37 Peases Point Way

by Katie Winters

  “I just want to go rest, I think,” Mandy said.

  “You should take the book with you,” Amelia said.

  “I don’t know. I don’t want Dad to see it,” Mandy returned.

  Amelia insisted on driving Mandy back home. From the car, she waved to Daniel, who spoke to someone on the phone and was therefore too busy to see the forlorn face of his eldest as she slipped past him.

  Back at home, Amelia sat on the couch and glared at the baby book. Several words Mandy had read continued to play out in the back of her mind. Finally, she lifted the book and began to read back some of the symptoms — nausea, fatigue, breast tenderness and pain.

  It couldn’t be. It really couldn’t be.

  Amelia grabbed her phone and called Jennifer. She answered on the third ring.

  “Hey, babe. What’s up?”

  Amelia bit hard on her tongue and then found the words.

  “Do you think I could be pregnant?”

  Jennifer laughed aloud. “Um. What?”

  Amelia splayed her hand over her chest to feel the steady thud-thud of her heart. “I have all the symptoms. Of a pregnant woman, I mean. And I don’t think I got my period. Actually, I’m sure I didn’t.”

  “But you hardly ever, you know.”

  “But I did—over a month ago. Remember? Walk of shame and all that?” Amelia said.

  “You did do the deed. That’s for sure.” Jennifer paused for a moment, then asked, “Didn’t you use protection?”

  Amelia thought back to that crazy impulsive, frantic, strange night with Nathan Gregory. She remembered something, a conversation about protection. And surely, they’d used something. They definitely had. One time, at least.

  “We did. I think the first time,” Amelia said.

  “But how many times...?”

  Amelia didn’t answer. She’d entered full-on panic mode, now.

  “All right, hun. Wow. Okay.” There was the sound of a printer, maybe the one at the bakery that printed receipts; Amelia could practically see Jennifer at the register, her eyes wide with this sudden, potential news. “I’m leaving the bakery right now. I’ll pick some supplies up on the way.”

  “Probably it’s just in my head,” Amelia said. “It’s totally not possible.”

  “Right. It’s probably in your head,” Jennifer returned. “Like when Mila thought she was pregnant after making out with a guy too much our sophomore year.”

  Amelia chuckled, then hung up the phone and wrapped her arms around her chest with panic. She fell to the side and stared at the blank glare of the television. Maybe if she’d had even a bit of sense, she would have turned the thing on, just to take her mind off of things.

  When Jennifer arrived, she just walked through the front door like she owned the place. Amelia needed that kind of authority just then.

  Jennifer placed several pregnancy test strip packages on the coffee table and then lifted up What To Expect When You’re Expecting. “Why do you already have this?” she asked.

  Amelia buzzed her lips. “It’s a long story.” Still, she wouldn’t tell anyone Mandy’s secret.

  “Well.” Jennifer splayed her hands across her thighs. “All I can say is this. You can lay there on your couch, freaking out all night long if you want to. Or, you can take one of these pregnancy tests and find out the truth.”

  “You’re always so logical, Jennifer,” Amelia said as she rose up and gripped one of the tests.

  “Actually, I’m not. You’re normally the one who’s logical,” Jennifer returned.

  Just before Amelia entered the bathroom, Jennifer stepped up behind her and added, “Amelia. Wait.”

  Amelia turned around and gazed at her dear friend, bleary-eyed. “Yeah?”

  Jennifer furrowed her brow. “You know that no matter what happens, we have your back. Right? Regardless if it’s positive or not and what you choose to do afterward.”

  Amelia let a single tear fall. “Thank you for being here today.”

  “Anytime, babe. You know, I never thought the great Amelia Taylor would have a pregnancy scare.”

  “And yet, here we are,” Amelia said as she slipped the door closed.

  After Amelia peed on the stick, she shoved the cap over it and wrapped the entire thing in toilet paper. She then stepped out into the kitchen in a panic while Jennifer practically chased after her.

