The Baby Agenda

by Janice Kay Johnson

  “You knew for a long time before you emailed me,” he said slowly.

  She nodded. “I thought about not telling you at all. You’d made pretty clear that you didn’t want any future involvement.”

  He closed his eyes. “If things had been different, I would have. I’d have called you the next day, Moira.”

  Her half laugh was disbelieving. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, although he suspected it did. “Gray chewed me out and said I had to tell you, that he’d be angry to find out he had a child he’d never been told about.”

  “Then I owe him one.”

  She didn’t say anything; didn’t believe he was grateful any more than she’d believed he actually liked her. Will wanted to shake her father and everyone else who’d ever made this woman feel unlovable.

  The knowledge that he’d contributed curdled in his stomach. He’d screwed her then slipped away in the night. He couldn’t quite convince himself that child-support checks and occasional weekend visitation made him in any way noble or good.

  Anger came to his rescue, roaring through him like the blustering winds of winter. What the hell else was he supposed to do? Throw over his life again? He’d done it once. Wasn’t that enough?

  He stared at her averted face, and had no idea what to say to make any of this better.

  CHAPTER SIX

  AFTER THAT INCREDIBLY AWKWARD dinner, Moira couldn’t believe she’d invited Will to go with her to her monthly checkup with the obstetrician. And poor Will—he was likely horrified, but what could he say?

  What he had said was, “I’d like that.”

  Now she snorted. Probably he couldn’t think of an excuse quick enough.

  With a sigh, Moira got out of her car in front of the clinic, a block from the hospital. Thank goodness West Fork had a hospital. Otherwise she’d have had a half-hour drive to Everett when she was in labor. Even so, she was already worrying about getting to the delivery room when the time came. There had probably been pregnant women who’d had to drive themselves to the hospital. Hey, she could pull over to the shoulder every time a contraction hit.

  Of course that was silly. She’d have a list of friends prepped to go. One of them was bound to be home.

  Except, what if the baby decided to make an untimely appearance, when no one did expect to hear from her? Or—her new nightmare—what if a winter storm knocked out phone service and she couldn’t call anyone?

  She’d keep her cell phone charged.

  But their phones might all be out.

  Jeez, she thought, disgusted with herself. Then I stagger over to a neighbor’s house and hammer on the door. Do I need to find things to worry about?

  Will had arrived at the clinic ahead of her. The minute she walked into the waiting room, he rose from one of the chairs. “Moira,” he said, in that quiet, deep voice of his.

  “You’re here.” Oh, brilliant.

  Pretending she hadn’t said anything so inane, she checked in at the front desk and then they sat next to each other. They weren’t alone. A very pregnant woman was in the corner, flipping through a magazine, and a couple holding hands had come in behind Moira. Their warmth and intimacy were so obvious, she had to tear her gaze from them.

  When she looked at Will, it was to find him watching her, his brown eyes unreadable but his expression gentle. “I’ll really be able to hear the heartbeat?” he asked.

  “I’m sure the doctor will let you.”

  His gaze lowered to her stomach. A couple of lines between his dark eyebrows had deepened, not quite in a frown, but as if… Moira wasn’t sure. As if he was unsettled, maybe. “Moira Cullen?”

  Moira stood automatically and turned toward the smiling nurse who held her chart. She was aware that Will had risen also and was following her.

  The nurse said, “Oh, good. You brought the father today.”

  “Uh…yes.”

  She produced a small cup and handed it to Moira. “Why don’t you give us your sample first, and then we’ll weigh you.”

  Will looked so horrified, Moira had to swallow a giggle even though she was probably blushing, too. She’d had sex with the man, for Pete’s sake. Why should she be embarrassed to talk about peeing in front of him?

  She was relieved when she came out of the bathroom to find the nurse, a comfortable woman in her fifties, had shown him to the exam room so that he didn’t see her step on the scale. She had gained four pounds this month, which horrified her even though she knew it was normal. After spending a lifetime battling her weight, though, it was killing her to watch it climb.

