The Second Time Around

by Marie Ferrarella

  CHAPTER 32

  She missed her energy.

  These days, any energy that materialized seemed to be in her head. Energized thoughts would scatter in several directions as she made plans, laid down schedules, promised herself deadlines. Her body, however, failed to keep up with any of it.

  This was what someone had in mind when they’d said that the spirit was willing but the flesh was weak. Her flesh was not only weak, it was exhausted.

  Laurel found herself longing for sleep the minute she opened her eyes in the morning. Not exactly the frame of mind she needed to get things accomplished. And there were always things to accomplish.

  Pregnant or not, she still had a household to run, a job to go to each morning. Listings did not care if you had the energy level of a snail that had just been run over by a truck. They needed to be moved. Clients needed to be shown properties. Houses, even perfect ones, did not sell themselves. She had a reputation to maintain, one that she had worked long and hard to create. She was proud of it. Proud that she had come in the Bedford agency’s top seller four times in the past six years. Her pregnancy shouldn’t change anything.

  But oh, God, how she longed to put her head on her desk and close her eyes for just a minute.

  Or thirty.

  There were tiny bursts of energy, followed by incredibly long spates of exhaustion. This was even worse than the early stages, which had been pockmarked with exhaustion.

  Pouring herself a cup of herbal tea, Laurel paused to lean against the counter. She took in a deep breath. It didn’t help.

  “Something wrong?” Jeannie asked. She was right behind her, intent on filling her oversize coffee cup with dark brew. But her face was lined with concern as she looked at Laurel.

  Laurel shook her head. Nothing was wrong, at least, no more than usual, she thought. “I feel like Rip van Winkle just before he first leaned against the tree and fell asleep for twenty years.”

  Concern turned to sympathy. Jeannie took the coffeepot and emptied the contents into her large mug. “That bad, huh?”

  Tossing the used tea bag into the wastepaper basket, Laurel nodded. “The baby kept me up half the night, kicking.”

  Jeannie tasted the brew she’d just poured and made a slight face. For Jeannie, the coffee was always too weak, even when it was mud. “She’s getting ready to blow that Popsicle stand and kick her way out of solitary confinement,” she declared.

  “I’m not due for another month,” Laurel reminded her, taking a sip of her tea.

  She stifled a shiver. God, but she was not looking forward to the end of the process. As much as she wanted to have the pregnancy over with, that was how much she didn’t want to have to face labor. Time had muted the memory but hadn’t completely erased it.

  “Maybe she doesn’t know that,” Jeannie pointed out. She patted Laurel’s belly. “I doubt if there’s room inside there for a calendar.”

  “Very funny.” She began to walk slowly back to her desk, aware that each time she passed, she garnered looks from the other agents. Sympathy and curiosity all mingled together in the eyes of her colleagues. “The nursery’s not ready yet,” she told Jeannie.

  Jeannie looked at her, curious. According to Laurel, the project had been undertaken several weeks ago. “How’s that going, anyway?”

  Laurel pressed her lips together. In about five years, this was going to be a funny story. Right now, it was just an exasperating one. “Jason has all the cans of pain opened.”

  Jeannie snorted as she sat down at her desk. “Going that well, is it?”

  There was no point getting herself worked up, so she laughed. “He keeps meaning to get to it. And every time I pick up a brush, he has a fit. Says the fumes aren’t good for the baby.”

  Jeannie glared at her over the rim of her mug. “He’s right.”

  “Thank you, expert,” Laurel replied loftily. She lowered herself onto her chair, then took another sip before continuing. “But neither is it good to come into the world and stare at walls that have the remnants of tape on them. Luke had all four walls completely covered in posters.”

  When her oldest had moved out on his own, she’d left the posters up, silently thinking that if Luke decided to come back home for a while, the way so many of his generation did, he might welcome familiar sights. But he didn’t move back. The months fed into one another and the posters continued to linger. Now that Luke had gotten married, she needed room for the baby.

