Take a Chance

by Simone Jaine

Just say it, he urged himself.

  “We didn’t use any protection last night,” he blurted.

  He looked at Jem to find her looking back at him decidedly unfazed.

  “Are you on the pill?” he asked.

  “No,” Jem said. She seemed to struggle with herself for a few moments before adding “I can’t get pregnant.”

  “How could you know something like that?” Eben asked.

  Jem bit her bottom lip. It was clear to Eben that she was uncomfortable explaining how she knew. He held her beside him snugly to let her know she had his support with whatever she said.

  Jem looked away and when she spoke she didn’t immediately come to the point.

  “Do you remember the dramatics Coco put everyone through when she came out here to help when Daisy was born?”

  Eben started idly twirling a lock of her hair around his finger.

  “That was something I doubt any of us will forget.”

  “After watching how she was when Jeremy was born and how she topped her performance at the time of Daisy’s arrival I decided I didn’t want her anywhere around me when my time came.”

  “That’s perfectly understandable.”

  “So I decided to do something to ensure she’d keep her distance.”

  She sounded so serious Eben wondered what on earth Jem could possibly do to have her social climbing mother not want to advertise the arrival of a grandchild among her friends.

  “I never told Coco about my engagement,” she said then turned her head to look Eben in the eye. “My plan was to have a baby first and get married afterwards.”

  Eben smiled. He could see Coco being unhappy about having an illegitimate grandchild. But he could tell there was more to this story.

  “So what happened?” he prompted.

  Jem decided to tell him the whole story.

  “Alan and I tried for close to a year then Toka got sick.”

  Toka was Jess’s father who had raised Jem, Jess and Freddie after he had objected to Coco leaving the children in boarding school for her convenience. He had died of stomach cancer half a year before Aidan was born.

  Jem had used her holiday allowance to visit Toka after the cancer had been first diagnosed. While she was there she had accompanied him to a hospital out-patient clinic where they learned the cancer had spread to other parts of his body and wasn’t treatable.

  Upon learning this, Jess, battling morning sickness, had travelled to his farm on the rural East Coast with Jeremy and Daisy to spend his remaining time together. Freddie arrived soon after, then later Jason had joined them, working remotely and travelling for work only when necessary. Eben recalled that Jem’s fiancé Alan had not gone.

  Jem carefully pleated a handful of sheet between her fingers.

  “When my holidays were almost up I knew I couldn’t go back to work, knowing I’d never see Toka again and I knew it would be unprofessional to ask for open ended leave when there was so much work to do so I drove back to Auckland to resign in person.

  “Although Alan was always on about me giving up work the moment I became pregnant, he was furious when I told him I was giving up my job to go and look after Toka for an undefined period of time.

  “I think he was angry about several things, Jem reflected. “Firstly, I had made the decision without consulting him which in retrospect was inconsiderate of me. I had also used up my holiday allowance which he had wanted to save for a trip overseas together.” Her hand fisted over her careful folding of the sheet. “But even so he shouldn’t have laid down the law and told me that my place was with him and not with a man who wasn’t even a blood relation and wouldn’t have included me in his will. As if that mattered! When his argument didn’t sway me he threatened to not support me financially until we were married which was stupid because I had more money saved than he had.

  “I couldn’t have even cared less about the money at any rate. I knew the doctors only expected Toka to live for another six weeks so I told him I needed that much time to say goodbye. Alan simply said no.

  Jem looked beseechingly at Eben. “How can you possibly accept being told “no” when you want to be with someone you love who has little time left?

  He hugged her against him firmly in support. Jem gave a sigh then continued.

  “It was then I realised he was testing his control over me and I knew then that if I married him he would choose to have me completely dependent on him and no better than Coco.

  “Our argument escalated and he demanded his ring back, probably hoping that I would give in. But I gave it to him and before he could throw me out I loaded up my car with my things which I left in Jason and Jess’s garage before I returned to stay with Toka.”

  “I have never regretted making that decision. Freddie joined Jess and I although he is no more related to Toka than I am. We all thought we would only have the expected six weeks with Toka but he battled and we were blessed to have him with us for almost two months. Then he died peacefully in his own bed early one morning with all of us around him. Being with him at that time was worth more to me than any future with Alan.”

  Eben used the tip of his thumb to remove a teardrop falling from her eye. Jem sniffed.

  “I ran into Alan at a conference about a month after getting back. In that short time he had married someone else and he took joy in telling me his wife was pregnant so it was obviously me with the problem.”

  Eben found his free hand clenching into a fist. If he and Alan ever crossed paths there would be trouble. Jem saw his fist and knowing what he must be thinking put her hand over his.

  “Alan’s not worth it,” she told him. “And at any rate I had the last laugh.”

  “How so?”

  “Freddie and I may not have been Toka’s biological children but we thought of him as our father and he treated us as such. When he died he equally left the three of us his share of the farm which we sold to a cousin and we also sold his budding pine forest for a healthy profit. The money was enough for Jess and Jason to have a decent deposit to build their house, me to easily afford the mortgage repayments on my apartment on my own and for Freddie to do whatever he does in style.”