  The nurse led her to an exam room, which had never looked so small. Will really was a very large man, Moira realized afresh. He backed out of the way and wedged himself into the V between the table and the cabinet so that she could sit in the one visitor’s chair to have her blood pressure and pulse taken. He seemed unwillingly fascinated, she thought, by the whole process.

  The nurse finished up then. She told them the doctor would be a few minutes and left, closing the door behind her.

  “I’ll hop up on the exam table,” Moira said. “Then you can sit.”

  “You don’t have to get undressed?”

  She shook her head and muttered, “Thank goodness.”

  “You have to pee in a cup every month?”

  “They’re looking for protein in the urine and things like that. That’s how they know if something’s going wrong.”

  “Huh.”

  Having him sit didn’t reduce the way he dominated the room. The effect was partly physical, partly just presence. It was funny, she thought, because Will didn’t give the impression of arrogance, but she also couldn’t imagine anyone not assuming that he was in charge on sight. He was simply that kind of man. She doubted he ever had to raise his voice.

  The door opened then, and Dr. Engel darted in. A tiny woman, she’d reminded Moira from the beginning of a hummingbird constantly hovering rather than settling in place. She listened, though, when Moira had questions, and answered without any impatience, her head tilted in a way that was birdlike, too.

  “Marcia Engel,” she said, thrusting out her hand at Will.

  “Will Becker. I’m the father.”

  “Ah. I’m glad to see you here.” She took him in with one sweep of her bright blue eyes. “How much did you weigh at birth?”

  He looked startled. “Almost ten pounds. My two brothers, too. My sister was eight and a half pounds.”

  “Then chances are we can expect the same for this one, Moira. Well.” She set the open chart on the small counter and skimmed the newest information. “Things are looking good. I’m glad to see you putting on weight now.”

  Moira made a face.

  “She wasn’t?” Will asked.

  “Nausea,” the doctor said. “Not unusual, but always a concern.” She gave him a sharp look. “You didn’t know?”

  “I’ve been away.”

  “Will and I don’t live together,” Moira said. “He’s being good enough to share responsibility for the baby, that’s all.”

  His mouth tightened, but he said nothing.

  After one more appraising look, Dr. Engel ignored him and smiled at Moira. “Lie back now, please.” When Moira did, she raised her shirt and pushed down the waistband of her maternity pants, exposing the freckled mound of her belly. Moira knew she was blushing, which seemed to be a redhead’s curse. It was dumb. He’d seen her stomach before, and a whole lot more, but she couldn’t make herself look at him.

  Even so, from her peripheral vision she knew he was staring.

  The doctor manipulated gently, then blew on the bell of her stethoscope to warm it before placing it on Moira. Listening intently, she moved it several times, and smiled. After a minute, she glanced at Will. “Would you like to listen?”

  “Please.” He stepped forward, bent and slipped the earpieces of the stethoscope in place. He frowned. “I don’t hear anything.”

  Dr. Engel moved the bell half an inch, then, after a pause,
another half inch. The expression on Will’s face transformed. Now Moira couldn’t help watching him, seeing what wonder did to the hard lines of his face.

  “It’s so fast,” he whispered.

  “Normal for a baby.”

  “I guess I knew that, but…” He kept listening, and when at last he removed the earpieces and handed the stethoscope back to the doctor, Moira could see his reluctance. “Amazing.” His eyes met hers. “You’ve heard it?” She nodded.

  “Have you felt the baby move?” Dr. Engel asked him.

  He shook his head and looked again at Moira’s belly.

  “Let’s see.” The doctor gently pressed, sliding her fingertips around. Finally she reached for his hand and laid it where hers had been. Will’s was so very large, it covered much of Moira’s stomach. A movement came inside, the flutter and swirl. Will stood very still, concentrating, then cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said, sounding hoarse. “Wow.”

