A Fool and His Honey

Chapter Five

Lunch that day was a real tense meal. I heated up soup and made grilled-cheese sandwiches, and we sat together at the kitchen table in uneasy silence. For once in my life, I wanted the phone to ring. Maybe the highway patrol would stop Regina’s car. Martin had asked Cindy to try to discover the name of the cruise line with which Barby had sailed, and getting Barby here would be a great relief. Or my mother might tell me more about John’s prognosis. I had so much to worry about my thoughts were running around inside my head like hamsters.

Just as I began the dishes, I heard Hayden stirring, and this time he woke up ready to raise the roof.

I put a bottle in the microwave before I left the kitchen. I was getting numb from the unaccustomed responsibility for this baby. I had never been so tired in my life, and every time I heard him tune up to cry, I leaped into action to stave off any more wailing. My stomach clenched every time he made a noise.

An hour later, I had changed Hayden, fed Hayden, burped Hayden-in short, fulfilled my part of the bargain. But he wouldn’t go back to sleep. In my opinion, he should be out of the picture until the next feeding-changing-burping cycle; but it was one he didn’t seem to share. Not knowing what else to do, I was holding the baby, sitting on the couch in the library, staring down at the round face with more than a little frustration. Furthermore, I had an awful feeling that the half-done dishes were still sitting on the counter in the kitchen.

“Listen, you need to give me a break,” I said. “Don’t you know I only have so many interior resources?” I definitely felt the cupboard was pretty bare in my interior resources closet.

Hayden regarded me wonderingly. He didn’t seem to be concerned that he was at the mercy of a totally inadequate caregiver. His arms waved around. He made little noises, “eh” and a kind of creaky grunt being the most popular. With my free finger I touched the round cheek. It was so soft. Through his thin down of fair hair, I could see the pulsing place on the top of his head where his skull had not yet joined, or so Lizanne had explained it to me. It made this small life seem incredibly vulnerable.

I had a sudden, strange impulse: I would call my friend and priest, Aubrey Scott, and have him baptize Hayden.

If my hands had been free, I’d have slapped myself after I ran that idea through my head a second time. Baptism wouldn’t put a protective candy coating on Hayden. He wasn’t an M &M. And to assume the responsibility of having this child baptized would indicate I had given up on Regina bobbing to the surface to reclaim him, a terrible admission.

But I knew I would’ve felt a lot better if I could have just eased into the church and sort of casually had Aubrey sprinkle some water over this kid. I figured that Hayden Graham, son of Craig and Regina-if that was indeed who this child was- needed all the help he could get.

Confident that no one could hear me, I whispered, “You is booful baby.” Hayden’s hazy blue eyes focused on me. He smiled. My heart pounded suddenly, as if I’d just fallen in love. I beamed back at him as exaggeratedly as a children’s TV show host.

Sally Allison said, “Your lips are gonna fall off if you keep that up.”

I jumped. “Why’d you go and scare me like that, Sally? Good golly Miss Molly! You about made me jump out of my skin!”

“Sorry. You and Tiny Tim here just looked so cute.” Sally bent over to get a close look at my lapful.

“You heard about our predicament, I guess.”

“Mild-mannered reporter Sally Allison sees all, tells most.”

“Got any news?” Having had her look, Sally threw herself in Martin’s luxurious chair while my blood pressure finally settled back down to normal.

“Hmmm. Well, police found Regina’s car.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Sally was carefully patting her right hand against her bronze curls, a gentle sort of pat that wouldn’t disarrange the perfect arc they formed around her head. She was checking for holes. Next, she’d pull her compact out of her purse and powder her nose; then she’d rummage for a lipstick and redefine her mouth. This was Sally’s personal checklist. As she opened her compact, she said, “It was just across the state line in South Carolina.”

“Any sign of Regina?”

Sally shook her head. “No, honey, I’m sorry. But on the big plus side, no bloodstains.” Sally carefully crossed her legs, smoothing the skirt of her expensive green suit.

Hayden smiled at me again, and it dawned on me that he didn’t smell very good. In fact, that was putting it nicely.

