by Karen Booth
She frowned. “That’s not very fun.”
“Sorry. That’s the way this has to happen. Plus, let’s be honest.” I pointed at the narrow passage up into the attic. “There’s no way you’re making it through there.”
A disgruntled exhale escaped her lips. “Fine.”
I started up the ladder, the air warm and stuffy at the top. “Is there a light up here?” I squinted in the darkness. A few spare beams of sunlight came through a vent tucked up into the peak of the gable roof.
“I don’t remember,” she called. “The only time I was ever up there was when we moved my dad into this house. Sam was a baby. It was a long time ago.”
As my eyes adjusted to the dark conditions, I spotted a single bulb a few feet ahead. “Never mind. Got it.” I pulled the cord. “Shit, Richard. You could’ve gone for a little more wattage with that bulb.”
“What?” Claire shouted.
“Nothing.” I crawled ahead on my hands and knees. The clearance seemed like less than five feet. At six-foot-four, there was no way I’d be walking my way through this. The dozens of cardboard boxes were in neat and orderly stacks, not surprising coming from Richard. He’d been fastidious in everything he did, even when no one would ever see it. Or maybe he’d anticipated this day. Knowing him, he probably did. “Tell me again what I’m looking for.”
“A cardboard banker’s box. Like you would use for hanging files. His name should be on the side.”
Sure enough, there was a stack of boxes meeting that description. It also happened to be in the farthest reaches of the attic, where the roof sloped down and there was virtually no room to maneuver.
“Did you find it?”
“I think so. Hold on a minute.” I crawled ahead, past boxes labeled “Christmas” and “Taxes”. Everything I saw was through the cloud of fine dust I kicked up as I shuffled along on my hands and knees. “I’m going to need a shower after this.” My head was inches from the roof trusses when I reached my destination, my forehead dripping with perspiration. At the bottom of the stack, were two boxes with Richard’s name on them. Of course. “I think I’ve got it,” I shouted.
“Cool. Hurry up.”
Hurry up. In the cramped quarters, it was easier said than done to drag along two heavy boxes, but I eventually got them to the ladder. “I’m coming down.” I took the first few rungs, then pulled one of the boxes to me and continued until I could plop it down on the hallway floor. “One more.”
“One more? He only mentioned one.”
“I’m just following instructions.” I headed back up and did the same with the second box, collapsing on the floor next to Claire when I was done. “Shit. It’s hot up there.”
“I bet.” She was immersed in sifting through the first box. “This is all a bunch of my dad’s old work stuff. From the hardware company he used to work for.” Confusion painted her face. Her shoulders slumped. “This can’t be right.”
“Then let’s try door number two.” I pulled the first box from her and slid the second into its place.
Inside, atop stacks of paper, were three or four notebooks, with black and white pebbly covers saying “Composition Book”. Richard’s name was on the front of each one. They seemed to be numbered.
Claire quickly found number one. She leaned against the wall and scanned the page, then began reading aloud. “Jonathan Mills slyly looked up from his newspaper as the train rolled into the station. He was three stops from his office and he knew exactly who was about to step on board. He knew those shapely legs the instant they came into view. The owner of those legs drove him mad with desire.” Claire put the notebook in her lap and giggled. “Oh my God.” She stared at me, bug-eyed. “What is this?”
I laughed. “Shut up and keep reading.”
She shook her head and opened the notebook again, finding her place. “This is kind of freaking me out, but okay.” She cleared her throat. “The raven-haired beauty stepped into the car and took a seat across the aisle from him, taking his breath away at the same time. Her skin pale as alabaster, lips red and pouty, womanly curves that went on for days. It was a good thing that his top-secret CIA training had equipped him to appear as though he was fazed by nothing. She fazed him all right, but he appeared nothing but calm and collected on the exterior.”
I squeezed Claire’s knee. “Who knew your dad had such a sexy side to him?”
“I never even knew he could write.”
