“Pregnant?” The word echoed. “You’re pregnant?” Dumbly he looked at her stomach.
She felt a touch of hysteria.
“I didn’t plan for us to happen. I didn’t expect it at all. I didn’t think pregnant women were capable of feeling the things you make me feel.”
His eyes met hers. “You’re pregnant?”
Her heart was in her throat. She tried to swallow it down, but it stayed right there. So she simply nodded.
“You kept that from me, too?” His deep voice was leaden with disbelief. “Didn’t feel it was relevant either? Did you think it’d just go away?”
He made it sound so absurd that she felt doubly the fool for not telling him sooner.
“I didn’t expect us to last. What we had was just physical. By the time it was more, I was feeling like a fraud. I wanted to tell you. I kept telling myself to do it.” Her voice shrank. “I’d have told you soon. I wouldn’t have had any choice.”
Astonished still, he looked at her breasts, then her waist. Then he pushed a hand through his hair and looked away. “Shit.”
“It won’t affect you, Judd,” she said quickly. “If anyone thinks it’s yours, I’ll set them straight.”
He strode to the window and looked out over the harbor.
She raised her voice to carry across the room. “Carl doesn’t know. I don’t know how to tell him without putting a wedge between Hailey and him. My father doesn’t know, either. He wanted me to marry Carl. He’ll be disappointed. Then he’ll tell Carl, and then Carl’s parents. It’ll be a mess.”
She hadn’t planned to say all that. Judd wouldn’t have any answers. He barely knew the people involved, and besides, it wasn’t his problem.
But she didn’t know what to do. She needed help.
He continued to stand at the window with his hands on his hips and his back to her. She could see the tension in his shoulders and wanted to cry.
A final time, she tried to reach him.
“The best thing seemed to be to leave Baltimore, and there was Norwich Notch, just waiting. The timing was perfect. I was sure that meant something. So I packed up and moved. No one knew me there. It was like a haven. I found the farmhouse and bought the Pathfinder. I met you and Donna and Hunter. I figured that I could give birth to my baby and find out who my birth parents were, and then decide what to do and where to go at the end of the year.” Her voice crinkled and shrank. “I never meant to deceive you. I didn’t tell you the first time, because I wanted you so badly. Maybe I was wrong. But I’m not sorry. I’m sorry you’re hurt, but I’m not sorry for the time we’ve had. I’d do it again, Judd. I’d do it again in a minute, if that was the only way to have what we’ve had. It’s been good.”
Her voice caught. Afraid she would burst into tears, she left him alone in the living room, which was where he spent the night. He was silent through the return trip to Norwich Notch, dropped her at Boulderbrook, then went on home. At least, she assumed he went on home. She didn’t know for sure. He didn’t come to her that night or the next, and he didn’t stop by the office in between. Then the weekend came. It was endlessly lonely. By Monday morning she was beginning to regret she’d ever set eyes on Judd Streeter.
Fifteen
Chelsea knew his footsteps. She had heard them coming toward her in the dark of night over the planked floor of her bedroom often enough to recognize their sound on the spiral stairs. Stay cool, she told herself. Still, her senses came alive.
“Uh-huh,” she said into the telephone. “That’s right. It’s top-quality white granite, and yes, we can produce the amount you need.” Judd’s dark head came first, then broad, chambray-covered shoulders, a lean torso, hips and legs gloved in denim. “Why don’t you come up and take a look? We’re having an open house on the weekend of September fifteenth, but the quarries are operational six days a week. You’re more than welcome to come whenever.” She held up a finger to Judd. Her eyes lingered on his tall frame when he went to the far window. “If you’d like specifics, I’ll have our foreman give you a call. Why don’t you give me your number.” She jotted it down, wrote “Judd” at the top, and underlined it twice. “Alex Lappin is a fine developer. I’m flattered by his recommendation.” Judd tucked his hands in the back of his jeans. She wasn’t sure what that meant. “The pleasure is mine.” Her own palms were damp. “I’ll look forward to it.”
She hung up the phone, flattened her hands on her middle, and sat back on the chair. When Judd didn’t turn, she said, “That was a man named Phillip Bundy. He’s an architect from Hartford. He’s been hired to design the first of a series of megabanks, the rebirth of several failed banks now merged into one. He’s interested in the white from Haskins Peak. He’ll be giving you a call.”
Judd hung his head. She wasn’t sure what that meant, either.
Anxious for him to know that she wasn’t angry, that she could understand if he didn’t want to touch her again, that what had happened between them wouldn’t affect the business, she said as brightly as she could, “I also heard from the Roskins Group. They want prices for a resort they’re putting up on Cape Elizabeth.”
“Why a resort in this economy?” Judd asked in the kind of impassive voice that she’d first known him for—which meant that they were back to square one in their relationship. She deserved it, she knew. Still, her heart fell.
Needing greater effort to produce that bright voice, she said, “People want to travel, just not as far as they used to. Cape Elizabeth is accessible. The facility is also being designed for conventions. Accessibility is a draw there, too.”
“Who’s Alex Lappin?”
“A friend. I worked for him after I graduated from college. When it was clear that I wanted to draw, he hooked me up with an architectural firm. I worked as a draftsman there before I went to design school.”
