Just in time to glimpse a vaguely familiar face in the split second before the figure disappears out into the street.
For a few minutes, she can’t seem to place him.
It isn’t until she and Allison have given the waiter their dessert orders that she realizes, with a twinge of excitement oddly tainted by a vague sense of uneasiness, who he was.
Tom.
The complete stranger who bought her the watermelon that night a few weeks ago.
Tom . . .
The complete stranger who seemed to know where she lived.
The thing about New York is that you can be utterly anonymous, utterly unnoticed. It takes a lot more than a river of mascara running down a person’s cheeks to capture attention on a crowded sidewalk.
Anne Marie wipes her face and eyes with a futile swipe of a tissue, but the tears refuse to subside.
What now? she wonders, looking down at the envelope clutched tightly in her hand. She’s afraid to let go even to tuck it into her bag.
If only you never let go in the first place, she tells herself, thinking not of the envelope but of the loss it signifies. Why did you let go?
Somebody slams into her from behind and she realizes she has stopped walking altogether. “Sorry,” the pedestrian flings brusquely over his shoulder, striding on.
Anne Marie forces her legs to start moving again, forces her thoughts into action as well.
What now?
I should probably call him, tell him. But I don’t even know where he is.
His whereabouts can be discovered easily enough, she supposes.
But that would mean letting him in, to share not just the burden but the decisions that will have to be made.
Is that really what she wants?
She clasps the envelope possessively to her chest, to her heart, knowing that isn’t what she wants.
This is hers, for now. All hers.
For now, and perhaps, forever.
“Peyton, wait—”
She turns back toward Allison and finds her still poised on the top of the subway steps.
“What’s wrong?” Peyton asks, retracing the few steps she had taken down the busy street. “Did you forget something?”
“Yeah. I forgot to ask if you’ll be my labor coach.”
“I was going to ask you the same exact thing!” Peyton exclaims, touched and surprised by Allison’s invitation.
“You were? I’ll do it. It’ll be an honor.”
“Same here. Only . . . are you sure you want me? What about your mother? Or . . . someone else from the group?”
“My mother?” Allison’s gaze darkens. “She’s the last one I want in the room. No, I just want you. You’re calmer and stronger than anybody else.”
Honored by the praise, and determinedly ignoring the jostling crowd edging by her as she hovers beside the green globe lamp at the subway’s entrance, Peyton asks, “So what do I have to do to prepare for this?”
“Rita will tell you. If I have you and Rita, I’ll get through it just fine. And I’ll get you through it, too, when it’s your turn. You’ll see. All you need when you’re in labor is to be surrounded by people you totally trust.”
After making plans to meet Allison for coffee after work on Monday, Peyton waits until the subterranean staircase has swallowed her friend’s glossy black curls.
Then she turns back to the bustling avenue—and realizes that she isn’t quite ready to go home just yet.
Maybe it’s spring fever, thanks to the unseasonably warm weather that has driven New Yorkers outdoors this balmy Saturday afternoon: on foot, on Rollerblades, on bicycles.
Or maybe, Peyton tells herself as she walks slowly down Seventh Avenue toward home, you’re looking for him.
She certainly shouldn’t be.
Nor should she assume that Tom Reilly’s appearance in Tequila Moon had anything to do with her.
When you come right down to it, that’s hardly a remarkable coincidence. After all, Tequila Moon is a popular Mexican restaurant, and he lives right here in the neighborhood.
So it isn’t as though he’s following her.
Nor, on the other hand, is it as though he’s avoiding her.
But if he was staring, as Allison claimed, then he probably recognized her. Why didn’t he come over and say hello? Why did he just disappear?
Because you’re virtual strangers, Peyton reminds herself, feeling foolish for caring. A container of watermelon hardly creates a lasting social obligation.
Particularly when one is hardly in prime condition for a romantic relationship.
So he happened to be there, and he apparently remembered meeting her that night, and he didn’t say hi. So what?
So, it’s bothering me. I can’t help it.
And she just isn’t sure whether she wishes he’d greeted her, or is glad that he didn’t.
Nor does she know why, when she reaches her cross street a few minutes later, she keeps walking rather than turning the corner.
Where the heck are you going? she asks herself, frowning even as she strides on down the sidewalk.
Who knows? is the hardly satisfying answer to her silent question.
Unaccustomed to harboring wishy-washiness, Peyton decides to chalk it up to pregnancy. Maybe aimless wandering is just another incongruous symptom, right up there with the leg cramps and facial pigmentation Allison warned her about earlier.
Allison also mentioned a great maternity boutique called Baby Blue that happens to be located down on Fourteenth Street, not far from here.
Okay, that’s a desirable destination. She’s far more comfortable heading some place specific rather than simply strolling the streets.
Strolling is for people who don’t know—or don’t care—where they’re going.
That’s so not me.
No, Peyton’s always known exactly where she’s going. She prefers to have every detail of her life mapped out with the same precision that landed her in New York, and in Dr. Lombardo’s office.
Dr. Lombardo.
The thought triggers an image of dark good looks, and a forbidden stirring.
Stop it, Peyton.
