Feeling like an idiot, he counted and Mindy panted. Finally, Lorraine called a halt to the exercise and had the women sit up. Everyone pulled chairs out and listened as she talked about breast-feeding. Quinn was almost as unnerved by the discussion as he’d been by stroking his hands from Mindy’s neck to her tailbone.
The class over, they walked out to the car in silence. For the first time, he was thinking about her alone in labor, trying without any help to maintain her focus on the pattern of breathing rather than the pain. Why hadn’t she asked a friend to do this with her?
During the equally silent drive, he also started to think about after the baby was born. She wasn’t intending to go back to that dank apartment, was she? He’d have to make it clear that he wanted her to stay at his place for a few weeks. Or longer. Having her there wasn’t the hardship he might have expected it to be.
“You think that stuff works?” he asked.
The car was dark, but he knew her head turned. “The breathing, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know.” She was quiet for a minute. “I hope it does. I’m actually a little scared.” Her voice hurried. “I mean, of labor. I think it must hurt a whole lot.”
He’d been a young patrolman when he’d had the memorable experience of helping a woman give birth. The young husband leaned over the front seat of the car holding her hand and giving encouragement as she screamed and pushed. He remembered crouching between her legs and watching in horror and fascination as a head crowned and then popped out. The baby, slick with mucus and blood, had slid right out into his hands. He’d just about quit the job after that one.
“Women survive it all the time. And then they do it again.”
“I know.” She was gazing straight ahead, her profile lit in flashes as they passed under streetlights. “It’s just, the first time... And having something already wrong.”
He took her hand, which went still in his for an instant before she gripped hard. “You’re a lot stronger than I ever gave you credit for,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse. “You’ll do fine, and I know you’ll be smiling when they hand you the baby.”
She sniffed. “Thank you, Quinn.”
He didn’t let go of her hand, and she didn’t let go of his. Not until he pulled into the garage and had to set the emergency brake. Then he went around and helped her out. She seemed to be moving slower, more heavily, tonight than even two days ago. He waited until they were in the house before he said, “You seeing the doctor again soon?”
“Wednesday. Visits are weekly this last month.”
“Good,” Quinn said with relief. “Are you hungry?”
“Starved!”
“Listen, you go lie down and I’ll warm up the pizza.”
She disappeared into the bedroom, but reappeared a couple of minutes later in pajamas and lay down on the couch with a sigh. She kept a pillow and throw there now.
Quinn brought her two slices of pizza and a glass of cranberry-apple juice.
As usual, Mindy started strong but couldn’t even finish the second slice. Quinn supposed the baby was crowding her stomach as well as her bladder. She hadn’t been kidding about the regular visits to the bathroom during the night. The first couple of nights, he’d come wide awake every time he heard the bathroom door close, however softly. Now her quiet footsteps, the bathroom door opening and closing, the toilet flushing, were part of the night sounds he hardly heard. They were almost...comforting.
“The Howies invited us to Thanksgiving.” Disconcerted by how that “us” sounded, Quinn set down his empty soda can. “I suggested they come here instead. Either you’ll have a newborn, or you’ll want to be close to the hospital just in case. And still on bed rest.”
Mindy bunched her pillow and rolled to her back. “Have you ever cooked a turkey?”
That part was worrying him a little, but, “How hard can it be?” he said with a shrug.
“The first time I cooked one, it was awful. It was still too frozen when I started, so it wasn’t done when dinnertime came. I swear that thing cooked for eight hours. And then it was so dry it was inedible.”
He laughed. “Thanks for the pep talk.”
“Fortunately, I now make fabulous stuffing and have mastered the turkey thing.” She smiled back. “So, whaddaya say, Quinn? Can you take orders?”
“Absolutely.”
She made a contented sound. “That was nice of you tonight. Staying at the class, I mean.”
“I meant it when I said I didn’t mind.” Well, okay, he’d been lying at the time, but now he was glad he had stayed. “You shouldn’t have to go alone.”
