Sweet Laurel Falls

by RaeAnne Thayne

  “How do you know? I made an appointment with Dr. Harris. She has one last opening today at five. I’m sure Jack would understand if you closed up the office a little early in order to make it.”

  “No.”

  And Jack called her stubborn. She ground her back teeth and wondered why her daughter’s strong will always took her by surprise, even after nineteen years of coming up against it. “You’re going to the doctor,” she said as sweetly as she could manage, “even if I have to get your uncle Riley to come in here, handcuff you and stuff you in the backseat of his patrol car.”

  Sage snorted. “As if he ever would.”

  “He might. You never know. What’s the point of having a brother who’s the chief of police if you can’t take advantage of the badge once in a while?”

  Sage shook her head. She fidgeted with her turkey wrap for a moment, then placed her hands flat on the desktop. “Mom, I don’t need to see Dr. Harris.”

  She sighed. “You need to be examined by somebody. Is there another doctor in town you would rather see?”

  “I saw a doctor at student health services when I went back to clean out my dorm room.” Her daughter spoke the words like a confession, fast, with the syllables all blurred together.

  Maura stared. “Why didn’t you say something? Did they give you any medication? What was the diagnosis?”

  “Well, the good news is I don’t have mono.” One corner of her mouth lifted as if she were trying to make a joke.

  Was it something more serious? Cancer? Maura felt as if every internal organ had frozen. Her heart surely had stopped beating, her lungs couldn’t draw air, her blood was no longer pumping. “What? What did the doctor say?”

  Sage sighed. “I didn’t want to tell you like this. I don’t know how I wanted to. The truth is, I didn’t want to, but…well, not like this, here in the office over turkey wraps.”

  Her face was frozen now too, and she could barely form any words through the sudden panic attack overwhelming her. She couldn’t lose Sage too. She couldn’t. “Tell me! What’s wrong?”

  Sage chewed her lip the way she used to when she was working on her times tables. “I’m pregnant.”

  Maura sank back in her chair as everything started working again in triple time. She couldn’t have heard correctly. She was hyperventilating, her breath coming fast and shallow, and her stomach gave a sickening curl. “You’re…what?”

  “You know. Preggers. Knocked up. Bun in the oven.”

  She couldn’t think. She could only stare at her pale daughter sitting in this elegant office that represented everything Sage had ever wanted.

  “How?” The word scored her throat.

  “The usual way, Mom,” Sage said, her tone dry. Still she didn’t meet Maura’s gaze, but resumed fretting with the paper wrap on her sandwich.

  So many things made sense now. Sage’s exhaustion, her sudden emotional outbursts, the upset stomach. Why hadn’t she said anything? All through the holidays, she hadn’t so much as given away a hint. Had their relationship become so superficial and strained since Layla’s death that Sage felt she couldn’t confide in her anymore?

  “I didn’t know you were even dating anyone,” she whispered. “Not since Michael Jacobs in high school.”

  Sage didn’t lift her gaze from the desk in front of her. “I’m not. Not really. It was…just one of those things.”

  “Who is the young man?”

  “I don’t want to talk about that right now, Mom, if you don’t mind. I haven’t figured out what I’m doing yet.”

  “What are you thinking about doing?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t.” Sage sighed. “I guess I’m just stupid, but I didn’t even suspect I might be pregnant until Christmas. I wasn’t having my period, but I just thought…I don’t know, that my cycle was all messed up because of stress and school and Layla and everything. When I went to the health center, they—we—figured out I must be about fifteen weeks along, which kind of eliminates some of my easier options, you know? I’m not sure if I could actually use those options, but I guess it can be harder to get a second-trimester abortion.”

  This couldn’t be real. Her daughter talking about abortions and trimesters as if she were discussing the latest movie trailer. Maura felt by turns icy cold, fiery hot, then completely numb.

  “You’re looking pale. Are you ready to kill me now?” Sage whispered.

