Dead Ringer

by Annelise Ryan

  He smiles down at me with one eyebrow arched. “I should study up on this case before we go to Eau Claire,” he says with an obvious lack of conviction.

  “We can do that tomorrow, in the car, on the way,” I say, pushing up his T-shirt and planting a kiss on his belly. “Right now, I think you need to study some anatomy.”

  With that, he tosses the pile of folders onto the floor, and then reaches down and pulls me up toward him, kissing me on the lips. And then he proceeds to earn an A+ in his anatomy class.

  CHAPTER 7

  I awaken the next morning at a little past six to find Hurley rolling out of bed and heading for the bathroom. My own bladder is feeling impatient, so I toss back the covers, get up, and head down the hall to the other bathroom. Matthew and Emily are both still asleep, and I figure Hurley and I might have an hour of peace-and-quiet time to enjoy our morning coffee before the chaos kicks in.

  Once I’m done in the bathroom—which includes another failed attempt to get my rings on and a tense exchange with my scale, where I learn that I’ve not only not lost any weight, I’ve gained another five pounds—I head downstairs to the kitchen. There I turn on the coffee maker, which I’d set up the night before. We have a fancy De’Longhi espresso machine, which makes lattes and cappuccinos, but the effort involved is more than I feel I can deal with first thing in the morning. I sometimes make exceptions on the weekend mornings if I’m off duty, but the fancy machine gets most of its use in the afternoons or after dinner. Good old-fashioned drip coffee is our morning staple on most days.

  Hurley comes downstairs a moment later, his unshaven face and tousled hair making him look scruffy and sexy at the same time. I’m in the process of taking two mugs down from the cabinet over the coffee machine when he comes up behind me and snakes an arm around my waist, pulling me into him.

  “Good morning, beautiful,” he says into my hair.

  I arch my neck and turn my face around to kiss him, but before I can, my stomach lurches threateningly. I quickly face front again and lean forward, bracing myself with my hands on the edge of the counter.

  “What’s the matter, Squatch?”

  I rub a palm over my stomach and swallow hard. “I’m okay,” I say tentatively. “I got hit with a wave of nausea there for a moment. I hope I’m not coming down with something.”

  Hurley’s hands settle on my shoulders, where they begin a slow, soothing massage. I close my eyes and relish the delicious feeling as he kneads my muscles. After several seconds of this, his hands suddenly stop moving and his fingers tighten ever so slightly.

  “What is it?” I ask, opening my eyes and turning to face him. I’m quite tuned into my husband’s body language, and I know that some idea, some significant thought, has just struck him. I assume it has something to do with our current case, but Hurley proves me wrong.

  “Could that nausea be an indication of something else?” he asks in a hopeful tone.

  I catch his meaning immediately and my eyebrows rise in astonishment. I flash on the swollen fingers, the weight gain, the intermittent nausea I’ve had recently. Oh, dear.

  “It could be,” I say, looking at him again, a tentative smile forming on my lips.

  Hurley’s mouth forms into a smile of its own. “Are you late?”

  I think back and try to calculate, but it’s no use. “I might be,” I say finally. “I don’t keep track of my periods very well. Do you remember when I had it last?”

  Hurley makes a face like I just asked him to eat from the cat’s litter box. “Lord, no. That’s your job.”

  Technically, but we are in this together. I feel oddly irritated by his response, and the uncharitable thought pops into my head, but I manage to subdue it before I voice it.

  “Do you have a test?”

  “I do. I bought four of them two months ago when they were on sale.” Hurley looks at me with a questioning expression, clearly implying that I should do the test right away. “I just peed,” I say. “I need to drink a cup of coffee so I can go again.”

  “But isn’t coffee a no-no?”

  I sigh, the mere thought of giving up coffee makes me want to scream or kill someone. “It’s fine in moderation,” I say, which is true, though it still feels like a lame excuse. And then, before Hurley can come up with any more protests, I proceed to pour coffee into both mugs, though guilt prompts me to fill my own cup only halfway.

