“You don’t believe that toxic crap anymore, do you?”
“Nnooo.” She dragged out the word. “Not anymore, but I wrestled with it a lot when I was younger. Cripe, Vinnie, I heard stuff like that preached from the pulpit the whole time I was growing up—that vengeful, judgmental God thing, you know? And so month after month when I didn’t get pregnant, the thought kept coming to me—why would God want to give a baby to someone who’d left the flock, especially someone who slept until noon, and then strutted around the stage in a bikini and ostrich plumes?”
“Jesus, Foxy, parenthood isn’t based on merit. You know better. All you had to do was look around. Some people have kids, some don’t. There are lousy parents with great kids and great parents with lousy kids, and everything in between. It’s a crap shoot! Sierra was dancing when she got pregnant, and she and Wylie weren’t even married. How does that fit your theory?”
She let her head fall back against the headrest. “I know, I know. The punishment thing doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, but see, I wanted to quit anyway. I wanted things to change. It wasn’t glamorous anymore—just a lot of crazy hours and aching feet. The longer we stayed in Vegas, the more tawdry and corrupt it felt, and the worse I felt about myself. I didn’t want to go back to Pine Glen, but I did want something a little more . . . wholesome, I guess.”
“Not everything in Las Vegas is unwholesome. There are plenty of real people with respectable lives who live there.”
“You know what I mean, Vin. I didn’t feel like me anymore. I’d gone out there when I was nineteen. I knew I had to break with my church and my family, and getting that job was my one big chance to get away. I was a good dancer, but it was never supposed to be a permanent thing.”
“You were a damn good dancer.”
She sighed, accepting the compliment. “But I never meant to pull away from them completely. I wanted to mend things with my family and be closer to them, especially Matt, and the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to get out of the desert and back to the woods and lakes.”
“You never told me.”
She sighed heavily. “I did, Vinnie, I did. You just never took me seriously. Vegas wasn’t my home and this—” She spread her hands to encompass the wooded scenery around them. “This wasn’t yours.”
They sat in the car in silence for a while. Snow swirled and eddied around them. A deer, a large doe, stepped out of the trees, flicking her ears. Humans and deer stared at each other for a long time before the doe slipped back into the brush.
“Can you honestly picture living in Minnesota?” Foxy asked. “You and your alligator shoes?”
Their laughter broke the tension. For one tender minute, they looked at each other, and it all seemed right that they’d be sitting in a parked car in the middle of nowhere. Foxy savored the moment before wrecking their short-lived peace. “But then that last November we were together, I missed my period.”
Chapter 20
Sitting in a booth at a hotel restaurant near the airport, Cate sipped her third refill of coffee and read William Kent Krueger’s latest in his mystery series. It was a pleasant enough way to pass the time until the plane was at the terminal, and she really didn’t mind the wait, except that her in-laws refused to use the fancy new cell phone Erik had bought them. Both Chuck and Sally—they preferred to be called by their first names—thought cell phones were unnecessary, and Sally declared she couldn’t figure out how to use one anyway.
Cate checked the time on her own phone and figured she had another fifteen minutes before heading out. The book was great. It would have been even better if she could have read it without listening to the idiotic Christmas music. There must be a speaker right over her head, and it pumped out enough volume to drown out all thought with the same endless loop that had been playing at every mall for a month. There were only so many times she could hear “Santa Baby” without wanting to throw herself under the sleigh.
Somehow, she got engrossed in the book and by the time she needed to leave, she’d read two chapters. She paid the bill and went out to find her car had accumulated almost an inch of fresh snow. As she swept the windows with a brush, she thought about how she missed the old days when she could park at the airport, sail past the ticket and baggage counters without anyone stopping her, maybe wander through the gift shops if the flight was delayed before meeting friends or family right at the gate. With the new system, timing was tricky. If she got there too early, she had to circle the airport until she spotted them at the curb. More than once, she’d been shooed away by airport cops who must have thought she looked like a terrorist. If she arrived too late, her father-in-law would give up on her and go back inside in search of a pay phone, where he’d call their home number because that was the one he’d memorized, and be in a pissy mood because nobody answered.
Traffic to the airport was especially heavy due to a combination of holiday air travel, weather and holiday shopping. Passing under the freeway into Minneapolis-St. Paul International, she saw a swirl of snow follow along the retaining wall like a ghost. She hoped Foxy was all right.
* * *
“What?” Vinnie’s head swung around and his grip on Foxy’s thigh tightened. “Pregnant? When?”
She swallowed hard. “I suspected it that last time we came out here for Thanksgiving. Remember how grouchy you were when I kept asking you to stop at gas station bathrooms?”
His brow furrowed. “Oh, yeah. I thought you had the stomach flu or something. So that was . . .”
She watched his face and knew he was calculating how long ago it had been. They would have child in high school by now. His expression changed from bewilderment to shock to something akin to joy. “We have a child?”
The question stopped her like a bullet to the heart. “Oh, Vinnie, no. I never . . . I lost it.” Lost was such innocuous word for what happened, she’d always thought. Lost was what happened to keys or glasses or games of poker.
