by Rachel Lee
“But not everyone opts to go to the places I went. Or take the risks I took. That was part of it, anyway.”
“And the rest?”
“We weren’t married long enough to be settled with each other. I wasn’t the only one with qualms because I wasn’t home much. Can we let that go? Everything’s different now.”
It surely was, he thought as he climbed into his car and headed back to his house. Very different. He was retired, and still adjusting to having to make his own plans for each day, still adjusting to a quieter, slower pace. But he’d be around. At least for a while.
The question was whether Edie would be around.
For the first time, he stopped focusing on Edie and the immediacy of the news and started thinking about what this could really mean to him.
He wasn’t at all sure about any of it.
Chapter Four
Edie awoke in the morning feeling well rested and with a surprisingly positive thought: if she’d made the biggest mistake of her career, at least she hadn’t made it with a total jerk.
Seth might still turn out to be one, but so far he hadn’t been. A little pushy about being part of her kid’s life, but that was excusable. For the rest, he was acting far better than she had expected.
She stretched, grabbed some fresh cammies from her bag and her travel kit and headed for the bathroom. A long, hot shower sounded good. She felt absolutely cruddy from the lengthy drive yesterday, and while her career had taught her to get used to it when necessary, it wasn’t necessary now.
As she stepped into the hallway, she smelled the delicious aroma of frying bacon, and her stomach rumbled. Being hungry more often was something she was still getting used to, just like she was still getting used to needing the bathroom more frequently, and the changes in her body. Hell, the changes in her emotions, come to that. She had always thought of herself as being on a pretty steady keel, but the baby had been changing that. Until the past few months she never would have dreamed of bursting into tears over something a superior said to her.
Lots of changes and more to come.
Like maternity clothes. So far she had avoided buying them. Cammies passed on base and at work. But if she wanted to go anywhere else, they wouldn’t do.
She almost sighed. She guessed she was still trying to avoid some basic realities here.
She put her things away, picked up the plate and glass from last night and made her way to the kitchen with some uneasiness. She really didn’t trust Seth’s assurance that his mother wouldn’t pressure her. She was getting sick of pressure to do things she didn’t want to do. It was entirely different from the pressures of the career she had chosen. This was personal.
But Marge took her dishes with a warm smile and told her to take a seat. “I made blueberry syrup this morning. I’d better warn you it’s not very sweet, but Nate and I have to watch our waistlines.”
“I love blueberries.”
“Good. Pancakes and bacon.”
Edie slid onto a stool, even though in some other part of the house she could hear Nate and Seth talking. Amazing, she thought, how things had slowed down. Yesterday she had planned to come and go like a whirlwind. Now here she was waiting for breakfast and what would come next.
As she watched Marge buzz around, she thought about Seth some more. She had liked him from the outset, but she liked him better now. As near as she could tell, he was being utterly honest with her. Could she ask for more than that?
And attractive. Damn, she wished that would go away. Finding him desirable could only muddy this mess more. Who needed that? Nor was it likely that he felt the same pull toward her. She remembered how he had looked at her just before they had made love, and that expression wasn’t there now.
No, he was handling her with kid gloves. Hardly surprising. She supposed she had lobbed a grenade at him. He’d have been justified in telling her to get lost. Instead he wanted to be part of this baby’s life. God, that was only going to make things messier.
As she tried to imagine how they could manage that, what with her career, she felt a kind of despair seeping into the morning. This couldn’t work. Absolutely could not. They had different lives. How could anyone pull that together?
She had believed she had faced all the complications already, but they just seemed to be growing.
All from one stupid mistake in the middle of a war zone. All from creating one life purely by accident. She was glad of the baby now in so many ways, even as she struggled with all the changes it would mean. Now she had thrown Seth into the equation. Rightfully, he would want some things.
Could she give them?
The realization struck her that she didn’t even understand the kind of life these people were living, not anymore. It had been too long, too many years of being in service, with all that entailed. She hadn’t been part of anything approaching a real family since her grandmother had died. She didn’t understand how they worked. Didn’t understand how to make one. Maybe just leaving would be the best thing.
But the baby stopped her. Maybe she didn’t know how to do it, but these people obviously did. Maybe she could learn something, a different way of living and thinking. For the sake of the baby, she should probably give it a shot.
They ate breakfast at the dining table in the kitchen. Seth told a few jokes. Marge reminisced a little about her daughters. Nate had a few more stories about being sheriff. All safe, all comfortable. Edie even managed to summon a few amusing stories of her own, although when she thought about it, she began to wonder if she hadn’t been too damn serious for too damn long. The few things that occurred to her didn’t seem fit for mixed company.
Black humor went with the job, and while Seth and Nate might get it, she seriously doubted Marge would. She looked at Seth’s mother, feeling a little amazed at how protected the woman seemed to be. Yet maybe there were ways she hadn’t been protected at all. Just from what she had said yesterday, there had certainly been sorrows and worries in her life.
