Summer's Moon

by Lacey Baker

  * * *

  “We’re giving her oxygen and she’s to keep the padding on her eyes for the next ten to fifteen minutes, then we’ll check her again,” Dr. Emil Rogers told Parker when he’d made his way back to exam room four.

  Dr. Rogers had been coming out of the room when Parker approached, and after asking who he was and just about requiring identification to prove that point, the doctor had given Parker the prognosis.

  “There was no smoke inhalation, but the pepper spray she was exposed to has caused some breathing problems for her.”

  “Is the baby still breathing?” Parker asked around the lump that had formed in his throat.

  Dr. Rogers smiled, closing his chart and holding it at his chest while he crossed his arms. “The baby is doing just fine. I’ve called for an OB to come down and do an exam to be absolutely sure.”

  “Why wouldn’t you be sure on your own? What aren’t you telling me?” he asked, because Parker knew doctors had a knack for keeping the worst to themselves for as long as they possibly could. Hadn’t that doctor kept Gramma’s cancer diagnosis a secret until months after the funeral?

  Rogers nodded as if he understood where Parker’s questions were coming from, even though Parker doubted that was actually the case.

  “I’m a little concerned about the fall. She said she’d already cleared the last step, then I’m guessing the explosion hit and she ended up in the backyard. I’m guessing that’s a pretty good distance.”

  “A couple of feet,” Parker answered worriedly. “But she doesn’t have any broken bones or anything like that?”

  “No broken bones, no internal bleeding as far as I can tell without performing a scan. I don’t think it’s worth the risk to the baby to perform one, so I’m just going to admit her and watch her for a day or so, to err on the side of caution.”

  Parker nodded. Caution was key, because if anything happened to Drew or the baby …

  “You can go in and see her now. But let’s try to keep her calm. Her pressure was on the high side when she came in. I suspect it’s because of the explosion and not because she has hypertension or anything more serious.”

  “No. Her last visit with Dr. Lorens went perfectly. She’s not sick at all,” he heard himself saying. Babbling. He quickly clamped his lips shut. “I’ll see her now.”

  Dr. Rogers smiled and stepped out of the way. Parker pushed through the door and held his breath.

  He wasn’t prepared to see her lying there looking so frail and so small. Surrounded by all the white bedding, she looked a little angelic. Two things caught his attention, the lump of her belly sticking up through the sheets tucked tightly around her and the mask that covered half her face. Taking a deep breath, he moved closer and noticed that in addition to the oxygen mask there was a thick white cloth over her eyes.

  Parker was speechless, and he stood like that for who knew how long. Then finally he reached for her hand, holding it while he did what he could not to weep.

  “Drew,” he whispered. “It’s me, Parker.”

  Her fingers grasped his, holding tightly. With her free hand she reached for the oxygen mask in an attempt to move it from her mouth.

  Parker took her other hand, now holding both of them. “No. Don’t take that off yet. You and the baby need it for a while longer.”

  She held on to his hands, telling him she didn’t like it with that action.

  “I know. It’s no fun being in the hospital. But Dr. Rogers is simply trying to make sure everything is all right before he lets you come home.”

  Home, Parker thought. Where was their home?

  He had an apartment in Baltimore that he didn’t want to return to, a room at the B&B that was lovely but possessed no privacy and no space for a growing dog like Rufus to live in. And Drew, well, she had a one-bedroom apartment that now probably had smoke damage from the explosion in the downstairs shop. Her flower shop. How was he supposed to tell her that it too was gone?

  “When you get out of here, I’m going to take you to The Silver Spoon so Michelle and Savannah can wait on you hand and foot. Mr. Sylvester will come in and talk to you, and Rufus will sit on the bed with you,” he told her.

  Rufus, whom Kyle had put in the back of his car amid the dog’s protests to climb into the ambulance with Drew. Dr. Bellini had been called, and Kyle had assured him he’d have Rufus taken care of and back home by the time Parker finished at the hospital.

  “You won’t have to lift a finger,” he continued.

  Drew held on to his hands tightly and he brought them to his lips to kiss them.