  I hand Hurley’s mug to him and we settle in at the table in our breakfast nook. It’s one of my favorite spots in our newly built house, an outset area with windows on three sides. It offers a view of the woods that border us on one side, and of an area that runs down the side of the house that I plan to turn into a flower garden. For now, the view is of a great expanse of mud waiting for the spring planting of grass that will eventually create a lawn. Since the house was completed in early December, there hasn’t been time yet to do any landscaping, though now that it is early April, the planting is about to begin in earnest.

  We have to be careful with spring plantings here. Snowstorms in April are not unheard of; in fact, it’s darn near a certainty that we’ll have at least one. Beyond the muddy moat that currently surrounds our house is a bluff that overlooks the countryside out front, and rolling fields that once yielded corn, soybeans, and tobacco out back. We bought five acres from a farmer who was no longer working the land and whose family was selling it off one parcel at a time to finance the old man’s nursing home–based retirement. Some of the surrounding acres have been sold to hobby farmers and are still being used for plantings. I’ll know it’s safe to start planting preparations when the first sure sign of spring comes around: the smell of cow manure. It’s the local farmers’ favorite fertilizer.

  Despite the lack of any natural beauty to take in at the moment, the nook is still a cozy, warm place, thanks to its southeastern exposure. I want to sit and bathe in the morning sunlight for as long as I can, leaving the rest of the world behind. Hurley, however, is staring at me with puppy-dog eyes—eager, excited, and impatient. Desperate to escape from that optimistic and expectant—pun intended—scrutiny, I ask him if he learned anything useful last night in the time he had to study what he had on the Eau Claire serial killer.

  “I was reading some police reports when you so delightfully interrupted me,” he says with a salacious wink. He eyes me over his mug of coffee and his gaze sobers. “Was this guy you talked to in the bar at the conference married?”

  I nearly spit my coffee out, surprised as I am by the question. “What difference does that make?” I ask a bit irritably.

  Hurley shrugs and props his elbows on the table, holding his mug up in front of his face with both hands as if to hide from me. But I can still see his eyes and they tell me we aren’t done with this discussion. “I don’t suppose it matters,” he says after a moment. “Did he flirt with you?”

  His tone is even, not angry or upset, but the question clearly is a provocative one. I shrug and hold my coffee cup the same way he is, obscuring part of my face. Two can play at this game. “Are you jealous, Hurley?”

  Another shrug. “I don’t like the idea of you sipping drinks till all hours of the night in an out-of-town bar with some good-looking guy,” he says. Now his tone is wounded, worried, but still not angry.

  “Who said he was good-looking?” I ask. I suppress a smile. Hurley’s image of me as some seductress or femme fatale amuses me because it couldn’t be further from the truth. I didn’t date a whole lot before I met my ex, David Winston, and the dates I did have were mostly disasters. I had one serious relationship before David that happened while I was in nursing school, but aside from that, the highlight of my dating experiences was a fellow who boasted that I was the best date he’d ever had. Sadly, he was one of my ER patients, someone I had to put in four-point leather restraints and shoot up with Haldol.

  My courtship and subsequent marriage to David occupied most of my adult life, and he was clearly the one in charge during the whole thing. Typical of his
surgeon’s type A personality, he is and always has been a take-charge kind of guy who has no qualms about steering his life in the direction he wants it to go. The one time he couldn’t do that was when I left him after discovering he’d been cheating on me with my coworker.

  I sometimes wonder if we might have tried to work things out, had I discovered his indiscretions via the pervasive and surprisingly accurate grapevine at the hospital, as opposed to the way it happened. I walked into a dimly lit operating room one evening, thinking my husband was working late saving lives. I was bringing him a goody basket, since he’d missed dinner, but I found him with the nurse in question. She was on her knees in front of him, eagerly exploring his goody basket. The shock and pain of that moment seared my brain and heart, slamming shut the door on my relationship with David.

  For two months, I hid out in Izzy’s cottage and experimented with things like how long I could go without bathing before I truly began to smell, how many pints of ice cream I could eat in one day before I had to worry about weight gain, and how long I could sit on a pity pot before I became laughing stock for a big helping of pathetic soup. Finally I emerged from my self-made prison and began my current job.