  “Two minutes!” Jennifer called.

  But when two minutes passed, Amelia didn’t have the strength to look at the thing. She sipped a glass of water and felt the frantic beating of her heart.

  “You know, the longer you make yourself wait, the worse it’s going to be,” Jennifer said.

  “But right now, I’m in the middle,” Amelia reasoned. “Everything is possible and impossible right now.”

  “And I’m starving. If you don’t want to look at the pregnancy test now, then I have to insist we order a pizza in the meantime,” Jennifer said.

  Amelia scrunched her nose. “I can’t imagine eating anything right now.” She then pushed the pregnancy test across the counter and said, “Will you look? Please?”

  Jennifer’s lips formed a circle. “Are you sure you want me to know before you?”

  “The thought of looking right now makes me want to throw up.”

  Jennifer heaved a sigh, grabbed the pregnancy test, and turned around so that Amelia couldn’t see her. Amelia strained to get some guess of the results from Jennifer’s shoulders, but Jennifer gave almost no sign with her body. The silence stretched between them, so much so that Amelia thought her heart would explode.

  “Well?” Amelia demanded.

  When Jennifer turned back, her eyes shone with tears. They were earnest tears, tears of happiness and the impossible joy of the new. Amelia felt it, deep in her gut, this time.

  Against all odds, she was pregnant.

  Jennifer placed the positive stick on the counter between them. She then reached across and gripped Amelia’s hand, even as it shook.

  “You are going to be the best mother of all of us,” Jennifer said softly. “This baby is so lucky to have you.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The following morning at her office computer, Amelia did something she hadn’t done for weeks: She Googled Nathan Gregory. The first results were all linked to him and not some other Nathan Gregory, which told her just how important and rich he was. She clicked through his website and then found a number of photographs of him, all taken at various high-roller functions. In each, he wore that smile that seemed very similar to a sneer, and his eyes seemed to reflect the feeling that he was much, much better than you and he couldn’t wait to prove just that. She was sure that if she looked up the word “arrogant” that his picture would be right there.

  Still, the genes were strong. Amelia couldn’t shake that thought. It would be a big test of nature versus nurture: could she raise an upstanding, kind, and generous individual, even when he or she looked like a god or goddess?

  That moment, Oliver Krispin appeared in the crack of her door. With a sudden smack, Amelia closed her computer and blinked at him, wide-eyed. She knew she acted like a crazy person; she just couldn’t help it.

  “Hey!” he said. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  “What’s up?” Amelia said. She tried to smile but felt her cheeks failing her.

  “I wondered if you were ready? We were going to meet up with that contractor and then head over to the site?”

  Another version of Amelia would have never, ever, not in a million years, forgotten something like this. But this was pregnant Amelia, and apparently, pregnant Amelia had very different rules.

  “Of course,” Amelia replied as if everything was normal. “Let me just grab my jacket.”

  Oliver drove them out to the site. Throughout the drive, he spoke about how beautiful Martha’s Vineyard was in the spring, that you could feel the excitement as it bubbled forth, with everyone looking toward summer and all summer would be. Amelia, who would have n
ormally been a sucker for this kind of conversation, hardly had anything to say in response.

  “I do love summer,” she finally said, after a strange moment of silence.

  “You feeling okay?” he asked as he parked the car off to the side of the grounds he’d purchased.

  “Yeah. I just had a little stomach bug this morning. Sorry,” Amelia said.

  “We can reschedule this meeting if you want to,” Oliver said.

  Amelia’s heart swelled. It was such a tender thought that someone wanted to go out of their way to make things more comfortable for her. But she shook her head. “No way. We’re already here, and we need to stay on schedule.”

  Throughout the meeting with the contractor, Amelia could feel Oliver’s eyes upon her. They both took notes, and both asked relevant questions, but to Amelia, there seemed something else between the two of them, something that simmered in the air. When she checked her notes, as the contractor left the site, she was surprised to feel as though she hadn’t been the one to write them. It was like she hadn’t been there at all.

