Trading Secrets

by Christine Flynn

  The cracked walls were now a golden Tuscan yellow. The scarred and scrubbed beige countertops held a couple of Bristol-blue canisters, a red cereal bowl of wild berries and a canning jar filled with the flowers that still struggled to grow at the side of the house.

  It was the row of boxes below the sheet-covered window that had his attention, though. That and the neat pallet of bedding near her cardboard nightstand and dresser.

  “Soap and paint only go so far.” She shrugged, apparently hoping her philosophical approach would remove his quick frown. “So,” she continued, motioning to the little refrigerator he knew Rhonda loaned her. “Can I get you anything? I only have milk and orange juice, but you’re welcome to either.”

  “I’m fine. Thanks.” Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he glanced inside an open doorway near the woodstove.

  He had no idea what horrors lurked in her plumbing, but as he stepped closer he could see that the bathroom with its claw-foot tub and pedestal sink had been scrubbed clean. It also smelled of her soap and shampoo.

  “It’s better than it was,” he heard her say.

  His glance slid from the defense in her expression to where the faded gray sweatshirt covered her stomach. It did look better, he thought. Brighter, definitely. But she had a long way to go to get the place ready for a child. This was the only area she was using, the only part of the house even halfway livable. She was sleeping on the floor. Her only furniture was the wooden stool she’d painted the same warm color as the walls.

  Not wanting to sound as critical as he felt, he rubbed the frown from his forehead. “Mind if I ask what kind of heat this place has?”

  “Oil.”

  “Does it work?”

  It was her turn to look displeased.

  “No.” She had asked the electrician about it. Oil furnaces hadn’t been his area of expertise, but he had one himself. As for hers, aside from needing a new motor, the empty oil tank had water in it and had rusted. “But the woodstove does. Grandma used it all the time.”

  “You have firewood then?”

  “Some,” she said, thinking of the lean-to that used to always hold a winter’s supply. “Less than a cord,” she amended, since he looked as if he were about to ask how much. “I’ll have to buy more.”

  “At least you’re not planning to cut it yourself,” he muttered. He checked behind the sheet over the window. “What about storm windows?”

  Jenny’s brow furrowed. “They’re in the storage shed.”

  “And?”

  Something in her expression must have given her away. “Most of them need to be replaced. The frames warped and the panes broke.”

  She thought he might ask why they hadn’t been put on the house before it had been boarded up. She would have had to tell him she didn’t know. She might have also told him his inspection wasn’t necessary. She was well aware of all the structural deficiencies. Most of them, anyway. But he’d just hitched his thumb toward the living room. “Mind if I look around in there?”

  Tugging at her sweatshirt, feeling as uneasy as she had the first time she’d considered what he must think of how she was living, she motioned for him to go ahead.

  Clearly on a mission, he disappeared.

  From where Jenny stayed beside her kitchen counter, she listened to him cross the hardwood floor and open the door that led upstairs. Since the door closed a few moments later, he’d apparently chosen not to go up. It was just as well, she thought. Between the cobwebs and the water damage from where the roof sagged over the bedrooms, the space was fairly frightening.

  When he walked back in, his features were drawn in the same thoughtful expression she’d seen when he was about to break uncomfortable news to a patient.

  “This really was a good house.” She wanted him to know that. As a child she’d had so many wonderful times there. Holidays. Birthdays. Ordinary days that seemed special just because her family had been together then. That was probably why she didn’t see it as the disaster Greg must, why she felt safe where no one else would.

  “You need some serious work here, Jenny. I know you don’t want to talk to Brent,” he admitted, stopping an arm’s length away, “but you really should call his attorney.”

  “I already did.”

  That seemed to surprise him. “What did he say?”

  The Oreos in the cupboards seemed to whisper her name.

  The man with the broad Bostonian vowels hadn’t wanted to help her at all. At least, not until she’d told him why she’d wanted to talk to his client. Even then he’d said that the best he could do was arrange for Brent to call her from the jail during one of his visitation times, and then only if Brent wanted to talk to her.

  Since the only place she could be reached during the day was at the clinic, and since the only time she could count on Bess not being there was on their lunch hour, she’d asked if he would call her then.

  She honestly hadn’t thought the man would call her back. And he hadn’t. When the phone had rung at ten in the morning with Bess, mercifully, busy with a patient, it had been Brent himself.

  “I talked to Brent Friday,” she finally admitted. Feeling an urgent need to move, she picked up the dishcloth from the edge of the sink to wipe the chocolate crumbs from the counter. “Aside from learning that he’s in the process of plea-bargaining himself from twenty years in jail to ten, he said that I’ll have to prove paternity.” She swiped at the counter, shook out the crumbs. “I’m not about to fight him.”

  She could still feel the sting of his insinuation. The man had to know the child was his. She had been with no one else. Ever. Brent knew that. But Brent was a man without character. The fact that he acted as if she had none tore her to the quick.

  “I don’t have the money to go to court,” she continued, tossing the cloth into the sink. “I have enough legal debt because of him as it is. And don’t tell me I should fight anyway,” she hurried to insist, because that was something Greg would do. He was used to fighting. He’d done it all his life. She was too new at it to survive its cutthroat rules. “He has no assets, no job and no means of paying me anything. This child is mine. No one else’s.”

