The Baby Bump

by Jennifer Greene

  But the point was that the light on the second floor could only be coming from Ginger’s bedroom. And she was alone upstairs. Which made it even more ticklish for him to go up there.

  Out of nowhere, he heard a voice. “Ike. For Pete’s sake, would you quit dithering out there and just come in and get your dog!”

  The voice was very cross and very impatient. Definitely Ginger. And Ginger was definitely wide-awake, which made his conscience stop feeling so frayed. He quit dithering and hiked as far as the bedroom doorway. He took one look. His response was immediate and instinctual. “Uh-oh.”

  “Ike. Your dog is a complete and total coward.”

  “Hey, you didn’t have to let her up on the bed.”

  “Right. I’m lucky she isn’t under the covers. She tried.” She was scowling at him—a pretty familiar expression, actually.

  But he had to hold back laughter. Pansy was stretched to her full length, which meant she was about as tall as Ginger. The hound’s face framed by the frothy-looking canopy over the bed was downright hysterical. Further, she was sleeping, eyes closed, snoring...except that her tail was wagging hard enough to shake the house.

  She knew he was there.

  She just wasn’t inclined to move.

  Ike could relate. Spooning next to Ginger in a storm on a chilly night... Oh, yeah, that sounded like a good idea to him, too.

  He leaned against the doorjamb. “I would have called, but—”

  “You left your cell phone in the kitchen.”

  “No. I mean, yes, I realized that. But I could have used someone else’s.”

  “I figured that, Ike. I was thinking a lot of bad names about you this afternoon. Some of them were even eloquent curse words. But the bottom line is that I knew you wouldn’t ditch your dog any longer than you had to. So you must have run into some trouble.”

  “I did. Tildey had two easy deliveries before, was so sure she didn’t need more than a midwife. And I would have agreed with her, except that this midwife happened to be a twerp. Didn’t know the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck. To top it all off, Tildey’s two other kids, both under five, were crying and wailing and scared.”

  “So where was the dad?”

  “Apparently he has a pattern of taking off to a bar when his wife goes into labor. Eventually he showed up...but right at the point when Tildey was a few huffs away from delivering. When she saw her husband, she tried to get out of bed, told him that she had a knife and if he ever touched her against she was going to use it.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Then she actually produced the knife. It was in the drawer by her bed. A butcher knife. Belonged to her great-grandma. Made of straight steel.”

  “Oh, no.” Her voice raised an octave. “Pansy. Do not lick my face. Ever. Ever again. Okay, Ike, then what happened?”

  “The husband—Hamilton is his name—passed out. Crumpled right in the doorway. The midwife tried to step in, and Tildey almost turned the knife on her. She was just out of patience, out of strength, and she’d lost the rhythm of the contractions, just plain got screwed up. When she started crying, the kids started crying and carrying on, too. And that woke up her husband, who was as helpful as an elephant in a china cabinet.”

  She bunched the pillow under her head, turned more on her side. The window lamp only provided a pale glow. He still couldn’t see much of her face. Just talking to her, though, eased the long day’s exhaustion.

  “Are all your patients this exciting?”

  “Actually...yeah. I don’t see many gunshots or stab wounds or gang fight scars. Just straight life kind of problems. Anyway. Tildey had a son. Her two other kids are both girls. That’s why they came easy as pie, she said. Men are always trouble. Even little men.”

  “Was the baby okay?”

  “Absolutely. Bald as an eagle, a scream worthy of a rock band, a wriggling mass of furious baby boy.” He eased into the room. Standing after all this time was exhausting. He just took a corner of the bed. The back corner.

  “What color eyes?”

  “Blue, silly. All babies are born with blue eyes.”

  “You think he’s going to be cute?”

  “Cute?” Ike had to think. “I’m not sure I ever notice whether a baby’s cute or not. He looked healthy—and happy—once he’d been cleaned up and put in his mama’s arms. Tildey settled down then, too. The kids saw the baby, but by the time the place was cleaned up, they’d cuddled on the couch with a blanket over them. I called the hospital—closest one is sixty-some miles—I didn’t think Tildey has to get there until tomorrow, but the baby should be checked out.”

