Marriage by Contract

by Sandra Steffen

  * * *

  “Hey, kid. Whatcha doin’?”

  The pebble Charles Alexander Nelson—Chaz—had been kicking down the driveway rolled out of his reach. Instead of walking toward it, he stopped in his tracks. He was extremely intelligent. Grandmother Katherine had told him so. He wasn’t supposed to talk to strangers, but he’d always thought of strangers as adults. The girl who’d spoken was a kid. A little older than his brother, Mark, maybe, but a kid just the same. Still, he didn’t know her. He wondered if kids could be strangers, too.

  “You live around here?” the girl asked.

  Chaz shook his head, studying her. She seemed tall, but then, most everybody seemed tall to him. Her dark hair was in a ponytail, and her blue jeans had holes in them. They were the kind his sister Danielle wanted to wear, but Mother wouldn’t allow it.

  “No,” he said, finally deciding it was okay to talk to her as long as he kept a safe distance. “My mother and I are visiting my Aunt Beth.”

  “You’re kinda formal, aren’t you?”

  “So what if I am?”

  Chaz watched the girl’s eyes widen, then settle back to normal. Her eyes were blue, her skin awfully pale. She was skinny, too. It made him wonder if she got enough to eat, which in turn made him glance at the sandwich halves in his hands. He’d taken two bites out of the one in his right hand, but the other one was as good as new. Holding out his left hand, he said, “Would you care for a turkey sandwich?”

  She glanced all around her the way he did when he was thinking about going into Mark’s room. “Don’t you want it?” she asked, staring at his left hand.

  “I can get another one if I want.”

  Chaz felt like smiling when she accepted his gift. “Do you have a name?” he asked.

  “Everybody has a name.”

  She’d answered with her mouth full, but Chaz didn’t mind because he forgot sometimes, too. Still, he noticed that she hadn’t answered his question. “My name’s Chaz. My real name is Charles, after my grandfather on my mother’s side. That name is even dumber than Chaz.”

  She smiled for the first time, and suddenly Chaz felt sort of weird.

  “I don’t think Chaz or Charles are dumb names.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Uh-uh,” she said, shaking her head. “They’re kind of like Christie and Christopher. And those are my two favorite names in the whole wide world.”

  “Really?” Chaz asked, his young voice full of amazement. “Christopher is my new cousin’s name.”

  “That right?” the girl asked, taking the last bite of her sandwich.

  “Yes. He’s very small. Too small to do much except eat and sleep and cry. He wears pajamas most of the time, except they’re not called pajamas. They’re called sleepers. Anyway, Aunt Beth sure loves him. So does my mother. They couldn’t stop making goo-goo eyes at him. That’s why I came out here.”

  “Do you like your Aunt Beth?”

  He shrugged, because a kid could get into trouble admitting he loved his aunt. “She smells nice. And she never says I’m clumsy if I break something or spill my milk at dinner. And she never, ever calls me a baby.”

  “She sounds smart. I’ll bet you take after her in a lot of ways.”

  Chaz felt himself blushing and was awfully glad that the girl was bending down to tie her shoe so she wouldn’t notice. He saw something sticking out of her back pocket. “Is that a baseball cap?” he asked.

  She took it from her pocket and smoothed it into shape. “Yep. It used to be my sister’s. She gave it to me a coupla years ago. You can try it on, but you’ve gotta give it back, cuz it’s my lucky hat. Do you understand?”

  Chaz nodded, although he didn’t really understand completely. He’d never heard of a lucky hat, but he had heard of lucky rabbits’ feet and horseshoes and lucky numbers. His older brother said all the luck ran out of horseshoes that were pointing down. Chaz wondered if the luck ran out of a lucky hat if somebody else wore it. Since he didn’t want the girl to run out of luck, he declined her offer. “No, thanks. You’d better hold on to it if it’s lucky.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  Chaz knew it wasn’t polite to stare, but he couldn’t help it. He simply was not accustomed to being told he was right. Suddenly, he wanted to know everything about this girl with the lucky hat and the serious blue eyes. “Do you live around here?” he asked.

