“I had curtains made out of material just like this when I was six,” Dinah said, her expression nostalgic. “It was the prettiest room I ever had. When I have a little girl, I’m going to do her room exactly the same way.” She scowled as the needle she was using to sew a hem pricked her finger. “Of course, someone else is going to make the damn curtains.”
Maggie regarded her with interest. “Any timetable for the arrival of this girl?” she inquired.
To everyone’s surprise, Dinah blushed. “Could be sooner rather than later.”
“You’re pregnant?” Maggie asked delightedly. “Does Cord know?” She shook her head. “Of course he does. You’d tell him first, wouldn’t you? When’s the baby due? How soon will you know if it’s a boy or a girl? Oh, Lord, this is going to give Josh ideas.” She sat back, looking stunned.
Amanda laughed. “I have never heard one woman’s good news cause such commotion for someone else before.”
“Then you haven’t spent nearly enough time around Maggie,” Dinah said dryly. “Trust me, she is not worried about this giving Josh ideas. She’s the one who’s always had to do everything I do and twice as fast.” She grinned at Maggie. “Sorry, sweetie. Not this time. I’ve got an insurmountable head start.”
Maggie’s gaze instantly narrowed. “How much of a head start?”
Nadine draped an arm around her daughter-in-law’s shoulders. “Maggie, honey, when it comes to babies, it’s all but impossible to make up any kind of a head start. Nine months is pretty much the rule. You can’t set out to have your baby in eight, though I for one would certainly like to see you try. I’m ready to be a grandmama.”
“But with those early pregnancy tests, Dinah could be only a few days pregnant,” Maggie argued. “If I take Josh home right this minute—”
“Give it up, Magnolia,” Dinah said. “This is one contest I’m going to win. Do you think I’m stupid enough to tell you news like this when you might have time to catch up?”
“So when is the baby due?” Maggie asked. “It’s November now.”
“I’m not telling,” Dinah said, her lips twitching with amusement.
Maggie headed for the door. “Cord will tell me. I always could wrap that man around my finger.”
“Not this time,” Dinah retorted. “I’ve put him on notice that he is not to tell you a blessed thing about this baby’s due date.”
Amanda listened to the two of them sparring as only best friends could and regretted that she’d never had a friendship that ran that deep. Her father had been her best friend, and then Bobby had taken his place. Now with both of them out of her life, she recognized the foolhardiness of not making more of an effort to surround herself with women like these.
“Hey, you okay?” Nadine asked, studying her worriedly.
Amanda nodded. “Just feeling a little envious, I guess.”
“Because of the baby?” Dinah asked. “Would you like to have another one someday?”
“Sure,” Amanda said without hesitation. “I loved every second of being pregnant, even the morning sickness. I loved it when the baby started to move inside me. I can’t say I was crazy about the pain of getting those little monsters into this world, but holding them in my arms for the first time was amazing. When they call it one of God’s greatest miracles, they get it exactly right.”
No sooner had she spoken than she looked up and spotted Caleb standing on the other side of the screen door. He looked as if someone had just delivered devastating news.
“Caleb?” Amanda asked, regarding him with concern. “Are you okay?”
He smiled, but she knew him well enough now to recognize that it was forced.
“I’m great. Just loaded down with all this food,” he said, juggling several bags. “Can somebody get the door for me?”
Nadine sprang up to do it. Maggie and Dinah immediately began poking in the bags to see what he’d brought for lunch, pulling out huge containers of coleslaw and barbecue and potato salad.
“Pickles?” Dinah queried. “Where are the pickles?”
“Right here, little mother-to-be,” Maggie responded, retrieving a plastic container of dill pickles. “I imagine you think they’re all for you.”
“Of course,” Dinah said, reaching for them.
During the exchange Amanda kept her gaze on Caleb. She’d never seen him looking quite so out of his depth before. She crossed the room. “Can I get you something to drink? A soda, maybe? Or the guys have beer in a cooler outside.”
