by Val Daniels
“I do look like a damn mountain,” she finally managed, blubbering as she tried to laugh between the tears. She knew she was being ridiculous.
“You silly, silly woman.” He chuckled softly. “Is that the problem here? Poor choice of words on my part.” He nudged her chin, lifting her face and carefully wiping away the moisture from her cheeks as he murmured comforting sounds. “You’re feeling like a mountain?”
“Look at me,” she demanded. “I’m not feeling like one. I am one.”
He took the time to do as she asked, holding her a full arm’s length away as he slowly examined her body from her head to her toes.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered, and stepped closer again to reverently place a kiss on her cheek beside a new crop of tears. “Oh, God, Allie. If only you weren’t so beautiful.”
His hands caressed her face and his lips descended in agonizingly slow motion to hers. His mouth sipped at hers, leaving an exquisite taste of heaven there as he raised his head and drew her tight against the length of him. He tucked her head under the curve of his chin and sighed.
His hands began a slow exploration of her body, down her back, along the line where her waist should be, softly, soothingly up the sloop of her slightly rounded tummy.
And the baby turned a flip.
Dan gently pushed her away but his hands seemed glued to the place where she’d felt that strange, swooping, uplifting sensation. She knew her eyes were as wide as his as she looked up to verify that he’d felt it, too.
Up until now she’d felt tiny flutters, like butterfly wings tickling her from the inside out. But this was movement, definite movement. Suddenly their baby seemed very real.
“Did you feel that? Did you feel her move?” he finally asked incredulously.
“Of course,” she said, and felt a gurgle of laughter bubbling up where sobs had been moments earlier. “Of course I felt him,” she said as he laughed in disbelief. “It’s my body,” she added half indignantly.
“I thought it was your mountain,” he corrected, mimicking her tone.
She didn’t have room inside to even be irritated at his teasing. She lifted her nose arrogantly and patted the spot on her stomach where his hand still rested. “It’s my baby.”
“Our baby,” he said after a solemn moment.
“Our baby,” she conceded quietly. “I’m glad you’re here.”
He met her eyes with a look of pure pleasure. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted you to,” she said softly, feeling really happy for the first time since this had all started. “Do you think it will happen again soon?”
He semi-shrugged. “They never taught us that kind of thing in medical school.”
“Then maybe we should move. This is going to be a very long pregnancy if we stand here in the middle of this motel room with our hands on my stomach.”
She wouldn’t have believed his grin could have stretched any wider. It did and he sheepishly dropped his hands. “But you’ll tell me when it happens again?” he made her promise.
She nodded and released a tight sigh.
“What are you—”
“I don’t suppose you—”
They both stopped and Dan nodded for her to start whatever she had been going to say again.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I don’t suppose we could discuss that over dinner,” he asked. “Frankly, I’m starving.”
“Frankly,” she said, “me, too.”
One of the things that fascinated him most about Alicia was that she didn’t fuss. At least not most of the time and not like most of the women he knew. As she excused herself to “straighten up,” she heard his stomach growl, ran a brush through her hair and got her coat almost immediately.
He drove them to the simple café that boasted “homemade” on nearly every item on the menu.
“You will tell me when it happens again?” he asked as they settled in a booth near the back.
She nodded, her eyes bright with excitement. She had barely removed her hands from her stomach since they’d both felt the baby move. “Has it happened before?”
This time she shook her head. “At least not like this,” she added. “From time to time I’ve felt things but I wasn’t sure whether it was the baby or me.”
“And this time there’s no doubt.”
“None.” She sighed happily, then opened her mouth to ask why he was here again.
“I knew as soon as I saw the first snowflake that you wouldn’t come home,” he answered before she could say it. “I decided to come to you.” He lifted one shoulder. “And with only two more weeks until Christmas, I thought if the weather is reasonable tomorrow, maybe we’d go into Kansas City and finish our shopping.”
There was a wary look in her eyes. “And that’s the only reason you came?”
“What other reason would there be?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, and buried herself behind the menu as the waitress came toward their table.
“I don’t think we’re ready yet,” Dan told her, “but I’ll have coffee, and...” He hesitated over Alicia’s choice.
“Milk,” the waitress supplied.
“Yeah,” Allie acknowledged with a grin to the woman who was becoming one of the those friendly acquaintances you made when you were traveling a lot.
“And this is the doctor husband? You didn’t tell me he was a hunk,” the waitress accused with a wink in Alicia’s direction.
“You didn’t ask.”
The waitress conceded a point to Alicia and went to get their drink orders.
“Sally’s been taking care of me,” Allie offered before Dan could ask about the conversation. “I’ve been eating most of my meals here and as soon as she knew I was pregnant, she’s pretty much been ordering my meals for me. She has this thing about pregnant women eating properly.”
“Too bad I didn’t know that two months ago,” Dan quipped. “It would have been one less thing to worry about.”
Alicia immediately sobered. “I told you, I don’t want you worrying about me.”