“I can’t imagine what happened,” I said absently, wriggling forward on the couch so I could stand with the baby. I managed this, and took him to the living room, which I’d definitely settled on as the best place to keep the diaper bag and the rubberized pad that you put under Hayden before you took off his diaper. (Experience had taught me the use of the pad.) With scarcely a fumble and no missed snaps, I wiped Hayden’s bottom and changed him. I dropped the soiled wipes in the dirty diaper before I rolled it up and retaped it shut, a refinement of which I was extremely proud.

“Good job,” Sally said approvingly, taking the used diaper from me and marching through the dining room to dispose of it in the kitchen. I heard the gush of running water as she washed her hands.

“I take it Martin knows about the car?” I called.

Sally gave me a funny look. I caught the tail end of it as she rejoined me in the living room. “Yes, the sheriff came to tell him. They’re out there talking in the yard.”

In the yard. Why would Martin talk to the sheriff outside? It was cold, and windy, and… oh shit. Where was our unwanted houseguest? That was why Martin was keeping the sheriff outside.

“What’s wrong?” Sally was paying attention, as usual.

“Nothing!” I said brightly. I was darting little looks out to the hall, the dining room, the kitchen, to see if I could spy Rory. When I looked back at Sally, she was looking skeptical, to say the least.

“And you say,” she began, her. voice an extension of that skeptical look, “that you have no idea what happened out here? Excuse me, Roe, but that’s hardly like you.”

“Listen here, Sally Allison, I have a lapful of trouble without you adding to it,” I said, to my own surprise. Then I burst into tears. If I’d been able to choose, I could hardly have picked a more effective diversion. While Hayden lay on his back on the coffee table, looking around him with increasingly heavy eyes, Sally patted my shoulder vigorously.

I found myself Telling Sally All About It, which means I was telling her my singular emotional reaction to the whole day yesterday, culminating with the appearance of my mother in the kitchen this morning with her own terrible news.

Sally’s pats gradually grew less and less emphatic and more and more punitive.

“What?” I asked, when it dawned on me that she looked sour rather than sympathetic.

“Not about you, is it?” she asked brusquely.

“What?”

“All this. Your stepfather’s sick, so your mother is preoccupied with him, as she should be. Your husband’s niece is missing and her husband is dead, so Martin’s thinking more about his family than he is about you, for once.”

I stared at Sally like a landed fish. Was I really that selfish? Or had Sally been so jealous of me all these years, and I hadn’t noticed? I felt like I’d been negotiating a minefield and the soldier behind me had started chucking rocks over my shoulder.

“You know, Sally, this maybe isn’t the best time to tell me about my character flaws,” I said in as even a voice as I could manage. “I had in mind something like you telling me, ‘There, there, you poor thing,’ rather than implying I’m a selfish bitch who thinks I’m the center of the universe.”

Of course, no matter what I said, I was wondering how much of what Sally had said was true. Did everyone see me that way? Oh God, had all the friends I’d had all these years looked at me and thought, That Roe, she’s okay, but talk about egocentric!

Sally looked stricken, thank God. But my relief faded when she said, “Roe, my timing stinks, I apologize for that. But you’ve never known how lucky you’ve had it. Your mother does everything but wipe your rear for you, and your husband not only thinks he should protect and pamper you, but he has money!”

“And that’s my fault?”

“No!” she said. “No! But it’s your-responsibility!” She looked at her watch and gasped. “City council meeting! I have to go now, Roe, I’ll see you soon.” And she grabbed her purse and flew out the door before I had a chance to respond.

I scooped up the sleeping Precious Burden, and watched through the window as Sally crossed the yard, pausing to talk to Martin and the sheriff. I was glad to see Martin was wearing his waterproof jacket, since the day was overcast and every now and then the sky spit some rain. The sheriff strolled away from Martin, and leaned on Sally’s car, talking to her through the partly open window for a moment before Sally gave a quick wave and swung her car around.

I picked and puzzled at the scene with Sally, which had upset me deeply. I felt like I hadn’t known the lion was within when I’d shut the village gates for the night. Gee whiz-Roe Tea-garden, Monster of Selfishness?

