McTiernan sent flowers, a gesture of goodwill that surprised Mac, all things considered. Mac’s parents had shown up at the hospital, faces lined with grief over the loss and concern for Jane, but not even his mother could coax anything from his stoic wife. She remained as closed from him as if she were locked behind a wall of steel.
Six days after the miscarriage he took her back home to the house on Robin Hood Lane. Nancy must have come in while he was at the hospital, for the nursery had been stripped of the little stuffed animals and other toys they’d arranged along the built-in bookshelves in anticipation of the baby’s arrival. Despite the crib and bassinet and rocking chair over near the window, the room looked desolate and empty. It hurt him like a shot to the gut to see the place where so many of their hopes and dreams for the future had taken root, and while Jane changed into a nightgown and robe, he shut and locked the door to the nursery and pocketed the key.
This couldn’t be happening. Things like this didn’t happen to him. He’d skated through his entire life, making certain he was never left open and vulnerable like this. He and Jane had started with the highest of hopes; their whirlwind romance had been blessed from the first moment. Where was it written that things went wrong?
Let’s get the hell out of here, Janie, he thought, unable to erase the look of that empty nursery from his mind. Let’s pack up and head for Timbuktu or Tahiti. Everyone knew you couldn’t hit a moving target, and God knew, he’d been a moving target for a long, long time.
“There’s a casserole in the fridge,” he said when Jane made her way, wobbly as a colt, from the bedroom to the den. “Why don’t I warm it up? You could probably use a good meal after all that hospital food.”
She shook her head, dark hair fanning across her slender shoulders like a mourning veil. “I’m tired,” she said. “If you don’t mind, I believe I’ll nap on the divan.”
“I’m not much of a cook, but I can scramble a mean egg, Janie. Why don’t you let me—”
“No.” Her voice was harsh, brittle. A voice he didn’t recognize. “I’m fine. I just need to sleep.”
He watched as she walked away—back straight, that damn English stiff upper lip locked into place. He wanted to go to her, cradle her in his arms, ease her pain, and by so doing ease his own pain, but he was rooted to the spot, as much a prisoner of sorrow as she was.
Hold me, Mac, Jane thought as she curled up on the sofa alone. Please tell me everything will be all right, that you still care, that we’ll have other chances, other babies. Tell me that I still have a home, a family....
Talk to me, Janie, thought Mac as he smoked a cigarette and stared out the kitchen window. I didn’t want it to be this way. I wanted that baby as much as you did. We can try again. We can still have our family. Tell me we can still make it all turn out okay....
But Jane fell asleep on the sofa and Mac smoked his way through a pack of cigarettes, and with each day that passed, the silence between them grew deeper until neither one could remember how it had been before.
* * *
Nancy, however, remembered, and as the days passed, Jane was never far from her mind. Though why she should spend so much time thinking about the Englishwoman’s troubles when her own troubles with Gerry grew worse with each day was beyond her, but that was the way it was.
“Come on,” said Margie, with a melodramatic groan. “Are you going to bid or not? The school bus’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
Nancy stared at the cards in her hand. This used to be the highlight of her week, this card game, sitting around the table with her friends, talking about nothing and everything, while the world went by. Now it seemed empty, pointless. Pat’s back had started acting up again and she had to drop out once, a few weeks before Thanksgiving. Nancy had suggested they ask Jane to join the game. “After all, she’s a wonderful card player,” she’d said, ignoring Ginger’s snort of disapproval, “and it isn’t like she’s not one of us.”
But Jane wasn’t one of them, and in the end the bridge game was cancelled. Everybody knew that Jane didn’t fit in, even if Nancy didn’t. Ginger had made the situation crystal clear. It was bad enough that Jane worked at the newspaper, but now the whole neighborhood knew about Jane’s uncle, the socialist, and they treated Jane as if she had a contagious disease and needed to be quarantined.
And Nancy fell away with them. The kids, she rationalized. She just couldn’t do anything that would make life difficult for her girls. Being one of the crowd was so important at that age; being different meant being lonely. She wanted so much more for her children than that.