  “So she’ll go?”

  “She’ll go. But I still couldn’t quite leave that minute. She told me I looked like hell, to use the shower off the kitchen, which I did. I always keep clean clothes in the truck. Pretty rare they don’t come in handy. I cleaned up as quickly as I could, but it was really late to call, and I was afraid of waking you both....”

  “It’s all right. I knew something had happened. However...”

  “However?”

  “Your dog, Ike, has no sense of boundaries. From the minute you left, she leaned on me as if I were a fence post. She moaned if I tried to go into the bathroom alone. Watched me while I brushed my teeth. And when she heard the first thunder—”

  Ike winced. “I know.”

  “It was one thing for her to want to sleep near a human. I get that. I had nightmares as a kid. But she still wasn’t happy until I turned the light on. And then she had to get in bed with me. I had to give her her own pillow, or else she was determined to share mine. If you don’t do what she wants, she looks at you with that...face. Those eyes. That expression. As if you’d broken up with her. This is not a dog, Ike. She’s a full-scale monster.”

  “I know, Ginger, I know. I didn’t want her. When I moved here, she just showed up at the back door. I couldn’t get rid of her. Tried to give her to a family down the road that had a bunch of kids. They loved her. But she came back. Tried to give her to the sheriff, thinking she could help, she’s got a serious nose and all. He liked her right off...but she still beat me back home, and I swear, she takes all day to walk a mile. So I gave up. Anyway, I’m sorry she was such a nuisance.”

  “Ike. She thinks we’re praising her. She’s wagging her tail faster than a metronome.”

  Ike thought maybe they’d had enough of this chitchat. “I think she’s got the best world she can imagine. Her and me on the same bed. With you. At night. Hell, it’s almost foreplay, don’t you think?”

  The storm stopped. Just like that. No more thunder, no lightning, no silver rain tapping on the windows. The room went still as a stone. Maybe she hadn’t noticed before that he’d slowly, carelessly sunk down on the bed. Just at her feet, not next to her. There wasn’t room next to her, because of Pansy.

  He’d leaned back on an elbow, at some point, because hell, it’d been a long day and it was late. And maybe he’d put a hand on her foot—which was covered up with sheets, of course. And maybe the embroidered sheet up near her neck had slipped a few inches—but only enough to reveal that she was wearing some kind of pale green nightgown.

  The lamp by the window, he finally realized, wasn’t an ordinary lamp. It looked like an antique, with an old brass base and a mother-of-pearl shade. Ike wouldn’t normally notice details like that, except that the lamp wasn’t...well...normal.

  It had been the beacon that drew him upstairs, into her room, but that wasn’t the issue. The lamp had magic. It had to have magic, because that soft glow made Ginger look irresistible in every way. Her skin, impossibly luminous. Her eyes, incomparably deep. Her hair, like copper on fire. And her expression...

  “No, Ike,” she murmured, but her expression wasn’t saying no.

  “No, you don’t think this l
ittle meeting is like foreplay?”

  “No. To what you were thinking.”

  “Ginger. There’s a dog on the bed. I couldn’t possibly be thinking anything that you’d object to.”

  “Yes, you could. Apparently no matter how bad I look or what the circumstances are.”

  “Now, Ginger. You’re giving yourself an awful lot of credit for being irresistible.”

  “I am. Just that. But I learned the hard way that I only seem to be irresistible to the wrong men. Go home, Ike.”

  “Man. You can be really harsh.”

  There, that serious expression disappeared. She had to bite her lip not to laugh. “You’re sitting on my bed, with this crazy hound, in the middle of the night! I’m not remotely harsh!”

  “But it’s just me,” he said plaintively. “And Pansy, of course. It seems really cruel for you to reject a helpless dog.”

  Rather abruptly, she threw a pillow at his head. That seemed to wake Pansy out of a dead snore. He made a tongue-click sound. The hound’s eyes immediately opened, and graceful as a pregnant ox, she leaped down from the bed.

