The Second Time Around

by Marie Ferrarella

  “With my husband,” she added, realizing that Robert might misconstrue her words to sound as if she was taking a rain check.

  “Bring him along,” Robert invited. “I’d like to meet the man who snagged the queen of the prom.”

  The queen of the prom.

  That had been her, all right. About a million light-years ago. She was surprised that Robert knew about that. They hadn’t traveled in the same circles. He hadn’t had a circle at all when he was in high school.

  She was being silent again, she realized. “I didn’t know you went to the prom.”

  The quiet laugh caused more warmth to travel along her body. She valiantly ignored the sensation. “I went stag. To see how the other half lived.” She could almost hear him smiling. “I wanted to ask you to dance, but I figured I didn’t have a shot. There were just too many guys around you.”

  All that was a blur in her past. “That was a very long time ago.”

  “Not that long,” he contradicted gently. “You still look like a prom queen.”

  Oh God, why couldn’t Jason say something like that?

  Feeling a bit self-conscious, she laughed. “One who has been left back a dozen years or so. Look, I really can’t make it tonight, but maybe another time. I’d like you to meet Jason.” Maybe some of you can rub off on him.

  “Just name the time and the place,” Robert told her. “I’ll look forward to it. And call me if you have any other listings to show me.”

  “Count on it.”

  Laurel replaced the receiver in its cradle, a very odd feeling rifling through her.

  “Can’t get enough of you, huh?”

  She almost jumped. When had Jeannie crossed back to her desk? “He just wanted to get together to go over a few details.”

  “The corner of your mouth twitches when you lie,” Jeannie informed her cheerfully. “Just thought you’d want to know.” She winked. “Just in case.”

  “Jeannie, I need to see you for a minute.” Callaghan called out from the threshold of his glass-enclosed office.

  Saved by the office manager, Laurel thought, as Jeannie reluctantly left her.

  She watched as Jeannie walked into the manager’s office, then she reached for the phone again. She had phone calls to make if this family meeting was going to be a reality.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Is this going to take long, Mom?” Christopher Mitchell called out as he let himself into the house. At five feet ten inches her youngest son was blond like his brothers with an athletic build that was the result of years of swimming. Seeing the rest of his family already in the living room, he went to join them. “I’m taking out a new girl tonight and I don’t want to be late.”

  Luke, the oldest, was perched on the arm of the sofa farthest from the doorway. “You’re always taking out a new girl.” His tone was lofty and a tad patronizing as he regarded his brother.

  Dutifully, Christopher paused to kiss his grandmother, seated on the sofa. He nodded at his aunt and his mother. In his bid for independence, he was in the midst of distancing himself from all his so-called childhood practices, such as hugging and kissing his mother and aunt. In his mind, his grandmother was ancient and scheduled to die at any moment, so she came under a different criteria.

  As he stepped away from his grandmother, he shot Luke a contemptuous glance. “Better than being stuck with just one.”

  Luke pulled back his shoulders defensively. He took his brother’s retort as a direct slam against the woman he intended to marry in four months.

  “I am not stuck,” Luke retorted. “I happen to love Denise.”

  “Or so she tells you,” Morgan quipped. Easily the tallest of the three, he was reclining languidly on the other end of the sofa, his long legs stretched out before him like two limbo poles at rest.

  “Are you saying you think I’m—” Luke’s lips began to form the letter p but since he was in a room with not only his mother, but his grandmother and his aunt Lynda as well, he switched directions swiftly and said “henpecked,” instead.

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Morgan answered, quite deliberately sticking his tongue into his cheek as he grinned.

  “Guys, put a lid on it,” Lynda ordered. “This is your mom’s show. The sooner you stop trading barbs, the sooner she’ll tell us what this is all about.” Sitting on the edge of one side of the love seat that she shared with her mother, Lynda looked up at her older sister impatiently. “What is this all about, Laur?” she asked.

