Tate jumped to his feet and gazed at her from above, still shocked, still stunned. “And?” was all he said.
“And I’m going to keep the baby,” she said.
He turned away as if he couldn’t bear to look at her, then wheeled around and stared again. “My God,” he said.
“I wasn’t going to tell you. But now—” she said, and she lifted her shoulders and let them fall.
He paced from one end of the cabin to the other as if physical activity would dispel his anger. “You should have mentioned it earlier,” he said.
“I didn’t know how you’d react.”
“So you waited until now? When we’re—” He left the sentence unfinished and stared at the ceiling for a moment. When he looked back at her, the pain in his eyes went straight to her heart.
“Why’d you tell me?” he said.
“I—I thought it would be unfair not to let you know. Peg told Tsani, and I told you.”
“What did you think I’d say? My reaction couldn’t be the same as Tsani’s. Did you’d think I’d be happy for you? Telling me you’re going to have another man’s baby is hardly the same as telling me you won the lottery, you know.”
“I didn’t think ahead,” she said miserably.
He let out a long deep breath. “Look, I don’t know what to think,” he said. When she was silent, he shook his head. “I’d better go. The rain has let up.” Tate strode to the door and after one last baffled glance at her, he let himself out. The door slammed behind him, perhaps driven by the wind, perhaps not.
Maggie’s first impulse was to run after him, to beg for reassurance that he didn’t think less of her. But she knew that if she got up, she’d be dizzy, and already she felt nauseated. Why, oh why, had she told him?
Between her and the window, a slight shadow passed, a mere blip. No, not a blip. Someone. Maggie blinked, but she knew who it was.
You had to tell him, said the voice. Just like I had to tell Tsani.
Maggie knew now whose voice she had been hearing, and in her despair over Tate’s reaction to her news, oddly enough she was comforted. Peg Macintyre had been a fragile presence in this cabin ever since Maggie had arrived, and now she knew why. Something at this juncture in her life had drawn Peg to her, had made her communicate with Maggie. Maybe it was Maggie’s pregnancy and the problem with Kip that made Peg sympathetic, or maybe it was some reason that Maggie couldn’t fathom.
One thing she knew was that she wasn’t the least bit afraid of Peg. She could never be afraid of this woman whose aura conveyed only a lingering, loving presence with which, Maggie now realized, she had become increasingly familiar over the past week and a half.
And Peg was her only comfort now, when she felt more desolate than ever. Tate had gone, maybe for good. Why would he come back after the strange interlude with Tsani and Peg? And what must he think after finding out that he had almost made love to a pregnant woman?
After an hour or more of huddling under the afghan and holding back the nausea with some success and the tears with far less, Maggie thought to look at the windowsill. The nest with the robin’s egg had again disappeared. This time, she thought as she pulled herself together and retrieved her clothes, she knew Tate wasn’t the one who was playing mind games with her, but at last she knew who was.
PREGNANT! Tate thought as he made his way through the wet woods toward his camp.
Maggie was pregnant, and by a man who didn’t love her, couldn’t love her if he could leave her at a time like this. And she was going to keep her baby. If Tate had known about the baby, things would have been different from the very beginning. He wouldn’t have become so deeply involved.
But he was involved, and that had dire ramifications. He was still too stunned to know what effects this new knowledge would have on his life; how could he know when he was still reeling from the shock?
Grimly he decided, as he pressed through tangles of raindrenched laurel, to embark upon a vision quest. The goal of such spiritual seeking was to produce a vision that would offer insight into the problems being faced. There was no doubt in Tate’s mind that his problems at the moment were mind-boggling. He didn’t know what to do about his job. He didn’t know what to do about Maggie and her astonishing news. And how did Peg and Tsani enter into any of it?
When he reached his camp, Tate silently went about preparing for his vision quest. His sweat lodge, which was about ten yards from the asi, consisted of a dome frame of peeled willow saplings covered with canvas. In the ground in the center of this structure he had dug a hole approximately twelve inches deep and twenty-four inches wide; it was lined with large rocks.
