Bountiful

by Sarina Bowen

  “Didn’t say you were. It’s a big deal, though.”

  “It is,” I admitted. “I definitely felt like a screw-up for not knowing who you were. I wondered what you’d think about the whole thing.” I was still wondering, I supposed. “I took these childbirth classes—the kind where they teach you how to breathe.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was all couples. And me. My mother offered to go with me but she had four kids and didn’t really need to learn. And I didn’t want to drag her there just because I was the only one in the room who didn’t know her baby’s father’s last name.”

  He chuckled, and I heard the sound right against my ear, through his chest. It must’ve been how Nicole heard everything. She was always using someone for a pillow.

  “You know,” he said at a whisper. “I looked back in my calendar to see where I was on May second a year ago. But it was after the regular season, and we didn’t make the playoffs. And I didn’t take a trip with the guys until June. It weirds me out thinking I was probably lifting weights at the gym while you were busy having our baby. What was it like?”

  Again he’d made my poor little heart go pitter-patter. I never thought I’d be lying in the dark telling him about the biggest day of my life. “Well, I don’t remember most of the exciting parts,” I joked. “So I guess I can’t fill you in.”

  “No?” His arm tightened over my back. “The drugs were that good, huh?”

  “The drugs were probably responsible for part of it. But also I was just so exhausted. She took a good eighteen hours to arrive. I was practically speaking in tongues by the time they handed her to me.”

  “Who was with you at the hospital?”

  “My mom was with me the whole time. And the rest of the brat pack was out in the waiting room. My brothers. My uncles. Audrey and Griffin.” I yawned. “You know what’s funny? I thought Nicole was the most beautiful baby I’d ever seen. Really perfect.”

  “She is.”

  “She is now. But on her first birthday, my mother gave me a photo album of her first year. And in the newborn photos she’s red and wrinkly, and looks like a skinny old man.”

  We both laughed. And then I got up and fetched him that photo album, so he could see for himself. At two in the morning we looked at those pictures. It was a lovely, ordinary thing that most mothers had always done with their babies’ fathers.

  And it was every bit as wonderful as I always expected it to be.

  * * *

  Dave

  * * *

  In my dream, a baby was chattering.

  Wait, no. That wasn’t a dream.

  I opened my eyes to see sunlight streaming in Zara’s windows. Beside me, Zara groaned sleepily, but her eyes were still closed.

  “Bah bip ta-da!” Nicole demanded from somewhere nearby.

  I swung my legs out of bed, pulled on my boxers and stuck my head in her room. She stood in the crib, waiting. “Da-da!” she yelled when I appeared.

  The clock on her wall said 6:45, but it felt earlier. I scooped her out of the crib and changed her diaper, even though my eyes were only half open. When I carried her into the hallway, I heard Zara say my name.

  “Don’t make a bottle,” Zara murmured from the bed. “My boob is about to explode. She hasn’t nursed since yesterday morning.”

  Nicole lunged for her mother, but this time I anticipated it, lowering her safely down. She wasted no time snuggling in beside Zara and clamping her mouth onto a nipple. They both closed their eyes and relaxed together.

  Watching them, that unfamiliar emotion returned—the one I didn’t have a name for. A warm spot in the center of my chest—some kind of sentimental yearning that I wasn’t used to feeling.

  I stepped away to use Zara’s bathroom and splash some water on my face. Then I lay down beside the two of them and dozed, trying not to do the math on how soon I’d have to leave Vermont again.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Zara

  Every summer there came a moment when the season began to turn. And this year—like every year—the moment took me by surprise. The next afternoons were sunny and warm, but the June bugs had stopped smacking into the window screens at night. The frogs stopped singing in the ponds, falling silent.

  And when I stood outside the coffee shop one afternoon, turning the sign on the door from OPEN to CLOSED, I heard it—the first cicada. Its hum rose up to fill the air, and it was quickly joined with its friends’ songs.

  That’s when I knew. Summer was practically over. Fall would soon paint the leaves red. Busses full of leaf-peeping retirees would crisscross Vermont. There wasn’t a freaking thing I could do to make summer linger.