She waited for him to say something more. She needed his direction, some hint of his thoughts.
“What do you think?” she asked. “Will an open house work?”
He was silent. Then, “Never been done before.”
“But do you think it will work?”
Again he was silent. Then, “Depends on who comes.”
She sighed. Unable to help herself, she said, “Ahhh. We’re in our Norwich Notch mode of speech. Y’know, I can understand why tradition is so big here. It would require such an effort to produce the words to express something new that by the time the words were out, the idea would be passé.” More softly she said, “Talk to me, Judd.”
He made a strangled sound and shook his head. She was about to take that as a refusal when he muttered a bewildered, “Why didn’t I see it? Your breasts are full. So’s your waist.”
“Many women have full breasts and not-so-narrow waists. You didn’t know me before. You had no basis for comparison.”
He shook his head again. “I should have seen it.”
“You were too close.”
“You never had a period. I should have questioned that.”
“We haven’t been together every night. Last time I was in Baltimore, I was gone for three nights. For all you knew, I had my period there.”
He turned then, an imposing figure silhouetted by the window, and in a tight voice said, “Were you planning to tell me it was Carl’s?”
“Of course! The problem was telling you I was pregnant at all, not that it was Carl’s. I’m not ashamed of what Carl and I did. We were trying to make something work, with the absolute best of intentions. All things considered, I had more business being with Carl than I had being with you.”
His gaze was relentless, his eyes hard as stone. “You could have let me think it was mine.”
“I’d have gotten too fat too fast. The baby is due at the beginning of February. You’d have known.”
“Babies have been known to be born prematurely.”
She followed his thinking and shook her head, appalled. “I would never have led you on that way. I’m not looking for a father for my child. I do
n’t want one. I don’t need one. I have the time and means to raise a child. I also have the desire.” She gave a short laugh and grew momentarily introspective. “That was the biggest surprise, I think. All these years I haven’t wanted to have children. Then the doctor said I was pregnant, and suddenly the idea that I would have something alive, my own flesh and blood for the very first time in my life, was so . . . comforting . . . that I knew that even if the baby came out with all sorts of congenital problems, I’d want it.”
“Which opens a whole other can of worms,” Judd announced, and came toward her reeking of anger. “What gives you the right to come up here saying you’re one thing and being another? Why the games? Have you gotten your kicks pulling a fast one on us? Does it tell you you’re smarter than we are? Or better?”
She held his gaze. “No. All it says is that I want to know who I am and where I’m from, but that I don’t know how to go about learning all that.”
“Why don’t you just ask?”
“Who? I was born here thirty-seven years ago and given up for adoption. That’s no easy thing for a mother to do.” She opened her hand on her stomach. “I can’t even feel this baby moving yet, but if I were to carry it to term, give birth to it, and then never see it again, I’d be crushed.” The thought alone brought tears to her eyes. “People don’t give up flesh of their flesh because they want to. They do it because they have to, and there’s almost always pain involved.”
“How do you know?” he demanded.
“I know because I’ve read nearly everything that’s been written on the subject,” she said, feeling suddenly stronger. No one could accuse her of not doing her homework or, worse, halfheartedly espousing the cause. “What I don’t know is why my birth mother had to give me up and what kind of pain she suffered in the process. I don’t know if she was single or married, young or old, rich or poor. I don’t know if she was hidden away in the Corner, had her baby in secret, then squirreled it off with no one the wiser—or if she was tarred and feathered, or made a pariah, like Hunter’s mother—or if she was a Farr, Jamieson, or Plum who conceived out of wedlock, spent her pregnancy in a bedroom in one of the houses overlooking the green, then had me whisked off because I was an embarrassment to the family.”
Barely allowing for a breath, she said, “Where would you have me start asking? People don’t hand over private information unless they trust you, and the Notchers aren’t quick to trust. I’ve been waiting for people to warm to me, but that isn’t happening. There aren’t any records of my birth, my father saw to that. The local lawyer who handled the adoption is dead, and the midwife was paid to be silent. All I know,” she said, spacing the words in frustration, “is that I was born in Norwich Notch. The only material thing that I have of my birth parents is a silver key that was sent to my mother years ago. There was no note, and there’s been no contact since. What would you have me do, hang that key on a string around my neck and wait for someone to claim it?”
“At the rate you’re going,” Judd said, folding his arms over his chest, “you could hang the queen’s jewels on a string around your neck and no one will notice. The only thing they’ll see is that belly of yours once it starts to swell. Do you have any idea what it’ll be like to be an unwed mother in Norwich Notch? It’d be one thing if you were from the Corner. People expect girls from the Corner to get knocked up. But here on the green? No way.”
Chelsea rose slowly to face him. If he wouldn’t understand, then he was no better than the townsfolk. She would fight them all, if she had to.
“What will they do,” she asked, “stone me? Set me up on a scaffold in the center of town with a scarlet letter on my breast? That won’t happen. I may have been born a nobody here and sent away for it, but I’m not a nobody coming back. This town needs me right now. Its fate lies with the granite company, and the granite company’s fate lies with me. If I’m treated poorly because I’m pregnant, I’ll turn around and leave.”
