Scrooge and the Single Girl

by Christine Rimmer

  Aaron said something at Celia’s end of the line, but Jilly couldn’t quite make it out.

  Jilly smiled. “Tell him to take slow, deep breaths.”

  “I have. It didn’t seem to help much—Janey’s coming, with Cade. They’re on their way.”

  Jilly clutched the phone a little tighter. She knew what her friend would say next.

  “Oh, Jilly. Could you come, too?”

  The problem was, she wanted to. She really, really wanted to. But Will might be there. And certainly Caitlin would. She didn’t know if she was ready to deal with either of them just yet.

  Celia coaxed, “I know you don’t have much on your schedule till after the first, since you’d planned to stay up at Mavis’s house until then. And it would be my treat. Just say yes and get to Sacramento International ASAP. We’ll have a ticket waiting in your name for the next Las Vegas flight. And Aaron will send a car to pick you up at McCarran.”

  “Oh, that’s crazy. You don’t have to—”

  “I want to. Every time I think of this baby, of how happy I am, I think of the three of us sitting by the fire at Janey’s last February. I think of how I might never have had the nerve to go after what I wanted, if it hadn’t been for you two.”

  “Ceil, I know you would have gone after that man on your own eventually.”

  Celia was laughing. “Sure, in another decade or two.” Then she sighed. “It would mean so much to me—to have you here for this. Since the first day of kindergarten, whenever something major happened in my life, you and Janey were there. This is pretty major, you know? And I have to admit, I’d just like to see you. I’ve been a little worried about you since that mix-up last week over that old house of Mavis’s.”

  Jilly winced. It was the problem with having really close friends—somehow they always sensed when something was wrong. “Oh, Ceil. Why? I really am okay. And the last thing you need right now is to be worrying about me.”

  “I can’t help it. Janey says you never called her back about visiting her and Cade.”

  “She called me. We worked it out.”

  “I know. But you haven’t called me.”

  “Ceil. Come on. It’s only been a few days.”

  “Something’s bothering you. I can sense—” Celia gasped. And the gasp became a low groan.

  “Ceil. Are you okay?”

  “Damn it, Jillian.” Suddenly, it was Aaron growling in her ear. “She’s having another contraction. Say you’ll come so she can get off the phone and concentrate on having this baby.”

  When he put it like that, what else could she do? “All right. But I’ll get my own flight.” He started to growl some more. She said firmly, “I don’t want you worrying about me. What hospital?” He told her. And she said, “Okay. Tell Celia I’ll be there as soon as I possibly can.”

  “She’s coming.” He was talking to Celia now, his voice low, tender. And urgent. “Don’t worry, my darling. She’s on her way….”

  Orlene promised to look after the sulking Missy. Jilly threw what she’d need for a couple of nights into a carry-on and found a cute, slouchy gray wool hat that covered most of the train wreck formerly known as her forehead. She locked up and went out and jumped in her 4Runner.

  At the airport, the terminal smelled of Cinnabons. Jilly was practically salivating as she took her place in a very long ticket line, not holding out a lot of hope for getting a ticket at the last minute like this, on New Year’s Eve. She was already resigning herself to calling Aaron back to report that she’d be driving in, after all.

  But an hour later, when her turn came, she managed to get a flight with only a two-hour wait till takeoff. She couldn’t believe her luck. And it wasn’t even standby. She bought some magazines and an intriguing looking paperback mystery and then she surrendered to that delicious aroma and bought herself a huge, delectable cinnamon roll. She was just sitting down to devour it when the phone in her purse rang.

  She checked the display before she answered. Great. “What do you want, Caitlin?”

  “Hey, don’t bother with a friendly tone. After all, it’s only me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Aaron says you’re on your way to Vegas.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You got a flight?”

  “I did.”

  “Way to go, sweetie pie. Listen, I want to be sure you get to the hospital in time to see my grandchild born. Give me your flight number. I’ll have a car waiting to pick you up.”

  “Oh, Caitlin. I can see you coming a mile away.”

