It's Never too Late

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  Was she getting married? And feeling guilty? How did he tell her he was fine with that?

  “I know. And I will tell you. It’s just that, it’s so good to hear your voice and...”

  She was crying. Because she was suddenly missing him? Doubting the decisions she’d made?

  Ella had always come to him first before deciding anything major. Which was fine with him. Even now. The crying...that was new....

  “Are you drinking, Ella?”

  “No.”

  “Not even one or two?”

  “No! Of course not! I just...talk to me, Mark. How’s school? Are you working? What do you think of Arizona?”

  She didn’t ask how Nonnie was doing.

  “School’s fine. I got a job at a plant here. Arizona’s different, but not bad.” The desert was growing on him, but he didn’t think Ella would understand if he told her so. The way the shades of brown took on life was something you had to experience. And he was certain she didn’t want to hear that he liked his new life. “What’s up, Ella? I’ll help if I can, you know that.”

  Was she in some kind of trouble?

  He glanced at his watch. Almost nine o’clock. Would Addy wait for him? “Is it work?” he asked. “If there’s a problem at the plant I can make a few calls. You in trouble there?” She’d been late a couple of times. Once more meant a write-up.

  Ella wasn’t the type to cry over a write-up. Or even over being fired. She took life in stride. Didn’t get real worked up about anything.

  Like him leaving. She just found someone else. Even before he was gone. Life always had options.

  “Work’s fine. What kind of plant are you at?”

  “Cactus jelly. I’m doing the same kind of work I was at home.” Home. An odd term for a place that seemed so far away.

  “You’re supervising?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How’s the weather? Is it really hot?”

  “Not too bad, eighties and nineties, but it really is a dry heat like they say. Nineties seem like seventies back home. You wouldn’t believe the difference it makes not having all that humidity weighing you down.” Cars whizzed past on the highway leading into town and a new wave of guilt assailed him at his eagerness to be among them. So he kept talking.

  “From what I hear, getting here in September was a good thing. It never dropped below a hundred the entire month of August.” He pictured Addy, sitting in her chair, watching her fountain. Had she noticed that his truck wasn’t in the driveway?

  “Maybe I should come out. For a visit. I’ve got vacation time coming...”

  Ella, here? “Sure, Ella, if that’s what you want to do.” Ella staying next to Addy? Even more outrageous, Ella and Nonnie in the same house? “I’m busy with classes and work so I wouldn’t have a lot of time to show you the sights, but you could do some exploring on your own.”

  He supposed she could walk to town and back, maybe get a bike... A month ago he would’ve been happy enough with the prospect.

  Or at least, not as unhappy about it.

  “You think Nonnie would give us hell if I slept in your bed with you?”

  “I’d take the couch.” For his sake, not his grandmother’s. Nonnie was no prude. Still, she was eighty-one years old. It wasn’t right to flaunt sex in her face.

  Sex. He wanted it with Addy. Not Ella.

  “Why the sudden change of heart, Ella? I thought you wanted nothing to do with Shelter Valley. Bierly’s your home, you said.” She’d been willing to toss him aside because of it.

  She hadn’t even seemed to consider the idea that there might be some benefit to him getting an education. Not that he could blame her. He hadn’t believed it, either.

  Who’d have guessed that he, Mark Heber, would ever take to schooling? He was the dropout.

  “I’m pregnant, Mark.”

  Traffic disappeared. The night disappeared. His dash lights were all that were left.

  “Did you hear me?”

  “Yeah, I heard you.” He could barely keep the phone to his ear. He just wasn’t processing.

  “I want to have this baby.”

  Of course. That was a given. Ella didn’t need and wouldn’t want an abortion. She wanted to be a mother. Wanted a family.

  “A couple of months ago you asked me to marry you. Does that still stand?”

  Ella...having a baby.

  “I can’t leave Shelter Valley.” The air in the truck was suffocating. He couldn’t see the mountains. Couldn’t see a way out. “I’d owe too much money.”

  Money that he was going to need.

  “You haven’t asked if the baby’s yours.”

  He didn’t want to know. “Is it?”

  “Of course it is. I’m two and a half months along.”

  They’d gone tent camping. She’d forgotten her pills. He hadn’t had a condom. She’d said she was safe. That missing one pill wouldn’t matter.

  He couldn’t remember if she’d had a period after that.

  I want kids now, while I’m still young enough for them to think I’m cool. Ella’s words came back to him. From the night she’d broken up with him. The first time he’d ever heard them.

  But maybe she’d been planning this all along—from the camping trip on. Even before they’d found out about the scholarship.

  Someone should really turn the air conditioner on in the truck.

  Had she known that she was pregnant the night she’d told him she was going to the pig roast with Rick? Or at least suspected?

  “What about Rick?”

  “We broke up.”