I’d always thought of myself more as Roe Teagarden, the Incredibly Lucky. Well… sometimes. Maybe not a few years ago, when my steady boyfriend had suddenly married the woman he’d gotten pregnant while he was dating me… but then again, I’d been lucky I hadn’t married him, right? And maybe I hadn’t been so lucky when my father and stepmother had moved my half brother out of state, making it almost impossible for me to see him… but then again, I’d saved his life, and I’d gotten to fly out to California to visit Phillip twice since then.

This “good luck” evaluation was just as helpful as opening the closet full of bridesmaids’ dresses I’d kept in my storage closet before I’d met Martin. Time to shuffle off this coil of introspection and deal with a here-and-now situation.

Hayden was asleep. His eyelids were so pale the veins stood out clearly, making his skin look almost translucent. I lowered my head to inhale his scent.

“I cheated you,” Martin said. He was standing in the archway to the dining room. He hadn’t shaved, and his hair was rumpled. The stubble on his cheeks was white, like his hair, not black, like his eyebrows.

I wasn’t in the mood for any more deep emotional scenes.

“How do you figure that?” I asked, my voice hushed and level because of the baby.

“We could have explored other options,” he said, his voice equally subdued. “Maybe your”-he nodded toward my mid-section to indicate my malformed womb-“could have been corrected surgically, or something. We could have adopted privately; we have enough money.”

I looked at my husband for a long, wake-up moment before I said, “And these are new thoughts to you?”

I carried Hayden up the stairs, and laid him in his crib.

Then I marched downstairs. Martin was standing right where I’d left him. I said, “I shouldn’t hop on you with both feet because something was more important to me than it was to you.”

It was like my words didn’t register, as if Martin had become deaf to anything that didn’t resonate with some mysterious preoccupation. “We should start out tomorrow morning,” he said.

“We’ll have to drive. Given the circumstances. Maybe you should go to the store and get whatever the baby will need for the trip.”

Like I knew? I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it again. Sally’s observation had stung me where it hurt, had made me doubt my every impulse. I went to the desk to make a list of things I might need, but instead I sat with my hand on the telephone. Despite a nagging fear that somehow this conversation, too, would be dispiriting, I called the one person I could count on, my best friend, Amina.

Wife of a Houston lawyer, Amina was a mother (and I a godmother) of a lovely little girl, Megan. Amina, an only child, and her husband, oldest of two siblings, were happily indulging Megan (now a Terrible Two) and threatening her with a brother or sister.

“Amina,” I said, relief throbbing through my voice, when my friend answered the phone.

“Roe,” she said, in a curiously hushed voice. “I can’t talk long, Megan’s got the measles.”

Of course.

“Is she very sick?” I asked, trying to sound Deeply Concerned.

“Just the usual case, I guess.” Amina was trying to be brave, not doing a very good job of it. “But she just needs me every minute, or at least she thinks she does. I’ve been taking her Popsicles and playing games with her all day. Do you think she’s a little spoiled? That’s what Hugh’s mom says.”

“Only as much as any only child,” I told Amina somewhat grimly. I had grown up as an only child.

“We’ll take care of that soon,” Amina said, with the confidence that comes of getting pregnant on your honeymoon. “Thank God I’m not pregnant now, since I have to take care of her and measles are so scary if you’re expecting. Oh hell, I hear her calling. Again.”

I cocked an eyebrow. Amina was wearing a little thin in the nursing department. I wasn’t surprised. Tall, energetic, and attractive, Amina had always been a person who had to keep moving, had always had a project in the wings and another to keep her currently occupied.

“I’ll let you go in just a minute,” I promised, “but I need some information first.”

“What can I help you with?” Amina’s voice had fallen even lower.

“What supplies do you need to take care of an infant for maybe two or three days?”

After a moment’s thoughtful silence, Amina began, “Four sleepers, about twenty diapers…” I wrote furiously on the notepad I kept by the phone. Bless Amina, she didn’t ask any questions. If I wasn’t going to get to cry on her shoulder, I might as well not go through the whole explanation.