She forces herself to think in strictly professional terms about her upcoming visit with the doctor on Tuesday afternoon. His nurse, Nancy, sent Peyton an e-mail last week suggesting that she arrive with a list of questions she wants to ask the ob-gyn. So far, Peyton has come up with only one that’s not entirely inappropriate: how does Dr. Lombardo feel about home deliveries?
The more she’s read—and the more time she spends with her support group—the more interested she is in that particular topic. There’s something reassuring about going through a traumatic experience like childbirth right in your own home, surrounded by familiar things and familiar faces.
Familiar faces . . .
As she walks downtown, Peyton finds herself scanning the crowded sidewalks for another glimpse of one familiar face in particular.
Every so often she looks over her shoulder, feeling as though somebody is watching her. Which is ridiculous. Odds are, she’ll never see Tom again.
Not necessarily, she can almost hear Allison saying.
As her friend pointed out in the restaurant when Peyton told her about her initial meeting with Tom, sometimes New York is a smaller town than legitimate small towns.
“You’ll probably run into him again in your neighborhood. Or maybe where you least expect it,” Allison informed her, and went on to tell Peyton about how she once found herself sharing a subway car with her ex-mother-in-law.
“The thing about this city is that its boundaries are relatively small, and people are absolutely everywhere,” Allison said. “You’re bound to cross paths with everyone in town, sooner or later.”
Peyton doesn’t know about that theory. She’s never run into, say, the mayor. Or any of her favorite local movie stars. Or her ex-boyfriend Gil Blaney.
She’s heard through the Talbot Corners grapevine that he’s living and working
in midtown Manhattan. In fact, both her mother and Peyton’s old friend Caroline, with whom she exchanges e-mails, have mentioned recently that Gil would love to hear from her. Peyton’s mother even mentioned that he had called there last Christmas, hoping she was home for the holiday. He asked for her phone number, but Mom didn’t feel comfortable giving it to him.
“I know how much he hurt you,” she told Peyton. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to speak to him ever again, but I took his number for you anyway, just in case.”
Peyton still has it, scribbled on the back of a bill envelope and stuffed into her desk drawer. Just in case.
It wouldn’t be so horrible to talk to Gil. Or even see him. Presumably, he spends most of his time a stone’s throw from her own apartment and office, but their paths have yet to cross by chance.
Sometimes, out of sheer nostalgia, Peyton is tempted to pick up the phone and give him a call. Yes, she thinks, as she spots the Baby Blue down the block near the subway station, she really should call him. Someday. Just for old times’ sake. Just in case—
“Oh, I’m sorry!” blurts a slow-moving passerby, who stopped directly in Peyton’s path to gaze into a store window.
“It’s okay.” Peyton sidesteps the stranger, who is licking an ice cream cone and who, like the majority of New Yorkers on the sidewalk today, obviously has nowhere in particular to be.
Striding on toward the store, Peyton resumes thinking about Gil.
You should look him up . . . in case what? In case he’s available again? Come on. You don’t want Gil back. You just finished telling Allison that you don’t want anyone.
She meant it. Yet, lost in memories of her first love, she continues to weave her way amidst the drifting herd, oblivious of the fact that not everyone walking behind her is strolling aimlessly on this mild April Saturday.
One pedestrian, careful to keep a safe distance, has a distinct purpose: to go wherever Peyton Somerset does.
Mouse in hand, Derry left-clicks on the icon that whisks her to yet another baby clothing Web site, glad Linden isn’t here to look over her shoulder.
He would undoubtedly tell her she’s being premature, ordering all these tiny socks and hats and Onesies with money they don’t necessarily have. He’d say she shouldn’t get her hopes up, that it’s too soon. That she should at least wait until they get the call from Rose’s agency, telling them that they are the Iowa teenager’s final choice—or, even better, that the girl has gone into labor and the Cordells’ parenthood is imminent.
Those are precisely the comments Linden made when Derry made a beeline for her stash of Right Start catalogs the moment Rose left their apartment.
Naturally, Derry snapped, her temper having already been stretched dangerously thin in all the previsit stress. She found herself engaged in yet another screaming battle with the husband who claims to want a child as badly as she does, yet is somehow maddeningly detached from the emotional trauma of obtaining that goal.
Finally, Linden grabbed his coat and left the apartment, headed God knows where. He didn’t say; Derry didn’t ask. Nor did she point out that he doesn’t need a coat in this weather. Let him sweat it out somewhere. She couldn’t care less about his comfort at this point.
Derry peruses a tantalizing array of old-fashioned pink floral dresses with tiny tucks along the bodices, the kinds of dresses she wore in her baby pictures and always imagined putting on a daughter of her own someday.
It would be nice to know if that girl in Iowa is expecting a girl. Has she had a sonogram?
“Please feel free to call my office with any questions you have,” Rose said when she left, handing Derry a business card emblazoned with the now familiar Cradle to Cradle logo: two tiny cradles and a winged cherub midflight between them. “Or you can always e-mail me. And of course I’ll be sure to call or e-mail you and Linden with any updates.”
