Rebel in a Small Town

by Kristina Knight

  “I do.” Mara was unsure what to say, how to read the shock on Gran’s face. Good shock? She seemed a little pale, and the knuckles had turned white from their tight grip on the countertop. Gran broke her hip earlier this year, and Collin had been very worried. Mara didn’t want Gran to collapse. Maybe she should have waited until Collin was at the house before walking in. “Gran, why don’t you sit down?” Mara took her grandmother’s arm, leading her to the Formica-topped table while balancing Zeke on her hip.

  Gran brushed Mara’s hands away. “You have a baby.” She squeezed Mara’s hand. “He has your grandfather’s chin.” Then she smacked her hand against Mara’s shoulder. She winced, more from surprise than pain. “Why didn’t you tell us, Butter Bean?” Her eyes narrowed and she glared at Mara for a moment, but behind the glare was something that looked a lot like love. Support.

  This, this almost immediate acceptance was beyond any of Mara’s expectations. She closed her eyes for a moment. It was going to be okay. It would take time, especially with James, but things would work out. She could do this. She would do this.

  “Mara?” Gran’s voice brought her back to the cozy kitchen, and she sat in the chair across from her grandmother.

  All the reasons she’d kept Zeke from her family tumbled through her mind. She wanted to get herself together. She hadn’t told James. But all of those reasons skirted around the truth she’d been afraid to admit even to herself. And in this kitchen, the one where she’d eaten butter beans and declared they were the only bean she would ever like, where she’d cried when the school put her in the advanced program, where she’d run after every minor and major scrape in her life, she couldn’t tell a half-truth.

  “I was afraid,” she said. She hadn’t even told the therapist about her fear. That Gran would think badly of her, that this would be the thing that caused her family finally to turn away from her. She knew it was silly. Babies brought families together, at least in books and on television. In her specific case, though, babies made adults do crazy, irresponsible, unforgivable things.

  Gran’s soft hand cupped her cheek, and her expression softened. “Butter Bean, what did you have to be afraid of?”

  So many things. That she would ruin her life or James’s. That Gran wouldn’t understand.

  “That I couldn’t do it. That I wasn’t made to be a mother. That you’d be disappointed.” She paused, ran her hand over Zeke’s baby-fine hair and said, “That I’d leave all the child-rearing in your more-than-capable hands.”

  Gran clucked at that. “When have you ever left anything you really wanted for someone else to handle?”

  “I’m so like them, like Samson and Maddie, though. I like traveling, I like living out of my suitcase, I like not being tied down—”

  “I could never be disappointed in you. Worried for you, yes. Disappointed? Not in a million years.” Gran seemed to consider her next words carefully. “I love my son, but I stopped...trying to understand Samson a long time ago. And you are like him, but in all the good ways. You inherited his excitement for the unknown, his natural curiosity. He could never seem to find a balance, but you? Sweetheart, you travel for work, but you’ve worked for the same company since college. You might not live here or visit often enough for my liking, but you call every week. You remember birthdays and anniversaries. You are a responsible, kindhearted woman, and I’m proud that I had a hand in raising you.”

  Mara smiled and leaned into Gran’s gentle touch. She closed her eyes and sighed. “I’m here now. Zeke and I are going to stop being afraid of things. We’re going to face everything head-on.”

  Gran put her hand over her heart and her eyes glistened. “Zeke?” The word was a whisper in the quiet room.

  Mara nodded. “I named him for Granddad. Ezekiel Tyler—”

  The back door opened before she could say his last name, which was probably just as well. Until she got things hammered out between her and James, it was best to keep that to herself. She turned and saw her brother, looking tanned and relaxed, in the doorway.

  Collin looked from Gran to Mara and the baby. He blinked and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and then stood a bit straighter. Collin tilted his head to the side as if considering all the options for a baby being in their kitchen.

  “I guess you weren’t kidding when you said you had something to tell us,” he said. Collin put the ball cap he wore in the orchard on a peg in the mudroom, then continued into the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and took a long drink.

  “Collin,” Gran began, but Mara stopped her.

  “It’s okay. Yeah, pretty big news. Something I thought needed to be shared in person,” Mara said. Her voice shook only a little, and for that she was thankful. Gran was the first hurdle in her family; Collin would be the second and probably the biggest. She and he had been close until she became pregnant. “I have a son.”

  “He doesn’t look like a newborn.”

  Mara swallowed. “I know. I had some things... I needed to figure out a few things. Before I told you and Gran and Amanda.”

  “And the things are figured out now?”

  Mara opened her mouth to say yes, but she didn’t want to lie. “Mostly.”

  “You’re okay?”

  She nodded. “Good job, good health benefits.” Mara wasn’t sure what more she could tell either Gran or Collin without first talking to James. “And now I’m home.”

  Collin put the water bottle down and crossed the room. He put his index finger under Zeke’s chin, and the little boy grinned at him. “He looks like Amanda did when she was a baby.”

  “He has your grandfather’s chin,” Gran added. “And his name.”

  Collin’s eyes widened, and Mara nodded. “I call him Zeke.”