“I should have asked Selene. She’s just...we’re good friends, but she’s not that reliable.” The pinch of worry made Mindy look pale and tired. She stayed quiet for a minute. “Have you ever delivered a baby?”
His expression gave away something, because she started to sit up. “You have! Was it horrible?”
“Lie down,” he ordered. “Yeah, it was horrible, but mainly because I was twenty-three and completely unprepared. The couple wasn’t much older or any more ready. The woman woke in the middle of the night thinking she was having a few twinges of false labor, or maybe just gas.” He gave a rough laugh. “The husband got nervous, insisted they go to the hospital. They didn’t make it. They pulled over, he flagged me down in the rain.” The guy had looked like a maniac, soaking wet and waving his arms frantically, his eyes wide and staring. “I knelt on the street and, uh, caught the baby when it popped out. Easiest labor in the world. Me, this was more than I wanted to see.”
Mindy giggled. “It didn’t make you eager to be a father?”
He shuddered again.
“They showed us a film at the Lamaze class last week.” She wrinkled her nose. “It was pretty graphic. I couldn’t help thinking yuck.”
“Yeah, but you should have seen the look on those parents’ faces when I wrapped the baby and laid it on her chest.” Funny, he’d forgotten that, but the scene came back to him as if it had taken place a few months ago instead of ten years ago: the father hyperventilating and making strangled sounds of joy, and the young mother smiling so softly, with such awe.
“Do you suppose he’ll look like Dean?” Mindy laid her hands over the mound of her stomach and looked at it. “Maybe with freckles?”
Wow. A little Dean. The idea made something twist uncomfortably in Quinn’s chest. To compensate, he joked, “If it’s a girl, let’s hope she looks like you. Dean’s nose. Not so good.”
Mindy giggled again, color back in her cheeks. “You didn’t have any sisters or brothers, did you?”
He shook his head. “Just me.” Until Dean came along. “You?”
She shook her head, too. “I don’t think Mom was crazy about pregnancy, childbirth or motherhood.”
“What about your dad?”
Her smile trembled. “He was great. He’d get down on the floor and play board games with me. I have this picture of him playing Twister. You know. One foot on the blue spot, one on the red, a hand behind him on the yellow...”
Quinn nodded. He’d seen ads.
“His hairline was receding even then, and he wore glasses with thick lenses. I think he was a geek. Big surprise, since he was a software designer. I don’t know why my mother married him.” She tried to smile again. “I...really missed him when he died.”
“I never knew my father.” Quinn was startled to realize the words had come from him.
Quinn didn’t look at Mindy. He didn’t want to see her pity.
“Do you have any pictures of your mother?”
“No.” His voice sounded harsh now. “I doubt anyone ever took one.”
“I’ll bet you could find a high-school yearbook, or something like that.”
Now he did meet her eyes, h
is own hard. “Why would I want to?”
She didn’t back down. “Curiosity? Don’t you wonder sometimes if the way you remember her is really the way she looked?”
“I don’t think about her.” He still sounded cold, but he knew he was lying. And he could see that she knew it, too.
“Dean didn’t tell me very much about what happened to you. He said I should ask you sometime.”
“There’s not much to tell.” Quinn managed a shrug. “She was a drug addict. Sometimes she fought it, but she always lost.”
Mindy asked tentatively, “Did she try to be a good mother?”
Had she tried? Quinn gave a sharp, painful nod. “Yeah, in her own way. She never shot up in front of me, and she didn’t have parties at our place. I don’t think she left me alone until I was—I don’t know—maybe five. Not for long enough to really scare me, anyway. She put me in school, even went to a few open houses. But, she got skinnier and skinnier and her hair lank and her eyes...” Dead. They’d been dead, long before she was. He’d looked into his mommy’s eyes and known.
“She really did that? Just left you alone?”
“She’d disappear. At first it was just overnight, but then she’d go for a couple of days. Sometimes a week, or even two weeks. She’d say, ‘Now you be good and go to school,’ but I wouldn’t. I’d just...huddle.”