  For a moment Greg said nothing. When he did, his quiet apology made her go still.

  “I’m sorry, Jenny.”

  She studied him as he stood there, taking up the middle of the golden-yellow room. She couldn’t tell if he was sorry for what Brent had said, or if he’d apologized for almost insisting that she contact Brent in the first place. She didn’t care. As empty as she felt inside, she would take either one.

  “Thanks,” she murmured. She was sorry, too. “But you know what really upsets me?” she asked, because the matter tore at her, too. “When I’d left Boston, I was escaping a scandal. The minute it becomes obvious that I’m pregnant, I’ll be right in the middle of another one. I’d thought I was safe here. I thought I could come back and blend in and just be like everyone else. But that can’t happen now. I’m going to be the girl who went to the city and came back pregnant. I don’t care how nice people will be to my face, I know what they’ll be saying behind my back.”

  Greg took a step toward her. “Jenny…”

  “You know Emmy Larkin, don’t you?” she asked, stepping back, not wanting him to stop her. “She runs her parents’ maple sugaring operation in the spring and a B and B in the summer and fall. I feel so awful for her whenever she comes into town. It’s been years and people still talk behind her back. She didn’t even do anything herself. The scandal was with her dad and the man who was supposed to be his best friend, but there are always whispers about how sorry people feel for her and how she’s going to die out there an old maid. People won’t be nearly so kind talking about me, but I’ll know they’re doing it. I don’t want people talking about me as if I don’t know what they’re saying. And I definitely don’t want it for my baby.”

  “Jenny…”

  “What?”

  “Come on,” he coaxed, reaching for her. Wanting t
o ease her agitation, his hands curved over her shoulders. Beneath his palms, her slender muscles felt rigid with tension, her bones amazingly delicate. “You’re not the only single woman to ever have a child.”

  Jenny felt the gentle kneading motion of his fingers and the heat of his hands seeping into her. Part of her craved that contact, the quiet support she felt in it. Another part wanted desperately for him to fold her against his very solid chest and simply hold her until the awful emptiness went away.

  The rational part of her simply wanted him to understand.

  “How many single mothers do you know in Maple Mountain?”

  “There’s Lorna Bagley.”

  “Her husband died.”

  “Penny Prescott.”

  “Divorced.”

  “There has to be someone else.”

  “Carrie Higgins’s sister got pregnant in high school and her parents shipped her off to relatives in Maine. She never came back. It’s not like I can leave here myself, either. I need the medical insurance that comes with my job at the clinic.”

  She stopped herself. Moving back from the arms he wasn’t offering anyway, she shoved her fingers through her hair. She didn’t mean to unload on him. It was just that with Greg it always seemed so easy to do.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, needing to pull back from where her thoughts had gone. She was better off to focus on one day at a time. One week, max. “You didn’t come by to hear me rant.” She wanted to hear about him, to just talk with him about something that wasn’t distressing. “How did your interviews go?”

  He wasn’t ready to drop the subject. She could tell by the quality of his silence. Desperately needing to move on, she tried again.

  “Did either place appeal to you?”

  “Brayborough,” he finally replied. “It’s about the same size as Maple Mountain, and they’re desperate for a doctor. They offered me the position on the spot.”

  “What did you think of the offer?”

  “I accepted.”

  She needed to take lessons from him, she thought. Something could get to him, but he could bury his reaction to it a matter of seconds. She had no idea how long it had taken him to learn how to do that. A lifetime, she suspected. But she definitely needed to study his technique. The best she could do now was force a smile and hope her quiet “That’s great” didn’t sound as disheartened as it felt.

  It must not have. Or if it did, Greg didn’t seem to notice. He left a few minutes later, after telling her he was relieved to have the job and that he should go so she could get some rest.

  A minute after that Jenny dug out what was left of her Oreo stash and slowly unscrewed a cookie.

  Chapter Eight

  Within days, change permeated the air. Jenny could feel it in the sudden coolness of the past few evenings and in the mornings that, almost overnight, turned crisp. She could see it, too, in the leaves. Touches of gold and bronze appeared in the birches lining the wide fertile fields and meadows, and crowning the ridge tops. Before long, maples would blaze crimson.

  As much as Jenny loved the change of seasons, as much as she’d always looked forward to them when she’d lived in Maple Mountain before, she felt more anxiety than anticipation now. In the past couple of months, she had experienced enough change to last her a lifetime and nothing would have made her happier than to find a routine and settle into it for…forever. There had been a time in her life when she’d thought she would dry up and die without the prospect of something new and exciting to look forward to. But she had since learned that there was a lot to be said for security and that a person had to be very careful what she wished for.

  Every morning now brought the reminder of more change to come. Every sunrise meant she had one day less to prepare herself for the responsibility of a child, and that she was one day closer to the time the little secret she carried would become apparent. Each day that passed meant she had one day less to repair the old house, and that she was twenty-four hours closer to the time the ice and snows would turn it drafty and cold.

  Her to-do list changed, too.

