Maybe Baby

by Elaine Fox

  She let out a long breath. “Okay, then. Thanks. Thanks for not misunderstanding.”

  “Well, I’m an understanding kind of guy,” he said, starting to walk in the direction of the Hornet’s Nest.

  Delaney started up beside him, and they crossed the street to the town green. The tree branches overhead began to sway, the leaves making a sound like rain, though the sky was clear. Feeling the wind freshening, Jack thought he should invite her down to the boat. The night was perfect for a sail. But then she’d really think he’d planned things, so he kept quiet.

  In contrast, the Hornet’s Nest was a loud, smoky cauldron of humanity. With the end of tourist season at hand, the place was full of sunburned people drunk on margaritas and Geary’s beer. They were, however, lucky enough to score a table in the back, near the doors to the kitchen, just as the people got up to leave.

  The table was perfect, Jack thought, because it was behind the speakers, making it one of the quieter spots in the bar.

  They sat and each ordered a beer.

  “So,” Jack said, as Delaney took a sip from her mug, her eyes grazing the bar and the pool table. “How’s Jim?”

  That got her attention.

  “Fine,” she said, eyeing him warily.

  “He coming up anytime soon?”

  She pushed her hair back from her forehead with one hand. He liked the way it looked afterward, slightly mussed, less controlled. Almost windblown, like that night on the beach.

  “Actually,” she said, “I’m meeting him this weekend. In Boston.”

  The image of her on the beach popped like a soap bubble and disappeared. “You are?”

  She nodded.

  He frowned. “He’ll go to Boston, but he won’t come here? Isn’t that a little odd?”

  It was more than odd, he told himself. It was ridiculous. The man didn’t—couldn’t—exist.

  She regarded him thoughtfully a moment. Then said, out of the blue, “That was you on the phone to Kim yesterday, wasn’t it? When we were at Sadie’s having lunch.”

  So she felt she had to change the subject. Interesting. He watched her eyes for signs of discomfort or embarrassment. “Yeah, probably. Why?”

  “She said it was her mother.”

  Jack was so busy looking at her face, taking in the subtle arch of her dark brows and the gentle curve of her mouth, that he didn’t immediately absorb what she’d said.

  “What?” he asked.

  “She said it was her mother,” she repeated, looking him dead in the eye. “Now why do you think she would lie about something like that?”

  A slow heat crept up Jack’s neck and into his face. His mind was blank. Why did she lie? To cover up the fact that he was checking in on her, seeing how the conversation went, wanting to know what information she’d gleaned from Delaney.

  His pause grew so long Delaney’s fine arched brows rose, and the look in her eyes bordered on triumphant. He’d been pushing her about Jim without knowing she had something to push back with. Damn Kim, anyway. She didn’t need to lie about that.

  “Maybe the call you heard was her mother,” he said, the thought coming to him like an unexpected guest, though perhaps a little late. “I talked to her while she was there, but she could have gotten more than one call.”

  “She only got one call.”

  “Maybe she got one before you got there—”

  “We got there together.”

  “Maybe when she went—”

  “She didn’t go to the rest room.”

  Damn, she was quick. Jack swallowed, then picked up his beer and swallowed some of that.

  “Besides,” Delaney added, “the voice on the other end was male. I could hear it through the receiver.”

  Jack cleared his throat and looked at the cocktail napkin on the table in front of him. Then, realizing how guilty that looked, he raised his head and took another swallow of beer.

  “I can’t imagine why she’d lie,” he said finally, turning the bottle of beer around and around in its water ring on the table. “Really.”

  Delaney gave a small smile. “Me either.”

  She sipped her beer.

  Suddenly a commotion erupted at the front door of the bar. People seemed to be stepping back and gathering around simultaneously, laughing. But when the song playing on the sound system stopped a voice rose over the noise of the crowd.

  “Gimme a ‘J’!” a female voice yelled. Loud.

