by Joan Kilby
“This morning?” she said crossly. “I need more notice than that.” She plunked a packed lunch down in front of him, shoved a hand through uncombed hair and closed her arms over her dressing gown.
Max winced as the paper sack hit the granite benchtop. “I hope there isn’t an apple in there. I didn’t make the arrangements until last night, and when I got to bed you were already asleep.”
He was worried about her. For the past week she’d been in bed, asleep, before nine o’clock, only to rise in the night. Once he’d found her baking pastry shells for crab puffs at 2:00 a.m. Another time, he’d caught her folding laundry at midnight. “Do I take it the answer is no?”
“Of course it’s no. My catalog still isn’t printed and I’ve got so much to do around here it’ll take me until next month to finish.” She shuffled across the kitchen to return the milk to the fridge, still grumbling. “You could have told me you were driving to Seattle before I made you a sandwich.”
“It won’t go to waste. I’m meeting my client to discuss the concept design, then I’m coming home.” He opened his briefcase and put the bag in, then stared as Kelly got the mop and bucket from the walk-in pantry and squirted floor cleaner into the bucket. “You’re washing the floor now? I thought you had so much to do.”
“This is one of the things I have to do. Anyway, what do you care when I wash the floor?” Kelly sloshed soapy water over the tiles with an urgency out of proportion to the task. “With five kids around, this place gets so dirty. Someone has to keep the house clean.”
“You know we could fix that with one phone call to a cleaning lady.” Max stepped carefully over the wet floor and took Kelly by the shoulders, forcing her to straighten. “Honey, what’s wrong? You’ve been acting so strange lately.”
Her eyes opened very wide. “Nothing’s wrong. What could be wrong?”
He pulled her into a hug. “It’s scary starting your own business. I was terrified when I first hung out my shingle and announced to the world I was an architect.”
Her nose pressed to his suit jacket, she uttered a disbelieving snort of laughter that sounded suspiciously like a sob. “You were never scared.”
“Sure I was. I just hid it.” He stroked her hair, worried by her tears, which seemed to have sprung from nowhere. “You’ve been laying the foundations of this business for years without even knowing you were doing so. Why not give it your all and quit real estate?”
“Not until I’m sure I can make a go of it.”
“You’re going to be a huge success— I just know it.”
“Thanks.” Her lips curved briefly.
Her smile didn’t reach her eyes, though, and that disturbed him. Where was his cheerful, carefree Kelly? “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”
Avoiding his gaze, she wiped her wet cheeks with the sleeve of her dressing gown. “You’d better go or you’ll be late for your meeting.”
“Okay,” Max said, reluctant to leave her in this odd emotional state. “I’ll call you after my meeting, around lunchtime.”
“No! I mean, I’ll be out…you know, doing stuff.”
Max picked up his briefcase and slowly backed away. “See you tonight, then. Take care. Love you.”
She smiled brilliantly, fresh tears welling in her eyes. “Love you, too. Bye. I’m fine. Go, Max.”
Max drove to Seattle, but his thoughts stayed in Hainesville, with Kelly. He didn’t know what to make of her moods lately—one minute angry, the next weepy, and usually over nothing. Nothing that he could discern, anyway.
He met his client, Frank McMurtrie, on the fortieth floor of his office building and spent the morning going over Frank’s requirements for a luxury penthouse apartment.
“How about lunch?” Frank suggested when they were done. “I found a great little seafood place near here.”
Max opened his briefcase to stow his notebook full of detailed notes and measurements. The lunch Kelly had made him stared back accusingly. She hated wasting anything. With a shrug, he closed his briefcase. “Sounds good.”
They walked from Frank’s office building to the restaurant, a matter of only a few blocks. On the way, Max dialed home on his cell phone, even though Kelly had told him not to. He’d counted twelve rings, when he suddenly stopped dead in the middle of an intersection and clicked off the phone. Kelly’s station wagon was parked across the street, in front of the medical center.
