Perfect Timing

by Catherine Anderson

  Ceara’s eyes filled with tears, and she shot a frantic glance at Quincy.

  “But!” Stevenson held up a staying hand and smiled. “In my experience, mothers who imbibe prior to realizing they’re pregnant and quit drinking all alcohol as soon as they do realize rarely deliver babies with problems. In short, Ceara, if you don’t drink any alcohol from now on, plus stay away from caffeine and nicotine, I have every reason to believe your baby will be delivered in perfect health.”

  * * *

  On the way home, Quincy stopped at a medical supply store and purchased a good-quality stethoscope so he and Ceara could listen to their baby’s heartbeat at home. Before he allowed his wife to dash upstairs to lie on the bed and do just that, he told her they had some phone calls to make.

  “Calls?” Standing in the kitchen archway in a ready-to-go stance, she fixed him with a puzzled gaze. “What is so important that we must make calls this verra moment?”

  Quincy’s heart squeezed just looking at her. “Have I told you today how much I love you?”

  “Nay.”

  “Well, I do, more than I ever thought it’d be possible to love anyone.” Quincy waited a beat. “Do you feel the same about me?”

  Her eyes shimmered like blue sapphires. “When ye walk into a room, the sight of ye makes me heart do a happy jig.”

  Quincy really wanted to hear the words I love you, too, but he guessed she wasn’t quite ready to say them. “As for the phone calls”—he paused for emphasis—“we are pregnant.” He jabbed his chest and leveled a finger at her. “You and me, doll face. We’re going to have a baby!”

  Her countenance lit up as if a candle flame flickered within her. “Yes,” she agreed, touching her belly. “A babe! ’Tis a miracle, fer certain.”

  “And news we should share with family. We need to call my dad and Dee Dee first and then trickle down through the hierarchy until we’ve shared the fabulous news with everyone we love.”

  Her smile dimmed. “What of me family? ’Twould be grand if we could tell me mum and da.”

  Quincy wished with all his heart that were possible. He knew she sorely missed her own family, and he guessed that no amount of love and acceptance from his would ever make up for the loss. A sudden idea occurred to him. “How’s about we invite everyone over to celebrate with us, and you can ask Loni if she could . . .” Quincy wasn’t precisely sure how to phrase it. “Well, you know, hook you in with your mother?”

  Ceara’s expression brightened. “What time is it?”

  Quincy glanced at his watch. “Twelve thirty. Why?”

  “’Tis eight hours later in Ireland, and me mum is old so she seeks her bed fair early. Do ye think Loni could hurry to get here?”

  Quincy rang his sister-in-law on his cell. “Ceara and I are throwing an impromptu celebration today, inviting the whole family, and Ceara would like you to come early, as in right now.” Quincy laughed. “Ah, no, I can’t tell you what we’re celebrating right yet. I have to call Dad and Dee Dee first. You and Clint will hear the news next, and so on down the line.”

  “You’re pregnant!”

  Quincy winced and held the phone out from his ear. “Don’t tell anyone. Dad deserves to be told first. Go ahead and bring Aliza. I’ll take her out to the arena to meet Beauty while you hook Ceara up with her mother and father to tell them the good news.”

  * * *

  By the time Quincy finished making his calls, everyone in his family had either guessed or felt certain that a baby was on the way. Both Sam and Mandy thought to bring bottles of sparkling cider for Ceara so she could join in all the family toasts to be made with champagne. Dee Dee showed up with a gigantic jar of dill pickles, which she’d apparently had on hand, and a half gallon of rocky road ice cream, which she insisted all pregnant women loved if they liked chocolate. As Quincy put the tub into his freezer, a vision of Ceara topping rocky road ice cream with artichoke hearts flashed through his head, and his stomach lurched. He’d gone to the market over the weekend and stocked up on anything sour and canned, including sauerkraut, and he had shuddered all the way through checkout.

