by Karina Bliss
Pip said, “Excuse me while I go to the bathroom.”
Joe paused in his conversation to give her an “I think this is going well,” look as she squeezed past him. Men.
When Pip left the toilet stall, Nadia was standing at the vanity repairing her perfect makeup. Uh-oh. With a smile of acknowledgment, Pip went to the basin and washed her hands. In the mirror, the little ghosts quivered on her head and she took them off. They were far too frivolous for the conversation she suspected was coming.
“Well, this explains why you were such a champion of Joe’s cause leading up to camp,” Nadia said, powdering her nose with short, sharp dabs.
“We didn’t start dating until after camp.” Pip activated the hand dryer to discourage further conversation.
Nadia’s lips tightened, which made it difficult for her to reapply the vermilion lipstick. “To tell the truth,” she called over the dryer, “I’m feeling a teensy bit betrayed, Pip.” She smiled to take the sting out of the words, but her eyes told Pip she was furious. “I revealed things I would never have divulged if I’d known you were sleeping with my ex-husband.”
Resigned, Pip turned away from the dryer, rubbing her still-damp hands together. “You and I had those conversations prior to camp, but regardless, I would never betray a professional confidence. I understand that seeing your ex with another woman for the first time must be upsetting, but—”
“Upset? Of course I’m not upset…damn, my lipstick’s smeared!” Retrieving a tissue from her bag, Nadia scrubbed fiercely at her lip. “I look such a mess.”
“No, you don’t.” Pip was confused by the other woman’s self-disgust. As always, Nadia was impeccably groomed, tonight in a cream sweater and fine wool pants. Her glossy tan boots were exactly the same shade as her handbag, and strands of fine gold gleamed at her ears, neck and wrist. After dinner she and Doug were trudging the streets, supervising a gaggle of trick-or-treaters, but as far as Pip could see, the other woman’s only nod to casual was a chic ponytail.
Glancing at her own reflection, Pip grimaced, then self-consciously finger-combed her short hair, disheveled from the head-bopper, and reapplied the lip gloss that Joe had kissed off. This is not a competition, she told herself.
Just as well, ’cause you’d lose.
Nadia dropped the tissue into the bin. “And I’m only upset for Kaitlin. It was a huge shock seeing her father playing tonsil hockey with her teacher.”
As Pip opened her mouth to point out that traumatized children rarely yelled, “Yay!” before celebrating with a double helping of witches’ pudding, the other woman added vehemently, “Why did I wear my hair this way?”
Pulling off the scrunchie, Nadia ransacked her bag for a comb and dragged it through her hair with shaking fingers.
And Pip finally got it. Despite Nadia’s painstaking efforts with her appearance, she’d never been able to make her former husband fall in love with her. Because he’d been in love with someone else.
“I’m going back to New Zealand at Christmas, so the relationship’s not serious for either of us.” She wanted to reassure Nadia, but the reminder steadied Pip, as well. “And the only reason we kept it secret was because we didn’t want to give anyone the wrong idea.”
Nadia bit her lip, then met Pip’s eyes in the mirror. “I’m sorry, I don’t know why I’m reacting like this. It’s not like I still love him.”
“You were married a long time. It’s natural to feel a little territorial, under the circumstances.”
“I assure you it’s only a reflex.” Dropping the comb into her bag, Nadia pulled her hair back into a ponytail. “Doug thinks I look gorgeous like this,” she said awkwardly. “God knows why.”
“You always look gorgeous,” Pip assured her. “And I can see why Kaitlin raves about Doug.” Though he wasn’t what she’d expected. Pleasant-looking and affable, he was the polar opposite of Joe.
“Does she?” Nadia’s face lit up. “I’m so glad. Things were tense for a while.” She hesitated. “Thanks for your help with Kaitlin and Joe.”
“You’re welcome.”
Turning from the mirror, Nadia squared her shoulders. “You’re a good person, so let me give you some advice. Don’t fall in love with Joe. He doesn’t cope with that at all well. He shut down his emotions after he had his heart broken in high school.”
Pip had two opposing impulses—to defend Joe and to try to learn more. “He dismissed it as a crush.”
