The Mother of His Child

by Sandra Field

  When she walked into the living room, her answering machine was blinking. Quickly, she pressed the button. “Marnie, this is Andrea, Lizzie’s mother. I’m afraid I have rather bad news. There’s been some kind of uprising around the airport in Kampala, and Cal’s flight didn’t get away. The embassy doesn’t seem to know what’s going on yet, but I’ll keep you posted as soon as I hear anything. So far I haven’t said anything to Kit. My husband and I can’t see the point of worrying her. Although if we don’t hear by early tomorrow morning, we’ll have to tell her. Sorry about this, Marnie. Bye.”

  Marnie’s heart had hardened to a lump of ice in her chest, and she was having difficulty breathing. She pressed the button again, but inexorably the same words came out of her machine. She then flicked through all the news channels, finally picking up on the BBC the mention of a small-scale insurrection, although with no details. It was only a minor incident, she thought wildly. Not worth bothering about.

  Except that Cal was there.

  Cal, whom she loved.

  She paced up and down. She sat out on her deck and stared blankly at the ocean, having left the door open so she’d hear the phone. She ate a sandwich that could have been made of paper and paced some more, with the television on as well as the radio. She went to bed around midnight and lay awake for the better part of the night, praying for the phone to ring.

  It did ring at eight the next morning. “Marnie? Andrea. The embassy just called. They seem to think flights will be leaving today and that Cal should be on one of them. Kit wanted to go to school—she says she’s better keeping busy—but she sends you her love. She said to be sure I used those exact words. I’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything else.”

  Marnie gave her the number of her school and hung up. Then she sat down hard on the nearest chair, her knees trembling. She had news of Cal, even if it wasn’t as precise as she would like. And Kit had sent her love.

  She’d been given her daughter back, Marnie thought, and counted herself blessed. Surely she couldn’t lose Cal, not now. Not when she and Kit were truly mother and daughter, and happiness was within her grasp. In a single night in her bed, Cal had taught her so much about the ways of love and the intimacy possible between a man and a woman. An intimacy on which they could build a marriage. Couldn’t they?

  Somehow Marnie got through the day, carrying a lump of anxiety as heavy as a granite boulder everywhere she went, although she was somewhat comforted by Christine’s concern. When she pushed open her door, her heart thumping, she saw the green light flashing twice on her machine. Steeling herself, she pushed the Play button.

  His voice gravelly with exhaustion, Cal said, “Marnie, I’m in London. The first flight I could get arrives in Halifax at midnight tonight—can you meet me? I’m going to call Kit next and let her know where I am.”

  The second message was from Andrea, who jubilantly left the same information.

  Then, as though she’d conjured it up, the phone shrilled. This time it was Kit. “I just got home from school and Dad’s safe. He’s in London and he’ll get into Halifax at midnight. Marnie, will you meet the plane?”

  It must be true, Marnie thought. He must be safe. Three people were telling her he was. “Yes…yes, I’ll meet him.”

  Obviously striving to sound matter-of-fact, Kit said, “I expect he’ll be really tired. It’s okay with me if he wants to stay at your place instead of driving all the way home. I’ll stay at Lizzie’s and see him tomorrow. Will you tell him that?”

  Not sure if she wanted to laugh or cry, Marnie said, “I’ll see what he wants to do. I’m just so glad he’s safe.”

  “Me, too. Can we have another climbing lesson on Sunday?”

  “I’d like that…and Kit, thanks for sending your love. I love you, too.”

  It was the first time she’d said this. Kit answered with unaccustomed shyness, “That’s good. See you soon.”

  The next seven hours felt like seven days. Marnie cleaned her house from one end to the other, ate supper, showered and tried on five different outfits before settling on a slim silk skirt with a purple overblouse that fell gracefully to her hips. It made her look sophisticated and more sure of herself than she felt; and it went with her newly painted purple toenails.

  What if Cal had decided while he was away that he wasn’t willing to risk loving her? What if that had been the gist of that frustrating phone call? How could she bear it?

  Trying to concentrate on details, Marnie put on makeup, slingback pumps and her gold jewelry, and knew she was as ready as she’d ever be. She drove straight to the airport, her hands welded to the steering wheel, arriving an hour early because she was so afraid she’d be late. In the washroom mirror, she saw a woman who looked like a stranger, her eyes brilliant with nervousness, her body a series of lissome curves in an outfit that made her look both mysterious and glamorous.

  She should’ve worn her jeans, she thought in a panic. Cal was used to her in jeans and shorts, not in slinky silk.

  She was behaving more like Kit than a woman of thirty who supposedly knew her own mind. One thing she did know: she couldn’t skulk in the washroom for an hour.

  As the digital clock clicked off the minutes with agonizing slowness, Marnie tried very hard to concentrate on a magazine someone had left on the chair. Then, finally, the screen indicated Cal’s flight had arrived. Fifteen minutes later, the door from Customs swung open and the first passengers trickled through. Marnie stationed herself as close as she could get without impeding the travelers’ progress, her hands as cold as ice.

  Cal was the fifth one through the door. He was limping.

  He looked awful.

  He saw her immediately, and something that had been tightly guarded in his face relaxed. He closed the distance between them, put his suitcase down and took her in his arms, burying his fingers in her hair before kissing her with an explicitness not entirely suitable for an airport terminal.

  Not that Marnie was complaining. His body was hard and warm against hers, she would have known the smell of his skin anywhere in the world, and it was sheer heaven to be held by him again.

  Dropping tiny kisses around her mouth, Cal said, “Marnie, I love you. Will you marry me?”