  Because she found out she was pregnant with Mark’s baby?

  “Did you sleep with him?”

  “Yes.”

  So he could still sleep with Addy. No—what in the hell was he thinking? He didn’t know what to think.

  Or do.

  “Does anyone else know?” Was he pond scum for doubting her? For thinking that the baby might not be his?

  “Just my mom.”

  Dot and he had gotten along. Mostly because Dot liked anyone with pants who’d take care of her daughter. “What’s she think?”

  “She’s excited about having a grandbaby. She’s been waitin’ a long time.” Ella’s drawl sounded odd. Unfamiliar.

  “And the doctor thinks it’s okay for you to fly?” Were his doubts about the baby’s paternity wishful thinking?

  “I was going to take the bus out,” Ella said. “It’d be fun, like a road trip. But I’ll need you to drive me around when I get there. Lord knows Nonnie and I can’t be spending all day together in that duplex you texted about.”

  Ella had lost her license to a drunk-driving charge before she and Mark had started dating. She had to make it through another year of sobriety before she could get it back.

  Biting back a retort, Mark stared out of the windshield into the darkness, as though the desert he couldn’t see would have answers he couldn’t find.

  “You have that much time off work?”

  “I can take that family medical leave thing, can’t I?” Things just kept getting worse and worse. “It’s not like I’ll be able to stand up all day as I get bigger, or even be able to reach the rods.”

  Ella worked at a machine that required adjusting rods in quick succession. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t learn something new.

  Not that he wanted the mother of his child doing manual labor while she was carrying his baby. But they weren’t financially p
repared. They had to have money coming in.

  And it might not be his baby.

  His baby.

  Not too long ago he’d thought that was all he wanted out of life. His Ella. Them to get married someday. To grow old in Bierly.

  And, eventually, in the distant future, for her to have his baby.

  How could all of that have changed in such a short time?

  “I don’t like the idea of you traveling out here on a bus all alone.”

  “Mom said she’d come with me. If she don’t like it there, she can fly back.”

  “What about her job?” He could give up his bedroom to Ella and Dot. Move out to the couch. They could stretch the food budget.

  He just didn’t want to.

  “She can take a leave. She’d have to, anyway, once the baby comes, to help out for a bit. But with hairdressing it’s not that big a deal. She can always do her regulars from home. Or go in after hours. It’s not like Gilda would care. We could get assistance if we needed to. Food stamps and all.”

  Ella’s mom had had the same chair at Gilda’s Hair Salon since he and Ella had been kids.

  “And if we stay in Arizona, she can get a job out there. Everyone needs haircuts. That way Mom can drive and we can drop you at work or school.”

  He couldn’t picture Dot at the Valley Salon and Spa a couple doors down from Harmon Hardware and Electronics. He’d never been in there, but even from the outside, with its pretty curtains and fancy gold lettering, he could tell it was nothing like Gilda’s.

  But there was always Phoenix.

  “When were you thinking about coming?”

  “I’m not sure. I have another doctor’s appointment in a few weeks. They’re going to do an ultrasound.”

  A test to look at the baby. His baby? It was someone’s son or daughter. He should identify with it. Care.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked, more because he thought he should than because he wanted to know. He wished the child Ella carried good health. He just didn’t feel any ownership of it.

  “Yeah. It’s standard now to do the tests.”

  Standard tests. They were covered by insurance. Mark sat up straighter, drawing a long breath of air into his lungs. “Your insurance will cover the pregnancy.”

  She had to stay in Bierly at least until the baby was born. Had to stay employed at the plant. What a relief.

  “I know.”

  “You can’t quit until after the baby comes. We aren’t married yet and my insurance benefits won’t cover you until we are. Even then, they won’t cover pregnancy until after you’ve been on the policy for a year.” He’d been able to switch from his old plan to the jelly plant’s group insurance plan.

  “It’s okay, Mark.” Her voice softened. “You don’t have to do all your worrying and planning up front. I’m not going to quit. Maybe later I will, but not now. I’ve got over a month’s vacation saved up and then I’ll check with HR to see about that leave thing.”

  “FMLA is only for twelve weeks,” he said slowly, his mind coming out of its deep freeze. The Family Medical Leave Act. He’d had several employees take advantage of the government program.

  “Bonnie took off almost her whole pregnancy and two months after, too, because she breast-fed.”

  “HR approved the leave. I’m not saying you can’t get it. Just that the family leave you’re talking about only covers twelve weeks. So you can get more time off, if the company approves, but you probably would only get paid for the three months. The rest would be without pay.”

  “But they’d hold my job, right? They did Bonnie’s.”

  “If they approve the leave, then yes, they’ll hold your job. The family medical leave through the government is a given.”

  “That’d be okay, then. Wouldn’t it? I mean, it’s not like I make a ton. Mom already said I should give up my apartment and move back in with her.”

