Maggie's Baby

by Colleen French

  ~~~

  “So?”

  Maggie looked up to see Lisa leaning against the hood of Maggie’s Jag. She wasn’t surprised to see her, though Lisa hadn’t ridden over with Maggie.

  Maggie hit the automatic key in her hand and heard her car doors unlock.

  “Where are you going to see her? Was he hostile? How did he look? Old?” Lisa put out her cigarette and got into the passenger side.

  Maggie gripped the steering wheel and stared through the windshield at the rear of the jeep in front of them. “He’s going to let me see her,” she said, her voice trembling. “Just see her for now. I told him he didn’t have to tell her who I was yet.”

  Lisa gave a hoot, slapping the leather dashboard. “You go, girl! I knew you’d be too tough for him. He crumbled, didn’t he? He couldn’t stand it. He was intimidated by the fact that you’re a doctor. I knew he would be.”

  “I didn’t tell him I was a physician,” Maggie said softly. She was still in a mild state of shock. She had gone to meet Jarrett to convince him to let her see her daughter. She had gotten what she wanted, but only now did she realize what it meant. She was finally going to see and talk with the child she had given birth to, but never seen. After all these years of fantasizing, she would finally meet her.

  “Didn’t tell him? Why not?” Lisa didn’t give her time to answer. “So when are you going to see her? Is she coming to your place? Can I meet her? I’m dying to meet her, but if you want some privacy at first, I’ll understand.” Lisa talked faster. “I mean she’s your daughter. I’m only her aunt.”

  “Lisa, Lisa.” Maggie rested her hand on her sister’s thin forearm. “Calm down. You’re making me crazier than I already am.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Lisa pressed both of her palms to her hollow cheeks. “I’m just so excited. Aren’t you excited?”

  Maggie clutched the steering wheel again. “Of ...of course I’m excited.”

  Lisa stared at her in the shadows cast by the streetlights. “You look petrified.”

  Maggie thrust the key into the ignition and the engine turned over. “I’m that, too.”

  “I say we both need a drink.” Lisa slipped her seat belt across her waist. “What say we stop at that little bar around the corner from your place?” She laughed. “We can always walk home from there if we need to.”

  “What about your car?”

  Lisa shrugged. “Still be here tomorrow. I parked down the street. No meters. Now tell me everything, word for word, and don’t leave anything out.”

  ~~~

  Jarrett knocked on Taylor’s bedroom door.

  “Enter, oh mighty one!”

  Jarrett opened the door and stepped over a pair of jeans crumpled on the floor. He picked up the pants and two T-shirts, making his way to her four-poster bed. “So, how was the movie?”

  Taylor didn’t look up from the book she was reading. She was stretched out on her back on her bed, pillows propped beneath her head. Her hair spilled across the pillowcase, almost the same spun red-gold color as her mother’s.

  “It was good. We had popcorn and licorice. Thanks for paying.”

  Jarrett’s toe caught on a sneaker, and he pushed it under the bed with his bare foot. He dropped her clothes into a purple canvas hamper and picked up two glasses from her nightstand, one empty, the other filled with flat soda.

  For the last hour he’d been trying to think of the best way to broach the subject of Maggie. He had decided to go with Maggie’s idea of not telling his daughter who she was, at least for the time being—not until he spoke with his lawyer, who was away on vacation in the Bahamas. But for now, what harm was there in Taylor’s meeting her mother? The truth was bound to come out now, anyway.

  “So, guess what?” He tried to sound casual despite the pounding in his chest. He was scared—scared of losing even one tiny part of Taylor, scared of the old emotions Maggie was dredging up.

  “What?” Still she didn’t look up from the book.

  “I met my friend Maggie Turner for a beer tonight. She’s a doctor at Talbany General.”

  “Cool.” She peered over the edge of the hardbound book for the first time. “Did you know a father used to be able to marry off his daughter as soon as she was born? That way he could make money off her from the get-go.”

  “I suppose I knew that.” Jarrett held on to the dirty glasses. “I thought we could meet Maggie on the boardwalk some night.”