  She could go without buying a bed, but she needed a crib.

  She could go without a dresser for her clothes, but she needed warm clothes for the baby. And blankets. And a car seat. And a snowsuit and mittens and a cap. The baby’s list grew.

  The baby.

  The thought of a child had brought panic before. Now that distress was still there, but so was a guarded sense of anticipation. She was going to be a mom. Life grew inside her. Life that was too tiny now to even feel, but it was there. And it was hers. The new little person wasn’t responsible for any of the circumstances surrounding its existence, the very existence that complicated the daylights out of her mother’s life. But she would be loved for who she was simply because every child deserved no less.

  She, Jenny found herself thinking more and more. She hoped her child was a girl, mostly because a girl would be easier than a boy to raise without a father. Yet, boy or girl, she would promise her child that she would somehow keep it safe and remind it not to be in a hurry to grow up because being grown up wasn’t nearly as much fun as it appeared to be when a person was only four feet tall.

  She needed a rocking chair.

  The thought hit as she left the clinic Thursday afternoon, so she added one to her mental list right below a washer and dryer. She’d decided those had to be priority, especially once the weather grew too inclement to dry clothes outside.

  She winced as she remembered something else she needed to add. Firewood. Greg had reminded her of it Sunday night while discussing her heating situation, but she’d forgotten to write it down. There were acres of trees on the property, some fallen from previous storms. She could barter half of whatever was cut for the labor. People did that sort of thing around there all the time.

  Dodging the slow-moving stream of visitors’ cars on her way to the diner, she wondered who she knew who owned a chain saw. If no one wanted to trade, maybe she could borrow the saw and cut the wood herself. Greg had said he was surprised she hadn’t already considered that, though his muttering had sounded more like an odd sort of frustration to her than mere observation.

  The memory brought a faint frown. He had seemed different to her all week. More watchful, somehow, but far less inclined to make small talk. She knew he had a lot on his own mind, but she missed his casual interest in the ongoing saga of her house repairs. Each morning he still asked what she’d accomplished the night before. Yet his response to her having sanded another chair and fixed the frame on one of the unbroken storm windows had been nothing but the pinch of his lips.

  His strangely restrained manner had been evident, too, when Bess had been on her rounds a couple of days ago. Jenny had been changing the paper sheet on an exam table after a patient left when he’d walked in and asked if she was taking any sort of vitamin supplement. After she’d replied to the seemingly odd question by telling him she wasn’t, he’d handed her a bottle of prenatal vitamins and told her to take one a day. He’d also given her a slip of paper with the name and number of a St. Johnsbury obstetrician because he figured she’d be more comfortable getting her care away from the clinic and Maple Mountain.

  Wondering at his thoughtfulness for her unborn child and his sensitivity for her, she hadn’t been able to think of a thing to say other than, “Thank you.”

  He’d said nothing more himself. He’d just given her a nod, pushed his hands into his slacks pockets and walked out without another word.

  Someone called her name.

  Plastering on a smile when she saw Claire McGraw wave at her on her way out of the quilting shop next door, Jenny waved back. Ever since Greg had alluded to how easy her emotions were to read when she worried, she’d made a conscious effort to keep her thoughts away from her troubles when she was around those who knew her.

  She was about to face a few more of those who knew her now.

  Dutifully keeping her smile in place, she headed up the stairs
Dora had lined with early-harvest pumpkins and pots of red and gold mums and pulled open the diner’s screen door.

  Greg stood at the reception room window watching Jenny wave to someone he couldn’t see before she disappeared inside the diner. He’d returned from his rural rounds a half hour ago, earlier than usual because he hadn’t had as many calls, but he’d yet to start his dictation.

  He hadn’t been able to shake the thought that Jenny was sleeping on the floor. She was using a comforter for a mattress.

  Until he’d followed the impulse and stopped at her house, he hadn’t given any thought to what she might be using for a bed. Mostly, he suspected, because thinking of Jenny in any horizontal context would have conjured thoughts of her sweet little body and how he’d like to be horizontal with her. All she had to do was walk into the room and he could feel his body responding in ways that had him feeling more frustrated than he did already. But casual sex was the last thing she would want or need. Aside from the emotional beating that had undoubtedly left her frightened and fragile inside, she was carrying a child. She had a roof with holes. She didn’t have a decent place to sleep.

  He’d been thinking of that for the past five days. He’d spent those same five days trying to figure out a way to make her house more habitable.

  For all her efforts, she was simply applying bandages when major surgery was needed. He had no idea what kind of damage the elements had done through the sagging roof upstairs, but he’d felt a breeze and smelled fresh air when he’d opened the stairway door. The night she’d helped him realign his arm, she’d had a pot on the kitchen floor to catch the rain.

  He’d called a roofer in St. Johnsbury himself to see how much a roof would cost and how soon the work could be done. After he had described the approximate size and condition of what was there now, the guy had given him a ball-park figure of ten thousand dollars, give or take a few thousand either way. He wouldn’t be able to tell him for sure until he saw it himself. With the jobs he was trying to finish before the rains started, he also wouldn’t be able to get to it until next spring.