  And this year that hurt me a little more than it had last year. Go figure.

  The days after Dave gave me the deed to the house on Main Street were bittersweet. Audrey was back, so I had some much-needed time off. “Go!” she’d say, shooing me out the door of the cafe on more than one occasion. “I’m back, I’m feeling better, and you put in your hours already. Go play with your baby and visit with your man. I’ll see you at Thursday Dinner.”

  The thing was, I hadn’t been to Thursday Dinner in a really long time. Dave had distracted me, and Griff and Audrey’s honeymoon had upended me.

  Should I go? And more importantly, should I bring Dave?

  Still unsure, I called Ruth Shipley to offer her a half-bushel of my uncles’ earliest pears, and to ask if I could bring a guest to Thursday Dinner, just this once.

  “Of course, sweetie!” she said. “Bring him every time.”

  If only.

  Lately, Dave and I had been spending almost every night together. Every morning I woke up to find him in my bed, usually with his hand lying possessively over my hip. I let myself enjoy it. On the mornings when I wasn’t opening the bakery, we all woke up slowly together, snuggling in the bed after Nicole woke up.

  I didn’t know why she’d picked this moment in time, but my baby stopped asking to nurse. She still wanted cuddles, of course. But she drank her milk out of sippy cups and stopped reaching under my shirt.

  That meant there were two things lingering in the periphery of my consciousness, threatening to break my heart. Dave’s departure, and my baby not needing me as much anymore.

  And he was leaving in a matter of days.

  The Thursday night we all got into his rental car to go to the Shipleys’, he was down to less than a week in Vermont. We didn’t talk about it. Neither of us wanted to. But the number of phone calls he had with the team staff went up, and sometimes when I glanced at him, I knew his mind was elsewhere.

  I bit my lip and said nothing. What was my alternative?

  When he parked the car beside the Shipley farmhouse, I popped out and unbuckled Nicole from her car seat. Then I fetched the peach tart that I’d made. By the time I had balanced it on one hand, Dave was already carrying Nicole on one arm and a half-bushel sack of pears in the other.

  “She could walk,” I pointed out. “I’ll hold her hand on the stairs.”

  “I got her,” he said mildly. He walked up onto the porch while I admired his muscled ass in a pair of khakis, and then he somehow managed to hold the door open for me, too.

  I held back a sigh of longing and followed him through to the dining room.

  “Well hello there, little lady!” Grandpa Shipley boomed at Nicole. “Who did you bring with you tonight?”

  Nicole, who loved a crowd, bounced on Dave’s arm. “Dada!” she crowed.

  I swear, all the women in attendance got a little starry-eyed. Even Griffin looked a little less grouchy at the sight of Dave carrying Nicole into the room.

  Audrey rushed over and relieved him of the pears. “Ooh! These are fantastic. Have they been chilled off?” she asked. Pears needed a few days at a near-freezing temperature to ripen properly.

  “Yes they have,” I assured her. “I took them out of the cooler yesterday, so give them two or three days in a bag. Or refrigerate half of them if you don’t want
them all to ripen at once.”

  “I can’t wait,” she said, hustling toward the kitchen door. “I’m going to make a pear and goat-cheese salad with balsamic vinaigrette.”

  “And bacon!” Zach called from a seat at the table. “I think bacon goes with that.”

  We were shown to seats on the bench that stretched along one side of the huge table. Dave greeted Zach and Lark, and was introduced to Jude and Sophie and the Shipley twins, Daphne and Dylan.

  I took a seat next to Kieran. “You need to hire a full-time employee,” he said without preamble.

  “Good evening to you, too,” I said, unfolding my napkin as Ruth and May put the last dishes on the table.

  May’s bitchy girlfriend seemed to be missing tonight, and I couldn’t help wonder why. Dare I hope they’d parted ways?