She put her cards face down on the table and stood up. “I’ll be back in a sec,” she said, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “I think I hear the baby crying.”
She disappeared down the hall, ignoring the whispers behind her. She couldn’t quite catch her breath; shame held her in its grip. The nursery was still and dark. Debbie lay on her tummy, arms and legs splayed in the froglike position all of her girls had loved. Nancy bent down and smoothed the strawberry blond curls, then placed a kiss on her daughter’s forehead.
She could hear the laughter of her friends drifting toward her from the kitchen, and she closed her eyes and leaned against the cool glass of the window. The ruffly dotted swiss curtains brushed against her cheek and she saw the curtains in Jane’s nursery, saw the crib and the bassinet, felt the love and the hope and the pain as clearly as if they were her own.
“Coward,” she said softly. She’d sent flowers and penned a note. She’d even slipped over to the house and packed away the teddy bears and stuffed dogs, but she hadn’t mustered up the courage to look Jane in the eye. She knew she could absorb Jane’s sorrow over the baby, but she didn’t know if she could absorb Jane’s disappointment in her.
A few houses down a woman her own age struggled with the loss of a child. If Jane could find the strength to cope with tragedy, what on earth was wrong with Nancy that she couldn’t find the strength to offer her friendship?
Where are you, Nance? Gerry’s words echoed inside her heart. I swear to God I can’t find you anymore.
Was she Pat, with the ready wit and quick laugh?
Was she Margie, always looking for the easy road?
Or, dear God, was she Ginger Higgins, suspicious and angry and willing to hurt others to maintain the status quo—even if the status quo might not be worth maintaining?
Mac told me you were a real fighter, Jane had said the day of her bridge party. The skepticism on Jane’s face had been painfully obvious.
You’re not the girl I fell in love with, Gerry had said, and for the first time Nancy understood exactly what he’d meant.
The old Nancy had vanished in a cloud of soapsuds, buried by the minutiae of daily living, gone but not forgotten. She’d been so busy trying to live her life according to someone else’s rules that she’d forgotten how to be happy, how to be kind, how to be the woman Gerry had married.
“It’s going to be a different world, Nance, once this war is over. The sky’ll be the limit,” Gerry had written in a long-ago letter.
“We’re able to do things our grandparents never dreamed of,” Nancy had written back. “Maybe one day we’ll even be able to fly to the moon! I don’t want us to become like everybody else, Gerry. I don’t want to live anyone’s life but my own. We’re special. Look at the crazy way we ‘met’. I just know we’ll always be special!”
Those words, and the emotions behind them, were as real to Nancy as the sound of her baby daughter’s breathing.
And that’s when it finally hit her that the lesson she was teaching her daughters was one of distrust and hatred and suspicion. She had been so busy building fences and drawing boundaries, which isolated her from new ideas and new experiences, that she had denied her children the right to make their own choices.
Being “different” had worked for Cathy and Johnny.
It had worked for her and for Gerry when the rest of the world laughed at their mailbox romance.
<
br /> It could work again. She knew it could work again if she could just find the courage to take that first step toward her husband and their future, toward finding the real Nancy Wilson Sturdevant, toward rebuilding a friendship that could be part of that future.
She whispered a quick prayer, then went out to tell her friends the card game was over for the day. She had more important things to do.
* * *
Gerry’s train was late. Nancy waited in the station wagon, tapping her fingers against the wheel while she watched her daughters in the back seat. The baby had finally dropped off to sleep, and she had warned both Linda and Kathy not to wake her up. “Just eat your cookies and be good,” she’d cautioned, not even feeling guilty that supper would be delayed. “We’re going to take Daddy for a little drive after work.”
The girls naturally thought a drive sounded swell, and they were on their very best behavior—and so was their mother. It had to work. Her plan was too wonderful not to work. Why, it had taken over an hour to dig up the map and figure out where the right place was. She knew what roads to take, where to park, how to tell him what was in her heart.
