Paradise Cove

by Jenny Holiday

  She sighed. This was one big-ass item on the to-do list that she’d been putting off. She was hoping that even if Jake wasn’t interested in the baby, his dad and stepmom would be. She just didn’t know how to make that happen. How to ask.

  “Nora.” Jamila flashed her a watery smile as she approached. “We’re so happy.”

  She blew out a breath. That was a relief. “I’m glad. I hoped— Oof.”

  She couldn’t get the rest out because Art had basically tackle-hugged her. He held her for a long time. She held him back. Let his strong arms bolster her. When he pulled away, his eyes were bright. He was so like Jake, a man of few words but many emotions.

  He cleared his throat. “We want to show you something. Would that be okay?”

  “Of course. I just have to pop into the bar and tell Maya and Eve not to worry about me.”

  “No you don’t, because we’re coming, too.”

  And there were her friends. Her generous, beloved friends. She hadn’t noticed them coming out of the bar during the hug.

  She narrowed her eyes. “What’s going on?”

  No one said anything. They just piled into Art’s car—Art and Jamila in front and Nora and her friends squished into the back.

  It was probably a surprise baby shower or something. She could be cool with that. That was the point of staying here, right? As Maya had said, this was her village. It wasn’t long before they were parking behind Jake’s truck.

  “You guys. I don’t think you understand. I can’t just—”

  “He knows we’re coming,” Art said quickly.

  “He does?”

  “He asked us to bring you here,” Jamila said kindly.

  “Hello, hello!” It was Eiko, opening the car door for Nora. “How are you feeling, Dr. Hon? You look wonderful.”

  “Doesn’t she, though?” Pearl said—Pearl was here, too? “The pregnancy glow is real.”

  “Just run with it,” Maya said, no doubt correctly intuiting that Nora was…what? What was she, even? Confused? Wary?

  Scared out of her mind?

  All of the above, actually.

  “Trust us.” Eve took her hand, which prompted Maya to take the other.

  The whole clump of them—Eve and Maya holding her hands and Pearl, Eiko, Art, and Jamila walking beside them—escorted her to the outcropping. There, Law and Sawyer were waiting.

  What the hell was happening?

  “We’re handing her over!” Pearl trilled. “The final item on the assembly line!”

  “Handing me over? What?”

  Sawyer and Law crossed their arms and clasped hands and made a “chair” for Nora to sit on.

  “On you go,” Eiko said.

  Nora thought about how wary she’d been her first few days in town. How suspicious she’d been of anyone who was nice to her. What’s the catch? she’d been constantly wondering.

  Like that time she’d come home to find Jake building her a deck. Her hackles had gone right up.

  But what had happened next? She had recognized her defensive impulse, paused, and thought about the fact that she was remaking her life. Asked herself what kind of person she wanted to be in that life.

  “Trust,” Eve said again, with so much warmth and affection in her voice.

  Nora sat.

  And let the men ferry her out into the lake and around the outcropping like she was Cleopatra or something.

  Jake was waiting on the other side.

  Of course he was.

  Gah. Just seeing him made her feel better—and worse. Better because she loved him. She loved him.

  And worse because she couldn’t have him.

  But hopefully, the baby could.

  Law and Sawyer set her on the sand in front of him, and he smiled. “Everyone has been helping me with a remodel at the cottage. As you can imagine, the location makes it a bit of a challenge, so they made a human assembly line to help me get stuff in and out.”

  “And I’m ‘stuff’ in this scenario?” She couldn’t help but smile, though.

  He did, too, even as he winced. “You are. But you’re the most important stuff.” He ducked his head then, like he was shy. “Will you come see what I did?”

  “Yes.”

  She wasn’t sure what to say as they walked across the sand, but Mick saved the day by appearing out of nowhere, barking and wagging his butt. She bent down to pet him. She didn’t pick him up—she’d been having a bit of dizziness lately—but she ruffled his fur and said, “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too.”

  She shot Jake a quizzical look. “I was talking to the dog.”