  “So you told him this?”

  “Of course I did.”

  Jem smiled and Eben took the opportunity to kiss her briefly.

  “I wish I could have been there for that,” he said.

  “Yes, the look on his face as he realised what he could’ve gotten out of a divorce settlement was something worth having a camera for.”

  Eben held Jem’s chin so she faced him again.

  “He was an asshole and not worthy of you. I on the other hand...”

  Jem laughed as he wanted her to.

  Eben drew Jem onto his lap, getting excited when he saw she hadn’t put on her pyjama pants. He ran one hand up her thigh, once again skirting her centre with his teasing touch. He imagined her growing round with his child and the thought appealed to him.

  “I would be ecstatic if you ever became pregnant with my baby but I am just as happy to have you,” he said against her ear.

  “You can’t mean that,” Jem told him quietly. “Every man wants a little bit of immortality through a child.”

  Jem felt Eben shrug his shoulders.

  “I come from a big enough family and have enough nieces and nephews for it not to matter. We’d also have Jeremy, Daisy and Aidan. We’d get to be the fun aunt and uncle who take them out for a good time.”

  “But you’re the only son,” she argued. “The only one who can pass on the family name.”

  “I’m adopted,” Eben said bluntly. “After three daughters Dad didn’t want to risk another one. As much as Mum and Dad love me they won’t mind if I don’t have biological children. We could adopt.”

  Whoa, Jem thought. This sounds serious.

  Jem made a t for time-out with her hands then moved off his lap.

  “We haven’t even dated and you’re talking about having children together?”

&
nbsp; “We made love together,” Eben said. “Shouldn’t you do the honourable thing and marry me?”

  Jem picked the pillow up from behind her and hit Eben over the head with it.

  “Do you ask every woman you sleep with to marry you?” she asked, punctuating the words with thumps of the pillow.

  “No. You’re the first and only,” Eben said and when she paused in shock he picked up his own pillow and hit her back.

  The bedroom door opened and Daisy came in.

  “Did you like...? Oh! Can I play?”

  At the intrusion Jem stifled a shriek and slid under the covers. Her pyjama top wasn’t quite long enough to be G rated.

  Looking up she couldn’t decide whether Eben looked amused or disgruntled. He threw a pillow at Daisy.

  “Sure he said. Let’s knock sense into Aunty Jem.”

  Chapter 13

  About an hour later Jem was sitting at the breakfast bar indulging in her second hot chocolate for the day. The marquee sat like an unwanted UFO outside the window beside her and she was still amazed that Jeremy and Aidan had helped themselves to chocolate cake after eating the number of pikelets that Eben said he had given them for breakfast.

  The children were now obligingly carrying their toys to their rooms with the promise of being allowed to have “party” food for dinner. Eben had disappeared to buy snack food in case the catered meal wasn’t to their liking and as a bribe for good behaviour.

  Jem rolled the mug of hot chocolate between the palms of her hands and used the brief interlude while he was gone to mull over what he had said earlier. She had just decided that he couldn’t be considered serious when she heard the garage door rolling up.

  She took a final sip of her drink then rinsed the cup and put it in the dishwasher before going to help Eben carry everything in. He met her in the hallway with several reusable grocery bags hanging from his hands.

  “I think we have a problem,” he said.

  Jem followed him into the kitchen where he set the bags on the kitchen bench.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “The grass out the front is boggy from all the rain. I don’t think it would be a good idea to park cars on it tonight.”

  “I hadn’t even thought of that,” Jem said “Do you have any suggestions?”

  “Are the SS Petersens at home?” Eben asked.

  Sonia and Sam Petersen were Jason and Jess’s teenage neighbours. Their mother joked that she gave them the same initial to save overwriting name tags in their clothes when they were younger.

  “What do you have in mind?” Jem asked.

  “Maybe Sam and Sonia would be happy to make a few dollars being car valets and parking people’s cars along the side of the road.”

  “That’s a good idea, I’ll phone them,” said Jem.

  Her cell phone rang from her shoulder bag sitting on the breakfast bar.

  “I’ll be just a moment,” said Jem as she took the phone out of the room to answer it.

  On the other end was Garth Smith, the CEO of one of the companies expected that evening. His company was in the process of rapid expansion and Jem knew they had competition for the lucrative contract to provide their software. She found him open and easy to deal with and would be willing to do almost anything to have his company as a client.

  Garth came quickly to the point. “I apologise for leaving this to the last minute but we can’t attend the presentation as my mother-in-law has the ‘flu so we have no one to look after the children tonight.”

  Jem knew his wife Amy chose to be an at home mother and hadn’t worked as his PA since the birth of their daughter four years ago. With the recent arrival of twin boys whom she quickly calculated would be about nine weeks old Jem wondered what had happened to Amy.

  “Is Amy all right?” she asked.