  “Audrey’s going to have this baby,” Kieran continued. “And you have your hands full with Mr. Hockey, here…”

  Dave gave him an amused glance, and then accepted a glass of cider from Griffin. “This tastes just like perry,” he said with a wink.

  Griffin rolled his eyes and moved on.

  “…and I can’t give you more hours,” Kieran finished.

  “I know you can’t,” I said, patting his arm. “And I appreciate the advice, but every month we put it off is another bunch of money saved.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he argued. “If someone else was cooking you could do more catering orders.”

  “He’s right,” Griffin said from across the table. “It’s time to hire someone. If a business is going to work out, you have to invest, even when it’s scary.”

  “And I have the gray hairs to prove it,” Ruth added, taking her seat beside Grandpa at the head of the table. “Can we say grace?”

  I grabbed a warm roll out of the basket and handed it to Nicole to keep her busy. Then I joined hands with Kieran and Dave and bowed my head.

  Dave stroked my palm with his roughened fingers under the table while Grandpa dove into a recitation of our blessings.

  It took a while, because there really were so many. Even with my eyes closed I could feel the presence of this circle of friends, each one dearer to me than the next. My heart split right open like an overripe peach from all the goodness in my life.

  I’d spent a long time feeling like the girl who had less than everyone else. I hadn’t known it would ache just as much to feel blessed.

  After the “amen,” we settled in to enjoy Ruth and Audrey’s cooking. There was pork loin with plum sauce, garden carrots, a version of potatoes au gratin, and piles of roasted cauliflower.

  “Wow,” Dave said, helping himself to another portion of the potatoes. “I shouldn’t eat like this until next month, but I don’t think I can hold back.”

  My poor little heart trembled at this mention of his departure.

  “Off to New York?” May asked. “When do you go?”

  “Tuesday,” he said, setting down his fork.

  The food I’d eaten settled heavily in my stomach.

  “But you’ll visit soon, right?” Audrey chirped.

  “I’ll sure try,” he said. “I’m hoping Zara and Nicole can visit me, too.”

  “See?” Griff said. “You two need an employee. Stat.”

  “All right, already,” Audrey grumbled. “You and Kieran can stop mansplaining our business to us now. We’ve been a little busy running the shop, cooking your dinner, and gestating your heir.”

  I had to laugh. Trust Audrey to break the tension knotting inside my chest. I cut more little cubes of meat for Nicole, and the conversation moved on to cidermaking, as it often did at this time of year.

  * * *

  After dinner, I left Nicole on Dave’s lap and helped with the dishes for once. Dessert was served, and my peach tart praised. I drank a second glass of wine—another first. “Nicole doesn’t nurse at bedtime anymore,” I told Ruth and Audrey. “So I guess I can have another drink.”

  “I hope I can figure out nursing,” Audrey said, settling into a chair with a cup of herbal tea.

  “Of course you can,” I said, drying another pan.

  Audrey hooted. “You were, like, the perfect earth mother. But I’ve heard horror stories from other people. Bleeding nipples and babies who can’t latch on.”

  “It will be fine!” I assured her.

  “You made pregnancy look like a cakewalk,” Audrey complained. “Seriously. My ass has already doubled in size, and I just spent the last three months puking. You looked like a string bean concealing a soccer ball under your shirt, and you wore heels behind the bar until you were eight months’ pregnant. Who could compete with that?”

  “They weren’t spike heels,” I pointed out, but Audrey, May, and Lark all groaned and laughed.

  “Wish I hadn’t missed that,” Dave said leaning in the kitchen doorway, Nicole in one arm and a glass of wine in his hand. His green gaze was warm, and it was aimed right at me. “Wish I hadn’t missed a lot of things.”

  The kitchen got quiet. You’re about to miss a lot more, I couldn’t help but add silently. There was no help for it.

  “We should get home,” I said instead. My baby girl’s eyes were shut where she lounged on his shoulder.

  “Probably true,” he said, then finished his glass.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Dave

  We said our thank-yous and goodbyes. I put Nicole into her car seat without waking her up. A month ago I couldn’t have imagined doing that, but it wasn’t even hard.

