“I’ll explain later,” Tessa said.
“Yeah, well. Like I said, kid, way to go.” His tone dismissed Sam and his accomplishment as though it was nothing. Of course, it was nothing to Brian. But not to her. Or to Mitch and Caleb and all the others who cared for the little boy.
“I like baseball, too. I’m a center fielder just like you.” Sam leaned forward in his eagerness to make a connection. “I’d like to talk about baseball sometime,” he hurried on, rushing his words.
Brian frowned, raising one eyebrow at Tessa. “What’d he say?”
“He’d like to talk to you about baseball sometime.”
“Yeah, sure, kid. We’ll do that.” Tessa held her breath. She hadn’t told Sam she was going back to California. She hadn’t told anyone except Mitch. All of a sudden she was afraid Brian would let it slip that they were leaving. She needn’t have worried. He seemed bent on communicating as little as possible with Mitch’s son.
“I have to go tell my granddad the news,” Sam said. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? Bye.” He gave a little smile in Brian’s direction. “See you, Tessa.”
Tessa leaned over and gave him a hug, then held him by the shoulders so he could read her lips. “I’m so proud of you.”
His face reddened again. “You helped me, Tessa. You told me not to be a quitter. Thanks.” He reached up and gave her a quick hard hug, then jumped backward. “I didn’t squash her, did I?”
“No,” she said, laying her hand on her bulging stomach. “She’s fine. Now, go tell Granddad Caleb your good news.”
“Okay, I will.” He pivoted and scooted out the door, dribbling an imaginary basketball as he went.
“Boy, I wouldn’t know what to do with a kid like that.” Brian’s voice was a little hollow. She looked over to find him rummaging through the small refrigerator for a beer.
“What do you mean, a kid like that?”
“You know. A retard.” His head and shoulders disappeared behind the door as he pulled a bottle from the lower shelf.
“Don’t call him that.” She grasped the back of a kitchen chair so tightly her knuckles ached. “He’s hearing-impaired. He’s a very smart little boy. And you hurt him with your callous remark about how loud he was talking.”
The anger in her voice brought his head around. Brian straightened and looked over his shoulder. “How was I to know he wasn’t slow, too?”
“He reads lips very well.”
“I’m just glad our kid’s not going to have anything wrong with him. I’m not good with kids like that.”
“I thought you enjoyed working with the baseball team at the school.”
“It’s okay.” His eyes narrowed slightly. He hunched his shoulders and tightened his fingers around the beer can. “But, you know…there’s nothing wrong with any of them. I understand them. They’re not like Sam.”
No more babies like Sam. She leaned forward, her heart beating hard in her chest, almost suffocating her. “How do you know there won’t be something wrong with our child?” She wanted to believe he was only voicing his own fears about physical imperfection. The understandable fears of an athlete who depended on the machinelike perfection of his body for his livelihood. But she was suddenly afraid it was more than that. She was afraid it was the real Brian, self-centered and selfish, the one she’d talked herself into believing didn’t exist anymore.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been around a lot of handicapped people,” he said carefully, obviously feeling his way through unfamiliar territory. “I guess I’d be okay with it. I mean there are schools for kids with problems. Places where they can be happy and well looked after.” He appeared wary, puzzled, as though they’d switched third-base coaches on him and he couldn’t read the new signals. He shut the refrigerator door with a thud.
“If Sam were your child, you’d send him away?” They had skirted most of the big issues that remained between them, despite Tessa’s insistence that they talk things through. It was as much her fault as his. She hadn’t wanted to hear anything that would make her change her mind again. But now she had no choice. She had to know how he really felt.
“If that’s what was best for him.”
“It’s what you think would be best.”
“In some cases, yes.”
“In our case?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” There was a hint of challenge in his voice.
“That’s not a good enough answer,” she said. “Will you love our baby if there’s something wrong with her? Will you promise me to keep her with us always?”
