by Nancy Martin
“Nora,” Michael said, “you’re not making any sense.”
Crewe arrived, breathless, his hands cupped to hold a dripping mess. “I brought the cherries.”
Ricci shook his head. “You people are all crazy.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Gus said, “My point is, Nora, when you’re a reporter, you’re supposed to tell the story to your editor before you tell the police.”
“I’m sorry.” I tried to appear contrite. “It all happened on the spur of the moment. I had to tell the police what I knew before Zephyr escaped. I’ll try to do better in the future. That is, if I still have a job?”
We were standing under the oak trees at Blackbird Farm, a safe distance from Ralphie, who eyed Gus from the shade of one of Michael’s muscle cars while he chomped meaningfully on a snack. His backside was decorated with a large white bandage where his tail had been, and his expression made me think he might blame Gus for his recent amputation. So I stayed between Gus and the pig in case Ralphie decided to charge him.
Behind us, the ponies grazed in the pasture, and Mr. Twinkles watched us from the fence, his tail swishing.
Beside his convertible and keeping a wary eye on Ralphie, Gus had his arms folded across his chest, looking stern even though the spring breeze charmingly ruffled his hair.
Frowning, he said, “At least you got a photo of Zephyr’s arrest when they dragged her out of the restaurant. It made a great front page, even with the blurry bits.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“We still need to teach you some basic photography,” he said darkly.
“So . . . I still have a job?”
He hesitated. Then finally he said, “Yes.”
“With the raise you promised? Thirty percent?”
“Thirty—! Get real. I reckon you misunderstood.”
“Plus, you promised to hire my friend Sammy to be your new assistant instead of those interns. He’ll do a good job for you, I’m sure of it. And you don’t need to tell him I asked you to hire him.”
“Are these demands of yours going to go on forever?”
“I wonder if the police will misunderstand when I tell them about the bug you planted on Tommy Rattigan?”
Gus stared. “Are you blackmailing me?”
I tried to muster some outrage about his illegal methods, but I had to admit it was Gus who’d learned where we could find Ralphie before he was butchered. For better or worse, my time with Michael had taught me that gray areas existed and should be tolerated on occasion. So I said, “Are you going to promise you’ll never do such a thing again?”
Gus raised a skeptical eyebrow. “What do you care about the way I do my job?”
“I care about the integrity of the newspaper.”
“Is that all? Would you care if I got myself deported?”
“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Hardwicke,” I said.
We eyed each other from a safe distance, both aware that Michael might very well be watching from one of the windows in the house. I saw Gus’s expression soften, and something in his gaze hinted he was resisting the temptation to say more. But he refrained.
Finally, he put out his hand. “A thirty percent raise.”
“With that,” I said, while his hand remained poised to accept mine, “I hope to be treated as the rest of the reporters are. Without having to worry about being chased around the desk. I may have things to learn, but I won’t put up with any more unwelcome behavior from you.”
After a moment’s hesitation that was suddenly electric with a dozen comebacks, he said with dignity, “Agreed. And to mangle a quote, I hope this is the beginning of an interesting friendship.”
I accepted his handshake, and we stood for a second too long, perhaps, under the trees, steadily meeting each other’s gaze.
“Thank you,” I said graciously.
I did not invite him for dinner. Gus drove off, waving at the wiseguys who were helping the fencing company install a large fence that would soon wrap the whole way around Blackbird Farm. Against the house, a security company crew had leaned an assortment of ladders while they tinkered with all the new electronic gadgetry Michael had ordered for all the windows. He had gone overboard, perhaps, but I knew how he felt. Where the money had come from to pay for all the improvements—that part worried me. There would be more to that story, I was sure.
I went into the kitchen and found my sisters squabbling about feet.
“The twins refuse to get pedicures,” Libby said, “so I need help getting them into the salon. And you’re elected, Emma. You owe me for all the babysitting.”
“You enjoyed every minute of babysitting Noah,” Emma snapped. “I’m not risking my life so those boys can get one lousy athlete’s foot commercial. Nora, do you have any batteries? I need four C batteries to get Filly Vanilli to work.”