“And take a major loss on your investment?” Judd barked out a humorless laugh. “Come off it.”
“You don’t understand me at all, do you?” she asked, disappointed but not surprised. As intimate as they’d been physically, they had never shared hopes and dreams, loves and hates, highs and lows. “My driving force in life is not to make money. If it were, I’d devote full time to managing my portfolio, rather than spending endless hours at a drafting table. I draw because I love to draw. I love the challenge of creating a building. When I make financial investments, it’s for the challenge of it, too. I don’t need the money. I never have. Call that arrogant, if you want. Call it wasteful, or decadent. But if I were to turn my back on Norwich Notch today and lose every penny I’ve put into this project, I could live with the results. Can the same be said for the people who live here?”
“They didn’t ask for your money.”
“No. But without it, without the granite company, they’d be in dire straits.”
“You’re the local savior, then?”
“No. I’m just the one with the money. That gives me a certain amount of power.” She took a breath, whispered, “God, I hate that word,” and went on. “But it entitles me to do things other people might not do. Oliver, Emery, and George monopolize the barber shop every morning, and no one says boo. Hunter bombs around on the Kawasaki without being picked up for disturbing the peace. Jamieson girls win the Miss Norwich Notch contest every year, even though other entrants may be prettier and more talented. So Chelsea Kane is pregnant. That’s her right. Anyone who chooses to punish her for it better be prepared for the consequences.”
He stared at her for the longest time. She stared right back but saw no softening in him.
“Gonna announce that in church?” he finally asked, impassive of voice, derisive of meaning.
She stood taller. “If need be.”
“That’ll really win ’em over.”
“I’m not here to win ’em over. I’m here to find out who I am, to make something of the granite company, and to have my baby in peace.”
“You can’t buy people’s love.”
“Who said anything about wanting anyone’s love?”
“That’s what you want all right. You want to buy your way in here, make yourself into a local hero people adore, then tell them to screw themselves—all because some nameless, faceless woman dared to give you up for adoption years ago.”
“That’s not what I want at all!”
He made a scornful sound, turned on his heel, and left her wondering whether the depth of his hurt made him think so little of her or whether what he said was true.
DONNA KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG. SHE’D BEEN SENSING it in Chelsea for a week. On those days when they didn’t see each other at aerobics, Chelsea dropped by the store midmorning to say hello. Ostensibly she came for a bottle of Snapple Passion Supreme, but she always stayed to talk. Donna enjoyed those talks. She felt honored to be Chelsea’s friend.
But friendship implied a responsibility, and increasingly Donna felt she was shirking hers.
Something had happened in Baltimore. Chelsea hadn’t been as lighthearted since her return, and Donna couldn’t believe it had to do with the September open house she was planning. So, by week’s end, when Chelsea hadn’t said anything but seemed as burdened as ever, Donna broached the subject herself.
“Something’s bothering you,” she typed into the computer after she’d gestured Chelsea into the back office. Matthew was out front and wouldn’t be pleased, but Matthew was never pleased with what she did, so she had little to lose. “What is it?”
“I have to decide between a clambake and a barbecue,” Chelsea typed back. “I don’t know which one to do.”
Donna waved a hand in dismissal. “Something else is wrong,” she typed. “Is it your father?”
Chelsea shook her head.
“Will he come in September?”
“Probably not.”
Donna studied her face as it frowned at the computer screen. Kevin had b
een a problem for months. But the preoccupied look Donna saw was new. “Then it’s Judd,” she dared type.
Chelsea’s eyes flew to hers. For a minute she looked indecisive, as though not sure whether to admit to anything. Then, quietly, she said, “How did you know about Judd?”
With a sad smile Donna typed, “Norwich Notch is a small town. People see cars going places at night. Word spreads.”
“It was Hunter. Hunter talked.”
But Donna shook her head. “Hunter isn’t a gossip, but dozens of others are. Someone must have seen Judd turning in at Boulderbrook late on a night when he paid a sitter to stay with Leo ‘til morning.” At Chelsea’s look of distress, she typed, “It’s not so awful. Judd’s single. So are you. You’re a beautiful pair.”
Chelsea’s expression was suddenly so stricken that Donna felt a sharp fear. “What is it?” she asked aloud, not caring how bad her voice sounded.
The stricken look remained. Ater a minute Chelsea turned to the keyboard and began to type. By the time she stopped, she had filled the screen three full times.
Donna looked at Chelsea’s stomach. She couldn’t imagine a baby there, Chelsea was so slim. But her clothes wouldn’t tell a thing. She always wore loose dresses or large tops over leggings or shorts.
Then there was the other, actually the more amazing fact of the two. “You were born here?” She couldn’t imagine it, either. Chelsea seemed too refined to be of Norwich Notch stock.
“Thirty-seven years ago,” Chelsea said, looking exposed and frightened, “but the records have all been destroyed. I don’t know how to begin the search. Norwich Notch is a small town. There can’t be many babies born and relinquished, but it’s a touchy subject.” She paused, looked even more unsure. “You don’t remember anything, do you?”
The Passions of Chelsea Kane Page 27