“No, I’m fine,” he said with another of those halfhearted smiles.
“Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” she pressed, keeping her voice low while Maggie, Nadine and Dinah chattered on.
“Nothing’s going on,” he said more tersely than he’d ever spoken to her before. He immediately winced. “Sorry. Bad morning, I guess. I’ll go outside and take out my foul mood on some wood. Hammering a few nails should make me feel better.”
Amanda reluctantly let him go. How could he claim that the two of them were friends when it was apparently so one-sided? He was always there for her, but the one time he looked as if he needed a friend, he shut her out.
She might not have a lot of experience with friendship, but she knew that wasn’t the way it was supposed to work, which meant that the minute this crowd dispersed, she and Caleb were going to have a chat. She was going to get to the bottom of whatever had put that lost and devastated look on his face.
Caleb wanted to kick himself for betraying even a hint of his reaction to Amanda’s comments about having another baby. Thankfully she’d only picked up on the fact that there was something wrong, not what had triggered his mood. He had a hunch, though, that he hadn’t heard the last of it. She was going to get in his face the very first chance she had.
Which meant, of course, that he needed to be away from her house one step ahead of everyone else. The minute the food had been served and the kids had gone inside for their naps, he made his excuses and started around the side of the house. Even though it made him feel like the worst sort of coward, he did it while Amanda was inside.
Unfortunately, the woman apparently had radar. She met him the second he turned the corner into the front yard.
“Going somewhere?” she inquired sweetly, her expression knowing.
“I have an appointment,” he said. It was only a slight stretch of the truth. He was going over to Mary Louise’s later to talk to her parents about the baby. She’d called that morning and asked him to be there when she broke the news. She’d sounded so nervous and uncertain, he’d agreed immediately.
There it was again. The whole baby thing. It seemed like everywhere he turned these days people were talking about babies. It was beginning to take a toll.
“Oh?” Amanda said, her expression skeptical. “Anything you’d care to talk about?”
“Sorry, it’s confidential,” he said evasively. “And I really do need to get going.”
She studied him with apparent disappointment. “I thought you trusted me more than this.”
“I told you, this appointment is confidential.”
“I’m not talking about that,” she said impatiently. “I’m talking about the fact that you’re obviously upset and you’re trying to hide the reason from me.”
“I can’t talk about it, Amanda. I really can’t.” He’d never discussed it with anyone, and Amanda was the last person with whom he’d share it. He hated the idea that it might change the way she looked at him.
“Then it’s all part of this confidential meeting you’re going to?” she asked.
For the first time since he’d known her, Caleb lied. “Yes,” he said. He could live with the lie far more easily than he could live with Amanda ever knowing the truth.
She regarded him sadly. “I wish I believed you.”
She turned and walked away, leaving him standing there knowing that he’d just lost something that really mattered. He’d lost her trust, something he’d spent months and months tryin
g to earn. He couldn’t help wondering if, once all the truths started coming out, he would ever get it back again.
Mary Louise wished her mom and dad weren’t looking at her like that, as if she were such a terrible disappointment to them. The minute she’d told them about the baby, her mom’s eyes had filled with tears and her dad had looked as if someone had punched him in the stomach.
“Where the hell’s Danny?” her father asked furiously. “Why isn’t he sitting here beside you? What kind of coward leaves his girl to break this kind of news alone?”
“I didn’t want him here,” Mary Louise said, looking to Reverend Webb for support. He gave her an encouraging smile. “Danny and I talked about this and we’ve met twice with Reverend Webb. We know what we’re going to do, or I guess I should say what we’re not going to do.”
Her mother’s hand covered a gasp. “Please don’t say he’s not going to marry you, Mary Louise.”
“Mom, it’s for the best,” she said urgently. “Getting married now would ruin all of Danny’s plans for the future, and sooner or later he’d come to hate me and the baby. That’s the last thing I want.”
Her father rose to his feet, his face red. “You’re going to sit here and tell me that boy is not willing to make an honest woman of you? We’ll see about that. I have a shotgun in the other room that says otherwise.”
