by Nancy Warren
“Already on.”
Iris neatened up the rows of mugs. A newish collection caught her eye. “Is this supposed to be Snow White and the seven dwarfs?”
“I think so. Though Snow White looks like she melted a little bit.”
“So did the little guys. Look, here’s Sleazy. And Dumpy.” She began to line them up. “And Dumpier.”
Iris pulled a red-faced gnome over. “Is this one Bashful?”
“Or had a snootful?”
Her sister went to the fridge for the soy milk and almond milk. “Seems like you and the professor are really hitting it off.”
“Teacher’s got a new pet,” she murmured.
Marguerite peeked into the living area where Geoff and Tara were yakking it up.
She turned back. “She’s got nothing on you. Take away that long blond hair, the centerfold body and killer smile, really, she’s nothing but a sharp brain.”
“I am so going to beat you senseless with Dumpy.”
Chapter Four
Whenever she had a birthday coming up, Iris scheduled all those annoying yearly checkups. That way she never had to remember how long it had been since her last one. Her strategy meant a flurry of appointments around the end of March each year, but then she was done.
Her eyes were still 20/20, her teeth cavity free and freshly cleaned. But, after some routine tests and an appointment with her doctor, she came out frowning.
Sunshine pricked at her eyes so she pulled sunglasses out of her bag and while she was in there, fished out her phone and made a call.
Her sister Rose didn’t pick up. But then Rose almost never picked up. If her doctor sister wasn’t in clinic, she was at the hospital or running a marathon or something. She’d intended to leave a message asking Rose to call her, but when she heard her sister telling her to do exactly that she heard herself saying, “I’m coming to Portland. I need a decent haircut and I want to have lunch with you. Text me a time that works for you.”
And so, three days later, she left Dosana in charge with Daphne helping and drove to Portland. She’d been going to David, of David’s, for five years now, every eight weeks. Usually while she was in Portland she’d do any shopping she needed to do and try to squeeze in a visit with Rose.
Iris had never seen a more stylish MD than her sister. Apart from flat shoes – though they were Prada or Chanel flats – she wore designer duds, even when they were hidden under a white lab coat. Her dark hair always looked like she’d stepped out of a salon moments ago, and her makeup was ever flawless. Iris, who had stepped out of a salon moments ago, felt like a wreck in comparison.
They hugged as they met at the restaurant door. “It’s so great to see you,” Rose said, squeezing her tight.
“You too.”
“And lunch is my treat. You’ve got a birthday coming up.”
“Steak and lobster sounds good,” she teased. Though she didn’t feel very jokey inside.
They were quickly seated at a quiet corner table which made Iris suspect that her sister was a regular here.
Rose picked up the menu immediately. She was always efficient with her time. “I’d love a glass of wine but I’ve got a full afternoon. You go ahead.”
She shook her head. “I’ve got a long drive home.”
They both ordered iced tea and the fish special, which was sockeye salmon flown in fresh from Alaska. That done, Rose turned her attention to her sister. Those dark eyes could focus completely; she supposed that was why Rose was such a good doctor. “What’s up?” she asked.
Iris reached for a chunk of the fresh focaccia bread and pulled it apart. Then she put the pieces on her plate. “I’m sort of here for a second opinion.”
“Okay.” Rose waited patiently.
“I went for my annual medical checkup the other day and everything’s fine. I’m not sick or anything.”
“Oh, thank God. You had me worried.”
“No. Sorry. No. I want your opinion on –“ She blew out a breath. “Well, I had, have I guess, endometriosis.”
“Okay. Not that uncommon in women in your age group who haven’t given birth. It’s basically uterine cells that have migrated outside the uterus. Unless it’s causing a lot of pain, it’s not a big deal.”
“It’s on my fallopian tubes. My doc said that if I want to have kids I should have them soon.”
Rose paused in the act of lifting her glass to her mouth. “You want kids?” She asked the way she’d ask her sister if she wanted a dose of rabies.
She nodded.
“We grew up in a house with eleven children and you want more?”
“Crazy, I know.”
“You of all people. As the oldest, I saw how Mom relied on you. I mean, you’ve practically been a mother for most of your life.”
“I know. All that practice shouldn’t go to waste, right?”
“You seriously want children.”
“I do.”
“Wow. I am never having kids.”
“I know.”
Their fish came at that moment and they took a few minutes to enjoy first bites, then Rose said, “You mentioned a second opinion.”
“Well? Is she right? Should I have kids soon?”
Rose took a moment to think. “Yes, probably. Statistically your fertility takes a big drop anyway at thirty-five. If your fallopian tubes are narrowed or blocked it’s going to be hard for you to get pregnant. There are procedures and new breakthroughs every day but why go there if you can avoid it?”
Normally in a restaurant she’d check out the service, be tasting the bread with an expert’s discrimination, but today she was more interested in the talk than the food.
“I’ve always wanted kids of my own. I can’t imagine my life without them.”
“Are you seeing someone?”
“No. And in Hidden Falls I’m running out of options. The men are taken or they’re gross or they’re gone.” She thought of Geoff McLeod. “Or emotionally unavailable.”