  Ignoring this, he was the picture of chivalry as he held the cottage door for her and took her coat.

  Inside, everything looked the same as it always had. “Where’s this remodel?”

  He pointed down the hall and to the left.

  “Your mom’s studio?”

  “No.” He nodded for her to go ahead of him. “The nursery.”

  And it was. She inhaled sharply. The walls were still covered with art, but it was bright, happy art—and he’d moved the painting of Jude in from the living room. The easels and paint-splattered tables were gone, replaced by a crib and a changing table and a rocking chair.

  He steered her to that rocking chair, because her legs had lost their ability to hold her up, and somehow he knew. She plopped down unceremoniously and looked up at him.

  “I’m sorry I reacted so poorly last week. I just…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I just never imagined getting a second chance. I didn’t feel like I deserved a second chance.”

  “Jake. I—”

  He held up a hand. “To be honest, I still don’t. But I’m working on that.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve got myself a therapist. A grief counselor. I’m going once a week for now.”

  Tears gathered in Nora’s eyes. He was so strong. He’d always been strong, but to ask for help like that was maybe the strongest thing she’d known him to do. “Jake. I’m so glad for you.”

  He picked up a quilt that was hanging over the edge of the crib. She recognized it as his mom’s handiwork. It was full of shards of exuberant color—limes and aquas and purples.

  “This was Jude’s quilt. Kerrie asked if she could take it when she left, and I said yes. She had a daughter eighteen months ago. Sienna. Jude’s sister. Sienna used the quilt, too. Now it’s our turn—Kerrie gave it back with her blessing.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered. Tears started to fall. Her kid had struck gold in the dad department. “I’m going to do up the nursery at my place—I’m buying a house, by the way—the same way. Maybe you’ll loan me some art. I was reading this book about coparenting, and—”

  “Hang on.”

  What? The heavy emotion that had been blanketing them had lifted a little, and he seemed…annoyed? Why was she having so much trouble recognizing emotions, both hers and his? Was that a pregnancy thing?

  “Coparenting?” he said.

  He probably didn’t know the term. “Yeah, it’s when two people who aren’t together agree to—”

  “For a smart woman, you are such a—” He cut himself off and huffed a frustrated sigh. “Okay. This is my fault. I’m doing this wrong.” Before she could blink he was kneeling at the foot of her rocking chair. “Nora. I don’t want to coparent with you.” He said the word like it tasted bad in his mouth. “I mean, I will, if that’s what you want. If you won’t have me. But here’s what I should have led with.” He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the arms of the chair. “I love you.”

  Tears started. She swiped them away and gave him her full attention, because he wasn’t done talking. “I fell in love with you even though I tried not to. You got me. Like the zombie apocalypse. You just kept coming at me, and…” He shook his head.

  “Eating your brains?” She smiled through the tears.

  “I’m still doing this wrong.” But he smiled back.

  “Nah. I think you’re doing it exact
ly right. Keep going.”

  “I love you. I’m gonna love the kid in there, too.” He nodded at her belly. “I just…I thought I’d had my shot. I thought loving you would somehow take away from how much I loved Jude. The reason I disappeared the morning after New Year’s Eve was that I realized I’d forgotten Jude’s birthday. It was on the thirtieth, and I just forgot it.”

  He sounded so disgusted with himself, it nearly broke her heart.

  “You make me forget, is my point. And even though it would be easier, and a lot less painful, part of me doesn’t want to forget. But if that’s the price I have to pay for you and our baby, I’ll gladly pay it.”

  Oh, her sweet man-god, whose heart was the most beautiful thing about him. “I think,” Nora said gently, “that you’re looking at it the wrong way. I can help you remember. If you tell me about Jude, I can help you remember.” She settled a hand on her stomach. “We can all remember together.”

  He nodded. He was crying. They were both crying.

  He lifted his hands off the arms of the rocker suddenly, in a jerky sort of motion. It was like they’d moved of their own volition before he got control of them again and put them back down.