  “Want to walk the grounds?” Oliver asked when they were alone.

  Amelia nodded. Her throat felt suddenly too tight, although she had managed plenty of conversation with the contractor. As they walked toward the water, her heart thudded, and her mind paced back to that night when they’d been at the diner and she’d thought, in some back alley of her mind, that maybe, just maybe, she had a real crush on Oliver Krispin.

  Now, she was pregnant with another man’s baby and she wasn’t totally sure what to do with her attraction for this man. Probably, she should put it to bed. He certainly was way out of her league, that was for sure.

  At the water, Oliver turned back and spread his arms wide. “Can you visualize it?” he asked. His voice was wistful.

  Amelia blinked several times and tried to imagine it: the resort that Oliver had helped design, the world that would blossom before them. It would be an ecosystem that merged the natural surroundings with a beautiful pool, a swim-up bar, a restaurant overlooking the water, all attached to the moderately-sized resort, with its high Roman columns and its beautiful bay windows.

  “It’s certainly going to be something special,” Amelia said.

  Oliver dropped his hands to his sides and turned his green eyes toward hers. “I’m so impressed with how quickly everything has gone since you got back to work. Some of that red tape you knew how to handle blew me away. I would have collapsed on the ground crying mid-way through.”

  Amelia chuckled sadly. “If there’s anything I know my way around, it’s red tape.”

  “You’re a strong woman,” he said. “That’s for sure.”

  “And you have an eye for architecture,” Amelia said. “We make a pretty good team.”

  Oliver looked incredulous. She could practically see the compliment as it rolled around his mind. Before a moment could pass, he asked, “I don’t suppose you’d like to go to dinner again tonight?”

  “Oh, um.”

  “It’s just that, yeah, I love diner food. Apparently, I love it a lot more than I ever let on because I’ve been back to that diner twice since then. The jukebox is to die for.”

  “I agree,” Amelia said with a laugh.

  “But I’d like to take you out somewhere proper. Somewhere with real, linen napkins and fewer fried options.”

  Amelia knew she should say no. In fact, she felt the NO burst up from her stomach, then fall flat before it came out. She nodded somberly, as though she had just agreed to something much bigger than dinner for two. With every part of her body, she wanted to be with him; and beyond that, she knew that if she spent a night at home, alone in her thoughts, she might scream.

  Later that evening, Amelia dressed in a simple black dress and analyzed her stomach in the mirror. There wasn’t a single sign of a baby. In fact, she felt she’d lost a bit of weight, probably due to all the stress and vomiting. She donned some lipstick and then nearly jumped from her skin when the doorbell rang.

  “Pull yourself together,” she whispered.

  Oh, but there really wasn’t anything like being nervous on a date with a man you liked. At least, this is what Amelia discovered now, as she slipped into the passenger seat of his car and watched as he jumped into the driver’s side and revved the engine. Why was it that everything he did, now, made Amelia’s heart stir with gladness? It was such a problem, falling for someone. It would have been an enormous difficulty anyway, but now that Amelia was pregnant, she felt each wave of lust for him like a wave of panic.

  Eliminate. Your. Feelings. She told herself this, like a kind of mantra, and soon laughed at herself, as clearly, this kind of thing didn’t work.

  Before she knew it, Amelia found herself at-ease with him again. They sat across from one another at a favorite Italian restaurant of hers. Their table sat between two other couples, and the conversation bubbled and popped around them. Amelia said she had a headache and couldn’t drink wine, so Oliver decided to just have one glass with his pasta.

  “I can’t believe your sister-in-law just left like that,” Oliver said somberly. “She sounds awful.”

  “It really broke me up for a while,” Amelia returned as she stirred her pasta round and round her fork. “She was really one of my closest friends. I helped her raise the kids.”

  “Did she ever say anything about wanting to leave?” Oliver asked.

