The phone in Gabe’s office rang.
“Cameron?” she said, and her apprentice looked up from the lemon torte he was setting out to serve at room temperature. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to play with the grill,” he joked.
Alice threw the towel from her shoulder at him and went to grab the phone on Gabe’s desk by the third ring.
“Riverview Inn, this is Alice.”
“Hey, Alice. It’s Tim Munez.”
“Tim!” The nausea in her stomach tightened into knots and she sat in Gabe’s chair, trying to ignore the smell of him that wrapped around her like an embrace. “How are you?”
“Fantastic.” Tim said and Alice smiled. He was an infectiously cheerful man. The two years they’d shared a kitchen in Albany had been two of the most fun years of her career. “Really good. How are things on that mountain?”
“Better every week, Tim.” She nearly laughed at the lie.
“Well, the spread in New York Magazine made that place look like heaven on earth.”
“It is, Tim. So, have you thought about coming to work here?”
“Yep, and I’d love to do it.”
She sighed and melted into the chair, a thousand pounds lifted from her, while another thousand resettled on her shoulders.
This is it. I’m leaving. It’s over.
“But—” Tim said and her muscles reseized.
“But what?”
“I can’t come on the date you wanted. I need two more weeks. I’m training my replacement here and it’s going a bit slower than planned.”
Alice spun and looked at the calendar on the wall behind her and did some quick math. She could do it. She could stay an extra two weeks.
Her heart pounded. It was a curse and a blessing. She was torn right down the middle between wanting to be here and wanting to put this place in her rearview mirror.
“No problem, Tim. We’ll see you at the end of June.”
“Excellent. I can’t wait.”
Alice hung up and continued to study the calendar. The wedding weekend was the tenth, which would make Tim’s arrival the twenty-fourth, and she would stick around two days and—
She blinked.
Today was the fifth.
Her period was two days late.
As if summoned, the nausea gurgled in her stomach and she raced to the bathroom to throw up.
Hope, fear and dread churned through Alice’s brain, eating away at her nerves for the next three days. Every time she went to the bathroom she was sure she would see blood. Sure that her period was only delayed by stress and the fact that she had no appetite whatsoever.
But every time, there was no blood, and hope would replace dread. Then upon thinking about a baby, about miscarrying again, fear would replace hope and the vicious cycle would spin.
I should tell Gabe, she thought as she sugared flowers to place on the wedding cake. She took a purple pansy, dipped it in egg white and sugar and placed it on a wire rack to dry.
I should tell him.
But she didn’t.
Another day went by and her period still didn’t come. Guests began to arrive. Her parents came in the evenings and helped finish the prep work and it was all background noise, to the constant conversation she had in her head.
I should tell him.
There’s no point in telling him if I don’t know for sure. Why get him all worked up?
She never bought a pregnancy test—she put it off and put it off.
Another day went by.
Hope was unfettered, a giant bird loose in her body. She stopped drinking coffee.
“Are you kidding?” Max asked as he waited, cup in hand, for the coffee machine to stop brewing one early morning with the sky just beginning to lighten. “No coffee?”
“It’s bad for you.”
Max scowled at her. “You’ve lost it.”
Find out! she thought. Just find out for sure.
But then there were problems with her decorations. In storage a panel of silk tore from its frame and she and Max spent hours repairing it.
“You all right?” he asked while she mended the silk that had torn and he hammered a new nail into the corner joint.
“I’m great.” She smiled at him. “Why?”
“You seem a little juiced.”
“Juiced?”
“Yeah, like you’re on something. And I know it’s not coffee.”
“Right.” She laughed. “I’ve managed to find the time to start a drug habit.”
“I thought maybe it was Gabe. Maybe you fixed things.”
Hope, that giant bird on the loose fell like a stone in her stomach. Reality crashed in around her and she couldn’t laugh. Her face felt suddenly paralyzed.
I might be pregnant with Gabe’s baby. Again. The nightmare might start all over. Again. She rubbed her forehead. What if she told him and he asked her to marry him, then she lost the baby? Again.
She swallowed back a sudden painful sob.
This was a horrific roller coaster she couldn’t get off.
It was ludicrous that she could be pregnant after the years, money and procedures dedicated to getting this way. But it was like those women in that counseling group who, years after accepting their fates, ended up knocked up.
When you let go of the obsession, some of them said, laughing and flushed with their unbelievable luck, it happens.
Hormonal changes, that’s why it happens, said the science-minded.
God, declared the religious.
She’d sat there and doubted all of them.
And yet here she was. Poised on this terrible precipice.
Do I want to try this again? Go through all of this again?
But, hope tried to say, what if she took it easy? What if she went on modified bed rest, and was really careful and Gabe could help her?
She shook her head, clearing hope’s voice from her brain.
I don’t even know for sure, she rationalized.
“Alice?” Max asked. He touched her shoulder and she flinched. “You all right?”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “I—” She swallowed and felt the sudden burn of tears. “I’ll be right back.”
She stood and ran for the bathroom, feeling Max’s suspicious gaze on her as she ran.
