by Anna Adams
“I thought about opening one down here in town. Ian was kidding, but I think it’s a good idea. Most women in Bardill’s Ridge use an out-of-town OB when they’re pregnant, and the others use Dr. Fedderson. He’s good, but why wouldn’t he welcome a clinic with a dedicated OB/GYN to lighten the load?”
“He might not.” Seth sat back. “He might think you’re cutting into his practice.”
“I’d talk to him about it first. And who’s to say his current patients would consult us? But Bardill’s Ridge is a growing area. A lot of young families are moving up here. I’d like to provide them with a choice.”
“Could you survive strictly on new patients?”
She blinked. “I haven’t thought everything through. Maybe I’d ask Dr. Fedderson if he’d like to share space. But he’s not my problem yet.”
“Greta is?” She had to be kidding. Greta had talked occasionally about opening a practice in town.
“She said I was moving too fast, that the town isn’t ready for a change like that. I got the feeling she resented my bringing up the idea.”
Seth set his teeth. Of course. Because Greta knew he wouldn’t stand for her dabbling in a brand-new enterprise, and she couldn’t bear the idea of not being part of a new clinic in Bardill’s Ridge.
“What do you think, Grandpa? You know Gran, and you know the town. My first question is about her. Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. Perfectly healthy, just a little anxious about retiring. You know she was already pregnant with Ned when she was in college.” He flinched as even the mention of his late son brought back the pain of trying to comfort Beth and Zach after Ned’s death. “She’s always worked with a full plate, and she’s envisioning days sinking into years with absolutely nothing to do.”
Sophie caught his hand. “Are you all right?” She squeezed pretty hard. “I’m starting to think I’ve come between you and Gran.”
“Not a chance. Don’t take so much credit for yourself. She’ll find plenty to do.”
“O-kay.” She injected the syllables with doubt. “What about the clinic? Do you think it would be a good idea? Would people here resist it?”
“I think it’s a great idea if you include Fedderson in the planning.”
“But what about Gran?” The bell above the door tinkled a warning. Sophie peered over his shoulder, guilt spreading a mask over her face.
He turned, already expecting to see his wife in a snit. He wasn’t disappointed. She marched to their booth, completely ignoring the café’s other customers, who spun in their seats to watch the free floor show.
“You lied to me, Seth Calvert. You told me you were eating lunch with Patrick.”
He glanced around. Their son Patrick usually came here for lunch, but wouldn’t you know? Today he was nowhere to be seen. “I’m sorry, Greta. I knew you wouldn’t like me talking to Sophie on my own.”
“It’s my fault, Gran. I asked Grandpa not to mention—”
Her eyes glinted with real pain. “And you, Sophie. Why would you go behind my back to your grandfather as if I were a child who couldn’t understand this clinic business? I know you’re talking about the clinic.”
“But I also wanted to talk about you. I’m worried.” Sophie tugged Greta into the seat beside her. “You haven’t been yourself since we started working together, and then you got angry over the clinic idea, as if you thought I was stealing your business. That just isn’t you, Gran. I thought Grandpa might be able to tell me what was wrong.”
Maybe he couldn’t get through to Greta, but their granddaughter could. Greta paused a moment. Sophie’s concern bothered her.
“Well, your grandpa can’t explain, because nothing’s wrong, except I’m starting to suspect the people I trust don’t trust me.” She stared across the table with an animosity Seth had never seen before. “Starting with you, Seth Calvert. If you weren’t so busy acting crazy to get your own way, no one else would dare.”
“That’s enough.” He stood, digging his wallet out of his back pocket. “Greta, you’re coming with me. You want the truth, Sophie? Your grandmother and I don’t agree on where our lives are headed right now, and all of a sudden, we’re discussing our private affairs with you. Greta doesn’t want you to start planning the clinic because she can’t stand not being part of it.”