The brunette shook her head. “Su…she was more than that. As Princess Diana once famously said, ‘there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.’” Nadia opened the ladies’ room door and gestured for Pip to exit first. “I sometimes wonder, if we’d known the truth about her then…” She paused, and the two women looked at each other.
Nadia was obviously waiting for her to ask about Joe’s disreputable first love. Heroically, Pip bit her lip and walked on. Out of loyalty to Joe or self-protection? Both, she decided.
Shrugging, Nadia closed the door behind them. “Well, it’s water under the bridge now. Still, be careful.”
“Like I said, we’re keeping it light…. So Kaitlin mentioned you’re going to Hawaii for your honeymoon?”
Much to Pip’s relief, Nadia accepted the change of subject and they chatted about tropical destinations as they returned to the table. “Even though Doug’s so mellow, he makes every day feel like a holiday,” Nadia finished.
Joe glanced up as they approached, his charisma potent even at this distance. He was a holiday, too, Pip thought, but adrenaline-fueled, thrilling…dangerous. And while she might be open to adventure, she had a safety harness firmly in place.
In a couple of months she’d be celebrating a summer Christmas and picking the red brush blooms of the po-hutukawa tree for the festive table.
Besides, she wasn’t stupid; she’d already taken his measure.
When they’d met he’d been too battle-weary to hide his vulnerability. Now the only time Pip glimpsed the inner man was in bed, where Joe’s lovemaking was so tender it would have broken her heart if she’d let it.
So Pip wouldn’t let it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“TELL ME AGAIN,” said Daniel. “It’s the best Halloween story I ever heard. Ex-wife springs you with secret girlfriend, a real horror.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not here just to be your entertainment,” Joe said. They were drinking beers at Murphy’s Bar, watching football on the big screen and talking idly between plays.
Daniel sipped his drink. “So how’d it end?”
“Pip lectured me walking home from the restaurant. Apparently, I should have tried harder to love my ex-wife.” When Daniel spluttered, Joe grinned. “Turned out she felt bad for hurting Nadia’s feelings by keeping our relationship secret.”
“Your girlfriend sounds kind,” said Daniel. His mouth twisted at some private joke. Or it could have been the slaughter on-screen. “Did you tell her that love can’t fix everything that’s broken?”
“Pip knows I don’t want long-term.” Seizing his courage, Joe pulled a photograph out of his jacket pocket and pushed it along the bar toward Daniel. “Recognize this guy?”
His uncle tore his eyes from the frenzied celebrations on-screen. The Washington Redskins had just killed the Oakland Raiders’ Super Bowl hopes with a touchdown in extra time. “There’s something familiar about him.”
“Remember he was at Josephine’s funeral?”
“Vaguely.” Daniel studied the photograph more closely. “He wore one of those old-fashioned soft-brimmed hats. But you were the one who talked to him.”
Sue hadn’t come to the funeral; Joe had asked her not to. Her rejection of him as a boyfriend had still been too raw, too painful.
The old man had arrived near the end of the service and taken a seat in the last row, laying his hat respectfully across his knees. Though he’d carried himself with dignity, sorrow rolled off him, thick as fog. That’s why Joe had noticed him.
; At the cemetery it had started to rain, a gusty shower that swept under umbrellas and sent everyone running for cover. Avoiding the crowds, Joe had sought shelter under a mottled oak on a small rise where the old man stood apart from the other mourners.
He’d stiffened at Joe’s approach, but other than nodding an acknowledgment, Joe hadn’t initiated conversation. For perhaps ten minutes the two had stood side by side in silence, listening to the rain patter on the overhead canopy, and dodging the soft splashes of water that made it through the leaves.
Joe had stared down at the coffin, abandoned by the open grave and worried that Nana Jo would get wet inside it. Even though he was seventeen, logic couldn’t shake the childish fear. The raindrops were liquid welts on the varnished mahogany, blisters on the gold handles. He told himself it didn’t matter—as soon as the shower passed, the coffin would be lowered in the earth and covered with wet dirt anyway. But still he watched in silent agony.