She read quickly, revealing a somewhat formulaic but still compelling tale of international espionage and intrigue—an American James Bond of sorts, but with a very strong love story. Sometimes, the prose broke down into rambling sections in which Richard wrestled with where to take the story. Once Claire had gone through a good twenty pages, the tale had started to veer off into multiple sub-plots. “He had a good idea. He just couldn’t figure out where to take it.”
“Lots of people want to write a novel and don’t finish it.”
“And he thought I could?”
“Correction. He knew you could.”
She looked up at me, blinking, her eyes filled with wonder and life. “I feel like I’m seeing a side of my dad that I never knew. There’s some amazing stuff in here. There’s some really kooky stuff in here, too.” She flipped it open and ran her finger down the page. “I can’t believe my dad wrote this.”
“He was a complex guy, Claire. He just didn’t always show it.”
She closed the notebook again and peered into the box. “You know what our relationship was like. We spent most of the time butting heads. We never did a single project together. He certainly never let me help him with things around the house. All that time, we could’ve been talking about writing.”
I watched her, relishing the light in her eyes that hadn’t always been there over the last few months. Richard. Stubborn bastard. He’d probably been too proud to open up to his daughter about his creative endeavors, worried that whatever he’d done wasn’t good enough. “He wanted to share it with you. Apparently, he just didn’t think it was up to snuff.”
“You know, when he told me that he never felt like he and I had much in common, I’d always seen it as some shortcoming on my part, that I’d never taken after him in anything.” She furrowed her brow. “Now I almost wonder if it was the other way around.”
“I know it was. He admired your writing, because I would hear him brag about it. He wouldn’t have shared this with you and been so explicit about his wishes if he didn’t think you could do it.”
“And he thought he couldn’t do it. He thought he wasn’t good enough, but he had a cool idea. Pulpy. A little seedy. I like it.” She stuck out her lower lip. “I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about this.”
“If there’s a choice, I think we go with happy. We’ve had enough sad to last a lifetime.”
Chapter Forty
Chris’s phone buzzed in the cup holder.
“Do you want me to look?” I shifted in my seat, my back protesting the way I’d twisted my torso. Ouch. Sleeping on the bed at my dad’s house the night before had left me with a dull backache.
“Sure. I’m guessing its Graham. He’s the only one who pesters me much anymore.”
I picked up the phone and read the text. “Yep. He says hello and asks how you’re doing.”
“Sweet, but that’s really his way of asking if things have settled down enough for me to finally commit to the recording schedule.”
Recording. I might’ve been more excited than anyone about the prospect of Banks Forest returning to the studio. The chance to be around for some of the recording, sit in the studio and listen to the tracks as they developed and became full-fledged songs? Forget about it. Way too thrilling to even think about.
It was the touring that had me decidedly less enthusiastic. I was not eager for Chris to leave the baby and me at home, especially when Sam would be gone by the time they got around to going on the road.
“What do you want me to tell him?”
“Tell him the truth, that we’re driving back to Chapel Hill and I’ll call him when I get home.”
I tapped away at his phone and hit send. I went to place it in the cup holder, but that didn’t happen. Ouch. Pain came again, but this time from a different place, and an entirely different sensation. I cramped, lurching forward as far as my stomach allowed. I dropped his phone in the process.
“Are you okay?” Chris asked.
The cramp tightened, the muscle turning in on itself. “Uh, I—” Words wouldn’t come. My brain and mouth felt disconnected. A long list of expletives sat on my tongue, waiting, but they stayed put. With a deep breath, my lower abdomen relaxed and I was able to straighten. I exhaled, my shoulders dropping. “I think the baby must’ve pressed on a nerve. I’m fine.” I gently rubbed my belly. Unless that was something else.
“Okay. If you say so.”
I knocked my head back on the headrest and remembered his phone was sitting on the floor. One attempt at bending forward and I realized there was no way. I was too big. “I don’t think I can get your phone.”
