It Started with a House...

by Helen R. Myers

  “That’s good. Excellent.” That was at least one bit of good news. “Will you let me know if she voices a concern about anything?”

  “I never forget that this is your baby, too. I just didn’t know if you’d mind since you’ll be busy and all.”

  What he minded was that they were talking as though last night hadn’t happened—or more accurately, that it was the biggest mistake of her life. “Call,” he rasped. Then he disconnected because it hurt too damned much to listen to any more.

  In the end, Genevieve bought herself more time from the eagle-eyed trio at the office and never bothered going in. Her appointment was for ten o’clock and she gauged it would take a half hour to get to the clinic. Besides, after her conversation with Marshall, she didn’t yet trust her emotions and could use the extra time to pull herself together. She called Ina and told her that she would see them after lunch. Ina was sympathetic but relieved to hear of the appointment. Genevieve let her continue believing that she was seeing her regular doctor. Considering Marshall’s abrupt departure from town, there was now even less of a rush than before to disclose her true condition.

  What she hadn’t anticipated was to start getting weepy every few minutes. She hadn’t been so bad since she’d suffered the blow of Adam’s loss. As if the morning sickness wasn’t punishment enough. But her heart was aching from the remoteness she’d heard in Marshall’s voice. What had happened to the man who couldn’t stop touching her last night? Was the business trip even real? Surely he didn’t have to do such a convoluted thing to show her that he wanted to put some distance between them?

  Could it be that with Cynthia’s suffering still fresh in his memory, her condition had become too much for him? He had to know that it was temporary?

  As a new wave of nausea assaulted her and she rushed for the bathroom, she thought, Please, God…let it be temporary.

  Although Dr. Tracy Nyland explained that she wouldn’t be able tell anything regarding her blood and urine tests until the results came back from the lab in a few days, Genevieve underwent a full exam and was deemed in good shape…with conditions. From the answers to her questions, Dr. Nyland did suspect she was slightly anemic and prescribed vitamins. She also listened to Genevieve’s rendition of her usual workweek, and recommended she start reducing her hours closer to fifty rather than seventy-five. She explained that alone should reduce some of the stress.

  “Given the tragic loss of your late husband,” the soft-spoken brunette said, her gray eyes warm with compassion, “I totally understand why you would have focused all of your energy on your career. However, your baby deserves a mother who’s not only physically able to nurture it, but one who is psychologically and emotionally willing to do that, as well.”

  Genevieve experienced a pang of guilt. Hadn’t Marshall said virtually the same thing? Yet she had seen his concern for her as possessiveness. He’d wanted more of her time and attention for himself. All he’d been doing was trying to protect her from bad habits acquired over years of grief.

  “You’ve heard it before, but it’s a rule of thumb full of wisdom,” Tracy Nyland continued. “‘Everything in moderation.’”

  When she finished writing her prescriptions, the doctor leaned forward over her clasped hands and smiled warmly across her desk at Genevieve. “Now you told me there are some complications with the father. I don’t mean to embarrass you, but from the intimacy signs on your body, it looks like you two share a healthy relationship.”

  It was all Genevieve could do not to writhe, she was so mortified. She’d totally forgotten that Dr. Nyland would see the effects of last night, too, until she’d been on the examination table. It got a little less humiliating when the woman urged her, “Call me Tracy. Let’s talk woman to woman.”

  “We seem to be running hot and cold,” Genevieve replied. “He claims to be ecstatic about the baby, but today he’s left for a business trip to I don’t know where.”

  “Could it be that you’ve been giving him those same hot-cold signals?” Tracy asked. “There’s no set timeline on grieving, and part of your morning sickness problem may be psychosomatic. You said you suffered a great deal of nausea after your late husband died. You know in some cultures there’s a belief that something like your chronic nausea and vomiting is your inner core’s rejection of what life is handing you. You couldn’t bear Adam’s loss, so you rejected it. Or put it this way, you ejected what was unacceptable to you. Now you find yourself pregnant during an extremely inopportune time and the father is someone you have strong feelings for, but you’re rejecting the idea that you could love again. Maybe love as you deeply as you did before.”

  Genevieve went all but slack-jawed. “You’re telling me that I’m making myself throw up?”

  “I’ve no doubt that your body chemistry is involved, but you could be helping things along,” Nyland replied. “I’ll give you a list of a few book titles you might want to look into. You don’t have to buy into the whole philosophy—I certainly don’t—but I suspect you’ll find some of it helpful and fascinating.”

  Later, as she sat in her SUV, Genevieve reported the doctor’s recommendations to her mother. “I should be much improved by Thanksgiving. She recommended I try to avoid strong perfumes, too.”

  “How are you going to do that?” her mother asked with no small disdain. “Give up breathing around Avery?”

  Genevieve ignored the sarcasm, especially since she thought Avery’s scent was intriguing and right for her. “She said the same about foods that are strongly aromatic. Oh, and to try cool rather than hot meals, and that some women had good results with adding higher protein to their diets.”

  “I could have told you that much,” her mother replied. “I must have consumed an entire side of beef by myself when I carried you. I barely had a bout of the morning horror.”