“I can’t seem to help it,” he said as Sally returned.
They ordered, then settled into an awkward silence. “Are you still going to be finished with this job in another week?” he finally asked.
She nodded. “Two. But I may have to come back after Christmas for a couple of days. There are usually a few things that come up after everything has been operating normally.”
“I guess you still go into Providence occasionally,” he remembered.
“Only since I’m close,” she said. “Usually after the first month or so, Jeff takes care of the nit-picky things over the phone.”
They sat quietly again until their meals came and he wondered how they could have so little to say. He knew hundreds of things he wanted to discuss, but couldn’t find the words.
She was the one to break the silence this time. “How are your mother and Melanie doing?”
“Melanie will be out for Christmas in another week,” he said. “She and Mom are going through all the literature she’s been getting and trying to narrow down the list of colleges she wants to apply to.”
That seemed to surprise her. “I assumed she’d go to K.U. From what you’ve said, I thought that was pretty much a family thing.”
“Only for the family doctors,” he said. “Mel wants to major in theater. She seems to think that department isn’t one of K.U.’s strongest. Maggie’s encouraging her to check out the college she attended in Ohio.”
At the mention of Maggie’s name, Allie’s spine stiffened. She quietly laid her fork beside her plate.
Damn. He wanted to kick himself.
“Maggie was a drama major?”
“No,” he said. “And she only finished a year and a half before she quit to get married. But she seems to think the theater department there is one of the best in the nation.”
And that wa
s one of the problems, Dan realized. Maggie was so intertwined, had been so much a fixture in his life, that he brought her up without thinking about it.
And now it was time to change the subject. “Mel asked me to tell you how much the letter you sent to her meant. I think she’s had as many compliments as she can handle from everyone in town, but you’re the first person in her entire high school career to congratulate her in writing. It wouldn’t surprise me if she had your letter framed.”
“I’m glad she appreciated it,” Allie said, her smile returning. “It’s been a long time since I attended a high school musical and really enjoyed it. I’ve never seen a better Sarah Brown. She has a lot of talent.”
“I can tell this isn’t going to be what I’d hoped it would be. Ever since Dad died, I’ve been ganged up on. I thought now that I was married, I’d have someone on my side.”
“I can’t compliment your sister?”
“Not if it means you’ve joined their mutual admiration society. It makes me hope you’re right about the baby being a boy. I’m tired of being outnumbered.”
“I hate to tell you, but one boy isn’t going to do it, Dan, and Dr. Bill surely would have mentioned if he thought there might be two.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her he didn’t want to stop with one. The memory of their talks about having kids—plural—was on her pale face. The tightness around his heart, in every tension-filled part of his body mirrored the pain that dulled her wide hazel eyes.
“Listen,” he said quickly. “One of the reasons I came this weekend was because I wanted to talk to you about an idea I’ve had.” He wasn’t sure how she could look relieved and hesitant at the same time, but she did.
“It occurred to me that it might be a good idea for you to take some classes at the community college in Providence next semester. If you’re interested at all, you’ll have to enroll soon. What do you think?”
She frowned for a second. “I don’t really understand what the point would be,” she finally said.
“It would get you out of this job, for one thing.” Touchy subject. He saw her sit up straighter as Sally brought them their meals—Allie’s, he noted, complete with two side dishes of vegetables.
She wrinkled her nose. “Carrots?”
“Hey, you want that kid to have good eyesight, don’t you?” the waitress said, then leaned over and whispered conspiratorially, “The other choice was spinach.”
Alicia tucked into the carrots with resignation and Sally smiled approvingly then left them alone again with an admonition to let her know if they needed anything else.
They returned to the conversation as if it hadn’t been interrupted. “You’ve had a year and a half of college,” Dan went on. “With another semester or two, you could get one of the school’s associate degrees. That would help you make a job change, wouldn’t it?”
“In what, though?” she asked. “Besides money, one of the reasons I didn’t go on was that I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do. Nothing’s changed.”
Lots has changed, he wanted to argue. “We both agreed that continuing with the job you have now is going to be very difficult with a baby. What are you going to do a year from now, Allie? Do you want to be gone all the time while our daughter is a baby? Do you want to miss that?”
“Our son,” she protested out of habit, but without any real passion. She put down her fork and shook her head.
“Think about it,” Dan said. He had to bite back his frustration. “I brought a bunch of information for you. You can look at it later,” he added, relieved when a few moments later she picked up her fork and began eating again. He suddenly felt extremely weary. Would it ever again feel like he wasn’t walking on eggshells when he tried talking to Alicia about the future—their future?
She was relieved to find that he’d reserved the room next to hers when they arrived back at the motel. She’d been dreading the moment when they would suddenly be alone and she would have to tell him he couldn’t stay. Or if she didn’t have the courage for that, to calmly crawl into bed next to him and pretend that it didn’t matter that he was also sleeping with Maggie. Or worse, fight her need to touch him, to have him curled around her like she’d dreamed of so often.
