Tammy walked into the kitchen with her baby on her hip. She’d given birth a week after the wedding. That’s what Nick called cutting it close.
The baby stared at Nick, wide-eyed. It wore a pink polka-dot sleeper.
“Laura? Oh, that’s far too early,” Tammy said. “Is she still in the hospital?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll go visit her tomorrow.” She kissed Ty.
“You manage to get a nap while Rebecca napped?” he asked.
Tammy nodded. “That’s what I was doing when I heard Nick come in.”
“Sorry if I scared you when I barged in,” he said.
“You didn’t. Ty called to warn me you were coming to town and would probably stay with us.”
She sat down at the kitchen table. The baby had been fussing. Tammy threw a small blanket over her shoulder then reached up under the top she wore and fooled around with something.
To Nick’s horror, he realized she was getting ready to breast-feed the baby. Didn’t women do things like that in private? He spun around and glared out the window at Ty’s backyard.
“What’s really wrong?” Ty asked. “You seem madder than you should be that there are complications in the pregnancy.”
“Yes,” Tammy said while tiny snuffling noises came from her chest area. Nick peeked over his shoulder. The baby, and Tammy’s breast, were hidden under the blanket, thank God. “Preterm labor is bad, but you seem more angry than worried.”
Nick felt bile rise into his throat just thinking about it. “What if the baby dies?”
“Nick, the baby won’t die. Preterm labor doesn’t have to be a death sentence,” Tammy said, watching him carefully. “Wait a minute. You’re worried about Laura, aren’t you?”
“She’s already lost one baby. It would kill her to lose another.”
“It’s more than that. You’re afraid for Laura’s health, too, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“The doctors will take care of her. She’ll take care of herself. She’ll do everything to keep her baby safe.”
“Who will keep her safe?”
“You?” Tammy asked.
Him. What a responsibility.
Still she watched him steadily while the baby made snuffling noises under the blanket.
“What?” he asked. “Why are you staring at me?”
“You love her.”
“No!” he shouted, rounding on her, breast-feeding be damned. “I don’t. I really don’t. I’m just worried. You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“That’s it,” Ty said, grabbing his shirt and manhandling him into the living room. “I get that you’re angry and worried about the situation with Laura, but you can’t take it out on Tammy.”
“I wasn’t taking it out on her.”
“You raised your voice to her.”
“Sorry,” Nick mumbled. He brought his temper under control. “This has got me tied up in knots. I don’t know why.”
He paced from one end of the room to the other. “I handle everything life throws at me. I have control of my business, and trust me, there’s a lot of stress there. I mean, these are million- and billion-dollar deals. I handle it all. I can’t take this, though. I don’t know why.”
“Were you this stressed when Emily was born?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I wasn’t around that much. Marsha handled the pregnancy and the birth on her own.”
“Laura’s handling the pregnancy on her own. She’s willing to raise the baby on her own. She can, too. That woman can do anything she sets her mind to.”
“I know, but I feel more responsible this time.” He struggled to remember. “I don’t think I ever saw Marsha breast-feed Emily.”
“You don’t plan to be around for this, other than sending a monthly check, so I still don’t get what’s so different this time.”
Nick sat on the edge of an armchair and leaned his elbows on his knees. He dropped his face into his hands and rammed his fingers into his hair. “I guess I’ve come to care more for Laura than I did for Marsha, which is weird because I’ve spent a fraction of the time with her that I did with my wife.”
“I always thought Marsha was a means to an end with you.”
“Yeah, she was. I wanted to work for Mort.”
“Poor Marsha.”
“She knew what she was getting into. I never lied to her.”
“How about Emily?”
“Marsha wanted a child. I never had time for Emily when she was young. I’m making amends for that now. She seems happy with me.”
“Are you happy with her?”
“I couldn’t care for her more. I treasure our time together. I love her.”
“You could come to the same place with this baby.”
“I had Emily without thought. I know better now how much children deserve. I can’t give this new baby what it should have.”
“Our parents really did a number on us.”
Nick jumped up out of the chair. “What about our parents?”
“Look how much trouble Gabe and I had finally claiming some love for ourselves. Look how much trouble you’re having with this.”
This was what had been sending a chill down Nick’s spine the entire drive from the hospital to the ranch. “Something about our parents wasn’t right. I keep having these vague thoughts, memories. Darkness. What happened with them?”
He stared out the front window. “I mean, Dad wasn’t there. He climbed a lot and then he died when I was only five. What did he have to do with my life?”
“You need to hear some things so you understand this family better.”
Darkness rippled along Nick’s nerve endings. “Something happened before Dad went away the last time, didn’t it?”
“Do you remember what it was?” Ty asked.
“I remember yelling. I remember hiding in my room.”
“Five-year-olds don’t always understand what’s going on around them. What do you remember about Dad?”
“He was big, gregarious, fun. Everybody loved him. Right?”
“Right. He was more than that, though. He was driven and ambitious and inclined toward getting his own way. Made him hard to live with.”