He was already ashamed of himself when his wife shot to her feet. “You’re darned right I’m coming with you. I’m going to straighten you out once and for all. I am not the lunatic you imagine. A lot of women don’t want to give up rewarding work to pander to their husband’s every whim. You pander to mine for a change.”
“I have, Greta, for fifty-five years.” He took money from his wallet and tossed it on the table. “It’s my turn now to have my own way.”
He glanced at Sophie, and the tears in her eyes damped the fire on his temper a little. “Sophie, honey, I’m sorry.”
“I’m the one you should apologize to,” Greta said, “talking about me behind my back.”
His wife’s outraged sputtering turned the flames back up. He stalked from the restaurant. So what if she didn’t follow him home? They’d never walked away from each other in mid-argument, but it might already be too late to hash this out.
CHAPTER TEN
HER GRANDPA’S DEPARTURE seemed to suck all the available oxygen from the unnaturally silent café. Sophie stared at her grandmother, who returned her gaze but clearly wasn’t seeing her. She said nothing before she followed in her husband’s wake.
Sophie felt the eyes of the town upon her. She didn’t care what they thought. She waved down the kid who’d taken their order and settled with him, and then she hurried out to her car. The second she shut her door, she started dialing her grandparents’ house on her cell phone. The answering machine picked up. Of course they couldn’t have made it home yet.
Would either of them ever go home again? What had she caused? Did she have to bring bad luck to every married couple she knew?
She dialed again and got the machine. “It’s me. This is my fault. Don’t blame Grandpa. I shouldn’t have asked him to meet me without telling you, Gran. And I probably overreacted to our talk about the clinic.” She felt like an eight-year-old, begging her mommy not to leave. “Please call me and tell me you’re okay. I’m worried about you.”
She drove to their house. Cupping her hands around her face, she tried to see through the dark garage windows. It was empty. Only the sunlight and the birds and the buds on the trees waited with her outside the tall, brick dwelling that housed everyone she loved most. What the hell had she been thinking? Only of herself. Only of what she wanted.
She had to make changes before the baby came. She had to learn to put the people she loved first, even when what she wanted—the clinic—seemed like the right thing to do.
She turned toward home. With any luck, her mother might still be out at lunch with her dad. But this was a no-luck day. Her mom met her at the cabin door again.
“How was your meal with Seth? Your father and I have declared a truce. Since we both want to be grandparents, we thought setting terms would be wisest. And look.” She pirouetted. “No knives anywhere. I think your father’s finally grown up.”
“Mom, I can’t listen to you say things like that about Dad today. He wasn’t in the wrong.”
“A woman has many reasons to look outside her marriage for sustenance.”
“And some women choose an excuse that gives them permission. I’m not saying both people don’t play a part in breaking a marriage, but you could have left him before you started an affair with another man.”
“You’re too hard.” Nita swept back inside the cabin.
Sophie hung back on the threshold while the summer breeze wrapped her in the familiar sounds of rustling branches and long grass, whose blades whispered against each other.
“You’re right, Mom.” She twisted out of her jacket and entered the cabin. “I am too hard, because it’s none of my business, and I’m sorry. The past is
between you and Dad. I don’t know what happened, but I love you both, and I should have just asked you not to talk about him to me.”
“What?” Nita jackknifed off the sofa where she’d already flung herself.
Sophie jumped.
“You love me?”
Sophie’s heart broke. Even so, she found it harder to say the second time. “I’ve always loved you, Mom.”
Her mother wrapped her in a real hug for the first time in probably twenty years.
“Your clothes, Mom.”
“What are dry cleaners for?”
As if she secreted oil or something. She’d meant she didn’t want to wrinkle her mother’s clothing, but some things never changed. “I can’t breathe.”
“Oh, sorry.” Nita backed off. “You have gained a pound or two. How far along are you?”
As if offended for her, the baby kicked so hard Sophie grabbed her sides.
“Sophie?”
“I think she cracked a rib.”
