First Comes Baby

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Voice soft, Caleb asked, “Do you know how often you touch your stomach?”

  Surprised, she looked down to see that, indeed, her hand was splayed over her abdomen. Her fingers curled, and she lifted her hand.

  “Oh, dear. Maybe people at work have guessed.”

  “Is it a secret?”

  “No-o…” She pursed her lips. “But I should officially give warning before everyone starts gossiping.”

  “And what are the odds you’ll manage that?”

  Remembering the two attorneys in the restroom, Laurel conceded, “Slim to none. Unless I make a preemptive strike.”

  “Do it as soon as you get back. You’ll start showing pretty soon anyway.”

  She would. It wasn’t lost on her that the waistbands of her pants and skirts hadn’t gotten loose as weight fell off her. If she ever started really eating again, she was going to get well-rounded fast.

  “We’re here,” Caleb said, pulling her from her reverie. “How quick can you pack?”

  “It won’t take long,” she promised. “Why don’t you find yourself something to eat while I throw stuff in a suitcase? I’ll grab a box from the garage, too. We might as well bring all the perishable food.”

  He grinned at her over the roof of the car after they got out. “If I don’t eat it first.”

  She packed in about ten minutes, taking only jeans, T-shirts and a couple of sweaters, sloppy canvas tennis shoes and sandals. Nine whole days without her having to squeeze into panty hose! No heels, no suits, maybe not even any makeup.

  She added toiletries and half a dozen books to keep her happy while Caleb was working, then pulled her suitcase out to the living room to find that he had the box of food set on the table.

  He loaded everything in the trunk while she e-mailed her boss and shut down her computer. Then she locked her front door and left a note at her closest neighbor’s to say she’d be away for a week, and they drove away with her refusing to turn her head to look back even though anxiety had once again balled in her chest.

  I can lounge around and be taken care of, she reminded herself. Sleep in. Take walks. Laugh with Caleb.

  Gradually, she relaxed, until she found herself childishly excited about riding on the ferry.

  Her enthusiasm suffered a jolt when they drove onto the dock and she saw how choppy the Sound was. Already queasy, she was bound to get seasick.

  “It’s such a short ride, I don’t usually go up, but sure,” Caleb said, when she asked if they could go up to the passenger deck.

  Looking amused, he went outside with her, where they leaned against the railing and looked ahead as the ferry horn sounded and water churned. Seagulls swooped around them, and the dark creosoted pilings fell behind.

  The cold, salty wind whipped Laurel’s hair and seemed to cleanse her lungs. Instead of the motion increasing her nausea, it seemed to be settling her stomach. Clutching the railing, she drew in great breaths of air and laughed.

  Beside her, Caleb turned his head and smiled. With the wind in his hair and the sun on his face, he looked more at home here than he did in the lobby of her office building.

  “How long since you’ve been on a ferry?”

  “Forever,” she admitted, looking ahead toward the green hump that was Vashon. She’d closed herself in, she realized. She lived in a city surrounded by water and mountains, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone for a hike, or accepted an invitation to sail or even walked on the beach. This summer, she would do more, she vowed. Instead of catching the bus home, she’d go down to the waterfront and take the ferry to Bainbridge and back, just for fun. Maybe she’d drive up to Paradise on the flank of Mount Rainier and hike when the avalanche lilies were in bloom as much as a pregnant woman could.

  The memory of the last time she’d been up to Rainier floated into her mind. She’d been with Caleb, of course. They’d just finished their sophomore or junior year in college.

  How much of what she’d done or thought or felt seemed to be related to Caleb.

  As if it were a natural corollary, she asked, “Have you talked to your parents since you got back?” She hated knowing that she’d damaged his relationship with them. One more thing she hadn’t thought of when she’d asked first Matt and then Caleb to father her child.

  He shrugged, not looking at her. “My mother.”

  Laurel’s heart sank. “I take it they’re not any happier about this?” She indicated her belly.

  “They don’t get how close we are.” He paused. “Mom did ask about you. She’ll come around.”