“Leave it.” He turned the radio back up a bit and switched between different satellite radio stations, ultimately turning it off. “No radio. Let’s talk. What are you thinking you’re going to do with your dad’s notebooks?”
I’d laid in the dark for much of the previous night, wondering that very thing. “I need to go through and read everything, but it’s obvious that he meant for me to turn it into a book. Don’t you—” The cramp came again. Fuck. This time, my spine and legs stiffened, so much so that my butt lifted off the seat.
“Claire? Are you okay?” Chris’s voice was pure panic, but I was in the throes of something else. “I’m pulling over.”
“No.” I shook my head, wincing then relaxing as the tightening slowly let go. This can’t be…no…no way…there are three weeks until my due date. “Keep driving. We need to get home.” I shifted slightly to my side. Maybe a change of position will help.
“You’re really worrying me. Do you think you’re going into labor?”
“I’m fine. Truly. I think it’s just Braxton-Hicks contractions. False labor.” False, my ass. These hurt like hell.
He looked at the clock on the dash. “It’s nine-fifteen. We’re going to keep track of how far apart they are.”
“Okay. I really don’t think they’re anything. It’s probably just from sitting in the car.”
“We have another two and a half hours ahead of us. We can always stop.”
“No. Keep going. If it’s not false labor, we have to get home.”
Chris’s eyes darted to my face and then back to the road. “So you do think it might be real.”
“It might. Keep driving.”
Sure enough, the contractions were coming regularly. Ten minutes apart. I was doing an okay job breathing through them, but I was far from comfortable and they were becoming more intense.
“Claire, maybe we need to pull over and find a hospital.”
“No way. If this is real, and it still might not be, Sam has to be there. I’m not having this baby without her there.”
“You may not have a choice.”
“How much longer until we’re there?”
“At the speed I’m driving, an hour tops.”
Another contraction started. I closed my eyes and tried to relax, to “embrace the pain” as the childbirth instruction had told us, to “sink into the bed”, or the car seat, as it happened to be.
“Another one?” Chris asked.
I nodded, concentrating, reminding myself to think of this as a “good pain”. It only got me so far.
“Eight minutes apart.”
It began to ebb and I blew out a long breath. “Distract me. Let’s talk about something other than this.”
Chris sat up straighter, leaning into the steering wheel as if that might make the car go faster. “Yes. Let’s talk.” He held up his finger. “Oh, I know. Baby names.”
“Yes. Good. Baby names. We’re set on boy names, right?”
“You really want to name him Christopher?”
“I do. I think it’s sweet and old-fashioned. Plus, I love your name.”
“What about the middle name? I’m not sure Alastair works.”
“As nice as it would be to give him your dad’s name, I agree. Christopher Alastair doesn’t exactly have a ring to it.”
“Honestly? It sounds like some pompous community theater actor’s name.”
I snickered. “Okay.” I thought for a moment, wondering what he would say to my idea. “What about Graham?”
“So you want to go the pompous rock star route instead?”
I laughed, which felt good considering that my abdomen was again starting to do its thing. “Christopher Graham Penman. It sounds nice.”
He kept his eyes on the road. “Let’s put that one on the back burner. We’ll see what happens.”
“Fair enough.” I wrapped my hand around my lower belly. “One sec.” I held up my finger, asking for quiet in Chris’s preferred way. The contractions were becoming more intense. I concentrated on relaxing when everything in my body told me to curl into a ball.
“Breathe, Claire.” Chris gently placed his hand on mine. “Just like in class.”
The pain subsided and I blew out a breath. “I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“Whatever these are, they’re still pretty short. I’ll live.” I think.
“You’re sure you’re okay.”
“Yes. What about girl names?”
“I thought we’d sewn that up.”
“I don’t want to force you to name our baby after my mom.”
“It was my suggestion, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, I guess it was. But are you okay with it? We had some other cute ideas. I like Avery.”
