By Candlelight

by Janelle Taylor

  April breezed into the agency. She still worked a few hours in the afternoons, and Kate was glad to have her around. The truth was April was about to fly out of the nest, and Kate wasn’t certain she was ready.

  “How’d it go?” Kate asked.

  “Pretty good, I think. By the way, have you seen the West Bank since they started fixing it? You can’t even tell. It’s almost done, so I guess we’ll be filming soon.”

  “Great!”

  “I saw Phillip at the shoot,” April added. She had been told enough about Phillip’s involvement with Nate Hefner to associate him with the sabotage.

  “How was he?”

  “Not bad. He seems—better,” she struggled, in lieu of finding a more definitive word. “You know, he can really make people like him when he wants to.” She glanced at Kate and Jillian, who were both noticeably mum. “When he’s not drinking,” she amended. “And he’s been on the straight and narrow during this whole commercial shoot. I told him he should talk to Jake about taking over as liaison for the ad agency.”

  “He works for Talbot, not the agency,” Jillian said.

  “So? He’s as good as that Sandra witch. Better really.”

  “How unkind of you,” Kate said drolly.

  “Yeah, I know.” April was unrepentant. “Anyway, I think he’s going to talk to Jake.”

  It was strange how things had turned out. Phillip’s transformation was symmetrical with April’s acceptance of Jake as her father. Kate didn’t care how, or why, it had happened; she was just glad it had.

  Later, as Kate prepared to leave work and drive back to the house, April said quietly, “Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  Jillian had already left, and for once the agency was quiet. Kate had just turned out the lights to her office, and April was finishing arranging items on the reception desk for the following day.

  “I’ve been filling out all my college applications.”

  Kate nodded. “I’ve been signing checks and handing them to you to mail with those applications,” she reminded her daughter with a smile.

  “I changed some things on the applications,” she said, frowning a little, as if she wasn’t certain how her mother was going to react.

  “Oh?”

  “Just one thing, really.”

  “Okay,” Kate said, waiting. It was odd, really, how April could draw out certain things that didn’t seem to have any particular significance, while the really important stuff she just breezed through.

  “My name. I added Talbot after Rose. April Rose Talbot,” she confirmed, then quickly snatched up her lightweight jacket and headed out the door before Kate could react.

  Kate didn’t remember the drive home after that. She wanted to shout with delight. She couldn’t wait for Jake to come over, so she could tell him.

  But later that night, while she was changing clothes to have dinner at Jake’s parents’ and discuss the upcoming wedding, Kate completely forgot about April’s surprising statement. Spots swam before her eyes. Nausea followed the whirling dizziness. She ran to the bathroom and promptly threw up in the toilet.

  Once she had finished retching, she rinsed out her mouth and splashed water on her face, then stared at her ashen pallor in the mirror. Her stomach still quivered. Cautiously, she climbed onto her bed, curling up to fight the debilitating feeling. Well, if she was going to have the flu, she reasoned, she might as well get it over with now before preparations for the wedding got into full swing.

  For Marilyn Talbot wanted the whole nine yards. Jake and Celia had married in a quick ceremony, almost on the sly from their parents. Marilyn was having none of that this time, and her lavish ideas had appalled both Jake and Kate. Tonight’s meeting was to try and calm her down. Kate would have loved to marry in front of a judge and then honeymoon at the beach; she wanted no lofty, overblown affair. Jake definitely leaned her way, but fighting his mother on this one was a losing battle that neither he nor Kate really wanted to fight in the first place.

  Still, the woman had to be stopped—or at least stalled. With her stomach roiling, Kate seriously hoped Jake would take over and put a leash on Marilyn by himself. She just wanted to go to bed for the night.

  When Jake arrived she was splashing water on her face again. “I don’t feel well,” she admitted.

  “You just don’t want to face my mother,” he teased.

  “True.” Kate managed a wan smile.

  “Let me take care of things,” he told her. “Besides, my brother’s going to be there. He and my father are discussing his future.”

  “His future?”

  “Phillip wants to stay with the company. I told him it was all right with me, but he’s burned a lot of bridges with my father. You know what he said he wanted to do?”

  “Be the liaison to Turner & Moss Advertising Agency?”

  Jake stared at her as if she were clairvoyant.

  Kate grinned. “April talked to him about the idea. I think she put it in his head.”

  “Quite a girl, our April,” he said. Taking Kate’s hands in his, he examined the ring thoughtfully. “When do you think she’ll be ready to tell the world that I’m her father?”

  “I’d say she’s already starting to.” At Jake’s swift look, she added softly, “She’s signing her admissions forms, April Rose Talbot.”

  Jake took the news with a swelling of pride that made him feel slightly ridiculous. He’d had no part in April’s development apart from scattering some genetics her way. It hardly seemed fair to bask in her accomplishments when it was April herself, and Kate, and possibly even Ben Rose—he had to admit, though it liked to kill him—who had fashioned the wonderful young adult she had become.

  “Well, good,” he said brusquely, his voice slightly rough. With a quick kiss for Kate, who looked all too aware of how he was feeling, he left for Lakehaven.

