THE STARLIGHT HILL COMPLETE COLLECTION: 1-8

by Bell, Heatherly

  They continued to talk about Frank’s family and kids for several minutes. It turned out Frank was a widower, and he still got teary mentioning his wife’s name. After about half an hour, Frank’s eyes were at half-mast, and Jeff decided he’d tired him out enough.

  “Rest. I’m glad you’re going to be okay.” Jeff patted his arm and rose to leave.

  On his way to the parking lot, he saw Lillian leaving. She caught up to Jeff, and they walked out to the lot together.

  “Thanks to your and Ivey’s recommendation, the board agreed to hire one midwife to start the trial. We’ll see how it goes from there. I want to thank you. You had an open mind, and I appreciate that.”

  “Thank Ivey. She’s persuasive when she wants to be.” And a good liar too.

  “Do you think she’s still interested in the position?”

  “You should call her.”

  “I will. I don’t want to lose her.” Lillian waved as they parted ways.

  He hadn’t wanted to lose her either, but it seemed inevitable now. He’d lost her a long time ago.

  He couldn’t go home, so he drove out of town and back again. Then wound up where he should have all along.

  Ali opened the front door. “Providence. That’s what this is. Pure and simple providence. Bob is working late and Becky won’t go to sleep. Here, you take Liam, and I’ll go in and hold her down till she falls asleep.”

  He must have given her a weird look, because she shook her head. “I’m not really going to hold her down.”

  “I didn’t think so, Ali.”

  He carried Liam to the couch, plopped him down, and sat next to him. Liam was two and didn’t like Jeff much. Or at least it always felt that way, because Liam didn’t say a peep around Jeff, and word out on the street was that Liam had learned to talk. Jeff and Becky were pals, but for Liam, it seemed like the jury was still out. Jeff couldn’t blame the kid since they didn’t see each other often enough.

  Liam, pacifier firmly stuck in his mouth, scrambled off the couch and handed him items from the coffee table. The remote control, a deck of cards, every single coaster on the table. Was he supposed to hold everything the kid gave him? Jeff set them back on the table, but Liam handed everything back to him. The kid was on some kind of mission to unclutter the coffee table.

  Finally he picked up a magazine—Ladies’ Home Journal—handed it to Jeff and climbed in his lap, where he proceeded to flip each page with the finesse of an orangutan.

  “Don’t worry, kid. You’ll get those fine motor skills.”

  Liam looked up at him, as if he questioned Jeff’s sanity.

  When Jeff started reading the Oil of Olay ad out loud to pass the time, Liam actually snuggled up to listen.

  “Erases fine lines and wrinkles.” He kept reading, and Liam kept getting limper in his arms. So this was the secret. Bore them to sleep.

  Kids weren’t so difficult. He didn’t know what Ali was always whining about. Liam’s soft blonde hair brushed against Jeff’s chin and the smell of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo brought back a childhood memory.

  He wondered if he and Ivey would have had a boy or a girl. Whether it would have hurt any less to know when she’d miscarried, instead of being blindsided now.

  “Bless you. He’s asleep. How’d you do it?” Ali whispered, lifting Liam out of his arms.

  “Oil of Olay.”

  Ali made a face. “I never understand your jokes.”

  The story of his life. When Ali came back, she had a glass of wine in each hand.

  Now it was his turn to be grateful as she handed him the glass of chilled white wine.

  “Chardonnay, Clos La Chance 2011,” Ali said, because she fancied herself a wine connoisseur. “It’s not bad. To what do I owe this unexpected visit? Did they finally decide to give you a day off?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, why don’t you look happier? Wait. Let me take a wild guess. Ivey.”

  “You have no idea.” And then, because Ali was his big sister and he didn’t currently owe Ivey a lick of loyalty, he told Ali everything.

  She didn’t speak for a moment. Maybe she was also thinking about the fact that in a different outcome, he’d have a child Becky’s age. Then Ali’s eyes watered, which made his stomach clench some more. “I’m so sorry. What a lousy way to find out.”

