Angel's Baby

by Pamela Browning

  “That fool cat got you into trouble. You could have drowned,” Stuart said.

  “But I didn’t,” Angel said.

  “If you’ll do something like trying to rescue a pelican in the middle of a bunch of man-of-wars, how can I trust you not to do the same kind of thing when you’re pregnant? Or when the baby is small?” He was frowning at her, his arms crossed over her chest.

  “I won’t. I’ll be more careful when I’m responsible for a child,” she said, but she was thinking that if something happened to her on this island, so far away from other people, her baby would be all alone and no one would know it.

  Stuart stood watching her with the cat, a whole panoply of expressions playing across his face. Angel, acting as if Caloosa had her full attention, pretended not to notice.

  Stuart heaved a sigh and shook his head. “Sometimes, Angel, I wonder if you know what you’re doing,” he said.

  Before Angel could reply, he turned his back and walked away. Anyway, she couldn’t think of anything to say. Stuart was right. Maybe she didn’t know what she was doing at all.

  Chapter Eight

  Not long after she recovered from her tangle with the man-of-war, Angel came in from the field to find Stuart sitting at the kitchen table, poring over one of her books on childbirth. “Did you know that only five percent of women give birth on their due dates?” he said without looking up.

  “No,” Angel said.

  “That’s what this book says,” he told her. “Maybe you should read it.”

  “I’m saving it for later,” Angel said. She took a loaf of bread out of the freezer and slapped it down on the counter. “Would you like a sandwich?”

  “What kind?”

  “Egg salad.”

  “Sure, sounds good.”

  Stuart flipped through other pages of the book while she made the sandwiches, and when she had finished, she sat down beside him to eat.

  They had almost finished eating when Stuart said casually, “Isn’t today the day your period is due?”

  Although Angel was positive that she had conceived, she had no proof. She knew that she’d need to start going to Key West for prenatal checkups soon, but she wanted to postpone her first one as long as possible for fear that Stuart would find out she was pregnant. And she hadn’t dared to use one of the home pregnancy test kits because she was sure that Stuart would notice it was missing. She might have known that Stuart would ask this particular question; with his sex-ed expertise, he probably kept track of her cycle better than she did.

  “Nothing is supposed to happen until tomorrow,” she said, getting up and rinsing her plate at the sink.

  “Oh. I guess I got my dates mixed up. Days seem to run into each other when I don’t have enough to do. You know, I’ve decided that next time I go fishing with Barky, I’ll stop off in Key West and buy drafting supplies, so I can start designing that cabin cruiser for my friend Tom. He wants a forty-footer, state-of-the-art, all that kind of thing.”

  “Good idea,” Angel said, thinking that this was a project that would keep Stuart busy and that he might want to stick around until it was finished—whether she was pregnant or not. Still, she knew that right now she should look him straight in the eye and say, “I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.” She did look him in the eye, but all she could force herself to say was “I’d better get back to work.”

  “Sure,” he said easily. “I’ll see you later. What do you say I chip a few more oysters off the dock pilings this afternoon? We’ll have steamed oysters for dinner. By the way, aren’t oysters an aphrodisiac?” He grinned at her.

  “The last time you cooked them, they sure weren’t,” she said, leaving him speechlessly recalling the night before they were married when he’d tried to get her to talk about sex at a time when she didn’t want to at all.

  If Stuart really knew a lot about pregnant women, she told herself as she headed for the outhouse, he’d have realized that she’d been paying frequent visits there lately. Even if she hadn’t had any other symptoms, to Angel, the sensitivity of her bladder would have been the real clincher.

  As for aphrodisiacs, pregnancy was the best one ever invented. Angel, anticipating the evening, was sure of it.

  * * *

  THE NEXT NIGHT, Stuart asked casually, “Well, Angel, did it happen?”

  Angel looked at him blankly. She was holding Caloosa and clipping her long claws with a metal clipper. She thought he was referring to the cat.

  “Did what happen?” she asked.

