“HAYLEY.”
“Don’t.” Mitch stepped forward as Harper sprang off the floor. “Wait.”
“I came back,” Hayley repeated, “for what was mine.”
“But you weren’t able to get to the child,” Mitch said.
“Wasn’t I? Didn’t I?” In the chair Hayley lifted her arms, held her palms up. “Aren’t I here? Didn’t I watch him, didn’t I sing him to sleep, night after night? And all the others who came after? They were never rid of me.”
“But that’s not enough now.”
“I want what’ s mine! I want my due. I want . . .” Her eyes darted around the room. “Where are the children? Where are they?”
“Outside.” Roz spoke quietly. “Playing outside.”
“I like the children,” Hayley said dreamily. “Who would have guessed? Such messy, selfish creatures. But so sweet, so soft and sweet when they sleep. I like them best when they sleep. I would have shown him the world, my James. The world. And he would never have left me. Do you think I want her pity?” she said in a sudden rage. “A housekeeper? A servant? Do you think I want pity from her? Damn her and the rest of them. I should have killed them in their sleep.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Her gaze shifted, latched on Harper. “There are other ways to damn. So handsome. You are so like him.”
“I’m not. I’m yours. The great-grandson of your son.”
Her eyes clouded, and her fingers plucked at the thighs of her pants. “James? My James? I watched you. Sweet baby. Pretty little boy. I came to you.”
“I remember. What do you want?”
“Find me. I’m lost.”
“What happened to you?”
“You know! You did it. You’re damned for it. Cursed with my last breath. I will have what’s mine.” Hayley’s head fell back, and her hand clutched at her belly before her body shuddered. “God.” She breathed out audibly. “Intense.”
Harper grabbed her hands, knelt in front of her. “Hayley.”
“Yeah.” Her eyes were blurred, her face white as paper. “Can I have some water?”
He brought her hands up, pressed his face into them. “You can’t keep doing this.”
“Just as soon not. She was pissed. Thanks,” she said to David as he handed her a glass of water. She drank it down like a woman dying of thirst. “Pissed, then sad, then pissed again—all sort of over the top on the emotional scale. The letter got to her. Well, it got to me.”
She turned to Mitch with her hands still caught in Harper’s. “I felt so sorry for her, and for the housekeeper. I could see it. You know, how you do when you’re reading a book. The house, the people. I could imagine what it would be like if somebody had Lily, and I couldn’t do anything to get her back. ’Course the first thing I’d’ve done was clock Beatrice. The bitch. I guess I was getting pretty worked up, in my head, and she just sort of slid in.”
Her fingers tightened on Harper’s. “She’s twisted up about you. Mostly, she’s just twisted altogether, but she remembers you as a baby, as a little boy, she feels love for you because you’re her blood. But you’re his, too. And you resemble him, sort of. At least that’s how it seems to me. It’s confusing when it happens.”
“You’re stronger than she is,” Harper told her.
“Saner anyhow. Way.”
“You did great.” Mitch set his tape recorder aside. “And I’d say you’ve had enough for today.”
“It’s been a busy one.” She worked up a smile as she looked around the room. “Did I wig everybody out?”
“You could say that. Look, why don’t you go up, stretch out,” Stella suggested. “Logan will go out, check on the kids. Right?”
“Sure.” He stepped over to Hayley first, gave her head a pat. “Go on up, beautiful, take a load off.”
“I think I will, thanks.” Harper straightened, took her hand to bring her to her feet. “I don’t know what I’d do without you guys, I really don’t.”
Roz waited until they were out of the room. “This is wearing on her. I’ve never seen her look so tired. Hayley’s a bundle of energy most times. Hell, she wears me out just watching her.”
“We’ve got to finish this.” Logan walked to the door, opened it. “And soon,” he said before he went outside.
“What can we do?” Stella spread her hands. “Waiting and watching doesn’t seem like enough. I don’t know about the rest of you, but seeing that happen, seeing it, shook me right down to the bone.”
“I could go to Boston, help Veronica sort through the papers.” Mitch shook his head. “But I’m just not comfortable leaving right now.”