  “Why didn’t she tell me? Maybe you can do me the favor of explaining womankind to me. You are my sister, and I did let you have my ice cream cone that one time you dropped yours because you’re such a damn klutz.”

  Ali rolled her eyes. “I can’t explain womankind to you, because even I don’t always understand women. We’re all different, and contrary to what you men think, there’s no secret handshake. You and I both know that Ivey had a lifetime of keeping secrets, protecting those she loved. It doesn’t seem like such a stretch to think she’d try to protect you too. Yeah, it was lousy and it was wrong, but the truth is I kind of understand.”

  “I can’t believe you’re defending her.”

  “I’m not defending her. I hate what she did. But I said I understand why she did it.”

  “She didn’t have to do me any favors. Didn’t she think I could handle being a father? Is that how little she thinks of me?” He heard the sound of his own voice, sounding like a stranger’s. Angry. Bitter. Hurt.

  “Shhhh, you’ll wake the kids. You’re going to make a great father someday, weird jokes aside. But you weren’t ready to be a father back then. Think about it. I actually recall you saying the words ‘I’m dying here.’ You didn’t have time to come home for the weekend, what makes you think you had time to be a father?”

  “Ouch.” Ali had a way of cutting to the heart of the matter.

  “I’m not kidding. This is my life.” She waved a hand, spanning the room. “I’m deliriously happy to be having a glass of wine at nine o’clock and some grown-up conversation. Do you know what I found the other day? Do you?”

  “I have a feeling I don’t.”

  Ali got closer, ruffling her hair and pointing to her scalp. “There! See that? Can you believe it?”

  Ali had always been a bit dramatic. Mom was right about that, come to think of it. “I don’t see anything but hair. What am I looking for?”

  “My first gray hair! Can’t you see it?” Ali continued pointing to her scalp.

  “One gray hair? How am I supposed to find it?”

  “I’m thirty-two years old and I have my first gray hair. Found it right after Liam was born.” She sat back down on the couch, smoothing her short brown hair back into place. “That is what kids will do to you.”

  “I don’t care about gray hair.”

  “See, you would have as a medical student with a wife and child. You probably would have a full head of gray hair when all was said and done.”

  He was about to say that it worked for George Clooney, but he was beginning to see Ali’s point.

  Ali turned to him with that annoying superior-big-sister look she’d spent years refining. “Not to mention you and Ivey would have wound up hating each other.”

  He scoffed. “Ironic, since we’re not together now.”

  “Yeah, sure. Like I believe that. Do you know how many young marriages end in divorce? What’s the divorce rate for doctors?”

  “Okay, okay, I get it. I wasn’t ready back then, but I’ll never believe that I didn’t have the right to know. To be involved. It was my baby too.”

  Ali nodded. “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. The problem is I think I still love her.”

  “Shocking,” Ali said. “I called it. Like magnets.”

  “But I can’t trust her.” He pulled out his phone. It had been buzzing on and off for the past couple of hours, and he’d been ignoring it on purpose. The hospital would page him, and he wasn’t even on call. He had a good feeling who had been calling him, and it didn’t surprise him when he finally took a look.

  Several missed calls from Ivey. And
two text messages: You don’t understand. Please let me explain.

  Maybe it was time to listen.

  13

  When Ivey returned the following morning, she hadn’t expected to find Babs napping on the couch in the family room. Ivey stifled the groan that formed in her throat. She wouldn’t have to ask Jeff how he found out.

  Babs sat up, rubbed her eyes and stretched. “What is wrong with you young people? I visit, and that man leaves me here alone. For hours! What if I was a thief or worse, an ax murderer? Where’s his sense of safety?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Marissa called me, and I needed to see you in person. This is important.” Babs stood and smoothed down her rumpled jeans. “But first, I’m afraid I spoke out of turn earlier.”

  “I know. And your timing is horrible.”