  The back of his neck throbbed. He’d worked a machine for most of the night, making up for production time lost by a new hire who was struggling. Mark saw potential in the older man and wanted to give him a little more time to catch on.

  “Giving up the apartment’s probably a good idea,” he said now. As he remembered it, the lease specifically disallowed children. “And then we can talk about you coming out here.”

  “You don’t sound angry.”

  “I’m not angry.” How could he be? If she really was pregnant with his baby, he’d done this to himself.

  “But you ain’t happy.”

  “I... There’s a lot to think about, Ella.” More than she knew. Way more than she knew. “I’m just hearing about this for the first time. You’ve got to give me some time to let it sink in.”

  “I just...I thought...I knew you’d be shocked, and all, but I thought, once you knew, you’d be happy. It’s our baby, Mark. Yours and mine. We made him.”

  Him. She couldn’t know the sex yet, but that child could very well be male. A son.

  He tried to picture it. To think about holding a child. There was nothing there. He should feel something.

  “I have to be able to support a child, Ella,” he said. Finances were the only thoughts he could focus on. “I’ve already used up a full semester’s tuition and there are no refunds on that. I’ve paid the lease for the first semester and accepted a check for living expenses. If I quit school, I’d owe all of that back immediately. I just don’t have the money.” Not even if he cashed in his 401K retirement plan. Not after he took the hits for early withdrawal and taxes. They’d have some left, but not nearly enough to sustain him through an emergency with Nonnie...

  He’d emptied his savings account getting him and Nonnie out here and settled in.

  He wanted to sleep with another woman.

  “I thought about what I said that night you asked me to marry you.” Her tone was back to the one she used at work now and he wondered what she was hiding. “About loving Bierly and never leaving. I was wrong. I can move there, Mark. For us. For the baby. As long as I know it’s only for the time you’re in school and then we can come back here.”

  She hadn’t asked how Nonnie was. Still.

  Nonnie. Oh, God in heaven, Nonnie. Ella said only her mother knew about the baby, but if that was even true, it wouldn’t be for long. Telephone. Telegraph. Tell Dot. He remembered the joke he’d heard around town more than once after he started dating Ella.

  And once people in Bierly knew, Nonnie would find out. Between Facebook and email, Nonnie still knew everything there was to know about everyone in the town where she’d been born and raised. The woman and her computer were a dangerous combination.

  “I need some time to think this through, Ella.” He tried to relax the tension radiating through him. “There’s a lot to consider.”

  “You taking back that offer of marriage, Mark?”

  “You turned me down.”

  “Well, now I ain’t. Please, Mark. Don’t leave me in the lurch here.”

  He’d told her he’d be back. No matter what. Even after she wouldn’t answer his texts, he’d told her he’d be back.

  “It’s late there, Ella.” Almost midnight by his calculation. “Why don’t you get some rest and I’ll call you tomorrow. We can talk about everything then.” His own drawl sounded loudly in his ears. Did he always sound that way? Did Abby think he was some backward hick?

  Did he think that of Ella?

  Growing colder and sicker by the second, Mark felt like a fool for ever thi
nking that he could really change his life. He was a high school dropout from Bierly. Always had been. Always would be.

  And that was okay. Only problem had been him thinking that he could escape.

  He’d been happy before. He would be again.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ADDY FINISHED HER TEA. Took the glass into the kitchen for a refill and just happened to make it from the counter to the refrigerator by way of the living room window.

  Mark’s truck was still not in the driveway.

  Working late? It wasn’t impossible. With the time he’d missed that weekend, he’d want to make up hours if they were available.

  And she had no right to be disappointed. They didn’t even have plans to see each other. She’d just assumed.

  Which was why she’d showered and slipped into a lacy white peasant blouse and her favorite jeans. And left off the bra she normally wore with the outfit.

  Back in the kitchen, she poured herself half a glass of wine. Just enough to make her sleepy. To take the edge off the nervous tension running through her.

  She’d been counting on seeing him. On giving in to the desire that had been haunting her every waking moment.

  She’d been the one to insist that they could only exist in the moment. Because she was Adele.

  Her emotions were strangling her tonight. Creating a dichotomy within her that had to be soothed so she could sleep. Or work.

  Work. Her head hurt when she thought about work. What was she going to do if it turned out that Will had committed litigable acts? How could she help him if she knew he’d done wrong?

  How could he have changed so much?

  Or had he? She’d been six the last time she’d seen Will Parsons. He’d been twenty-eight or twenty-nine. What did she really know about his character? Other than the fact that he’d been kind enough to spend time with his ten-year-old sister and an impressionable orphan?

  If only she could talk to Will’s wife—not as Adele, but as Adrianna, the little girl who’d convinced herself that the childless couple would see how much she adored them and want to adopt her.