by Madelyn Alt
“Congratulations on your new baby.” I smiled. “I think we sat with your in-laws in the waiting room. The Watkins?”
She nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Nice folks, Joyce and Harold,” I added, but I could tell that I was losing her. Her attention was starting to veer off around the room. “Joyce seemed so happy to have her first grandchild, signed, sealed, and delivered. Very proud.”
“You didn’t happen to see a magazine in here, did you?” she said, completely off the original topic as she scanned table and countertops.
“Um, well, no.” Actually, now that I looked around, I did notice that the bevy of magazines that had been on the tables while we were waiting for Mel to pop had since disappeared. “Gosh, there were loads of them in here last night.” And then in my mind flashed a memory: a stack—well, a former stack once I was done with it—of glossy periodicals on the floor by the bed in Mel’s room. “You know, it’s possible I might know where to start the search.”
“I am actually looking for one in particular,” she offered as I started wheeling myself toward the door. “I thought maybe my mother-in-law might have walked off with it accidentally when I wasn’t looking. I was really hoping to get it back.”
“In the middle of an article, were you?”
“Something like that. So, you think you know where they went?”
“My sister has a whole stack in her room that I think must have come from here, because all the mags that were in here last night are gone. Follow me, I’ll show you where. You can look through them to see if any are yours.”
I waited as she opened the door. With my phone charger and cell phone on my lap and my injured ankle leading the charge, I maneuvered my way through the doorway and out into the corridor ...
Straight into the path of a very familiar personage.
“Oh, excuse me, Miss—”
An equally familiar voice broke off suddenly, and I had a feeling his gaze had just connected with my face.
“Maggie.”
I cleared my throat and steeled my emotions. “Hello, Tom.” My gaze flicked to his left—to the woman on his arm—and then back again. I smiled, ever so pleasantly.
He still had his favorite aviator sunglasses on, so I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew they weren’t meeting mine. “What are you doing here?”
I shrugged. “Mel had her baby. Babies, I should say. She had twin girls.”
“Ah. Be sure to tell her congratulations for me.”
“I will.” But I didn’t know why, really. Mel had never actually met Tom, unless it was in some capacity outside of being my boyfriend-minus-one that I wasn’t aware of. Still, it was a nice sentiment, I would give him that much.
“Looks like you had a little trouble,” he said, inclining his head toward my ankle.
When he said “trouble,” why did it sound critical, as though I had caused it somehow by my actions? “This old thing?” I joked. “A minor spill, that’s all. Just dumb luck.”
I thought I heard him say, “Karma, maybe,” but it was mumbled, and I couldn’t be sure.
I held out my hand to the woman whose hand was curved around his inner elbow. She released his arm and took it, hesitating only slightly. “Hi there. I’m Maggie O’Neill.”
I got my first good look at her. She was slender, wispy even, with short pixy hair that waved appealingly around her face and a long neck that was enviably swanlike. She was also taller than me, nearly Tom’s height with the low heels she was wearing with her casual jeans and airy blouse.
“I’m Julie,” she said. “Julie Fielding.” Dun-dun-dunnnnnnn . . .
I flashed back to the day, just a few weeks ago, to when Annie Miller had hesitantly, reluctantly, worriedly clued me in to the fact that she had seen Tom while out at a local Mexican restaurant in the company of an attractive woman. At the time Tom and I had still been “dating,” although both of us had acknowledged that there were issues cropping up that were directly related to who we were as individuals, issues that we didn’t quite know how to conquer, although time itself seemed to have decided that for us in the end. At the time I had also tried to convince myself that it had been his sister. Gazing up at the woman, I suddenly knew that this was without a doubt the person he’d been having dinner with. His ex-wife. The ex-wife he would never talk about. Not even ex, since they were only in the process of being divorced.
Were they back on now?
Did that even matter?
“Julie and I are here to visit—”
“Me.” The Watkins woman stepped forward. Until that moment, I don’t think Tom and Julie had even registered her presence behind me. I’d almost forgotten her there myself.