“That’s not an answer, Chet,” Reverend Webb said mildly. “Forcing two kids to get married when they recognize all the pitfalls won’t help anyone, least of all your grandchild.”
Her dad scowled at Reverend Webb. “At least my grandchild would have its daddy’s name.”
“And now it will have mine…and yours,” Mary Louise stressed with a touch of defiance. “And that’s okay. I’ve made my peace with raising this baby on my own.” She gave her father a hard, unyielding look. “And I can do it completely on my own, if that’s the way it has to be.”
“Oh, Mary Louise,” her mother whispered, her voice thick with tears. “Are you sure you want to do this? You could…” Her voice faltered.
“What? Have an abortion? Give the baby away?” Mary Louise said. “No way. Neither of those is an option. This is Danny’s baby and I want to keep it.”
Her mother turned to Reverend Webb. “Talk to her. Tell her how difficult this is going to be.”
“I think she knows,” he said gently. “Your daughter is very mature. You should be proud of her. She hasn’t come to this decision lightly. Neither has Danny. I can vouch for that. In the end, they made the decision together. He’ll acknowledge the baby and pay what he can in support.”
“Well, that’s mighty damn big of him,” her father blustered. “Seeing as how he’s the one who got her into this fix.”
“We made this baby together,” Mary Louise corrected him staunchly. “Don’t blame it all on Danny. He’s a good guy. He’s just not ready to be married or to be a father.”
“Well, ready or not, it looks as if he’s about to be a daddy. He ought to be man enough to be a husband, too,” her father insisted. “I don’t care what the rest of you say, I’m going over there to talk some sense into him. I imagine his folks will see my side of it, especially when I ask ’em how they’d feel if it was that little princess of theirs. I imagine if Cindy came to them with this news, they’d want the boy to do the right thing.”
He stomped out of the room. Mary Louise sent a pleading look toward Reverend Webb. “Please, talk him out of this. I don’t want it to get ugly.”
He gave her hand a squeeze. “I’ll do my best,” he promised, heading after her father.
Mary Louise turned to her mother. “Please don’t hate me, Mom.”
“Oh, sweetie, we could never hate you. It just makes me sad to think of all the difficulties you’re bound to face. There will be talk, you know. That’ll be hard on you and on the baby. And being a single mom might be common these days, but it’s not easy.”
Mary Louise crossed her arms protectively over her still-flat stomach. “I don’t care about ‘easy.’ I already love this baby. I can’t wait for him or her to get here. It’s seven more months, but I already wish it were tomorrow.”
Her mother gave her a watery smile. “My first grandbaby,” she said. “You know once your father gets over the shock, he and I will do anything we can to help you.”
“Do you think Daddy will calm down and leave Danny alone?” Mary Louise asked, worriedly glancing toward the door. She could still hear her father’s raised voice and Reverend Webb’s quieter responses outside.
“You’re his little girl. He only wants what’s best for you,” her mother said. “He’ll settle down once he accepts that this is the way you want it.” She studied Mary Louise’s face intently. “It is the way you want it, right? Because your daddy will change Danny’s mind if you still want a wedding.”
Mary Louise regarded her mother sadly. “I do, but not if it means being divorced a year from now. I think this is the only way Danny and I might eventually have a real chance.”
Her mother crossed the room and sat next to her, then drew her into a fierce hug. “Reverend Webb’s right. You’re wise beyond your years, Mary Louise, and I am very proud of you.”
Tears, never far from the surface these days, spilled down Mary Louise’s cheeks and mingled with her mother’s. Being wise pretty much sucked.
“What put you in such a sour mood?” Big Max asked Caleb when he showed up on Sunday evening. “If you’re going to sit there looking as if you just lost your best friend, you might’s well go on home. Things get gloomy enough around here without you adding to the misery.”
“And who’s fault is that?” Caleb retorted heatedly, his patience worn thin by too many people poking into his business the past couple of days. “You could change the way things are around here with one phone call.”