“Safety in numbers?” Roz reached out a hand for his, squeezed. “I feel the same. To tell the truth, at this point I don’t like David spending so much time alone in the house.”
“She doesn’t bother me.” He’d poured a glass of wine and lifted it now in a half toast. “Maybe because I’m not a blood-related male. Add gay to that and I’m not of much interest to her. You can factor in that she’d see me as a servant. That puts me bottom of the feeding chain.”
“A lot she knows,” Roz replied. “But that’s logical, from her point of view, and does a lot to relieve my mind. Find her. She’s said that before.”
“Her grave,” Mitch put in.
“I think we’re all agreed on that.” Roz walked over, helped herself to a sip of David’s wine. “And how the hell are we supposed to do that?”
LATER, WHEN THE house was quiet and Lily slept in her crib, Hayley couldn’t settle. “One minute I’m ready to drop, and the next I’m all revved up. I must be really annoying.”
“Now that you mention it.” With a grin, Harper pulled her down on the sofa beside him. “Why don’t we watch the game. I’ll raid the kitchen for junk food.”
“You want me to sit here and watch baseball?”
“I thought you liked baseball.”
“Yeah, but not enough to zone out in front of the TV.”
“Okay.” He heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I’m about to make the ultimate sacrifice for my breed. Pick a DVD. We’ll watch a movie, even if it’s a chick flick.”
She eased back. “Really?”
“But you have to make the popcorn.”
“You mean you’ll sit here and watch a girlie movie without making snide comments?”
“I don’t remember agreeing to the second part.”
“You know, I like action flicks.”
“Now we’re talking.”
“But I’d love to watch something romancey, with a couple of good weep scenes. Thanks!” She pressed her lips noisily to his, then jumped up. “I’m loading the popcorn with butter.” At the door, she stopped and beamed back at him. “I feel better already.”
SHE’D NEVER HAD so many ups and downs in her moods in all of her life. From manic energy to exhaustion, from joy to despair. She ran the gamut, it seemed, every day. And under the swings, the spurts, and the tumbles was an edgy anticipation of what happens next. And when.
When she spiraled down, she struggled to remind herself of what she had. A beautiful child, a wonderful man who loved her, friends, family, a good interesting job. And still, once the spiral began, she couldn’t seem to control the fall.
She worried there was something physically wrong with her. A chemical imbalance, a brain tumor. Maybe she was going as crazy as The Bride.
Feeling harassed and overtired, she swung into Wal-Mart on her morning off to pick up diapers, shampoo, a few other basics. She could only thank God to be able to snatch this little window of alone time. Or alone with Lily time, she corrected, as she strapped her daughter in the shopping cart.
At least nobody felt they were obliged to watch her when she was away from Harper House or work. And watching was what they did. Like hawks.
She understood why, God knew she appreciated the concern and care. But that didn’t stop her from feeling smothered. She could barely start to brush her teeth without whoever was hovering offering to spread the paste on the brush for her.
She wandered down aisles, listlessly picking up what she needed. Then she detoured into cosmetics, thinking a new lipstick might cheer her up. But the shades seemed too dark or too light, too bold or too dull. Nothing suited her.
She looked so pale and wan these days, she decided if she put anything bright on her lips they’d look as though they walked into the room a foot ahead of her.
New perfume maybe. But every tester she sniffed made her feel slightly queasy.
“Just forget it,” she muttered, and glanced back at Lily who was trying to stretch out her arm to reach a spin rack of mascaras and eye pencils.
“Not for a long time yet, young lady. It’s fun being a girl though, you’ll see. All these toys we get to play with.” She chose one of the mascaras herself, tossed it in the cart. “I just can’t seem to gear myself up for it right now. We’ll just go on, get your diapers. And maybe if you’re good, a new board book.”
She turned down another aisle, reluctant to leave. Once she did, she’d need to take Lily to the sitter’s, go to work. Where somebody would be attached to her hip for the rest of the day.
She wanted to do something normal, damn it. More, she wanted to feel like doing something. Anything.
And an absent glance to her right stopped her in her tracks.
Something that was both panic and nausea, with a helping of dull realization spurted into her belly. It continued to rise as she did hasty calculations in her head.