“It’s fun now to feel all that life going on inside you, but from here on the work starts. And then she’ll be on your mind the rest of your life.”
The baby seemed to be drumming with her heels. Sophie wished Ian were here. No one could have missed this display. “Am I on your mind, Mom?”
“Well, yeah.” She said it as if Sophie must be nuts for not knowing.
IAN MET HIS CLIENT, Andrew Hawthorne, at a little sandwich shop in Great Falls the night before they were to drop off the software. Ian and the courier discussed their plans at dinner.
“I don’t even know why they hired you,” Andrew said. “I know it’s financials, but I can hand-carry a CD as well as the next guy, and I’m assigned to security. They picked me because I can bench-press more than my boss in the company fitness center.”
“I don’t need to know what’s on the software,” Ian said, “and you shouldn’t be so willing to discuss it.” The other guy looked sulky, but Ian found he didn’t care so much for short jobs when they meant leaving his pregnant wife behind. He wanted to take care of business and go home.
After they ate, Ian sent Hawthorne out ahead of him so he could check to see if the other man was being followed. The coast seemed clear enough. He headed back to his hotel. In his room, he sprawled on the bed and dialed Sophie on his cell. Her voice flashed images of last night in his mind. An uncomfortable hunger took hold of him.
“What’d you do today?” he asked, trying not to sound as desperate as he felt for her.
“I had lunch with Grandpa, and then our little soccer player broke most of my ribs.”
“What?” He loved the joy in her voice, but he felt left out. “I’m never going to feel him move.”
“You’ll have plenty of time when you get back home.”
“Well, I like the sound of home.” And that she assumed it was his now, too.
“Good. How’s your stuff going?”
“Fine, but I already wish I hadn’t taken the job. I’ve managed to switch my flight, so I’ll be in Knoxville by nine tomorrow night. I should make it to the cabin by ten-thirty.”
“I’m glad.”
Her relief sounded too intense. Something was wrong. “Did you have a good lunch with Seth?”
“Fine.”
He waited for more. She volunteered nothing. “You don’t sound as if it was fine.”
“We’ll talk when you get back. My mom’s calling me. She wants to start the movie we rented.”
“Okay.” She was pulling away from him as if he had no right to pry, but he didn’t want to argue over the phone. “See you tomorrow night.”
“All right.”
He hung up, dissatisfied.
The next morning he picked up Hawthorne at the Metro station at Rosslyn. An odd thing happened. Sophie kept showing up in his head, getting between him and his client.
In the subway car, sitting across from Hawthorne, he had time to stare at the dark walls they sped past, wondering why his wife still held back. He seemed to be acclimating to sharing their life more easily than she.
Ian tried to clear his family from his mind. He turned to Andrew. “We’re on time as long as your counterpart shows up.”
“He’ll be there. We’re just two guys passing a baton at Union Station.”
Ian glanced from face to bored face among their fellow passengers. The courier ought to shut up. At Union Station they left the Metro car and headed upstairs toward the coffee bar.
He kept his client a few steps ahead of him. All this for software. A man stepped away from the bar, and Ian’s guy held out his hand, the CD case extended. But the man he was handing off to didn’t match the photo Adam had faxed to Ian.
Ian stepped between the two men and reached for the CD. A second too late.
The new guy turned and bolted for the nearest exit. He had the CD. Ian shot after him. Hawthorne tried to trip Ian, but Ian ducked the move.
Damn. Over software.
He shoved through the double glass doors that had barely shut behind the other guy. He was still reaching as the man jumped into the front seat of a cab. The CD was close enough to touch. Without thinking, Ian threw himself at it. He grabbed it and slid along the open door, onto the hood. A random taxi shouldn’t have been moving so fast—unless the driver was in on the scheme, too.
Ian slammed into the windshield, breaking the antenna that slapped him in the face. Still calculating how to get out of his first job gone really bad, he learned that fear tasted like metal in your mouth. He had too much to lose now.