“Ahh.” His shoulders sagged with the exhalation. “When?” Emotion played across his features. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because—No, please let me tell it my way.”
He knocked his knuckles together the way he did when he was impatient.
“As soon as we got home from Thanksgiving with my folks, I made an appointment and the doctor confirmed I really was pregnant. I was surprised and thrilled and scared. I was going to tell you, I swear, but I wanted to wait for the right time. With the crazy hours we both kept, you weren’t easy to pin down.”
His lips formed a thin line. “Are you saying it’s my fault you didn’t tell me?”
A picture flashed through her mind of the day, a few days after the doctor visit, when she’d begun to tell him. As excited as she’d been, it seemed Vinnie had been even more excited, interrupting her almost immediately to talk about how he’d won six-hundred dollars at the blackjack table. They’d wound up in a nasty fight, the result being she no longer had wanted to share her news with him. She reached for Vinnie’s hand and said, “Things were running off the rails by then. We were fighting a lot, and you flat out told me you’d never quit gambling. I was already worried about what kind of parents we’d be anyway, but—”
He pulled his hand away. “I was a real asshole back then.”
She didn’t argue with him.
“But then things got better, or at least I fooled myself into thinking they were. You weren’t going to the casinos so much and I even thought you’d figured out about the baby and had decided to grow up.” She saw him flinch. “I mean, every day I saw how my body was changing, even that early, and I assumed everyone else could see the transformation.”
Hanging his head, he mumbled, “I didn’t have a clue about the . . . the pregnancy. If I was acting better, it was because I knew I needed to clean up my act or I was going to lose you.” His voiced dropped. “Turns out, I
lost you anyway.”
For a while they both sat, staring ahead. The wind had picked up, driving the snow at an angle and shaking the car with the heavier gusts.
“So what happened? How did—? Were you pregnant that night, the night of Wylie’s birthday?”
“I was. About six weeks.”
Molly Pat startled them both by barking. Poking her nose between them, she rolled her eyes from one to the other.
“She needs to get out.” Foxy opened the door and the dog leapt out, squatted, and when she was done, instead of heading back to the car, she took off toward the building, bounding through the snow and frolicking like a puppy.
Vinnie and Foxy pulled on their hats and mittens, buttoned up and got out of the car. They trudged through the fluffy snow past the bakery. Suddenly a pine tree appeared to swell and burst open as hundreds of small birds erupted from it. The chirping cloud flew over Molly Pat’s head and disappeared over a rise. She tried to chase after them and barked long after they were out of sight.
“Keep going,” Vinnie said when the dog’s racket settled down. His words were clipped.
“That night is when it really sank in,” Foxy said, “We were going to have a baby, and I couldn’t figure out how to tell you I didn’t want to raise a child in Las Vegas.”
“I wish to God you had.”
She nodded and they walked a little further. Along a wire fence, a trail had been worn in the snow. Foxy recognized it as an animal path used by several species—she recognized the upside-down heart shapes of white tailed deer prints. The other prints were probably raccoons, skunks, squirrels and weasels.
“The second that guy got murdered right in front of us, I knew we had to get out of Sin City,” she said with a sideways glance. “And then we found out what was in the cooler bag.” She spread her hands out, as if appealing to an unseen judge. “There was enough for all of us to get a fresh start. I was confused. Deep down, I knew it was wrong to keep it. If you remember, I argued that we needed to turn it in to the police.”
“I remember.”
“But, by the next day, I got it torqued around in my head to where I actually started to believe it was a sign, that God had given us that money to raise our kids someplace else. I just wanted a little time to figure things out so when I told you about the baby, I could have a plan in place for where we could go.”
His face hardened as she spoke. “Is that what you think marriage is? You make a plan for both of us and tell me where I fit in?”
“No, it wasn’t like that.” But of course, that’s exactly how it had been. He did things behind her back, and to protect herself, she discussed things with him if and when she deemed it wise. “The truth was I was scared about what you’d do with all that money.”
“You never did trust me.” He stopped and faced her, sucking in his breath for a counterattack, and then his face fell. “I didn’t do much to instill faith, did I?”
She looked away.
Dropping a hand on her shoulder, he turned her to him. His eyes were wet with tears. For a while, they looked at each other. “What happened to our baby?” he asked at last.
“I told you, Vinnie, I lost it—him. It was a little boy.” She tried to banish the memory of that day. The pain had begun as a dull ache in her low back with a tiny bit of spotting. By the time the pain was radiating to her belly, the blood started in earnest. There had been so much blood, so much pain, she expected to die. And when the doctor said miscarriage was inevitable, she actually hoped she would die.
His face crumpled. His eyes slid away from her and then back to meet hers. “Tell me.”
