MILLION DOLLAR BABY

by Patricia Ryan

  Kay chuckled throatily, then took a sip of coffee. "The view outside that window just got a whole lot prettier."

  "What is he doing?" Laura asked dully.

  "Uh … chopping up your cordwood?"

  "Why?"

  "Because it's a job you hate and he likes to stay busy. Keeps his mind off cigarettes. Least that's what he told me this morning."

  Laura turned to look at Kay. "You knew he was going to come over here and do this and you didn't warn me?"

  Kay's eyes widened with poorly feigned mystification. "I didn't warn you that he's planning on doing you this monumental favor?"

  "You know what I mean," Laura accused, wagging the palette knife at Kay. "You know I don't want to have anything to do with that man!"

  "All I know is he's got you so worked up that within the past twenty-four hours you've threatened me, your best friend in the world, with a knife, an ax, and now a … whatever the heck that thing is called."

  Laura hurled the palette knife across the room to the accompaniment of another blistering curse.

  "I take it back," Kay said with that shrewd little smile of hers. "That's not all I know."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean I'm not stupid. I may have tanked on my math SATs, but I've still got enough fingers to add and subtract, as long as the answer isn't higher than ten. And the number of months between April 2, 1995, when Dean came to visit you here, and the following January 1, when Janey was born, is…"

  Oh, God. Laura leaned back against her worktable, feeling suddenly weak, as Kay made a show of counting off the months on her fingers.

  "…six, seven, eight…" Kay looked up, wriggling her right ring finger. "Why, what do you know? It was exactly nine … oh. Oh, honey, I'm sorry."

  Laura must have looked utterly stricken, because Kay bolted out of her chair, instantly serious, and put her arms around her. "I'm sorry, Laura. I'm an ass. I shouldn't have been so flip. This must be anything but funny to you."

  "When did you figure it out?" Laura asked hollowly.

  "Last night. You'd never told me exactly when Will died – I guess I'd always assumed it was late spring or in the summer. I was lying in bed thinking about what you said, about Dean coming here that April, two months after Will died. So I … I don't know. The light-bulb just went off, and…"

  Laura groaned and covered her face with her hands. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid. She'd been so rattled the other day by that check and the fact that Dean had sent it that she'd slipped up royally, without even realizing it! Stupid!

  "Does anyone else know?" Kay asked. "I mean, that Will wasn't … wasn't Janey's…"

  Laura shook her head. "Even Grandma Jane never found out, although she would have if she'd lived long enough. See, I'd miscarried Will's baby in February, right after he died, so—"

  "Oh, Laura." Kay hugged her. "I'm really sorry."

  "So she would have known Will couldn't have been the father this time. But she died that summer before I'd worked up the nerve to tell her. I wasn't even showing yet."

  "No one else did the math?" Kay asked disbelievingly.

  "I've got hardly any relatives – neither did Will – and I never see them. I'm out of touch with all my old friends, except for Christmas cards and the like. People know about Janey, but they all assume she's Will's."

  Kay chewed her lip. "Whose name did you put on the birth certificate under 'Father'?"

  Laura closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead. "I left it blank, 'cause in this state you can't name anyone without his knowledge and permission. And I just couldn't put Will's name there. He'd been dead for eleven months by that point. I just … I just couldn't lie so baldly."

  "You know," Kay said with a rueful little chuckle as she squeezed Laura's shoulder, "this unrelenting honesty can't be a good thing. Not in the long run."

  Laura smiled in spite of the circumstances. Quietly she said, "Kay, I … I know I don't have to spell this out, but…"

  Kay pulled an imaginary zipper across her lips.

  Laura sagged against her. "Thanks. I just don't want any complications in Janey's life."

  "Speaking of complications…" Kay nodded toward the wall of windows. Outside, Dean was working his way steadily through the pile of cordwood, reducing it into manageable pieces, which he stacked neatly against Laura's toolshed. "I take it he's got no idea he's Janey's father."

  Hearing it said out loud like that – "Janey's father" – made Laura's stomach tighten. "No – thank God."

  Kay slanted a look of reproach toward Laura. "For an honesty freak, you sure know how to tell a whopper when it suits you."