“Check the second drawer,” I said. “But good grief, that’s an ugly toy.”
Emma held up the misshapen horse with its googly eyes and shaggy mane. “I think it’s kinda cute.” She pulled a string, and the animal began kicking its gangly legs and making squawking noises.
With delight, Max pointed at the singing horse. “Mama!”
“Mama?” Libby cried. “Did you hear him? He said his first word!”
“Yeah,” Emma said. “He’s also got you confused with a horse. How much bug spray is he inhaling these days?”
I decided to avoid the coming argument and went through the butler’s pantry and the dining room to my grandfather’s study, now Michael’s office.
But the door was closed. I hesitated in the gloomy hallway, listening. From inside the room, I could hear Rawlins speaking slowly, his words muffled. Michael asked him a question in an equally low voice, and there was a long pause before Rawlins replied. I didn’t interrupt. I wondered if my nephew had reached any important decisions yet—decisions he was ready to share with his mother, that is.
Quietly, I turned to go.
But the door opened from inside, and Rawlins said, “Aunt Nora?”
He’d been crying. I gave him a hug, holding him tight while I looked past him at Michael, who leaned on the edge of the desk, looking solemn, too.
“You both are very serious,” I said, trying to make my voice light. “What’s going on?”
Rawlins said, “I guess I have to tell my mom.”
“Yes,” I said. I rubbed his arms to bolster his resolve.
To me, Michael said, “We thought maybe you could soften the blow.”
I shook my head. “Learning that Rawlins is going to be a father is bad enough, but Libby is going to flip out when she realizes she’s going to be a grandmother. Nothing I say is going to help.”
Rawlins glanced at Michael and seemed to gather his strength. “I didn’t know most of what was going on, Aunt Nora. You know that, right? I mean, I was—Zephyr and I, we hooked up in January, but I didn’t know anything about the pig stuff. I didn’t know she killed her husband, either. That night when she told me about—you know, about being pregnant, we were in my car. We sat and talked until the car ran out of gas. She was all worried about telling her husband.”
“Because she was pregnant with your child, not his?”
Rawlins flushed. “Yeah. She was afraid he’d get mad because he’d already raised one kid that wasn’t his. I said I’d stand by her while she told him, but she wanted to do it herself. She took my keys so I couldn’t follow her. I gave her my coat because she was cold. That’s how come you and Aunt Emma found my stuff at Starr’s Landing. Anyway, when she told him about the baby, her husband went apeshit. He said he’d gone through a bad operation just for her, but she went behind his back with me and—anyway, he said he would divorce her. He wouldn’t raise another kid that wasn’t his. He was gonna leave her broke, with a kid coming. So . . . she went nuts and killed him.
”
“Thinking she’d be better off financially,” Michael guessed, “if she wasn’t divorced, but a widow instead.”
“If she was thinking at all,” Rawlins said. “She’s really pretty, but kinda impulsive and—well, a little strange, I guess.”
I took Rawlins’s hand and gave it a squeeze, very glad that he was alive. With Zephyr’s past history, it might have just as easily been my nephew whom she tried to kill. I said, “I’m sorry you had this experience, Rawlins.”
He nodded. “Yeah, well, it’s not over yet. Here’s the thing, Aunt Nora. Zephyr’s probably going to go to jail for a long time. Killing her husband—that was crazy bad, and Mick doesn’t think she’s going to get out any time soon, not with her record. She knows that. So she says the baby doesn’t matter now and—well, it’s mine after it’s born.”
“Oh, Rawlins,” I said.
“Hey, I know I was stupid,” he went on, unable to drag his gaze up from the floor. “My mom’s been talking to me about taking precautions since I was, like, ten years old, so I should have been smarter, even in the, you know, heat of the moment. Mick says that was probably Zephyr’s plan. So now I have a—a kid coming.”
“Or not,” Michael said.