  She gaped up at him, wondering if she’d heard him right. “Whatever happened to your face?”

  “I got in a fight. Several, actually. Answer the question.”

  “You’re giving me orders again.”

  His grin made him look thoroughly raffish. “I can’t get down on my knees. I got bashed on the thigh with a chunk of wood. But it’s obvious I need to live with a strong-minded woman who won’t let me order her around. Marry me, Marnie.”

  “Is that another order?” She looped her arms around his neck, carefully avoiding his scraped cheek and luridly bruised cheekbone. “It could be a life’s work.”

  “Oh, I’d want it to be.”

  “You figure I can do it?”

  “I’m putty in your hands,” he said solemnly.

  She laughed outright. “Now that I doubt, Cal Huntingdon. But it’s my turn to give the orders. Tell me again that you love me.”

  He cupped her face in his palms, kissing her once more, totally ignoring the influx of passengers that swirled around them. “I love you so much I can hardly breathe,” he said. “I figured that out between London and Uganda on the way out there, called you as soon as we landed and wasn’t even sure I’d gotten through to you. Serves me right, no doubt.”

  She said, nuzzling her cheek into his shoulder, “That phone call kept me awake all night. Kiss me again and you’re forgiven.”

  With an ardor that was more than satisfactory, he complied. “We walked smack into some kind of minicoup last night on the way to the airport. There were a couple of hours when I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out of there in one piece—that I’d be able to tell you face-to-face that I love you with all my heart and want to spend the rest of my life with you. That I’ve finally worked out that love�
��s far more powerful than loss. I’d left it too late. Those have to be the two worst words in the whole language. Too late.”

  “It’s not too late, Cal,” Marnie said shakily. “Because I love you, too. More than I can say.”

  His face stilled. “You do?”

  She said the words out loud that she’d repeated like a mantra ten days ago. “I love you, I want you, I need you.”

  “Enough to marry me?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said, and kissed him as though he’d been away for ten months rather than ten days. Then she said, “Let’s get out of here and go home. We can talk on the way.”

  “Home’s wherever you are,” he said.

  Arms around each other, they walked out to her car. As Cal climbed in, taking his time, Marnie said, “You’d better tell me what happened. Because you’re hurting, I can see.”

  “The coup was a very amateurish attempt, although I never did find out the details. On the road into the city, a group of kids were being mistreated by a gang of looters, so the five of us intervened. I used every dirty trick I know, and I know a few. The kids got away and eventually we made it to the airport, where we hung out until the planes started flying again this morning.”

  “And that,” Marnie said, “is a very condensed version.”

  “It’s all you’re getting. But there’s nothing like seeing someone do his best to bash your brains in to make you realize where your priorities lie. Mine are here with you—that’s what I learned and that’s where I want to be. Now and forever.” He eased back in the seat as she drove toward the exit kiosk. “I’m almost sure Kit’ll be okay with our getting married…what do you think?”

  “Kit suggested to me after we climbed the Eagles’s Nest last Sunday that you and I might like to get married. She also said you ought to stay at my house tonight. Because you’d be tired.”

  Cal gave a choked laugh. “When she comes around, she does a good job of it. Marnie, I hate to sound unromantic, but I can count on both hands the hours of sleep I’ve had the past week—wake me when we get to your place, will you?” And he closed his eyes.

  They were dark shadowed, and from the extreme care with which he’d climbed into the car, Marnie was quite sure there was a lot Cal wasn’t saying. Filled with deep gratitude that he was alive, and with wonderment and joy that he loved her as much as she loved him, she drove back to her little house by the sea. Pulling up by the door, she said softly, “Cal, we’re home.”

  He woke instantly. “Lead me to the shower,” he said, yawning.

  She let him into the house, feeling oddly shy for a woman who’d been very nicely proposed to. She busied herself getting out clean towels and noticed he didn’t ask her to shower with him. In her bedroom, she changed into her prettiest nightgown, which had a scalloped neckline that exposed her cleavage and long slits up either side that exposed her thighs, and sat down on her bed to brush her hair.

  She heard the bathroom door open, then Cal walked into the bedroom, a towel swathed around his hips. “It looks worse than it is,” he said uncomfortably. “The doc in London said nothing was broken.”

  She looked at him in silence, from the livid bruises on his thigh and ribs to the jagged cut on his arm, whose edges had been neatly stitched together. She said quietly, “Loving you makes me terribly vulnerable.”

  He sat down beside her, resting his hands on her bare shoulders. “The same’s true for me. Perhaps it’s called living dangerously.”

  She burst out, “I promise I won’t try to climb Everest if you promise you won’t go to the world’s ten most dangerous places.”

  “Done,” Cal agreed.

  “I do love you,” Marnie said, stroking a lock of hair back from his grazed forehead.

  Cal said huskily, “It’s past time I show you how much I love you.”

  She said dubiously, “You don’t look in great shape—we could always go to sleep.” With an impish smile, she added, “After all, we’ve got the rest of our lives. Oh, Cal, isn’t that wonderful, amazing and incredible? The rest of our lives! So I really don’t mind if we go to sleep now.”

  “We’ll go to sleep later,” Cal replied firmly, and through the pale satin of her nightgown took her breasts in his hands, bending to kiss her on the lips.

  “Not that you’re giving orders,” Marnie said, and kissed him back.

  As Cal had once said to her, one thing led to another; it was quite a while before they fell asleep.

  The next morning, Kit was delighted to hear that they were getting married.

  As was Christine.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-0450-8

  THE MOTHER OF HIS CHILD

  First North American Publication 2000.

  Copyright © 1999 by Sandra Field.

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