  “No. Oh, no. It’s a…shock, that’s all.”

  She suddenly remembered being seventeen and pregnant and alone and having to tell her own mother. Mary Ella had been just months away from James McKnight walking out on the family. She had hated adding to her mother’s stress and had put off telling her as long as she possibly could.

  “It was a shock to me too. We, uh, used protection, but I guess it failed. Obviously.”

  Sage gestured to her abdomen, which now Maura could plainly see was bulging. A baby. Her daughter was going to have a baby. She still couldn’t wrap her head around it. She was only thirty-seven years old. Certainly too old to be a grandmother, for heaven’s sake.

  “I’m sorry,” Sage said, her voice small. “I know this changes everything.”

  “Yes. Yes, it does.”

  Sage looked so defeated, so small, that Maura did what she should have done in the first place, what she would have done if she hadn’t been reeling from the concussive grenade her daughter had just thrown in her lap. She leaned across the desk and wrapped her arms around Sage.

  Her daughter smelled of wool from her sweater and watermelon-scented shampoo. When Sage was first born and they were living in the little apartment above String Fever she had rented from Katherine, Maura used to hold her daughter for hours, her face buried in her neck as she savored the scent of baby powder and breast milk and a world of possibilities.

  “You’re not mad?” Sage asked.

  She hugged her more tightly. “No, honey. How could I be? I would be the world’s worst hypocrite to yell at you about an unexpected pregnancy, wouldn’t I? I just wish you had told me.”

  In her ear, Sage sniffled a little, which made Maura sniffle as well. Sage eased away to grab a tissue from the box on her desk and handed one to Maura too.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to tell you,” she admitted. “I just… With everything I’ve been dealing with—Jack and working here and my online classes—it just seemed easier to put it out of my head. I guess I figured I would deal with everything later.”

  She had vivid memories of having the same instinct. For a long time after she finally figured out she was pregnant with Sage, she had wanted nothing more than to hide in her bed with the covers over her head and pretend none of it was real, that Jack was still there, that she wasn’t pregnant, that she wasn’t alone and terrified.

  “You can’t do that, not when you have a pregnancy to consider. Deal with everything later, I mean. Somebody else is now depending on you to make sure you’re filling your body with proper nutrients and doing everything you can for a healthy baby. Are you taking prenatal vitamins?”

  Sage nodded and tucked her hair behind her ear. She looked impossibly young for this conversation. “The clinic doctor prescribed them for me, and I’ve really been trying to eat better since I found out. I also made an appointment to follow up with a doctor over in Telluride to start on all the prenatal visits. It’s next week. Now that you know, would you…could you come with me?”

  “Yes. Of course.” Maura squeezed her daughter’s hand. “I’ll do whatever you need.”

  “Thanks, Mom. That…means a lot.”

  How much more stress could she endure in a month? First having Jack come back, then Sage leaving school and now this, all on top of the grief that seemed her constant companion.

  “I know you said you didn’t want to talk about it, but have you told the baby’s father?”

  “No. I haven’t talked to him since…that night. I told you, it was a one-time thing. Nothing serious.”


  Again she felt constrained from offering advice in this arena. How could she tell Sage she shouldn’t withhold this information from the child’s father when Maura had done just that for twenty years?

  She glanced at the closed door. “What about your, uh, Jack?” For a crazy, fleeting moment, she wished desperately that he were here to help her know what to say, how to respond. Theoretically they were supposed to be a team now.

  She hadn’t wanted him back in Sage’s life, but since she couldn’t change that now, it seemed only fair that he help her face this now, after twenty years when she had to shoulder every crisis on her own.

  With inordinate care, Sage wrapped her mostly uneaten sandwich and tucked it back into the bag. “I haven’t told him yet. I wanted to tell you first. I thought that was only right. I mean, I like Jack and everything but…it’s different than my relationship with you. I still barely feel like I know him. I’m not quite sure how to sit down with him and say, hey, looks like history is about to repeat itself. Funny, isn’t it?”