The common fate of humanity, it seemed.
After breakfast, Seth suggested they go over to his place. “You might as well see what I’m up to these days.”
Renovating a house sounded like an alien world to her. She was only too happy to go with him, to escape the family setting to something much less daunting. To get away from a situation that was making her feel her lacking as a person.
Seth’s house wasn’t that far away, but definitely in an older part of town. Two stories with dormers, it clearly needed a coat of exterior paint, but otherwise it looked fine.
“Why did you get a house?” she asked.
“Something to do. And since I’m probably going to be staying around here...well, I’m a little too old to move in with my parents, don’t you think?”
The wry question almost made her laugh. “You seem to be very close to them.”
He pulled into the short driveway, which faced a detached garage. “I am now.” He switched the SUV into Park but didn’t immediately turn off the engine. “I think,” he said, “I can identify a little with how you felt coming here yesterday.”
“You can?”
“I showed up unannounced to tell Marge I was her long lost son. I sweated it a bit.”
“I know I would.”
“The funny thing was, I didn’t even have to say it. She took one look at me and knew. She said I looked exactly like my dad.”
“You look a lot like him,” Edie agreed. “But I can see your mother in you, too.”
“Before you go, she’ll probably pull out some pictures of him and me at the same age. She gets a kick out of the resemblance.”
Edie hesitated. “I gather it caused a storm, though.”
“Big-time.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Dad was furious that she’d never told him, that she�
��d kept me a secret for all those years. He moved out for a while. I felt like hell for causing that.”
“But they worked it out.”
“Obviously. Dad mentioned once that he’d had to do some serious thinking about the kind of husband he was, too. They’ve been closer ever since. And now I’ve got a whopping big family with sisters, their husbands, nieces and nephews. A couple of the girls still live in town. Maybe you’ll meet them.”
“Maybe.” She wasn’t committing to a single thing yet.
“Do you have any family?”
“No.” She realized her answer sounded too abrupt, and really, she didn’t want to be difficult, at least not yet. That might come later. “My mother overdosed when I was little and I was raised by my grandmother. There was nobody else.”
“So you never knew your father?”
“No.” Now she felt as if she’d been stripped naked. He’d probably assume she had come looking for him because she had never known her own father. Well, maybe that was part of it, but only a small part. “In my case, nobody knew who the father was.”
“Ouch.” He drummed his fingers again, thinking, then dropped it. “Let’s go inside. You can tell me how awful my color choices are.”
“As if I would know.”
She was grateful he had let it go and was willing to lighten the moment. Dealing with the child they had created, deciding how to handle the kid’s future, did not mean she had to expose her entire life to him.
He didn’t insist on helping her out of his car, for which she was grateful. Those courtesies were a thing of the past, if they’d ever existed in her life. She was an officer, an equal, and she expected to be treated that way. Gender didn’t enter into it.
The porch creaked a little under their feet and when he unlocked the front door, it squealed a bit. “I keep meaning to oil those hinges.”
“Well, you’ll hear anyone come in.”
He laughed. “Around here that’s not as big a deal as some places we’ve been.”
She looked around, surprised by the tidiness. She had been expecting much worse. The mere idea of remodeling a house had led her to expect total chaos and dust. Instead she saw spacious rooms with beautiful wood floors, lots of sunlight and some freshly painted walls.
“I told you it wasn’t too bad. I was thrilled when I stripped away old carpet and linoleum and found oak floors. But I’ve been working one room at a time, mostly, to keep it under control. First the living room, then my bedroom and my bath.”
“You’ve done a lot in a short time.”
“I started last year when I was on leave, but I haven’t had much else to do with my days since I retired. Mostly the place needed to be freshened up, but the bathrooms needed redoing, and my next project is the kitchen. It’s a big room but could be a lot more useful.”
They climbed the stairs together. “That bathroom is going to blow you away,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because I went overboard. I don’t have to tell you how important a really good shower can be. I know about conservation and all that, but this I couldn’t resist.”
Neither could she when she saw it. Her eyes widened with delight. A walk-in shower with several nozzles and even a bench to sit on. Everything gleamed with brand-new beige tiles and brand-new fixtures.
“Wow! I could live in that shower!”
He laughed. “So could I. I try not to overdo it, but sometimes I could just sit there with the hot spray beating forever. I always felt a good shower was a great luxury. So it’s my luxury.”
“I can’t think of a better one. It looks like something out of a magazine.”
“I think that’s where I stole the idea from.”
She laughed. “Good steal.”
“The bedrooms are pretty much just bedrooms, but they have nice big closets. And I put in insulated windows over the summer. That was some job. I’m learning as I go.”
Downstairs he showed her the kitchen. It was indeed large, and very much underutilized. “Maybe you’ll have some ideas about what I should do with it.”