After I hung up and checked on Hayden, I found my coat slung over a chair in the dining room. I put it on and grabbed my purse. Martin and Rory had a football game on in the den. I didn’t think either of them could have told me the score if I’d asked, but I wouldn’t have put money on it. To make sure I had their attention, I stood in front of the screen.

“Martin,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound like a total shrew, “the dishes are still on the counter from lunch. Please do them by the time I come back. Rory, you listen for the baby. He’s asleep upstairs.” They both stared at me groggily, so I didn’t move until I had confirming nods from both of them.

It was a real pleasure to leave the house.

I turned a country music station up real loud as I drove to that new southern cultural center, Wal-Mart. Somehow, country music seemed to fit the low-down strangeness of the past two days. “My Husband’s Niece Done Shot Her Man”-how would that play? Or “Whose Baby Am I Feeding?” Nah, couldn’t think of a chorus for that one. What about “There’s a Dead Man on My Stairs and a Baby ‘Neath the Bed”?

That kept me smiling until I got past the greeter (who happened to be a cousin of my husband’s secretary and always had to pass the time of day with me due to that connection), got my cart (known locally as a “buggy”), and set off down the main aisle. I wheeled my buggy toward a corner I seldom visited, the corner full of baby paraphernalia. I had my little list with me, the list I’d scribbled while I was on the phone with Amina, and I studied it with care. I bought: a package of Pampers, a can of powdered formula, some baby bottles, three more sleepers in what I estimated was Hayden’s weight range, one rubberized bib, another baby blanket, an extra set of fake keys, and four spare Binkys. I thought pacifiers were the most wonderful inventions on earth, and I planned to boil them and put them in little plastic bags and stow one in my purse, my coat, Martin’s coat, and keep the spare in the diaper bag.

I paused, my hand resting on a box of wet wipes. I looked down at the fuzzy sleepers in the buggy. Why did Hayden need clothes? I put the wet wipes in the buggy very slowly, wondering. I recalled the look of the apartment, the open suitcase, the spill of clothes.

Clothes for Regina. Not clothes for the baby.

Aimlessly, I began pushing the buggy around the store, trying to figure out what that meant. Regina had known she was going on a trip. But she hadn’t planned on taking Hayden? Or-she hadn’t had a baby when she started on the trip? That didn’t make any sense.

Shaking my head, I realized I’d plowed into men’s wear. I slipped a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt into the cart. They were smaller than Martin’s usual, but I hoped no one would think of noticing. Probably Rory also needed underwear, but I’d be damned if I’d pick it out. I tucked the “no clothes for Hayden” thought into a side pocket of my mind, to pull out and reexamine later.

While I was in the men’s section, I was lucky enough to run into our closest neighbor, Clement Farmer. He was staring dubiously at a rack of silk boxer shorts. Clement was a small man, almost bald, with a few wisps of white hair over his ears. He had a red complexion, and very white even teeth, which made him look overall like a Christmas elf.

“I told Padgett I saw a car pulling out of your drive the other night,” Clement said, without any preliminaries.

“Is that so?”

“Yes, it was a dark red car with Ohio plates.”

Regina’s car.

“Who was in it?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“Two people. I couldn’t see the driver very well, but the passenger was a dark-haired young woman.”

Sounded like Regina.

I was in more of a hurry than ever to get home and tell Martin. I thanked Clement for telling me (though I wondered why he hadn’t called us on the phone) and asked him to feed Madeleine for us while we were gone. She hated to be checked into the vet’s almost as much as the vet’s staff hated to see her coming.

“Sure!” Clement agreed, obviously pleased. He was the only person I’d ever met who seemed to genuinely like Madeleine. “Think she’ll need a brushing?”

“Oh, I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt.” I’d made one person happy today, anyway.

I loaded my purchases into Martin’s Mercedes, stopped by the filling station to top up the tank. Home again, this time to find the dishes done and in the drainer; Rory watching television in our den (still, or again); and Hayden continuing his nap. Martin was packing in his usual efficient pattern, and I noticed he’d gotten out his extreme-cold-weather gear that he seldom needed in Lawrence ton.