  “Yeah, what’s the big mystery, Mom?” Luke chimed in. He glanced toward his father, but the latter’s face was impassive. No clues there. “Why couldn’t you just tell us over the phone?”

  It might have been easier in the long run, Laurel thought. At least she wouldn’t have worried about seeing the looks on their faces. Too wired to sit, she was the only one standing in the room. Jason had taken a seat off to one side, like an observer.

  As if this could have all happened without him.

  “Because I wanted you all to find out at the same time so there’d be no hurt feelings about who was first. Also I don’t have conference calling for six.”

  “Six,” Morgan repeated, nodding his head thoughtfully. His eyes slanted over toward his father. “So Dad knows.”

  She glanced at her husband. Jason had taken the seat facing the love seat. It placed him on the same side of the room as everyone else. And not her. Laurel couldn’t help wondering if he knew it made her feel isolated.

  Me versus them. We’re supposed to be a team, Jason. I’m not supposed to be out here on my own.

  Hormones again.

  In the past few days, she’d felt them bouncing around like Ping-Pong balls on steroids. She’d hit highs and lows she’d never experienced before, not even when she was pregnant with Luke. And entertaining thoughts she could never even utter in confession. Being pregnant at forty-five was certainly different.

  “Yes,” she acknowledged, “Dad knows.”

  Christopher made no effort to hide the fact that he was looking at his watch. “Are you going to tell us anytime soon?”

  “How about a clue?” Morgan interjected drolly. “First word? Sounds like?” he coaxed, as if playing a game of charades.

  She smiled to herself. Morgan was her clown. Her peacemaker. The perfect middle child. Except that he wouldn’t be the middle child anymore. At least, not alone. He would have to share that position with Christopher now. She wondered if that would bother him. Probably not as much as having his mother pregnant, she decided. Although, of the three, she imagined Morgan would probably take the news the best.

  “Maybe,” she finally said.

  “Maybe?” her mother, Debra Taylor, repeated. She looked at her in confusion. Her mother did not like being confused. It made her feel as if she wasn’t in control. They shared that, she and her mother. Always wanting to be in control.

  Sometimes the Fates conspired against you, Laurel thought philosophically.

  “It sounds like ‘maybe,’” Laurel elaborated, then corrected herself. “Or rhymes with ‘maybe,’ actually.”

  Christopher and Luke looked at each other. None of this was making any sense to them. Or to her sister by the expression on Lynda’s face.

  “What rhymes with ‘maybe’?” Christopher asked.

  “Glad to see our money wasn’t misspent on your college education,” Jason interjected drily.

  Laurel struggled not to glare at him. Great, first thing he says and it’s a joke.

  “Baby,” Lynda said suddenly. “Baby rhymes with maybe.” Having said that, she was no more enlightened than she’d been a moment ago. “What are you trying to say, Laurel?”

  Feeling stranded, Laurel leaned over toward her husband. “Jason, back me up here.”

  “You want me to tell them?” He asked the question as if something dire was about to be revealed, something he wasn’t really responsible for. What was the matter with him?

  “Tell us what?” Debra demanded. “One of you say
it already.”

  “Why does Dad have to back you up?” Luke asked.

  Debra’s sharp blue eyes narrowed. “Laurel, are you thinking of adopting a baby?”

  “Is that it, Mom? You’re adopting a kid?” Every syllable Christopher uttered had protest written all over it.

  “Mom, do you—?”

  Luke got no further as Laurel cut in. “No.”

  Luke breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s good to hear.”

  Only Morgan continued watching her, keeping his silence. The expression on his face told her that he had already put one and one together and gotten three.

  “No, I’m not adopting,” Laurel corrected. “Having.”

  Luke nearly fell off the sofa’s arm. “You’re thinking of having a baby?”

  “Are you out of your mind?” Lynda was on her feet, as if the mere action would bring her sister, her normally very logical sister, back to her senses.