  He gave her a look of impatience, but it was fond impatience.

  “Did you get your period?”

  “Oh,” she said, looking down at the cat’s paws. She hesitated only slightly. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I did.”

  She glanced up in time to see Stuart’s face fall. He looked so disappointed, as disappointed as she might have been if it was true.

  “That’s too bad,” he said quietly.

  “Yes, it is,” she said in a level tone, but her heart was beating a mile a minute. She shouldn’t be deceiving him this way; it was wrong, all wrong. But, oh, she wasn’t ready for him to leave yet. Give her another month, one more month of nights spent making sweet love to each other, of turning to him in bed and feeling his arms go around her. Give her one more month of days on the beach, kissing until she could stand it no longer, then trying to make a baby right out in the broad daylight to the music of the surf spilling upon the sand. One more month. It would mean so much to her, and Stuart could spare the time. He had no timetable, no place he had to be.

  Caloosa, perhaps sensing Angel’s misgivings, leaped from her lap and chased a ball into the kitchen. The only sound in the room was the swish of the overhead fan and the chirp of tree frogs on the outside of the window, their long tongues lapping up insects drawn to the living room light.

  “Don’t look so sad,” Stuart said, getting up and walking over to her. She sat looking up at him, hoping that he wouldn’t read the deception on her face.

  “I’m not,” she said, and at least that was true. Or partly so, anyway.

  “There’ll be other chances,” he said. “Lots of other chances.”

  “I know.”

  He sat down beside her and massaged the back of her neck. “Would you like me to rub your back? Valerie used to...” His words trailed off in midsentence.

  “Valerie? Who’s Valerie?” she said, instantly alert, but Stuart had clamped his lips together.

  “It doesn’t matter. Here, let me move around to the back of you... That’s right. Relax, Angel. Do you have cramps?”

  “Y-yes,” she said, her mind reeling. Valerie must have been important to him; he used to rub her back when she had her period. So what had happened between them? Where was this Valerie now?

  Stuart’s cool hands on her back didn’t do much to calm her active mind. She felt a sharp stab of jealousy; maybe the reason he wanted to leave her as soon as she became pregnant was because he wanted to get back to this Valerie, whoever she was.

  “How does this feel?” Stuart said, close to her ear. His hands were inscribing circles on either side of her spine. It felt good.

  For two cents, she would have turned to him, thrown her arms around his neck and begged to know if Valerie, whoever she was, was special to him. But she only answered quietly, “It feels fine.”

  He didn’t speak anymore, and Angel finally straightened and stretched. “I’m really tired, Stuart. I think I’ll go to bed now.”

  “You go ahead. I’ll close up the house,” he said.

  She let Stuart go about the business of checking the pet door for Caloosa and turning out the lights. When she heard him leave the house, she quickly changed into her nightgown and switched off the bedroom light, knowing that he’d soon return from his trip to the outhouse. She climbed into bed and retreated to the corner, so that her back would be toward Stuart when he came in.

  Soon she heard the back door close, and she listened while Stuart rummaged in the refrige
rator for a snack. After a while, he walked into the room, his footsteps light, and she concentrated on breathing steadily as if she were asleep.

  He parted the mosquito netting and sat down on the edge of the bed, causing her to roll slightly toward him when the mattress dipped. She stiffened, knowing that if she corrected her posture, Stuart would know she was awake.

  “Angel?” he said in a low voice.

  She kept breathing regularly, and soon he lay down on the bed beside her. He reached over and touched her arm briefly, but took his hand away after a moment. In a matter of minutes, he was asleep, but she lay awake in the dark for a long time, thinking over what she had done.

  Her conclusion, in the moments before she fell asleep, was that she was wrong to have deceived Stuart, but if the result was that he would stay on Halos Island, then lying was worth it.

  That night, or perhaps it was early morning, they were both awakened by an owl’s cry somewhere close by. The owl hooted several times, then stopped. Angel, trying to get more comfortable, rolled over on her back and encountered Stuart’s arm. She drew back from it and pulled the sheet up over her.