This is crazy, Gabe told himself. You’re crazy. The stress has finally eaten your brain and now you are standing outside your ex-wife’s cottage like a stalker.
Worse, this was his third night out here.
He felt as if the proverbial other shoe was poised above his head, waiting for him to relax so it could fall and crush him. Alice didn’t look good these days and he wondered if she was drinking again. He told himself he was out here, watching her in her cabin to make sure she wasn’t. But the truth was, this was the only place he could actually take full breaths of air.
Everything was going fine. The wedding was four days away and the details that he checked and rechecked obsessively so as to keep thoughts of Alice and his mother away seemed straightforward and taken care of.
So what the hell is wrong with me? Why am I here?
Because in his office, his stomach burned as if filled with acid. And in his room, his chest ached and he couldn’t sleep.
He watched David and Savanah, day in and day out, young, in love, expecting their first baby, and missing Alice felt like an open wound.
It would be better when she was gone, when she wasn’t constantly there reminding him of things they would never have.
But then where will I go to breathe?
“Gabe?”
He whirled away from the cabin he’d been watching only to find Alice on the trail behind him, a plastic grocery-store bag in her hand which, when he looked at it, she tucked behind her back.
“Did you need something?” she asked.
He nearly laughed, nearly fell on his knees under the force of all the things he wanted. He opened his mouth but only a rattling gasp came out. Sile
nce.
“Gabe?” Her voice was that soft pet, the delicious stroke against his body, and he wanted to pull her into his arms one last time. Banish the demons, the past, the specter of the future.
“Just wanted to make sure everything was going okay,” he said. “We’ve been so busy I never get a chance to see you.”
“I know. It’s like I blink and three days have passed. But everything seems to be going really well.”
“That’s making me nervous.”
She laughed and the tension in him balled tighter.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, Tim Munoz has taken the job. He’ll be here on the twenty-fourth, so I can stay or—”
“That’s fine. Thank you.”
He was too abrupt, too close to apologizing, to asking for another chance, another doomed chance.
“Good night,” he said and walked away, into the dark.
“Good night, Gabe.” Her voice chased him all the way back to the lodge, to his empty cold bed.
The world cracked, opened and then closed again, different now than it had been before Alice looked at the stick. Pregnant.
She tore open the plastic around the second test, downed a glass of water, peed, waited and got the same blue plus sign in the window.
The earth dazzled, sparkled; her small cottage was the epicenter of the universe. Of creation.
She pulled in air that tasted like sugar and salt. Her heart pumped blood through her body, through the small tadpole deep in her belly.
“A baby.” She sighed, the words delicious on her tongue, the prospect all she would need to sustain her. For months. Years. Her life.
She put her hand to her mouth to stifle the laughing sobs. The giddy screams of joy and panic. Alice collapsed onto the toilet, slid sideways when she miscalculated and she landed on the floor. She lay back, flung her arms out and laughed at the ceiling.
A baby.
The world was filled with blessings and second chances.
Gabe.
She put her hands to her face, kicked her feet against the wall in a sudden thrilled spasm.
Gabe standing in front of her cabin, looking for the whole world, like a boy lost in a mall. She could give him a second chance, them a second chance. Another shot to make it work.
Tears burned down her face into her mouth, a champagne of hope and wish.
But soon the tiles grew cold against her back and what would be settled around her like a curtain, a screen showing old home movies of their life before the divorce.
She’d tell him she was pregnant and Gabe, honorable and longing for a family, would propose.
She didn’t want that marriage. She didn’t want him that way, tied to her by this fragile pregnancy. What she wanted them to have had to be real.
Gabe couldn’t know. Not yet.
17
“I’ve requested a few more servers from the catering company in Albany,” Gabe said to Alice and the rest of his staff in the kitchen the morning of the rehearsal dinner. Alice barely listened, still blissfully distracted by her pregnancy.
Gabe’s confidence in this staff, including Cameron and her folks, was tangible. He treated everyone like a team member and they listened to him like the good boss he was. Affection, a great tidal wave of love for everyone in this room, washed over her, and she bit her lip to keep her eyes from welling with happy tears.
“These people are drinkers and we’re going to need the extra hands just to get rid of the bottles and empty glasses,” Gabe said. “We don’t want it to look like a teamsters’ picnic.”
“We’ve added a few heartier appetizers,” her father said. “Maybe we can keep the drinkers from getting too drunk too fast.”
What a guy, she thought, looking at her dad. She wished she could tell him he was going to be a grandfather, but the past had taught her to keep the joy silent until it was a sure thing.
She looked at Gabe and felt paralyzed by the choice she had to make, the news she was keeping from him. Was it for his own good? Or hers?
“Excellent idea, Michael,” Gabe said, and the meeting broke up, everyone heading to their last-minute duties. Alice watched Gabe head to his office and took a step to follow. To say what? To do what? She didn’t know, she just knew she wanted to be close to him.
“Can I talk to you for a second?” Max asked, touching her elbow slightly.