  Clint arrived later than everyone else, because he’d stayed behind to pick Trevor up when he got off the bus. Aliza, who’d been in Quincy’s care since one o’clock, when Loni had shown up, bounced across the kitchen in a five-year-old gallop to leap at her father as if she hadn’t seen him for a week. Clint swung the dark-haired child high into the air, and on the downward loop growled and made gobbling sounds as he pretended to devour her belly. Aliza shrieked in delight. Watching, Quincy wondered if he’d soon have a beautiful little girl to love. Then his gaze shot to Trev, who’d grown so tall over the last few weeks, his dad was threatening to stack books on his head. Hmm. Maybe, Quincy decided, he and Ceara would have a boy. Quincy honestly didn’t care, just as long as the child was healthy.

  After setting his daughter back on her feet, Clint glanced around the kitchen, nodding in greeting to Frank and all his brothers. “Where are the ladies?”

  Quincy hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “In my office, talking to ghosts. I went in to say hi to Ceara’s parents. Couldn’t see anyone, so it felt a little weird. But according to Loni, they can see us in Ceara’s mum’s crystal ball.”

  Frank, lounging at the table with his legs outstretched and crossed at his booted ankles, took a sip of his Jack and Coke. “I went in. Figured I should, since we’re gonna share a grandchild. Like Quincy, I couldn’t see no parents, but maybe they got a gander at me. Hope it didn’t scare ’em to death.”

  Clint found a chair between Tucker and Zach. He lifted a black brow at Parker, who sat across the table near Frank. “You go in?”

  “Too weird for me, pal. I’m staying right here.”

  Clint shrugged. “Nothing weird about it. If Loni says she’s hooking in with them, she’s hooking in.”

  “Then get up off your lazy ass and go in to introduce yourself,” Parker replied. “Me, I’m more inclined to avoid conversations with folks who’ve been dead over four hundred years. Gives me the willies just thinking about it.”

  Zach laughed and took a long pull from his bottle of Mirror Pond Pale Ale, a brand produced in nearby Bend. “Big pussy. I went in, and I’m not hearing the theme of Twilight Zone playing in my ears.”

  Clint sighed and set Aliza off his knee. “I reckon it’d please Ceara if we both went in, Parker. It’s her family, after all.”

  “And pregnant ladies rule,” Zach inserted.

  Parker swore and stood up. “Oh, hell, why not?” He directed a compelling glare at Tucker. “Your ass glued to the chair or something?”

  Tucker laughed and pushed erect. “With all the girls already in there, won’t we be overwhelming them with too many new faces at once?”

  Quincy checked the steaks he had thawing on the counter. Over his shoulder, he said, “Your faces won’t be new. Ceara’s mother has been watching our whole damned family in her crystal ball for nearly a year, and I’m sure her da has seen all of us, too. That’s how the woman finally determined I was the only bachelor left in our branch of the Harrigan line.”

  “You saying two ghosts have been spying on us for months? Uh . . . all the time?” Parker sounded none too pleased by the thought. “This family is getting so weird, I could sell tickets.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Quincy fell in love with being pregnant. Prenatal vitamins. Decaf coffee and tea. Enough cans of sauerkraut in the pantry to hold a Bavarian Biergarten festival at his ranch and feed everyone in Crystal Falls. Jars of baby dills overtaking the shelves as well. Morning sickness, always morning sickness, only Quincy couldn’t quite determine why it was called that, because Ceara grew nauseated at all times of the day or night. Worried consultation with Loni had reassured him that for some women this was quite normal. Privately, he suspected that some of Ceara’s sickness was because no human stomach could tolerate some of the combinations she put into hers. She had developed a passion for pizza, particularly one local
pizzeria’s specialty called a Mount Bailey, which was topped with feta, spinach, and artichoke hearts. One night as they watched Old Yeller, she cried, tears sliding into her bowl of chocolate ice cream lined with pickle spears—Quincy’s most nightmarish version of chips and dip. He’d learned to will his smeller into inaction, but he hadn’t yet learned not to look.

  But, oh, man, he cherished the whole experience. At four months along, Ceara’s nausea abated, and he seriously considered nicknaming her Hoover, because almost overnight she started sucking up food, any kind, with more efficiency than a name-brand vacuum cleaner. She craved crazy stuff, and more than once he made midnight runs to the country store, a corner joint at a deserted junction between his ranch and town, to get his wife weird foods. Peanut butter, because they’d run out, and bananas. One night it had been oven-ready pepperoni pizza. Another time it had been pickled Polish sausages, which made Quincy nearly gag when he bit into one. He brushed three times to get the coating of cold fat off his teeth. Ceara ate all of what remained of the sausages. Quincy couldn’t figure out why she didn’t weigh three hundred pounds, but Dr. Stevenson seemed pleased with her weight and told Quincy that cravings were normal. In other words, if Ceara got a hankering for something, her body probably needed it.

