The Last Honest Woman

by Nora Roberts

  "Hot chocolate all around."

  A grin split his face. "Can I have marshmallows?"

  "Absolutely."

  "Hot chocolate?" Dylan asked as he came down the steps.

  Abby hooked an arm around Ben's shoulder. "We're celebrating the one hundred percent, graded, unit 31. Twenty death-defying words spelled correctly." She held up the paper where the little gold star glittered damply.

  "Pretty impressive." Dylan scrubbed a hand over Chris's head, then held it out to Ben. "Congratulations."

  "It's no big deal," he murmured, but looked secretly pleased with the handshake. "Can I have three marshmallows?"

  "The boy knows how to take advantage of a situation," Abby stated. "Let's go. Hang up your coats," she said automatically when they stepped into the kitchen.

  For the next twenty minutes, the air was filled with stories of the adventures young boys go through in a day. Then bloated with chocolate, Ben and Chris tugged on their boots and coats and went out to tend the stock.

  "I bet I haven't had any of this for twenty years," Dylan mused as he studied his empty cup.

  "Bring back memories?"

  "My mother used to make it." When Abby leaned on the counter opposite him and smiled, he found himself continuing. "She's a great cook. I still think she bakes the best custard pies in New Jersey."

  "Do you get to see them often? Your parents?"

  "Couple of times a year." He shrugged, feeling the familiar tug of guilt and resignation. "There never seems to be enough time."

  "I know." Abby glanced over her shoulder at the window. There would come a time when her boys would go, when she'd have to let them go. That was the price of being a parent. "I don't see mine very often, either. They're never in one place long enough."

  "Still playing the clubs?"

  "They'll always be playing the clubs." Affection came into her voice, deep and natural. "Put two people into a room and they're ready to entertain. It's in the blood, if you believe my father's theory. He's desperately proud of Chantel and Maddy for carrying on the tradition in grand style. He stays annoyed with Trace because he didn't."

  "What does your brother do?"

  "Travels." She moved her shoulders. "None of us really have any idea just what it is that Trace does." She took another cookie off the plate and offered Dylan one. "Pop claims Trace doesn't know, either."

  "What about you? Any problems because you don't sing for your supper?"

  "Oh, no." She grinned. "I gave them Ben and Chris-better than a command performance. Your parents must be proud of you."

  "My father would have preferred it if I'd stayed on the farm and milked cows." He drew out a cigarette. "But my mother tells me he's read every word I've written."

  "Isn't if funny how-"

  "Mom!" Chris came barreling through the door, dripping wet and tracking mud. Abby caught him halfway into the room, checking for injuries.

  "What is it? What's wrong?"

  "It's Eve. She's sick. She's lying down and all sweaty."

  Abby already had her coat off the hook. Not bothering to change into her boots, she dashed out the door in her sneakers. When she got to the barn, Ben was sitting next to the mare, struggling not to cry as he stroked her.

  "Is she going to die?"

  Abby crouched beside him and put a hand on the mound of the mare's stomach. "No, no, of course not." She circled her arm around Ben and squeezed hard. "She's just going to have a baby. Remember, we talked about it."

  "She looks awful sick."

  "When babies come, it hurts some. But she's going to be fine." With her heart in her throat, Abby prayed she wasn't making promises she couldn't keep. "She's having contractions," she murmured, soothing the mare. "Her body's helping the baby come out."

  All Ben could see was the mare's shudders. Sweat rolled, dampening her coat and overwhelming the scent of fresh hay. "Why does it have to hurt?"

  "Because life hurts a little, Ben. But it's worth it." One of the barn cats mewed in sympathy as Eve moaned. "Now, Ben, I want you to go in and call the vet. Tell him who you are first, okay?"

  He sniffed. " 'Kay."

  "Then tell him that Eve's in labor."

  "In labor?"

  "Having a baby's work," she told him, and kissed his cheek. "Go ahead. Then come back. This is something you'll want to see."

  He dashed off, recovered enough to be pleased with the responsibility. As the mare suffered her pangs, Abby shifted Eve's head onto her lap.

  "Anything we can do?"