  She nodded. “I got me my own place down in the Downs.” She laughed. “Get it? Down in the Downs?”

  Chaz had heard his grandparents talk about a place called the Downs. Although he’d never actually been there, he understood enough about the way they said it to know that it wasn’t a part of town they cared to live in. “My grandmother said the Downs are on the wrong side of the tracks.”

  “Yeah?” she asked. “Well, sometimes the tracks run in circles, ya know?”

  Chaz didn’t have any idea what she’d meant by that. How in the world could train tracks run in circles? Still, if the girl was old enough to have a place of her own, even if it was in the Downs, wherever that was, she must have been older than she looked.

  Sighing over his perpetual youngness, he said, “It must be cool to have your own place.”

  “It’s cool in some ways, hard in others. You’ll see when you get a little older.”

  “It’s taking forever to get older.”

  She laughed. Chaz didn’t know what was happening to him, but his throat felt funny and he practically squashed his sandwich.

  “It’s not taking forever,” she said. “You’re getting older every minute of every day.”

  “I am?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Everyone is.”

  He gave that a considerable amount of thought before saying, “I suppose you’re right. I’m almost seven.” He didn’t tell her his birthday wasn’t until February. As far as he was concerned, he’d been going on seven since the day he’d turned six.

  “Almost seven is pretty old,” the girl said quietly. “Think it’s old enough to keep a secret?”

  “What kind of secret?” he asked, feeling at once important and afraid because the last time Danielle had asked him to keep a secret, he’d told. She’d been so upset she’d slammed the door in his face, but not before he’d seen the tears in her eyes. He couldn’t remember what the secret had been, but he sure remembered those tears.

  “It’s no big deal, really,” the girl with the lucky hat answered. “It’s just that I’m not really supposed to be here right now, and I don’t want to get in trouble. So I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t tell anybody you talked to me. Deal?”

  It took Chaz a minute to realize that she’d held her hand out to him because she wanted to shake on it. Feeling ten feet tall, he juggled his sandwich into his other hand and placed his fingers in hers.

  “Be extra nice to Christopher, will ya?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  She smiled again, stuffed her hat on her head, then turned around. He watched until she’d disappeared around the corner at the end of the block. Then, because he wasn’t a baby at all, he ate his sandwich, even though it was smashed and dry. Rubbing the crumbs from his hands, he strolled back up the driveway and on into the house Aunt Beth lived in with her new husband and their new baby boy.

  He heard his mother and Aunt Beth laughing as soon as he opened the door. Chaz paused at the sound, not entirely sure why he felt like laughing, too. Maybe it was because it had been a long time since he’d heard his mother laugh that way, or maybe it was because he’d made a new friend. Whatever the reason, he walked right up to the table and looked at his new cousin much more closely than he ever had before.

  “He’s cute, isn’t he?” he asked his mother.

  “Almost as cute as you,” his mother answered.

  Feeling strangely important, Chaz said, “I’m too big to be cute. I’m getting older every day, you know.”

  “Yes, I know,” his mother said affectionately. “Before you know it, you’ll be
as big as Mark and Danielle. Your brother and sister will be home soon. We should go, too.”

  For as long as Chaz could remember, he’d wanted to be big like Mark and Danielle. But suddenly, there was somebody else he wanted to be like. “Okay,” he answered. “But could we do something on the way home?”

  “Do you want to stop at the park to play?” his mother asked.

  Christopher was looking at him with serious blue eyes that somehow made Chaz feel older, taller, wiser. Grinning, he held his finger out the way he’d seen Aunt Beth do, and laughed out loud when the baby clamped onto it with his own tiny hand. Mesmerized, Chaz shook his head, being careful not to pull his finger out of his new cousin’s grasp. “I want to go shopping for a baseball cap like my friend’s.”

  “What friend?” his mother asked.

  “A baseball cap?” Aunt Beth asked at the same time.

  He stopped suddenly, his breath catching in his throat. He wasn’t supposed to tell anybody about his new friend. He’d promised. Why were secrets always so hard for him to keep?

