by Nancy Thayer
She hangs it in the closet, then leads him into the living room, which glows like a scene from Masterpiece Theatre, with the burning fire and the abundance of food spread out on the walnut table next to the window.
“I’m glad to see you again,” Emily says, sinking onto the sofa and patting the spot next to her.
“Same here.” Cameron sits. “You look very attractive.”
“Thanks.” She’s trying to be casual but inside she’s trembling. “Would you like some wine? I thought red because”—She gestures toward the table set with interesting cheeses, seedless red grapes, lime green Granny Smith apples, crusty French bread, and several different desserts from the local bakery.
“Looks like a feast.” Something has put him on guard. Rising, he says, “I’ll pour the wine. Red for you, too?”
She accepts the wine but only pretends to sip it.
When she stretches her arms above her head, he playfully asks, “Are you trying to seduce me?”
“Of course, Cameron,” Emily replies smoothly. She takes a sip of wine after all, for courage. “But I need to tell you something first.”
“Okay.”
Now that the moment has arrived, all the clever scenarios Emily has imagined have evaporated. She sets her glass down. She takes a moment to gather her nerve.
“It’s very hard for me to say,” she tells him honestly.
Cameron waits, no longer smiling.
She crosses her arms, hugging herself. Protecting herself. “Cameron, I’m pregnant.”
Cameron blinks. “Well. Huh.” He scans Emily’s body. “How far along are you?”
“Six weeks.”
“Just before Christmas.”
“Right.”
“If it’s mine.”
“What?”
“The last time I checked, you were ‘sort of going’ with Ben.”
She’s reviewed every word she remembers saying to Cameron. She’s prepared for this. “Yes, that was true. I said that, and then you said perhaps I ought to do a little experiment to see if I was really in love with him. And you and I made love and—” She flushes and looks down. She hopes she looks modest and vulnerable. Lord knows she really is vulnerable right now. “And I haven’t been with Ben since.” Speaking, she completely believes her lie.
“Really.” Cameron stands up and walks across to the window. Pulling open the heavy curtain, he stares out into the evening, into the darkness swirled with falling snow. “And you’re sure the kid is mine?”
She sees herself reflected in the glass of the window, and Cameron’s reflection, too. Their eyes meet. “Yes. That’s what I’m telling you.”
Cameron shakes his head. “I’m shocked.”
“I know. Sometimes contraception doesn’t work.”
He returns to the table, standing next to her, his face serious, but calm. “What would you like to do about it?”
Emily doesn’t have to pretend a thing. He’s being nice, and the truth is she’s afraid. Tears stream down her face. Sobs wrack her chest, and her throat closes up. She can’t speak.
Cameron nods, as if, wordlessly, she’s told him. He knocks back his wine and pours himself another glass. Emily cries steadily, face buried in her hands.
“If it’s two months, you can have an abortion,” Cameron states quietly.
Emily struggles to control herself. “Cameron, I thought that … going to meet your friends, staying in Stowe with the Endicotts … I thought you might have marriage in mind.”
Cameron shrugs elaborately, almost like a man trying to shake off a backpack. “Maybe I did. But this is a bit more rushed.”
She needs to appear slightly elusive. She will not beg. She keeps her voice cool when she responds, “More rushed than I had in mind, as well.” Emily finds a handkerchief and dries her face. “One way or the other, I can absolutely deal with it. But I thought you should know.”
Outside, a siren screams past.
“Yes. You’re right.” Cameron walks to the window. In a mild, conversational tone, talking to the night as much as to Emily, he says, “I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve screwed around a good bit in my life, without necessarily thinking of the consequences.” He shakes his head. “It’s surprising this hasn’t happened before now. But I don’t intend to walk away from whatever I’ve done.”
Emily waits.
“I wonder,” Cameron muses, “could we make it, Emily? Let’s really think this through now. Do you think we could get married and have a child, live together and be happy?”
Emily knows he’s not waiting for her answer. He’s searching his own heart. Rising, she goes into the kitchen and pours herself a glass of water. She returns to the living room, composed.