  Jack and Delaney both stared at the crowd. Over the heads of the tallest Jack could see the large end of a crimson megaphone.

  “Gimme an ‘A’!” the voice said again.

  The music started and someone pulled the plug on it.

  “Gimme a ‘C’!”

  It was then that the crowd parted and there, standing in full cheerleader regalia, stood Lisa Jacobson. Megaphone in one hand and pompons in the other, she strode toward him.

  “Gimme a ‘K’!” The hand holding the pompons rose into the air with the words.

  No one gave her a “K,” or any of the other letters, but still she asked, “What have you got?!”

  A nightmare. Jack closed his eyes.

  “JACK!”

  Chapter 11

  The next day Delaney finished up the last of her notes on Mrs. Beckwith’s bursitis and flipped the folder shut. Emily sat in her car seat making what could at any moment become unhappy sounds.

  “Two more minutes, Em,” she pleaded, piling up the last of her charts and setting them in the box for Nurse Knecht to file on Monday. If she could just get out of there and on the road, Emily would fall asleep and Delaney would have some time to think about what else she needed to buy.

  She was heading to Boston this weekend, ostensibly to meet “Jim” for a minivacation. In reality she was going to shop for her husband. That is, shop for evidence of her husband.

  Several things had strengthened her resolve to stay with her husband, as it were, and increase the evidence of him around the house. First, when Jack had pointed out the lack of masculine items in the house she’d realized that if she was going to continue the charade, she had to at least make it convincing.

  Second, Aunt Linda had fallen in love with Emily—and vice versa, it seemed—and was going to take care of her starting next week.

  Third, it was obvious something was going on between Kim and Jack. What, was none of her business, really, but it cemented her opinion about his opportunistic womanizing.

  And fourth, the moment Delaney saw Lisa Jacobson in her tight little cheerleader’s outfit she’d known she could never in a million years trust a man who would be attracted to a child bimbo like that.

  So she decided it would be appropriate for at least a few things to “arrive” that her husband might have sent up, had he actually existed. Last night, after arriving home from the bar, she’d sat down and made a list of things she wanted to get. It was easier than thinking about Jack, she’d reasoned at the time. Because thinking about Jack was what she’d done all the way home.

  She pulled the shopping list from her purse now and glanced at it.

  Frames were first on the list. At the very least, she’d decided, she should have a picture or two of him around. She had cut out black-and-white photos of a guy from one of her medical journals last night—a nice-looking guy who wasn’t too pretty, so his modeling career wasn’t likely to propel him into mainstream magazines anytime soon—and she planned to pick up frames to display them on the mantel at home and perhaps on the desk in her office. She’d chosen him carefully so that his build was similar to Jack’s. His hair color appeared to be that same sandy blond and even though the photo was black-and-white, his eyes could easily have been brown.

  The fact that he was a model for an article on the drug Viagra was only momentarily alarming.

  She also wanted to get a decent color television, as much for herself as for “him.” She was tired of watching Destiny’s Children wrestle with her own lie on that tiny black-and-white set. Plus, now that s
he was practically studying it for insight into her own situation, she needed a TV that would actually show the characters’ expressions.

  She wanted a boom box, too. Some clothing, would be appropriate, she thought. Books, CDs, shoes, shaving equipment for the bathroom, that sort of thing. It would cost her, but it would be worth it. For one thing, she was saving so much money in rent, she could afford to purchase a few luxuries. For another, those luxuries were even more justified if they served to remind Jack, Kim, Aunt Linda, the diners club, and whoever else was skeptical that there was a husband in the picture.

  The day after Jack had fixed the window Delaney had filled out subscription cards to several magazines, including Architectural Digest and The Law Review, in the name of Mr. & Mrs. J. Poole. Since they shared a mailbox, having those labels stare him in the face once a month ought to keep Jack at bay, she figured.

  In addition she had ordered a few things from the Internet that would be arriving with Jim Poole’s name on them.