  She looked up to see Dylan standing at the entrance to the stall, Chris's hand firmly caught in his. Her son was wide-eyed and fascinated. She smiled.

  "I've helped the vet with deliveries before, and I found that you end up doing little more than cheering her on. Eve has the starring role here." Eve moaned with the next contraction, and Abby leaned over and crooned to her. "Oh, I know it hurts, baby." The mare's sweat transferred to her own skin. Abby wished she could take some of the pain as easily.

  Chris swallowed with a little click. He'd never seen anything like it. One of the cats had had kittens once, he remembered. But he'd come out to the barn to find them snuggled, clean and naked, against their mother. "Did it hurt when I was born?"

  "You were a slowpoke." The mare's eyes half shut, and she breathed heavily. With her hand on Eve's stomach, Abby felt the power of the contraction. "For a while I thought you'd decided not to come out after all. The doctor had music on. They were playing 'Let It Be' when you were born."

  "Would Eve like the music?"

  "I bet she would."

  Anxious to help, Chris dashed over and turned on the radio. A familiar ballad filled the air.

  "The vet said he'd come as soon as he could but not to worry 'cause Eve's real strong." Ben dashed back in and took his place beside his brother.

  "Of course she is.''

  But as the minutes dragged on and the contractions built, Abby worried. She knew she could handle a simple foaling, with or without the vet. When a woman lived on her own, raised children on her own, she had no choice but to develop self-confidence. But if there were complications- She shook her head and cleared her mind. Whatever happened, she was going to give Eve the best she could. The horse meant more, much more, than a means to an end to her. Eve was flesh and blood, something she'd cared for day after day for over a year. When pain went through the mate, it rippled through her. Then Dylan crouched beside her.

  "She's doing fine," he assured her. "Look, I never delivered any horses, but I helped with my share of cows."

  She leaned her head on his shoulder briefly in a gesture that caught Ben's attention. "Thanks."

  But when it began, Abby rushed to help the foal into the world before Dylan could. Her own sweat mixed with the mare's, and her voice was raised in encouragement. The blood that came with new life streaked her hands. The hope that came with new life shone in her eyes. She looked, Dylan realized as he watched her, magnificent. He glanced at the boys and saw them watching the foal's birth with their mouths hanging open.

  "Incredible, isn't it?"

  Ben looked at him and made a face. "It's pretty gross." Then he saw spindly legs emerge, a small head and a compact body. "It's a horse. It's a real horse." Both he and Chris scrambled for a closer look.

  "But he's big." Intrigued, Chris measured the foal. "How'd he fit in there?"

  "She," Abby corrected, weeping shamelessly. "Isn't she beautiful?"

  "She's kind of sloppy," Ben commented. Then Eve immediately went about her business and cleaned up her baby.

  "Good job." Dylan stroked a hand down Abby's hair, then kissed her. "Real good job."

  Chris reached out a tentative hand to touch the foal. "Can we play with her?"

  "Not yet- but you can touch. Isn't she soft?"

  Then Chris jerked back as the foal shook and shivered and tried out her legs for the first time. "She stood up!" Amazed, he stared at his mother. "She stood right up. Cathy Jackson's little sister didn't stan
d up for months and months." It pleased him enormously to find his horse superior. "What can we name her?"

  "We can't name her, love. If Mr. Jorgensen's going to buy her, then he'll want to name her."

  "We can't keep her?"

  "Chris-" She looked at him and at Ben. "You know we can't. We talked about this."

  "You didn't sell Ben and me."

  "Horses grow up faster," Dylan put in. "One day you'll have a house of your own. The foal's going to be ready for her own place in a few months."

  "We can visit her." Ben set his chin and waited for someone to shoot him down.

  "I'm sure we can." Abby smiled at him. Her baby was so grown-up already. "Mr. Jorgensen's a very nice man."

  "Can we watch when Gladys has her baby?" Ben reached out for the first time to touch the foal's ears.

  "If you're not in school." She heard the sound of an engine and looked down at her hands. For the first time, she noticed they were streaked with blood. "That must be the vet. I'd better wash."

  The excitement didn't die down until long after bedtime. Because she understood, Abby let her boys go out and say good-night to the foal after they should both have been in bed themselves. Tired, but pleasantly so, she settled down in front of the living room fire.