  “Now, darlin’ girl, what is that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re up to something.” Jilly didn’t know exactly what, but it was Caitlin, so there had to be some kind of scheme going on here. Maybe she planned to trick poor Will into being the one to meet her at the airport. It seemed like a stretch, but with Caitlin, anything was possible.

  “Jilly, sweetie, how come you’re so damn suspicious lately?”

  “Oh, puh-lease.”

  “Now, hon.” Caitlin had put on a wheedling tone, one Jilly found particularly grating, given Caitlin’s basic nature, which was brash and bossy in the extreme. “You just be a good girl and give me that flight number, now.”

  “Thanks, but I’ll rent a car.”

  “That could be a problem,” Caitlin advised in a sweet, husky singsong. “Darlin’ girl, it’s New Year’s Eve.”

  “I’ll manage. And I have to go. My Cinnabon is getting cold. Bye, now.”

  Caitlin was still wheedling away as she disconnected the call.

  Jilly’s flight took off on time and landed at McCarran right on schedule. She ran into a snag at the rental car booth. She’d called to reserve a car before her flight, but when she got there it turned out that available vehicles were nil. She thought of Caitlin, wondered if Will’s manipulative mother could possibly have done something to keep her from getting her rental car.

  But then how would Caitlin Bravo, who ran a saloon and café in a tiny town east of Tahoe, have that kind of influence with a Las Vegas rental car outlet? And why would she even want to do such a thing? Jilly must be getting paranoid. She’d have to watch that—though it was difficult to keep suspicions in check after you’d been dealing with Caitlin for a while.

  Finally, about an hour after Jilly showed up at the desk, someone turned in a no-frills compact. Jilly snapped it up.

  It took her forty-five minutes to reach the hospital from the airport. By then, it was three in the afternoon. She raced inside, stopped at the front desk for directions and then headed straight for the maternity ward.

  When she stepped off the elevator, which opened right on to the waiting area, she knew she was in the right place. Celia’s mom, Maggie Tuttle, sat in one of the gray chairs, wearing her usual sweetly distracted expression. Celia’s oldest sister, Annie, sat beside Mrs. Tuttle, holding her mother’s hand. Caitlin sat two chairs down from the Tuttle women. She was thumbing through a dogeared magazine, her hard black hair gleaming, her black satin shirt spangled with sequins that perfectly matched her skin-tight turquoise jeans. Cade and Jane were there, too—Cade in baggy cargoes and a leather jacket, Jane in one of those Eddie Bauer jumpers that always looked just right on her, her coffee-colored hair a wild mass of cascading curls.

  Oh, yes. Everyone who should be there was there. Except Aaron, who had taken labor classes with his wife and was probably with her right now. And Will…

  Caitlin looked up first. “Darlin’ Jilly. It’s about time—and what’s with the hat?”

  “Hello, Caitlin.” Jilly tipped her head back slightly so she could see beneath the hat’s low brim and gave Will’s mother a big, defiant smile.

  “Hey, there,” said Cade.

  Celia’s mother let out a tired littler chirp of greeting, and Annie gave Jilly a nod and a smile.

  Janey jumped from her chair, arms outstretched. Jilly rushed to her. They met in a hug. “I was getting worried,” Janey whispered once they had their arms a
round each other.

  Jilly gave her other best friend one more good squeeze and stepped back. “Nothing to worry about. Here I am, safe and sound.”

  “Is this some hot, new look?” Janey brushed the low brim of the hat. “How do you see?”

  “I tip my head back. Tell me. How’s Ceil? Has the baby arrived?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Is everything going okay?”

  “So far as we know. Evidently, things have slowed down. But there’s nothing to worry about. The baby’s fine and Ceil is, too.”

  Maggie Tuttle sighed. “First babies. They always take forever.” Celia’s mother ought to know. She’d had six babies herself.

  Caitlin stood. “Jilly honey, it’ll be a while before we get anymore news. And I’ll bet you’re dyin’ for a snack about now. I’ve checked out the cafeteria and they’ve got bacon burgers and fairly decent fries. It ain’t the Highgrade, but it’ll do in a pinch. How about if you and me head on down to the cafeteria?”

