Lullaby and Goodnight

by Staub, Wendy Corsi

  Miraculously, within weeks of submitting their paperwork, Mary and Javier found themselves chosen as adoptive parents by that teenager in Idaho. It was too good to be true. Even the fee was an amount they could afford, an amount that could be paid over time without hardship.

  It was as though it was meant to be.

  So when Rose broke the news a month later, about the donor changing her mind, they found themselves facing a more shattering blow than ever before. It seemed as if their lives were over . . . until Rose told them about this opportunity.

  It was their last chance for parenthood.

  They knew it, and Rose acknowledged as much, when pressed.

  Otherwise, Mary would never have agreed to the charade.

  Now, she tells herself, staring down at her precious child, you have no choice but to live with what you did.

  You ’ll have to suffer the consequences . . . and be grateful that this terrible guilt is the worst of it.

  “Derry? I just got your message. What is it? What’s wrong?”

  The sound of Rose’s familiar voice is as reassuring as the obvious concern that emanates over the telephone line.

  I’m not as alone as I feel. Not really.

  Rose cares about me. And she’ll see to it that I get this baby, no matter what. Then I’ll never be alone again.

  Clutching the phone tightly against her ear, Derry allows herself to exhale, telling herself, for perhaps the hundredth time in the past hour since Linden left, that everything is going to be okay.

  Yet even as she thinks it, a tide of heartbreak rushes through her to sweep away her voice, her composure, every bit of hard-won confidence in her soul.

  She loved him. He was her entire world.

  What is she going to do? How will she survive?

  Thankfully Rose is silent, waiting patiently, as if sensing Derry’s crisis.

  “It’s Linden,” she says in a small voice when at last she can speak. “He’s . . .”

  “What?” Rose persists gently when she trails off. “Did something happen to him?”

  Yes. He turned into an absolute bastard. That’s what happened to him.

  “He moved out,” she tells Rose reluctantly, wishing that with the revelation she could put behind her the anguish of their final fight.

  The one that sent him out the door.

  Not for the night.

  Forever.

  That’s what he said and she knows in her heart, in her gut, that it’s true.

  Their marriage is over. All she has now is the baby.

  He told her that was the only thing she really wanted anyway, but he was wrong.

  She wanted to be a family. She just lost sight of her husband’s role in the struggle toward that goal.

  “He moved out?” Rose is echoing in disbelief as Derry wipes away the fresh tears that sting her swollen eyes. “What happened?”

  “Things have been bad for a long time. We’re splitting up. It’s better this way, though,” she says, sniffling. “He didn’t really want the baby. Not like I did.”

  Rose is silent. Ominously so, Derry realizes.

  “This won’t change anything, will it?” she beseeches the woman in near desperation. “I mean, this girl—the donor—she has to know that one parent is better than none.”

  “I would think so,” Rose agrees after a pause. “But—”

  “No, Rose, don’t say it. Please just say she’ll still let me have the baby. Please. That’s all I have left and we’ve come so far. Everybody knows that I’m pregnant. They’re all expecting me to have a baby. I can’t suddenly undo everything, take it all back, say that I wasn’t really pregnant after all.”

  “No,” Rose agrees again, after another brief hesitation. “You can’t.”

  “Please talk to the donor for me. Can you? Can you convince her that we have to go through with this?”

  Derry holds her breath, sensing that everything is hanging in the balance now, waiting for the verdict. She thrusts a fingertip into her mouth, and then another, and another, searching for a ragged edge to chew, finding nothing but raw nubs.

  “I think it’s time that you met her yourself,” Rose tells her at last.

  “When?”

  “As soon as possible. I’m sure that if she hears your story firsthand she’ll be more apt to agree that you can handle this as a single mother.”

  “Just name the time and place and I’ll be there,” Derry says in sheer relief, hugging the rubber mold close.

  “All right. But, Derry . . . ?”

  “Yes?”

  “Please don’t say a word about this to anybody. Not even Linden.”

  “Linden and I aren’t speaking,” Derry reminds her, wondering why Rose sounds so adamant. Of course Linden is already aware of the pregnancy charade in the first place. Did Rose forget somehow that she was the one who convinced him to go through with it?

  “I realize that, but if you by any chance see him again before we meet the donor, don’t say a word about it. I mean it, Derry, this has to be absolutely confidential from here on in—between you, and me, and the donor. Do you understand?”

  “Of course,” Derry promises. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  “. . . and the progeny of an unlawful bed will disappear . . .”

  Suddenly hearing Jarrett coming up the stairs, Anne Marie shoves the red leather Bible and envelope back into her bureau drawer and slips swiftly and silently into bed.

  Heart pounding, pulse racing, she pulls up the duvet on her side, hoping to duplicate her usual even-breathing huddled sleep posture before he arrives in the room.

  To her relief—and surprise—she hears him pause on his way down the hall to look in on the slumbering triplets, just as she did mere minutes ago. Jarrett stays in the nursery just briefly, presumably tucking them in more securely, but the unexpected paternal gesture fills Anne Marie with unaccustomed remorse.

  He’s not all bad. In fact, he’s not bad, at all. He loves their children. Perhaps not as fiercely as she does, but then, her motivation is unique.