“Hey. We don’t need to have this conversation. There’s nothing wrong with you or the baby, right? You told me the doc says you’re both doing fine.”
“As far as she can tell, yes. But a problem like Sam’s wouldn’t show up until the baby’s born. Or it could happen later. Sam didn’t lose his hearing until he was almost two. What if that happens, Brian? Then what will you do?”
“I’ll do the best I can, but I already told you—I’m not good with kids like that.” He set the beer can on the table and stepped toward her.
“I want to hear you say it, Brian. Would you love a child like Sam?”
He looked at her for a long moment, his blue eyes narrowed and darkened with emotions she couldn’t read, didn’t want to understand. “Nothing I say is going to be the right answer, is it?”
She shook her head. “No.” She was suddenly unutterably weary. “Nothing you can say now will make it right.”
“I’m not the kind of guy to nursemaid a sick kid.” He shrugged. “Hell, I don’t know how good I’ll be with a normal kid. I’m sorry, but you said you wanted the truth from me, and that’s it.”
She took a deep breath. “I’ve made a terrible mistake. I’m as much to blame for this as you are. I’ve been trying as hard as I can to make you into something you’re not. A man who wants to be a husband and a father. That’s not who you are, is it, Brian?”
He shook his head. “I’m not very good at pretending. You wanted the truth so here’s the rest of it. I’m thirty-two years old. I’m a decent center fielder, but not a great one. I worked my ass off to get this shot at the big leagues and I’m going to take it. I’ve got one last chance for a couple of good years in the sun. I don’t want to be tied down with kids and mortgages and that whole domestic scene. All I ever wanted is to play baseball.” His voice cracked a little. “And you.”
She laid her hand on her stomach. “There isn’t just me anymore. There’s us.”
“You’re not coming back to California with me, are you.”
“No,” she said softly.
“Are you staying here?”
She looked down at her baby gifts piled on the table to be packed. Gifts from friends. Women who knew the meaning of love and family, constancy and stability. Concepts Brian couldn’t or wouldn’t understand. And never would. At least never with her and their child. She’d had a chance to be part of that world, and she had let it slip away to try to force reality into a dream mold of her own making. “It wouldn’t work. I’m leaving, too.”
“How will I know about the baby?”
“I’ll call you. You’ll always be welcome to visit, Brian. You can be as much a part of her life as you want.”
“If you leave here, where are you going? Your sister’s?”
She had forfeited her chance for a life in Riverbend. “Yes. The way I’d planned. I want to be settled in with Callie before Thanksgiving.”
MITCH TURNED OFF the ignition and sat in the pickup, looking across at the darkened apartment above the boathouse. Had she really gone? Just up and left with Delaney and not even said goodbye?
He’d stopped by the hotel to drop off flyers with the dates and times for Santa to visit the Chamber of Commerce’s North Pole Village at the Courthouse square the Saturday after Thanksgiving. Denise Ball, the night clerk, had caught him looking at an autographed picture of Delaney in uniform lying on the registration desk.
“He check
ed out early this afternoon,” she told him. “Heading back to California to finish his rehab so he can rejoin the team.”
Had he taken Tessa with him? He hadn’t talked to her since the day he’d told her not to come back to work. He’d told Caleb she was just too pregnant to spend so many hours on her feet. If his grandfather had seen through his excuse, he hadn’t said so. Neither had Bill Webber or Linda or any of the others. Mel Holloway’s boy had shown up over the weekend, and he was going to start work in the next day or two. Mitch figured with the pre-Christmas rush and a new hand to break in, he might be able to keep his mind off her for as long as five minutes at a time.
So far it hadn’t worked.
He crawled out of the truck feeling a hundred years old.
He shouldn’t have sent her home from the store last week. If he’d let her stay, he might have figured out what she was planning. Maybe even changed her mind. But he had no idea what magic formula to use. If telling a woman you loved her and wanted to spend the rest of your life with her wasn’t enough, he didn’t know what was.