“Hiya, Jules. It’s good of you to come in.”
Surprised, Julie stepped up and embraced her. “Frannie! Harry said it would be all right for us to just come up; I hope that’s okay. We just wanted to stop in and see how you were doing.” With her hands on Frannie Watkins’s shoulders, she leaned back to survey her. “Should you even be up? You just had a baby, for heaven’s sake.”
Frannie waved her hand to dismiss the concern. “You’d be surprised how quickly they get you up and around these days. Don’t worry, I’m not doing anything I’m not supposed to.”
Except probably helping me back into my wheelchair, I thought guiltily.
“Frannie and I are cousins,” Julie politely clued me in. “Second cousins, I guess, but family nonetheless.”
“Good thing you stopped in early,” Frannie told her. “Little Harry and I are being released later tonight.”
“So soon?”
“No complications in pregnancy or delivery, so it’s a one-day stay. Insurance dictates.” Funny, I could feel her getting antsy about the impromptu visit, even though it was, as Julie Fielding said, family. “Listen, Maggie here was about to help me with something. Why don’t we go do that, and I’ll meet you in my room in a few minutes?”
Perhaps Julie had sensed her preoccupation as well. “Oh, that’s all right. We can’t really stay. Tom is taking me out to a lovely dinner tonight,” she said, leaning into his arm and smiling up at him.
I froze. I couldn’t help thinking that the mention of their upcoming dinner date was for my benefit. Why else would she have mentioned it? I hadn’t even had lunch yet!
For one completely, ridiculously irrational moment, I was that girl. The girl who has left one boyfriend behind and has moved on, but the instant the previous guy showed signs of moving on, too . . .
Yeah. Zing went the strings on the harp played by my own personal little green monster.
Disgusted with myself, I intentionally summoned the image of Marcus into my mind’s eye. Marcus, who made every bad day somehow better. Marcus, my friend and my soon-to-be lover, if I had anything to say about it—stupid yellow cast be damned.
I just wished I didn’t know that Tom had been purposely exploring his options before we had officially called things off. Say what you will about my jumping ship to Marcus so quickly, but at least it hadn’t been planned. It wasn’t intentional.
I looked into Tom’s gray eyes and found him watching me, too. I lifted my chin. Things were better this way, better for everyone.
Still . . .
“I hear the band at Finnegan’s Reef is really good,” I couldn’t resist mentioning, intentionally referring to the place where Marcus and his bandmates were currently playing Wednesday nights and weekends. “Maybe you should take her dancing, too.”
His eyes betrayed nothing, but the slight tightening of his jaw spoke volumes. Let’s just say that I knew that he knew that I knew he knew ... “Maybe I will.”
“Oh, Tom, really? I love dancing. It has been ages,” his clearly not-so-ex-wife gushed. Although she was doing a good job of appearing unaware of the edgy connection between Tom and me, I knew—I sensed—that she wasn’t oblivious to it at all. Perhaps that was why she reached down and took his hand as I watched on. From my seated position, it was right on eye level. I co
uldn’t have missed seeing it if I’d tried.
“Women sure do have a way of staking their claims, don’t they, Margaret? Even when their claims are in the past.”
There it was, Grandma’s voice aloud in my ear, again. Complete with self-satisfied cackle at the end. I sighed, wishing the voice would go back to being that soundless one in my head. Although at least this time it was a quiet one. But really, consciences can be a real pain in the neck sometimes.
Especially when they made you think.
Was that what I was doing? Trying to stake a claim? Of course I wasn’t. Things between Tom and me had never been quite right. We had both sensed that, and seemingly we had both come to that conclusion around the same time. If Tom wanted to get back together with his ex-but-not-ex-wife, who was I to complain? I should be happy that he was moving on with things. After all, that’s what I was doing.
Still, I was relieved when the two of them decided to go, leaving me to head back to Mel’s room with Frannie Watkins at long last. She had been just as anxious as me to get on with things; something told me she wasn’t as close to her cousin as all that. Either that or she had other things on her mind.