  “No,” said Garth. “But it isn’t what you think. My PA had a family celebration to attend tonight and when Amy found out she offered to be her stand-in so that my PA could go to her family get-together. My mother-in-law was going to babysit for us and it is a shame she is ill because Amy had been looking forward to getting out of the house. It would have been great for us to have an evening out discussing something other than children for a change.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” Jem told him as she crossed her fingers. “There will be other children here tonight so we have hired a responsible baby sitter to look after them. You are welcome to bring your three; the more the merrier. I’ll even set up a portable cot in the guest room so all you need to bring are their special blankets and the usual baby things.”

  “Are you sure it won’t be too much trouble?” asked Garth.

  “Absolutely not,” said Jem with conviction. “So will we see you tonight?”

  “Yes. Thank you for doing this for us. I’m looking forward to seeing what Sachs Wall has to offer.”

  After they said their goodbyes Jem slid the phone into her shoulder bag and looked at her crossed fingers.

  “I’m just popping next door to ask the SS Petersens for their services tonight,” she told Eben as he removed two different flavours of ice cream from one of the bags.

  “I thought you were going to phone them,” he said.

  “I thought the personal touch would be better and it’ll be harder to turn me down while I’m clinging to their legs begging.”

  Eben laughed.

  When Jem returned she found Eben in the marquee. He noticed she was looking a lot more relaxed than she had been when she left.

  “Did everything go okay?” he asked as he unfolded table legs and snapped them into place.

  “Even better than I hoped,” said Jem as she took one end of the table and helped him set it upright. “Sonia was a little reluctant until I said that she could sit on Aidan if she had to and the baby twin boys clinched it. I don’t think she realises they’re too little to do much other than sleep.”

  “Twin boys?”

  “Yes. That was Garth Smith, a prospective client on the phone earlier. He was intending to cancel because his wife was going to come as his PA but their babysitter is sick. I told them we’d have someone to look after the children and to bring them too. I just felt trying to get their contract would be worth a few concessions,” she explained.

  They set up the second table and Jem fished in a box for tablecloths. She waved them with her hand.

  “Do you think I am tempting fate by putting these on now?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Eben. “What about Sam? Is he happy to be the car valet?”

  Jem set the tablecloths back in the box and moved to help Eben set up the next table. He had been busy in her absence and it was the last one to do.

  “Sam is rather excited about it. He only got his restricted licence a few weeks ago and is keen to practise his hill starts.”

  “He’ll certainly get good practise here,” said Eben as they turned the table upright. “Do you think he will be okay on his own doing this?”

  “That’s the good news,” Jem told him as she started unstacking chairs to go around the tables. “A couple of his friends were over and they were keen to help. They don’t even want to be paid as they think it’ll be great driving expensive cars up and down the street.”

  Eben started unstacking chairs too so Jem began placing them around the tables.

  “Do they have their licences?”

  “I’m sure they do,” Jem said “But we’ll check before we let them get behind the wheel.”

  “It was rather cute really,” she said, leaning on the remaining stack of chairs. “The boys were talking about wearing similar clothes to look like they had on a uniform. Crash wanted to have black jeans...”

  “Crash?”

  “He had trouble learning to ride a bike and the name stuck. I think his real name is Simon so we can call him that tonight.”

  “Might be a good idea,” said Eben wryly.

  Daisy came into the marquee carrying her kindy bag.

  “Aunty Jem! Ther
e’s a note in my bag to give to you.”

  Jem went to Daisy, unzipped the bag’s big pocket and fished out Daisy’s lunchbox which was blocking the view of the interior.

  “I must have forgotten to check your bag because Mark turned up,” Jem said and rattled the lunch box. “Hmm. Sounds like something you wouldn’t want to eat now.”

  She reached into the bag again and pulled out a knotted plastic supermarket bag filled with something green, sparkly and squishy.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Playdough!” Daisy exclaimed happily. “They make it new on Monday and on Friday someone good gets to take it home. This week it was me!”

  “I’m glad that you have been a good girl at kindy,” Jem replied as she dropped the playdough back into the bag.

  She put her hand in the bag again and extracted a piece of paper. Jem skimmed over the contents.

  “It says here that I need to check you for head lice as kindy have had a few cases.” Jem looked at Eben. “What do I look for? What do head lice look like?”

  Eben shrugged.

  Just thinking about head lice made her head itchy. She caught herself bringing her hand up to scratch her head and lowered it. Jem sighed. With everything else to be done the last thing she wanted to do was sort out head lice.

  She removed the hardened sandwich from the lunchbox, went outside and threw it onto the lawn for the birds. At least the weather was finally nice, she thought distractedly.

  “Daze, come out into the sun so I can take a look,” she called back into the marquee.

  Daisy obediently came to her side and looked a little anxious as Jem repeatedly parted her hair to look at her scalp.

  “I think you have a bit of dandruff,” she told Daisy and tried to brush out white specks with her fingers but they refused to budge from Daisy’s hair.

  “That’s funny,” said Jem, then startled when she saw a speck near the colour of Daisy’s hair move across the part she had made.

  “It looks like you have them,” she said regretfully, pulling her hands away.

  Daisy’s bottom lip trembled as she looked up at her aunt.

  “I don’t want head lice,” she said and burst into tears.