Cameron strokes his chin as he thinks aloud. “My boss likes his employees to be married and have children. Thinks it gives us stability and incentive. Still—I have to tell you, Emily, I need to tell you—I’m not in love with you.” His eyes become hooded. “In fact, I might be in love with someone else …” Sadness shadows his face.
Fresh tears swell in Emily’s eyes. He’s more brutal than she thought he’d be.
Bluntly, he continues, “And I’m not sure you’re in love with me.”
“But I am in love with you,” Emily says, and it’s almost true. For if she’s not in love with him, certainly she could love Cameron.
He shakes his head sadly, but comes to sit on the arm of her chair. He puts a steadying hand on her shoulder.
“That’s very nice, then. That’ll be a big help to us, won’t it? We should be able to make a good little family.”
“Cameron”—Emily smiles, and at this moment she does love him very much—“is there anyone else like you in all the world?”
“Maybe,” Cameron says. “Maybe there is, right in there.” And he gives her belly a little nudge.
Frances sits on Maggie’s bed. “Tell me.”
Huddled in misery in fetal position, Maggie says, “I met a man at the New Year’s Eve party I helped cater.”
“I remember.” Frances nods. “You went out to dinner with him the next night. Clarice told me she met him when he came to pick you up. She said he was quite the gentleman, and extremely handsome.”
“He’s nice, too, Mom.” Maggie struggles to sit up. “He’s in finance on Wall Street, whatever that means, but he’s sweet, and kind, and—how can I explain it? For a very short time, it was like magic, as if something special existed between us after our eyes first met.”
Frances chuckles. “You don’t need to explain that, honey. I think I can almost remember.”
“We had so much to tell each other over dinner. We were the last ones to leave the restaurant … and I went to his room. I spent the night with him.”
Covering her face with her hands, Maggie says, “I was such a fool. I’m the biggest sucker on earth.” Lifting her tearstained face to her mother’s, she says, “He said he was going to call me. He wanted me to come into New York. He had plans for us … Oh, God, how could I have been so stupid?”
Pulling her daughter against her, Frances pats her back soothingly. “He hasn’t called?”
“He called once, the day after he returned to New York. He told me he was slammed with work, he was thinking of me, he didn’t have much time to talk, he’d call me—but he hasn’t called again.”
“Do you think you could phone him?”
“No!” Maggie pulls away from Frances, the movement making her queasy. “No,” she repeats, more quietly. “It’s been eight weeks. He’s only texted me once in eight weeks. He hasn’t called. No one is that busy.” Bleakly, she faces her mother. “What am I going to do?”
“How about if Thaddeus takes his shotgun and goes into Manhattan …?” Frances has a twinkle in her eyes when she speaks.
“Oh, Mom!” Maggie can’t help but laugh, and somehow the bitterness evaporates in the face of her mother’s love, and the realization that whatever her situation is, it’s not tragic.
“We’ll
find our way through this,” Frances says. “Does Clarice know yet?”
“Oh, Lord,” Maggie moans. “Of course she doesn’t. She’ll be horrified.”
“I doubt it. She’s older now, but she’s always been a lovely woman. No doubt she had her share of what she would call suitors.” Frances smiles. “I’ll bet it would cheer up the old lady enormously to have a baby around the house.”
“A baby,” Maggie whispers. She can’t take it all in. She has to throw up.
She runs from the room.
Emily wakes. Cameron’s beside her, still sleeping. She sinks into her pillow, playing through last night: her announcement, his kindness, their decision to marry. It was emotionally exhausting. She was glad she’d brought food, because suddenly they were both hungry and devoured her little feast. Emily drank no wine but Cameron did, which relaxed him, and they ended the evening making love in her bed.
It seems unreal to her, though. A dream.
Beside her, Cameron stirs and wakes. “Good morning.”
She kisses his mouth. “Good morning.”
He glances at the clock. “I’ve got to get to work.”
“I’ll make coffee.” She pads barefoot into the kitchen and fills the Keurig, prepares coffee the way she knows he likes it, and carries two cups of it into the bedroom. He comes out of the shower and quickly dresses, his mind obviously on business.
