“A temptation,” Hunter yelled back, “but not wise. Until that tree’s up, the Blazer is your only way back into town.”
Judd hadn’t thought of that. Vowing to replace Hunter’s boots if they were ruined, he plowed on as fast as the wind and the snow would allow. The farmhouse finally materialized like a large, lumpy animal in the beam of his flashlight. A bit nearer, he caught the faint glow of a light in the window. The sight of it gave him the strength to pick up his pace. Head bowed against the wind, he loped up the drive, then the front steps and across the porch. He barged through the front door in time to see Chelsea writhing on the sofa.
“Oh, God!” she cried in a burst of breath when the contraction finally subsided. She held a shaky hand out to Judd. “The baby’s coming!”
He was fast discarding snowy outer things—half of them falling on Buck, who ran around him excitedly—on his way to the sofa. “I knew it. I knew it. I had a feeling.” He hunkered down and took her hand. “When did it start?”
“Three hours ago.” She spoke in short spurts, still breathless from the last contraction. “It wasn’t supposed to happen so fast. The pains are coming every two minutes.” She held his hand to her throat and started to laugh and cry at the same time. “I didn’t think you’d make it, Judd! I was sure I’d be alone!”
Slipping an arm under her, he held her to his chest. “I’m here.” He smoothed a tangle of hair from her cheek. “Jesus, I knew. The minute it started snowing, I knew.”
“You were right about the manual. I should have read it. I tried to before, but I couldn’t.” She caught in a breath. Her stomach was tightening again. “Oh, hell. Another one.”
Judd laid her back on the sofa and put a hand on her stomach. “What can I do?”
“Be calm.”
“I am calm!”
“Be confident.”
“I am confident!”
“I knew you would be. You read the book.” She broke off and went with the pain, which rose and rose and crested at last, leaving her breathing in huge gulps and damp with sweat.
Through a blur, she saw Hunter lean in. “I’m going back for Neil,” he told Judd.
She grabbed his arm before he could move. Her eyes went wide in pleading. “Don’t! Stay here! I want both of you here!”
Incredibly, he touched her head. “You need Neil.”
“There isn’t time! Stay here, Hunter! Please!”
Hunter looked at Judd. “She needs Neil.”
Judd nodded. “Get the Blazer and go to Dunleavy’s. Catch Nolan if you can. He’ll get Neil. Then come back.”
“Don’t leave!” Chelsea cried, but he was already on his way. “He won’t get back in time, Judd!”
“He’ll get back.”
“I want him to see the baby born. I want you to deliver it and him to see it.” Now that the terror of being alone was gone, things were shifting in her mind. Survival was no longer the issue—Judd had read the manual. So she began feeling excitement. For the first time since starting labor, she felt the adventure of what was happening.
The next contraction was longer and stronger. Through it, Judd held her gaze, spoke softly, massaged the rigid wall of her stomach. “That’s it. You’re doing just fine.”
She wasn’t sure about that. The contraction didn’t want to end. It waned, then picked up again. She was feeling exhausted by the time it finally allowed her to rest.
Gently he said, “I’m going into the other room to get some stuff, okay?”
She didn’t like the idea of his leaving for a minute, but she knew he was thinking that it was now or never, the delivery was so advanced.
“Okay,” she whispered, and touched his face. “Thank God you’re here, Judd. Thank God you’re here. This baby is more yours than Carl’s, you know that, don’t you?”
“I know,” he whispered back. “I love you.”
“Me too—’ She scrunched up her face. “Damn it, damn it.” She tried to breathe evenly, but the pain was insidious. It circled her belly, pulling at every other part of her body, forcing the baby lower, then lower still. “I have to push.”
“Don’t push!” Judd shouted, and lowered his voice. “Not yet. Not until I look and see what’s happening, and I can’t do that until I get something spread on the floor. I need some goddamned sheets.” He was stroking the lower band of her belly, breathing right along with her until her body relaxed. “Are you okay now?”
“Go. Quickly.”