“If we have a girl, we’re naming her Sara. It seems silly to name her anything else.”
“Why don’t we wait and see what she looks like? Maybe she won’t look like a Sara.”
I didn’t have to see Chris’s face to know that he’d rolled his eyes. “Sure. We’ll wait. But if we’re having a girl, I’m sure Sara will suit her perfectly.”
My belly began to coil, this time with surprising ferocity. I braced for the pain as it held me firmly in its clutches. “Chris.” I grabbed at the seat. Oh shit. “Find my phone. Tell Sam to meet us at the hospital.”
Chapter Forty-One
“Nine centimeters. We’re very close to pushing.” Dr. Thorp, the attending OB, snapped off his gloves and pushed back on his rolling stool. “I’m going to check on a few other patients and I’ll be back. It won’t be long now.”
My heart skipped several beats. Won’t be long. Good. I’ve been waiting a long time.
“No. No. I can’t push yet. Sam isn’t here.” Claire shook her head vehemently.
“We might not have much choice,” I said. “I even called Bryce and she hasn’t called back.”
“Please, call her again,” Claire begged.
Margo, the nurse who’d been with us through much of labor, wiped Claire’s brow with a washcloth. “Go ahead and make the call, Dad. Nothing will happen while you’re gone.”
I marched out into the hall and called Samantha. For the fourth time, I got her voicemail. “Sam, it’s Chris. You’d better hurry down here, honey. Your mom will be really disappointed if you aren’t here for this.” I shoved my phone back into my pocket and returned to the room. “Voicemail. I left another message.”
Claire closed her eyes. “She has to be here. I’m not doing this without her.”
Margo had been watching the fetal monitor that told her when the next contraction would come. “Another one’s coming, Claire.”
I stepped into position and held Claire’s hand, looking intently into her eyes. “Focus.” I nodded, wishing I could take away at least some of her pain. She wrung my hand as if it was a wet dishrag. Okay, I guess I’m feeling some of her pain now. “Breathe. Hee hee hoo. Hee h
ee hoo.”
She winced and crinkled her forehead, eventually just closing her eyes, losing her breathing pattern at the very end.
“Contraction’s ending,” Margo said.
I looked down at Claire. “How are you feeling?”
“The epidural feels like it isn’t doing anything anymore.”
“You’ll be able to push more effectively,” Margo said. “And trust me, you aren’t feeling everything. It just might seem that way.”
Claire closed her eyes. “I just want the baby to get here.” When she opened them again, the blue was intense as midnight. “Sam isn’t coming, is she? She’s trying to get me back for all of that stuff with Bryce, isn’t she? I’m so stupid. Why did I do that? I should’ve let him come to Thanksgiving. I can’t have the baby without her here.”
“Claire, darling. Thanksgiving was a lifetime ago.” Dammit, Samantha. “I’m sure she’s on her way.”
“Then why hasn’t she called?”
Excellent point. “I’m not sure.”
“Will you try her again?”
“Sure. I’ll be right back.” I ducked out into the hall, grumbling to myself as I fished my phone from my back pocket. “Just answer your damn phone.” I dialed Sam’s number. Incessant ring after incessant ring came. Voicemail. Bugger. I blew out an exasperated breath. “Samantha, I don’t know what else I have to do to get you down here. I’m begging you.” My voice began to quake, but I was too bloody tired and pumped up on adrenaline, simultaneously excited and terrified, to care anymore. “This baby cannot come without you being here. You have to be here. For your mom and for me.” I dug my hand into my hair, staring down at the speckled tile floor. Just let it out. “I love you, Sam. As far as I’m concerned, you are my daughter, and I am your dad. You have to be here when your brother or sister arrives. It can’t happen any other way. So, stop driving your father crazy and get your ass down to this hospital now.”
Sam and Bryce burst through the doors into the Obstetrics wing.
I dropped my head back, looking up at the ceiling. Shit. Finally.