She hands him his cup of coffee. Leaning against the counter, she stares down into her own cup, milky and sweet.
“How would you feel about eloping?” Cameron asks.
Emily tilts her head, considering. “Would your family be terribly upset if we didn’t have a big fat wedding?” Elopement’s probably a good idea, given Emily’s condition, but she wishes he had asked her if she’d like a big fat wedding.
Cameron shrugs. “They’d probably be happy not to interrupt their busy schedules.” Carelessly, he adds, “Anyway, if we elope, you won’t be bothered planning a wedding and you can still finish your semester and get your degree.”
“Okay,” Emily agrees reluctantly. She pulls herself together. The man is going to marry her. Sweetly, she tells him, “Then I want to stay home and take care of our baby and take care of you.”
He lifts his coffee mug and salutes her. “Sounds good. How are you feeling?”
Grateful for his question, Emily nestles against him. “I’m fine right now. The morning sickness seems to have faded.”
“Good. Because I’ve got piles of work.” Cameron moves away, to put on a tie.
“Of course.” Emily gathers herself. Almost casually, she adds, “I’ll find out about getting a marriage license.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
In her bedroom at Thaddeus’s farm, Maggie sits at her old desk, making a list. She must buy baby books. See a doctor. Talk with Clarice. She hopes Clarice will understand if she moves back to the farm when she has her baby. Maggie will need Frances then as she’s never needed her before. Clarice is getting around fairly well these days.
She adds to her list: tell friends. Ha, won’t they be shocked! Boring old Maggie who does nothing but clean houses and write. Check out the thrift shop for secondhand maternity outfits, although she won’t need those for months. And baby clothes? Baby furniture? She is so unprepared.
A vision of a baby snugly tucked into a carrier on Maggie’s bosom blossoms in her inner vision, and happiness washes through her blood. This baby will have everything—a family to love it, and this magical island floating in the sea, with its shorebirds and seals and shells and ferries, its sailboats and tugboats and fields of wildflowers, its picture book town with—
A cry shatters her thoughts.
And then, a heartrending howl.
Frances!
Maggie runs down the stairs and into the kitchen. The sight before her waves like a hallucination. It takes a moment to come clear. To make its terrible sense.
Thaddeus lies on his back on the floor, a felled giant. Maggie’s mother is on her knees, hitting Thaddeus in the chest over and over again.
“Maggie!” Frances cries. “Call 911! I think Thaddeus has had a heart attack!”
Maggie calls for an ambulance. She phones Ben, who’s in Vermont skiing with friends. He doesn’t answer, so she leaves a message on his cell: Thaddeus. Heart attack. Dropping to her knees on the kitchen floor, Maggie takes her stepfather’s wrist in her hands and feels for a pulse. If one is there, it’s so light she can’t find it.
The ambulance arrives quickly. With swift, efficient care, the EMTs lift the big man’s inert body onto a stretcher and slide it into the van. Frances steps inside.
“Go. I’ll follow,” Maggie tells her.
The Nantucket Cottage Hospital is two stories high and, not counting the labor-delivery-room area, it holds fourteen beds. Thaddeus is in the emergency room. Frances paces the floor of the waiting room, wringing her hands, her face white.
“What did they say?” Maggie asks her mother.
“They’re trying to save him.”
Save him. Very quietly, Maggie asks, “Is Thaddeus dying?”
Her mother’s voice shakes. “They told me the situation is grave.”
“Oh, Mom, Thaddeus is too young to die.”
“He’s fifty-five.”
“That’s far too young. I mean, his own mother is still alive.”
“No one ever said life was fair, Maggie.”
A nurse comes down the hall. “Why don’t you come in?” she says, inviting them to see Thaddeus at last.
The lights are low in the room made intimate by white curtains. Thaddeus reposes on a hospital bed, long and straight against the white sheets like the mast of a capsized schooner lying on its sails. Machines wink and blink around him and tubes snake into his gigantic arms.