  Chaz glanced up at the grown-ups. He recognized the look of curiosity on his mother’s face, but he didn’t understand the worry on Aunt Beth’s. Since a promise was a promise, he pulled his finger out of Christopher’s grasp and tucked his hand into his mother’s. “All the guys in school wear them.”

  Beth tried to tell herself there was no reason for the chill running down her spine. Surely there was no connection between Chaz’s sudden desire to own a baseball cap and the person several witnesses had seen near the nursery, a person whose most outstanding feature seemed to be a baseball cap.

  Chaz had said it himself. All the kids wore them. Hundreds of thousands of people wore them. Why, then, did goose bumps skitter along her arms when she glanced out the window where Chaz had eaten his lunch? The bench was empty, the early autumn afternoon sunny and clear. There was nothing amiss. It was just a normal Thursday afternoon. The leaves were beginning to change colors, the mountains rising in the west like ever-watchful friends. Why, then, did she suddenly feel as if her chance for happiness was hovering dangerously close to the edge of a treacherous cliff?

  She didn’t have an answer, but she strode directly to the table, unstrapped Christopher and lifted him into her arms. His warmth seeped into her chest, her love for this child gradually chasing away all but the faintest traces of fear.

  She walked Janet and Chaz out to their car. Waving goodbye, she felt her eyes close dreamily. She held the baby away from her face and cooed, half in English, half in gibberish. “I love you, Christopher, yes I do.”

  He looked up at her. And smiled for the very first time. Wrapping her arms around him, she cradled him close and pressed her cheek to his, wondering if all mothers felt as if their time with their babies was slipping away. She scanned the driveway and the mountains, and everything in between. Blaming her lingering sense of unease on an overactive imagination, she turned and carried Christopher inside.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Taste this, Anthony,” Tony’s mother said, holding a spoon to his lips. “Does it need more oregano?”

  “It’s perfect, Ma,” Tony answered, licking his lips. “But you’ve gotta stop feeding me or I won’t be able to eat a bite at the dinner party the board of directors is throwing tonight.”

  His mother made a grunting sound that was all but impossible to imitate. “That’s hours away. You’ll have worked up an appetite by then. What about your Grandma Rosa’s sauce? I think there’s a little too much basil, don’t you?”

  Tony backed away, holding up both hands. “I’m not tasting that sauce, and I’m sure not taking sides when it comes to you and Grandma Rosa’s opinions on basil. Have Maria taste it. Where is she, anyway?”

  “Your sister’s running the register up front, not that she’d come near you after the way you practically bit her head off a little while ago.”

  Shrugging sheepishly, Tony glanced out the doorway that separated the kitchen from the rest of the store. Mario’s Grocery was in a midafternoon lull. In fact, there were more Petrocellis wandering around than there were customers. But his mother was right. He had been a little short with Maria earlier when she’d teased him about all the stops he and Beth had made before coming here.

  He’d only been making conversation when he’d told her he’d gone to the gas station, the car wash and the dry cleaners to pick up his best black suit, and Maria had only been making conversation when she’d joked that he sounded like an old married man. He wasn’t sure why it had rankled, but it had.

  “Don’t worry about Maria,” Elena said, stirring the big pot of homemade Italian sauce the store was noted for selling. “She’s just jealous because you asked Carmelina to baby-sit tonight instead of her.”

  He shrugged, breathing in the heavy scent of garlic, tomato, onion and oregano. The store always smelled the same. Like home. For some reason, it didn’t make him feel better today.

  Two dark-haired children streaked around the corner of aisle five. Leaving his mother to her cooking, Tony headed his nephew and niece off at the pass, lifting the smallest of the two off his feet. “You’d better not let your mama catch you running in this store. She’ll tan your hides for sure.”

  Four-year-old Gabe Bulgarelli and his six-year-old sister, Robin, looked at each other, then glanced around nervously. Ruffling both dark heads, Tony said, “I think you’re safe for now. What do you say we go find your Aunt Beth?”

  Turning dark brown eyes rimmed with curling black lashes to his uncle, Gabe said, “Grandma Rosa has her cornered in the freezer section.”