  If he ever knew . . .

  She quells the thought that’s flitted through her mind countless times lately.

  He doesn’t know. He’ll never know, unless she tells him.

  And why would she do that?

  Because you can’t keep this up much longer, she acknowledges wearily, closing her eyes, pretending to be sound asleep as he comes into the room.

  Because sooner or later, you might just crack . . . and confess.

  If Jarrett hadn’t come down earlier and found her before she left, she’d have stolen off into the night without thinking of the consequences, just as she did before. She’d have driven two hours on a useless, impulsive mission borne of this obsession that’s taken over her life.

  What if she hadn’t been so lucky this time? What if she’d been caught, prowling around a stranger’s home? What if she’d had an accident, speeding along the highway to get back home before dawn?

  What was she thinking?

  She wasn’t thinking.

  She was feeling.

  Maybe it’s about damned time she traded an anesthetized existence for a confrontational one. It’s about damned time she found him, called him. It’s about damned time she decided to seek closure.

  But for now, closure will have to wait.

  She hears Jarrett tiptoeing across the floor, pausing at the upholstered bench by the bureau, where he tossed his discarded boxers and T-shirt earlier.

  Only when she realizes that he hasn’t yet put them on does she surreptitiously open her eyes.

  She finds her husband standing absolutely still, looking into the top drawer of the bureau, left inadvertently ajar in her haste to cast aside the incriminating evidence: the Bible and the manila envelope.

  Well. Talk about an unexpected turnoff in a well-mapped road.

  Not that this is entirely unwelcome.

  She wasn’t the right choice from the start. Though she technically fit all the
requirements, there was always something vaguely impetuous about her.

  Now she’s gone too far. There is simply no room in the meticulous plan for a loose cannon.

  Something must be done.

  And it can’t wait until tomorrow, or next week, or next month.

  No, she’ll have to be dealt with tonight.

  “I’m coming over,” Tom Reilly informs Peyton the instant she picks up the telephone. “In two minutes. I’ll be right there.”

  “But—”

  Her protest is met by a dial tone.

  He’s coming over?

  There’s nothing to do but cast aside her summer pajamas, hurriedly throw on a T-shirt and shorts, comb her bed-rumpled hair, brush her teeth, and wonder why he can’t just leave it alone.

  She honestly assumed whatever it was that they had ended when she bade him a firm and final good night outside, after Gil tactfully hopped into a passing cab, leaving the two of them alone on the stoop.

  “I need to talk to you,” Tom said even then, before and after her goodnight, but Peyton brushed him off, escaping into her building to call Rita.

  Now he’s coming over.

  She can always just not let him into the building when he buzzes from the door outside.

  But that isn’t her style. She isn’t a person who ducks confrontation.

  Oh yeah? What about avoiding all his phone calls until now?

  And, aside from Tom, what about not telling Tara you’re pregnant?

  The truth is, she’s becoming a wimp, and she doesn’t like it. She’s let Allison’s disappearance and her own break-in unnerve her to the point where she’s no longer capable of handling her own problems.

  The old Peyton Somerset would face Tom head-on, listen to what he has to say, and stand up for herself.

  “Wimp,” she accuses, glaring into the bathroom mirror. “What’s happened to you?”

  He probably wants to tell you off because you led him on, she informs her infuriatingly anxious-looking reflection. Or maybe he’s just curious and wants to know who the baby’s father is.

  She can handle that. She can at least listen. She can at least talk to him.

  Feeling reassuringly decisive, infinitely more like her usual self, she splashes cold water on her face. If only she could somehow wash away the purplish trenches beneath her sleep-deprived eyes.

  Yes, she can talk to him . . . but what can she say?

  Maybe she should actually come right out and explain the circumstances of her pregnancy. Maybe she owes him the truth because . . . because . . .

  Because she cares about him. There. She’ll admit it, if only to herself.

  Certainly not to Rita. Peyton felt her friend’s disapproval for Tom, and she knows Rita has her best interests in mind. That’s why she called her. Because she needed a sounding board, a voice of reason.

  All her life, though, she has relied on her own instincts. She’s never needed anybody else’s input. Why now?

  Because this pregnancy has wreaked havoc on her chemistry, her emotions. How can she trust herself when she frequently feels like an outsider in her own body?

  It’s been five months now. She should be used to it. She should make an effort to go back to listening to what she wants, what she needs.

  Beginning tonight. Right now.

  All right, then, Peyton. What do you want?

  I want to see Tom again.

  Yes. She’s glad he’s coming over . . . even if it’s only to have the final word.

  The playground, jam-packed with romping children every single day, is virtually deserted at this late hour on a weeknight, just as Derry expected. The only person she passed on the way to this part of the park was a homeless man collecting discarded cans from a trash bin.

  She figures that’s why Rose selected this remote corner as a meeting spot, knowing the pregnant teen would be skittish.

  But couldn’t they have waited at least until daylight?

  Derry looks over her shoulder as she takes a seat on the designated bench right on the edge of the pond, where little boys sail remote-operated boats on beautiful summer afternoons.