  “Hello, Zeke,” Collin said after a long moment. “I’m your uncle, Collin.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  JAMES SAT IN his Jeep outside the Slippery Rock B and B—hands at ten and two despite the SUV’s parked position—with the air-conditioning blasting. Her SUV wasn’t in the lot, and he wasn’t above tracking her down in town, but he’d rather have this conversation in private. If he hadn’t stormed off last night, they could have talked then, but he’d been too floored by her revelation.

  He rubbed his hand over his neck.

  Angry, a little.

  Scared, maybe. About the baby, about what the baby meant for his future in the Slippery Rock Sheriff’s Department. About what the baby meant for his future with Mara. Or what his future might look like without her. There had to be some dark reason she’d kept the baby from him for two years.

  For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what the reason was. He had a good job, came from a good family, had the same core group of friends he’d had since high school. For Pete’s sake, he was still a member of the Slippery Rock Methodist Church along with his parents and grandparents. He didn’t attend regularly, but he donated at all the usual holidays. He wasn’t a mean-spirited drunk, and he wasn’t a crazy, let’s-jump-off-a-cliff drunk, either. He actually wasn’t a drunk at all, despite the weekly dart games at the Slope. One or two beers was his limit, and not only because he was a cop. Because he didn’t like the feeling that came with having a few too many beers or shots.

  For her to have kept knowledge of the baby from him for all this time didn’t make sense. It didn’t fit into his plans on how he’d start a family, for sure. More than that, her secrecy didn’t fit into the Mara he knew. No, their relationship hadn’t been serious, but she’d never lied to him before. Not intentionally and not by omission. The Mara he’d known for most of his life was fearless. She did what she wanted, when she wanted and to hell with the consequences. In that respect, keeping their son from him made sense, but under that brave, rebel exterior, Mara had a kind and soft heart. She couldn’t bear to watc
h Dumbo because the circus kept the elephant calf from Mrs. Jumbo.

  James clenched his jaw. None of this made sense.

  A dark SUV turned the corner and pulled into the B and B’s lot. James exited his Jeep and strode across the pavement, waves of heat rising up and making him sweat.

  “We need to talk,” he said without preamble as Mara got out of the driver’s seat. The woman from last night wasn’t there, and the baby seat in the back seat was empty. A quick stab of disappointment hit his belly.

  Mara didn’t blink. “Why don’t you come inside?” she said as if she were inviting him into her home instead of a rented suite.

  He followed her up the walk, reaching around her to open the door.

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice starchy.

  “You’re welcome,” he returned, his voice just as firm as hers.

  Mara unlocked the door to room seven. It was empty. No baby. No nanny. Just a green square playpen thing with mesh sides and dinosaurs on the fabric. A light blanket lay on the bottom, more dinosaurs on it, and a stuffed T-Rex sat in one corner.

  Well, at least he knew the baby thing was for real now. Not that he’d doubted it. Mara wasn’t one to make up stories.

  She folded her arms over her chest and watched him a long moment. “Well?” she asked. “You wanted to talk. Here we are. Talk.”

  James wasn’t sure where to start. “I think you’re the one with some explaining to do.”

  “After the way you stomped off last night, you have some explaining to do.”

  He squinted. “Because I needed time to process you having my baby two years ago, I’m the one who has the explaining to do?”

  “Technically, I had him fourteen months ago. We haven’t spoken in two years.”

  “This is really the way you want to handle it? Me the pretend bad guy so you can be the Virgin Mary with the surprise baby?”

  An expression he couldn’t read flashed over her face. Mara bent to pick up the baby blanket and began folding it into smaller and smaller squares. “You aren’t the bad guy. There is no bad guy in this scenario.” James harrumphed. “Okay, maybe I was a little bit of a bad girl. I was scared.”

  “Of what?”

  She put the blanket down and held her hands out at her sides. “Everything? I didn’t know how to be a mother. We only had one real conversation. Every dinner we started ended up in doggie bags and eaten cold because we would run back to whatever hotel we were staying in. I don’t consider cold meals actual dates. Then I was pregnant. It was too much, and I freaked out, and I cut myself off from everything.”

  Mara picked the blanket up again and put it into a bag. She tossed the T-Rex in, too, and then took a suitcase from beneath the bed. She pulled open drawers and began to pack. James grabbed a handful of lacy garments and put them back in the drawer.

  “No, you don’t get to tell me I have a kid and then pack up to leave. I don’t care how scared you are.” His gaze landed on a picture frame on the bedside table. Big brown eyes stared at him from the frame. The same brown hair, the same nose. Same smile. The jaw was different, but there were enough similarities between himself and the baby in the picture that James forgot to breathe for a long moment. He picked up the picture, lightly tracing the lines of the chubby face with his fingers.

  “I’m not leaving,” she said. “I’m moving my things to the orchard.”

  “But you told me it would be more convenient to stay in town because of the grocery store job.”

  “I did.” Mara put the things he’d tossed into the drawers in the suitcase and shrugged. “Staying here was never about convenience. I wasn’t sure how Gran or Collin or Amanda would take the baby news. Having the suite here meant I had a good reason not to stay there if they didn’t want me and the baby around.”