  At a little over twenty weeks, Ceara received her first ultrasound. Although the hens had all explained the procedure to her, she’d been baffled by the idea that a picture could be taken of her growing babe. She climbed onto the table readily enough, but Quincy could tell she felt she was humoring him. Once the screen activated, though, and the doctor pointed out the baby, both she and Quincy stared at the screen, fascinated by the blurry images.

  “Would you like to know the baby’s gender?” the tech asked with a smile.

  Ceara’s eyes widened. “Ye can tell if it be a lad or lass?”

  “I can,” the tech replied. “Well, I’m ninety-nine percent sure, anyway.”

  Beaming with happiness, Ceara sent an appealing look at Quincy. He nodded at the young woman. “Sure, we’d love to know.”

  “You have a little girl.”

  Quincy’s heart leaped. Ceara’s smile lit up the darkened room as he pressed his cheek against hers and looked at the screen again. “Look, honey, she’s got your little nose,” Quincy said. Then with a sigh of relief, he added, “Praise God. A girl with my nose—well, that just wouldn’t do at all.”

  A baby girl. Quincy called everyone in the family to spread the word, and that night he posted the film on Facebook so everyone could see his daughter on their own computers. The next morning, he got Ceara up at the crack of dawn.

  “Now that we know it’s a girl, we gotta get ready!” he told her.

  “Quincy,” she said patiently, “ye’re daft, me man. We already are ready for ten babes. ’Tis a wonder to me that any other mum can find so much as a shift in the stores, ye’ve bought so much.”

  “Yes, but it’s all yellow and white and green. I want pink! I want to go shopping for my daughter,” Quincy insisted. “And, oh, man, we need to think of a name.”

  “Ach, na until the birth,” Ceara informed him. “’Tis the way in me family.”

  * * *

  Ceara spent a lot of time when she was alone at the house watching the ultrasound video of her and Quincy’s little girl. She couldn’t grasp the concept of an ultrasound—how a woman had rubbed her belly with warm gel and then had been able to take pictures, moving pictures, of Ceara’s baby while it was still inside her. Pictures alone, of which Ceara had taken many with her cell phone, were mystery enough. In her time, ’twould be such a strange and inexplicable thing that the picture taker would be suspected of possessing evil powers. Not even the druids whom Ceara had known in her beloved Ireland had been able to capture images of people or things to display on a screen.

  When Ceara wasn’t watching her daughter’s grainy image, she spent hours in what Quincy called the nursery, which was now almost completely furnished. She loved touching the dainty lace on the hood of the bassinet. Holding to her cheek the wee clothing in the drawers brought tears to her eyes. Quincy was unstoppable in shops, filling a cart faster than Ceara could blink. If she just paused over an outfit, or one of those strange pretties called mobiles, Quincy tossed it in the cart, and when they reached what people in this century called “checkout,” he never hesitated to hand over his plastic credit card, which he’d explained to her was coded with special numbers so the charges went against his account. Ceara had used her own credit card while shopping with the hens, but at the time, she hadn’t quite understood how it took the place of actual money.

  For Ceara, pregnancy was a beautiful experience. She would never forget first feeling her daughter move within her womb. Or that fabulous night when Quincy finally felt his wee girl kick. She’d smile for the rest of her days remembering his stunned expression. He’d laughed and said he was signing her up for soccer. Ceara had nary a clue what soccer might be, but ’twas pleased she felt to see her husband’s eyes glow with joy and pride.

  Morning sickness hadn’t been one of Ceara’s favorite things, but she enjoyed all other aspects of pregnancy except one: Quincy’s insistence that she never, absolutely never, use her gifts. ’Twas difficult to obey her husband’s order, but Ceara tried, learning to light candles and evening fires with the long-stemmed starter, and never allowing herself to flap her hand to change the weather. ’Twas fer the good of the babe, she reminded herself. Quincy said that if using her gifts was a physical drain on her, it might also be taxing on their baby’s tiny body. Ceara would do nothing to endanger her babe, and after growing so weak from stopping and restarting the snowstorm the day of their horseback ride, she knew her husband was right. Ceara had been with child even then, and surely her daughter must have felt the awful weakness that Ceara had experienced.

