor’s glow in the darkened room. How many pictures had she taken of that face, trying to capture perfectly on film the strength and character there? It was so unfair. While she’d been mourning the loss of her chic but no longer necessary professional wardrobe and grappling with some unattractive side effects of the medicine, David merely got sexier with each passing day. He’d doubled his jogging regimen, and now that Tanner was back, David was shooting hoops regularly in addition to the community softball he’d always played. He was in the best shape of his adult life, which made her feel even worse that her own body had turned against her.

  She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until she got to the guest room at the end of the house and finally exhaled. It was such a pretty room really, the muted pastels in the drapes and matching queen-size comforter off-setting the dark wood of the sleigh bed. A person should feel cheerful here. A person should not obsess over how this room would have made a lovely nursery.

  After the miscarriage, Rachel had fallen into the habit of coming here when she couldn’t sleep, just to sit and think, then she’d awake on the bed in the morning. David never said a word about it, so when difficulties between them had reached their zenith, it had been almost a natural transition to adopt this room as her own. She hadn’t actually started moving clothes into the closet and her alarm clock onto the nightstand until after Thanksgiving, when she’d told him she couldn’t do this anymore.

  She would miss a lot of things when it came time to leave Mistletoe-friends, the Waides, the chicken-fried steak down at Dixieland Diner-but she would not miss this room. Grabbing the cordless phone, she sat on the mattress. She should return Kate’s call before it got too late.

  Her younger sister, who lived with her husband and eleven-month-old daughter just a few miles from Rachel’s parents, picked up on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “Hey, it’s Rachel. David said you called?”

  “Oh, hi!” Kate’s greeting was so effusive that it bordered on a squeal. Odd. The last few times they’d spoken, her sister had been subtly petulant that Rachel wasn’t coming to South Carolina for Christmas. After all, it would be little Alyssa’s first, never mind that Rachel had committed to being in a wedding and was planning to visit home for New Year’s. Rachel had even contemplated getting out of Mistletoe for Thanksgiving, but Kate had gone to her in-laws’ place in Virginia so that they could coo over the grand-baby.

  “You sound like you’re in a good mood,” Rachel observed.

  “The best! I’m so glad you called back. I’m having lunch with Mom tomorrow, so I’ll talk to her then, but she heard first the last time. I thought it should be your turn.”

  Rachel couldn’t help smiling, Kate’s fast-paced prattle reminding her of when they were younger and her sister would burst through the kitchen door with sixty-miles-an-hour news of her day. “My turn for what?”

  “Okay, you are officially the very first person in the family to hear this.” Kate giggled. “Well, except for Mike, obviously. He bought the test for me.”

  “Test?” Rachel’s stomach dropped. Realization hit. I am the worst sister in the world. She didn’t want to hear this news; she wanted to slam down the phone and curl into the fetal position. Pun not intended.

  “We’re expecting again! Alyssa is going to be a big sister. It’s a little sooner than we anticipated-I mean, we just started trying and you never know how long it will…” Kate trailed off in abashed silence.

  “Congratulations,” Rachel said. “That’s wonderful.”

  “I am so sorry.” Kate sounded horrified. “That was a really insensitive way to put that. I was just so excited-”

  “As you should be! And you were right, a woman never does know how long it will take.” Or if it will happen, ever. “Don’t worry. I’d be a lousy person if I weren’t thrilled for you.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Hell. Once again, tears threatened to we
ll in Rachel’s eyes-what was that, the sixth time today?-but she was determined not to let Fertile Myrtle know. She coughed, trying to keep her voice even. “Absolutely! I owe you a huge congratulatory hug when I see you in January.”

  “Yeah, you’ll want to do it then before I get too big to wrap your arms around,” Kate joked.

  They talked for a few more minutes, but it was clear that neither one of them was entirely comfortable.

  “Oh, dear,” Kate said, interrupting as Rachel answered a question about Lilah’s wedding plans. “That’s Alyssa crying. I’d better go. See you in a few weeks!”

  “Right. See you then.” Rachel disconnected, flopped back on the mattress and glared at the ceiling.

  Well, at least now when she announced to her parents-who were already baffled as to why she was “wasting” her college degree in a “dinky” North Georgia town-that her marriage had crashed and burned, the Nietermyers would have Kate’s pregnancy as a happy distraction.

  Yeah, that made Rachel feel much better.

  Chapter Three

  Mental note. Rachel squeezed herself behind a kitchen chair for safety. Never, never ask a bunch of animals “Who wants to go for a walk?”

  Unless, of course, she wanted to be trampled to death. The two labs were scrambling to reach her, and Hildie was probably waking up the neighborhood, running circles on the tile and barking her head off. Although the dogs enjoyed playing in their own fenced backyard, Winnie had mentioned that walks were a special treat. Bristol and Rembrandt shared a double-dog leash, and in theory, Rachel should be able to walk Hildie with her own leash held in the other hand.

  Faced with the challenge of harnessing all this uncoordinated enthusiasm, however, Rachel was suddenly dubious. If she had any common sense, she’d probably be snuggled under the covers; she wasn’t due for work at the print shop for another two and a half hours.

  But she hadn’t been asleep anyway. She’d been up three times during the night, probably because the unfamiliar noises of pets in the house kept waking her. Shortly before 6:00 a.m., it had become clear that no matter how exhausted she was, she was awake for the duration.