She took another deep breath and puffed it out between pursed lips. “It happened after Christmas. The baby was perfect. He had no defects, and there was no reason they could give me, but I, I just miscarried. I was three months along, and—Vinnie, I swear I was going to tell you about the baby, but then so much happened, and when I lost him, I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I mean, you were lying in the hospital with tubes coming out of everywhere and in terrible pain. The timing—”
“That’s when it happened? Wait, wait. Just let me take this in.” He turned and retraced his steps through the snow.
She took deep breaths and waited for him to come back.
Coming to a stop in front of her, he had his hands plunged deep in his pockets. “Okay,” he said. “Keep talking.”
“From the beginning, the doctor had said the pregnancy was a little risky because of my age, but he also told me I was in great shape, and so I thought my age didn’t matter. Women older than that had no complications and healthy babies. I’d already tried to tell you that one time, and since that didn’t work, I decided it was best if I waited until I made it through the first trimester. See, if I managed to make it that far, the risk of miscarriage was less.”
He frowned as she spoke, but didn’t stop her.
“It was hard to keep it a secret. I’d just gone in for my three-month checkup and found out everything was coming along fine. I was thrilled. I could hardly wait to get home. On the way, I bought some flowers and a bottle of Chianti, and stopped at Siena Deli for sausage and peppers and pizzelles. I wanted to make a romantic dinner, and—” Her voice caught. “Vinnie, I was so excited to tell you.”
Even with his head down, she could see him wince as he started to put together a timetable of events.
“When I put the gelato in the freezer, I moved the stuff in front so I could see our stash of money. It sounds stupid now, but I wanted to look at it and count it and think about how it would change our lives. I put the packets on the kitchen table and I thought they looked a little thinner. It took me a minute to see that they’d been opened and crimped down again. On one of them, the corner was crumbling and the money was wet.
He turned away from her, hands still jammed in his pockets. “Shit,” he said and kicked his toe against a tree stump.
“Imagine me ripping the foil open and counting the money, and then counting it again, working myself into a panic. I could barely breathe. I knew you had to be the one who took it. And I knew what you’d done with it.”
His head sunk lower, and he curled into himself as if her words were physical blows.
“You gambled it away, didn’t you?” She spoke to his back now. “I went insane, Vinnie. I cried and I threw things, and then I went cold—shaking, shivering cold—and when I stopped shaking, I was numb. My only thoughts were how I could protect the baby, and so I packed up the rest of the money in a grocery bag and took it over to Sierra’s. Vinnie, I couldn’t let you gamble it away. I thought if I could just get the rest of money out of there, there would still be plenty. I was thinking you couldn’t handle the temptation of having it in our house. Half of me was thinking if I could get you away from Vegas, you’d be the husband and father I needed, and the other half was thinking I’d better cut my losses and run.”
His breathing changed. He spun around. When he spoke, his tone was menacing. “Did it ever occur to you I might have turned my life around sooner if I’d known I was going to be a father? Do you think I might have already known I was in trouble with my gambling? How about the possibility I might not have wound up in the hospital if you’d just said one God damn thing about our baby. Jesus, Foxy, didn’t you ever ask yourself why those goons came and used me for a punching bag before they broke my leg like a dry twig?”
Molly Pat came to Foxy’s side, nosing her mittened hand.
Foxy gaped at her ex-husband, and then she broke down. Tears spilled down her face and onto her scarf. Cupping her hand over her mouth, she moaned, knowing she’d brought all of this on herself. And on him. She could forgive him, but how could he ever grant her absolution?
He stood just inches away from her with his arms around his own chest, trying to hold in his rage.
There was no choice but to tel
l it all. With determination, she pulled herself together enough to continue with the narrative she’d held inside for all those years. “I didn’t even think. I reacted. That money—it was like a miracle. Me getting pregnant after all that time was the first miracle. And then this money, this chance to raise our baby in a better place. All I was thinking was how to keep it out of your hands long enough to get away. When I ripped open all the packets and counted out the money, it was twenty thousand shy, and I did the math. In two months, you’d taken almost ten percent of our money. In less than two years it would be gone.”
Vinnie said nothing, but she could feel the tension radiating from him. The air between them felt denser and charged with retribution. She gulped, but the lump in her throat stayed. “Sierra was the only one who knew I was pregnant. She had a child, and I thought she’d understand, and she did. Considering the off and on again relationship she and Wylie had, she’d talked to me about how she was going to support herself and Beau if and when Wylie took off for good.”
Vinnie raised his dark eyebrows, but said nothing.
“I went straight to Sierra, and the more we talked, the clearer it was what I had to do. Beau woke up from his nap and I held him on my lap. I thought this was what it would be like when our baby was born, and I was overwhelmed with the responsibility of raising a child. I’d already picked out names and everything. I tried to picture us—you, me and the baby—but when I tried to picture us in our house there, I just couldn’t see it. I thought about going it alone, maybe moving back in with my parents. But that felt all wrong too.”
“That’s when you decided to leave me.”
“No, not then. It occurred to me even then that it might be the only way, but it wasn’t what I wanted. What I wanted was to make it work with us.” She pulled a tissue from her pocket and blew her nose. It was pointless to wipe away the tears because they kept coming.
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