“There you are! I was looking everywhere for you.”
We had barely made our way around the corner when Frannie’s husband came out of her room as we passed by, their baby in his arms. Frannie jumped guiltily.
“Hi, honey.” Her accompanying wave was a little weak.
“Hi. I just got here, and Little Harry was waking up in his bassinet. I didn’t see you, so ...”
“I just left him for a minute, Harry, I promise,” she rushed to explain in an agitated voice. “He was perfectly safe.”
The lapse forgiven, Harry glanced my way and smiled. “Hello there.”
More babies. Sigh. I smiled a greeting back at him and nodded toward the baby. “Could I?”
He angled his arm so that I could see the tiny eyes peeking out from the folds of a soft blanket.
“Look at those eyes,” I cooed. “Have you ever seen a baby with such big, dark eyes? They couldn’t be changing already, could they? No, it’s much too soon. And look at those lashes!”
The proud papa patted his son lightly on his padded rump. “You think that’s dark? Look at what he got from his mommy.” Gently, carefully, he peeled back the fuzzy blanket and with a big calloused palm slipped the knitted cap from the baby’s head. Out sprang a head full of dark, curling waves. “A full head of hair! Just what every man needs, let me tell ya,” he said with a glimmer of humor, with no need to run his hand over his own receding buzz cut to demonstrate why.
With a soft cry, his wife padded forward, her hands reaching for their baby. “He’ll catch his death,” she insisted, tugging the cap back down to the baby’s downy eyebrows. She stroked her fingertips in a sweet, soft caress along his cheek, a flicker of emotion feathering over her brow as she gazed down at him.
Turning away suddenly, she cleared her throat. “I was just on my way to find a magazine to flip through, and this lady said her sister had some in her room.”
“Oh. Okay. I’ll just take Junior and wait for you here, then.” He looked down at the pale blue bundle in his arms and his expression softened. “Come on, Junior. Let’s go see if your diaper needs changing.”
“Wow, your hubby changes diapers,” I commented up at Frannie as we continued on to Mel’s room. “That’s a keeper for sure.”
She nodded. “He’s been wanting to start a family for a long time. This is a dream come true for him.”
She sounded so ... I don’t know . . . vague? Distracted? In fact, come to think of it, she had seemed that way since she walked into the waiting room. Something wasn’t right in Frannie Watkins’s world today, I would guarantee it.
It hit me then. There are only two other mommies on the entire floor, the night nurse had said, and then later that night I had seen a man with dark hair coming out of a room. Sneaking out of a room, in the middle of the night, following what certainly sounded like an argument of some kind. What was his name? I had forgotten in all the events of the day. Frannie herself had mentioned she was right down the hall from Mel just a little while ago. But it hadn’t clicked with me until just now.
The room that Harry Watkins had emerged from was the exact same room.
Chapter 12
No wonder Frannie Watkins was out of sorts today. I didn’t know who the man had been or what the connection between Frannie and her after-hours visitor was, but it couldn’t be an easy one.
Curious.
A moment later I could have smacked myself. Good heavens, I was turning into as much of a “Nosy Parker” as my sister and mother. Shoot me now! Whatever connections existed between them, it was their business. It certainly wasn’t mine.
“Now you’re learning, missy.”
Yeah, thanks for the vote of confidence, Grandma C. Now, butt out, wouldja?
“Here we are, room twelve twenty-three,” I said, pushing against the mostly closed door.
“I was wondering when you were going to come back, Mags,” came Mel’s voice from the far bed. “You keep disappearing.”
I steeled myself, put a neutral smile on my face, then led the charge back into the trenches.
Or should I say, the viper’s pit? Because who should be sitting on the chair and love seat opposite Mel but my long-time nemesis, Margo Dickerson-Craig (emphasis on the hyphen, please—she’d be the first person to tell you it was important) and her partner-in-gossip, Jane Churchill, each with a twin cradled in her arms.
Ol’ Murphy was obviously in top form. How many times did this make in the last couple of days that he’d reared his ugly head? I was starting to lose count.