  “After dinner we can sit out in the yard. There’s a bench there that Gramma and Mr. Sylvester used to sit on all the time. We can watch the sunset and the boats coming in. Rufus loves to run around out there, he and the other dogs. They all love it at The Silver Spoon. But I was thinking, Drew, that maybe we could find our own place in Sweetland.” He swallowed deeply at the words that had been rumbling around in his head but hadn’t really formulated until this moment. “Maybe you and I can find a house where we can raise our daughter and so Rufus won’t have to come and visit you so often because he’ll already be with you every day.”

  Her hands went still in his, her breathing hitching a bit. Then she sat up, letting the cloth at her eyes fall away. She looked at him through puffy red eyes, the oxygen mask slipping slightly down her pert little nose.

  “Are you serious?” she asked, her voice coming over the whir of the oxygen.

  Parker squeezed her hands and nodded. “I’m very serious.”

  She didn’t speak, but tears fell from her eyes. Now, these could very well be remnants of the pepper spray she’d endured, or she could be emotionally moved by the giant leap their relationship had just taken. Since Parker’s heart was beating so fast that he felt he might need that oxygen mask in a moment, he decided it was the latter; that way, he wasn’t going through the emotions all on his own.

  “Do you want us to find a house together to raise our family in?”

  She blinked and nodded. “Yes, Parker. Yes, I think that’s a great idea.”

  Now he did move the oxygen mask, right after dropping her hands and leaning close. “Just for a second,” he told her as his lips touched hers. “Just for one second more.” He kissed her again, and Drew wrapped her arms around him.

  Chapter 21

  “Oh dear, now he’s put the baby in danger,” Lorrayna began the minute she entered the bedroom at the B&B, where Parker had not an hour ago tucked Drew into bed.

  “If you lose this baby, I’ll sue that awful ass of a man. Come to think of it, I don’t want you staying here.” Lorrayna pulled back the sheets, then turned to the partially unpacked suitcase across the room. “Let’s get you dressed and I’ll get Walt to pick us up and take us home. The poor thing has been working so hard to get his place back in shape.”

  Drew closed her eyes to the drone of her mother’s voice. She’d stayed in the hospital for two days, during which time she’d been moved to the labor and delivery ward, where Dr. Lorens kept a close eye on the spotting that had started only hours after her initial admission. Her heart still beat wildly at the thought, tears welling in her eyes as she considered the implications. Dr. Lorens had commented that the spotting might have been brought on by stress or the fall after the explosion.

  Yes, the explosion. She remembered hearing footsteps on the stairs, stinging in her eyes, then the jolt of the house and grabbing Rufus in her arms. The next thing she knew, she was awake and Parker was holding her hands, asking her to find a house for them to live. A house, because hers had been destroyed, along with her flower shop and the life she’d spent nearly three years building.

  But she wouldn’t cry. No. Tears didn’t fix anything, and she’d shed more than her share as she lay in the hospital bed, praying desperately for her baby to live. By the afternoon of day two, the spotting had ceased and there was no trace of any contractions. The next morning, Dr. Lorens discharged her with strict instr
uctions: “Complete bed rest until you deliver.”

  So in Parker’s bed she would rest, until they found their own or until her mother drove her absolutely insane and they found a psychiatric institution that would allow her to give birth there instead.

  “I’m not going anywhere, Mama,” Drew said quietly, reaching out to pull the sheet back over her legs. It was mid-October, and summer had eased into fall. That normally brought the temperatures down from the high nineties to the seventies. When they’d arrived at the B&B, the thermostat in the burgundy truck Parker had picked her up in read the mid-eighties. It was Parker’s truck, the one he’d had transported from Baltimore.

  “What do you mean you’re not going anywhere?” Lorrayna asked after slamming the suitcase shut and coming back to stand beside the bed. “He almost got you killed and now the baby is in danger. It’s not smart to stay with him, Drew. It’s downright ridiculous. Everyone in town is talking about you two. It’s not bad enough you’re pregnant by him, but now you’re shacking up with him. It’s deplorable!”