“Me? I haven’t cooked since I put on my uniform for the first time.”
He cocked a brow at her. “Mess hall, huh? Me, too, mostly. But I gotta have a kitchen. It’s not like this town is loaded with restaurants. I can’t keep eating with my family or going to Maude’s diner. She’ll turn me into a blimp.”
“So you’re going to learn to cook, too?”
“Absolutely. I expect I’ll get some lessons, too, whether I want them or not. But I still have to figure out the best way to organize this room. And since I don’t cook I haven’t the foggiest idea.”
“Steal another magazine idea.”
He laughed. “Sure. It might look nice, but what if it doesn’t function well?”
He had a point. She had to smile. “Are you feeling like a fish out of water?”
“In more ways than one. It’ll come to me eventually.”
“So what’s your plan for remodeling today?”
“I wing it. I was thinking about tearing out some drywall in the back bedroom. From the look of it, it got wet. The roof must have leaked at one time or another. But I don’t want to do that while you’re here. It’ll make dust and I’m not sure that’s safe.”
“I could be somewhere else.”
“Not if I have anything to say about it.” He pulled two chairs over to a minuscule dinette. “How about some lemonade? I practically live on the stuff.”
She sat gingerly, unsure of the chair, but it seemed safe. He brought her a glass of lemonade, then leaned against the chipped counter as he held his own. “How about you?” he asked.
“What about me?”
“Anything you’d like to do today? See the sights? See the town, such as it is?”
She hesitated. “Why would I want to see the sights?”
“Because they’re there?” He grinned. “More time to get to know each other, too. Without pressure, I promise.”
She could hardly argue with that. She looked down at her cammies, though. “Any place I can buy something else to wear first? I’m tired of walking around in a tent, but so far I’ve refused to buy any maternity clothes. I’d love a pair of jeans again.”
“We’re a small town but we’ve got Freitag’s. It may not have the biggest selection in the world, but it’s got a little of everything. Unless you’re looking for high fashion, they must have something.”
After they finished the lemonade, he drove her over to the department store. It reminded her of such stores when she was little in a small town. Not the big modern boxy places, but the kind of store where everything was crammed in and old wooden floors creaked beneath every step.
She did have some different jeans to choose from, and a few tops that didn’t strike her as too frilly or cutesy, but basically the kind of gear even a pregnant woman could work in if she needed to.
When she had made a few selections, she came out of the dressing rooms in jeans with an expanding panel and an extra-long shirt that resembled a man’s button-down. Good enough. The cammies were in her bags.
Seth had waited for her at the front of the store, giving her the time to make her own choices. She appreciated that he hadn’t tried to be part of it. She’d been buying her own clothes for a long time.
“That looks more comfortable.” He smiled. “I mean, cammies are okay, but an awful lot like wearing a tent, even when they fit. Have you got a jacket? It’s getting chillier here.”
So she added a jacket at the last minute, something she figured would do for a few days. When she got back to Minot, she was going to have to shop for a brutal winter, but she didn’t need to do it yet. Not for here.
Outside, they paused beside the car after he tossed her bags in the backseat. “The question,” he sa
id, “is what you’d like to see. I could take you up into the mountains to see the old mining town. It’s picturesque, but it can’t be explored because the old tunnels are collapsing.” Then he faced her. “Or would being in the mountains bring back memories you don’t want?”
That was a thoughtful question. She half smiled. “I mostly saw them from above.”
“True. So the mining camp? I should stop at the diner and get us a picnic lunch. In case we get hungry.”
Some part of her wanted to take over and make some of the decisions, not just become a passenger on this tour. Yet, she reminded herself, he was asking her. He had given her every opportunity to say no, or change the plans. Including agreeing when she said she wanted to get some clothes.
Maybe he was being too amenable, she thought as she waited in the vehicle while he ran into the City Diner. And maybe she was just making up reasons to be irritated. None of this was turning out as she had anticipated. She ought to know by now how little of life actually followed the plan.
The thought eased the niggling irritation she had begun to feel for no good reason. One of the things about her pregnancy that still surprised her was the rapidity with which her moods could change. She’d never been a moody person, but now she could sometimes swing as fast as a pendulum. She had to keep catching herself, and she was rapidly discovering that when she felt something, her mind quickly tried to serve up a reason for it.
It had been easier at work, though. Much easier. There the sheer predictability and patterns had made it possible to remain fairly stable. Now she was out of her element, and it was exposing things in herself she hadn’t faced before.
On the way out of town, Seth said, “If you need to stop for any reason, let me know. I’m not exactly a vet at pregnancy, but I can remember my sisters talking about things like not being in the car for too long. As for bathroom facilities, we’ll have to rough it out there.”
Oh, great, she thought. “Do you know how hard that is for a woman?”
He slowed down. “Then maybe we shouldn’t go so far.”
“Is there any place to go around here that isn’t far?” She managed to sound wry.