  “Then, we don’t have much time. We have to get to her and save her before it’s too late.” Tony settled Gabe on his hip and took Robin’s hand, all three of them setting off for the back of the store.

  They hadn’t gone far when they came across Tony’s sister, Gina, who was stocking shelves. Looking up from a display of canned green beans, two for a dollar, Gina swiped her hands on her short apron, looked at Gabe and exclaimed, “The older that son of mine gets, the more he becomes the spittin’ image of you, Tony.”

  Gabe wiggled to get down. Tony obliged him, his gaze settling on Bethany about the same time Gabe’s feet touched the floor. Just as the kids had said, Grandma Rosa was talking to her in the freezer section. Beth was nodding at the old woman, her hand patting Christopher’s back in a steady rhythm. The baby was strong enough to hold his head up now and seemed to be mesmerized by all the bright colors. His hair was as dark as Gabe’s, but it was becoming apparent that Christopher’s eyes were going to be light blue.

  “Beth tells me Christopher is beginning to smile,” Gina said conversationally.

  “Yeah,” Tony answered absently. Then, coming to his senses, he said, “Yes, he is. It’s the darnedest thing, too. I swear his whole body lights up every time it happens. Beth can lure a grin out of him all the time, but he’s only done it twice for me.”

  “He’s with Beth a lot more of the time,” Gina answered, returning to her task.

  “I’ll have you know I spend time with my son, too.”

  Gina’s head came up and around with a snap. “I didn’t say you don’t. For crying out loud, Tony, there’s no need to bite my head off. Maria’s right. You are a crank.”

  Tony wouldn’t have needed to see the look in his sister’s brown eyes to feel like a heel. He scowled. Gina and Maria were both right. He was cranky. He wasn’t sure why.

  “Tony?”

  “Hmm?” he asked, his sister’s voice drawing his gaze away from Christopher’s dark little head and mesmerizing blue eyes.

  “If you hurry, you might be able to rescue Bethany before Grandma Rosa reaches the war years.”

  Her wink was part of the standing family joke. Just like that, Tony knew all was forgiven. “Thanks, Gina. I think I’ll do that.”

  “Oh, and Tony?” she called to his back.

  His answer was a raised eyebrow and a “what” sort of look over his shoulder.


  “Break a leg tonight. The hospital board made a good choice.”

  Swallowing the lump that had come out of nowhere, he nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

  “You always do.”

  Tony was glad Gina didn’t wait around for his response, because he would have been hard-pressed to come up with one. Of all his sisters, she was the one he’d always argued with the most. Their mother claimed it was because they were too close in age and too much alike. Until now, it hadn’t felt like a compliment. Maybe that was the reason behind the dull ache in his chest.

  Making his way toward Beth and Chris, he wished he felt a little more convinced.

  * * *

  Bethany studied her reflection in the mirror. She’d applied her makeup with a light hand, placing more emphasis on her eyes than on the rest of her face. As a result, her lashes looked long and thick, her lids tinted a pale brown, her brows darkened just enough to call attention to their delicate arch. She applied a bit of translucent powder to the rest of her face, and followed that up with a hint of blush on her cheekbones and a coat of deep red lipstick on her lips. She liked the effect when she was finished, but she knew that it wasn’t makeup that was responsible for the healthy glow on her cheeks and the glimmer of happiness in her eyes.

  Always one to give credit where credit was due, she had to admit that Christopher was responsible for her more rested appearance. Tipping the scales at six-and-three-quarter pounds, he was growing like a weed, eating more at each feeding and sleeping longer in between. As a result, Beth was able to sleep for four hours at a time. When Tony didn’t wake her, that is. That brought her to the other reason for her glowing appearance, another reason who just happened to be lounging in the doorway, watching.

  “Tell me more about your sisters,” she said, brushing her hair.

  Ready except for his jacket, Tony strolled farther into the room, stopping near the foot of the bed. From this angle he could see the back of Beth’s head as well as her reflection in the big oval mirror over the makeup table. She reached up with her hands, winsomely twisting her hair into some sort of knot on top of her head. His heart thudded, then settled back into its normal rhythm. “I’ve already told you everything there is to know about my sisters.”