  She can’t help feeling a little spooked. It’s easy to imagine danger lurking in the underbrush a few feet away from the bench; easy to imagine that she hears something rustling the branches.

  She slaps at a mosquito that rises from the murky water to buzz around her sweat-sticky neck, manages to find a sliver of fingernail to gnaw, and wishes Rose would hurry.

  The evening’s oppressive humidity threatens to give way to a thundershower any second now. There’s an ominous rumble in the distance, and heat lightning flashes are coming more frequently above the skyline in the western sky.

  Derry would hate to be caught out here alone in a storm.

  If Rose and the girl would show up, the three of them could go some place to talk. Even back to Derry’s apartment, which is what she should have insisted upon in the first place.

  But when Rose called to hastily present this last-minute plan, she agreed.

  What else could she do?

  Rose is calling all the shots, clearly, from here on in.

  And with Linden gone now, Derry reminds herself grimly, this is definitely my last chance for—

  Her final thought is forever incomplete as, with a single, shattering blow from behind, her world goes blacker than the night sky.

  “Here.” Still in the gray shorts and navy T-shirt he had on earlier, Tom thrusts the familiar white plastic shopping bag and flowers into Peyton’s arms. “These are for you.”

  “But—”

  “Please take them,” he urges. “I want you to have them.”

  What is there to do but accept? She peers into the bag, sees a clear plastic deli container filled with watermelon chunks, and looks up at him, not sure how to react.

  She’s afraid that if she tries to speak, she might cry. And she never allows herself to cry in front of anybody. Not even over Allison.

  “It’s almost in season,” he says with a shrug. “I thought you might like it.”

  “Thanks,” she murmurs, setting both the bag and the flowers on the counter of the kitchenette. Riddled with unaccustomed uncertainty, she wonders if she should put the melon into the refrigerator and the flowers in a vase. The gestures seem somehow inappropriate, in light of the grave undercurrent in the room.

  “This is just how I pictured it,” he comments, and she turns to see him looking around, walking around, seemingly inspecting the place. “Crown moldings and all.”

  She nods again, wishing she could find her voice, and something worthwhile to say.

  “Are you going to stay here when the baby comes?” he asks unexpectedly. “I mean . . . do you have room?”

  “Yes.”

  He looks as though he’s waiting for her to elaborate.

  What else can she possibly tell him? That she’ll buy a cradle, then a crib, then a toddler bed, and keep them beside her in the apartment’s lone bedroom? That someday, with luck, she’ll be able to afford a bigger place, and private school, and all that lies ahead?

  “There’s something you should know.” Tom sits, uninvited, on her couch. He pats the cushion beside him. “Come sit with me. Okay?”

  She does. Her pregnancy-enhanced senses drink in the familiar smell of him. Not cologne, exactly, but the clean, woodsy scent of soap or shampoo, a scent that is uniquely his . . . a scent she realizes she’s been subconsciously craving for weeks.

  “You should know why my marriage ended,” he tells her.

  She throws up her hands, instinctively fending off an unwelcome onslaught of information.

  He captures her hands gently in his, squeezing them. “Look, I wouldn’t be telling you this if it wasn’t relevant.”

  “None of this is relevant,” she tells him, but she doesn’t sound convincing, even to her own ears.

  “My wife didn’t want kids, Peyton. I love them. It’s that simple.”

  Peyton merely gapes at him, preten
ding to wonder what that has to do with anything.

  “I should have known from the start. But I was crazy about her. Or maybe just crazy.” He gives a humorless laugh.

  She should slip her hands out of his, but she can’t seem to bring herself to pull away. It’s been so long since she’s had human contact like this.

  But it isn’t just that. It’s him. She’s drawn to him. She can’t help it.

  “Amy was never good with my nieces and nephews—I have eleven of them—but I thought she’d change,” Tom goes on. “All my friends kept telling me her biological clock would start ticking eventually, and she’d want a baby after all. Of course that didn’t happen. People don’t change.”

  “No, they don’t.” Peyton thinks of Jeff, and Scott, even Gil. Of the reasons none of them is right for her.

  But Tom isn’t, either, she reminds herself. He could have been, if things were different. . . .

  “Why are you telling me this?” she asks abruptly, pulling her hands from his grasp at last.

  He takes a deep breath. “I know this sounds corny. I can’t even believe I’m telling you this. But I felt something for you from the first time I saw you that day in the park, even before we ever met. I took one look at you and it was like I knew there was going to be something—”

  “In the park?” she cuts in, her mind reeling. “We didn’t meet in the park. We met in the Korean grocery. Remember? On Saint Patrick’s Day.”

  “But that wasn’t the first time I saw you,” he says without flinching. “I noticed you around the neighborhood before. I even knew where you lived. I saw you coming out of this building a couple of times. Once you must have been Christmas shopping . . . you had all these bags and it was snowing and I kept thinking I should run up and help you open the door . . . but I didn’t.”

  Oh God. She remembers that day. Remembers her weighted arms, and blowing snow, and being in a festive, carefree mood anyway. Carefree . . . and blissfully unaware that she was being watched.

  Unsettling as that realization may be, Peyton can’t deny that she still feels something for Tom.