Certainly mending fences with her very own husband couldn’t be any harder than it had been to mend fences with Jane. The walk up to the Weavers’ front door had been the longest walk of her life. She wouldn’t have blamed Jane if she’d slammed the door right in her face. Nancy wasn’t entirely certain how she herself would’ve acted in a similar situation.
But, of course, Jane had done no such thing. The young woman was pale and drawn but still beautiful—and unfailingly gracious. She’d welcomed Nancy and the girls into her house and fixed them tea while Nancy struggled to tell Jane how sorry she was. Jane nodded, eyes downcast, and poured sugar into the teacups. There were no words to convey Nancy’s regret and it soon became apparent that none were needed.
“I’m going to the library tomorrow morning,” Nancy had said as she got up to leave. “W-would you like to come along?”
Jane looked at her as if trying to see into Nancy’s soul. “What would the neighbors say?” she asked, her voice light but sharp.
“I don’t care what the neighbors say. It’s what I think that counts, isn’t it?”
Jane’s smile was the best answer Nancy could have hoped for.
Now if Gerry was only half as receptive, she’d be home free.
“Close your eyes,” she said the minute he climbed into the car, grumbling over the fact that she wouldn’t relinquish the steering wheel. “We’re going for a ride.”
His brows lifted. “A ride? It’s suppertime.”
In the back seat their daughters giggled.
“Suppertime?” asked Nancy. “Don’t be such an old stick in the mud, Gerry. We can eat anytime.”
“What are you up to?”
She could barely suppress her grin. “The sooner you close your eyes, the sooner you’ll find out.”
Five minutes later she maneuvered the station wagon to a stop by a field south of the Sunrise Highway. The sun had set and a glittering field of stars twinkled in the sky. Their headlights provided the only other light.
“You can open your eyes now.”
Gerry, grumbling but good-natured, did as she ordered. “What the he—” He stopped. “I know, I know. Little pitchers have big ears.”
A surge of hope leaped to life inside her breast. There was still a chance. There had to be.
“Prime location,” she said. “Forty-five acres. Zoned for commercial property. Great spot for the right business.”
He stared at her. “You read the brochure.”
“I read the brochure.”
He gestured toward the untouched land beyond the car. “And this is—”
“The site you picked.” Swallowing hard against her nerves, she pointed off toward the right. “I think the movie screen would look swell over there, don’t you?”
He gathered her hands in his, forcing her to meet his eyes in the darkened car. “It’s risky,” he said, voice filled with hope. “The drive-in is a great idea, but it doesn’t come with any guarantees.”
“Life doesn’t come with any guarantees,” she said, feeling happier than she had in a very long time. “I think it’s time we took a chance.”
“I can’t do it alone, Nance. I’m gonna need your help.”
“Oh, Gerry,” she said, as tears filled her eyes. “I was hoping you’d say that.” They moved closer, words of love soft and quick between them as they went to kiss.
“I’m hungry,” Linda piped up from the back seat. “I want my hamburger.”
Nancy and Gerry broke apart like two guilty teenagers. “Later,” said Gerry with a smile meant for her alone.
She would be counting the minutes.
* * *
The first snow of the year came in mid-December.
“Be careful,” Mac had warned as he kissed her goodbye at the Wantagh railroad station. “That’s a snow sky if I ever saw one.”
“I’ll be fine,” Jane said, sliding over into the driver’s seat and adjusting the mirrors.
He started to say something, then apparently thought better of it. “I’ll call you at lunch. I might get out early.”
She nodded. “Don’t work too hard.”
“That’s one thing you don’t have to worry about.” He turned and disappeared up the stairs to the platform.
A few months ago Jane would have sat there until the train had come and gone, feeling a tug at her heart when the last car had vanished down the tracks. Now she welcomed the distance that separated Mac and her, because each time she looked at his beloved face she was reminded of all they had lost.