It seemed grossly unfair that Hayden slept when he was alone with Martin.

I told Martin what Clement Farmer had seen the night before.

“So she’s a hostage, if it was Regina Clement saw,” he said.

“Could be, Martin.” I wondered how he’d gotten that out of the story I’d told him, but shook my head and decided not to pursue it. I thought of sharing my wonderment about the lack of provision for Hayden with Martin, but he looked so distracted I decided I’d be wasting my breath. I turned and went downstairs.

I sat at the kitchen table studying the directions on the can of formula powder. I read them over and over, determined not to do Hayden harm with my ignorance. I assembled everything I’d need, down to the same pan I remembered Regina using. I had a hard time believing I’d talked to Regina while she prepared formula right here in this kitchen, less than twenty-four hours before.

While I waited for the water to boil, I called John’s hospital again, talked to my mother once more, found out John was out of the room having a test.

Our telephone persisted in its curious silence. I did get a call or two from older friends of my mother’s, asking about John; but other than our priest Aubrey no one seemed to want to know how Martin and I were handling our own little corner of Craig’s tragedy. I wondered forlornly at that, but then I decided that no one knew quite what to say.

A brusque rap at the back door made me look up sharply while I was sealing bottles of formula to put in the refrigerator. I’d made enough to last us the trip to Ohio, I estimated, having no idea what I’d do if I’d figured wrong. Could you buy formula ready to serve? I hadn’t remembered to check while I was at the store. I was so lost in worries about feeding Hayden that it took me a second to realize I was happy to see my friend and former employee Angel Youngblood, and to translate that happiness into a smile.

Only the fact that Angel was preceded by a huge bulge kept me from hugging her, which would have surprised both of us. Angel is almost a foot taller than me, and golden and rangy as a leopard. Though now she looked like a really pregnant leopard, the effect was still striking. I couldn’t remember exactly how old Angel was, but I was sure she was at least six years younger than I, and her husband Shelby was a few months older than Martin. Shelby and Martin had been buddies in Vietnam, and had met sporadically after the war and their covert activities in South America had concluded. Now Shelby worked for Martin as a crew leader at the Pan-Am Agra plant.

“Where’s the baby?” Angel was always direct. I called up the stairs softly, to alert Martin, and led Angel up to have a look. Martin, who’d been reading a magazine (or at least staring at its open pages), rose when Angel came in, seemed to pull himself together a little. Angel just nodded at him. She was absorbed in the tiny face. She put her long fingers around the curve of Hayden’s skull, and she laid her other hand on the mound of her pregnancy. The mound constricted-that’s the best way I can describe it-and after a long moment, relaxed.

Angel smiled at me. “This one doesn’t even have room to move around anymore,” she said, her voice quiet and smooth so as not to wake Hayden.

“Isn’t it almost time for you?”

Angel nodded. “Time, and a day over. But I’m feeling fine, so today’s not the day, I guess. I’m sorry about your stepfather,” she added, jumping mentally from her own hospital stay to John’s. “How’s he doing? How’s your mother holding up?”

My mother and Angel had developed an arm’s-length mutual respect.

“She’s doing pretty well.” You know my mother, my voice said.

Angel nodded, her eyes back on the baby’s face. “There’s something about them,” she said, the smooth low voice almost hypnotic. “You’d kill for them.” Her hands caressed her own stomach again, and I saw it tighten again.

“If they’re your own,” I said, a question in my tone.

“Maybe not just then. Look at him.” And Angel crouched over the pale-green-and-blue portable crib, her blond hair framing her narrow face.

“What are you gonna do with him, Roe? If I understand right, his dad is dead and his mother is missing,” Angel said as we went back downstairs to the kitchen. She sat at the table while I poured her a glass of orange juice.

“We’re planning on driving to Corinth, where Regina and her husband were living,” I explained. “Then, I guess we’ll see if Craig’s family will keep him. Or maybe Regina will have turned up by then, and we’ll know what happened. Or… we’ll be able to get in touch with Barby, and when she flies back from her cruise, she’ll be coming into Pittsburgh, which is the closest airport to Corinth.”