  It turns out that holding on to your child wasn’t that difficult. Holding on to your moody woman, on the other hand, was a little tougher. Tonight I could feel all Zara’s barriers going up again. When Griff Shipley’s sister had asked when I was leaving for New York, Zara had put on the bullet-proof mask that I used to know so well, and she hadn’t taken it off again all evening.

  The ride back to The Gin Mill parking lot was a quiet one. We were both lost in our own worries, I guess. But that was the problem. We’d never had the chance to talk to each other like a real couple, and I’d never done that with anyone in my whole life.

  On the ice, when my teammates and I were struggling in a scrimmage, Coach Worthington would yell, “Talk it out, men! I can’t hear you.” And I knew what to say in that kind of situation—how to save my teammate’s ass when a competitor was bearing down on him.

  I just didn’t know what to say to a prickly girl who was too used to getting by on her own.

  “Baby,” I tried, as we sat there listening to the engine cool. “I printed out my fall schedule.”

  “Sorry?” She turned to me, surprised.

  “My game schedule. I printed it out at the copy shop so we could try to figure out when I’m going to see you again. We can look at it after we put the baby to bed.”

  Zara bit her lip. “Dave, you have twelve games in October and ten in November. Then fifteen in December. All over the fricking country. How is that even possible?”

  I blinked as this little explosion of words hung between us for a second. “You looked at it already?”

  “Of course I looked,” she grumbled, bumping her head back against the headrest. “I know you have to go, Dave. It means a lot to me that you want to see us. But it isn’t going to be easy.”

  “I do have to go,” I said slowly. “For a lot of reasons.”

  “You don’t have to explain.”

  “But what if I want to?”

  She swallowed. “Okay. Go ahead.”

  “There’s a lot of people depending on me. And they pay me a shit ton to show up and stay sharp.”

  “Your whole life is there. Your career. I get it. Vermont is just a vacation for you.”

  I reached across the gear box and took her hand. “It’s more than that, prickly girl. I love you.”

  Zara’s eyes widened. “You don’t have to say that.”

  “I know I don’t have to.” It came out sounding almost angry. But, damn. She was never going to let me in if I didn’t kick
down the door. “I didn’t say it out of obligation. And I’ve never said it to anyone before, unless we’re counting my sister. So don’t throw it back in my face when I tell you I love you and I wish I could wake up in your bed every day.”

  Zara put her elbow on the passenger door, then rested her cheek in her hand. But the fingers of her other hand curled around mine. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I find it hard to trust you.”

  “Okay.” I snorted. “I’ll try not to take it personally.”

  “You didn’t choose this. You didn’t choose me.” Her lovely, proud chin turned in my direction again. “Let’s face it—your vacation fling got a little complicated. But I refuse to be that girl who tries to pin you down. Been there. Have the T-shirt and the scars.”

  “Nobody’s pinning me down. Unless you want to ride me when we go upstairs.” She gave me a glare, and I had to chuckle. “That was just a little joke to shake you loose.” I picked up her hand and shook it gently. “If you don’t love me, you can say so. But don’t make me out to be a guy who can’t figure out what’s important. I’m a slow learner, but I’m not an asshole, Z.”

  She sighed. “I don’t know what to think. You have to leave, and I have to stay here.”

  “For the record, if you ever wanted to spend some time in Brooklyn, I have a sweet apartment.” It was a long shot, but I didn’t want her to think she wasn’t welcome there.

  “Can’t,” she said simply. “I have a business to run. I can’t bail on Audrey. I lease space from Alec. My whole family is here. I can’t just fritter off to New York because you’re a lot of fun.”

  “At least you’ll admit that I’m fun,” I said, squeezing her hand. “It’s a start. If I’m lucky, you might even admit you like me a little.”

  “I do like you. A whole lot,” she added grudgingly. “But I have obligations, and I can’t run off on a wild hair. I have to protect my child.”

  And myself. She didn’t add those words, but I heard ’em anyway.

  Clearly I was going to have to wait her out.