  In the middle of the night Kate awoke with tears on her face, startled from a vague nightmare where everything she did and everywhere she turned, something horrible happened. Worse, she was the villain in every scene. April and Jake and Jake’s parents and even Phillip all accused and blamed her for each and every misdeed.

  Rising from the bed, Kate was glad to feel her stomach under control once more. She walked to the window and gazed out at sharp, bright pinprick stars against a midnight sky. She should be deliriously happy. She was deliriously happy! But a strange, plaguing anxiety hung around her like a bad smell that she couldn’t quite rid herself of.

  Jake had called at about eleven to inform her that he had derailed his mother’s eager attempts to take over the wedding—at least for the meantime. Phillip and his father had gotten along as well as could be expected, managing a civility sadly lacking in previous meetings. “Maybe things really are working out for the better,” Jake had theorized with hope in his voice.

  Now Kate winced, remembering her own dreams that seemed to suggest something else. She wanted to believe the best, like Jake, and why not? Even April was beginning to forgive and accept. What else was there?

  Pushing her uneasy feelings aside with an effort, she climbed back into bed and fell into dreamless sleep.

  At seven she rose from bed, beelined for the bathroom, and vomited up the remaining bit of food left in her stomach. Once again, she stared at her reflection. She felt horrible.

  When she appeared in the kitchen she was still wearing her bathrobe, and as she fixed herself a piece of dry toast and cup of tea, April, who was busily shoveling in sugared corn flakes, lifted her brows. “Are you sick?”

  “I think I’ve got the flu. That’s why I didn’t go with Jake to meet his parents last night.”

  “Mmmm…”

  Kate nibbled her toast, concentrating on her uncertain stomach. She would have liked to take the opportunity to discuss with April her “about-to-be” relationship with Marilyn and Phillip Talbot. They were, after all, her grandparents, and as soon as they learned the truth, Kate imagined, knowing them, they would want an active role
as such. But she couldn’t manage it right now.

  “Maybe you have food poisoning,” April suggested. “I heard somewhere that there’s really no such thing as the stomach flu. You might be sick with the whole respiratory thing, and then react to food, I guess. But it’s not really the flu.”

  “I don’t have a respiratory thing,” Kate retorted, sipping tea.

  “Touchy, touchy,” April said, grabbing up her book bag and heading for the door. “See ya later.”

  Kate worked through half her piece of toast, and by the time she had finished her tea she felt a lot better. It was while she was rinsing out the cup that the shocking thought hit her: pregnancy!

  The cup slipped from her hands, shattering in the sink. Instantly Kate was infuriated with herself. No. She couldn’t get pregnant. She knew that. Just because April had slipped some doubts in her head didn’t mean she had to start searching for some other answer.

  A niggling thought kept at her. A memory. This was exactly how she had felt with April. It was, in fact, the reason she had begun to suspect she was pregnant.

  “That was eighteen years ago!” she declared aloud. Too long to recall. It was all just a bunch of crazy little worries because she was feverish and sick and suffered a sleepless night.

  Are you feverish?

  With slightly unsteady hands, Kate searched through the medicine cabinet in the bathroom for the thermometer. Sticking it beneath her tongue, she went to stand at the window and think. She was grasping at straws. She was, what? Hoping for something that would bind her to Jake even tighter? Didn’t she trust his feelings? He had survived the knowledge that she had kept April from him. Did she seriously think a baby would make things better?

  No. A baby would make things worse. A baby would turn her into a liar once again, because she had sworn she could not get pregnant.

  Jake wouldn’t survive two lies—even if the second wasn’t really a lie at all.

  Kate’s heart pounded as if she were in a race as she removed the thermometer from beneath her tongue. Ninety-eight point eight. Two-tenths higher than the norm. Not exactly a raging fever.

  Inconclusive, she told herself, clamping her teeth together and shivering as if she suffered from palsy. With a moan of worry, she snatched up her lightweight jacket and headed for the nearest pharmacy.

  It didn’t open until eight-thirty and that was just for prescription drop-offs anyway. Kate called Jillian at work and explained that she wasn’t feeling well and that she was just waiting for the pharmacy to open so she could get some over-the-counter flu medication. She thought she sounded moronic, but Jillian was too busy to notice. In fact, all she really said was that they were going to have to get some more help, something they had discussed off and on for the last month.

  Kate drew a long breath as the proprietor unlocked the door, offering her a smile of greeting. More help? If she were pregnant, they would need to hire more than just one extra person.

  If she were pregnant!

  Kate dazedly shook her head as she purchased the home pregnancy test. She half expected to see someone she knew in line, but she managed to make the purchase and head home without running into anyone she recognized. Although the test warned her that the first urine of the morning held the highest concentration of the hormone for which the test registered positive, Kate wasn’t interested in waiting. If the test was negative, she would just wait for her period to start. If it was positive, well, then…

  When was your last period? she asked herself with a jolt. With disbelieving eyes she watched the color of the test turn pink, a positive rosy glow, at the same moment she realized she had missed her last period.

  Denial. She had been through such a roller coaster of emotion that she had been in denial. She still wanted to deny the results. It wasn’t possible!