He ought to go inside. Caleb and Sam were waiting. They were going to have pizza to celebrate Sam’s success. All his hard work and practice had paid off. But instead, Mitch found himself at the door of the boathouse apartment.
As he noticed when he’d driven up, the place was dark, which was as much an indication as any that she had gone. Ever since Tessa had moved in, there’d been a light on in the small main room. He turned the doorknob. He’d better make sure that the water heater was turned off and the door locked. The knob turned easily and he stepped inside. She’d probably left the keys on the counter. He moved farther into the small apartment, compelled by a force he could not resist. Immediately he was enveloped by the lingering scent of her perfume. Something light and flowery and evocative of her smile.
His hand brushed fabric on the back of a chair. He could make out the lighter white rectangle of a name tag on the front. Her work smock. She’d left it behind. He stood quietly a moment, listening to the hum of the refrigerator, the ticking of the silly sunflower clock Tessa had tacked above the sink. He laid his hand on the table, touched cloth again. The tablecloth and place mats she’d bought at Killian’s. Had she left those things behind, too, like her smock, because they had no place in her life with Delaney?
Headlights turned into the driveway. A car drove up to the boathouse, and parked in Tessa’s usual spot. Mitch waited in the darkness, his hands balled into fists, hoping against hope it was Tessa come back to him.
Footsteps echoed on the gravel. There was no sound of a second car door opening and closing. Mitch’s heart began to hammer against his ribs. The door opened. A woman’s form was silhouetted against the streetlight. A Madonna figure with softly rounded belly. Cold air flowed into the room and carried with it the scent of summer flowers and rain-washed clover fields. Tessa’s perfume. Tessa’s scent.
The light came on. Mitch blinked against the sudden brightness. Tessa stood with her hands clutching her purse. “My God, Mitch. You scared me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, feeling ten ways a fool. “I thought you’d gone with Delaney. I figured you’d left the keys inside. I came to get them and lock up.”
“How did you know he was gone?”
“This is Riverbend, remember? Home of the world’s fastest gossip chain.” She didn’t smile at his weak joke, and neither did he. “I stopped by the hotel to drop off some flyers. The clerk told me Delaney had checked out to head back to California.”
“I took him to the airport to catch a plane.” She set her purse on the table. “I would never have left Riverbend without saying goodbye to all of you.”
“I apologize for thinking that you would.”
She shook her head. “Don’t apologize. I’ve made a mess of everything these past couple of weeks.”
“If you mean trying to reconcile with Delaney, then I’m glad you screwed up. But if you’re talking about us—”
She cut him short. “I don’t know what I want right now, Mitch. I only know I have to leave Riverbend to find it.” Her voice faltered and she fell silent.
He came around the table, wanting to take her in his arms so badly he ached with the force of it. “Why punish yourself?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Running off to live on your sister’s charity. Is that what you really want?”
She shoved her hands into the pockets of his mother’s old coat and faced him head-on. “I won’t be a burden to her. Brian and I came to an agreement on child support. But I still have to get things straight in my own mind. I don’t trust myself anymore, Mitch. Maybe it’s hormones. Maybe it’s the weather.”
“Maybe it’s because you’re scared to let your heart lead the way.” But what the hell could he say or do that he hadn’t already said a dozen times to change her mind?
“I won’t argue with you anymore. Please go. It’s getting late and I’m tired. I have to call my sister and finish packing.”
“When are you leaving?”
“Wednesday morning. Annie Stevens insists on another checkup before she’ll release my records.”
“Is anything wrong?” He couldn’t stop himself from asking.
“I don’t think so. My blood pressure was a little high. But all the stress—” She broke off what she’d been going to say next and tightened her lips into a straight line. “It’s nothing.”
“Wednesday’s the day before Thanksgiving. The traffic will be bumper to bumper all the way to Albany.”
“It can’t be helped.”
“At least stay until after the holiday.”
“No.” There was a note of panic in her voice that was hard to miss.
“Is Delaney coming to Albany to be with you when the baby’s born?”