  Her hackles rising, Laura crossed the room to pick up the palette knife she'd thrown. "I never told Dean that Will was Janey's father – not in so many words. He just assumed—"

  "A lie of omission is still a lie, kiddo. People who pride themselves on truthfulness are supposed to know that."

  "Kay, please don't lecture me," Laura said testily. "You have no idea what I went through, what I'm still going through. And if you think this is easy for me – keeping this secret – then you don't know me as well as you think you do."

  Nodding thoughtfully, Kay perched on an arm of the easy chair, cradling her mug of coffee in her hands. "You're right. I've got no business making judgments. I should be trying to understand, not censure."

  "That's right," Laura mumbled sullenly as she returned to her worktable.

  "So, help me to understand," Kay said quietly. "Tell me what happened. You and Dean … had this been going on while you were married to Will?"

  "No!" Laura exclaimed as heat flooded her face. "Of course not! How could you think that?"

  "I didn't think it," Kay soothed, "I was just wondering. Things happen … you know, things people don't plan. Repressed desires and all that."

  Expelling a ragged sigh, Laura plucked a flat bristle brush out of its can and charged it with the alizarin tint. "Yeah, well, there were repressed desires, all right, all through college, but we didn't do anything about them – we didn't even acknowledge them. I loved Will. Dean knew that." Turning, she brushed a warm flush onto Janey's deliciously fat cheeks. The effect was pretty, but the color wasn't quite deep enough.

  "So that day in April when Dean came here to bring you Will's effects, that was the first time…"

  Laura nodded. "The first and only. It was…" She closed her eyes and felt it again, the heat, the inevitability, her desperate need for him stripping away all sense, all misgivings … and then – oh, yes – the exhilarating shock of him on top of her, inside her…

  But then afterward came a different kind of shock, when she realized that they had actually done it, done what they'd longed to do for years, but always had the sense to avoid … because of Will.

  Will…

  No sooner had Dean withdrawn from her than he'd begun apologizing. Laura's last memory of that night was weeping as he held her, whispering a litany of contrition. This is my fault. It was my doing. If anyone's to blame, it's me.

  Knowing how deeply he regretted making love to her had only compounded Laura's anguish. After all those years of aching for each other in such ardent silence, their coming together should have been unreservedly joyous. It should have left them fulfilled, transformed. Instead, it had left them – or Laura, at any rate – consumed by guilt.

  Will…

  It was wrong. It must have been wrong. Will had only been gone for two months, and she'd loved him. Being with Dean that way, letting that happen … it was shameful.

  But it was the next morning that cold reality had really set in.

  "When I woke up," Laura said in a raw voice she barely recognized, "he was gone."

  "Gone. Just … gone? No note, no—"

  "He doesn't leave notes. He doesn't break things off with women. He…" Laura unscrewed the tube of alizarin crimson and squeezed some more into the patch of pink on the butcher tray. "He hates being tied down, having to answer to anybody. He's always been that way."<
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  "Is that why he left, do you think?" Kay asked. "Because he thought you would tie him down? Or was it guilt?"

  Laura nodded as she mixed the paint with her palette knife. "He probably did feel some measure of guilt, and I'm sure that didn't help, but given his history with women, and that loner thing he's got going … I'm guessing he was afraid I'd become too attached to him. All those years of lusting in my heart, and then we finally…" She swore under her breath.

  "Maybe he was afraid he'd get too attached," Kay ventured. "Or maybe he already felt too attached, and he was all conflicted and—"

  "You don't know Dean." Grimacing, Laura scooped up some of the new, darker crimson tint with her brush. "He doesn't get conflicted, not over women. And he sure doesn't get attached. Dean Kettering has never needed anybody but Dean Kettering, not then, not now."

  As Laura turned around, she noticed Dean outside, pausing to wipe the back of his arm across his forehead, then raking a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. Wresting her gaze from him, she started deepening the color on Janey's cheeks. "He left because he decided it would be too messy if he stayed. I don't know. Maybe he was right."

  "You don't believe that."