  But Sage would eventually have to face her father with the news, no matter how difficult. Maura’s heart ached a little, remembering well the strain of knowing she was disappointing so many people who had different expectations for her.

  “My family was here for me when I was pregnant with you, Sage. My mom was a pillar of strength, and my older sisters were wonderful. They all backed me up and supported me. Even Riley. Rumor had it he got in a fight at school once when somebody called me a particularly nasty word.”

  She didn’t feel compelled to add that Riley was always on the lookout for any excuse to fight in those days. That wasn’t the point anyway.

  “I hope you know I love you. Nothing will change that. I’m…concerned about the difficulties ahead of you and the choices you’ll have to make, but I love you and trust you to do what’s best for you and the child.”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.” Sage sniffled again and wiped at her eyes with the tissue. “Sorry. You know I’m not usually such a baby, but lately it seems like I cry at everything.”

  “It’s the hormones. Get used to it. You’ve got twenty-something weeks to be an emotional wreck.”

  “I’ve been so worried about telling you. I thought you would yell and scream and tell me what an idiot I’ve been.”

  “We’ve got time for that too,” Maura said with a wry smile.

  Sage smiled back, and Maura was happy to see much of the tension she had sensed in her daughter over the past few weeks seemed to have seeped away. “I just never thought you’d be so…cool about this.”

  There she was being cool again. This was definitely an Academy Award–caliber performance. Apparently these past months of pretending she had her life together had given her serious acting skills useful in other areas of her life.

  She wasn’t cool with her daughter’s unwed pregnancy. She was sick, physically sick. Sage had such natural talent for architecture. Jack had told her so, and he would know. Sage had dreams and goals for her future, and Maura didn’t know how any of those were attainable now, with another life to consider.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “THANKS AGAIN FOR COMING with me, Mom. I didn’t think I needed moral support, but now that we’re here, I’m so glad you came.”

  “So this is it?”

  “I think so. Aspen Ridge. He’s in unit twelve.”

  The town-house development was one of the more luxurious in Hope’s Crossing, all glass and cedar and river rock, set on an exquisitely landscaped sprawl of land that provided a beautiful view of the town and the mountains beyond.

  How was he adjusting to living here? Was it difficult for him to look out that picture window toward Silver Strike Canyon, a vivid reminder of all the reasons he had left?

  She pulled into a visitor parking lot near his town house. “Are you sure you don’t want me to wait in the car?”

  “Do you mind coming in?” Sage asked.

  Yes. She really didn’t want to be part of this conversation with Jack. Sage was here to tell her father about her pregnancy, an embarrassing discussion for any girl, not to mention one who hadn’t known her father existed a little over a month ago.

  Maura preferred to stay right here instead of having to face him with the inevitable awkwardness. How could it be anything else? She hadn’t told Jack about her own pregnancy. How weird was it to find herself here with Sage while their daughter told him she was pregnant?

  “I don’t mind,” she lied. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Thanks, Mom.” Sage smiled nervously and Maura reminded herself this wasn’t about her. It was about Sage and her fledgling relationship with Jack. “I thought about waiting until tomorrow at work, but after his text this morning while we were at breakfast it just seemed like a sign that I shouldn’t procrastinate something so important. I’ll feel better when it’s done, right?”

  “Have I told you how proud I am for the way you’re facing all of this? I know telling Jack is going to be hard, just as it was rough when you told your grandmother last night, but you’re confronting it head-on and trying to make the best of it. It’s exactly the right way to handle this.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  Sage still seemed reluctant to open the door, and Maura made sure it was unlocked, then opened her own. Though the day was mild for early February, the outside air rushing in was still much colder than her climate-controlled vehicle interior, and she shivered a little but forced a smile anyway.

  “You’ll do fine. What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “He could shove me out the door and tell me he doesn’t want anything to do with me. I mean, come on. What father wants to find out his daughter is knocked up?”