  “Sure. Whatever.” Again she was lost in the pages of her book. “Would you shut off the overhead light?”

  Jarrett had to smile. “Sure, sweetie.” He leaned over and kissed the top of her head. “ ’Night.”

  “ ’Night. Love you.”

  “Love you more,” he answered, as he always did. It was a game they had played for years. When he was really lucky, she said, “I love you a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.” Something his grandfather has said to him as a child.

  Jarrett flipped the light off, leaving his teenage daughter bathed in the glow of her reading lamp. She looked so relaxed, so content, that he felt guilty. How was she going to react to the news that her mother was alive and wanted to be a part of her life?

  He closed the door behind him.

  Knowing his daughter, he had a feeling she wasn't going to be happy with him.

  Chapter 10

  Maggie dropped quarters into the parking meter and hurried toward the boardwalk. Vacationers thronged the avenue, taking their sweet time as they moved down the sidewalk hand and hand, pushing baby strollers, or eating ice cream cones. Lisa had wanted to come to lend moral support, but Maggie had made her stay home. Having Jarrett, Lisa, and Maggie's daughter all in one place at the same time was more than Maggie could deal with, especially when she considered Lisa’s role in the fiasco that had brought them all to this point in the first place.

  She slowed as she approached the end of the avenue that met with the boardwalk along the beach. Ahead she could see the designated meeting place: the fry joint.

  Her palms were sweaty and her stomach rolled. She wanted to see her daughter, of course, but at the same time she was afraid to. What if Taylor didn’t like her? Worse, what if she didn’t like Taylor? Even worse, what if they got along famously and Jarrett refused to let her see Taylor again? Would Maggie be forced to go to court to seek joint custody? Was she strong enough to go through that? Could she put Taylor and Jarrett through that?

  And what about Jarrett? Maggie had never seen him again after he left for Spain. She had broken up with him the night he confessed he’d had sex with Lisa, and she’d never spoken to him again. Looking back now, she realized hers had been an immature reaction. Despite their age, maybe they could have worked things out, even with a baby on the way. But she’d been stubborn and childish and afraid. That, fueled by Ruth’s ranting and raving, had been Maggie’s undoing.

  Stubborn was right. In all these years she hadn’t spoken to Jarrett once, not until this week on the phone. She wondered if they needed to talk about the past at some point, come to some resolution. Or would it be better to just let the past lie? After all, nothing could be changed.

  Somehow that seemed childish too. How could they pretend none of it had happened when they had a daughter to prove it had?

  Maggie halted in front of an ice cream shop and stared at herself in the reflection in the glass. She wiped at the trickle of sweat that ran down her temple, half tempted to turn and run. Was she crazy to be doing this? What could she offer her? How could she convince Taylor to allow her to be part of her life after all this time?

  Maggie had to force herself to walk toward the boardwalk. She’d gotten this far. She wasn’t going to chicken out now.

  She spotted Jarrett immediately. He was seated on a wooden bench along the beach, his back to the ocean, watching the seagulls fly overhead.

  “Jarrett,” she called, raising her hand in a half-hearted wave.

  She couldn’t see his eyes for the wraparound sunglasses
he wore, but she knew from the tightness around his mouth that he wasn’t pleased to see her. She couldn’t help remembering how once upon a time he’d always greeted her with a smile.

  “Maggie.”

  She wove her way through the crowd and across the wide boardwalk to sit beside him. There was no teenage girl to be seen. “Is she here?”

  “She’s here. I told you I’d bring her.”

  Maggie folded her hands nervously in her lap. She had changed clothes several times, settling on denim shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops. “What did you tell her?” She surveyed the people seated on benches on both sides of them. He’d said Taylor was here. Where was she?

  “Just that you were an old friend.” His voice was terse.

  “So where is she?” Maggie whispered.

  He hesitated, then stood and turned to face the ocean. He pointed over the dunes.

  Maggie stood. What she saw took her breath away. It was the girl on the beach, the one she and Kyle had seen making sandcastles not long after Jordan was killed.

  An omen. A good omen. It just had to be.