  "Dean knew me, Kay. He knew how I was, how I am – a one-man woman, born to keep a house and raise kids. He used to tease me about being 'the salt of the earth.' And he used to argue with me about sex, about how it was really just about animal gratification, and how monogamy was unnatural and marriage was an institution dreamed up by women to keep men under con—"

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah." Kay waved a dismissive hand. "The college boy's credo. So, you're saying he thought you'd get hung up on him if he stuck around?"

  "Yep." A flash of movement from outside the windows snagged Laura's attention – Dean imbedding the ax blade into the chopping block with one swift flick of his arm before yanking the blue sweater over his head. Balling it up, he tossed it onto the stack of newly chopped wood. Beneath it he wore the old Henley shirt he'd had on yesterday, the bottom of which he pulled up to blot his face, revealing a flat abdomen ridged with muscle. "He was right," Laura said softly. "I would have gotten hung up on him. I already was."

  And, God help me, I always will be.

  "What did you do when you found out you were pregnant?" Kay asked.

  "I cried," Laura said as she carefully brushed the darker pink onto Janey's cheeks. "Just once, but it was a pull-out-all-the-stops bawl-fest. I mean, I'd always wanted children, but the circumstances couldn't have been more screwed up. But then … I don't know, maybe it was the pregnancy hormones or something, the endorphins and all that … I calmed down and just accepted it. I had a baby inside me. It may not have been the right guy who put her there, but that didn't mean I didn't want her."

  Kay nodded. "Somehow I couldn't see you wallowing in your misery for very long. You're not made that way."

  "The only fly in the ointment was having to tell Grandma Jane, but of course she passed away before I got around to it, and left me this house, and a little money, which was a lifesaver. Not having a mortgage meant I didn't have to hold down a day job while I got my art career off the ground. And painting helped to keep me sane, so…" She shrugged.

  "And you never considered contacting Dean and telling him about the baby?"

  "Actually, I did, in the beginning. I thought he had a right to know, so I tried to locate him through the air force, but they wouldn't disclose his whereabouts I kept thinking he'd get in touch with me, but…" She sighed heavily. "He never did."

  "Ah." Kay was finally getting it, it seemed.

  "He'd obviously washed his hands of me," Laura said. "It was around the time you moved here, when I was almost due, that I finally gave up on trying to find Dean. I decided my baby would be better off with no father than with one who didn't want anything to do with us. She deserved better – we both did."

  "Maybe you should have tried harder to find him," Kay suggested. "Maybe he would have wanted something to do with you if he'd known about the baby. Maybe he even would have done the right thing and married you."

  Laura spun around to face her friend. "Let's say he did, as contrary to his nature as that would have been. You can't tell me he would have stuck around for the long haul – not Dean Kettering." I always hated toeing the line, always had an itch to go off and do my thing, regardless of how it affected anyone else. "And a father who tosses his family aside like trash is worse than no father at all because of the scars he leaves on his kids. Dean himself is evidence of that."

  "And that's why you're still refusing to tell him," Kay asked, "even though he's reestablished contact?"

  "Yes, and that's why I can't take his money." Returning her attention to the painting, Laura scowled at the dark pink blotches on Janey's cheeks. "Yikes, she looks like a clown – what was I thinking?" Grabbing her palette knife, she started scraping off the paint she had so painstakingly applied. "How could I possibly take a million dollars from him while keeping a secret like this? And if I told him, it would open up a horrendous can of worms. He'd be in the picture then, he'd be Janey's father."

  "Uh … he's already Janey's father," Kay pointed out evenly.

  "You know what I mean. He'd be a father figure. He'd be important to her. And then he'd split and pull the rug out from under her, and I'd be left to pick up the pieces. No, thank you."

  "Maybe you're not giving him enough credit. All things considered, he actually seems like a pretty nice guy."

  "A pretty dangerous guy is what he is." Laura ceased her scraping and stared in dismay at the wounded-looking mess she'd made of Janey's face. Shifting her gaze, she looked outside to where Dean was methodically splitting hunk after hunk of wood, his body moving with that potent masculine grace that had always made her shiver deep in her belly.

  "Well…" Kay began, "he may be a tad on the untamed side, a little reckless, a little impulsive, a bit too self-sufficient for your taste. That doesn't mean he's dangerous."