  Laurel nodded, not trusting her voice. Knowing how much his parents loved Caleb, she supposed they would. But they would always regret that this grandchild hadn’t been born under more normal circumstances, that he or she wouldn’t grow up under Caleb’s roof. Thinking about them gave her a twist of guilt.

  When the ferry landing and the tiny town grew near, Laurel let Caleb urge her down to the car. They drove off the ferry, in line with other islanders on their way home.

  Vashon was beautiful, wooded from end to end with occasional pastures, businesses clustered in a couple of tiny communities, most of the homes on acreage like Caleb’s. His was down a long gravel drive that felt as if it was plunging into a tunnel through a stand of mature Douglas firs and cedars, the understory thick and green, made up of ferns and salal and huckleberries.

  When the car emerged from the trees and she saw the house ahead amid curved beds filled with naturalistic groupings of rhododendrons under-planted with tulips, lawn winding between the mulched beds, Laurel gasped.

  “It’s spectacular! Caleb! You let me brag about my teeny garden, and yours looks like…like…” Words failed her. “The Arboretum, or Olmstead Gardens or…”

  “You notice everything I planted is easy care.” Caleb shrugged, but his voice held a note that told her he was pleased by her awe.

  “I’ve never seen so many varieties of rhody.” When he stopped the car by the front porch, she got out.

  When this property was logged, it had been done skillfully, leaving clusters of four and five firs or cedars here and there rather than stripping the land bare. Rough grass had once grown between, but now Caleb had dug out the shrubbery borders in long, graceful curves. Leggier rhododendrons grew in the shade close to the trees, thicker bushes in sunnier spots. She saw an amazing diversity of foliage, and huge clusters of blooms in pale pink, buttery yellow, lavender and fuchsia. Other shrubs and small trees were interplanted, she saw, with Japanese maples having deep red leaves and flowering cherries or plums that had likely already bloomed. At the lowest level, he’d added the salal and ferns native to the Northwest forest, as well as the tulips. From the size of the rhododendrons, she realized Caleb had to have been planting them ever since he’d bought the house.

  A glorious fragrance wafted to her, and she identified the humming she’d been vaguely aware of as bees buzzing in the blooms.

  Aware that Caleb had come around the car to stand beside her, Laurel turned to him. “You never said.”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “You talked about digging and planting, but I thought just a bed or two. I had no idea you’d been so ambitious.”

  His shoulders moved, as if he was embarrassed. “I wasn’t ambitious. I started because, jeez, I was a home owner and home owners should landscape. Right? But then I found out it’s good therapy.”

  She nodded. Therapy was exactly what gardening had become to her, as well. Using her muscles, sweating, being outside in the sun or mist, creating earth richer than she’d started with, watching leaves unfurl, vines clamber, flowers open—all had given her a sense of purpose and of rightness she never felt when concrete was underfoot.

  “So I finished the first bed,” he gestured at one close to the house, “and decided it looked weird all by itself. I bought a book about rhododendrons, started making a game of finding new varieties. Somehow—” he rotated as if surprised himself to see the extent of his labors “—I jus
t kept going.”

  “I keep realizing,” Laurel heard herself say softly, “how much I don’t know about you.”

  “You know me better than anyone else.”

  She shook her head. “I did, maybe, when you were twenty-two. But not anymore.”

  His expression when his eyes met hers was inscrutable. “I’ve always been here, Laurel.”

  She nodded, unable to say anything. Or, perhaps, unwilling to say, I guess that means I was so self-absorbed I didn’t bother seeing how you’d changed.

  “You’re not the same person you were, either.” His gaze was steady, his eyes so blue.

  “No.” They both heard her sadness. “I’m not.”

  “It doesn’t matter, though.” His hand caught hers. “What was it I said?”

  She tried to smile, but felt her lips quiver. “‘Friends forever.’”

  “That hasn’t changed.”

  “Thanks to you.” Grief welled in her at the thought of how much she had lost, and how close she’d come to Caleb, too, being no more than a memory of a fun college friendship. And it would have been her fault.