It sounded pretty thin and uncertain, even to me.

“Wouldn’t it be better to stay put?” Angel drank her juice in one long gulp, and set the glass down. She eased forward in her chair, and her hand rubbed her back absently. Her face tightened suddenly, then relaxed. “After all,” Angel said slowly, with effort, “if Regina does escape, or return…” Her face did that tightening and relaxing thing again. “She’d come back here, for her baby…” This time Angel’s face stayed tight for a while.

“Angel?”

“I think,” she said slowly and thoughtfully, “that maybe it will be today, after all.”

I was on my feet in a flash. I’d seen one baby born, and I wasn’t about to do that again. “Let me drive you to the hospital,” I said. “I’ll get my jacket.”

“No, that would get the cars all confused,” Angel said, but as if she hardly knew what she was saying. All her attention seemed to be focused inward. “My car would be out here, and who knows when I could come back to get it. I can drive home, and wait there for Shelby to get off work.”

“Call him from here.”

“Okay,” she said, to my surprise. My concern deepened. Easy capitulation was not one of Angel’s characteristics. “Let me use the bathroom first.”

I hovered outside the door.

When Angel emerged, she said, “Today for sure.” Her voice was still calm and flat, but I sensed all kinds of suppressed excitement just trying to bubble to the surface. She went to the telephone on the kitchen wall, walking in a kind of tentative way, as if she expected something to grab her at every step. I bounced around her like a rubber ball, anxious to help, trying not to get in the way, scared to death she’d have the baby here.

Angel punched Shelby’s work number, waited for an answer, all the while that inner-directed look on her face.

I heard a squawk from the other end of the line.

“Jason Arlington, that you? This is Angel. I need to talk to Shelby,” Angel said.

I could hear the tiny voice squawk some more.

“Yes, you can sound the siren,” Angel said, sounding as if she was holding on to her patience by a very taut leash. The siren’s wail was audible from where I was standing.

“Shelby’s crew think it’s real funny that he’s going to be a father for the first time,” Angel explained. “They set up this siren to call him if he’s far out in the plant when I phone to tell him the baby’s on the way.” Her face tightened again, and her fingers clenched the receiver until they turned white. Then, gradually, she relaxed. She smiled into the telephone. Her husband was on the other end.

“Shelby,” Angel said. “I’m going to leave right now to drive back into town. I’m at Martin and Roe’s. Meet me at our house.”

This time I could hear Shelby’s words. “You stay right there,” he bellowed. “I’ll come get you. Don’t you try to drive!”

To my amazement, Angel said, “All right.”

I think Shelby was startled, too, because there was silence on the other end of the line. Then he said, “I’ll be right there,” and the line went dead.

I caught a glimpse of Rory Brown stepping quietly down the hall. Angel’s back was turned, and frankly I don’t think she’d have cared if a real leopard went through the house, at that point.

I went to the foot of the stairs and called Martin, who came down with a newly awake Hayden. Martin tried not to look dismayed when I explained the situation. He handed me the baby immediately.

Angel seemed to want to remain standing, so I tried not to fuss over her. I put a bottle in the microwave, and Angel said, “That’s not a safe way to heat bottles.”

“What?”

“Sometimes they have hot spots if you heat them that way. That’s what the baby book said.”

Everyone’s a critic. “So far, we haven’t had any problem,” I said. “I’m testing it before I give it to him.”

Angel shrugged, as if she’d done her best and it wasn’t her fault if I was misguided. I shook the bottle vigorously, tested the formula on my arm, and sat down to feed Hayden, who had just let out a few preliminary “eh” noises.

Angel did the face-clenching routine again. This time she propped herself against the wall.

“Are they getting worse?” I asked, while Martin looked as if he wished he were on the moon.

“Maybe I should call the ambulance,” he suggested.

I noticed he didn’t suggest taking Angel into town himself. I had a sneaking suspicion he was worried Angel’s water would break in his Mercedes.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. Martin tried not to look relieved. “I know this is going to take hours. I’m just trying to get used to the feeling. It’s like a clamp. Then there’s the release. Then, along after a while comes the next clamp.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not yet, but it’s on a roll downhill,” Angel said. “I hope Shelby doesn’t pass out in the labor room. He got sick when I broke my leg a few years ago.”