“Something wrong, Max?” Frank asked from a few paces ahead when he’d noticed Max had stopped.
“No, nothing.” The light turned and Max hurried to catch up, his gaze fixed on the car. Could he be mistaken? There were plenty of red Ford station wagons around. Coming closer, he saw Beth’s baseball hat in the back window and a peeling bumper sticker that read Ballet Dancers Do It Gracefully. Robyn, thank goodness, had no apparent understanding of double entendre.
All through lunch, Max wondered and worried. Had Kelly changed her mind about contacting craft shops? Or did she have an appointment at the medical center? Her OB-GYN was in Everett, so if she was here for a medical visit it had to be for something other than a new IUD. The way she’d been acting all week suggested something was wrong with her.
Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself. With all that had happened between them this summer he was stressed out and paranoid. Now that everything was starting to go well for them he was being foolish, imagining the worst. There had to be a simple explanation.
Nevertheless, a cold finger of fear traced his spine as he tried in vain to concentrate on what Frank was saying about the penthouse apartment. What if Kelly had some terrible disease?
But if that was true, why didn’t she tell him?
Because she was Kelly. A pillar of strength. Supermom, who admitted no weakness and allowed nothing to stop her from taking care of her family.
Somehow he got through lunch, set another date with Frank for getting the concept design to him and headed for home via the northbound interstate freeway. His mind flip-flopped between worst-case scenarios and the impossibility of believing anything serious could be wrong with Kelly. He tried to call her again and again, but there was still no answer. When he pulled into the driveway and spotted her car parked outside the garage he breathed a sigh of relief. At least she was home.
“Where’s your mother?” he demanded of Beth, who was playing chess with Randall in the family room.
Beth glanced out the window and back at her father. “In the garden.”
He found her in the sweet peas, waist-high in a sea of fragrant purple, blue and pink petals and curling green tendrils. She grew these not for drying but because she loved the scent and the colors. A woven basket was slung over her arm and she was cutting flowers for the house. The sight of her slender figure and swinging hair glinting in the sun brought moisture to his eyes.
“Kelly!” He hurried over to her, striding through the rows of flowers, heedless of the damage he wreaked.
“Max!” She stared, aghast at the broken stalks and crushed flowers. “Slow down. What are you doing?”
He scooped her in his arms and pressed her to him, “My God, why didn’t you tell me?”
She pulled back, stunned. “You know? How?”
“I saw your car parked outside the medical center.” He framed her face with his hands. “You’ve got to trust me, Kelly. How bad is it?”
“Bad?” she repeated, clearly astonished. “I thought you at least would be happy.”
“How can you say that? We’ve had our rough patches, but I love you. Even if I didn’t, I’d never want anything awful to happen to you.”
“Hold on,” she said, frowning. “Just what do you think is wrong with me?”
“I don’t know. Cancer?” He searched her face for reason to hope he was mistaken.
To his shock and amazement, she began to laugh.
“It’s not funny,” he said angrily. “I’ve been scared sick all afternoon.” Her laughter continued, and with alarm he realized she was becoming
hysterical. “Kelly. Snap out of it.” He gave her a little shake.
All at once her laughter died and her eyes looked so old and tired he was afraid all over again. “For God’s sake, Kelly. What is it?”
She stepped back from him, clutching her basket with both hands. “I’m pregnant.”
For a moment all he could do was stare at her as his overwrought brain tried to take in the meaning of her words. Pregnant. Pregnant. They were going to have another baby! His heart lifted, bringing forth relieved, joyous laughter. “Oh, man, oh, Kelly. I thought…I thought you were dying and instead you’re…” Unable to stop grinning, he threw up his hands in the effort to express his happiness. Tears again came to his eyes. “A baby.” He held out his arms for her. “Come here, sweetheart.”
Face frozen, she planted her feet and stayed put. “I don’t want it.”