  “I’m leaving,” he told Ginger, still using his most plaintive voice. “But first, I’ll turn the light off for you.”

  “Thank you. Good night. Goodbye.”

  He threw her another wounded look—as if she’d hurt his feelings yet again.

  He crossed the room, switched off the light, took a second to let his eyes adjust to the sudden darkness. He knew where Pansy was. She never moved if she didn’t have to, so she was exactly where she’d jumped down and waited for him.

  Easy enough, then, to edge toward the bed.

  Ginger sensed it, too. Said, “I mean it, Ike. No.”

  “Hey. I was just tucking you in.” Which he did, shaking off the sand Pansy had brought with her, easing the soft percale sheet under Ginger’s chin, the light blanket beneath. Not touching her. Just tucking. And looking at her.

  Swiftly—faster than a breath of wind—he bent over and kissed her. Just a light kiss. A texture to texture, taste to taste connection. At least he tasted it. The flavor of all that could be.

  Just as swiftly, he lifted his head. “That was just a good-night-sweet-dreams kiss. So don’t argue.”

  * * *

  Ginger didn’t fuss, but she woke up the next morning with a good fume on. By the time she changed the sheets—which happened to have a fair amount of dog hair and sand—she’d added to the day’s fume. A shower, hair brush and fresh clothes later, the fume had become one of her best.

  Ike was playing with her. Flirting, for lack of a better

  word—and in the South, there probably was no better word, because the term had always been cherished below the Mason-Dixon Line.

  She headed downstairs, reminding herself that she had a grandfather losing his mind, a pregnancy she hadn’t even started to deal with, no job or means of supporting herself. So. There was nothing for Ike to be attracted to—which was why she was so certain he was playing. And the truth was, because she was stuck in a quicksand well of troubles, it felt good to do a little playing.

  But that was no excuse to be so damned charmed by the man. He was a devil.

  A rascal.

  She found Gramps in the kitchen, wearing the same clothes he’d had on the night before, holding—for no known reason—a clock.

  “Well, aren’t you looking pretty this morning, Loretta,” he said immediately.

  She was in no mood to be patient. Not this morning. “Gramps, this is me. Ginger. Not Loretta. I don’t have a clue who Loretta is.”

  “You don’t know where she is?”

  She sighed. Made him scrambled eggs and toast, picked up the morning paper from the porch and sat across from him. “Gramps. Try to concentrate. What happened to Amos Hawthorne?”

  “That old son of a sea dog? I fired him.”

  “Why did you fire him? Do you remember what happened? Do you know where he lives?”

  Well, hell. That was clearly too many questions. He lifted his head and blessed her with a beatific smile. “These are probably the best eggs I’ve ever tasted in my whole life. You’re spoiling me, honey, and I like it.”

  Okay, okay. She started answering to Loretta, got the kitchen cleaned up and tracked down her grandmother’s old address book. Naturally, she should have thought of it first—but she quickly located the number and address for Amos Hawthorne. She put on shoes, grabbed a purse and was almost out the door when the landline rang.

  Her grandfather picked it up, called out, “Ginger, it’s the doctor. Ike. For you!”

  She answered back, “Tell him I’m late for a meeting. Can’t talk now.”

  “What meeting?”

  “Just tell him, Gramps.”

  “But where are you going?”

  “I told you. I won’t be gone more than a couple hours—max. I promise. And you have my cell phone number.”

  She’d been through this with him several times. Gramps wasn’t into technology like cell phones, and he didn’t want to learn. Would probably forget it if he did grasp it. But she’d put her number on paper in several rooms so he could reach her whenever she was gone.

  She tried calling Amos Hawthorne’s phone, but no one answered, so when she climbed in her Civic, she plugged the address into her aging GPS and took off.