  Jilly grabbed Jane’s hand. There was no way she was letting Caitlin Bravo corner her alone. “Thanks so much. But Janey’ll take me. We have some catching up to do, anyway.”

  Jane was a champion. She didn’t miss a beat. “Do we ever. This way.”

  “Don’t you leave me alone with her,” Jilly said desperately.

  Jane had led her to a quiet corner, where they could talk undisturbed. Jilly had her bacon burger and fries in front of her and her head tipped way back so she could see her friend across the table.

  “I’ll do what I can.” Jane tore the top off a container of strawberry-kiwi yogurt. “And I am sorry. But she really thinks you’re the one for Will, and when Caitlin decides you’re right for one of her boys…” Jane’s voice trailed off and she shook that cloud of thick, dark hair. “She’ll get over it. In time. And Jilly, come on. What is going on with that hat?”

  It was one hat comment too many. Jilly gave in and took the hat off.

  Jane said, “My God.”

  “I think of it this way, in six or eight weeks, who’s gonna know I ever looked this bad?”

  “How did it happen?”

  “Got a month?”

  Jane leaned closer, dark eyes shining with love and concern. Jilly felt a little better, just to have so much caring coming her way. “I want to hear,” Jane said. “Everything. Please. It’s what friends are for, you know?”

  “We should get back soon. Ceil might—”

  “If they need us or she wants us, they know where to find us.”

  “It seems…I don’t know, like a bad idea, to tell you about it.”

  Janey had no trouble understanding why. “Because it’s about Will, right? And his brother is my husband.”

  Jilly felt her face turning red. “Yeah, ’fraid so.”

  And Janey said, “I’m your friend. It feels to me that we’ve always been friends. You know in the end you’ll have to come to me or to Ceil—and Ceil is married to one of Will’s brother’s, too. So what can you do?”

  Jilly picked up a French fry and set it down without eating it. “Oh, Janey. I just don’t know….”

  A sudden frown drew Janey’s brows together. “You’re not trying to tell me…Will didn’t…?”

  “What?” Jilly pointed to her forehead. “This?”

  Janey now wore a look of pure horror. She gulped. Nodded.

  Jilly cried “No! Of course Will didn’t do this to me.” It hurt, she realized, just to say his name out loud. Tears tightened her throat. “He only thinks that he did.”

  Jane set down her yogurt and laid her hand over Jilly’s. “Come on, now. You’d better explain.”

  So Jilly did. She told it all. How she and Will despised each other at first, how the tree branch fell on her, how she told Will she’d overheard him saying rude things about her, how Mavis appeared in her dreams. She included the part about how Missy went missing, and the night Will told her about Nora and then the lights went out. She explained how Mavis showed her where to find Missy. And then she shared a little about the best times—the Christmas she and Will had made, just the two of them, his birthday the next day….

  Jane leaned close across the table. “You became lovers, then?”

  “Yes.” And Jilly told the rest, about the lost dog they never found and how she fell into a ravine chasing after him. How everything changed after that. How Will sent her away—but then had to go and give her that one last incredible kiss, out in the clearing, as she was leaving. How he insisted she call him to say she’d made it home safe.

  When she was done, Janey said, “So what now?”

  “I don’t have any idea.”

  Janey was smiling. “I think you do. I think maybe Caitlin’s right about you and Will. I think maybe you think so, too.”

  “Oh, God. You think?”

  “How could I not? Look at all that’s happened. Even Mad Mavis is trying to get you two together.”

  “Don’t even joke about that. I mean, that is seriously creepy. I sincerely did feel that she really was there, that she was trying to help Will, you know, from beyond the grave?”

  Jane shrugged. “Maybe she was. And if she was, well, isn’t that kind of wonderful?”

  “Oh, Janey. You think?”

  Jane leaned close again. “Maybe you just have to…accept it. Just take whatever lesson you believe you were supposed to learn from it and go with it.” She picked up her yogurt and sat back in her chair. “Eat your burger.”