“So what? Mom adored him.”
“Yes and no.”
“What the hell does that mean?” They’d had a good marriage. Nick knew it. Mom had idolized Dad. She’d told him so often enough.
“I mean exactly what I said. Dad could be incredibly hard for her to live with. I don’t know all of it. Gabe would know more. He was older. You should ask him about it sometime.”
Maybe he would talk to Gabe at some point, but Ty was here. Nick was here. He wanted answers now.
“Tell me what you know.”
“Dad’s climbing put a heavy load on our stretched resources. When he climbed Everest he paid $25,000 to the Nepalese government for a license. Do you know how much food that can buy a family of five? How many pairs of shoes that kids run through like they’re made of paper? That’s just the license. What about the cost of the gear? There was no point in going if he didn’t have the right gear to make sure he would survive.”
Good Lord, he’d never realized.
“While Dad was training and climbing, he wasn’t bringing in income. They fought about money. A lot. Loudly.”
Ty looked queasy, as though there were more to come that Nick wasn’t going to want to hear, that made Ty uncomfortable, too.
“The night before he left for Everest, she actually said, ‘If you leave tomorrow, don’t come back.’ He didn’t.”
A train might as well have flattened Nick. Oh, Mom. Oh, God. The guilt after Dad’s death, after saying something like that to him in anger, would have devastated her. No wonder she hadn’t coped well.
Ty had heard it all. No wonder he looked sick. Nick could imagine how loud the fight must have been in that small house. There would have been nowhere to hide from the angry voices, from the things
Mom and Dad said, hurtful words hurled at each other like missiles. Nick suspected that part of the darkness inside of him was a room where those words still lived. After all, he had been only five. He would have been in the house. He would have heard that fight.
“Mom would have never meant it,” Nick whispered.
“No, but she would have lived with terrible guilt after he died up there.”
“She was scared about money.”
“Probably feared for his life, too. Was afraid that he’d be injured or die. Unfortunately for all of us, he died.”
“Knowing Mom, for the rest of her life, she would regret that instead of telling him she loved him, she told him to not come back.”
“She did love him. She told me so. I once asked her about that fight. She couldn’t talk about it much, but she did say that she’d loved Dad and regretted everything she’d said that night.”
It explained so much. So, all of those things Nick had offered her over the years, including a new house? She hadn’t been keeping the old one as a shrine to Dad. She hadn’t taken the things he’d offered because of her guilt. She’d been paying a penance in keeping things as they were, in thinking that she deserved no more than what she lived with.
Oh, Mom, you deserved.
Nick wished he’d known this information years earlier. Then again, he might not have been ready for it. He felt as if he was only just growing up now. Finally.
“Gabe had to do everything, Nick.”
“I know. He had to cook and clean and watch out for us.”
“No,” Ty said, his voice quiet. “I mean, immediately after we learned about Dad’s death, Gabe had to take over. Mom fell apart.”
“Can you blame her?” Nick asked sharply.
“No, but Gabe was only ten. He grew up overnight. He talked to a funeral director about organizing a service to celebrate Dad’s life. We needed something to aid our grieving. To bring closure. There was no body to bury. It was too dangerous to bring the body down from Everest. Besides, how could we have afforded to send an expedition up there to retrieve his body? Gabe arranged the service.”
Nick had always known Dad’s body was still up on top of Everest but had never thought about what that would have meant to the family immediately after his death.
“Gabe called neighbors, Mom’s friends, church ladies, anyone he thought might help, and asked if they would bring food to the house after the service. He bought paper plates and serviettes and plastic forks. Jesus, Nick, he was just a kid.”
Nick’s vision misted, for the first time his grief directed toward Gabe. Jesus, what a burden for a boy to bear.
Nick couldn’t deny that what Gabe had done was pretty miraculous for a boy his age. Saint Gabe, all right.
For the first time in his life, he regretted that he’d been so young when his father died. He would have helped Gabe with everything.
“What do you think that has to do with now?” Nick asked. “With Laura and the baby?”
“You must have been in the house that last night. Their fight was nuclear. You would have heard everything. My guess is you blocked it out, but it would have gone underground, Nick. You would still be carrying scars from that battle.”
“Yeah, but what scars?”
Ty shrugged. “I don’t know. I imagine they’re the same for all of us, but unique, too. Don’t forget that our lives changed in different ways after that. You became Mom’s favorite. I think that was good for you, but screwed you up, too. It kept you apart from me and Gabe. It made you think you deserved more in life than you had. It made you work pretty damn hard to make a lot of money. What a great marriage you entered into with Marsha, one in which you really didn’t have to care, which engaged none of your emotions. You sure do care about Laura, though, don’t you?”
Nick could only nod. What a mess.
He rubbed his temple where one of his old headaches was forming—the first one in months.
He wasn’t flying back to Seattle and leaving Laura in the lurch for the next month. Neither could he sit here for a month doing nothing.
He called Rachel. “Get down here to Accord.”
“But Thursday is Thanksgiving. I’m visiting my family in Olympia.”