  Delaney was just stuffing the list back into her purse when Maggie Coleman appeared in the office doorway. She was dressed in tight, worn jeans and a black Metallica tee shirt that was short enough to show her navel.

  “Hey,” Maggie said, a big smile on her face. “Haven’t seen you in a few days.”

  “Oh, hi, Maggie.” Delaney zipped the list safely away in her purse. “No, I’ve been having to leave early this week to pick up Emily. I only came back tonight to finish up a few charts before the weekend.”

  Maggie glanced at the suitcase on the floor next to Emily’s car seat. “Going on a trip?”

  “Yes, actually, I’m leaving right now.” Delaney stood and started gathering her things, hoping Maggie would take the hint and not delay her.

  The last couple of times she’d run into Maggie after work she’d had trouble extricating herself from the conversation, most of which revolved around her son Blake and his antics.

  “I’m meeting my husband in Boston,” Delaney continued. The words felt so strange on her lips that the lie suddenly seemed like a game they were both playing. “And since we only have two days, I don’t want to miss a minute.”

  “Oh good.” Maggie leaned one hip on the doorframe and looped her thumbs in her jeans’ pockets. One hand held a feather duster, the kind stereotypical French maids used, and bounced it idly against her side. “About time you got to see him. You know it ain’t good to let men out of your sight for long. That’s what happened to me and Blake’s dad. And I swear, most of Blake’s troubles are directly ’cause he grew up without a man in the house.”

  “Is that right?” Delaney picked up the paperwork she was taking with her and stuffed it into the side pocket of her briefcase.

  “Oh yeah. You know, they done studies. Blake’s a classic example of a one-parent household. That’s what the counselor told me last year after Blake took that teacher’s purse and stole her car. Said it was a cry for attention.” Maggie shook her head, then laughed. “Well, he got some attention for that, lemme tell you. And not the kind he was likely looking for, I don’t imagine.”

  “I’ll bet.” Delaney gazed at her a moment, at the smile still lingering on Maggie’s face, and felt something akin to admiration at how she could continue to see the humor in things Blake did after all the trouble he had put her through.

  Delaney had met Blake once as he and Maggie were coming out of the tattoo parlor next door. Maggie’d apparently caught him just as he was about to get rap tattooed on his forehead. She’d only gotten him out of there by pointing out that he’d probably go through life with people knocking on his head to see if anyone was home.

  Clearly, however, Maggie hadn’t been able to intercept him before several other visits to the tattoo parlor. His forearms were covered with them, and his nose, ears, eyebrow, and tongue were all pierced. For all Delaney knew that was not the extent of it, but she certainly wasn’t going to ask.

  He’d seemed personable enough, though, with Maggie’s same broad smile and dark curly hair. But while Blake’s problem may have had something to do with not having a father, Delaney also suspected he’d learned early on how to manipulate his young mother.

  Or that’s what Delaney told herself anyway. It comforted her to think that while she herself was a single parent, becoming one at thirty instead of seventeen, like Maggie, might make a big difference in the outcome of the child. She also found herself thanking God after conversations with Maggie that Emily was a girl.

  Tonight, however, Delaney was able to escape Maggie fairly easily by asking her to help carry some things out to the car, making her departure that much more obvious, though she did have to start the engine in the middle of Maggie’s diatribe against the cop who arrested Blake for vandalism even though he and Maggie had gone out on a date the week before. This was only after hearing about the math teacher who’d given Blake a D just because she, Blake’s mom, wouldn’t go out with him after he’d picked her up at a party.

  Delaney sighed deeply as she pulled out of the parking lot. She was never going to date, she decided. Not in this small town. Not if it meant dating cops and geometry teachers who pick up cleaning ladies at parties. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but Maggie’s dating woes—about which Delaney heard quite a bit in each of their conversations—made Delaney feel like avoiding the entire single population of Maine. If she added her own experience with single Maine men to Maggie’s, it seemed they all were after the same thing. Getting drunk and having sex. Neither of which was high on Delaney’s list at the moment.