Derry finds the card and dials the number—a local one with a Manhattan exchange—not really expecting to get a human answer. After all, it’s a weekend, and late afternoon. Then again, maybe adoption agency offices don’t keep regular business hours. Maybe staff is on hand around the clock to field calls from potential mothers-to-be.
Rather, donors.
She smiles, Rose’s words echoing in her head.
If everything works out the way we expect it to, Mrs. Cordell, you will be the mother. Not her.
Was it Derry’s imagination, or was the final word uttered with a hint of distaste? As the number she dialed rings on, unanswered, Derry contemplates the fact that Rose didn’t exactly seem to hold the unwed pregnant teenager in high regard.
Well, who can blame her? In her line of work, she’s probably seen a lot of neglect. She must weary of working with women who are carrying babies they can’t raise for one reason or another. She probably feels as though they’re recklessly irresponsible, or—
There’s a sudden click in Derry’s ear.
“Your call is very important. Please leave a message.”
Derry hangs up abruptly, confused. Was that a private residence?
She presses Redial and checks the number that comes up in the caller ID window, comparing it to the one on the business card.
The numbers are the same.
After three rings, the call is answered, and she hears an identical message, succinctly delivered in a female voice that may or may not be Rose’s.
“Hi, this is Derry Cordell,” she says tentatively, after the beep. “I just . . . I had a quick question for Rose, if she could call me back.”
She recites her phone number, utters her thanks, and hangs up, still feeling a bit uncertain.
You’d think the agency’s recorded greeting would be a little more . . . businesslike. And specific. At least the message could have mentioned the name of the agency, Cradle to Cradle. Or even have some kind of answering service or hotline for expectant mothers who call when they’re in labor.
No, Derry corrects herself again.
At Cradle to Cradle, we prefer to call expectant clients “donors.”
Well, that’s just fine with Derry. She prefers to think of herself as a mother-to-be from here on in.
Smiling once again, she redirects her attention to the on-screen cursor blinking alongside that display of tiny pink floral dresses.
If Jarrett ever finds out she lied to him about where she was going today . . .
With a squeal, the subway train lurches into motion again.
No, he won’t find out, Anne Marie tells herself, holding the manila envelope with its precious, shocking contents close against her side with one hand and reaching overhead for the metal bar with the other. And anyway, you didn’t lie. You’re in the city, just like you said.
Yes, but she hasn’t been at a matinee for the new Andrew Lloyd Weber show on Broadway. She was taking care of business. Business that Jarrett knows nothing about.
What if he asks her specific questions about the musical?
She’ll have to stop at Hudson News to pick up a copy of New York magazine before she gets on the commuter train at Grand Central. Hopefully, there will be a review in the Theater section.
Then again, what does it matter? It’s not as though Jarrett is apt to ask her about the plot or lyrics or acting. He’s about as interested in Broadway shows as he is in art galleries, fine dining, the Yankees, window-shopping on Fifth Avenue . . .
Anne Marie frequently tells him that he might as well live on a desolate prairie for all the time he spends enjoying the city during nonworking hours. Jarrett’s interests are confined to the stock market, his antique sword collection, and his children.
Yes, and sometimes, it seems, in precisely that order.
To be fair, she knows he loves the boys, just as she knows, deep down, that he loves her.
She loves him in return. Jarrett Egerton saved her when she was at her lowest, a drab shell of the vibrant woman she once was.
Seven years ago, she was working in a Revolutionary War museum on the Hudson River, s
pending her days, fittingly, in isolation, cataloging dusty relics as she attempted to come to terms with her own past.
There was a time when she longed to be an archaeologist, but of course, college was out of the question for her. She had to earn a living, and until ten years ago, she earned it working as a salesclerk by day, a waitress by night.
But there she was, finally employed by a museum—not as an archaeologist, of course; by then she had long since given up the childish dream. She was content simply to support herself, to exist in relative anonymity.
Then Jarrett came along, a longtime patron interested in donating historic weaponry from his private collection.
He took her to dinner; he took her to Paris; he proposed. It was an unexpected fairy-tale ending to a bleak existence . . . or so she foolishly believed.
She should have known her newfound happiness could be little more than a temporary bandage on a festering wound.
She doesn’t expect it to heal, even now. But she must find a way to cope with the chronic suffering, if only for her children’s sake.
So stop feeling guilty about today.
On Jarrett’s account, anyway.
She only regrets that she had to leave her cherished boys at home all afternoon with a father who isn’t accustomed to being solely in charge. But she had no choice.
She has to see this through.
She owes it to herself . . .
And I owe it to you.
She closes her eyes in brief, painful remembrance, only to open them abruptly as the careening train screeches around a curve in the dark tunnel.
Anne Marie instinctively adjusts the position of her black leather pumps to keep her balance with the ingrained expertise of someone who hasn’t ridden a two-wheeler in decades, yet finds that her body instantly remembers how.
These days, she’s far less accustomed to the subway than she is to the upholstered seats on MetroNorth’s commuter trains. She certainly wouldn’t be riding the downtown local now if cabs weren’t so sparse in the neighborhood she just left. Within the circles she travels as an Egerton of Bedford, nobody rides the subway. Few ever did.
Lullaby and Goodnight Page 7