  Really? Who says “deplorable” anymore? Drew thought with a sigh. One of Dr. Lorens’s other instructions had been to cut down on stress, which Parker had assured her would be done. He’d sworn Michelle and Mr. Sylvester would keep her so occupied that she wouldn’t have to worry about anything else. Apparently that hadn’t started yet.

  “Mama, listen to me. I’m going to stay here and I’m going to get the rest Dr. Lorens prescribed. The baby is going to be just fine.” That was about as calm as Drew could manage the words, and even then she’d been gripping the sheets.

  “He’s no good! Where is he now? Why isn’t he here taking care of you?” she demanded.

  “He’s taking care of business.”

  “What business? I hear he doesn’t even have that fancy job in Baltimore anymore.” Lorrayna had the audacity to nod her head curtly at the end of that sentence as if she were giving Drew a breaking news update. “And now you don’t even have a shop. I tell you this is worse than the situation in Stratford, and we cannot keep running, Drewcilla. It just doesn’t make sense. We had it so good here in Sweetland until he came back here smiling and riding around town like he were some type of god. Well, he’s not! He’s just a man, and who the hell needs them!” she yelled.

  Drew sat up in bed, her temples throbbing, hands clutching the sheets so hard that her knuckles whitened.

  “It wasn’t my idea to leave Stratford and come to Sweetland, Mama. Do you recall whose idea that was?” Drew didn’t give her mother a chance to answer. “I had plans for my life, plans that would have taken me to the city, where I would have worked in a professional setting and bought a nice place to stay. I would have been away from Stratford and the unfortunate ‘situation’ you referred to so delicately. But no, your husband had a plan, he had a business venture that took every dime he’d managed to save in twenty years, which wasn’t much since he gambled just about his entire paycheck every week. I stayed for you. I gave him my money for your sake. Then he goes and kills himself, the selfish bastard! As if he hadn’t done enough to disgrace us in Stratford. That business collapsed and we never got a dime from the insurance company. And you couldn’t handle any of that, so we came to Sweetland to save your life so I wouldn’t have to bury both my parents before my thirtieth birthday!”

  Her chest was heaving, tears welling in her eyes, as she spoke to her mother in a tone she had never dared before. But she couldn’t stop now; she doubted anything but a muzzle would keep all that she’d kept pent up for years from breaking loose now.

  Drew untangled her legs from the sheet and tossed them over the side of the bed. She was standing before she could stop herself.

  “I worked for you, I paid your bills even when it took the last of my savings. I started from scratch here in Sweetland so I wouldn’t upset you by leaving. I like it here, I’ve made it my home.” She blinked away the first of the tears to fall as she stared at her mother’s shocked and pale face. “And I love Parker Cantrell. He is the father of my child and we are going to buy our own house and raise our daughter there. That’s for me, Mama. That’s what I want to do with my life at this point, for me!”

  “Drewcilla!” Lorrayna finally gasped. “You have never been so disrespectful in your life. I can only blame these ill-mannered people you’ve been hanging around.”

  Drew shook her head. “Don’t do that, Mama. Don’t make this about anybody else but us. For years I’ve been walking on eggshells, afraid I’d set off some ticking time bomb in your head. I’ve watched you whittle away your life because of what he did to you, and I’m sick of it. I won’t watch it anymore. If you want to walk around pining away and banking your pain behind sarcasm and complaints, you go right ahead. But I won’t do it with you any longer. I won’t listen to it and I won’t let you drench my baby in it either.” Drew was crying full force now, sucking in air as she talked, and fighting the spiking pain at her temples as she breathed.

  Lorrayna shook her head. “You would choose him over me? You would choose this man that hasn’t promised you anything but the moment over your mother who gave birth to you and who cared for you all your life—”

  “And who put her love and dedication for a drunken gambler over my best interests time after time,” Drew finished the sentence for her mother. “Whatever he said you did, whatever he wanted you made sure happened. You asked me to give him my money, you told me it was my duty. Well, it wasn’t my duty, Mother. It was his duty to take care of us!”