  “So, they didn’t know?” She shook her head. That, at least, was a relief. She may have lied by omission, but his best friend hadn’t lied either outright or by omission.

  “Well, that’s a relief.” She shot him a questioning glance. “Collin doesn’t share his secrets much better than you do, but I was afraid... I’m glad he wasn’t keeping the secret, too, is all I meant.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “For not telling you then. For making you think one of your best friends was being dishonest with you. I know how much honesty and integrity is to you.” She pulled a few pairs of jeans and some shirts from the bureau, adding them to the suitcase. “The baby looks like you, you know. Same hair and eyes, same smile. I don’t expect you to forgive me—”

  “But you want me to?”

  She grinned sheepishly. “It would make things easier.”

  “I need to be a little mad at you.” Except he was already feeling himself caving in on the anger thing. He could push his feelings about her keeping the kid from him into the background. They could make this work. Somehow. The baby was a real person, not a figment of some bad dream. James’s baby. He couldn’t turn away from that—it wasn’t possible.

  “I figured.”

  “Smart woman.”

  “I did skip the tenth grade.”

  “I remember. You went from freshman to junior. Col was not impressed to have you as a classmate and sister.” This lighthearted banter was better than the serious conversation they needed to have. Easier and so much more familiar to him—at least where Mara was concerned. In every other aspect of his life, James always did the responsible, mature thing. With Mara, however, responsible and mature always turned into simple and easy.

  “He was just mad that I made better grades than he did.” Finished packing, she zipped the suitcase closed. “I don’t expect you to forgive me,” she said again. “And I didn’t come here to dump this news on you and, I don’t know, try to make our lives look like a really bad made-for-TV romantic comedy. Two hapless singles thrown into parenthood or something. I don’t want anything from you. I don’t need child support or insurance or even a hand changing middle-of-the-night diapers—”

  “You have a nanny for that.”

  “Yesterday was her last day, actually. She left this morning. Also, he sleeps through the night no matter what horrifying things come out of his body. That doesn’t matter. What I meant—what I mean is I’m the mom and you’re the dad. You can be as involved or you can be as uninvolved as you want. It’s your choice.”

  His choice. As if being a father was a “check yes or no” decision. The anger he kept pushing away came roaring to the surface. Being a father wasn’t an in-or-out choice, not for him. This baby, no matter what challenges he brought, was his family, and he wouldn’t turn his back on family.

  Carefully he put the picture on the bedside table. “It isn’t a choice. He’s my responsiblity.”

  Mara reached for him, taking his hands in hers, and the sizzle that always accompanied her touch raced along his nerve endings. Stupid chemistry, anyway. James pulled away from her.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she said. “This isn’t a responsibility you have to take on. No one knows you’re the father, and no one has to know. You can continue on with your perfect life in your perfect town where you can be the perfect sheriff just like your father was—”

  “And live a perfect lie by not taking part in my son’s life? I don’t think so.”

  “I’m not asking you to lie. You had a right to know, and now you know, but you don’t have a responsibility here. He’ll be fine. I can handle it. He’ll have a large extended family—an uncle who is going to adore him, a great-grandmother who dotes on him. Amanda’s a teenager, so her response will be largely dependent on whatever else is going on in her life, but if she isn’t thrilled, I can deal with that, too.”

  “And what about college? Orthodontic bills? His first car?”

  “I have a good job with great benefits and a flexible schedule.
”

  “You have this whole thing planned out, don’t you?” he said, keeping his voice soft. He shoved his hands in his pockets. She didn’t need him.

  From the first time they met up together, he had wondered where he stood in her life. Now he knew. Mara didn’t need him. Why did that hurt?

  Mara worried her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’m just saying that we were never serious. Our relationship wasn’t intended to be long-term for either of us. We were just...”

  “Filling a physical desire?” he asked.

  She nodded enthusiastically. “Exactly the right phrase. I fulfilled a desire for you, and you did the same for me. It wasn’t serious. We weren’t making plans. My getting pregnant was an accident, but it doesn’t have to ruin your future or mine.”

  “Because I can just walk away.”

  “Right.”

  “Because we were never serious.”

  “Exactly.”

  He wanted to ram his fist through the wall, and if she used another yes synonym, he was going to do just that. No, the relationship between them wasn’t serious, at least in her mind. But he’d bought her a ring. He almost proposed that first day in Nashville, but decided to figure out some extravagant proposal scenario like on social media. He’d wanted to surprise her, to give her an amazing memory. She might have been playing around, but he for damn sure had feelings for her. She was his friend, his buddy. His confidant. She made him feel things—not just physical things—that no one else did.

  None of that mattered, not now. Because she might insist they weren’t serious about one another two years ago, but the situation had changed. They had a baby and, like it or not, he was now in her life and she was in his. She was still talking, but James couldn’t focus on the words as he watched her. Everything blurred out of focus until he saw only her. Those big blue eyes. The curves that hadn’t been there two years ago. The voice that still sent shivers along his spine. She was the mother of his child. She was exactly the wrong person to be in his life right now.