  “So this guy was ugly,” Hurley says hopefully.

  He hadn’t been—quite the opposite if memory serves. Though when it comes to that night, my memory is serving minuscule portions, like they do in those extremely fancy, expensive restaurants where they put one scallop on a plate and then decorate around it and call it an entree. As far as I’m concerned, that barely qualifies as an appetizer.

  I dodge. “I’m starting to think you don’t trust me, Hurley.” It’s not an answer, but I’m hoping my deflection will keep Hurley from noticing this. It’s wishful thinking on my part. My husband is an experienced interrogator.

  “You didn’t answer the question,” he grumbles. “And it isn’t you I don’t trust, it’s men in general. I know how we think.”

  I give him what I hope is a reassuring and understanding smile.

  “You’re not wearing your rings again,” he says.

  “They’re too tight,” I say, flexing my fingers. “I’ve put on a few pounds. I think I’m going to have to get them resized.”

  Hurley scowls, and I figure this conversation has about as much promise of turning out well as did the offering of the dead chipmunk Rubbish left on Hurley’s pillow a few days ago, though it has been entertaining listening to Matthew natter on about the dead “pimpchuck” ever since. I decide to switch gears.

  “I think I can pee now,” I say, getting up. “Be back in five.”

  The diversion works. Hurley’s developing scowl immediately morphs into an expression of hopeful anticipation. I make my way upstairs to the bathroom off our bedroom and retrieve one of the pregnancy tests I have stashed in a cabinet. After a brief review of the instructions, I position myself and proceed to pee on both the stick and my fingers. I set the test stick on top of a wad of toilet paper and leave it on the edge of the sink while I wash my hands. I glance at the clock on the wall and calculate my waiting time.

  The idea of having another kid is one I’ve come to, somewhat reluctantly. Hurley has been eager to have a second child—though technically for him it’s his third—ever since Matthew was born. I, on the other hand, have been on the fence. I didn’t enjoy my pregnancy all that much, and I still recall the mental and physical exhaustion I felt during those early months of Matthew’s life. Granted, things would be different this time. When I had Matthew, I was still living in the cottage behind Izzy’s house and was essentially functioning as a single parent. It wasn’t because Hurley didn’t want to help; he did. But I was in a strange place then, mentally and emotionally, still struggling to deal with my failed marriage to David and unconvinced that Hurley’s proposals were based on anything more than a sense of obligation.

  Don’t get me wrong. Hurley is a great hands-on dad and I absolutely adore my son. I would do anything for him. But Matthew really tests my patience at times, and I get tired at the mere thought of doing it all over again. There’s also the fact that Emily will be moving out of the house in another year or so, taking with her one of our most convenient babysitting resources. It’s already hard enough trying to balance Matthew’s needs with those of my job and marriage. Adding another kid to the mix isn’t likely to make things easier.

  Hurley’s persistence wore me down, however, and in a desperate attempt to come up with a decent birthday gift for him, I agreed that we would try for another child. I’ve become resigned to the idea at this point, though I also realize that my body may not be as willing as my mind. I’m pushing forty and keenly aware that the risks to any child I might bear and to me increase with every month that goes by. I’d be lying if I said there isn’t some part of me that is hoping this pregnancy test will be negative.

  I glance at the clock, see that my time is up, and brace myself before looking at the test stick. The answer is crystal clear, and after taking a moment to absorb it all, I get up and head back downstairs.

  I’m on my way out of our bedroom when Matthew comes tearing down the hall and smashes into my legs, wrapping his arms around them. “Morning, Mammy,” he says, using his unique combination of Mattie and mommy.

  “Good morning, Matthew.” I reach down and scoop him up, balancing him on my hip. He is the spitting image of his father, with his black hair and blue eyes. He has his father’s nose and mouth, too, though he did manage to inherit my dimples . . . the ones on my face, that is.

  “Maffew hungry,” he says. This is his latest affectation, talking about himself in the third person.