  “Now we’re tied together once and for all.” His gaze lowered deliberately to her stomach, then back to her face. “Our very genes have mingled.”

  Laurel felt that squeeze again in her belly she knew was sexual. She ignored it. Her body didn’t understand that this baby was being born out of friendship, not lust.

  “That’s a funny thought, isn’t it?” Laurel said.

  “Not funny. Nice.”

  This smile came more easily. “It is nice.”

  His gaze moved over her face with an intensity that caused another odd cramp low down.

  “You have color in your cheeks.”

  She reached up to find them warm. “I feel good. Hey! Really good,” she said in surprise.

  Caleb grinned, that dimple deepening, for a moment the boy a part of her wanted him to be forever. “Mi casa es su casa.”

  “Gracias” was the limit of her Spanish.

  “Let’s get your stuff inside,” he said practically, and she followed him to the trunk of the car.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ON THE SECOND FLOOR, Caleb stood at the window of his office and watched Laurel out in the yard. Every morning, sometime after breakfast, she’d taken to putting on gloves and going out with a knee pad and an old bucket to handpick weeds from shrub borders.

  He’d argued the first morning or two, telling her she didn’t need to feel as if she had to work for her keep, that she could just lie around, et cetera et cetera. He had finally figured out that she was happy puttering outside, that she was no fonder of lounging now than she had been when he first knew her.

  Kneeling in a sunny spot between two drifts of tulips, she tossed some weeds—probably dandelions, his bane—in the bucket, then paused, her face tilted up and her eyes closed. Enjoying the sun on her face, she had an expression of quiet pleasure.

  He hated like hell that he had to take her home tomorrow, that the day after she’d be back at work, with a forty-five-minute bus ride each way. She looked a hundred times better than she had a week ago. He wanted her to quit the damn job and stay.

  Caleb also had the sense not to tell her that. For half a dozen good reasons, with three predominating.

  For one, she had fought hard to maintain her independence and dignity, and he respected her for that.

  Two, Laurel would resent being told what was best for her, and he would once again be invited to butt out.

  And finally, the very suggestion that she stay—how long?—held implications he wasn’t yet comfortable with, or willing to put into words. Even touching on the idea in his thoughts made him shy away. Wanting Laurel to stay for good… They were friends, no more, and likely never would be more.

  He’d always felt protective of her. Since finding out his bright, confident Laurel had been left for dead, Caleb had worried about her. He was finding now that he hated thinking about her and his kid living an hour away, pretty much on their own. She wasn’t willing to take enough money from him to allow her to quit her job. Which meant six weeks or so after giving birth, she’d be putting the baby in day care for ten- or eleven-hour days, then coming home to be a great mom as long as she could stay awake. Day after exhausting day.

  No, the life he imagined her and the baby living didn’t sit well with him, but he didn’t know what he could do about it. He’d offered sperm and some involvement in their child’s life, and that’s what Laurel had accepted. That’s all she’d wanted from any man, and he’d jumped in without taking the time to think through how left out he was going to feel.

  His father’s words drifted through his mind. Ever occur to you that you were reeled in like a big, flopping rainbow trout?

  And his mother’s. You don’t understand yet what you’ve given away.

  Frowning, he watched as Laurel bent her head and began plucking weeds again. Caleb didn’t even have to ask himself whether he’d have kept his mouth shut even if he had talked to his parents in advance and thought all this through. Of course he wouldn’t have. Picturing her pregnant with Matt Baker’s baby was still enough to raise his hackles.

  No, what really ticked him off was knowing she’d planned to get pregnant with another guy’s baby, that if he hadn’t happened to drop by, she would have done it.

  If the first he’d heard about it was a joyous “I’m pregnant,” the news would have damn near killed him.

  Which circled back to the huge problem of why he was the only man who could father Laurel’s babies, and why he’d face a lifetime of misery if he said the words aloud even to himself.

  He swore softly and made himself turn away from the window. He had plenty of work to do. Sitting down at his desk, he tried to concentrate.