  * * *

  Watching his wife’s belly swell. Seeing her start to develop that glow so common to pregnant women. When Ceara was in the early days of her sixth month, Quincy got on his cell, organized a hen party for the ladies at his house, and then called to arms his father and all his brothers for a good, old-fashioned guy get-together with a pony keg of fine draft in Clint’s arena, the keg ready to tap when anybody got the urge.

  Frank, who wasn’t a beer man, stuck to his usual J and Cs. Sipping from a big red plastic cup, he studied Quincy over the rim. “I know you’re pregnant, but what the hell are we celebratin’ tonight? Exactly, I mean. A set of twins they didn’t see in the first ultrasound, or the end of mornin’ barf detail?”

  Quincy, on only his first beer, took a long swig. Clint had brought in white plastic lawn chairs and set them in a circle on the arena sand. Occasionally a horse whickered or snorted, which was the perfect live music for any Harrigan man. It was totally a guy party, no fuss, no muss. A few bags of chips were all they needed to make it complete, and if a little dirt got into the mix, nobody gave a damn.

  “No twins. I’m celebrating the waddle.”

  “The what?” Parker asked.

  “Just because you aren’t pregnant yet don’t mean Quincy can’t celebrate the waddle,” Frank said, lifting his cup in a toast. “Your mama.” He closed his eyes, clearly reminiscing, and smiled. “Yep, it was along about six months. Started bowin’ her back and plantin’ a hand just above her fanny, walkin’ like a sailor in rough seas. Never was she more beautiful than when she was carryin’ my babies.” When Frank lifted his lashes, a tear spilled over onto his weathered cheek. “God, how I adored that woman.”

  Clint shifted on his chair as if fire ants had invaded his boxers. “You’ve got Dee Dee now, Dad. I mean, we all loved Mama, but it’s sort of like you still think of her in the present tense.”

  “True love, the kind that warms the marrow of your bones, it ain’t never over,” Frank replied. He narrowed an eye at his eldest son. “You thinkin’ I’m bein’ disloyal to my sweet Dee Dee or somethin’?”

  Clint switched knees to prop up a boot. He cleared his throat. “
I’m not saying that, Dad. It just sort of—” He broke off and looked to his brothers for help. Nobody raised his hand. “Well, you’ve remarried now. Seems to me like you should let the dead rest and live in the present. For Dee Dee’s sake, I mean. It can’t be easy for her, knowing your heart still belongs to our mother.”

  Frank chuckled. “Spoken by a young fart still wet behind his ears. Dee Dee knew when we married that I’d never stop lovin’ your mama. And I do mean never. The heart is big enough and has plenty of corners to love many people, and Dee Dee understands that. She keeps a picture of your mama—the one I always kept on my nightstand—right up on our mantel, bold as brass, along with pictures of all you kids. She’s not threatened by Emily or jealous of my love for her memory. At our age, we’ve loved and we’ve lost, but we’re smart enough to know that ain’t the end of it. Took me a lot of years to understand that. Otherwise I might’ve married Dee Dee when all of you kids was at home and still such a pain in the ass. Could’ve saved myself a lot of money, not havin’ to pay her wages all them years.”

  Quincy couldn’t imagine ever loving any woman but Ceara, and he knew all his brothers felt the same way about their wives.

  Zach, always the one who spoke first and thought later, said, “What’re you sayin’, Pop, that women are kind of like dogs? Shit, no, really? You love one, but when it dies, you can go out and find a replacement?” Zach squeezed the bridge of his nose and blinked. “I didn’t mean that exactly the way it came out. I mean, I know you loved Mama more than you ever would a dog, and that you love Dee Dee a whole lot more, too. I just—”

  “Need to stop talkin’ before you dig yourself such a deep hole you can’t drag your ass out of it,” Frank finished for him. Then he chuckled, his way of letting Zach know he wasn’t pissed. “Women and dogs ain’t on the same plane.”