“You could move.”
“For a guy? Please.”
Her sister’s lips twitched.
“I’m thinking of doing it alone.”
“Sperm bank?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s expensive.”
“I know. I looked it up online.”
“What about a friend with benefits? A baby daddy?”
Rose glanced at her watch and signaled for the waiter. She pulled out her wallet and retrieved a credit card. “I need to get back but you stay and have whatever you want.”
“No. I’m done. I’ll walk you back to work.”
As they left the restaurant, weak sun danced off puddles from a recent rain.
“I thought of finding some guy to father the baby but it seems complicated. First, there’s no one I want to sleep with (who wasn’t emotionally unavailable) and second I don’t want my kid going to find their dad someday and being disappointed.”
Rose reached out and gave her a quick one-armed hug. “You never should have gone looking for your birth parents.”
“No. I shouldn’t.” Jack and Daphne Chance had always been honest that their twelve children had come to them in various ways, but they were adamant that every child was their son or daughter. There’d been no differentiation between natural born and adopted. Jack had come through the foster system and he was determined that no child in his home would ever feel different or less special than another. The deal was, if you wanted to know all the details you had to wait until you were sixteen.
Iris supposed it was a good policy, except that she’d not only found out she was adopted but she’d followed that up by searching out her birth parents. It had been one of the most devastating experiences of her life.
“I don’t want that to happen to my kid. So I’ll be honest that he or she was fathered by a gorgeous, brilliant med student who needed the money. There’s no rejection in that.”
The yeasty aroma of rising sweet bread dough, soon to be cinnamon buns, filled t
he air in the kitchen. While the dough was rising, Iris made lemon squares and kept an ear out in case Dosana became overwhelmed with a morning rush.
She loved her bakery, the chaos and the comfort of it. Serving hot beverages to get people going in the morning or to pick them up in the afternoon. She loved the pre-work crowd, always in a hurry, followed by the overtired moms who came in dragging strollers and packing bottles of milk or Tupperware boxes filled with fish-shaped crackers for the kids. She liked the old people who wandered in with the newspaper, maybe open to the crossword puzzle and settled down with all the time in the world. She loved her go cup crowd and the sit down and stay awhile crowd.
She sprinkled icing sugar over her fresh-from-the-oven lemon bars, their sharp-sweet scent overpowering the bread dough as she cut them into perfect squares with a large pizza wheel.
She headed out front to refill the bakery case and, since there were three people in the line, immediately put the tray down on the back counter and took over barista duties while Dosana took orders and money.
“Busy morning,” she said, when the rush was over. “You should have called me.”
“Didn’t want you to burn anything.” Dosana turned to her. “We need more staff.”
“I know it seems like that now, but what if this is only a short term thing? I don’t want to hire someone and not be able to keep them.”
She shrugged. “I guess. In my business courses we talk about things like that.”
“Let’s see how it goes. If we’re still as busy in a month, then I’ll think about hiring someone else.”
“Okay.”
She slipped surgical gloves on, opened the case and rapidly refilled the lemon bars.
“Would you mind if I use the bakery for a project I’m doing for my marketing class?”
Dosana was pursuing a business degree.
“Um, I guess not.” She wondered what that would involve and how much confidential information she’d have to offer.
The bell rang signaling another customer and Geoff McLeod walked in. “Let’s talk about this later.”
He was dressed for school in brown khakis, a cream denim shirt and tie. All he needed was a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches and a pipe to complete the cliché. And yet the look suited him. She found the rumpled intellectual look ridiculously sexy.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Morning.”
“Are those lemon bars?”
“One of my many specialties,” she told him. “Here, try a bite.” She’d cut off the edges and so she sliced him off a piece of the edge, picked it up with her gloved fingers and placed it on a square of parchment paper and handed it to him.
He popped the treat into his mouth and moaned in appreciation. “Oh, that is good.”
“Want one?”
“Of course I want one. With coffee.”
While she was filling his order, Dosana took the now empty tray back into the kitchen. Geoff leaned in and said, “I never got your number. So I could call you about dinner.”
“Oh, right.” After Tara the physically gifted physicist had monopolized him for the rest of the night of the vegan potluck, she’d wondered whether he even remembered he’d asked her for dinner.
“I was wondering about Thursday night?”
“Thursday?”
“Comes after Wednesday?” His eyes had the most wonderful way of gleaming when he was amused.
“I, yes. Sure. Thursday’s good.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“Pick me up?”
“Don’t people do that anymore? I’m surrounded by high school kids all day. It’s hard to tell what adults do.”
“Yes, of course. I only live a couple of streets over.” And she wrote down the address for him and her phone number.
“Great. Thanks.” He held up his cardboard coffee cup in a toast. “I’ll see you then. Well, I’ll see you every day probably when I come in for coffee.”
The bell jingled like laughter when he opened it to leave, then stood back holding it open for the woman coming in. An attractive woman in her fifties with blond hair streaked with gray that they paid a fortune for in New York, jeans that showed a still hot bod and a jean jacket worn with a hand woven scarf. Iris knew the scarf was hand woven because she’d bought it for her mother for her birthday, in Daphne’s favorite blues and greens. “Hello,” her mother said beaming at Geoff. “It’s Geoff, right?”