Why was he telling her this? Quinn had no idea. Nonetheless, he finished the story, voice raw. “The last time, the police came instead.”
“Oh, Quinn,” Mindy whispered.
“Not what you’d call a stable childhood.”
“And I complained about my mother!”
“With good reason. Didn’t she understand that you might lose the baby if you didn’t have some help?”
“I don’t know if she wanted to understand.” Mindy bit her lip. “Because taking care of me would have been inconvenient.”
Quinn growled.
“I wish...”
When she didn’t finish, Quinn prodded. “Wish what?”
“Oh...” Her eyes shimmered. “Just that we’d been friends sooner, I guess. It bothered Dean that we weren’t.”
Yeah, it had. Quinn had known at the time how much Dean wanted his best friend and his wife to like each other, but Quinn hadn’t really tried. He hadn’t figured out yet why.
“I’m sorry, too.”
Both were silent for a long moment. Then Mindy said, “Maybe he knows. I mean, now. That...you’re doing what you can, and that we’re talking.”
“Talking?”
“Instead of just being polite.”
That’s what they’d done. They’d been civil for Dean’s sake to hide...what? He’d always believed it was disdain on his part, but now he wasn’t so sure. And for the first time, it occurred to him that she had never, even from the get-go, been as easy with him as she was with other people. He wondered why.
“You didn’t like me, did you?”
Her gaze shied from his. “I wouldn’t say...”
“Come on. We’re being honest.”
She took a deep breath and met his eyes again. Her cheeks were flushed. “Okay. No, I guess I didn’t like you.” Her forehead furrowed. “Although it wasn’t quite that. I mean, I didn’t, because you looked at me like... like I was a hooker Dean had brought home.”
Quinn winced.
Absorbed in untangling her recollections, Mindy didn’t seem to notice. “Somehow you always made me uncomfortable. I’m not sure that was your fault. Maybe—I don’t know—you reminded me of someone.” She gave a fake-sounding laugh. “Maybe you gave me a traffic ticket. I was actually a little scared of you, which I resented. So I suppose I was snippy to hide it.” She stirred. “We blew it, didn’t we?”
“Yeah, we did.” He gave her a wry smile.
“Why did you look at me that way?” she asked unexpectedly. “Did you think I was out for his money or something?”
He rolled his shoulders, feeling tension he hadn’t known was there. “No, it wasn’t that.” Then what had it been? he asked himself. “Dean always had a woman around,” he explained. “I hardly paid attention. They came and went.”
“Isn’t that normal for a bachelor his age?”
“Well, sure, but...” Quinn struggled for the right words. “He had a pattern. Until you came along. He’d fall in love. I mean, everyone around him would be rolling their eyes. She was all he’d talk about. There’d be this escalation as he courted her, and then maybe a couple of months of contentment once he had her. Then...” He shrugged. “His interest would wander. She wasn’t exciting anymore. Suddenly, someone else would be. The last woman was gone, he was in love again. It was as if he needed that first excitement.”
“The way he always wanted new things,” Mindy said slowly. “He’d only had his pickup truck a year when he decided he had to have a new one. He needed an extended cab, he claimed. He lost so much money when he traded the last one in. I tried to argue, but it was like he didn’t even hear me. He wanted that truck. He spent weeks doing nothing but reading reviews of pickups.”
So she’d noticed. “With women, it was pretty much the same. He coveted, he was flushed with triumph when he got whatever it was he wanted, and then he was bored with it. Or her. After a while, I quit taking him seriously when he claimed to be in love. Then, out of the blue, he announced that he was marrying you.”
“And you thought...”
“That you were holding out for a ring,” Quinn said bluntly.
“Thus the scathing way you’d look me over.”
For the second time in this conversation, he winced. “I didn’t realize I was that obvious.”
“It never occurred to you that he might really be in love?”