Rawlins nodded. “Talking to Mick got me thinking about college again. About my future. That maybe the best thing for me and for the—the baby—is that I decide not to be a dad right now. I mean, Aunt Emma gave up her kid, right? And that’s the best thing for him?”
“I hope so,” I said gently.
“So maybe you would take Zephyr’s baby. You and Mick.”
I met Michael’s gaze. He tried to wipe all expression from his face, letting me make the decision.
Which was impossible, of course. Neither one of us could make a choice of this magnitude alone.
I gave my nephew another hug. “Rawlins, how about if you let Michael and me talk about it?”
“Okay.” He sighed as if his heart were too heavy to budge off the floor. “I guess this is the right time to tell my mom about Zephyr and me.”
“It won’t be too bad,” I said. “She’s not going to be happy to hear she’ll soon be a grandmother. But she’ll get used to it. She loves babies, you know.” So much that I already worried she might make a rash decision where Perry Delbert was concerned. “You’ll be okay.”
Rawlins didn’t look as though he believed me. He turned and said, “Thanks, Mick. I mean it.”
Michael shrugged, making light of his contribution. “Anything you need, kid. I can always listen.”
Rawlins walked over and shook his hand, then gave me a kiss on the cheek before going out the door. He closed it behind him.
I went to Michael, and he gathered me up tight.
Holding him close, feeling his heart beat against mine, I whispered, “This is so not the way I expected things to turn out.”
“Me neither,” he said. “Lemme tell you right now, I’m not buying a minivan. I don’t care how many kids we have—a minivan is out of the question.”
“Any other fatherly demands?”
His embrace turned gentler. “Nora, when you told me we were going to have a baby, I was happier than I’ve ever thought I could be.” He smiled at the memory of our private interlude when we got home from the evening’s excitement in the city. His voice turning husky, he said, “I know a lot of guys whose lives are behind them. But with you, now, I feel like I’ve got the whole world ahead of me. Ahead of us.”
“We do, Michael.”
He pulled back enough to cup my face and look into my eyes. “This thing with Little Frankie. I’ll be honest. It’s not over yet. I’ve got business to take care of. But I’ll work it, I promise.”
I tried to quell the anxiety that fluttered inside me. I knew the money Michael had received from his brother had come at a price. I just hoped it wasn’t too dear. I took a deep breath and said, “You’ll be careful.”
“Sure. I’m not worried about that problem. I gotta admit, though, this development with Rawlins has me a little . . .”
I smiled. “Overwhelmed?”
“Overwhelmed in a good way. This is big, Nora. You’re going to have to marry me now for sure. We can’t provide a half-assed life for these kids. They make things forever between you and me.”
Yes, it was forever. I felt as if we were rowing out into the swift and turbulent river of life together, only now our little boat had children in it—with all the joy and heartbreak, the memories and the future that came with a family of our own. Michael and I each had an oar in our hands, but our course was plotted and steady, together. I needed to find a way to make marriage a part of our journey.
A noise came from the old Blackbird family cradle. Noah gave his usual sigh before he woke up and decided he was starving. Michael and I turned to look down at him—the little boy who didn’t quite have a home yet, but who had come to live with us for the time being. He seemed to become more and more a part of our household with every passing day in our care. With his little fists, he rubbed his nose, then opened his eyes and looked up at us with happy trust.
In recent days I had spent a lot of time thinking about boys—about sons and fathers and the consequences of wrecked families. I knew it had all weighed on Michael’s mind, too. Neither one of us wanted Noah to grow up wondering if he was somebody’s consolation prize. Maybe because of that, we already loved him. Perhaps too fiercely for a child who wasn’t really ours. Not yet, anyway.
I said, “Hart and Penny and Emma are still fighting about Noah. I don’t know how that’s going to turn out.”
“Until they decide,” Michael said in his most no-nonsense tone, “he’s better off here, at home with us, than anywhere else.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. You and me, we’ll handle it somehow. But . . . three kids? All coming at the same time?”
I smiled up at him, my love, my heart, the man with whom I had decided to set sail into the eternal adventure of life. I said, “Be careful what you wish for.”