  Like a child, Lorrayna lifted her hands to her ears. Drew reached out and pulled them down, holding her mother’s hands at her sides. “You will listen to every word I have to say, because if you still want to carry on with this charade you call a life, then it’ll be the last time I talk to you.”

  Lorrayna blinked and looked away.

  “I did everything I did because I loved you and I cared for your well-being. Now, it’s your turn, Mama. Now, it’s time for you to stop being so selfish and put aside your sordid thoughts and fears for me. Parker is not like Daddy and he’s not like Jared Mansfield. He’s a better man than both of them rolled up together and we’re going to be together for as long as it lasts. I’m not going to think beyond that, or spend my time worrying about the second it’s over or if he’ll walk away. I just won’t live like that—not now or ever again!”

  “Drew!” Delia yelled the moment she walked into the bedroom.

  Parker’s suite at the inn had a sitting room and a small kitchen that had to be passed before a person arrived at the bedroom. So Drew hadn’t heard the outer door open, but she sighed with relief that someone had interrupted this scene. Her heart couldn’t take another moment of breaking at the sheer look of sadness in her mother’s eyes.

  “You belong in bed,” Delia said, crossing the room until she was next to Drew. “Let go,” she told her as she grabbed Drew’s wrists, shaking them so that she would let go of her hold on Lorrayna.

  Drew felt as though that might be the last connection to her mother she ever had, the last time they actually touched each other, and she lost her breath at the thought. For as much of a pain in the butt that Lorrayna had been over the years, it had been just the two of them for so long. They’d stood together against the Jared incident, her father’s death, the move, finding out she was pregnant, everything. And now that might be over.

  “Here, get yourself back into this bed and I’ll get you some water.” Delia pushed past Lorrayna and was back in seconds with a glass of cold water and a wet cloth she used to wipe Drew’s face.

  As for Lorrayna, she had backed up quietly until she was totally out of the room. Drew closed her eyes to that sight, but she didn’t cry. Not again. It was done. She’d stood up to her mother, said some things that probably sounded pretty awful but were necessary.

  “She’ll get over it,” Delia said as she sat on the bed beside Drew, rubbing her belly. “Or she’ll miss the very best thing to ever happen to her.”

  Drew n
odded, a part of her hoping Delia was right. Another part of her hating that she might be wrong.

  * * *

  “Hey there, sleepyhead,” Parker said softly, gently moving hair from Drew’s blinking eyes.

  For the last twenty minutes or so, he’d been watching her sleep. Waning rays of sunlight filtered through the half-closed blinds, casting a shadow over part of her body and face. Her hands were pulled up to cradle beneath her cheek and she’d been breathing in and out evenly, melodiously.

  “Hi,” she murmured, then rolled onto her back and stretched. “How long have I been asleep?”

  She was trying to sit up now, and Parker helped her by rearranging the pillows and making sure she was comfortable, which earned him a smile from her. A smile that reached right into his chest and wrapped tight fingers around his heart.

  “I’ve only been back for about a half hour and you were asleep when I came in.”

  “Oh, really? I still feel really tired,” she said with another yawn.

  “Dr. Lorens said you’d been through a very traumatic experience so you were bound to be exhausted. She also sent over a bottle of iron pills that she wants you to take once a day.”

  “Wow, a doctor that really does house calls.” She chuckled.

  “Not really. I stopped by to see Quinn and she was there. She asked how you were doing and said you should try the pills for a little more energy.”

  “I guess I really don’t need energy considering I can only get out of the bed to visit the bathroom.”

  She didn’t look too happy about that prospect and Parker couldn’t really blame her, but it was for the best.

  “Where have you been all day? Michelle said she thought you were going to the police station.”

  The worry was clear in her eyes, and Parker wished he could wipe it all away. Actually, he could and planned to do just that tonight. But he had to talk to her about that first.

  “I did, but I stopped by your place first.”

  Another statement that brought sadness to Drew’s face. Hurriedly, Parker moved to the chair across from the bed where he’d dropped the bags he’d brought from her apartment and the flower shop.