He left the room at a lope, Buck at his heels. She was at the tail end of another contraction when the front door opened. “Hunter?”
He dropped his jacket and gloves and kicked off his boots. “Nolan was back at the tree. Willem and his son are moving it, while he goes for Neil. Where’s the big guy?”
“Getting things from the other room.” She reached for his hand.
He let her take it. “Another one?”
“The same one, another one, they’re starting to blur.” She squeezed her eyes shut. Through the pain radiating around her middle, she said, “Piercing my ears was nothing compared to this.”
He made a sound that might have been a laugh.
Judd returned. “Hangin’ in there, babe?” he asked.
She was exhaling in short, shallow puffs. “Hangin’ in there,” he mumbled. His arms were loaded. He looked at the rug. “Can’t do it on this.”
“Why not?” Chelsea cried.
“It’s an Oriental.”
She laughed. She was in such incredible pain, but more excited than she’d ever been in her life. Her baby was about to be born, her own flesh and blood. She could feel it coming. Soon, so soon, she would see it, hold it. “On the Oriental,” she ordered. “It was Mom’s favorite. She would have wanted it.” She started to cry. “Nothing’s too good for my baby!”
Her hand tightened around Hunter’s. She let out an agonized groan. The pain was low, intense, and endless.
When it finally eased, Judd lifted her and set her on the bed of sheets on Abby’s Oriental rug before the fire. He put a pillow under her head and raised her nightgown.
“Ah, Christ, it’s here. Where the hell’s Neil?”
Chelsea laughed. She couldn’t help it. “I’m pushing.”
“Don’t.”
“Do you see the head?”
“It’s got hair.”
“I’m pushing.” She did just that with the next contraction. She felt the baby move lower.
Judd must have seen it and accepted that Neil wouldn’t make it; he suddenly regained command. “Get behind her, Hunter. Lift her, that’s it. Brace her back. Gravity will help.”
She panted when the contraction eased, then, clutching both of Hunter’s hands at her shoulders, bore down and pushed when a new spasm began.
“That’s it, babe,” Judd coaxed. “That’s it, a little more, it’s coming.”
The contraction ended. She gasped, wiped her temple with the back of Hunter’s hand, braced herself, and began pushing again.
“Here we go,” Judd said. “Push a little more, babe, just a little. Jeez, here it is.”
Chelsea knew the instant the baby’s head cleared the birth canal, like the popping of a cork, felt an immediate sense of relief. There was a low, deep slide inside her, then a tiny cry, then a louder wail, then Judd’s proud, “You got a little girl, hon. She’s teeny, but perfect.”
Tears slipped down Chelsea’s cheeks. She held out her arms, curving them around the tiny bundle Judd placed on her stomach. A baby girl. Chelsea’s own. She laughed and cried and touched her daughter, so that her fingers got in the way of Judd’s as he tried to towel her clean. And she was teeny all right. She was dark-haired and pink-skinned beneath all sorts of cheesy slime, but she was without doubt the most beautiful thing Chelsea had ever seen in her life.
Twenty-three
Neil arrived in time to clean things up and pronounce the baby as perfect as Chelsea already knew she was. By morning the snow had stopped and the road had been cleared an
d plowed, and though the lights wouldn’t be restored until the next day, Chelsea didn’t miss them. She had just about everything she wanted—a little girl to one day wear her mother’s ruby ring, Judd, even a steady stream of well-wishing Notchers who braved the still-slippery roads to bring food and drink and admire the baby.
Hunter hung around with a subtly proprietary air that Chelsea enjoyed. Donna hung around, too, alternately holding the baby and busying herself in the kitchen, often with Nolan. To Chelsea’s surprise, Oliver dropped by with Margaret, who stared and stared at the baby until Oliver led her off.
Judd was the best. From the start he gave baths and changed diapers and jumped out of bed at the baby’s first cry to bring her to Chelsea, and then he would sit and watch Chelsea nurse. Sometimes he asked questions, but often he watched in silence, at times such a somber silence that Chelsea would laugh.