  But why not? her reasoning mind answered. So, Ben had been proven an able sperm donor. So what? There were any number of reasons two people couldn’t conceive together. It wasn’t necessarily that one could and one couldn’t. It was the combination that mattered.

  So, why had she believed it was her fault, her body that was inadequate? Because Ben had wanted it that way. He had needed to believe it, and Kate had accepted the verdict without question because, truthfully, she hadn’t really cared.

  But she had been wrong. She had conceived once. She should have expected she might be able to again.

  Especially with the same man!

  “Oh, God,” she murmured, sinking onto the floor as she considered all the ramifications. A pregnancy. A baby. Jake’s child. Again.

  He wants a child of his own. He said so!

  But that was before he knew about April.

  It makes no difference. He missed out on parenting. He’ll grab this second chance like a lifeline.

  He thinks you’re a liar. He’ll think you made it up, just to trap him.

  He knows you better than that. He loves you.

  His trust in you is paper thin. This will break it. It’s over, Kate. Over.

  Burying her face in her hands, Kate was consumed with fear. She was paralyzed for the space of a minute; then she jumped to her feet and ran to the phone. In the midst of calling her gynecologist she slammed down the receiver. There was an Immediate Care Center twenty minutes away. They could give her a pregnancy test. When she got those results, then she would call Jake and give him the good—bad?—news.

  The streets of Lakehaven were fairly busy, even though it was an ordinary Thursday afternoon. Kate sat at an espresso bar and watched the world pass by outside her window. Her roiling stomach had been replaced by a lowgrade collection of butterflies about to take flight at any second. She sipped another cup of tea, chamomile, but still couldn’t bear the idea of any solid food.

  She had come here because…Her mind went blank. She couldn’t recall. She had simply walked out of the Immediate Care Center after her blood test and said she would call sometime after two o’clock for the results. Then she had climbed into her sports car and driven straight to Lakehaven, as if she’d had it in mind all along, which she hadn’t.

  She had driven by the Talbots’ and even cruised by the tiny home her parents had rented not far from the center of town. Not that there was anything to see there any longer. It was gone. Ripped down. Turned into a row of gray-painted shops trimmed in white.

  Now, with the feeling that she had aged horribly in the past few hours, she walked to a nearby public phone and placed the call to the Immediate Care Center.

  “Positive,” the woman checking her file answered cheerily.

  She had known the answer before she heard it. Thanking her, Kate hung up, then stared through the walls of the phone booth, feeling as if she had somehow been dropped on another planet.

  If she were brave, she would pick up the receiver once more and place a call to Jake right now. Her hand was still clenched about it already. But instead she loosed her grip and let herself out of the booth into a typical fall day where maple leaves drifted onto the sidewalk from the row of trees that lined the street, and the air smelled sharp and biting in her nostrils.

  A watery sun still held sway in the heavens, but it wasn’t enough to dispel the chill in Kate’s soul. She climbed into the Mustang and drove aimlessly until she found herself on the outskirts of town and a very familiar knoll upon which sat the old church where she had once “married” Jake.

  Someone had saved it. Window panes had been replaced, and the white paint looked spanking new. The walkway was concrete which ended in a set of curved steps to the porch. White rails flanked each side, and Kate, still in her self-imposed daze, ascended the steps and let herself in through the refinished double doors to the anteroom beyond.

  Musk and vanilla and white candles. None of that greeted her as she walked between the pews to the altar. Gazing around, she realized that although everything was redone and well-loved rather than forgotten, it seemed small and insignificant to her somehow. She had built it up inside herself as some monumental cere
mony to endless love, but in reality she and Jake had played a silly child’s fantasy that had no bearing on real life.

  “Can I be of help?” a male voice inquired, and Kate gasped in surprise as she saw the young man standing by a side door that led behind the altar to the rooms beyond.

  “I didn’t see you,” she admitted.

  “I didn’t want to scare you,” he said as he stepped forward.

  He was somewhere in his twenties, Kate guessed. “Are you the minister here?” she asked. His casual clothes could have meant anything, but he possessed that easy aura of belonging that sent a clear message.

  “I am. Did you want to see me?”

  “No, I…was just passing through and…I remembered the church.”

  “It was vacant for a long time. Our congregation moved when we outgrew the space we’d started in. We’ve been here about five years.”

  “I came here once,” Kate said, the words tumbling out, though she had no recollection of conceiving them before they fell from her tongue. “With my boyfriend. We ‘married’ each other, but it wasn’t a real marriage. We wanted to be together, but we were too young and his parents…” She sighed. “It was a long time ago.”

  “It still matters to you,” he said gently, reading her troubled thoughts with quiet certainty.

  Kate uttered a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “You’re good at what you do, aren’t you?”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

  Kate stared at him. She swallowed, expecting herself to deny it, but once again the words came from somewhere inside herself not connected solely to her brain. “Yes.”

  It was night by the time she left the church. A cold wind blew off her right shoulder as she climbed into her car and headed west toward Portland. She had been gone a long time without a note or explanation to anyone, and she knew both April and Jake would be concerned.