  Amelia shrugged. “She would say things here and there about, like, how exhausting it was to be a mom. Or that sometimes, she wondered whether or not she could have made it in the big city. But I thought all moms said stuff like that. Everyone is curious about lives they might have had if they hadn’t made all the decisions they made.”

  “Of course,” Oliver said. “But to leave your kids, just because of some idea...”

  “I know,” Amelia said. “But to be honest, her leaving made me so, so close with those kids. Jake and Mandy are my world. I don’t know what I would have done without them in my life all these years.”

  Oliver’s eyes glowed with intrigue. “I want to meet them.”

  Amelia laughed, surprised at his sudden answer. “I’m sure they’d like to meet you, too.”

  “But you said Mandy’s a senior? Probably she’s about to leave the island,” Oliver said.

  “Maybe. She hasn’t fully decided what she wants to do yet.”

  Amelia turned her eyes back toward her bowl. Despite thinking she hadn’t been so hungry, she’d managed to scrape down her alfredo to the very bottom, where the white sauce pooled up.

  “I’m jealous, though. That you have them,” Oliver said finally. “I’m sure they show you stuff about this new generation and this new world that I’ll never know or experience.”

  “You know, they do, sometimes. But the closer I get to them, the more I realize that nothing really changes. Not as much as we think it does,” Amelia said. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Although the problems never really get any easier.”

  Amelia had never had a more honest and beautiful conversation with a man in her life. Date or no date, whatever this was, she cherished it.

  Just past nine-thirty, Amelia gave herself away with a massive yawn. She smacked her hand over her lips as Oliver laughed aloud.

  “You don’t have to pretend to be awake around me. I know I’m boring,” he said, wearing a lopsided grin.

  “That’s really not it. I’ve just been so slammed with work. Hardly sleeping,” she lied.

  Oliver paid the bill and walked Amelia back to the car. As they went, his hand swept against her fingers, and she shivered with excitement. In the car, they didn’t speak, as though anything said would mean too much. Amelia felt like a silly teenager with a high school crush.

  Don’t even think about it, she told herself. You’re pregnant.

  But at the door, when Oliver said, “I had such a wonderful time tonight,” and Amelia lifted her chin, she wanted nothing more than what she got.

  A kiss. A beautiful, ear
nest, open, wonderful kiss.

  It was the kind of kiss that lifted her off the ground and told her good things could belong to her if only she reached for them.

  When their kiss broke, Oliver’s hands swept down her shoulders, toward her hands. He held them for a soft moment as he said, “You’re one of the bravest and most passionate people I’ve ever met.”

  After that, he left.

  Amelia crawled into her bed without bothering to get undressed. She played that same stupid Fleetwood Mac song from the diner, “Everywhere,” a few times on her phone as she stared into the darkness. She couldn’t dare to dream of this, even though this was all she wanted.

  It seemed impossible that suddenly, after so many years alone, she had been given a baby and a new love, all at once.

  But how cruel that she’d only be allowed to keep one.

  Still, she was grateful, if utterly sad.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Are you ready for this?” Amelia asked. She sat in the front of her car; as Mandy leaned back in the passenger seat, the sonogram lifted so that the light swept through the image of her kidney-bean sized baby. The doctor visit had been a roaring success; everything had seemed in-order, healthy, ready. And the doctor hadn’t given even a single word of alarm at Mandy’s young age. Instead, she’d said only, “Wow. You must be so excited. What a beautiful time,” which was exactly what Mandy had needed to hear.

  “I guess I’m ready to tell my dad that I’m a huge disappointment and will have a baby out of wedlock, the year after high school graduation?” Mandy asked as she placed the sonogram back on her lap.

  Amelia chuckled. “You do have a way with words. Maybe you should think about being a writer.”

  “I talked to Chelsea recently,” Mandy said then. “About maybe getting a shift at the diner for the spring and summer. Save up a bit of money until I have to, you know, succumb to the big-old belly.”

  “You don’t think it would exhaust you to be on your feet all day like that?” Amelia asked.