  “Well, then, we best go feed that monster in your belly before he starts to growl.” I tickle his tummy, making him laugh and squirm to be let down. I set him on the floor and watch as he dashes off toward the stairs. “Be careful!” I holler. It’s a wasted warning. The kid always tears down those stairs like they aren’t there. My son is a constant ball of energy and inquisitiveness, a cross between two of his favorite cartoon characters: the Tasmanian Devil and Curious George.

  As I reach the top of the stairs, I hear the delighted squeals of Matthew greeting his father good morning, and it makes me smile. Then I remember the test stick.

  Hurley is busy fixing Matthew a bowl of cereal when I enter the kitchen. Our kid has some odd tastes when it comes to food. He doesn’t like milk on his cereal, and for a time, we had to give it to him dry, lest he dump the entire bowl on his head in protest. Then one morning he decided to pour his apple juice into his bowl of Cheerios—his favorite cereal—and eat that. Now that’s how he wants his cereal every morning, and it’s what Hurley has prepared for him.

  Hurley looks at me expectantly, a half-smile on his face. “Well?” he prompts when I don’t say anything right away.

  “I might have to start limiting my coffee intake,” I say glumly, giving him a wan smile.

  He gives me a bemused look. “Meaning . . . you’re pregnant?”

  “I am.”

  “Woo-hoo!” Hurley whoops, pumping one fist in the air. He walks over and gives me a big hug, nearly lifting me off the floor.

  Matthew mimics Hurley’s holler with one of his own. “Woo-woo!” he says, throwing both of his arms up in the air and then laughing hysterically. Unfortunately, he is holding a spoonful of apple-juiced Cheerios when he does this, and the oat circles go flying in all directions. Hoover knocks over a chair as he makes a mad dash for the scattering cereal bits, and our cat, Rubbish, comes flying out of the laundry room and starts running after rolling oat bits, too. This makes Matthew laugh even more, and before I know it, he’s dug his spoon into the bowl and gathered up more cereal, which he then tosses across the floor.

  “Matthew, stop that,” Hurley says in a calm voice.

  Matthew does, looking properly chastised. It amazes me how Hurley can do this, as I often have to repeat my commands several times, getting sterner with each one, before Matthew will listen to me. And then it’s even odds as
to whether he’ll listen to me at all.

  Though my feelings on the pregnancy matter are still mixed, it’s hard not to get caught up in Hurley’s excitement. Clearly, he is thrilled. Matthew appears to be, too, though he has no idea what all the excitement is even about. I wonder what he’ll be like as a big brother.

  Hurley gets solicitous suddenly. He releases me from his bear hug and steers me toward the breakfast table, where he rights the chair that Hoover knocked over, and directs me to take a seat. “What would you like for breakfast, my dear?” he asks.

  My first inclination is to tell him not to bother. I’m not a big fan of being fussed over. But I hold back and think about it for a moment, realizing that it would be unfair to deny Hurley this bit of excitement and celebration. “How about some scrambled eggs and toast?”

  “Coming right up.” Hurley heads for the refrigerator and gathers what he needs. Then he heads for the stove and starts cooking.

  I sit and watch as Hoover finds and scarfs up the last of the apple-juiced Cheerios, and then I look at my son, sitting across the table from me. The morning sunlight dances in his hair, his delight over the celebration still evident on his face, even though I don’t think he has a clue what all the hubbub is about. My heart swells with love for him, and for a moment, I worry that I won’t be able to love another child the way I love Matthew. It’s hard for me to imagine doing so, but I shrug the feeling off and tell myself that surely nature has a way of dealing with these things.

  Then again, nature is also responsible for things like tornadoes, volcanoes, and certain breeds of animals that eat their young.

  Twenty minutes later, breakfast is finished, and we are all headed upstairs to get dressed. Hurley, still riding his high, offers to take care of dressing Matthew while I hop in the shower. I typically get first dibs on the shower that Hurley and I share because my routine takes longer than his. I have more surface area to shave, more hair to shampoo and condition, and then there’s the whole styling thing, which Hurley doesn’t have to do. He simply runs a comb through his hair and calls it good, letting it air-dry. I have a lot of hair, particularly for a blonde, but the individual strands are very thin and prone to frizz. If I were to do what Hurley does, my head would look like a dandelion puffball gone to seed.