  “Mom, you can’t have a baby at your age,” Luke declared, horrified. “You’re…not young.” He’d nearly blurted out the word “old” and had stopped himself just in time, knowing that would most likely only set his mother off.

  “Mom, you can’t have a baby.” Christopher echoed his older brother’s words, adding, “It’s too gross.”

  Morgan drew in his legs and rose from the sofa. He crossed to his mother, dwarfing her by close to a foot. He put his arm around her shoulders and looked down into her face. “Mom?”

  He knew, she thought. She took a breath. “It’s too late for the can’t part,” Laurel answered.

  The smile on Morgan’s lips was pure understanding. She could have thrown her arms around him. But this wasn’t about being grateful for the one who was supportive; it was about getting everyone else on board. Including Jason.

  “You’re having a baby,” Morgan said softly.

  Laurel pressed her lips together, suddenly wanting to cry. That’s all she needed, to have them think she was coming apart at the seams.

  She nodded. “I’m having a baby.”

  It felt like a confession instead of the happy announcement she’d hoped it would be.

  Morgan gave her a quick, warm hug. “Looks like Christopher isn’t going to be the baby of the family anymore.”

  He sounded rather amused by that, Laurel thought.

  CHAPTER 10

  The next moment, as if someone had just shot off a gun, signaling the beginning of a major event, everyone swarmed around her. Morgan took a step back as his two brothers converged on her from the right, while Lynda and her mother filled up the remaining spaces on the left.

  Only Jason hung back from the crowd, observing the rest of the family without comment, like a physics professor monitoring a science experiment in a state-of-the-art laboratory. His detachment bothered her more than words could express. For the very first time in her marriage, she felt at odds with him.

  Christopher seemed particularly distressed as he approached her. “Mom, how’d this happen?” He obviously was having a great deal of trouble coping with the news now that it was out in the open.

  Luke hit his younger brother’s chest with the back of his hand, the way he used to when they were little boys. “How do you think it happened? Didn’t they teach you anything in school?”

  Laurel wasn’t sure if he was putting his brother on, or if this was Luke’s way of coping with the shock of finding that his parents still had an active, or at least semiactive, sex life.

  Christopher looked a little green around the edges as his eyes shifted back toward his mother, shock and accusation mirrored with the dark green orbs. “I don’t want to think about how it happened,” he cried, suppressing a shudder.

  “No one’s asking you to go there, Chris,” Jason said sternly.

  Glancing in her husband’s direction, Laurel flashed him a grateful smile. Finally, he’d said something that sounded as if he was on her side here. It was a start.

  And then, holding her breath, she slanted a glance toward her mother, the woman who, nineteen years ago, had trouble understanding what would have possessed her to want to add a third child to the group. She’d fully expected her mother, never a shrinking violet, to voice some sort of criticism about this turn of events.

  But Debra Taylor moved her younger daughter aside and threw her arms around her firstborn. Laurel was as stunned by her mother’s unexpected demonstration of affection as she had been the other day by Dr. Kilpatrick’s diagnosis.

  “Mother?” she asked uncertainly from the middle of a very warm embrace.

  She felt her mother’s smile blossoming, spreading out to encompass both of them. “Well, if anyone cares, I think it’s wonderful.”

  Laurel drew back from the smaller woman, staring at her as if she had sprouted another head. Or possibly a pair of wings. “You do?”

  “Sure.” Debra’s smile widened, the area around her eyes disappearing into a wealth of wrinkles. “As long as it’s happening to you, not me,” she added with a broad wink.

  Joke or not, she realized her mother meant it. She was really happy for her. The way she had been when Luke and Morgan had been on their way. The way she later was once Christopher had made his appearance. Laurel breathed a sigh of relief. She’d been resigned to fighting everyone on this, one by one or en masse. This was turning out not to be so bad.

  “God, Mom, you have no idea how much that means to me,” Laurel said as her mother impulsively hugged her a second time. She allowed herself a moment to linger there, remembering when she’d been a little girl and there’d been no safer place than her mother’s arms.