  Dr. Engel pulled up the waistband of Moira’s pants, drew down her shirt, said briskly, “One month,” and breezed out.

  Moira shifted her weight to an elbow to lever herself up. Without a word, Will wrapped an arm around her and helped her to a sitting position.

  “That’s only going to get harder, isn’t it?” He sounded amused.

  “I’ve perfected the art of rolling out of bed.”

  The amusement left his face. He was silent as they walked out and she scheduled her next appointment. Still quiet until they were in the parking lot.

  “If you have an emergency, do you have someone to call?”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “But I don’t expect an emergency.”

  “No.” He had that look on his face, the not-quite-a-frown one. “Four more months.”

  Moira nodded, unlocked her car door and opened it.

  He gripped the top of the door and watched as she got in and put on the seat belt. “I’d like to see you again,” he said quietly. “Before I go.”

  Her throat felt clogged, as if she wanted to cry.

  When she didn’t say anything immediately, his hand tightened until his knuckles turned white. But his voice stayed calm. “You’re not comfortable with me, are you?”

  Breathe in, breathe out. A chance to practice her Lamaze techniques, Moira thought a little hysterically.

  “I don’t know why you’re here,” she said. “You can’t possibly want this baby.”

  “You don’t know what I want.” The timbre of his voice had roughened.

  She stared at him fiercely. “Be honest. You were horrified when you got my email.”

  “Shocked,” Will admitted after a moment. “Yeah, I was. I’ll bet you were, too, when you first suspected.”

  “Yes.” She had to be honest. Not just shocked: terrified. She wasn’t going to tell him that. “But I do want the baby now. What I don’t want is to…oh, count on you in any way then have you back out. Do you understand? It’s not money, it’s…everything.” She hardly knew what she meant herself. It was dumb to feel so distraught when she didn’t even know why she did. “I don’t want her to count on you if you’re not going to stick it out.”

  His gaze flicked to her belly. “Her? Do you know it’s a girl?”

  “No.” Oh, damn, damn. Her voice was thick, and she would not cry. “I was just…”

  “Talking about yourself,” he said softly.

  They stared at each other.

  “Maybe,” she whispered.

  Will circled the car door and squatted close to her.

  “Have you told your mother yet?”

  Moira bowed her head and saw a tear splash onto her maternity top and soak in. She took an angry swipe at her face. “No. I don’t know why. I…keep putting it off.”

  “Like you put off telling me.”

  “I’m used to doing things for myself. I’m good at taking care of myself.” It seemed important that she convince him. She didn’t want him feeling guilty in some way.

  “I’m not telling you that I need you,” she said, looking fully at him despite a nose that had probably resembled Rudolph’s. “I just want to know. If you’re going to send support checks, that’s great, but then…then don’t come and see me, and be nice, and…” Crap. Her vision was blurring again and she hated herself. She was doing the absolute last thing in the world she wanted to do, which was laying a guilt trip on him. “No,” she said suddenly. “No, I don’t want to see you again. All right? My hormones are going crazy, and I’m up and down, and I’m confused about you, and I don’t want to see you tomorrow or the next day when you won’t be around again for another six months.”

  Something happened to his face, although she couldn’t see clearly and didn’t want to. She thought it contorted briefly. Then he stood so she couldn’t see it at all.

  “All right.” His voice was low and scratchy. “Thank you for this. For today. Please keep letting me know how you are. Will you?”

  She swallowed and nodded.

  After a moment, he said, “Goodbye,” closed her door and walked away.

  Moira sat with tears running down her face until she saw his pickup drive out of the parking lot and knew he was gone. And she didn’t even know why she felt like her heart was breaking.

  FOUR DAYS LATER, Will got on the goddamn airplane and felt like scum. Worse than scum. All he could see was her face, all he heard was the way her voice broke when she said, “Then don’t come and see me, and be nice, and…”

  Every time he thought about her, he felt as if his guts were spilling out, and it hurt.