  “Well, I’m sorry about that. I didn’t tell him much, but he guessed. Anyway, I know about the women’s center, and I’ve come here to give you my opinion in person.”

  So Marissa had called in reinforcements. But Ivey had already made up her mind, especially after last night. “I don’t need your opinion. I’ve already made my decision.”

  “Good. I was worried after Marissa called and told me.”

  “I’m going to do it.” Baby boy Foster had been born early this morning on the same bed where his parents likely conceived him, bathed by the soft light of his mother’s reading lamp, while his father wept (he couldn’t read the poem after all). Ivey didn’t think a hospital could replicate that in a hundred years.

  Not without her there to help them.

  “Didn’t I teach you better than this? Doctors don’t understand birth. Even women doctors. I don’t know what they do to them in medical school, but you’d think that labor and delivery were something they have to cure.”

  “Look, I understand. Believe me. Tonight Asia Foster gave birth at home, and it was beautiful. I wish every woman would do that. But the truth is they’re not. For whatever reason, they’re going to feel safer in a hospital setting. I know it’s not the easy thing to do, and I’m sorry if I’m letting you down. Jeff and I turned in our recommendation to the board. And if they’ll have me, I’m going to work at the women’s center. I want to make sure that every woman can have the childbirth experience they want.”

  “But the doctors aren’t going to let them have that experience!”

  “Well that’s exactly why they need me there.”

  “You’re one tiny girl, up against territorial doctors who are going to defend their livelihood to the death.”

  “Let them. I’m fiercer than I look, and you ought to know that.”

  Babs’ gray eyes softened. “I still remember the young girl who came to me pregnant with her first child, wanting to have that perfect birth. You’d read everything you could get your hands on and already knew what you wanted.”

  “I didn’t get very far.” Ivey’s breath hitched, for one minute drawn back to that time when she thought for a few months that she’d been blessed. Finally, she must have done something right. She’d failed to take care of Mama, because she hadn’t been able to stop her from driving off the road. Failed to plan ahead, like so many times before. But this time, she wouldn’t fail.

  Only she had. Even eating the healthiest diet, taking her vitamins, doing everything she’d been asked to do and then some, she’d lost the best mistake she ever made.

  Babs gathered Ivey in her arms. “You never get over losing a baby, honey. I tried to tell you that, even as you wanted to act like delivering someone else’s babies would somehow make up for the fact that you never got to have your own precious child.”

  Is that what she’d done? “I thought it was all in the past as long as I didn’t think about it. But when I came back home, when I saw him . . . ”

  “It all came back, didn’t it?”

  Not while she could pretend for a while that it had never happened. Jeff didn’t know, after all. Except that now he did, and she was somehow reliving the hurt all over again.

  The memories—bleeding and in agonizing pain, rushing to the hospital. Babs had met her there and tried to be a friend because the client-midwife relationship was over. Aunt Lucy had come to see Ivey a few days later, insisting that it was all for the best and that someday she could try again. Saying all the wrong things, even with the best of intentions. But the pregnancy hadn’t been an inconvenience to her. It had been her baby.

  Like so many good things in her life, the joy hadn’t lasted. Didn’t have staying power. “I wasn’t ready to tell him.”

  “It’s good that he knows. You need someone to grieve your loss with you as only he can do.”

  Like he’d been summoned, Jeff chose that moment to walk through the front door.

  Babs stared from him to Ivey, then back again. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

  Ivey didn’t even say goodbye, because her eyes were riveted on Jeff, who looked like he wanted to say a million things or maybe nothing at all.

  He held the door open for Babs, nodded to her as she left, and shut the door again.

  “Where were you?” It was the only thing she could think to ask him. Not “will you ever forgive me,” or “can’t you at least try and understand?”

  “Driving, mostly. I stopped by the hospital, and I stopped by Ali’s. And then I kept driving until I thought I could be calm enough to listen to you.” He scrubbed a hand across his face, and from the looks of it, he still hadn’t yet reached that point.

  “You have to understand—”

  “I don’t have to do anything, Ivey.” His jaw quivered almost imperceptibly, but she noticed it.