  “Mother, please.” No way would Genevieve tell her about Tracy’s more unorthodox ideas about her stomach problems.

  “Sorry. I’m glad you went, darling. Did you let Marshall know?”

  “I’ll probably wait until I get the test results next week—or when he returns if there’s nothing out of the norm.”

  Sydney’s indelicate response was followed by, “What I’d like to know is why he didn’t postpone his trip and go with you?”

  “It’s not like an ultrasound or anything. Besides, he had business out of town.”

  “Doesn’t that make you wonder? He sold his businesses. One of the things that was getting to you was that he had nothing but time on his hands and was fixating on you.”

  That was then. Now that she thought she understood him better and trusted her heart, she yearned for his company. This abrupt departure was really throwing her. “It could be something connected to Cynthia’s estate. Stop speculating.” Genevieve felt a lump growing in her throat. But if she sobbed while on the phone with her mother, there was no telling what Sydney Sawyer would do. “I have to get back to the office, and I still need to stop and pick up the vitamins Dr. Nyland recommended. Talk later.” She hung up.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered as she started down the road. On this occasion, she had to agree with her mother: she didn’t believe Marshall’s “business trip” excuse, either. “What happened? Why did you really leave, Marshall?”

  When she got home from the office that evening, she didn’t feel better emotionally, but her physical symptoms had eased—possibly due to Avery and her exotic perfume being absent. She’d also eaten lightly and with care. Nevertheless, her heart was growing heavier with every passing hour.

  Unable to settle down, she paced through her house, an old habit when she couldn’t sleep, but thinking gave her no answers. She paused where Marshall had slept and leaned over to catch his scent on the cushions. She found it again on her bed and curled there hoping for the oblivion of sleep, but didn’t find that relief, either.

  She checked her BlackBerry frequently. The only message was a reminder about choir practice the next night, which she already kn
ew she wouldn’t be attending. In fact, she wondered how long it would be before she was asked not to participate any longer. Somehow that bothered her less today than it would have yesterday.

  The tears started again. Hoping to stem them, she went back to pacing through the house while doing some deep-breathing exercises. It eventually came to her that she was trying to avoid the photos spread around the house. Finally, inevitably, she stopped at the one in the living room. For quite some time it had been soothing to have it and the others to talk to and to keep Adam’s handsome face fresh in her mind. But in another moment of clarity, she realized that the full reason she’d turned the picture in her bedroom facedown that morning was because she was accepting that things did have to change. She could no longer come to these singular shrines throughout her house. She couldn’t use him to work through her problems, or lie in bed at night and share events of the day, and her deepest thoughts. She couldn’t make him her means to escape dealing with her own life issues, either. He was gone and that would always weigh heavily in her heart, but she had been left to keep living. And living meant to open herself and her heart to the new experiences life brought her—like love.

  One by one, she collected the photographs and brought them to her office. She’d gone into a storage box in the utility closet and retrieved her supply of Christmas tissue paper. Almost with the same painstaking care that she’d first framed them, she ceremoniously and lovingly closed them away in the box.

  There was no box to resolve her dilemma about Marshall.

  On the first Monday in October, she received the news from Dr. Nyland that her tests had come back confirming that she was in excellent health and that if all continued well, they could do an ultrasound just before Thanksgiving. That gave her a little boost until the thought came like a black cloud—what if Marshall was no longer in her life then?

  That made her decide to bring Ina, Avery and Raenne into the loop, situation-wise. They were driving her crazy anyway. She knew she was acting more subdued, despite some relief from the morning sickness. And she was crediting that to giving more attention to what and how she ate, not the fact that she was moving on with her past. However, they were the ones who kept noting that her phones were quieter, and Avery point-blank asked her what she’d done to Marshall that he hadn’t shown his “brooding poet’s” face lately, either. They knew something was up despite her brief explanation that he was out of town on business.

  But as plans often go, later that afternoon, just when she was deciding that she might as well admit that she was pregnant, so they would know to help her monitor the stages of her pregnancy, Beethoven’s Fifth chimed on her BlackBerry, putting that meeting on hold.

  “He’s home!” her mother declared.

  Weak-kneed, Genevieve sank into her office chair and almost started to hyperventilate. She pressed her hand to her heart. “When?”

  “I think just now. Bart and I were in Texarkana all day, so we’re only now getting back. The garage door was closing behind his Mercedes. I don’t think he saw us. Has he called you yet?”

  “No.” Then she added with false reassurance, “But I’m sure he will. He’ll need to turn off the alarm and check the house first.”

  “I’m sure.” However, Sydney didn’t sound at all convinced, or happy to know she’d been the one to have to pass on the news. “I’ve a good mind to go over there right this minute and give him a good talking-to.”

  Her mother had called at least twice a day, her first question always being, “Have you heard from him?” Now Genevieve had to admonish her. “Stay out of it, Mother.”

  “He’s breaking your heart.”

  “I have always stayed out of your relationship with Bart, haven’t I? Even when you scared me to death picking him up so quickly after your divorce.”

  “I did not pick him up. He approached me.”

  “After you spotted him—that’s the story you’ve always confessed to once you have two martinis in you.”