Nick cursed. He’d forgotten about the holiday. “Go celebrate with your family, but send the most urgent work to me at the B and B. Go to my house and pack up the contracts on my desk and ship them to me.”
After he hung up, he sought out Ty and Tammy in the kitchen.
“I’m going to stay in town. I can’t leave Laura now, but I need to get a bunch of work done. Rachel’s going to ship work to the B and B.”
“You can have one of the bedrooms to use as an office.”
“Thanks, Ty, but it’s probably smart for me to be in town. Kristi has an office in the hotel that I can fax from. I can receive them there, too, in case there’s something urgent to be taken care of.”
Ty looked worried.
“Take it easy, Ty. I just don’t want to leave Laura in the lurch.”
“Tell her I can come right over if she needs me,” Tammy said then ran off to change a diaper that reeked.
“God, breast milk makes baby’s poop stink? It’s all natural. Shouldn’t that mean it’s pure, or something? That the poop should be pure and natural.”
Ty laughed at Nick’s expression. “It’s still shit, Nick.”
“Babies are messy.”
“Life is messy.”
After settling in at the B and B and spending a restless night, Nick drove to the hospital to pick up Laura.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
NICK FOUND LAURA sitting on the bed trying to put her socks on.
“If you dare laugh,” she said, the strain in her voice so dark it swallowed sunlight, “I will personally eviscerate you, slowly and painfully.”
Nick hid a smile and got down on his knees to put her shoes on for her. His humor disappeared when he saw how swollen her ankles were. He rubbed her instep gently with his thumb.
“On the other hand,” she said, sounding infinitely better because of that simple touch, “if you keep that up, I’ll bake a cake for you, a chocolate layer cake with the best chocolate icing on earth. Not too sweet. Light as a feather. The whole thing just for you.”
Her eyes were closed and her head was hanging back. Lord, she was a sensual creature.
He smiled and put her shoes on. He would give her a massage when they got home. To her apartment, that was.
He helped her up her back stairs. She’d put on a lot of weight, the baby weight spreading across her hips more than it had on Tammy.
“No comments about how big my behind is, no thoughts about how big it is, or that chocolate cake never gets made.”
Upstairs, she went straight to an armchair and sat down. She looked tired. They’d stopped at the pharmacy to fill her two prescriptions.
“Here,” he said, handing her a glass of water and today’s pills.
Under her sink in the kitchen, he found a bucket with two compartments, obviously for washing the floor, with one side for soapy water and the other clear for rinsing. It would be perfect for soaking Laura’s feet.
He filled it with cool water and found bath oil in the washroom that smelled like incense. No wonder Laura always smelled so sexy.
In the living room, he set it down in front of her feet.
He searched through her CDs and put on Joni Mitchell’s Mingus.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
He took her shoes and socks off then lifted her poor swollen feet into the cool water.
She sighed.
“I’m going out for food. Stay put, okay?”
She nodded.
“I mean it. Don’t get up for anything. I won’t be gone long.”
“Oh, don’t worry. This feels heavenly. I’m not moving.” A smile hovered on her lips.
He shopped at the organic market down the street, returned and loaded everything into the fridge.
Then he ran
downstairs and looked in on the shop. It was busy. He went around behind the counter.
Two of the farm women Laura had hired in the summer were cleaning up the kitchen.
They looked up when he entered.
“Hello, Nick,” they both said, and Nick was embarrassed that he didn’t remember their names. Man, he had to get his head out of his rear end and start paying attention to those around him.
“Is there any chance I could hire you two to come up to Laura’s apartment after you finish here today to cook her some meals and freeze them.”
“Of course. How is she doing?” Wanda—or was it Norma?— asked.
“It was premature labor. The doctors have stabilized her and she’s on bed rest.”
“Poor thing.”
“I picked up groceries.”
He named everything he’d picked up. “Should I have got anything else?”
“It sounds like you bought out the store. We should be able to manage.”
“I’ll leave Laura’s back door unlocked and tell her to expect you. Thank you, ladies.” He pulled a couple of hundreds out of his wallet and handed them to the women. “Will that cover your labor?”
“It will do.” They both grinned.
Okay, that was taken care of.
He slipped across the street to the B and B. He found Kristi in her office.
“Kristi, I’m going to be eating with Laura for the next few days.” He’d already explained the situation to her when he’d checked in. “You have this pudding, though, that’s really good. Some kind of custard with rice in it.”
“It’s rice pudding, Nick. Simple rice pudding.”
There was nothing simple about it. It had wild rice and golden raisins in thick creamy custard.
“Do you have any?”
“How much do you want?”
“Four servings?”
“You got it. Want it packaged up now or do you want me to deliver it to Laura later?”
“Can you bring it over when you have a minute?”
“That would be after tea and before I start on dinner service.”
“You’re busy. I’ll come back over and get it from you if you can have it boxed up by then.”
He had this weird nurturing thing going on all of a sudden. He wanted Laura happy and taken care of.
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