  "To me it does." Moistening a rag with turp, Laura blotted up as much of the remaining crimson disaster as she could.

  "That's it, isn't it?" Kay said in that all-too-knowing way of hers. "Your problem is you kinda dig that bad-boy thing."

  "Excuse me? I'm into stability and commitment, remember?"

  "And bad boys – or, at least, a certain bad boy. Not on a conscious level, of course. You think you want some nice, sweet, honorable Father Knows Best type who likes his hedge trimmer, his steady paycheck and the easy listening station, and on a certain level you do. But on another level—" Kay's voice lowered suggestively "—in that deeply buried place where a woman's secret drives and desires lurk…" She cocked her head toward the wall of windows. "You want to rock and roll."

  With a roll of her eyes, Laura flung the rag into the trash can she reserved for flammables, and wiped her hands on the paint-crusted denim bib apron she wore over her gesso-flecked jeans and sweatshirt. Charging her brush with some flesh-toned paint, she set about covering up the faint crimson stain left on Janey's cheeks. "You know, for a shrink who supposedly doesn't believe in that stuff anymore, you sure seem to like spouting those psychological insights."

  "That was just an observation," Kay corrected. "If it's insight you want, how about this. The reason you regard Dean as dangerous – and therefore won't take his money or tell him the truth about Janey, despite your honesty fetish – is because you secretly fear your overwhelming attraction to him. You're afraid that if he reciprocated your feelings, you'd throw your lot in with him—"

  "And end up sorrier than I can imagine," Laura said soberly. "Especially if Janey is left traumatized because I was stupid and selfish enough to let him into our lives. Which, incidentally, isn't quite as simple as you seem to think. What am I supposed to tell Janey about Dean? 'Hey, by the way, your father wasn't my husband after all, but his best friend. Just thought you should know.'"

  "She should know."

  "You've got to be kidding. Trust me, Janey's a lot better off thinki
ng—" Laura gasped. Janey! She'd gotten so involved in their conversation that she'd forgotten about preschool. Glancing at her watch, she groaned. "Omigod, it's almost nine o'clock. She's gonna be late for the field trip."

  Tossing the brush aside, she sprinted out of the studio, down the hall and up the stairs, yelling, "Janey! Are you ready?" She flung open the bathroom door. "Janey, it's time to go. You're gonna be…" Laura blinked at her daughter, standing on her little wooden step stool, her sleeves pushed up, her arms submerged up to the elbows in a sinkful of soapy water.

  Janey's unruly corn-silk mane had clearly not been combed, nor her face washed, if her dried-milk mustache was any indication. "Janey, what are you doing?"

  "Washing my button collection." Janey scooped a double handful of glistening wet buttons out of water and held them up proudly.

  With a frantic little growl, Laura grabbed her hairbrush off its shelf and yanked it through her daughter's tangled curls. "Take that towel off the rod and dry off."

  "But my buttons are all—"

  "Now!"

  "Ow!" Janey whined as she grudgingly dried her hands and arms. "You're bwushing too—" Tossing the brush aside, Laura dipped a corner of the towel in the sink and used it to perform a quick'n' dirty cleanup of Janey's face. The teeth would just have to go unbrushed. "You were supposed to be getting ready! Now you'll be late for the field trip."

  "Can I just dwy my buttons off?" Janey asked plaintively as Laura hustled her out the door and down the stairs.

  "Your buttons can wait. And when you get home at noon, we'll have to have a little talk about priorities."

  "What are pwi … pwiowi—"

  "I'll explain later." Bundling Janey into her coat and mittens, Laura called out, "Kay, are you all set?"

  "Coming!" Kay's voice came from the direction of the studio. "I'm just pouring Dean a cup of coffee. I thought he could use a break, so I invited him in."

  Squeezing her eyes shut, Laura mouthed the vilest word she knew.

  "Is Mr. Kettle-wing here?" Janey asked delightedly. "Can I say hi to—"

  "No." Laura yanked Janey's woolen cap on with a little too much force. "There's not enough time." Kay came down the hall, shrugging on her colorful, fringed blanket coat. "You ready, sweetie?" she asked Janey.