  She thought she knew what was happening. She brought her hands to her belly. “You want to touch?”

  “Can I?” he whispered.

  “Of course.” She lifted her shirt up to expose the bump.

  He put his hands on her, his big, rough, perfect hands, and it was such a relief.

  He laid his cheek on her belly, too, and she tangled her hands in his hair. They stayed like that for a long time, breathing and listening to Mick’s quiet snoring. While they were having the most significant conversation of their lives, he had fallen asleep.

  “You know, this room was really a symbolic gesture,” he said, his voice muffled as he spoke against her belly. The words tickled. “We can live in town. Or in Toronto, if you want to be near your family.”

  She extracted one of her hands from his hair and swatted his head. “Oh, shut up. You know this is my dream house.”

  “It is?” He sounded ridiculously pleased.

  “They don’t call it Paradise Cove for nothing, do they?”

  “I guess not. But what about your sister? The house?”

  “Turns out you guys aren’t the only ones with meddling old people in your lives. My grandma left Erin her condo. She’s going to sell it and get a place of her own, but she’s been harassing me about cottages. She has this idea that they’re all going to descend on Moonflower Bay in the summers.” She snorted. “So you might have to, like, build a guest wing.”

  “I can do that.” Rocking back on his heels, he grinned. “You gotta tell me everything that’s been happening here.” He rubbed her belly again. “I’ve missed a lot of stuff.”

  “Yeah, you missed all the barfing. Except that one time.”

  “No, like appointments.”

  “I’m using a midwife.” He raised an eyebrow. “Oh, come on. It’s not like I couldn’t deliver it myself if I had to.”

  “That’s true. So what happened at your last appointment? Did you hear the heartbeat?”

  “Yeah.” She smiled. “It was pretty amazing.”

  “What else?”

  She thought back to the appointment, which had been routine. Except, actually…Heat started to spread inside her. “The midwife told me that in case I was wondering, sex is perfectly safe, and in fact there’s some thinking that the hormones released by orgasm are good for the baby.”

  He licked his lips. “Are they now?”

  “I mean, I don’t know.” She performed an exaggerated shrug. “I guess we just have to trust the medical experts here.”

  The Walsh repair.

  It popped into Jake’s mind as he helped Nora out of the chair. It was some kind of surgery stitch that her grandma had invented, if he remembered correctly. A method for fixing broken hearts.

  Damned if Dr. Walsh Junior hadn’t done it to him. Forced him to want things, to want them enough to hack through all the fear and habit that had accreted around him, calcifying his heart.

  He cleared his throat. “I have one more thing to show you. In my room. Our room.” He steered her across the hall. “We can redecorate it however you like.”

  “Are you forgetting that I’m the person who moved from Harold Burgess’s hovel to the Barbie Dream Room? I don’t care what the room looks like.”

  “Well, you might care about this.” He had added a small cabinet to the far wall, across from the foot of the bed. He opened it to reveal a little TV and a DVD player. “Old-school, I know, but as you know, I’m a little behind the times on the whole technology front.” He was getting rid of that damn phone ASAP, now that he had Nora back.

  “You’re not a Netflix guy, probably,” she teased.

  “Happily, it turns out that most of your weird zombie movies come on DVD.” He pulled out a little drawer under the TV to reveal the collection that Clara had helped him order from Amazon with rush shipping.

  “Oh, Jake. You know just how to romance a girl.”

  “I know.” He wagged his eyebrows at her. “Now strip.”

  “Stop it. You’re slaying me with the romance.” She was stripping, though, and rather quickly, too. And laughing. He did the same.

  How quickly they had gone from crying to laughing today.

  Soon they were standing in front of each other totally exposed. And not just physically. He had told her his worst fears and she was still here, his beautiful, brilliant Nora.

  And, not to get too caveman about it, but she was here with his baby inside her. Her previously flat belly was gently curved, and it made him crazy. It made him want to do wicked, wicked things to her, but then lay her down and rub her feet while she watched zombie movies. It was all very confusing—but in a good way.