  Jeannie waved a hand at Laurel’s words. “She’ll survive,” she promised. “My father was the last of ten. He said that when he was born, they had no room for him so he slept in a drawer for the first three months.”

  Now there was a story she wasn’t about to pass on to Jason, Laurel thought. “As long as no one closed the drawer.”

  Jeannie grinned.

  Laurel put down her cup, her eyes widening. She hadn’t been serious. “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. His older brother Kyle did, once. He was jealous of all the attention the new baby was getting. Luckily, my grandmother saw him shut the drawer. She came running to my dad’s rescue. To hear my dad tell the story, Uncle Kyle couldn’t sit for a week.”

  There was no one at the house to be jealous of the baby. She thought of Christopher. He still wasn’t exactly thrilled about all this, but he was too old to act out that way, thank God. “Lily’s not going into a drawer.”

  Jeannie raised an eyebrow. “Lily?”

  She’d forgotten that she hadn’t told Jeannie about their decision. It had taken Jason and her all this time, since they had first known about the baby, to come up with a name they both agreed on.

  “That’s what we’ve decided to call her. Just the other night,” she confided, then added, “Lily was Jason’s grandmother’s name.”

  “Nice.”

  Because she knew her, Laurel could hear the trace of sarcasm someone else might miss.

  “That’ll keep your grandmother-in-law always close to you.”

  She felt duty-bound to defend the late woman. “She was a very nice woman. She died shortly after we were married.” To placate her mother, whose feelings were liable to be hurt at being passed over, they were going to use “Debra” as a middle name.

  Jeannie nodded thoughtfully before taking another long sip of her coffee. “Thus proving the old adage, only the good die young.” And then she grinned wickedly. “I can lend you my mother-in-law in case you miss having one.”

  “I still have one, we’re talking about his grandmother,” Laurel reminded her. Jeannie went into great lengths describing all of the older woman’s shortcomings. “And as for your mother-in-law, why would I want the lady from hell?”

  “I had to try,” Jeannie quipped. She turned toward her computer, then paused and glanced back at Laurel. “You have any plans for lunch?”

  Laurel thought the question was a little premature. “It’s only nine o’clock, Jeannie.”

  The woman’s wide shoulders rose in a half shrug. “I don’t like putting things off to the last minute. Besides, if I have lunch to look forward to, it makes the morning go by faster.” She turned her chair around to face Laurel and peered at her over the top of the reading glasses she’d just lowered to her face. “How about it?”

  She was supposed to have lunch with Jason today, but he’d abruptly backed out this morning, telling her he needed to put in extra time on his new presentation. So, she was free. “No, I don’t have plans.”

  Jeannie grinned, pleased. She turned back to her computer. “Now you do.”

  Laurel smiled to herself. It had been a long time since she’d gone out to lunch with Jeannie. Things had gotten so hectic and her supply of energy so limited that she often found herself working through lunch, an ignored sandwich on her desk, sitting on an island of wrinkled aluminum foil. There was no other way to catch up on her paperwork.

  “Okay,” Laurel agreed, “it’s a date. Provided the Kellers make up their mind between now and noon,” she added, murmuring
the words out of the side of her mouth just as the couple in question entered the office.

  Jeannie looked over toward the front door and shook her head. Wade and Leticia Keller had been coming into the office every other day or so now for the past two months. They had already gone through several other agencies before walking into Bedford Reality Company. Laurel hadn’t even been their first agent. They had used up two Realtors before they had been passed on to her.

  “If anyone can sell them a place, it’s you,” Callaghan had told her when he informed her of the change.

  Laurel wasn’t so flattered by the words that she couldn’t see through them. No one else at the agency had enough patience to put up with the overly picky pair. Gamely, she had agreed to work with the couple. It had earned her the undying gratitude of no fewer than three of the other agents who had feared they were going to be behind the eight ball.