Having Dan here wasn’t as bad as she had feared, she admitted to herself as he retrieved his bag from the top of her TV.
“Rest up,” he admonished her, dropping a quick, hand’s-free kiss on the top of her head. “If it’s halfway decent out tomorrow, we’ll go shopping. Good night.” A minute later, she heard him settling into the room next door.
She flipped on the TV, put on her yellow, footed sleepers and settled beneath the covers with the catalog he’d brought her from the local community college.
The junior college catalog listed several associate degree programs. Office management. Personnel. Would something like that pay enough to let her hire a sitter, pay the bills and give up this job? Could she put roots down and let her son grow up like she had always wanted to, in one place? With a parent who was always there? she wondered.
If she stayed in Providence, as Dan obviously wanted her to, he would always be there. And Maggie, too, she imagined. If she continued to travel, their baby would always have them as that steady source of support. Her son would have someone to talk to after a bad day, someone to call for help with his homework.
For a second she saw the image of herself as a child, with a young Brad’s head tucked close to hers as he helped her with her math. She saw a man, her father, standing in the background, watching, tears clouding his eyes for a moment before he caught his coat from the rack by the door and stomped out of the house. Alicia shook head to get rid of the image that had blurred and become her. Her father hadn’t given up his responsibilities to them, she realized in awe. She and Brad had gradually formed a tight circle that didn’t include him. The man had loved them but they had always kept him on the outside looking in. And he hadn’t known how to get back in.
If she kept the job she had now, she realized, it wouldn’t take long before her son became so accustomed to her not being there that he would automatically turn to Dan and Maggie, probably even Brad before he would turn to her. By the time their child was eight or ten, she would be left out in the cold.
Going back to school suddenly didn’t seem a bad idea.
Saturday dawned bright and beautiful. The night’s storm had left a two-inch covering of snow on the world and everything seemed clean, fresh and renewed. The sun lit a silver strip across the usually drab parking lot and made the one tree at the edge look like it had been dipped in white neon.
As Alicia was admiring, Dan poked his head out from the room next door. He grinned as he saw her face in the window and his own face was transformed to match the bright day.
He dodged inside and returned almost immediately, putting his long arms in the sleeves of his coat as he approached her door. “Good morning,” he said as she let him in. “You ready to go get some breakfast?”
“Yes, I’m starving,” she answered and felt a strange awkwardness as he watched her move to get her own coat from the rack by the bathroom. “It seems like that’s a permanent condition. And don’t you dare say, I’m eating for two.” She turned on him. “I’m sick of people saying that.”
“I won’t.” His grin slipped crooked as he stepped toward her to help her with her coat and she knew that was exactly what he’d been going to say.
After a leisurely meal in the coffee shop next door to the motel, they embarked on their Christmas shopping expedition to Kansas City in Dan’s car.
“What all do you have left to do?” Dan asked as their first traffic light on the edge of the city stopped them.
“Everything,” she said sheepishly. “I didn’t know if I should go ahead and get your mother and Melanie something, or if we’d give them whatever we got together.” She watched her hands as she laced her fingers into a knot. “How about you?”
“I’ve bought a couple of things,”
he said. “And I hadn’t thought about it, but let’s give all our presents together this year,” he said, throwing her a conspiratorial grin. “I hate shopping. This will get me off the hook.”
She was glad he’d made the suggestion—and later seemed perfectly content to pay all the bills—when he drove directly to the shops at Crown Center. The gifts they chose were out of her price range. Whatever else Dan was, no one could accuse him of not being generous.
Midday, Dan settled Alicia in one of the little specialty shops with a cup of chocolate-hazelnut coffee while he made a second trip to the car to deposit packages. “You look tired,” he commented as he joined her with a cup of his own a few minutes later.
“I am,” she agreed. “But I’m getting my second wind. I’ll be okay if we can rest a little while.”
“Maybe we should go get lunch.”
She laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding. We haven’t stopped eating all day.” Dan had dodged into almost every little food shop they’d passed all morning and shared a constant barrage of fudge and dried fruit and frozen yogurt with her as they’d wandered from store to store. Since they weren’t allowed to take food into the stores and he didn’t seem to enjoy it all nearly as much as she did, she’d quickly come to the conclusion that he was doing it as an excuse to make her sit on every little bench they passed. He was going to be a wonderful father, she realized with a sudden burst of melancholy that they wouldn’t share it all.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.” She forced herself to brighten a bit. “I was just thinking about the baby.”
“And that makes you sad?”
At that she had to smile. “No. But it sometimes makes me envious.”
He frowned.
“You’re going to be a wonderful father,” she said. “Our baby is very fortunate.”
“And that makes you envious?” he asked incredulously.
“In a way.” She studied the lipstick smudge she’d made on the coffee-colored mug she held between both hands. “I was thinking about my father last night. I think he would have been a better dad if the situation would have been different. I realized he really didn’t have many choices.”