“Yes. Daphne, hello.”
She was impressed that he remembered her mom’s name since he’d only met her briefly at the vegan potluck, then realized that as a teacher he must be good at remembering names.
“I’m so glad I ran into you. I’m having a few people over on Saturday night for Iris’s birthday. Why don’t you come?”
She decided in that moment that she was never going to let Geoff go out that door again unless she ran ahead and checked that there was no embarrassment train steaming her way.
If he glanced back at her after her mother invited him to her birthday dinner she wouldn’t have known it as she had her head in her hands. She heard him say, “I’d love to come.”
“Fantastic. Come around six. You’re not allergic to anything are you?”
“Not a thing.”
“Wonderful. Look forward to seeing you then.”
“Me, too,” Geoff said.
“Bye.”
She heard footsteps and waited until they stopped before lifting her head.
Her mother was still there.
“Isn’t that nice that he’s coming to your birthday.”
“Why don’t you get me a big T-shirt for my birthday that says Desperate Spinster all over it.”
“Already ordered.” She reached out and brushed the top of Iris’s nose with her fingertips. “You’ve got flour or something all over your nose. It’s adorable.”
“This day just gets better and better.”
“Oh, stop it. He’s nice. I’m sure he could use a friend since he’s new in town.”
“You two are going to be great BFFs.”
“Funny.”
“What can I get you, Mom?”
“That nice jasmine green tea.”
“The lemon bars are fresh out of the oven.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t but I am weak.”
Daphne had her shoulders hunched so slightly that no one who didn’t know her as well as Iris did would even notice. Because she did notice she made a pot of tea for two and asked Dosana to take over. “But call me when the timer goes off for the cinnamon buns.”
She took a tray over to the table where her mom was sitting staring out the window and sat down.
“You don’t need to sit with me, honey.”
“Happy to get off my feet for a few.”
They poured tea and she waited. Her mother sipped her tea, bit into a lemon square and complimented her on how good they were.
She waited.
“I wonder if you could talk to your father,” Daphne suddenly said.
“What’s he done this time?” Jack Chance was a kind and decent man. He was a loving husband and a good father. But he had some very odd ideas and whenever her mother said, “I wonder if you could speak to your father,” she knew he’d come up with a doozy.
“He decided we should have a greenhouse,” Daphne began.
“Okay.” Somehow she knew it wasn’t going to be as simple as going to the local garden shop and ordering up a greenhouse for delivery.
“He’s decided to put it on the sunny side of the house.”
“You mean like a lean-to?”
Daphne looked at her with the eyes of a woman who is barely holding it together. “I mean that if I hadn’t hidden the sledgehammer, we’d be missing a wall in the front room by now.”
“Why?” she cried. “Why does he do it?”
“He gets these ideas and they make sense to him.”
“Can’t you stop him?”
Her mother looked helpless. “Y
ou know what he’s like. If I argue with him he tells me I have no vision. And then he acts so hurt that I end up giving in.”
“How am I going to stop him?”
“If you can get him focused on a different project he’ll have time to realize that we don’t need a greenhouse in the front room.”
“Focus on what?”
“Well, he’s very good at dry walling and flooring. I was thinking maybe you could tell him you really need your attic done. Tell him you need a studio or something.”
“A home office.” Strangely, she’d been thinking about finishing the attic.
“Perfect.” Daphne looked puzzled. “Except you already have a home office in your spare bedroom.”
She took a fortifying sip of green tea. She supposed this was as good a moment as any to share her plan. “I’m thinking of turning the spare bedroom into a nursery.”
Daphne was rarely shocked. After years of Jack’s home handyman projects and the antics of eleven kids, she was pretty much immune. But Iris had the dubious satisfaction of knowing she’d shocked her mother speechless.
After a moment, Daphne said, “How can you be pregnant? You haven’t had a date in months.”
“Ouch. And I’m not pregnant. Yet.” The bell rang and she heard Dosana greet someone. She leaned forward. “I’m thinking of having a baby.”
“On your own?”
She nodded.
After a second her mother smiled at her. “You know I support you in anything you choose to do. If you’ve thought it through carefully and you’re sure this is what you want then I’ll do anything I can to be there for you. And my first grandchild.”
She reached over and grasped her mother’s hand. “Thanks, Mom.” She glanced at the clock. “Okay, keep Dad busy and the sledgehammer hidden and I’ll be over this afternoon.”
“Bless you, Honey. You know he listens to you.”
Which pretty much told her how desperate her mother was feeling.
Chapter Five
Geoff finished his school day having discovered already that Iris Chance had been right. The students had ganged up on the newbie teacher and tried to get King Lear off the curriculum. And, he’d been right that Rosalind was the first one to pull out the old, “How is a Shakespeare play relevant to me? I’m going to be a firefighter/nurse/chemical engineer/realtor/serial killer/ argument that kids in school had been using since probably Shakespeare’s time.