  He shouldn’t have come at all. She was right. They didn’t mean anything to each other, and he’d let himself start thinking they did, as if there must be a connection between them if they were having a baby together. He’d never imagined having a child with a woman who wasn’t his wife, a woman he didn’t love. Somehow he’d turned things around in his head and gotten to believing he felt things he didn’t. That was all this was.

  He closed his eyes and ignored his seatmates, who seemed to be ignoring each other, too. Three strangers, compelled by circumstances to sit shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh, for hours.

  It was all Will could do not to jump up, grab his carry-on and bulldoze his way off the airplane before the door was shut. But he sat where he was, muscles locked with the effort not to move, and thought, What the hell’s wrong with me?

  Torturing himself this way was stupid. Moira had a mother, she had friends. Single women had babies all the time. He could tell she meant it when she said she really wanted this child. There wasn’t a reason in the world she wouldn’t do fine without him.

  So why was it killing him to know that he wouldn’t be in the States for another five or six months? That she’d already have had the baby by then? That at best he’d have a brief visit before he was off again?

  The expressions on his brothers’ faces when he told them hadn’t helped. He’d done it last night at the dinner table.

  “This woman,” Clay had said slowly, as though to be sure he understood, “is having your baby while you’re off in Africa.”

  “I didn’t know her well. We had sex. I used a condom, but it apparently failed.”

  Jack had offered a profanity. Clay never took his eyes from Will’s face.

  “You came back to make sure she’s all right.”

  He unclenched his jaw. “Yes.”

  “Is she?” Clay might be young, but he had the implacable expression Dad had done so well. Funny, until that moment Will hadn’t realized how much his brother had come to look like their father. More so than Will did.

  “Yes,” he said. “I, uh, went to the doctor with her. Heard the baby’s heartbeat.”

  They were all quiet for a moment. “Well, damn,” Clay said at last.

  “I don’t like it,” Will had told them finally. “I don’t like anything about this. The only thing that would have been worse is if she’d aborted my baby. Okay?”

  “The timing is piss-poor,” Jack said th
oughtfully.

  Will turned on him almost savagely. “You don’t have to tell me. I should have kept it zipped. Do you think I don’t know that?”

  Goddamn it, right now Jack looked like Dad, too. Dad had believed there was right, and there was wrong, and not one hell of a lot in between. He’d taught his children his unbending rules. Will couldn’t remember even hesitating about whether he’d come home and take Dad’s place after he died. That was the right thing to do.

  The plane was accelerating down the runway, then lifting off, tilting upward to climb. It was too late now to sprint down the aisle and beg to be let off. Sitting here, his body still rigid, Will thought, This is wrong.

  But, for one of the first times in his life, he had no idea what the right thing to do was. He’d believed he was doing the right thing. Maybe this was one of those hellish situations where there was no right.

  What stayed with him all the way to New York then across the Atlantic was the knowledge it wasn’t the baby he was worrying about. He didn’t doubt that Moira would be a good mother. The best. No, what was tearing him up inside was Moira herself, the woman whose vulnerability he’d seen from the beginning. No matter how beautiful he’d thought she was, he wouldn’t have stayed talking to her so long that night if he hadn’t seen that someone had hurt her. Yes, he’d wanted her, but even more, he had wanted to be the one man who would make her feel good about herself.

  And look what he’d done instead.

  He’d known grief twice in his life, once when he was a boy and his mother died, then again when his father and stepmother were killed. This shouldn’t have been as bad. Nobody had died. Nothing was unfixable. But by the time he got off the plane in Harare, his heart felt like a rock in his chest, and not one that had been tumbled smooth. This stone was so rough, it scraped his sternum and ribs every time he took a breath.

  THE HOSPITAL HELD REGULAR cycles of childbirth classes. The sessions were eight weeks long, and it was recommended that expectant mothers not wait until the very end. After all, the online description pointed out, not all pregnancies went full-term.