  “I will.” Jilly reached for it. But before she took a bite, she set it down again. “Where is he? Do you know? Is he still up at Mavis’s house? Did anyone call him? Does he realize that his first niece or nephew is, at this very moment, being born?”

  Jane spooned up more yogurt. “I assume he’s still at the cabin. And yes, he’s been told about the baby. Aaron finally got hold of him. I think Caitlin called him about a hundred times. She left message after message. She finally badgered Aaron into calling and that call, Will answered.”

  “But he’s not coming?”

  Jane gave her a patient look. “Jilly, think about it. A baby’s birth is not really the kind of thing bachelor uncles feel obligated to attend—especially not when they have to get to the hospital from high in the mountains five hundred miles away.”

  “Not coming…”

  Jane gave her a sympathetic look. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Oh, why did she feel so deflated and sad? She’d been telling herself that what she wanted most was not to have to see him.

  Jane was leaning forward again. “Jilly…”

  “Is this advice I’m about to get?”

  “Yes, it is. Are you listening?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, I am.”

  “When it comes to love, somebody’s got to go for it, to stand up and say, ‘This is what I want and I intend to fight for it.’ Caitlin told me that.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. My mother-in-law does have her honestly insightful moments.”

  “You’re saying I should fight for Will?”

  “I’m saying you two won’t work anything out if you never see each other. I’m saying if you have something to say to him, you ought to track him down and say it. You can’t allow yourself to imagine that the opportunity to work things out with him is somehow going to drop into your lap.”

  David Aaron Bravo, ten pounds, three ounces and twenty-one inches long, was born at ten minutes past midnight on the first day of the New Year. After mother and child were cleaned up and settled in their own private room, the anxious visitors who’d waited all those hours for the baby’s arrival were allowed in to see them, one or two at a time, for only a few minutes each. The new mother asked to see Jane and Jillian together.

  Jilly’s first thought when she entered that hospital room was that Celia looked awful. She had dark circles beneath her eyes. Her red hair, hanging lank and oily on her shoulders, cried out for a shampoo and some decent conditioning. The hideous floral hospital gown had
to go.

  Ungroomed, exhausted and unattractively dressed, Ceil also somehow managed to look luminous. She gazed down at her child with so much love and pride on her heart-shaped face, that Jilly found herself gulping furiously to keep from bursting into tears.

  Celia glanced up and a sharp cry of distress escaped her. “Jilly. What’s happened?”

  Jilly touched her forehead. “Oh, this? It’s nothing. A tree branch fell on me and I rolled down a ravine.”

  “But you’re okay?”

  Jilly shared a look with Jane, then announced, “Never better.”

  “And we’ll only stay a second,” Jane vowed.

  Ceil was smiling again. “It’s so good to see you both.” And then she whispered, “Triple threat.”

  Jane and Jilly repeated the words in unison. “Triple threat.”

  It was what they used to call themselves, way back when, as kids. In reality, of course, they’d been no threat to anyone. They were three nice girls who, for the most part, had spent their lives behaving themselves.

  Jane and Jilly moved in to get a closer look at David Aaron.

  “Oh, I cannot believe those tiny hands,” Jilly whispered. “That incredible perfect little mouth….” She offered her index finger and one of those waving hands wrapped reflexively around it.

  Ceil said, “Janey, did you talk to her?”

  Jilly caressed the baby’s gripping fingers with a brushing motion of her thumb. “She did. I told her everything. And as usual, she’ll tell you everything I said.”

  Jane chuckled. “But later. After you’ve rested.”

  Ceil said, “Jilly, you could just tell me yourself.”

  And Jane said, “She can’t. In a few minutes, she’s leaving.”

  Reluctantly, Jilly pulled her finger free of David Aaron’s grip.

  “Leaving?” Celia adjusted the blanket around her new baby’s darling wrinkled face. “Where is she going?” And then she looked up and grinned. “Never mind. I think I can guess.”

  Caitlin caught up with her as she was heading for the elevators. “Jilly. Hold up. Don’t even imagine you’re getting away from here without—”