  But he had awakened, and she heard him sigh, her name a mere whisper upon his lips. He slid his hand over and rested it for a moment on her hip. She froze. Sometimes, in the night, he reached for her, and often they came together blindly in the dark, linked not only by their willing bodies, but also by their pact to create a child. At those times, they eased effortlessly into and out of each other as if it were second nature. Which, by this time, it was.

  “Mmm...” Stuart said sleepily, and she knew that he was only half-awake. His hand moved upward to cup her breast through her nightgown, a signal that he wanted to make love.

  She was supposed to have cramps. If she really had cramps, she wouldn’t want him to make love to her. Yet her nipple went rigid and tingled at his touch, and it was all she could do not to turn on her side and slide her leg over his.

  Suddenly, Stuart’s fingers became still. He had remembered. “Sorry,” he said, a muffled word, and he withdrew his hand. Before she could reply, he had flopped over on his stomach and was breathing in and out, in and out, the rhythmic inhalation and exhalation of a man fast asleep.

  Angel, however, was not asleep. She lay on her back, the sheet pulled up to her chin, and tears slowly seeped from her eyes.

  If she had not lied to him, they would be making love at this very minute. And it would have nothing to do with wanting a baby, but everything to do with wanting each other. It would be the very best kind of lovemaking, and it made her sad that it wasn’t going to happen—at least not tonight.

  * * *

  IT WAS A WEEK OR SO later that Stuart brought home the sailboat.

  Angel was outside gathering fresh tomatoes from the garden when she saw a sail approaching far out to sea. She watched for a moment but didn’t recognize the boat. It was Saturday, not the day for Toby to bring the mail. And this little craft with its white billowing sail bore absolutely no resemblance to Barky’s runabout with its distinctive putt-putt motor. In fact, Angel knew no one who owned a sailboat.

  She set the tomatoes aside and walked slowly toward the dock. She recognized Stuart at the tiller as the boat drew closer. He was smiling, his hair blown back from his forehead by the wind. She ran to meet him.

  As the sailboat glided toward her, Stuart’s grin broadened, his teeth white against his tan. He tossed her a line. “Hang on to that for a minute, will you?” he called.

  She caught the line and hauled on it, then began to fire questions. “Is this your boat? What happened to Barky? Didn’t you go fishing?”

  Stuart jumped onto the dock and loomed over her, hands on his hips, a smile of amusement curving his lips. “The answers are yes, it is my boat, and yes, we did go fishing for a while, but we gave up and went to Key West when we didn’t catch anything.”

  “Looks like you caught something,” she said, her eyes taking in the bright shiny sailboat with its polished brass fittings.

  “She’s a beauty, isn’t she?”

  “She’s quite a boat, all right. Where’d you find her?”

  “Barky had a friend who wanted to sell her, and when I found out that she was built by a Bahamian native, I was interested. She’s made for sailing around the shallow reefs of the Bahamian out islands, so she has no centerboard and the keel’s small. She should be perfect for sailing the waters in these keys.”

  At the moment, all Angel could think about was that the sailboat gave Stuart a way to leave the island whenever he wanted. “I don’t know much about boats,” she said.

  He smiled at her. “I thought I’d teach you to sail.”

  “Me? Sail?” She laughed, genuinely amused.

  “What? You think you won’t like it?”

  “I know I won’t, Stuart. I’ve been sailing once in my life, and I spent the whole time ducking and dodging. This big stick swings around—”

  “It’s called a boom,” Stuart supplied.

  “And you have to keep leaning in different directions,” she said.

  “That’s to balance the boat.”

  “As you can tell, I know nothing about boats, I’m scared to go sailing around in the ocean, and I’m not athletic at all.”

  “You look pretty athletic when you’re swimming,” he said.

  She wrinkled her nose. “When I’m swimming, I don’t think you’re admiring my athletic prowess,” she said saucily. It was becoming increasingly easy, now that she knew Stuart better, to tease him, and he seemed to like it.