“Sure,” she said, eager for the distraction. “What’s up?”
“Outside,” Max said and opened the door for her to step into the beautiful June morning.
Surprised, she walked over to the small hill with the view of the lawn and gazebo, which were getting decked out in fine style.
“What’s going on with you?” Max asked, cutting to the chase.
Alice nearly blanched. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, what’s going on? You’re—” He blew out a breath. “You’re happy. Gabe’s a wreck. I haven’t seen either of you like this since—” He stopped suddenly and Alice could actually see the math in his head, the wheels turning. “Are you pregnant?”
For a moment she was able to pretend she was going to lie about this, that she had the capability to keep a straight face when fireworks were going off in her head. But then she smiled.
Max flung his hands in the air. “That explains it. Gabe’s just worried about another miscarriage.”
“Gabe doesn’t know.”
Max’s mouth fell open slightly. “You haven’t told him? You’re pregnant after everything you two went through and you’re not telling him?”
“Yet. I’m not telling him yet.” She stepped closer and considering how right she believed she was, she had no problem standing up to her tough former brother-in-law. “If he and I are going to make it work, he needs to come back to me for me. Not because I’m pregnant and he’s trying to do the right thing, or to get his shot at a family. It has to be about us, first and foremost.”
Max stared at her a long time, and Alice kept his gaze. “Sounds reasonable. But he’s got to know at some point. You can’t walk away from him with his baby.”
“What if I lose the baby, Max? What then?”
He shook his head, clearly understanding her dilemma. “So, what are you going to do?”
“I am going to…” She took a long breath and let it out. “I’m going to give him another chance to try to make it work without knowing about the baby. If he’s still too scared, then I’m going to leave and talk to my doctor and then…” She took another long breath. She really hadn’t thought this out very well. “If everything seems good, I’ll contact him.”
“When?”
“When I think it’s right.”
“You’re going to do it all by yourself?”
“If he’s too scared to try to make it work with me before I go, then—” she swallowed “—yes.”
He shook his head. “Not acceptable.”
“Excuse me?”
“First of all, you shouldn’t do all of it alone. Bed rest and doctor’s appointments and whatever else you’re going to have to do to carry this baby the whole way and, second—” Max’s eyes went soft for a moment “—it’s Gabe’s baby.”
Her stomach melted into her feet. “I know, Max. But it would kill me to have him ask me to stay because of a baby. We did that before and it failed miserably. I need to know it’s about me. Us. That we could make it together if I lost this baby.”
Max didn’t blink. He didn’t move until finally he nodded, once. Definitively.
“You have two months and if Gabe doesn’t hear from you, I’m sending him to you to tell him.”
“Max—”
“That’s the deal, Alice. He’s my brother and if you won’t look out for him, I will.”
Alice nodded. It was fair. It was ugly and weird, but it was fair. And she truly hoped, in the end, it wouldn’t come to that.
“Hey, hey.” He pulled her into his arms, a big hard hug that made it difficult to breathe. “Congrats, Alice,” he murmured against her hai
r. “I know how bad you want this. But remember, so does Gabe.”
“I know,” she whispered. It was the thought that plagued her.
The rehearsal dinner rolled around and Gabe had asked Alice to play hostess with him, so she kept her chef whites in the closet and pulled out the one dress she’d brought for the event. A black kimono-style dress with an embroidered cherry tree along the side. It skimmed over her body, formfitting but not too tight. She endured, for the sake of fashion, a pair of modest high heels, that made her feet hurt just looking at them.
She kept her hair down, brushed to a blue-black shine and for once, not an unruly curl in sight.
At the last minute, she added the mascara she knew her mother would hound her over and a bit of red lip gloss.
All of which was worth the effort when she walked into the dining room, and Gabe, giving last-minute instructions to the two bartenders working the event, glanced at her then did a quick double take.
Patrick, looking dashing in a suit and tie, whistled. Max, still in his flannel shirt and fleece, looked at her and mouthed, “Tonight.”
She scowled at him and joined Gabe at the bar.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
“You’re not too shabby yourself,” she said, straightening the collar on his black shirt. Her hand lingered, touched the plane of his chest, felt the thump of his heart under her hand.
“You okay?” he asked, just barely touching her wrist.
“Yes.” She lifted her hand to her forehead. “I am, but I—”
“Hold that thought, Al. We’ve got mother of the bride at three o’clock, looking mad.”
Gabe stepped away to intercept Gloria, and Alice sagged briefly against the bar.
“Club soda, please,” she said to the bartender and she avoided Max’s pointed look.
The rehearsal dinner passed in a blur. The sea bass was well received, but perhaps not hearty enough to counter all the alcohol the party went through. Alice was called into duty to help various women with safety pins and tissues. She directed a drunk bridesmaid out back with the rest of the smokers and noticed the great-aunt of the bride was sitting alone at one of the dark tables while the speeches got started. She brought the woman a cup of tea just as the sound system screeched and Patrick was called into duty to fix it.
Wedding At the Riverview Inn Page 18