  Maura tried not to think very often about her own father, who had betrayed and abandoned his family to pursue his own dreams. When she had found she was pregnant, James McKnight had been so self-involved, so entranced with his new life as a fancy-free bachelor and award-winning archaeologist, that he hadn’t seemed to care about the lives of any of his children. She could count on one hand the number of times he had even seen Sage before his death.

  “Jack seems like a decent guy. I haven’t had much to do with him since he came back—but that alone should be proof. He’s here, isn’t he? Despite his personal feelings about Hope’s Crossing, he came back for you, to establish a relationship with you. I don’t think he’s going to shove you out the door, not when he has made such an effort to make sure that door is in the same general vicinity as you.”

  Sage nibbled her bottom lip, looking about ten years old again. “I guess you’re right. He didn’t have to move back to Hope’s Crossing and open an office here. I figured out the first day I worked for him that everything we’re doing here in town probably could have been done more efficiently from San Francisco.”

  “Right. He’s here for you, and I don’t think this pregnancy will change that. You need to trust him now more than ever.”

  Sage sighed. “Even though I know that intellectually, it doesn’t make telling him any easier.”

  Maura forced another smile. “You’ll do fine. Come on. Let’s get this over with. Rip off the Band-Aid and all that.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  Sage finally opened her SUV door and climbed out, then headed past snow-covered ornamental pine trees toward Jack’s town house. Maura followed more slowly, making her way carefully up the curving path. The temperature was still cold but above freezing for a change, one of those teaser days that made her long for spring.

  Sage waited until she reached her on the doorstep before she rang the bell, then tucked her arm in the crook of Maura’s elbow as if they were taking a casual stroll along the parkland trail that ran parallel to Sweet Laurel Creek.

  They stood that way, arm in arm. The two of them against the world, as it had been from the moment she was born and again the past year since Layla died.

  Jack answered the door in jeans and a casual tan shirt with the sleeves rolled up to hi
s forearms. He had reading glasses on, and his wavy dark hair was slightly messy, as if he had just absently run one of those strong, long-fingered hands through it as he read.

  Despite her tension, she was aware of a completely inappropriate—and unwelcome—stir of attraction. Drat the man for still twanging her strings after all this time.

  “Hello. This is a surprise.” He quickly removed the reading glasses and tucked them in the pocket of his shirt, and she tried not to be charmed by his embarrassment.

  “We were in the neighborhood, sort of. When you sent your text, we were just finishing up brunch with Grandma up at the resort at Le Passe Montagne. Have you tried it yet?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Well, you need to,” Sage said. “It’s really excellent. They have these crepes on the weekends that are just fantastic. Melt-in-your-mouth fantastic. All these weird fillings you wouldn’t think would be good but are, like asparagus and sweet potatoes, truffles, artichokes. Any combination you can think of. I love the savory ones, but my favorites are the sweet. They make a blackberry crepe that is totally delish.”

  Sage ground to a halt as if she had suddenly remembered their purpose there. “Sorry. We’re letting all your heat out. Can we come in?”

  Curiosity flickered in his blue eyes, but he opened the door wider. “Of course. Please.”

  They walked inside and she was astonished at the size of the townhome. Most of her house could probably could fit in the great room, with it’s sweeping post-and-beam ceiling and two-story river rock fireplace.

  “Let me take your coats,” Jack said. Sage quickly shrugged out of her fluffy parka and handed it to her father. Maura dug her curled fingers into the pockets of her wool coat, driven by the ridiculous urge to clutch it around her in some sort of feeble protection. He was waiting for her, though, his head curiously turned, and she finally pulled her arms free and handed it over.

  His hand brushed hers as he took it, and a little spark jumped between them. Just a current, she knew, but his gaze seemed to catch and hold hers until she couldn’t breathe. She saw a flicker of heat there, as if he were remembering their kiss too, but he turned away to hang their coats on a rack made of entwined elk antlers near the entryway.