  Suddenly dizzy, Maggie exhaled slowly. Taylor was beautiful. Thin, but not overly so, with long blondish-red hair, a little lighter than Maggie’s.

  She was on her knees, sideways to Maggie, using her hands to dig out a moat around an abandoned sand castle.

  “Oh,” Maggie breathed. “Jarrett, she’s beautiful.”

  A smile crossed his taut face. She could tell he was trying to remain cool and distant, but he couldn’t help himself. He took his time, flipping the back of the bench so they could sit and face the ocean “She is, isn’t she? As beautiful as—” He cut himself off.

  Maggie didn’t dare wonder what he had intended to say. She was too enthralled by the sight of the long-legged teen engrossed in her sand architecture.

  Taylor turned her head, and the last rays of the day’s sun shone on her suntanned face. She was without the thick makeup most fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds on the boardwalk wore, her skin smooth and fresh. Her eyes were blue. She had a turned-up nose and a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her nose and cheeks.

  Maggie ran a finger across her nose as they sat down. Not her nose, but her freckles. Her hair. Jarrett’s eyes.

  She looked nothing like Jordan.

  “Want me to call her?”

  Maggie couldn’t take her tear-filled eyes from her daughter. “No.” She laid her hand on Jarrett’s on the bench between them, surprised by the familiarity she felt. “Not yet. Let me look at her another minute.”

  He slipped his hand awkwardly from under hers.

  “I could sit here and watch her all night,” Maggie said after several minutes ticked by.

  “Yeah, well, that would be fine,” he said tightly, “except that I promised her pizza and fries.” He stood. “Taylor!”

  She immediately looked up at her father and smiled a smile that made Maggie’s heart flutter. She was a happy child. Maggie could tell by the sparkle in Taylor’s eyes and the sincerity of her grin. And she loved her father dearly.

  “Let’s go, Taylor. Maggie’s here.”

  “Coming!”

  Maggie watched as Taylor stood and brushed the sand from her shorts and then her hands and came up the steps to the boardwalk.

  Maggie didn’t have time to rehearse what she was going to say. Almost fifteen years just wasn’t enough. Suddenly, Taylor was there in front of her.

  “Hi, I’m Taylor.” She offered her hand and shook Maggie’s in a confident manner that Maggie had never possessed at fourteen. Jarrett had done an excellent job of raising their daughter. She could already see that.

  “I think we spoke on the phone,” Maggie managed, savoring the feel of her daughter’s sandy hand in hers. Her daughter! Her daughter, at last. Her chest tightened until she felt as if her heart had swelled until it rose and caught in her throat.

  “It’s nice to meet you.”

  Reluctantly, Maggie released Taylor. “Nice to meet you.”

  “So.” Jarrett clapped his hands. “Food first, or the arcade and then pizza and fries?”

  “Whatever you want, Dad.” Their daughter hooked her thumbs into her shorts. She was dressed similarly to Maggie, in denim shorts and a T-shirt, hers with a women’s athletic company name emblazoned across the front of her small breasts. “I’m not too hungry yet.”

  Maggie watched the exchange between father and daughter, trying to keep her focus on Taylor. After all this time, seeing Jarrett like this was hard. Here was a man who had betrayed her, stolen her child from her, and yet, in only a few minutes, she could see that he was just the kind of man she’d been looking for when she settled for Stanley.

  “The arcade it is, then.” Jarrett motioned south down the boardwalk, avoiding eye contact with Maggie behind his sunglasses. “Ladies.”

  Maggie naturally fell into step between them. Her heart was still racing. Taylor was so sure of herself, so bright and articulate, and her eyes sparkled the way Maggie had remembered Jarrett’s sparkling, as if he had some secret he was about to spring.

  As they walked along the boardwalk making small talk about the smells of funnel cakes and caramel corn, Maggie’s gaze strayed to Jarrett. Despite his terseness with her, he was everything Maggie remembered—still handsome, though in a more mature, adult way, smart, engaging, so loving with their daughter.

  Seeing him like this with their daughter was more poignant than Maggie had ever imagined. Memories crashed through her head, overwhelming her—the smell of him, the sound of his laughter that was still just the same. She had loved him so much. She just hadn’t remembered until now.