  Her eyes strayed toward her sister. Lynda hadn’t said anything yet and there was a confused look on her face. Easing herself out of her mother’s hug, she went to her sister.

  “What?”

  Lynda looked self-conscious at being caught in the middle of a thought. She shrugged, glancing away. “Nothing. It’s just that I thought you…you know—” Lynda looked back at her “—couldn’t.”

  Obviously, there were a great many holes in her education as far as menopause went. “Well, looks like I could and I did.”

  Debra waved her hand at Lynda, dismissing her younger daughter’s question and turned back to Laurel. “How are you feeling?”

  The question, Laurel thought, was very typical of her mother. Health had always been her primary concern, especially since her husband died. Debra Taylor was the classic kind of mother, one who had you wearing a sweater when she felt cold.

  “I feel relieved,” Laurel admitted. She blew out a breath to underscore the feeling.

  Debra shook her head, her recently refreshed and dyed blond hair moving back and forth about her face. “No, I mean healthwise.”

  She shrugged in response to her mother’s question. “A little nauseous.”

  “That’s because you’re afraid the baby’s going to come out looking like another Christopher,” Morgan quipped, his mouth curving in his father’s smile.

  Christopher glared at him. The butt of both brothers’ jokes while he was growing up, he was still overly sensitive to their teasing comments. “I wouldn’t talk if I were you,” he ground out, then went on to ask, “Cracked any good mirrors lately?”

  It was only a matter of time before Luke was drawn in. She wasn’t about to allow this to disintegrate into a knockdown, drag-out squabble between the brothers.

  “All my sons were and are beautiful,” Laurel declared, raising her voice in order to be heard above the din.

  Although, she added silently, she had been worried about Christopher for the first three months. He’d come out with his head misshapen and he’d resembled an old man who had a perpetually sour stomach. But within six months, he was on his way to being as good-looking as his brothers and now he was probably the best looking of all three, although she would have never said as much out loud, not even to Jason.

  “Boys aren’t beautiful, Mom,” Morgan interjected, a tolerant look on his face. He was obviously attributing her sl
ip to her present condition, as if pregnancy somehow stopped the flow of blood to all vital organs, most assuredly the brain.

  But she shook her head and declared with a laugh, “They are to me.” She put her arms around the shoulders of the two closest to her, having to stand up on her tiptoes despite her high heels. “At least the three of you are.”

  Debra interpreted her daughter’s response in her own way. “So, this is going to be another boy?”

  “I don’t know yet.” She removed her arms from around her sons, coming down on her heels again. “I haven’t had any other tests done, other than the one that indicated I was pregnant.”

  Debra frowned. She had never been known for her patience, or for waiting things out until the person felt like telling her something. She always jumped into the heart of the matter. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Courage.”

  The word had come out before Laurel thought to stop it. She quickly glossed over the slip, even though it was truer than she’d like to admit. She’d always been the one to forge ahead, to let nothing stop her. For the most part, she liked to think of herself as being fearless, not someone who worried about consequences. Yet here she was, taking baby steps. Hoping for approval. She wondered if that was due to a hormone imbalance, because this was certainly nothing like her normal self.

  “And I wanted to let you all know about the baby before any more time had gone by.”

  “So when are you having the test to determine gender?” Morgan asked.

  “It’s called an amniocentesis,” she told him, and then shrugged in response to the question.

  She really hadn’t thought that far in advance, certainly not when it came to wondering about the baby’s sex. A part of her felt she knew what it would be. She’d always had boys. There was no reason to think that she might have something else.

  Even though a part of her secretly hoped…

  No, healthy was all she was hoping for. Boy, girl, pony, as long as it was healthy, that was all that counted in her book. Well, okay, maybe not a pony, she amended silently. But healthy. Healthy was all that counted. Which meant that she was going to have to see about having the test done, not to determine gender, but to make sure everything was all right. Great strides had been made with in vitro surgery to correct certain conditions even before the baby was born.