  Sales weren’t what he’d hoped for in the Tacoma store, and he was analyzing the problem. Wrong location? Inadequate advertisement? The store had a different layout than the others he owned. Unappealing for some reason? Was it the manager? Staff?

  The San Francisco store was less than a month away from a grand opening, and he probably should have flown down there this month. He’d been more hands-on with his other stores in their early months. This one was by way of an experiment. He couldn’t keep expanding if he had to micromanage every step. There was only so far he could stretch himself. The question had become, what did he give up? Choosing merchandise, nurturing the co-ops, meeting with the artists? Not a chance. Yet every new store meant more sales, more opportunities he could offer to the artists, more villages he could work with.

  All this going on with Laurel had brought to a boil his time-management issues. He’d promised to be here for her when she needed him. He was going to want to be here even more when the baby was born.

  The only answer was to hire good people, provide support but oversee from a distance, and let them do the job. Caleb was finding that to be harder than it might sound. He was used to doing everything.

  On the other hand… He was glad not to have to be in San Francisco this week. His hands-off policy with it gave him time to concentrate on the disappointing sales at the Tacoma store, and most of all, to be here with Laurel.

  She had entertained herself happily. He’d gone one day to Tacoma, one to Bellevue. Otherwise, he’d spent a few hours of every day shut in his office studying figures, making phone calls, taking faxes. Then he and she had gone for walks, taken a picnic to the beach, browsed antique stores here on the island, cooked together and gone out for a couple of lunches.

  He’d noticed that her nausea had diminished from the minute she set foot on the island. She was still tired; she’d taken to napping for at least an hour, sometimes longer, every afternoon, but she looked rested when she got up. More than rested—satisfied. She would wander into his office and yawn and stretch luxuriantly, sometimes lifting her T-shirt to bare a strip of pale stomach.

  He would look at it and feel a jolt. My baby is inside her. Caleb was still stunned by how powerful
that knowledge was, how primitive his response to it.

  My baby. My woman.

  Sorry, buddy, he reminded himself. No such luck.

  She’d smile at him lazily and just a little secretively, as if she had kept a private tryst. But then she would say with open delight, “That was a lovely nap,” and bend over so that her hair flowed toward the floor and she could grab it and bundle it into a scrunchie. “What’s for dinner?” were always the next words out of her mouth.

  He wondered if she had realized how much hungrier she’d gotten. He would swear her face had filled out in just the one week. Her color was certainly healthier. A couple of times, he’d thought of suggesting she use suntan lotion, considering how much time she was spending outside, but she looked better with her cheeks rosy and the beginnings of a tan on her arms and legs.

  It was almost lunchtime now. He hit Send on an e-mail he’d wasted a half hour composing—or, more accurately, not composing, because his thoughts had been on Laurel instead. Then he went downstairs just as she came in the back door.

  “Caleb.” Her face lit at the sight of him. “Want to go out for lunch? I have a craving for another of those veggie melt sandwiches.”

  “Why not?” he said lazily, glad she couldn’t see the way his heart bumped because she smiled that way, just for him.

  “Give me a minute to clean up.” As usual, she slipped past him without actually touching him. She didn’t like touching, he’d noticed, if she could avoid it.

  “Take your time.”

  He stayed where he was as she climbed the stairs. Damn, Caleb thought in faint shock, I’m in deep.

  ONLY A FEW DAYS AFTER he’d taken her home, Caleb flew out to San Francisco with the intention of continuing on from there to El Salvador, a country where he had just established a fledgling co-op.

  With her nausea having vanished virtually overnight, Laurel recovered her excitement. I’m pregnant! she found herself thinking with delight again. Six more months, five, four.

  On a Saturday morning in July, she awakened with a sense of anticipation. Not about the weather: forecasters were promising near ninety-degree temperatures by noon. But earlier in the week, Meg and Laurel had talked on the phone about doing something undefined. Maybe Summerfest, the art fair in Kirkland this weekend; maybe the aquarium, something Laurel hadn’t done in years, and lunch at Ivar’s. Megan arrived in her usual breezy fashion, to find her sister still in her shorty pajamas and robe.