  “Oh, I miss those things,” Sydney lamented. “They give me dreadful headaches though. Well, seeing that no good deed goes unpunished, I’m going to go have a glass of wine with Bart and listen to him explain our Houston itinerary for the sixth time.”

  About to beg her mother to think of her husband a little more instead of feeling sorry for herself, she bit her tongue. “Give him a hug from me,” she said instead.

  As brave and bold as she had been with her mother, Genevieve quickly lost all confidence when the minutes dragged on and an hour later there was no call from Marshall. It was closing in on five o’clock when, unable to bear sitting there pretending to see anything on her computer screen, she snatched up her things and left, telling a startled Ina that she needed to go home.

  Riley Butler was shuffling the long haul to the mailbox as she turned into her driveway. Shifting into Park, Genevieve got out of the SUV and went to say hello to him. It had been several days since they’d talked and she was usually better with checking on him and his wife.

  “It’s good to see you taking advantage of this gorgeous weather,” she began as she drew nearer. When she reached him, she gave him a big hug and peck on the cheek.

  “Do that again. Maybe Shirl will look out the window and get a little jealous. An old buzzard like me needs all the help he can get.”

  Genevieve happily complied, enjoying his laughter at his own humor more. “How are you holding up?”

  “Not worth a .22 short,” he said as usual.

  Thank goodness Riley’s son, Raymond, had taken the former hunter’s shooting arms away from him. Although Genevieve knew Riley was kidding her now, she wasn’t so sure he would be if something happened to his precious Shirley, whose inquiries into her welfare were equally repetitious: “Sometimes so—sometimes so.”

  Genevieve gazed around the Butlers’ yard with its Secret Garden clutter of plants and yard ornaments and said, “You still have the best color regardless of the season.”

  “Gonna depend on the cardinals, blue jays and finches to provide that pretty soon, I expect. Don’t think I have the energy to keep up with things the way I used to.”

  She made a mental note to bring them at least two poinsettias for their larger front and back windows and a bag of narcissus bulbs and potting soil so Riley could have indoor blooms to carry him and his Shirley through the winter and past the spring frosts. Their son, Raymond, was pretty good about visiting but lived and worked in the DFW area. That and three growing kids claimed most of his thoughts as much as his income. He probably wouldn’t think of little things that fed the soul of the elderly.

  “Is Shirl still crocheting?”

  “Pancakes.”

  “I think she calls them pot holders, Riley.”

  “Silly things are the size of flapjacks as my gramps used to call ’em.”

  “I hope she saves me a pair,” Genevieve said. “I’ve about worn out the last set she gave me.”

  The old man cast her a tender look. “Bless you. You know full well you have enough of those things to carpet your living room.” He looked at the sky and lifted his collar around his scrawny neck. “Wind is picking up. Front is gonna make us old-timers with chronic hurts miserable tonight. Stay warm, angel.”

  With her eyes burning from repressed tears, Genevieve returned to her car and drove it into her garage. She didn’t know how she would bear it if she lost one or both of the Butlers on top of Marshall this year.

  Riley was right—a colder-than-usual front was approaching. It was time to add a blanket to the bed, especially since she slept alone and there was no help to help keep things warm. “Maybe I’ll get a dog,” she said to herself. That would supply some body heat.

  But she knew her timing was off. She was trying to add hours into her day, not subtract them. And having a newborn was the world’s worst time to train a new pet.

  She did, though, make a mental note to transition the thermostat from cool to heat, and to check the pilot on the furnace and change the air filt
er. She wouldn’t need a serviceman for any of that, but the loneliness that came with the idea of watching seasons—and the holidays—come and go by herself for yet another year dealt her another debilitating blow.

  She had changed into a soft velour pajama/lounge set in a powder blue and was trying to convince herself to take out something from the freezer to nuke in the microwave when the doorbell rang. Since it was still daylight—barely—and she didn’t put it past Riley to have grabbed a handful of Shirl’s pot holders to bring over, she opened the door without hesitation. To her amazement, Marshall stood there instead.

  Her first thought was, He didn’t use his key.

  He was wearing a deep-blue sports jacket that matched his eyes, jeans and a gray crew-necked sweater and held the largest bouquet of white and red roses that she’d ever seen. But more memorable was the look on his face. She’d never seen so many emotions play on his face at one time before.

  “Look who’s back in town,” he said.

  Not knowing what to say in reply, Genevieve stepped aside to let him in. She wasn’t so confident about shutting the door behind him, but the fact that he was here merited something.

  She accepted the bouquet with a murmured, “Thank you,” but the ache in the vicinity of her heart kept her from being able to smile. “It looks like you hit every florist in town.” There were four in total.

  “Just about. The idea was to impress, not to wrench your back from the weight or stab you to death with the thorns.”

  His corny humor almost succeeded in tugging at the corners of her mouth. What helped was thinking that this might explain why it took so long for him to get here. “Have you been back long?”

  “You know how long I’ve been back.”

  Advantage, Sydney, she thought, but she only shrugged to Marshall. “When I didn’t hear from you day after day and through the weekend, I started to think I never would.”