Frances stands by his side, holding his hand. He doesn’t know it, he’s sleeping, or so it seems. Frances’s hair is sliding free of the clip, her eyes rimmed with shadows.
“Hi, Thaddeus.” Maggie puts her hand on his arm, an uncomfortable gesture, for she’s seldom touched her huge, taciturn stepfather. His arm, muscular, hairy, hard as bricks, is reassuringly strong.
Thaddeus’s jaw clenches, and his throat bulges as he swallows, but he doesn’t make a sound.
While Frances sits with her husband, Maggie drives to the house on Orange Street to tell Thaddeus’s mother. Maggie lets herself in to the house. Clarice is seated in her living room, dressed in slacks, cashmere sweater, and pearls, reading a biography of Thomas Jefferson.
“Hello, darling,” Clarice says when Maggie enters the room. Seeing Maggie’s face, she puts the book in her lap and removes her reading glasses. She sits up straighter, steeling herself.
Maggie knows not to touch Clarice right now, but she kneels next to her grandmother’s chair. “Thaddeus had a heart attack. He’s in the hospital. Mom’s with him.”
Clarice puts her hand to her heart and turns away, shoulders bent. For a moment Maggie thinks the older woman will crumple to the floor. But Clarice straightens.
“Could you drive me to the hospital, Maggie?”
“Of course.” Maggie holds a coat for the older woman to slide into, awkwardly, as if she’d forgotten how it all works, these moving limbs, this clothing against the cold.
Thaddeus dies at midnight. Frances is with him, as are Clarice and Maggie. It happens so quickly Maggie feels cheated. She feels more angry than sad. She wants to say, “Wait!” Ben has texted to say he’s driving home from Vermont.
She stands at the end of the hospital bed while Clarice smooths her son’s hair and bends to kiss his forehead. Clarice turns to Maggie and says, “Let’s give your mother some time alone.” As they leave the room, Maggie turns back to see Frances fall across Thaddeus’s body, her face contorted with such grief Maggie has to look away.
They wait in the hall, Clarice and Maggie, not talking, while in the room Dr. Anderson does his final ministrations to Thaddeus’s body and talks with Frances.
When Fr
ances steps out of the room, Dr. Anderson is with her, his hand on her elbow. “I’m sorry,” he tells Clarice. “It was massive, unavoidable.”
Frances reaches for Clarice. The two older women embrace, heads bent, keening softly.
Dr. Anderson puts his hands on Maggie’s shoulders and takes her aside. “I’m concerned for Clarice. And for your mother. They’re both in shock right now, and I don’t think they should be left alone. I’m giving you sleeping pills, one for each woman.” With his weary, wise eyes, he scans their faces, and hers. “I’ll give you an extra in case you need one, too.”
Maggie escorts the older women out to the car, handling them as gently as porcelain statues. Clarice is nearly comatose in the front seat, but as Maggie drives back to the farm, Frances rails, arguing with Fate as if she believes she can change the course of things.
“This is absurd!” Frances weeps. “He was so hearty! He didn’t smoke, his cholesterol was fine, there’s no earthly reason this should have happened!”
“I know, Mom,” Maggie says quietly.
“He was a fighter, God damn it!” Frances hits her fist against the window. “He was a fighter, wasn’t he, Clarice? Why didn’t he fight this? Oh, God, why didn’t I sense that something had happened? Why didn’t I know? I can’t believe I didn’t feel something!”
Maggie helps Clarice from the car and holds her arm as they enter the house. Clarice has gone so white she seems nearly transparent.
“Let’s go up to bed, Clarice,” Maggie says. “I have a pill for you that will help you sleep.”
“I don’t want to sleep.” Her voice is weak.
Because Clarice doesn’t look strong enough to manage the stairs, Maggie settles the older woman on the living room sofa.
“I’m cold,” Clarice whispers. “I want to keep my coat on.”
“I’ll make you a pot of tea. But take this now. Dr. Anderson prescribed it.” She fetches a glass of water and watches Clarice take the mild sleeping tablet.
“I’m going up to bed.” Frances weaves slightly as she stands in the doorway.