He stripped off his wet clothes. Then he lit a fire in the sweat lodge and waited outside until the fire grew hot. He searched for a crane in the trees, but all he saw was one reticent owl that landed at the top of a huge oak tree and studied him with thickly hooded golden eyes. Tate didn’t know how to interpret this as an omen; he still had so much to learn about native ways.
When the owl flapped away into the night, Tate said, “Go, little brother, and bring me the crane.” The owl answered with a muffled cry, which Tate interpreted as a positive sign. Then he went into the sweat lodge and tossed water on the hot stones. He sat naked amid the rising steam and concentrated on finding solutions to his problems as the sweat poured from his body.
Tate delved deep into his emotions, tried to figure out what they were, tried to feel them in his heart. For so long he had made himself feel nothing; the circumstances of his life were such that it was better not to feel. Now he was feeling something for Maggie, and it frightened him.
Once the vision presented itself, he would know what to do. Until then, he would not see her. Until then, he would not go back to Maggie’s cabin.
He threw more water on the stones and gazed into the fire, knowing that he might have a long wait before he found the answers he so desperately sought.
ONE DAY. Two days. Three days. Tate didn’t come to the cabin, and Maggie didn’t know where to find him. At times she was sure she’d never see him again; other times, she knew she would. Occasionally she broke down in despair over his reaction to her pregnancy. She had, she realized, counted on him to be a friend. Now she couldn’t count on him for anything.
Maggie ticked the time off on her Filofax calendar, which was seeing a lot less action than it had when she was in Atlanta. She spent her days working on her mother’s quilt, which was coming along faster than she had expected. Her fingers fairly flew when she was sewing, guiding the needle in and out, in and out, with a skill she had never known she possessed.
The apphquéd squares were pure artistry. Most of them were almost finished; others had been pinned and were ready to be whipstitched onto the background fabric. Maggie found herself empathizing with the Peg and Tsani she grew to know through the quilt. The squares showed them kissing beside the waterfall, picnicking in the woods, riding on horseback along a winding mountain trail—all things that Peg and Tsani probably did in real life. The last piece that Maggie’s mother had completed, however, was the scene of Tsani being swept over the waterfall as Peg looked on, horrified. There was room for two more squares that were needed to complete the quilt, and Maggie knew that it was up to her to create them.
The trouble was that she had no idea what her mother had in mind. What scenes had she planned to depict? Peg married to the old man who had become her husband? Peg with her baby, Tsani’s child? Peg living out her life in this cabin, an unhappy woman? Maggie had no idea.
At least working on the quilt kept her mind off Tate Jennings. Then again, it didn’t always. Sometimes she could almost forget how he had stormed out of the cabin, and at those times she caught herself smiling a slow secret smile whenever she thought about the way he had kissed her. She fantasized about making love with him, thinking about his long limbs entwined with hers, about his dark skin sliding against her body, hot with passion and urgent with need. She remembered all too well how eagerly her body h
ad responded to his touch.
She thought about him so much that she stopped sewing one day when the shock of it hit her: she was mooning over Tate Jennings as if she were in love with him.
Nonsense, she told herself. She sternly made herself think about the baby instead. Her dear little Awful Predicament. Except that she hardly ever thought about the baby as her Awful Predicament anymore.
She would have told Bronwyn this, except that Bronwyn wasn’t on her wavelength these days. She was being helpful, though, for which Maggie was extremely grateful. Bronwyn had talked their boss into letting Maggie work at the cabin. She even interrupted her lunch hour one day to call and relay the good news to Maggie.
“A lot of companies are encouraging employees to work at home these days, since it saves on office space and expenses. How would you feel about that?” Bronwyn asked.
“Hey, I might like it,” Maggie said in surprise. She hadn’t considered this solution before, but it would be ideal. She could write creative ad copy anyplace, not just at a confining desk in a claustrophobic office.