While everything inside her sank, Hayley closed her eyes. She opened them again, looked into Lily’s happy face. And reached for the home pregnancy test.
SHE DROPPED LILY off, kept a smile plastered on her face until she walked out the door to her car. Afraid to do otherwise, she kept her mind blank while she drove home. She wouldn’t think, she wouldn’t project. She would just go home, take the test. Twice. When it came out negative, which of course it would, she’d hide the packages somewhere until she could dispose of them without anyone knowing she’d had a panic attack.
She wasn’t pregnant again. She absolutely couldn’t be pregnant again.
She parked, and made certain the boxes were buried at the bottom of her bag and well hidden. But she’d taken two steps into the house when David appeared like some magic genie.
“Hi, sugar, want a hand with that?”
“No.” She gripped the bag to her chest like a cache of gold. “No,” she repeated more calmly. “I’m just going to take these things up. And I have to pee, if that’s all the same to you.”
“It is. I often have to pee myself.”
Knowing her tone had been nasty, she rubbed a hand over her face. “I’m sorry. I’m in a mood.”
“Something else I often have.” He pulled an open tube of Life Savers from his pocket, thumbed out a cherry circle. “Open up.”
She smiled, obeyed.
“Let’s see if that sweetens your mood,” he said as he popped the candy into her mouth. “Can’t help worrying about you, honey.”
“I know. If I’m not back down in fifteen minutes, you can call out the cavalry. Deal?”
“Deal.”
She hurried up, then dumped the contents of the bag on her bed—for God’s sake, she’d forgotten the diapers. Cursing, she snatched both pregnancy tests and bolted to the bathroom.
For a moment she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to pee. Wouldn’t that just be her luck? She ordered herself to calm down, took several long breaths. Added a prayer.
Moments later, with the sweetness of cherry candy still on her tongue, she was staring at the stick with PREGNANT reading clear as day in its window.
“No.” She gripped the stick, shook it as if it were a thermometer and the action would drop things back down to normal. “No, no, no, no! What is this? What are you?” She looked down at herself, rapped a fist lightly below her navel. “Some kind of sperm magnet?”
Undone, she sat on the toilet lid, buried her face in her hands.
THOUGH SHE MIGHT have preferred to crawl into the cabinet under the sink, curl up in the dark, and stay there for the next nine months, she didn’t have much time to indulge in a pity fest. She washed her face, slapping on cold water to eradicate the signs of her bathroom crying jag.
“Yeah, crying’s going to make a difference,” she berated herself. “That’ll do the trick, all right. It’ll change everything so when you look at that stupid test again the damn stick will read: Why no, Hayley, you’re not pregnant. You just needed to sit on the toilet and bawl for ten minutes. Idiot.”
She sniffled back what felt like another flood of tears and faced herself in the mirror. “You played, now you pay. Deal with it.”
A quick makeup session helped. The sunglasses she grabbed out of her purse helped more.
She buried the home pregnancy test boxes in the bottom of her underwear drawer, jumpy as a drug addict hiding his stash.
When she went out, David was already halfway up the stairs.
“I was about to get my bugle.”
She stared at him. “What?”
“To call the cavalry, honey. You were longer than fifteen.”
“Sorry. I got . . . Sorry.”
He started to smile and brush it off, then shook his head. “Nope, not going to pretend I don’t know you’ve been crying. What’s the matter?”
“I can’t.” Even on those two words her voice shook, broke. “I’m going to be late for work.”
“Somehow the world will keep turning. What you’re going to do is sit right down here in my office.” Taking her hand, he tugged until she sat on the steps with him. “And tell Uncle David your troubles.”
“I don’t have troubles. I’m in trouble.” She didn’t mean to tell him, to tell anyone. Not until she had time to think, to deal. To bury her head in the sand for a few days. But he draped an arm around her shoulders to hug her, and the words leaped out of her mouth.
“I’m pregnant.”
“Oh.” His hand stroked up and down her arm. “Well, that’s something my secret horde of super chocolate truffles won’t fix.”
She turned her head, pressed her face to his shoulder. “I’m like some sort of fertility bomb, David. What am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do?”
“What’s right for you. You’re sure now?”