A battered car sped up our driveway, and Shelby, tall and pockmarked and burly with muscle, was out of the vehicle and in our kitchen door before you could say “Having a baby.” His dark hair, liberally streaked with gray, was dented all around where his hard hat had rested, and his Fu Manchu mustache was going in all directions, as if he’d rubbed his hands over it.

Wordlessly, Shelby shook hands with Martin, kissed me on the forehead with nary a glance at the baby I was holding, and took his wife by the elbow to hustle her out the door. Angel gave us a nod and they were on their way, Shelby shepherding Angel as though she were the only woman who’d ever given birth. “Jason said he’d get one of the guys to drive him out here to pick up Angel’s car; I gave him a spare key,” Shelby called over his shoulder at the last minute. Then he buckled up and headed back into town to the Lawrenceton hospital.

Rory came out of the den when Shelby had turned out of the driveway. He was looking amused.

“So, she’s gonna have a baby really soon,” he said agreeably. Listening at doors did not seem to present a moral dilemma for Rory Brown. “Craig took Regina to a midwife.” Then the reminiscent smile faded from the boy’s face as he remembered that his friend Craig was now dead. “He told me it was a lot cheaper,” Rory added, with no smile at all.

“I have to pack,” I said, and both the men looked at me.

“Okay,” Rory said, after what I could only think of as a pregnant pause, “I’ll feed the little fella.”

I transferred baby and bottle to the young man, and spent a blessed hour alone upstairs trying to assemble clothes suitable for an Ohio winter. A number of important questions bobbed to the surface of my mind as I folded and figured. Where would we stay in Corinth? The Holiday Inn I’d used before would certainly be cramped with a baby sharing the room. I wondered about the farmhouse Martin owned up there, the one in which he’d grown up. He’d had it restored from its near-derelict condition, he’d mentioned in passing.

“We could stay in the farmhouse,” Martin said from the doorway, and I jumped in my skin. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.

“I was just thinking about the farmhouse,” I said, when my heart had stopped trying to make tracks out of my chest. “You had it repaired?”

“Yes… and to confess something to you, Regina and Craig were living in it.”

“Why should you say ‘confess’?” I asked. I sat down on the end of the bed, two unopened packages of panty hose in my hands.

“I didn’t tell you,” he said. He wandered across the room to stand looking out the window. His shoulders had an uncharacteristic slump. The bleak view of winter fields couldn’t have helped his state of mind much. It was a gray day, and the clouds were full of rain… Pregnant with it, in fact, my brain told me chirpily. I dropped the hose on the floor and clutched my head with both hands.

“Why didn’t you tell me, Martin? Why did that have to be such a big secret?”

He sat beside me on the foot of the bed. He put one arm around me, carefully, as though he realized there was a good chance I’d sock him in the nose.

“Cindy told me you would always keep secrets,” I said. “She said you couldn’t help it.” I’d never told Martin about the conversation I’d had with his first wife, before Martin and I were married. I’d been convinced he’d learned his lesson during his first marriage, that with me he would not repeat the same mistake.

“I’ve never lied to you about anything,” Martin said now, and that was something else Cindy had told me.

I hated her being right.

“Martin, if there’s something you know about this that you haven’t told me, if there’s anything about Craig and Regina and Rory and Cindy or your sister… anything you haven’t told me, this is your last free pass.”

“After this I get penalized?” His face fell into more familiar lines, the uncertainty fading to be replaced with the intelligence and command he normally wore like his suit coat.

“After this, you get thrown out of the game.” I looked him straight in his pale brown eyes.

“But I’m still in?”

I nodded.

His mouth only had to move an inch to cover mine.

It was different, this time; we’d always been perfect together in bed, and this morning he still had the magic to make me lost in the act of love; but now he was rougher, more demanding. It was as if he was reasserting his exclusive right to me, daring some cosmic force to just try to separate us. You woman, me man, his body said: and mine gasped, Hoo boy.