  As far as Laurel was concerned, she had nothing but patience. It came from raising three children and bracing herself to raise one more. She had learned a long time ago children either taught you patience, or the fastest route to the pharmacy to fill a new prescription for Valium.

  With effort, Laurel pushed herself up to her feet, then picked up her leather-bound notebook. She met the couple halfway.

  “Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Keller. You’re not going to believe this, but I just got in a new listing and I think this just might be that dream house you’ve been looking for.”

  “Liar,” Jeannie muttered under her breath, audible enough only for her to hear.

  Laurel managed to keep her smile in place as she approached the couple. “We’ll take my car,” she told them.

  “Well, of course we will,” Mr. Keller replied coolly. “You stand to make a sizable commission off us. The very least you can do is pay for gas.”

  As she led the way out, Laurel wondered if California convicted pregnant women for committing justifiable homicide.

  CHAPTER 33

  The moment Laurel walked into the real estate office, Jeannie was up on her feet, slinging her purse straps over her right shoulder and pushing in her chair.

  “Wow, I was getting worried that they ate you alive. Any luck?” The question came out as an afterthought.

  God, but did she feel bushed. Laurel glanced around the room and noticed that it was almost empty, except for Hank Wilson, who was sitting all the way in the back, munching on his customary peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. It looked like everyone else had already gone to lunch.

  “They’re ‘thinking about it,’” Laurel answered with a huge sigh, sinking gratefully into her chair. “I showed them five more houses besides the new one.” She did her best to distance herself from the morning’s events but it wasn’t easy. “It got to the point that I seriously regretted not having an ejection seat installed in the car.” She opened her bottom drawer and dropped in her purse. “God would have trouble keeping his temper with those two.”

  Jeannie bent over and retrieved the purse from the drawer, holding it out to her like a freshly saved treasure. “Well, we’ll have a nice lunch and you can forget all about those people. They’re probably not going to buy anything anyway.”

  She was beginning to think that herself. The Kellers were what was commonly referred to in the industry as Lookie-Lous, except a little more upper-crust.

  “Probably,” Laurel agreed. She took back her purse but made no effort to get up. At this point, she doubted if she’d ever get up again. “Look, Jeannie, would you mind very much if I took a rain check on that lunch? I’m just too exhausted to go out again—or even to get up again.”

  Jeannie stared at her for a moment as if she’d transformed into Wiley Coyote and had just discovered that she’d walked two extra feet than there was ground. Said knowledge was going to instantly send her plummeting down the ravine.

  “Yes, I mind,” Jeannie finally said.

  The answer stunned Laurel. Jeannie was the last word in easygoing. She went along with everything. Usually. “What?”

  “I’ve been looking forward to having lunch with you all week.” Jeannie seemed hurt.

  “We can send out,” Laurel told her. “My treat.”

  Again, Jeannie surprised her by shaking her head. “It’ll take too long.” She got behind Laurel’s chair and turned it around to the door. “It’ll be faster just to go.”

  Laurel sincerely hoped that Jeannie had no intention of tilting the chair and dumping her out onto the floor. She grasped the armrests, just in case, her purse strap wrapped around one arm. “Not the way I’ve been dragging.”

  “I’ll drive,” Jeannie volunteered with a touch of eagerness that Laurel found incredibly strange. Her friend didn’t care for driving and begged off whenever humanly possible.

  Now it was Laurel’s turn to stare. “And if I still say no, are you planning on carrying me out of here?”

  “If I have to,” Jeannie answered matter-of-factly. And then her voice softened. “C’mon, Laurel, you’re getting into a rut and you need to snap out of it.”

  “And you think going out to lunch is going to snap me out of it?”

  “It might.” Jeannie’s purse strap slipped off her shoulder and she pushed it back up again, her eyes never leaving Laurel’s face, never relinquishing its pleading look.

  Oh well, what would it hurt? Laurel decided. And maybe she’d wind up regaining some of her energy back.