Sniffling, she boosted her butt off the steps, tugged the stick out of her pocket. “What’s that say in there?”
“Mmm. The eagle has landed.” Gently, he caught her chin in his hand, lifted her face. “How are you feeling?”
“Sick, scared. Stupid! So damn stupid. We used protection, David. It’s not like we were a couple of lust-crazed teenagers in the back of a Chevy. I think I have some sort of übereggs or something, and they just spit on barriers and suck the sperm in.”
He laughed, then gave her another squeeze. “Sorry. I know it’s not funny to you. Let’s calm down here and take a look at the big picture. You’re in love with Harper.”
“Of course I am, but—”
“He’s in love with you.”
“Yes, but—Oh, David, we’re just getting started on that. On being in love, on being together. Maybe I let myself imagine how it might be down the road some. But we haven’t made any plans about the long-term. We haven’t talked about it at all.”
“That’s why sooner comes before later, honey. You’ll talk now.”
“How can any man in the world not feel trapped when a woman comes up and tells him she’s pregnant?”
“You manage to get that way all by yourself?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Hayley.” He drew back, tipped her sunglasses down her nose so he could look into her eyes. “That’s exactly the point. With Lily, you did what was right for you, and what you felt in your heart was right for the father, and for the baby. Right or wrong—and personally I think it was right—but either way, I think it was brave. Now you’ve got to be brave again, do what’s right for everybody concerned. You’ve got to tell Harper.”
“I don’t know how. I get sick thinking about it.”
“Then you might love him, but you’re not giving him credit for being the man he is.”
“I am, that’s the trouble.” She stared back down at the stick and the word in that window seemed to scream in her head. “He’ll stand up. How will I know if he did because he loves me, or because he feels responsible?”
David leaned over, kissed her temple. “Because you will.”
IT ALL SOUNDED good. It sounded reasonable, logical, and adult. But it didn’t make it any easier to do what she was about to do.
She wished she could delay it, just ignore it all for a few days. Even pretend it would go away. And that was small and selfish and childish.
When she reached the nursery, she slipped into one of the employee bathrooms to take the second test. She glugged down most of a pint of water, turned the spigot on for good measure. She started to cross her fingers, but told herself not to be a complete ass.
Still, she read the results with eyes squinted half shut.
It didn’t change the outcome.
Well, still pregnant, she thought. There was no crying this time, no cursing fate. She simply tucked the stick back in her pocket, opened the door, and prepared to do what needed to be done next. She had to tell Harper.
Why? Why did he have to know? She could go away now, she thought. Pack up and go. The baby was hers.
He was rich, he was powerful. He would take the child and toss her aside. Take her son. For the glory of the great Harper name he would use her like a vessel, then rip away what grew in her.
He had no right to what was hers. No right to what she carried inside her.
“Hayley.”
“What?” She jolted like a thief, then blinked at Stella.
She was standing among the shade plants, surrounded by hostas green as Ireland. Yards away from the restroom.
How long had she been standing there, thinking thoughts not her own?
“Are you all right?”
“A little turned around.” She drew in a long breath. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“It’s all right.”
“I’ll make it up. But I need . . . I have to talk to Harper. Before I get started I need to talk to him.”
“In the grafting house. He wanted to know when you got in. Hayley, I wish you’d tell me what’s wrong.”
“I need to talk to Harper first.” Before she lost her nerve, or her mind.
She hurried away, walking quickly between the tables of plants, across the asphalt skirt, past the greenhouses. Business was picking up, she noted, after the high summer slump. Temperatures were easing off, just a little, and made people think about their fall plantings. Stella’s boys were going back to school. Days were getting shorter.
The world didn’t stop just because she had a crisis on her hands.
She hesitated outside of the grafting house, struck by the fact that her mind—so full a moment before—was now a complete blank.
There was only one thing to do, she decided. That was to go in.
The house was warm and full of music. It so well suited him, full of plants in various stages of growth and development, smelling of soil and green.
She didn’t know the music that played, something with harps and flutes. But she knew whatever it was wouldn’t be playing through his headphones.
He was down at the far end, and it seemed like the longest walk of her life. Even when he turned, saw her, and flashed a grin.