  Although…she thought to herself…it had been a long, long time since she’d been touched by a man. Heck, a simple hug would feel good some days, when she was stiff and stressed from standing up and dealing with other people’s maladies all day long. As nice as Emily’s warm clutches and soft touches were, they were still imbued with responsibility. Though she knew she couldn’t risk it, she had to admit that spending a few quiet minutes in a good hard embrace would be awfully nice…

  Which was the only reason Jack Shepard ever looked good to her, she told herself firmly. And was the only reason—with the possible exception of the beer she’d had—that she’d found herself attracted to him again last night.

  After they’d left the bar—Jack had somehow escaped Lisa Jacobson with just a few words, none of which Delaney could or cared to hear—she’d almost felt sorry for him. He was so clearly mortified by the experience. But then, he’d gotten himself into that mess, she had to remind herself.

  Still, she’d felt herself softening toward him, even going so far as to joke with him when he’d started to explain why Lisa was the way she was. He was so grateful for her casual attitude she had to catch herself after they’d picked up Emily and driven home from Aunt Linda’s before inviting him in for another drink. If there was one thing she shouldn’t do around Jack Shepard, it was drink. Emily was proof enough of that.

  Delaney cruised south on the dark pine-lined Maine Turnpike and turned her attention to the stores she’d have to hit in and around Boston. Thinking about Jack was not productive. She had to concentrate on her immediate future, which consisted of setting up a life that would keep both herself and Emily together and well provided for.

  Most of what was on her list she could have found in Harp Cove, but even having only been here a month she knew that people would talk about her purchases. After her conversation with Kim she was more paranoid than ever about what people might be noticing and speculating about her.

  Which was why she’d brought with her several boxes in which her mother had shipped items to her from D.C. She would produce the new things she bought from the boxes as if they’d been brought up by her husband. Not that the townspeople were likely to see them, but Jack might, if she left them in a conspicuous location when she knew he was coming to work on the house. After all, he was probably the one fueling the gossip about her husband’s absence, so the more convinced he became, the less talk there was likely to be.

  Jack walked across the
driveway separating his house from the carriage house, flipping a set of keys around one finger.

  Delaney was gone this weekend, so he was going to use the time to do some of the louder projects the place required, such as replacing the missing trim in the baby’s room and installing a new medicine cabinet in the upstairs bathroom. He was also going to paint the bathroom while he had time to air it out before they returned.

  He moved up the front walk, past the pansies and petunias Delaney had planted in the front beds, and inserted the key in the lock. Though he’d been in this house thousands of times, he felt strangely alien entering it now, with its rightful occupant gone.

  He stepped into the foyer. The door closing behind him sounded surreally loud, like the creaking of a shutter in a horror movie.

  The hallway was cool. A tiny vase of pansies sat on the half-moon table against the stairwell, along with several pieces of opened mail.

  Jack moved forward to look at the envelopes, not touching them but noting the return addresses. They were bills, it looked like—Visa, American Express, some insurance company.

  Nothing from Jim.

  He moved into the kitchen and noted the crumbs on the small table by the wall. Emily’s high chair was pushed against the back doorway, the top disengaged and resting in the seat, wiped clean. In the dish-drainer was a mug and a plate, in the sink a few coffee grounds.

  The place was homier than he’d ever felt it. He passed a hand over the kitchen counter, briefly touched one of Emily’s empty bottles.

  He turned and went upstairs, noting the pictures she’d hung on the wall, etchings and watercolors, one pen-and-ink drawing of Emily looking much closer to newborn than she did now. The door to the master bedroom was closed, and he paused outside of it, hand on the knob.

  He frowned, fingering the cool metal knob and gazing at the brushstrokes in the freshly enameled door. He imagined turning the knob and going into the room, smelling her scent, seeing where she slept. Did she make up her bed? Were there clothes scattered on the floor?