She lifted her chin and looked right through him. “I’m going to do this on my own.”
If he hadn’t believed her before, he did now. Her words hit him like a sledgehammer. Whatever she felt for him wasn’t strong enough to overcome her fear of making another mistake.
“You can stay here as long as you need to.”
“I’m leaving Wednesday,” she said one more time, as though it was some kind of incantation. Three times the charm. “That will give me a chance to say goodbye to Kate and Ruth and Rachel. To Caleb. To Sam.”
“I’ll tell Sam you’re leaving.” Mitch spoke too harshly. She blinked at the force of his words.
“Mitch—”
“It will be better coming from me. Until then, I’d appreciate it if you don’t say anything to him. He’ll try to talk you into staying, and it’ll just make it harder on all of us.”
She bowed her head for a moment as she absorbed the full impact of his words. When she looked up at him again, her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “Of course. I understand.” She was wringing her hands but didn’t seem to notice. He jammed his own deep into his coat pockets to keep from taking her in his arms. “I’m sorry, Mitch. So very sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too. Goodbye, Tessa.” He wasn’t a bastard. He didn’t want a woman he had to bully into his arms. She looked haunted, trapped. The way Kara had looked at the end of their marriage. A marriage he’d tried too hard to save. Was he doing the same with Tessa?
She’d just sent the father of her child away. She wasn’t ready to make a commitment to him or to anyone else. The time for that had passed, a small window of opportunity slammed shut on his hands. He wouldn’t ask her again to stay with him. Damn it. If he could help it, he’d never say another word to her as long as he lived.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
IT HAD BEEN the longest damned weekend he’d ever lived through. Monday hadn’t been much better. Mel Holloway’s boy had shown up at the store, and while Mitch thought he’d grow into a fine manager, the week before Thanksgiving was a hell of a time to start breaking him in. To top it all off, a water line in the women’s bathroom had sprung a leak sometime during the night and ruined the flooring
. Tuesday hadn’t turned out any better than the day before, with delays in shipments of tool sets that he wanted for a big Christmas display, and notice that the small sawmill that provided all their custom-made woodwork had burned down overnight and wouldn’t be back in operation for at least three months.
He’d used the turmoil at the store to hold off telling Caleb and Sam until just a couple of hours ago that Tessa would be leaving in the morning. His grandfather had looked at him with pity and disgust written large on his face. Sam had simply refused to believe him at first. Mitch had explained about how emotional women who were going to have babies could be. He’d told the unhappy boy that she needed to be with her sister, the only family she had, at such a time.
“We could be her family,” Sam said miserably. “Did you tell her that?”
“We’re not her family,” he’d said, knowing that was no answer at all. Sam had closed his eyes and shut out Mitch’s halfhearted attempts to explain what he didn’t understand himself. His son had demanded to be allowed to go to the apartment and talk to Tessa on his own. Pouring rain and a cold wind off the river was his excuse to say no. But he told Sam he could phone. Her line was busy.
Sam tried to call three more times during the evening. The line remained busy. Whether she was talking to her sister, reconciling with that bastard Delaney or just had the phone off the hook, Mitch had no idea. Sam pressed his face to the window and looked out into the rainy night. “No lights are on,” he announced, looking longingly at the phone one more time.
“It’s late, Sam, time for bed,” Mitch said, feeling his son’s anguish as sharply as his own.
“I can’t believe she doesn’t want to talk to me.”
He had no answer for that. Finally Sam gave up and went up to his room. But not before he’d wrung a promise from Mitch to wake him early enough to say goodbye to Tessa in the morning.
“You sure made a mess of that,” Caleb told him bluntly when he dropped onto the couch beside the old man’s chair. Mitch ignored the gibe and stared sightlessly at the weather channel as temperature and wind conditions from a hundred cities across the country scrolled by. A huge mass of clouds covered the eastern third of the country. Mitch didn’t even notice the winter-storm warning posted along the bottom.
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