“We were talking about you, not me,” Big Max responded. “Don’t try to twist it into another one of your pitches for me to crawl back to my daughter.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to grovel, Max. You could use a healthy dose of humility in your life.”
“I’ve got plenty to keep me humble,” the old man said. “And I’m sure you’ll see to it that I’m brought down a peg or two when I need it. Now, what got your knickers in a knot? There’s no point playing poker if your mind’s not going to be on the cards. What happened in church today? Did somebody tell you your sermon stank like day-old fish?”
Caleb bit back a laugh. “My sermon was just fine. Several people said so.”
“Did somebody dump a problem in your lap that you can’t solve?” Big Max pressed. “You’re not the Lord Almighty. You can’t fix everything. To tell you the truth, it seems to me He’s at a loss from time to time, too.”
Caleb thought of how ineffective he’d been yesterday when he’d been trying to help Mary Louise’s parents cope with the news of her pregnancy and guide them toward a workable solution they could all live with. Chet Carter had been all for taking his shotgun over to the Marshalls’ and using it to nudge Danny down the aisle. Eventually, Caleb had been able to make him see that a forced marriage wasn’t a good solution to anything, but Caleb wasn’t convinced Chet wouldn’t go back to his plan before all was said and done. He was still mad as hell that his daughter was facing this pregnancy alone.
“I do have a parishioner in need of some help,” he told Big Max, hoping to throw him off the scent. “I suppose that’s why I’m so distracted tonight.”
Big Max studied him skeptically. “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to tell me?”
“That’s all I can tell you,” Caleb said.
“Well, hell’s bells, if you can’t do better than that and you can’t concentrate on poker, get on out of here. You’re wasting my time.”
Relieved by the prospect of an early end to the uncomfortable evening, Caleb was about to take him up on it when Big Max suddenly looked a whole lot less feisty. “Is everything okay?” Caleb asked him, worried by the sudden uncertainty he s
aw in the older man’s eyes.
“Sure. Why wouldn’t it be? You’re the one acting crazy tonight,” Big Max grumbled. “Don’t know why you showed up here in the middle of the week, anyway.”
Caleb regarded him with real concern now. “Max, it’s Sunday night, same as always,” he said gently. “You asked me about church not two minutes ago.”
Big Max looked flustered, but he covered it with anger. “Of course it is. Stop trying to confuse me. Go on, now. I’m going to bed.”
Caleb wasn’t about to leave, not unless there was someone else around. “Is your housekeeper here?”
Max glowered at him. “Why do you care about that? You hoping Jessie will send you home with another piece of pie?”
“Exactly,” Caleb said, unwilling to admit that he wanted to be sure that there would be someone nearby in case something really was wrong.
“Well, I sent her home, so you’re out of luck,” Max said ungraciously. “Now, stop dillydallying and go.”
“I wouldn’t mind staying for a while,” Caleb offered. “That drink you made went to my head. I’d like to make myself a cup of coffee.”
Though the old man would never admit it, Caleb thought he detected relief in Max’s expression.
“Knew you couldn’t take a real drink,” Max gloated. “Stay here. I’ll make the coffee. I know my way around the kitchen.”
He left Caleb sitting alone, staring after him, concern suddenly eating away at him. Tonight wasn’t the first time Max had seemed a little…off-kilter. Caleb had chalked up all the other incidents to mere forgetfulness, but tonight he had to wonder if it might not be something more.
Then again, Max insisted on living out here all alone. He rarely ventured into town anymore, not even for the board meetings he was expected to attend. He’d turned into a recluse, but most people in town talked about his behavior as nothing more than the eccentricity of a wealthy man.
George Winslow ignored Max’s bad temper and lack of welcome and continued to visit from time to time. Caleb came by regularly, but if others dropped in, Caleb didn’t know about them. It was little wonder Big Max occasionally lost track of what day of the week it was. He supposed that the real surprise was that it didn’t happen more often.
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