  Surrendering, she shook her head as she slipped the strap of her oversize purse back up on her arm. “You know, if you demonstrated this much drive when you’re showing houses, you might sell a lot more and get on Callaghan’s good side.”

  Jeannie snorted, leading the way to her car. Having come in early, she’d secured a spot against the building. It was a short walk. “Callaghan doesn’t have a good side.”

  “That’s true.” It was incredibly sunny, one of those days that had people labeling Southern California paradise. The middle of October and it was crisp, clear and warm. She felt better just being outside. “So, now that you’ve managed to pry me away from my chair, where is it we’re going?”

  Jeannie unlocked the pristine white Toyota Echo. Three years old, it was in the same mint condition as the day it was purchased. Planting herself in the driver’s seat, she waited for Laurel to get in and buckle up. “I thought we’d try someplace new for a change.”

  “New?” Laurel echoed. These days, she was rather cautious about what she consumed. Ever since she’d gotten pregnant, food didn’t seem to like her the way it once had. “As in guaranteed to give me a case of heartburn?”

  Jeannie smiled as she turned the key in the ignition. “Don’t worry, honey, I kept your delicate condition in mind. Besides, this is your favorite kind.”

  “Chinese food?”

  “The Red Dragon,” Jeannie told her. It was a new restaurant that had opened a month ago in a freshly renovated strip mall not too far from the office. She spared Laurel a look. “They even have bland food on the menu to soothe the expectant mama’s tummy.”

  Laurel hated baby talk. “Now you’re just getting nauseating.”

  Jeannie laughed, backing out of her spot. “Sorry, being thoughtful has that effect on me. You’ll like it, trust me.”

  Trust me. Whenever people said that, it inevitably made her feel uneasy. “Well, since you’re driving,” Laurel said philosophically, “I guess I’m going to have to.”

  The moment they got to the street, they were engulfed in traffic. It was almost noon, the time of day when everyone who worked hit the road in either an attempt to get some necessary shopping done or go to a restaurant, hoping to mentally get away for a half hour or so. Today seemed a little worse than usual.

  Laurel shifted in her seat. She put her hand between the shoulder strap and her throat in an attempt to keep from being strangled by the seat belt. “You know, it’s not too late to turn around and order takeout from the office.”

  Rather than answer, Jeannie gunned her motor and began weaving in and out of the la
nes of traffic. For a robustly built woman, she had chosen a rather compact vehicle as her mode of transportation. Getting in and out of the Echo was a complete challenge—for her and definitely for any pregnant woman who dared to enter. But the upside of driving a car the size of an extralarge crayon box was that it barely needed the space of a whisper to get in and out of crowded lanes. In addition, it could turn on a dime.

  “You afraid of a little traffic?” Jeannie teased, working her way through a third lane change.

  “No, I’m afraid of dying in a little traffic,” Laurel answered. She had her hands out flat on the dashboard in an attempt to remain upright, besting gravity so as not to tilt right or left with each maneuver that Jeannie executed.

  Her friend slanted a quick glance in her direction, chuckled and promised, “I’ll get you there in one piece, Laurel.”

  She had her doubts about that. Her wrists felt as if they were going to snap off. “You drive like this on the way back from lunch and you’re going to have to have the inside of this car steam cleaned,” Laurel warned.

  “Duly noted.” The next second, Jeannie was shifting into yet another lane.

  Laurel sucked in her breath as they barely made it into the lane, avoiding the rear bumper of a semi. It was going to take a while for her heart to crawl down from her throat.

  “Jeannie, why are you playing hopscotch on the road? They won’t mind if we’re a little late getting back from lunch. Callaghan wasn’t even in the office when we left. He won’t be able to say anything about our taking too long.”

  Jeannie didn’t seem to be listening. She was intent on watching the road. Or what was up ahead. Suddenly, like Columbus’s lookout in the crow’s nest, spying land for the first time in months, she pointed triumphantly. “There it is.”

  “There what is?” With the ongoing thrill-a-minute ride, she’d forgotten about their destination.