  Amos only lived about ten minutes away, farther into the country, the sign for his road barely visible for all the scrappy brush. Once she located the house number on his mailbox, though, the landscape changed abruptly. Amos lived in a tiny white-frame house, but the lawn was manicure-perfect, the windows gleamed and even the driveway looked clean enough to eat off of.

  She didn’t try knocking at the house, because she could smell the burning brush the minute she climbed from the car. His property was long and narrow, and he’d set up a brush pile at the far back end. It struck her as amazing that he had any brush to burn, when every tree and bush and plant had been pruned to perfection. She’d known Amos from years ago—but he was distant from her life, never at the house, only someone who’d passed in and out of the tea store sometimes.

  He was younger than Gramps by a heap, had taken the job when he was fresh out of school, but that was about all Ginger remembered about him. She thought he was tall—likely because she’d most often seen him atop a tractor—but he wasn’t at all.

  He was raking brush into his fire, and he half turned to fork up another small heap of twigs when he spotted her.

  She was probably a couple inches taller than Amos. They probably weighed about the same. He was all wire and bone, with straw-colored hair, and skin prematurely wrinkled from endless sun exposure. He squinted at her.

  “I’m Ginger Gautier, Amos. You probably don’t remember me—”

  “Shore I remember you.” His voice wasn’t unkind, but it wasn’t welcoming, either. He poked the rake in the ground, leaned on it. Then just waited.

  “I need help. My grandfather needs help.”

  “Cashner fired me. Told me I was the son of Satan. That I’d been messing with his wife.” A scowl showed up, hard to discern from the rest of his wrinkles. “Your grandmother’s been gone a while now. As if I’d ever have touched a hair on her pretty head. He couldn’t have said anything to insult me worse.”

  “That’s terrible, Amos. But my grandfather isn’t in his right mind. I’m sure you must have seen changes in him. He really doesn’t always know what he’s saying.”

  “That’s what you know. But I’ll tell you what I know.” He stopped the leaning on the rake posture, stabbed the rake into another short pile of brush. When he tossed it on, the flames shot up, and the smoke swirled in restless circles. “I knew he had trouble. And I got into it with him a while back, talked to him with all the tact I had. We needed to shut down the store. No one cou
ld handle it. The store was just a fun project for your grandmother anyhow. We could sell on the internet if he wanted to keep up that nature of the tea business. We could hire a kid to set that up. Even the dumbest kids seem to know everything about computers these days.”

  “That sounds like a wonderful idea.”

  “You think? Just suggesting that was when Cashner started cussing me out. That was the fight that led him to firing me.”

  “Would you consider coming back?”

  “Why, shore...on the day it rains purple.”

  Ginger gulped. “What if I raised the salary you had before? And if you weren’t working for my gramps, but me. And I’d be happy to accept your judgment on whatever you felt needed doing.”

  More stabbing brush. More sparks of hot fire. More simmering smoke.

  “I don’t like to turn down a lady, especially one asking for help. Lots of people with a farming background around the country here. But not many who know tea. But your grandfather treated me wrong. I understand. He’s ill, so to speak. But I don’t see being ill is an excuse for treating someone bad.”

  “I don’t, either. But he’s been calling me all kinds of names—like he thinks I’m Grandma. And some other names, I don’t even know who they are. Amos, he’s not in his right mind. I don’t believe he’d ever have insulted you if he’d been himself.”

  “I don’t know that. And I’m finding plenty to do. Everybody knows I did a good job at your place. That I work hard. Know my way around a wrench and a tractor. So I don’t need that job anymore.”

  “Please?”

  “I’m sorry. No.”

  “Even for a short period? Amos, I can’t possibly replace you and really, really don’t want to. But right now, I don’t know a plant from a weed. Could you work with me for a while, just to educate me on things I should do, get some kind of idea what the place needs? I’d pay you anything you asked.”

  Ginger rarely met anyone as bullheaded as she was, but Amos wouldn’t give in by even the slightest millimeter. She tried every guile and wile and coaxing that she knew. She even tried being flat-out honest. Nothing worked. After he’d given her his final “no” several times, she walked away...but she wasn’t about to give up.