“Good thing she liked the rain,” said the old man, and Joe was reassured by that simple truth.
“Into every life…” he murmured, then stopped because tears burned his eyes. It had been one of his grandmother’s sayings.
“A little rain must fall,” whispered the old man.
Eventually the shower spluttered to a stop and mourners started making their way back to the grave.
“I wonder,” said the old man, “if you could point out Adam Fraser for me.”
“You know my father?”
The old man started at that. “You are…?”
“Joe Fraser, his son. Adam couldn’t make it back in time.” Again.
“So you’re doing this alone?”
“No. Daniel…Josephine’s son by her second marriage is here.”
He’d pointed out his young uncle, but the old man gave Daniel only a cursory glance. “You were named for her.”
“Yes. When did you know my grandmother?”
“A lifetime ago.” The brim of the hat hid his face as the old man bowed his head. “She was an incredible woman.”
Below, Daniel beckoned, his face stony with repressed grief. Twenty-six years old was too young to be burying your mother. “We need to go back down,” said Joe.
“I wonder if you’d put these on her coffin for me,” the old man said hoarsely, pulling a slightly crushed posy from under his coat. “I find myself unable to say goodbye.”
Joe had accepted the flowers, the palest lilac roses. They smelled exactly like Nana’s favorite perfume and for a poignant moment it felt as if she was there with them.
“God bless you, son.” The old man’s farewell handshake had a faint tremor and he’d taken a while to let go.
“You know,” Joe said awkwardly, “some of Nana’s friends are hosting an afternoon tea back at the house.”
“Thank you, but I’m due home.”
“It was your grandfather Robert Carson, wasn’t it?” Daniel’s touch brought Joe back to the present. On-screen, the Redskins fans were still leaping around in a frenzy of burgundy and gold. The glass in front of Joe was empty.
“Yeah.” He gestured to the bartender for another round. Ironically, Joe had visited the old man’s house after Sarah Carson’s funeral six months ago, when he’d given Sue a ride to the Twin Peaks home and been talked into staying for a drink. At that point he’d simply been her old friend, plain Joe Fraser, son of Adam, grandson of Billy, exchanging polite condolences with strangers.
Strangers who’d proved to be his aunts, uncle and cousins.
If only he’d known, he would have examined his surroundings, searched out the family portraits, hunted for clues in the minutiae of his real grandfather’s life. For decades Robert Carson lived in that house. He’d built it. Surely Joe would have found some echo of the man.
It was too late now. Sam had cleared out the place for sale, stripped it of its character. But Joe did remember one thing. The wine collection. His grandfather had been a connoisseur. Like him.
The bartender delivered the beers. Joe picked up the glass, icy to the touch. “You know what really gets me now?”
“What’s that?” His uncle’s gaze was compassionate.
“I liked the son of a bitch.”
“BUT I CAN’T BE PREGNANT,” Pip told Dr. Giles at her after-school appointment. Despite telling Joe at Halloween she’d get checked out, it had taken another two weeks to find time in her busy schedule. “I’m on the pill,” she insisted. “I’m fanatical about taking it at the same time every day.”
Sitting in his consulting room, she locked her hands in her lap and waited for the physician to admit he was wrong.
Dr. Giles was a thin, beak-nosed man with enough experience to know when to meet his patient’s eyes and when to look away. He doodled a tiny line of spirals at the bottom of his notes. “If you had food poisoning and were throwing up, it’s likely your protection was compromised, even if you had taken it during that time.”
He ran out of doodle space and dropped to a new line. Pip’s gaze followed the pen. “And women who get pregnant on the pill may have intermittent bleeding, which would explain the spotting you thought was a period.”
“No.” Instinctively, she shook her head, and Dr. Giles’s eyes darted to hers before returning to his spiral doodle. She decided he was drawing her brain wave, chaotic, whirling.
“How long did the food poisoning last, Miss Browne?”
Realizing she had slid down in the chair, Pip struggled upright. “Only twenty-four hours…give or take.” Thinking about it, she realized she’d compromised two doses, maybe three. Why had it never occurred to her?