The house was quiet and still. She tossed her car keys down on the hall table then shrugged out of her coat and draped it over the back of an easy chair. The christening present for Cathy and Johnny’s new baby daughter, Christine, rested atop the coffee table, a lacy white receiving blanket with satin trim. It made her heart ache to look at it. She wondered if the pain of her loss would ever lessen or whether she would go through life feeling as if her heart had been pierced through.
The blare of the telephone was a welcome interruption.
“Did you see the sky?” Nancy demanded. “A blizzard’s on its way, you mark my words.”
Jane smiled at the glee in her friend’s voice. It was so wonderful to have Nancy to talk to again. Nancy was so happy these days she was a pleasure to be around. “I thought you hated shoveling snow.”
“First snow’s different,” said Nancy with a laugh. “It’s special.”
Jane had little experience with snow of any kind. She’d imagined walking down snowy lanes hand in hand with her husband, planning their baby’s future, while carolers sang Christmas songs and sleigh bells jingled.
“I’m zipping over to Billy Blake’s Discount store in a little while. Want to come along?”
“Not today, Nancy. I’m going to the office.”
The statement surprised Jane as much as it did her friend.
Luke Fenelli had tendered an invitation for lunch. “We don’t see enough of you around here,” he’d said, voice booming as he tried to hide his uneasiness over the loss of her baby. “Might as well come in for our big Christmas lunch—it’s about as close to a bonus as we’re ever gonna get.”
She dressed with care, trying not to notice the way the waistband of her navy blue skirt had room to spare. The phone rang as she was heading out the door, but it stopped by the time she reached the kitchen. Mac, she thought, hand lingering on the receiver. She wished she could call him, but he said they were moving his office and he wouldn’t have his own number until after the first of the year.
Luke and the others greeted her warmly. She could see the sympathy on their faces, but they quickly gauged her mood and kept the conversation light and breezy. How wonderful it felt to put aside the jumble her life had become and laugh and joke with Luke and the others at the Daily.
“The Big Man’s showin’ up for dessert,�
� said Luke as they polished off salad and lasagna and an unconscionable amount of Italian bread.
Jane looked up from her vanilla cola. “The Big Man?”
“You don’t know the Big Man?” asked Pamela, the society editor. “Take a look at your next paycheck. You’ll find his name on every one of them.”
Everyone laughed and Jane joined in. “He shows up once a year to play Santa Claus,” Luke explained. “Only nobody told him Santa Claus doesn’t show up empty-handed.”
Franklin Darman and the strawberry cheesecake arrived at the same time. Jane met Luke’s eyes and laughed softly as he whispered, “See what I mean?” Her mind wandered as Darman made a short dull speech about the Christmas spirit and how it applied to newspapers and to reporters. The rousing applause when he finished was more relief than appreciation.
“Come on,” said Luke, taking Jane by the elbow. “Let me do the honors.”
She pulled back. “I don’t think so. I’m only part-time. I can’t imagine he’d want to be bothered.”
“Sure he would,” said Luke in his jovial fashion. “He’s a sucker for an English accent. Give ’im both barrels, Weaver.”
Darman may have been a sucker for an English accent, but he was even more impressed by the name Weaver. “Don’t suppose you’re any relation to a fellow named Mac Weaver?” he asked as Luke stepped away to chat up a pretty blond researcher. “Good reporter,” Darman continued before Jane could answer, “even though he did his best work during the war. Tough luck what they’re doing to him.”
Ice formed in the empty hollow of Jane’s stomach. “What are they doing to him?”
Darman shot her a look, but she remained wide-eyed and innocent. “Guess it’s too soon for it to hit the papers.”
Luke popped back up at her side. “For what to hit the papers?”
“Mac Weaver,” said Darman, oblivious to the tension racing through Jane’s body. “He’s been subpoenaed by the Committee.”
Chapter Sixteen
A light snow was falling as Jane left the Long Island Daily office, but she scarcely noticed it. She got into the car, turned the ignition key, then drove home, her movements precise and rigid as a robot’s.
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