  How could she have forgotten the burning love she had felt for him? She had never felt that love for Stanley or any of the men she had dated through college and med school. What was she supposed to do with all of the memories and feelings now?

  “I’m not sure you want to challenge Taylor to a game of air hockey,” Jarrett said. Father and daughter grinned at each other. “She plays a mean game.”

  “Learned from the best, didn’t I?”

  Maggie remembered playing air hockey with Jarrett on this very boardwalk, in the very same arcade they were walking into. Some things never changed.

  “I’ll get some quarters,” he said, walking away.

  “No, wait.” Maggie started to dig into her shorts for the bills she’d stuffed in them, but he waved her back. “You stay with Taylor and get in line to play air hockey.”

  He disappeared into the swarm of sunburned beach-goers, leaving Maggie alone with her daughter for the first time in her life.

  “You . . . you come here a lot with your dad?”

  Taylor chose one of the two hockey tables and leaned against a cinderblock wall to wait her turn. Two boys in baggy surf shorts and T-shirts popped coins into the game table and watched Taylor admiringly from the corners of their eyes.

  “All the time. I know it’s touristy, but—” The teen shrugged.

  Maggie nodded, feeling foolish. She didn’t know what to say next to keep the conversation going, but she wanted to desperately. She wanted to know what Taylor was thinking, what she thought about everything, anything. She wanted to make up for all these lost years right here and now.

  Taylor seemed to have her father’s gift for casual conversation. “Dad says you’re a doctor.”

  “I am.” She took her time in answering. She had never imagined she’d be so nervous with her own flesh and blood. “At the emergency room at Talbany General.”

  “Cool. Nana and Pop wanted Dad to be a doctor.” She wrinkled her freckled nose. “But he didn’t think he had the drive to stick with it.”

  Maggie had promised herself she wouldn’t ask Taylor about her father. Jarrett McKay’s life was of no consequence to Maggie now. But she couldn’t resist. For some reason she wanted to know about him almost as much as she wanted to know about Taylor. “I think he would have made a good physician. But he'd be good at anything he did, wouldn
’t he?” She leaned against the wall beside Taylor, feeling a little calmer. “It’s been a long time since I saw your dad. Just what does his company do?”

  Taylor watched the air hockey game. “They write the instructions in English for all kinds of foreign-made kits. Mostly on how to put furniture together.” She laughed. “We’ve got these pieces of rickety furniture all over the house that Dad has tried to put together using his firm’s directions. You ought to come by and see the place. It’s a hoot. You'd think that he'd go out and buy real furniture as much money as he makes.”

  “I’d like that. I’ve never heard of such a business.”

  “Dad thought of it on his own. He didn’t go to medical school or law school like Nana and Pop wanted him to. He went to a business grad school instead, nights, so he could be with me in the daytime when I was a baby. He started the business in our apartment. He had his picture on Business Man magazine cover last month and everything.”

  Maggie made a mental note to go online and try to find that back copy as soon as possible. Against all logic, she was fascinated by every element of Jarrett’s past and present. She told herself she needed to know these things for Taylor’s sake, but the lie was a thin one. Lies to herself always were.

  “Here we go, ladies.” Jarrett appeared, jingling a handful of quarters.

  “Just in time, Dad.”

  The two boys in surf shorts walked away from the table and Taylor stepped up, popping coins into the slot. “Ready to be slaughtered, Maggie?”

  “Oh, no. I haven’t played in years. Your dad—”

  “Go ahead, Maggie. Play her.” Jarrett gave Maggie an easy push in the small of her back.

  His touch took her by surprise. In a flash, she remembered what his hand had felt like in hers. The warmth. The security.

  Maggie stepped in front of the table.

  “Ready?” Taylor asked, grinning across the table.

  Maggie swallowed. “Ready.”

  Maggie played Taylor three games of air hockey and lost all three. By the time they’d played four games of Skee-ball, squirted water into castle doors, whacked rodents, eaten two pieces of pizza each, and shared a bucket of fries with vinegar on them, Maggie was beginning to feel as if she and her daughter were old friends.