He shook his head, his smile still in place. “But, Kelly, it’s our baby. I know you weren’t keen on having more kids…still—”
She made another step back and her eyes took on a wild gleam. “I’m not having it.”
At her obstinate tone his fist closed around a clump of sweet peas and with an abrupt movement he snapped off their heads. Kelly gasped at the deliberate destruction. Taking a deep breath to control his anger, he said, in the firm, calm voice that he used to settle the twins, “Why don’t you start by telling me what you were doing at the medical center today. I take it you had a doctor’s appointment?”
She nodded. “Dr. Johnson moved his clinic there. I went in for an ultrasound.”
Max’s thoughts flashed back to previous ultrasound images and his dawning feelings of love for their unborn children. Now he only felt a rush of anger toward Kelly for not letting him be present at the first sight of this new baby. He controlled that, too, with difficulty. She was obviously having a hard time with this pregnancy and it was up to him to help her through it.
“Let’s sit down.” He took her arm and led her out of the flower bed to a garden bench overlooking the river. Her gaze became fixed on the flowing water and he had to touch her shoulder to get her attention. “How far along are you?”
“Fourteen weeks.”
The weekend at the Salish Lodge. Max experienced a stab of guilt, quickly followed by a purely male reaction—virility triumphant. He knew better than to let that show. “And the baby is fine?”
“What? Yes, it’s fine.”
“And are you okay?”
Head down, she nodded and mumbled something.
“Pardon?”
Lifting her chin, she said, “They couldn’t tell what sex it is.”
As if that were his main concern. Although he guessed she could be forgiven for thinking it so, considering the attention he’d lavished on Randall all summer. “I don’t care if it’s a boy or girl.”
“Sure you don’t,” she said bitterly.
Her hand lay inert in her lap so he laced his fingers through hers and rested their hands on his thigh. “Aren’t you even a little bit happy, Kelly?”
Mutely, she shook her head.
“You feel down because this is so unexpected. Once you get used to the idea of having another baby, you’ll feel differently—”
She shot to her feet, yanking her hand from his. “Don’t patronize me. You don’t have a clue how I feel. I’m telling you, Max, I’m not having this baby.”
Her threat struck fear in his heart as he rose to confront her. “You can’t make a unilateral decision. It’s my baby, too.”
“It’s my body. I’m the one who has to carry it for nine months, and breast-feed it and care for it.”
“You can’t get rid of it because it doesn’t fit in with your career plans.”
“I didn’t want another baby and you knew that,” she said harshly. “Yet you conveniently forgot to bring condoms to the Salish Lodge.”
“Birth control is a two-way responsibility. You happily made love without protection. You’d better not be suggesting I forgot on purpose.”
“If the shoe fits…”
Suddenly he understood her behavior on his awards night. “You knew you were pregnant that night in Seattle. You’ve known for weeks!”
“So what if I have?”
They were face-to-face, shouting at each other in a scene uglier than any of their worst fights in the past.
“You’ve been stringing me along for years,” he accused. “Promising me you’d consider another baby, while all the time you were lying. ‘When the moment is right, when the twins are older,’” he mimicked her. “Maybe you didn’t even want the twins.”
Her face turned stark white. “How dare you!” she gasped. “You only want more children so you can have a boy.”
“I do not!”
She opened her mouth to shout back, but at his overloud denial she stopped and in a deadly calm voice said, “But, Max, you’ve already admitted to me you desperately want a boy. That’s not a good-enough reason to have a baby. What if it’s a girl? Maybe you wouldn’t want it. Think of that poor child growing up knowing without having to be told that it wasn’t wanted. That’s worse than the mistake you made in conceiving Randall.”
Max’s vision blurred red. He hardly knew what he was saying. “The only mistake I made over Randall was giving him up for adoption in the first place. If I hadn’t married you—”
Revelation dawned in her horror-stricken face. “You blame me for having to give up your son years ago.”
“No!” He shook his head vehemently. “That’s not true. It’s not.” He backed away as present anger confused past emotions, mixing things up in his mind.