“I thought you’d go for it. Do you think you could get a fax machine up there, Maggie?”
“Oh, yes.”
“So, you do want me to pursue the matter?”
“Bronwyn, it’s a great idea and a good solution for all of us. I’ve been trying to figure out a budget since I last talked with you, and I’ve realized that I can’t afford to take any unpaid leave.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and line up the fax machine, and I’ll check into sending your computer up there to that miserable place. What’s the name of it?”
“The town is called Scot’s Cove. You know that.”
“I know that. You’re right. I just refuse to admit that such a backwater town exists in your consciousness,” Bronwyn said.
Maggie thought it prudent not to mention what else existed in her consciousness, like people who had been dead for over a hundred years but tried to impose their will on the living in a most remarkable way. She held her tongue, but it wasn’t easy.
Not wanting to discuss the deficiencies of Scot’s Cove again, Maggie changed the subject. “I’m going to have to start wearing maternity clothes soon,” she said.
“Is this news? Should I be surprised?”
Maggie sighed impatiently. “Somehow, I didn’t expect to gain so much weight in the early months.”
“Here’s a helpful hint. My sister-in-law wore stretchy leggings during the first several months of her pregnancy,” Bronwyn said.
Maggie wrote Stretchy Leggings on a pad of paper beside the phone. “Good idea. I’ll try it.”
“How are you feeling? Any more stomach upsets?” Bronwyn asked.
“I feel super fantastic, but strong odors bother me sometimes. I tried to sauté onions yesterday but had to quit because my stomach rebelled.”
“I can’t believe you’re not rebelling against this motherhood bit,” Bronwyn said with a sigh.
“I’m happy about it. The baby is going to be cute.”
“Cute. Well, I can’t argue with that. All right, Mags, you line up the fax machine, and I’ll talk to you soon,” promised Bronwyn, and she hastily hung up.
The baby was becoming more and more of a reality to Maggie, especially since it was clearly rounding out the bottom part of her abdomen. This interested her. Somehow she had believed that it wouldn’t be until the very end of her pregnancy that she’d have to wear maternity clothes, and now almost none of her clothes fit.
Then came the day when she could no longer force her jeans to button at the waist one morning. One broken thumbnail later, she gave up and slipped on a pair of Kip’s old shorts. The seat bagged, but she could fasten them. Unfortunately, when she looked in the mirror and saw how frumpy she looked, she dissolved into tears.
Also on that day, Maggie started asking herself agonizing questions. Had becoming intimate with a pregnant woman turned Tate off? Did he find her breasts with their darkening areolas unattractive? Had his hands detected the firm little lump in her abdomen that was the baby?
She reminded herself that Tate hadn’t been making love to her; Tsani had been making love to Peg. This hardly consoled her. It was Tate’s kisses that had made her feel wonderful. And, heaven help her, she wanted to feel that way again.
Heaven did not help her. Tate did not appear, and if Peg was around, she wasn’t talking. Even the bird’s nest seemed gone from the windowsill for good. Maggie faced facts: maybe Tate and Maggie’s love scene the other day had broken whatever spell existed here in this cabin. Maybe Tsani and Peg had received the solace they had needed and had finally gone the way of all good spirits, leaving her with sensuous memories of Tate and a yearning that was destined to remain forever unfulfilled.
Chapter Seven
By the third day in the sweat lodge, Tate had almost given up on his vision quest. He became frustrated waiting for an elusive experience that he wasn’t even sure would take place. He had meditated, he had sweated so many buckets that he was sure he must be the most purified person alive, and he was growing weak from fasting. He had sprinkled river water over the hot stones to make steam, and still all he saw through his light-headed haze were the canvas walls of the sweat lodge and swirling billows of smoke.
Finally, late on the third night when Tate had despaired of ever having a vision, the white crane appeared as a tiny white speck in the darkness, growing until it had distinguishable features, growing again until it towered over him.
“Hello, my brother,” it said.
“Who are you?” Tate demanded.