  "Quite a day," Dylan murmured as he sat beside her.

  "And then some. I'm so glad the boys were there. It's something they'll never forget. It's something I'll never forget." She felt a stirring inside her, one she hadn't experienced for a long, long time. She knew what it was like to have Me grow inside her, what it was like to bring it into a not-so-perfect world. Would she ever carry another child? She sighed, reminding herself she had two beautiful healthy sons.

  "Tired?"

  "A little."

  "Your mind's wandering."

  She curled her legs under her and watched the flames dance. "I think you see too much in there too easily."

  "Funny, I would have said I haven't seen nearly enough."

  She blocked off wishes and longings and faced reality. "Tomorrow you're going to have more questions, and you're going to expect me to answer them."

  "That's what I'm here for, Abby." But he wasn't sure that was the complete truth, not now.

  "I know." She accepted it as truth. She had to. "I've made myself a few promises, Dylan. I'm going to try to keep them."

  He touched her hair, wishing there were other ways to get what he needed to get from her. "There aren't any questions right now."

  She closed her eyes a moment. Maybe there was a little room for longings after all. "For tonight, just for tonight, I'd like to pretend there isn't any book, that there aren't any questions."

  He knew he could have pressed. He understood that at that moment she was open enough to tell him everything. If be pushed the right buttons, the answers would simply pour out. He had an obligation to do it. He slipped an arm around her shoulder and watched the fire with her.

  "We had a big stone fireplace at home. My mother used to say you could roast an ox in it."

  She relaxed against him as if it were the most natural thing in the world. "Were you happy?"

  "Yeah. I never much cared for milking cows before the sun came up, but I was happy. We had a creek and a big oak tree. I'd sit under it, listen to the water and read books. I could go anywhere."

  She smiled, picturing him as a child. "And you decided to be a writer."

  "I decided to single-handedly spread the truth. I guess that's why reporting came first. I went into that with the First Amendment playing in my head." He laughed at himself, something he didn't yet realized he'd learned from her. "I found out you've got to crawl through a lot of dirt to make it work."

  "The truth." She closed her eyes and wished the word didn't have such a sharp edge. "It's very important to you."

  "Without it the rest is just dressing, just excuses."

  She'd made plenty of those, Abby thought. "Why biographies, then?"

  "Because it's fascinating to explore one person's life, one person at a time, and find out how many other lives were affected, what marks were left, what mistakes were made."

  "Sometimes mistakes are private."

  "That's why I've never done a bio that wasn't authorized."

  "And if one day someone wrote yours?"

  He seemed to find that amusing. She heard his chuckle as his cheek brushed over her hair. He couldn't know how deadly serious she was. "Maybe I'd do it myself-warts and all."

  "Have you ever done anything you were really ashamed of?"

  He didn't have to think for long. A man didn't live beyond thirty without shame. "I've had my share of wrong turns."

  "And you'd write about them, no matter what anyone thought of you after it was done?"

  "You can't bargain with the truth, Abby." He remembered what she had told him about Chris's conception and continued, "Sometimes, when it's important enough, you can pretend you didn't hear it."

  She watched the fire and thought about that. She thought about it a long time.

  Because he wanted to get an early start, Dylan was downstairs before the boys had finished breakfast. The main topic, as expected, was the foal. The boys were arguing, though without heat, about whether Gladys would mess things up and deliver while they were in school. Veterans now, they were prepared to step in as midwives. To prove their valor, each one had a Polaroid snapshot of the new addition to take to class.

  "They're having hamburgers for lunch today," Ben remembered, looking expectantly at his mother.

  Abby put the jar of peanut butter back in the cupboard. "Get my purse."

  "Me, too?" Chris asked dribbling milk down his chin.

  "Okay." She opened her bag when Ben brought it in, and dumped out the contents. Along with her wallet, she pulled a pair of rubber gloves in a plastic bag out of the pile and dropped them on the counter. "Here you go. Don't lose it."

  "We won't." Chris scrambled for his coat white he stuffed the money in the pocket of his jeans. "Mom, I know where babies come from."

  "Um-hmm." She was pouring her second cup of coffee.