  He hardly knew where to start.

  Except, wait. He did. He smiled. “I like your hair, Dr. Walsh.”

  “I like your hair, too, Mr. Ramsey.”

  Epilogue

  Thirteen months later

  When Nora told Jake about her ex-boyfriends, that night they were rounding third base—third base being talking about sexual insecurities while grilling fish—she had mentioned one dude who kept saying he needed her to “meet him halfway.”

  Jake had never really gotten that.

  Nora needed someone to meet her more than halfway.

  She worked a lot. She had an important job. She took care of the town of Moonflower Bay. She took care of their daughter. They took care of their daughter. Penny. Named after Dr. Penelope Walsh, of course, but maybe also a little bit after the Beatles song “Penny Lane.”

  So when Nora went back to the clinic three months after Penny was born, Jake met her more than halfway. He brought Penny in for feedings. He filled in at the front desk when Jacques was sick. He learned how to do the billing and did it during Penny’s naptime so Nora could come home sooner and they could have their evenings free.

  He didn’t even like to think of it as meeting her halfway, because that implied that there was a compromise being made. There were no compromises here. It was all his pleasure. It was, as Sawyer had shouted at him what felt like a lifetime ago, the first thing he’d wanted. He was good at it. At being a dad. At being a husband—they’d had what Nora called a shotgun wedding on a full-moon night by the lake before Penny was born. Eiko had gotten some crazy internet ordination, and they’d said their vows—“Standard, old-school. I’m not really a write-your-own-vows kind of girl,” Nora had said—chucked some flowers into the lake, and that had been that.

  The best part of every day was the end of it. After Penny’s bath, they would all pile onto the bed and play two songs: “Hey Jude,” and “Penny Lane.” It had been the grief counselor’s idea, and at first he’d felt weird about it, but now he loved it. Nora and Jake would sing and try to make Penny laugh.

  Which she usually did. She laughed easily, his Pen. She embraced new experiences�
�she’d just started solid food this week, in fact—with gusto, delighted by nearly everything she encountered. Watching her reminded him that while being open to the world could have a cost, it could also have a payoff that was immeasurable.

  She was laughing now, in fact. He blew raspberries on her belly while she screamed in delight.

  “Hey!” Nora stuck her head into the room. “I thought we had to leave. I thought it was imperative that I get home by four so we could hit the road for the mystery trip.”

  “It was. It is.” He planted one last kiss on Pen’s chunky belly and snapped her into her new onesie.

  “Is that…” Nora came closer. “Is that a Detroit Tigers onesie?”

  “Sure is.”

  “Oh my God, are we going to a Tigers game?”

  “Home opener versus Blue Jays.”

  “Are you kidding me?” She started jumping up and down. “Ahh!”

  “Yeah, I mean, that was one of the whole points of moving to Moonflower Bay, right? And you haven’t gone yet.”

  They dropped Mick at Jake’s dad’s house and managed to escape after only ten minutes or so of Dad and Jamila losing their minds over Penny—and hit the road. Nora made moony eyes at him the whole way.

  That was the other thing about meeting her more than halfway. It paid off so profoundly. She was so ridiculously easy to please that it almost felt like cheating. Zombies and Tigers and trout melts by the lake all had the pixie doctor turning into a gooey pile of mush.

  So yeah, the whole meeting-halfway thing wasn’t work at all.

  Leave it to Jake to think of this.

  The Tigers were the one item in the new-life to-do list she hadn’t gotten around to yet. But to be fair, she hadn’t known that her new life was going to involve a husband, a kid, and a house you had to walk through a lake to get to, so she’d been a little busy.

  They’d been in a cocoon since Penny was born, one made of sleep deprivation and endless feedings and the clinic and Jake’s counseling, which she sometimes went to with him. Work. Good, important work, all of it. Which meant it had been a good, important cocoon they’d been in. She wouldn’t have traded it for anything. But an outing like this was a total thrill.