  He slung an arm around her shoulders. “Will you give it a try?” he asked.

  “I don’t know about a landlubber like me learning to sail, but I’d like to go out on her, if you’ll take me.” She liked bearing the weight of his arm; she liked the way he was grinning down at her.

  “Can you go now? I’ve an urge to explore some of the isolated keys to the south of here.”

  “Well...”

  “Come on, be an angel, Angel,” he coaxed in his most winsome way, making her smile.

  It was no use trying to resist him when he was so charming. “All right,” she said. She glanced at her watch. “It’s getting late. I could bring along the chicken I fried earlier, and some drinks, and we could eat dinner over near Fiddler’s Key.”

  “That’s the best idea you’ve had all day. Want me to help carry things?”

  “There’s not much to carry. You stay here and admire your new boat, and I’ll be back in a few minutes. By the way, what’s her name?”

  “Right now she doesn’t have one,” he said.

  “We’ll christen her tonight. Between the two of us, we’ll think of something.”

  “If we’re going to be christening a boat, you’d better bring that bottle of champagne from the pantry. I bought it for a special occasion. We’ll splash some on the bow and drink the rest.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I’d better have any,” Angel said, without thinking. Knowing that she was pregnant, she had made a conscious decision not to drink alcoholic beverages for the duration.

  “Why?” Stuart asked, looking puzzled.

  Realizing her slip, Angel made herself look as indifferent as possible. “I won’t be drinking alcoholic beverages when I’m pregnant. I thought I might as well stop now,” she said.

  “Well, we already know you’re not pregnant yet. In fact—” Stuart squinted into the sun as he rapidly subtracted “—at this point, you’re about five days away from your most fertile period. Am I right?”

  He would have been right if she hadn’t already conceived. “Right,” she said with reluctance.

  “So bring the champagne and two glasses. And hurry up. This is a great boat for sailing before the wind, but the drift makes tacking difficult, so it’s going to be slow going.”

  Angel turned away, wishing she could be honest. If things had been different, she and Stuart might have been able to turn this inaugural cruise into a celebration of something wonderful. But
now her worry was compounded; if Stuart wanted to leave the island, he now had the means. He wouldn’t even have to wait for a Tuesday or a Thursday so that he could leave with Toby on the mail boat.

  * * *

  A FEW HOURS LATER, Angel sat across from Stuart in the new sailboat with her feet up and a plate of fried chicken in her lap. They were riding at anchor off the coast of Fiddler’s Key, the boat rocking gently on the outgoing tide.

  The short cruise had turned into a glorious experience that Angel enjoyed tremendously. They’d started to eat their dinner shortly after dropping anchor, and now the bright orange crescent of the sun was sinking into the sea behind the key in an exquisite show of pink and amber and pale, pale blue.

  “So what do you think about the boat?” he asked her.

  “Before this, I only experienced boats as a means of getting from one place to another. Sailing is more like recreation than transportation,” she said.

  “Not too much duck and dodge?”

  “You kept it to a minimum.” She smiled at him.

  Stuart unexpectedly waved his glass of champagne in the air and stood up, balancing himself as the boat rose and fell on the gentle swell of the waves.

  “I hereby christen this boat Angel’s Wings in honor of my beautiful wife. Angel, the way you looked today when we tacked into the wind made me think of it. With your hair streaming behind you, all silvery gold in the sunlight, you looked as if you’d taken flight.” He moved toward the bow and tossed the contents of his glass toward it. The drops seemed to hang suspended, glinting like liquid gold before falling onto the bow.

  Angel, who had taken advantage of Stuart’s turned back to pour the untouched contents of her own glass over the side, smiled back. “You shouldn’t have named this boat after me,” she said.

  “If not you, then whom? It’s customary to name a boat after one’s wife.” He sat down beside her and draped a casual arm across her knee.

  She looked down at the wedding ring on her finger. “I keep forgetting that I am your wife,” she said in a moment of rare candor.