  “Okay, you don’t have to. But if you would try to imagine how I felt—”

  “What do you think I’ve been doing for the past few hours? Over and over in my mind I’ve thought about how scared you must have been. What it must have felt like to lose our baby. All the physical pain you went through. And all I can think is that I should have been there, but because of you I wasn’t. You didn’t trust me enough. Didn’t think I could handle it.”

  “No, it’s not that,” she protested. “I didn’t want you to feel obligated. I didn’t want to ruin your plans for the future.”

  “Screw planning. Maybe I needed something to show me that the best things in life just happen. You didn’t give me a choice. You lied to me. I’ve never lied to you.”

  “I know I was wrong. But can’t you forgive me?” She moved closer to him, but he was a hard, solid wall of anger.

  And he didn’t answer for a few lonely seconds. “I don’t know.”

  The answer made the tight fist of fear in her stomach open up and spread to the tips of her toes.

  Ivey fingered the soft bristles on his jawline and tucked a lock of his hair that had fallen over his eye. “I love you, and you love me. We can get past this.” Please, God, let us get past this. She’d never wanted anything more in her life. Another chance. Did anyone really get over their first love? She never had.

  His eyes were wet, and she thought maybe she really would die right here and now because she’d done this. She’d caused him this pain.

  He took her hand and kissed the back of it. “I don’t know. I need some time.”

  Time. Right. Time away from her. She was familiar with that refrain. “Maybe I should go stay with Brooke.”

  This was where he would protest, and let her stay here where maybe within the next day or so they’d be back in each other’s arms again. But he only gazed at her with red-rimmed eyes and said, “Maybe you should.”

  * * *

  Ivey and Brooke hadn’t tripped over each other yet, but they had bumped into each other several times over the past week. Hard not to in a nine-hundred-square-foot cottage.

  Even so, Brooke wouldn’t hear of any other arrangement.

  “This is temporary, because you two will be back together in no time,” Brooke said as they stood hip to hip in what passed as the kitchen.

  “Do
n’t be so sure. You might be stuck with me, and rentals don’t come up every day.”

  “You’re telling me. I’ve wanted to get out of this place for years. I’ve got enough money saved up and no place to rent. But I’ve got my eye on Mrs. McCreety’s place. She’s ninety. How much longer can she last?”

  “Brooke!” Was that what it had come to? Wishing people dead?

  Brooke only shrugged. “The thing to do is buy land. One of these days I’ll get my hands on some of it.”

  Everybody had to have a dream. Ivey had received part of her dream a few days ago when Lillian phoned with the job offer. She’d start next month, working in the women’s center. One of her proudest achievements, and she wasn’t sure why it didn’t feel like enough.

  Now, the tears—she’d shed enough of those. It had been a week of staying in, feeling sorry for herself, and waiting for a phone call. But she was all done with pathetic and ready at the very least to go to lunch and maybe for a little retail therapy.

  Brooke drove, since she had a nice BMW company car and Ivey had still to go car shopping. Brooke cruised down Main Street. For a Saturday in the middle of the day, it wasn’t all that busy. Then again the grape harvest had come and gone, and summer and tourist season were about to close up shop.

  “Where to?” Brooke asked. “Anywhere. It’s my treat.”

  “Anywhere but Mama’s Diner.” Ivey might run into Jeff there, and she wasn’t ready. She’d need to be ready by next month when she started her job at the hospital, but by then, well, she didn’t know what she would do, but she’d figure something out.

  “Let’s try Sweet Southern Buns. It’s brand new and I haven’t tried it yet.”

  Ivey didn’t notice the ribbon until they were at the front door to the eatery. But right there, poised prominently on the front door—a beautiful and large pink ribbon. Clearly new and fresh, not an old faded one from the past.

  “Oh no,” Ivey breathed, but Brooke pretty much pushed through the front door.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll find out what this is all about,” Brooke said, waving to a petite young redhead.