  "But how do they get there?"

  "Oh." She spilled the coffee on the counter, and caught Dylan's grin as she turned to look at Chris. His round young face was lifted to hers. But he's only six, she thought, wondering just what she was supposed to tell him. She knelt down in front of him and asked herself how to tell a six-year-old about making babies in the two minutes he had left before he had to catch the bus for school.

  "Love puts them there," she told him, and kissed both his cheeks. "A very special kind of love."

  "Oh." Satisfied, he gave her one of his quick, energetic hugs and dashed for the door. "Come on, Ben." Then, seeing that his brother was still pulling on his coat, Chris grinned. "I'll beat you." He flew off with the challenge and left Ben struggling to zip up and run at the same time.

  "Bye, Ben," Abby murmured. Then, with a shake of her head, she went back to mop up the coffee.

  Dylan sat at the counter and watched her tidy up the spill with a secret smile of amusement on her face. "I like your style, lady."

  "Oh?" Laughing, she tugged at the hem of an over-laundered sweatshirt. "It is rather today isn't it?"

  "I was talking about your answer to a very important and very ticklish question from a six-year-old boy. Some people would've given him a biology lesson, and others would have brushed him off. You gave him exactly the answer he needed. Still-" He toyed with the last of his coffee. "I wish I'd had that Polaroid when the question popped out of his mouth. Your face was worth the price of a ticket."

  "I'm sure it was." She walked over to pull on her boots.

  "I like the way you look in the morning.''

  She stopped, still bent over, and looked at him. "Frazzled?"

  "Fresh." The smile on her face faded. "Soft." His voice lowered. "I'd like to be able to lie in bed with you during the morning, watch you wake up, fall back to sleep and know when you wake up again I could make love with you." />
  Her pulse thudded, and she wondered he didn't hear it. "I'd like that, too. But the children-"

  "I didn't say I didn't understand. But the idea warms me up a little."

  It warmed her more than a little, she thought as she finally managed to get into her boots. "As it is, there isn't a lot of time around here for lazing around in bed in the morning. I always figure I'll know the kids are growing up when they sleep past seven." Not quite steady, she walked over to clear the counter.

  "I'll do that," he said, and caught her hand.

  "It's all right."

  "Abby-" He flicked a finger over her wrist. "Haven't you ever heard of women's liberation?"

  She lifted a brow. In her way, she'd been liberated since she'd taken her first breath. Her parents had seen to that. "Sure. That's why the boys take turns doing the dishes, put away their own clothes-on a good day-and know how to use the vacuum. Their wives will thank me. In the meantime, someone has to man the oars."

  "There are usually two oars."

  She tilted her head, smiled, then nodded. "Fine. You clean up the kitchen, I'll feed the stock. It'll save some time."

  "Okay. We'll get started when you come back in."

  He started to object, then made himself stop. She had her own life. He watched her fill her purse again. "Do you always carry rubber gloves in there?"

  "What? Oh." With a laugh, she dropped them in. "I do when I'm going to the Smiths'. She's a fanatic about ammonia."

  "Come again?"

  "Ammonia." Abby zipped up her purse and wondered if there was enough spaghetti in the fridge for leftovers. "The straight stuff. The woman has a fetish about having all the floors cleaned with ammonia."

  His brow creased as he tried to follow her. "You clean them?"

  "Twice a month." Her mind on dozens of other matters, Abby went for her coat.

  "What is it, like volunteer work?"

  She have a quick, appreciative roll of laughter as she turned back. "Not on your life. I make six dollars an hour. Look, don't run the dishwasher. I think-"

  "You work as a maid?"

  "Housekeeper." She grinned and pulled a bandanna off a peg to tie her hair back with. "I suppose that's really a glorified term, but I always see a maid in a little black skirt, and-" She let the words die when he rose out of his seat and walked to her. Something in his eyes had her throat clogging up. She'd never dealt well with anger.

  "Why in the bell are you getting down on your hands and knees and scrubbing someone else's floor?"

  Her chin came up. "It's honest work."

  "Why?"

  "Because the only other thing I'm good at is singing in three-part harmony. There isn't a lot of call for that, and the pay's lousy."