Too sick, too infatuated, too—
Nausea came in a rush and Pip leaped to her feet, trying to swallow the bile. “Excuse me,” she managed to say. Yanking open his office door, she ran to the bathroom and frantically jiggled the handle, clamping a palm to her mouth.
The door was locked.
“Key,” Dr. Giles called sharply behind her. The receptionist came flying. Sweat on her forehead, Pip stopped heaving through sheer force of will as the woman fumbled with the key. Finally, Pip shoved the door open, slammed it behind her and threw up lunch, closing her eyes against the sight of regurgitated corn chowder.
Not residual food poisoning, but a baby.
Trembling, she flushed the toilet, rinsed out her mouth at the sink, then tidied her hair in the mirror. All small, methodical actions designed to reassure the terrified face looking back at her. A woman nowhere near ready to be a mother.
With a paper towel she dabbed her forehead, clammy with sweat, then crouched under the dryer and lifted her face, needing the hard blast of air. Soon, she thought, I’ll wake up.
“Miss Browne?” The receptionist knocked on the door. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Pip hauled herself upright on shaky legs. “I’ll be out in a minute.” Pregnant. She touched her flat stomach, but all she felt was a flutter of panic. In a daze, she returned to the consulting room, where she listened carefully to Dr. Giles’s advice and accepted all his pamphlets.
Then, with no recollection of anything he’d said, she walked out of the doctor’s office and straight into a drugstore, where she bought a pregnancy kit.
Back in her North Beach apartment, Pip did the test twice, in between drinking mugs of hot, sweet tea. The result was the same both times. Positive.
Despairingly, she tossed the second tube into the bin. How could a negative be a positive? Once again she tried to think of the baby as real—and failed.
Dear God, she wasn’t ready to be pregnant. She wasn’t married, she wasn’t in New Zealand, she wasn’t thirtysomething and, most importantly, she wasn’t with a man who loved her.
No, Joe loves you. He just doesn’t know it yet. Except Nadia had held that hope for almost nine years. Pip groaned as the implications sank in.
Now, when she could least cope with it, “I left my heart in San Francisco” stopped being a cutesy sound bite and took on a sinister, ripped-out-of-your-ch
est, blood-and-guts menace.
The possibility that she loved Joe Fraser hit harder than her pregnancy, because this one she found easier to believe.
She recalled, all too clearly, how paranoid Joe had been about risking conception, and how breezy she’d been about being fully protected. Her stomach swooped in a way that had nothing to do with morning sickness. This pregnancy would kill whatever feelings he had for her. Destroy his trust.
In a panic, Pip crawled into bed and burrowed under the covers. Okay, she wouldn’t tell him. She’d simply go home, back to New Zealand as planned. But even as the notion rose, her conscience quashed it.
Joe had the right to know he was going to be a father again. In the warm, dark womb of her blankets Pip practiced saying it aloud. “I’m pregnant.” Her breathing came faster, she started to hyperventilate, and kicked off the blankets in a panic. Swinging her legs to the floor, she bent her head forward until the dizziness subsided.
She’d always been so intolerant of women who got themselves into this situation, and now she was one of them. But she had used birth control, so wasn’t she innocent? A laugh escaped her, like the valve release on a pressure cooker. Could you get pregnant innocently?
Oh, God, how am I going to tell my family? She laughed again, a pained, hysterical sound that ended in a sob. Pip stripped off her clothes and stood in the shower, letting the jets pummel heat into her body, which was chilled with delayed shock. She tried to empty her mind of everything but the steam catching in her lungs as she forced herself to breathe. In, two, three. Out, two, three.
I will get through this. Somehow.
The intercom buzzed as she finished dressing, and Pip stood there blankly. The buzz came again, as impatient as an angry bee. Oh, hell! She was supposed to be going on a night tour of Alcatraz with Joe, Kaitlin and Melissa.
Scrabbling for an excuse, she stepped onto her tiny first-floor balcony with its fanciful wrought-iron railings. Three faces looked up, two wreathed in excited smiles. Joe gave her a crooked, sexy grin and she resisted the urge to cry.