Images of Sophie passed through his mind as safety glass broke around him. He pulled up his legs, slid off the car and hit the road, rolling.
Sophie. She’d wanted him to turn down this job. He thought of the baby who’d never moved in his hands.
Oil from the road filled his nostrils. Sophie would never trust him again. Sky, swirls of blue and white and gray filled his eyes. Pain swiped everything except Sophie aside. Sophie and their unborn child.
His ankle broke with a crack like a piece of brittle wood. His shoulder seemed to catch fire. The road scraped his shirt off.
Need, like a well, opened within him. He had to see Sophie again. He was falling in love with her.
Dark liquid welled up on the pavement in front of his eyes, and he smelled his own bleeding body. He couldn’t move. “Sophie.” He couldn’t tell if he was saying her name, or if it just screamed inside his head. Blackness took her away from him.
“YOU’RE FINE, JANEY.” Sophie pointed to the machine that counted all 145 beats per minute of Janey’s baby’s heartbeat. “I know it’s scary to fall.” Janey was only fifteen, and terror pooled in her eyes as the fetus in her belly struggled hard enough to cause waves in her teenage mom’s skin. “But you’ve clearly annoyed the baby. She’s too strong to be hurt.”
“How can you be sure, Dr. Ridley? Something bad could happen any second.” The young girl valiantly controlled tears. She grabbed at her stomach. “I didn’t want her at first. Now I’m getting paid back.”
“Nothing’s wrong. You’re thirty-seven weeks along. We can hear that the baby survived your tumble down the front porch, and the worst thing we have to fear is that you’ll go into labor.” She’d checked Janey on Thursday, and the girl hadn’t been effaced. No sign of dilation. Her daughter hadn’t even dropped yet. “I’m not going to check you right now, because your body’s been through enough, but we’re going to sit here together and listen to the baby, and if you have any pain, we’ll go from there.”
Sophie reached for a wipe from a box on the pale blue counter. “Let me clean your knee. You tore your jeans.”
“Is my mom outside yet?”
“You want me to check?”
Despite having only a learner’s permit, the girl, one of Greta’s outpatients, had driven herself because her mom had said she couldn’t leave her job.
“No, stay here. I told her to just yell my name if she came.”
Sophie crossed the room and opened the
honey-colored door. “We’ll make it easy for her.”
“She says Sunday after church is her best time for tips.”
How could that be? Most people had children to get ready for school the next day. “How about your dad?”
“I don’t want him.” Janey looked sullen. Sophie recognized the look. She’d felt that way about her mom once.
“How about the baby’s father?”
“He went in the Army. He’s supposed to come back for us after his training.” Janey’s tears rolled down her face, toward the collar of her straining, green knit shirt.
Sophie smiled her best I’m-perfectly-capable smile. “I guess you’re stuck with me.”
“Thank you for coming. When I couldn’t get hold of Dr. Calvert, I thought I was going to have to drive to Knoxville.”
“What about Dr. Fedderson?”
“He didn’t answer his phone either, and besides, I’ve been seeing Dr. Calvert because my mom didn’t want Dr. Fedderson to know.”
About the baby. Small-town fears of being shunned for a child’s mistake. Ridiculous. “I don’t think he’d care, Janey.”
“You don’t care, do you?”
Sophie planted her hands in the small of her own overworked back. “That you’re pregnant at fifteen?” She shook her head. “I’m worried about your future.” She adjusted the monitor across Janey’s stomach. “About the baby’s future, but I guess you know what you’re facing.”
“I’m getting a clue.” The tears poured out again, and Sophie handed her a box of tissues.
Footsteps started down the hall to the office area. “We’re back here,” Sophie said, but it wasn’t Janey’s mom who showed up. “Grandpa.” Sophie knew instantly that something was wrong. “Gran?”
“No, but she’s coming.” He glanced at the girl on the paper-covered table. “Janey, how are you?”