“You look like you’ve lost your best friend,” she said once.
“No. It’s just beautiful. The closeness. That’s all.”
She leaned forward and kissed him over the baby’s warm head. As far as she was concerned, the beauty and the closeness included him. Much as she adored the baby, she wouldn’t be feeling such peace if it weren’t for Judd.
For however long it lasted, he was her family, because Kevin still wouldn’t come. She called him the instant her phone was fixed, and although she sensed he was pleased—and touched by the name she had chosen—he refused to commit to a trip north. She was hurt all over again, until Judd pointed out the progress she’d made. Kevin was talking to her. He had given her a powerful lead for work. And he hadn’t ruled out a future trip. All he asked for was time.
AFTER A MONTH, CHELSEA RETURNED TO THE OFFICE. JUDD set up a small cradle there, so that the baby could sleep while she worked.
Cydra, who had visited when the baby was two weeks old, had called little Abby’s birth a sign of good things to come, and Chelsea came to believe it. For starters, the Notch’s resistance to her seemed to have broken. With the baby as a conversation piece, people who might otherwise have felt at a loss for what to say suddenly had plenty.
Then the hospital project came through. Chelsea couldn’t have been more thrilled, for along with it came a lucrative contract for granite.
Then, at her six-week postpartum checkup, Neil gave her the go-ahead to make love. She had been waiting for it, but it wasn’t until that night, until she and Judd knelt naked with each other before the fire, on the same Oriental rug on which Chelsea had given birth, that the deepest meaning of it hit her.
She looped her arms around his neck and raised her face to his. “This is the first time.”
He manipulated her waist so that her breasts moved against his chest. They were still large and full, though her stomach had returned to its earlier flatness. Slipping a hand between them, he covered that flatness, then lowered his fingers to the curly hair between her legs. His breathing was slow, deep but unsteady in the way that would have told her of his arousal even if she hadn’t felt his erection.
“We’ve made love,” he said in the gritty voice that was so male, so needy.
“But with the baby between us.”
“Since the baby.”
“Not inside.” They had done it with their hands and their mouths, but this was the ultimate for her. “It’ll be the first time inside, just you and me. The first time with me not pregnant. The very first time.”
Judd was gentle as could be. He kissed her, touched her, and when she was hot and wet, entered her carefully. She let out a sigh of satisfaction to echo his groan and let herself stretch to feel him, just feel the power of him inside her. She was full to overflowing. She savored the moment. Life had never been as rich or as grand.
TOWN MEETING WAS AN INSTITUTION IN NORWICH NOTCH. IT always began on the second Tuesday evening in March and continued until the last of the town warrant articles had been addressed, preferably before mud season set in. As far as Chelsea could tell, there were no weighty decisions to be made this year. Town Meeting was, more than anything, a social event signaling the end of winter’s isolation.
This was her first and, in that, an initiation of sorts. She looked forward to it far more than she had either the Fourth of July or Labor Day, because now she had friends. And indeed it was great fun. Chelsea held Abby, who slept quietly. On her right was Donna, who quilted. Beside Donna was her sister Janet, who was doing the crossword puzzle from the Sunday Times. Ginny Biden was on Chelsea’s left with her own twelve-month-old, also asleep. Farther down the row, and in front and behind, there were other mothers with babies, other quilters, embroiderers, or knitters, women from town, women from the Corner, women from in between.
The men were across the aisle in a sexist split that would have irked Chelsea once but didn’t bother her now. She was comfortable sitting with the women. If she wanted to speak up in response to a proposed article, she could do so as easily from one side of the room as the other. Yes, there was something archaic about the arrangement, but it wasn’t without its humor. While the men paid diligent attention to Emery, who orchestrated such momentous happenings as his own renomination as moderator, the appropriation of three hundred dollars for new shovels for the Norwich Notch Sanitation Department, and the institution of a fine for those allowing their dogs to soil the town green prior to dances there, the women were more discriminatory. They chatted softly, kept busy with their hands, and generally put the importance of the subject matter into perspective.