In the blink of an eye, the crane’s head transformed into a ceremonial mask which he lowered to reveal a face that Tate instinctively recognized as Tsani’s. Tate was stunned; Tsani’s face was the twin of his own. He blinked, scarcely able to comprehend it.
“You see now that I am really Tsani. For good luck, I showed myself to you in the guise of a crane.”
“You are my good-luck crane?”
“Yes. You must come with me.”
Tate started to say that he could not leave the sweat lodge, but Tsani’s eyes mesmerized him so that the words would not come. Suddenly, as if he had been cut loose from the bonds of earth, Tate was borne up and away, weightless and free. In the blink of an eye, Tate was standing before a cabin similar to Maggie’s but not as attractive. Crows hunched silently in a leafless dead tree, staring at him with unblinking eyes. Not far away a stooped and bent man stumped past a tumbledown chicken coop on a wooden leg, the expression on his leathery face as bleak as the surroundings.
“That is Old Garvey,” said Tsani, and Tate realized with surprise that although they could see the old man, he couldn’t see them. “This is the man that Margaret’s parents wanted her to marry.”
“We must have gone back in time,” Tate said. He darted a look at Tsani for confirmation.
“Yes, but do not worry. We’ll not stay.”
Tate stared at the old man. He could not imagine a young and beautiful woman married to this dirty old codger.
At that moment, two ugly heavyset men appeared at the edge of the forest. They were shouting and raining blows on each others’ heads. Tsani leaned close and spoke.
“I received a message from Old Garvey the night before I was to run away with Margaret. The acquaintance who had helped me plan our escape had become drunk in a tavern in town, and when he talked too much, Harry Garvey’s sons learned that we were planning to leave. When I was summoned to the Garvey farm, I was stupid enough to think that I could explain how much I loved Margaret. I believed that when he knew of my sincerity and good intentions, Old Garvey would accept my love for her, especially if he loved her himself. Wouldn’t he want her to be happy? I thought so until I learned that he only wanted her as his prize, a bit of information that I found out too late. When I came here on that night, I was ambushed by Garvey’s two loutish sons, who tied me up and locked me in the shed over there. They left me there and went away to debate what to do w
ith me. I heard them arguing with their father over my fate.”
“Is that why you were late for your meeting with Peg?” Tate asked.
Tsani nodded. “In order to get away from here, I had to break the rawhide thongs with which they had bound my wrists, and then I tore away the boards of the shed with my bare hands to make an opening through which I escaped. The dogs heard the noise and began to bark, and they chased me, and—you know the rest. You saw it in your dream. So did your woman.”
“Are you saying that the nightmare that Maggie and I shared really happened?”
“Yes. I sent it to both of you so you would understand our desperation. Tate, the woman you know as Peg—my Margaret—and I need your help.”
“But I can’t-”
“Oh, but you can, Tsani.”
“I am Tate,” he said in a mystified voice.
“What has gone before will come around again. Tsani and Tate are the same. Peg and Maggie are the same. Our destinies are intertwined. Didn’t you guess that?”
Of course he had. He hadn’t wanted to admit it, that’s all.
Tsani leaned close and said, “Listen well, my brother. Know this—I will live unhappily forever with the Little People beneath the waterfall and my Margaret will wander the earth searching for me for all time if you and your woman do not find a way to be together. You have one chance in this lifetime, and one chance only. You must correct times past.”
“Correct tunes past? I don’t even know how to manage the present,” Tate said with more than a hint of ruefulness.
“Don’t you understand? The ghosts of my Margaret and I will not be released to travel to the Nightland together until our spirits are joined in you two.”
“Joined?”
“Not only in sex. In the mind and soul as well. The souls of you and Maggie must come into each other as my Margaret’s and mine have done. And then we will go to the Nightland and be together for all eternity. It is our only chance to know peace and your only chance to know true love. You must do this, not only for us, Tate, but for yourself! You must!” Tsant’s eyes burned into him like two black coals.
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