“I guess in a way I wasn’t sure he was capable of it. Not the ‘till death do us part’ kind.”
She challenged, “So you would have looked at any woman he married the same way.”
What did she want him to say? I didn’t think you were up to his weight?
“I thought you were too young.”
“You mean too shallow, don’t you?” Eyes spitting fire, she struggled to sit up again.
There she was, shaped like a pygmy goat, in her flannel pajama bottoms, a white T-shirt cut like a tent and decorated with a spot of pizza sauce, her hair disheveled, and she was fighting mad.
Before he could answer, she snapped, “Well, did it ever occur to you that Dean was shallow? I loved him, but, honestly, the man didn’t even read the newspaper! He didn’t care about world events, or politics, or ideas. He didn’t want a wife with any depth! I didn’t know...”
With a small gasp she stopped, as if she’d said something she hadn’t even known she was thinking.
“Are you saying you fit the bill?” Quinn paused, then finished with quiet intensity, “Or that you didn’t?”
She struggled the rest of the way upright. “I loved him! I did!”
But maybe, Quinn diagnosed, she wouldn’t have kept loving Dean. Maybe she would have gotten bored. And right now, she didn’t want to believe that.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“No, it’s not!” Using the arm of the couch, Mindy pushed herself to her feet. “I shouldn’t have said something I didn’t mean. It’s you,” she said with venom. “You always goad me. I don’t know why.” Tears sparkled in her eyes. “Good night.”
“Mindy...” Feeling sick, he rose, too.
“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” She gave him a last look, full of grief and knowledge she couldn’t evade and hatred because he was the one to trigger unwelcome awareness. Then she walked out and a moment later he heard the bathroom door open and close.
Alone in the living room, he closed his eyes and let the wave of self-revulsion crash over him.
&nbs
p; CHAPTER TEN
MINDY LAY AWAKE staring at the dark square of window. She napped in snatches all day, making it harder and harder to fall asleep at night.
And tonight... Oh, she’d been awful to Quinn! Mindy punched her pillow. He hadn’t said anything, only asked a simple question.
Are you saying that you fit the bill? Or that you didn’t?
Squeezing her eyes shut, she saw her big, lanky husband with his easy grin and disarming freckles. He was strong, funny, gentle and ambitious. So, okay, she’d begun to notice that his interests were pretty limited, that he just didn’t care about anything outside his immediate sphere. Well, so what?
She moaned and turned her face into the pillow. Quinn hadn’t implied a thing. She was the one to freak when she heard what she’d said. She hated knowing she had started to get bored when Dean had gone on and on about the riding lawn mower he’d decided he needed despite the fact that their yard wasn’t big enough to justify it, or the fishing trip she’d skipped, or which player’s RBI was awful this year. She’d give anything now to go back and really listen instead of going, “Uh-huh,” while continuing to read the newspaper out of the corner of her eye.
She’d never thought Dean was dumb, or less than her intellectual equal. Look at the business he’d started! How many small businesses succeeded on the scale Fenton Security had?
But his tastes had been so different from hers. He’d liked shoot-’em-up movies with flashy special effects or long chase scenes. Sports. Any sport. Whatever was on TV was okay. He could get excited about curling if that was all that happened to be on.
From the time she was little, her dad had taken her to exhibits at the Seattle Art Museum or funny little foreign films, or they’d gone for the whole day down to the Seattle waterfront, visiting the aquarium and then spending two hours at the Elliott Bay Bookstore. She’d loved climbing in the castle in the children’s room at the bookstore when she was really young, and then reading in it when she got older. Her dad had bought her books, subscribed to magazines for her. Dean hadn’t read anything but Sports Illustrated and the sports page.
Her mother hadn’t been much of a reader either—another of the mysteries of why her parents had gotten married in the first place and then had stayed together. Mindy had loved college, where she had friends to talk to about books and art and the odd things she sometimes wondered about. She’d kind of thought that marriage meant having somebody to talk about those things with forever.
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