Moreover, sitting with the women, Chelsea didn’t bat an eyelash when Abby woke up wanting to be fed. That didn’t mean she whipped out her breast, simply that she could play with the baby a little—with the help of those around her—until the crying became disruptive, at which point she sought the privacy of the town clerk’s office.
Abby was tucked warmly against her, suckling to her little heart’s content, when Hunter came through the door. He hadn’t been as distant since the baby’s birth. Chelsea liked to think that was because he had witnessed it. He had returned to his usual touch-me-not manner, and he held his hands off when she offered him the baby, but he looked at Abby plenty, with a quiet and intent curiosity.
Now he put both elbows on the counter and studied her.
“She’s getting bigger.”
Chelsea smiled and traced a perfect shell of an ear. Abby was still petite, but more beautiful by the day. She had large, wide-spaced eyes that were Carl’s hazel brown, a tiny turned-up nose, and, in place of the hair she’d been born with, a headful of soft auburn fuzz. Chelsea had managed to tie the thinnest pink ribbon in a tiny tuft at the top of her head. What with that, and her ruffled playsuit, she looked adorable.
“You like her?” Hunter asked.
“I love her. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” Besides Judd, Chelsea thought.
“Because she’s family.”
“Yeah.”
He straightened, dug into his pocket, and pulled out a small envelope, which he tossed onto the desk where she sat. “This is for you. Happy birthday.”
Chelsea blinked. “For me?” Smiling a bit self-consciously, she looked at the envelope, then at Hunter. “How did you know it was my birthday?”
“Your driver’s license. The date was easy to remember.”
“Because you’re a March birthday, too?”
He didn’t answer, just hitched his chin toward the envelope. “Take a look.”
She was tempted to tell him he’d have to hold the baby while she did, then took pity on him. He was uncomfortable with that idea. Besides, Abby was drinking away, her little cheeks flexing hungrily, her fingers doll-like on Chelsea’s breast. Chelsea wasn’t about to dislodge her.
She took the envelope with her free hand, opened the flap, and let its contents slide out. One look at the folded tissue paper and her heart skipped a beat. It skipped more than that when she unfolded the tissue, for lying there, slightly tarnished but otherwise intact, was her silver key.
Her eyes flew to Hunter’s. Excitedly she asked, “Where did you find it?”
He shrugged. “I found it.”
“Where? Who took it?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“Word went around that I was looking for the key. It probably passed through dozens of hands before I got it back.”
“Who gave it to you?” She could work backward, tracking those dozens of hands.
“It just showed up in my mailbox,” he said, which meant she had nowhere to start.
She felt the old familiar frustration, another thread of hope lost to another dead end.
Taking Abby from her breast, she put her to her shoulder and gently rubbed her back. In a discouraged murmur, she said, “Just showed up in your mailbox.” She gave a growl of disappointment, which frightened the baby, who started to cry. “I’m sorry,” she crooned, kissing her sweet-smelling head and rocking her gently, “I’m sorry.”
Abby forgave her with a delicate burp, which made Chelsea smile in spite of herself. A key was only a key. People were what counted. Abby was what counted most.
“Anyway,” Hunter said, “I just wanted you to have it.”
“Thank you,” Chelsea said sincerely. “I’m glad it’s back. And you were good to remember my birthday.”
He shrugged. “Did you celebrate?”
“Not with Town Meeting.”
“Maybe we’ll do it together next week.”
“Is that when your birthday is?”
“No.” Negligently he said, “Mine is today, too.” Before she could express proper astonishment, he was out the door.
CHELSEA TOOK THE STAIRS TO ZEE’S BARBER SHOP WITH DEtermination. She entered and closed the door behind her, and when four faces turned her way in surprise, she met them without a qualm.
George and Emery were at the window overlooking the green. Oliver was lying on the cracked leather chair, surrendering his stubble to Zee’s straight blade.
George looked at Emery. “You invite a guest?”
The Passions of Chelsea Kane Page 43