“Of course it is,” she insisted. “If I hadn’t been in the picture you probably would have married Lanni and kept Randall. Now you’re angry because I won’t give you another chance at a son all your own.” She brandished her secateurs. “That’s what’s been bothering me all along about having another baby. It wasn’t so much the idea of giving up work, although I really did want a chance at my own life for a change. No, it’s the feeling I’m being blackmailed into getting pregnant because I owe you.” Tears puddled in her eyes, and her chest heaved several times before she gained enough breath to speak. “It’s over between us, Max. And you can forget about me having this baby. I won’t bring a child into a dysfunctional relationship.”
“You’re damn right this marriage is over,” he shouted, “if you could even think about aborting our child.”
Max stalked back to the house, leaving Kelly alone by the river. This wasn’t the woman he’d fallen in love with, the woman he’d defied his parents and turned his back on his only son to be with. She was wrong, wrong about everything.
Striding through the family room, he ignored Beth and Randall’s worried looks and went to his office. At the door he stopped short, surveying the stacks of gardening books and flower presses Kelly had brought in to replace his things. Fuming, he waded through to his chair.
Moments later he heard footsteps in the hall and got up, to see Kelly putting on her shoes, a suitcase on the floor at her feet. “Running away again?”
She ignored him.
So be it. This time when she walked out the door he didn’t try to stop her.
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND what happened,” Robyn fretted, slumping her ordinarily straight back in a chair. The five children had met in Beth’s room for an emergency conference. “After they came back from Dad’s awards night they were so happy.” She turned to Randall. “Did Dad say anything to you about why she left?”
Randall shook his head. He was worried, too, although a small part of him was pleased Robyn had referred to her father as his father. Her acceptance went a long way to easing the tightness in his chest. At least this time she wasn’t blaming him for her mother’s departure.
Beth’s legs dangled from the top bunk as she twisted her baseball cap in her hands. “They’re supposed to be getting married again. Do you think they’ll still go through with the ceremony?”
“I overheard M
ax on the phone telling someone it was canceled,” Randall replied.
“Well, I don’t think he got through to everyone,” Robyn put in. “Mabel Gribble phoned today and asked if we wanted to borrow chairs from the town hall. I didn’t know what to tell her.”
“What did you say?” Randall asked, racking his brains for answers. There had to be something they could do to fix Max and Kelly’s marriage.
“I said I’d ask Mom.” She glanced at her watch. “I wonder if she’ll come back tonight for dinner.”
“Uh-uh,” Beth said. “Dad said he was going to make us pizza. It sounded like he didn’t want her to come home,” she added miserably.
Robyn shook her head. “This is bad.”
Tammy wailed, “Me and Tina want to be flower girls.”
“Flower fairy princesses,” Tina corrected, reaching for Tammy’s hand to comfort her.
“We can’t let them call off the wedding.” Randall thumped a fist on his knee. “If Max and your mom are too upset to finish the arrangements, then it’s up to us to make sure they renew their vows.”
“We’re just kids,” Beth protested. “Besides, they don’t want to be married anymore. They’re more likely to get divorced, instead.”
“They had a big fight before and got over it, didn’t they?” Randall argued.
“Yes, but this is different,” Robyn said. “I’ve never seen Dad this angry and if Mom’s not even coming home to fix dinner…”
“We have to think positive,” Randall declared. “Imagine how disappointed they’d be if they did make up but couldn’t renew their vows because nothing was prepared. What did that guy say in that old video we watched the other day? ‘Build it and they will come’?”
“He was talking about a baseball diamond,” Robyn said scornfully. “Besides, that was a fantasy.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Randall maintained. “What he meant was, if you believe in something, you can make it happen.”
“Do you really believe that?” Beth asked, perking up a little.
“Sure,” Randall said. “I believed my biological father was a really great guy, and he is. I believed he’d want to know me as much as I wanted to know him, and he did.”