The three women had formed a sort of coffee klatch after Mel and Greg had moved into the upscale subdivision of Buckingham West. Before I even found out about the alliance of the terrible trio, they had cemented together via their thirst for scandal, their taste for the illicit, and their hunger for one-upmanship. It was a friendship that would live in infamy.
“Well, look who it is,” Margo smirked.
One person with a personality, coming right up, I thought to myself, smirking right back. But I took the high road. My new nieces were in the room. They didn’t need to be exposed to such negativity. They were already surrounded by it ... poor things.
“You just missed Mom. She just left. Where did you disappear to?” Mel asked.
I shrugged. “Never mind that now. Come on in, Fran—”
“Frannie Watkins!”
The sudden screech of recognition bounced off the walls and my eardrums. With it Mel had sat up straighter on the bed; she sank back now instantly, grimacing, her hand held protectively to her abdomen. “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow.”
There was a lot of that going around today.
Frannie stopped in her tracks and stared. “Melanie? I had no idea it was you down the hall. They said the girl in here had had twins—” Her searching gaze found the two empty glass bassinets, then the two babes in the arms of the two wenches, I mean, women. “Wow, you did. I had no idea you were having two. Never in a million years . . . you were so tiny.”
Were we back to discussing Mel’s petite uterus? Oy.
“I would have stopped in earlier, had I known it was you,” she continued. “Honestly, I thought you were pregnant with just one. Gosh, I feel bad now. I’ll be going home this evening.”
“You two know each other, I take it?” I asked, trying to keep my sense of humor.
“From Baby Bellies,” Mel confirmed. “My fitness class. I was going until Dr. Jonas ordered me on bed rest.”
“Twin girls?”
Mel nodded. “Sophie June and Isabella Rose. You?”
“A little boy. Harry the third. That was pretty important to my husband. Not Harold, though. I put my foot down about that. I thought two Harolds in a row were enough.” She laughed a little self-consciously. “Speaking of the baby, I’d better be getting back. H3 is going to be wanting to ea
t. That’s what I’ve decided for a nickname for him, you see. H1 will be grandpa, H2 his dad, and he’ll be H3. How else are you supposed to keep them apart? Besides, Harry is waiting for me. My Harry. My husband, I mean.” She groaned and shook her head. “See what I mean? It’s self-defense.”
Mel laughed politely.
Frannie glanced at me. “Well . . . I don’t mean to be rude . . . But if you have those magazines handy?”
“Magazines?” Mel asked, looking at me now, too.
“Mom must have picked up one that had been left in the waiting room by the Watkinses when she brought in the stack for you to flip through earlier,” I explained. Embarrassed because I wasn’t going to be much help in my somewhat incapacitated state, I was forced to point to the stack of magazines on the floor. “I would help, but . . .”
“That’s okay.” Frannie crouched down in her bathrobe and slippers and began to flip through the stack swiftly. “Oh, thank goodness!” Finding what she wanted, she straightened the stack.
I caught sight of the magazine as she rose carefully to her feet. It looked like a men’s sporting magazine, like one my grandfather would have enjoyed. She caught me looking and blushed.
“I scratched down some personal thoughts in it while I was in labor,” she quickly explained, waving it slightly in my direction. I thought I saw something fall from it, but it happened so fast and when I looked around her feet, there was nothing there. Oh well. It was probably just one of those annoying inserts anyway. “It’s my husband’s magazine, really, but I wanted to capture what I had recorded there before it ends up getting lost in his bathroom reading stash.” She turned to leave, pausing at the door. “Congratulations, Mel, on the babies.”
“You too, Frannie.”
It hadn’t even occurred to me that Margo and Jane had been uncharacteristically silent throughout the bulk of this exchange between the two new moms. But now that Frannie had gone, Jane got up quietly behind her, passed the baby she’d been holding over to Mel, then tiptoed stealthily over to the door to watch Frannie retreating down the hall with her prize. She closed the door just as quietly on its pneumatic hinges, then turned back to face the rest of us.