“Hey, just who I wanted to see.” He made a come-ahead gesture with one hand as he drew his headset off with the other. “Take a look.”
“At what?”
“Our babies.”
Since he shifted to the plants, he didn’t see her jerk in response. “They’re right on schedule,” he continued. “See, the ovary sections have already swelled.”
“They’re not the only ones,” she mumbled, but moved forward to stand beside him and study the plants they’d grafted a few weeks before.
“See? The pods are fully formed. We give them another three, four weeks for the seeds to ripen. The top’ll split. We’ll gather the seeds, plant them in pots. Keep ’em outdoors, exposed. And in the spring, they’ll germinate. Once they’re about three inches, we’ll plant them out in nursery beds.”
It wasn’t procrastinating to stand there talking about a mutual project. It was . . . polite. “Then what?”
“Usually we’ll get blooms the second season. Then we’ll study and record the differences, the likenesses, the characteristics. What we’re hoping for is at least one—and I’m banking on more—mini with a strong pink color, and that blush of red. We get that, we’ve got Hayley’s Lily.”
“If we don’t.”
“Pessimism isn’t the gardener’s friend, but if we don’t, we’ll have something else cool. And we’ll try again. Anyway, I thought you might want to work with me on a rose, for my mother.”
“Oh, um . . .” If it was a girl, should they name her Rose? “That’d be nice. Sweet of you.”
“Well, it’s Mitch’s idea, but the guy couldn’t grow a Chia Pet. He wants to try for a black. Nobody’s ever managed a true black rose, but I thought we could play around and see what we came up with. It’s the right time of year—time to wash down, disinfect, air and dry out this place. Hygiene’s a big for this kind of work, and roses are pretty fussy. They’re time-consuming, too, but it’d be fun.”
He looked so excited, she thought, at the idea of starting something new. Just how would he look when she told him they already had?
“Um, when you do all this, you pick the parents—the pollen plant, the seed plant. Deliberate selection, for specific characteristics.”
Her blue eyes, Harper’s brown. His patience, her impulse. What would you get?
“Right. You’re trying to cross them, to create something with the best—or at least the desired characteristics—of both.”
His temper, her stubbornness. Oh God. “People don’t work that way.”
“Hmm.” He turned to his computer, keying data into a file. “No, guess not.”
“And with people, they can’t always—or don’t always—plan it all out like this. They don’t always get together and say, hey, let’s hybridize.”
He shot a laugh over his shoulder. “Now that’s a line I never thought to use in a bar, picking up a girl. I’d put it in the file, but since I’ve already got a girl, it’d be wasted.”
“You never used a line on me,” she told him. “Anyway, hybridizing’s about creating something, a separate something. Not just about the fun and games.”
“Hmm. Hey, did I show you the viburnum? Suckering’s been a problem, but I’m pretty happy with how it’s coming along.”
“Harper.” Tears wanted to spurt and spill again. “Harper, I’m sorry.”
“It’s not a big,” he said absently. “I know how to deal with suckering.”
“I’m pregnant.”
There, she thought. She said it. Fast and clean. Like ripping a bandage off a wound.
“You said what?” He stopped typing, slowly swiveled on his stool.
She didn’t know how to read his face. Maybe it was because her own vision seemed blurry and half blind. She couldn’t read the tone of his voice, not with the roaring going on in her ears.
“I should’ve known. I should have. I’ve been so tired, and I missed my period—I just forgot about it—and I’ve been queasy on and off, and so damn moody. I thought, I didn’t think. I thought it was what was happening with Amelia. I didn’t put it together. I’m sorry.”
The entire burst came out in a disjointed ramble that she could barely comprehend herself. She dropped into silence when he held up a hand.
“Pregnant. You said you were pregnant.”
“God, do I have to spell the word out for you?” Not sure if she wanted to weep or rage, she yanked the test stick out of her pocket. “There, read it yourself. P-R-E—”
“Hold it.” He took the stick from her, stared at it. “When did you find out?”
“Just today, now. A little while ago. I was in Wal-Mart, getting some things. I forgot Lily’s diapers and bought mascara. What kind of a mother am I?”
“Quiet down.” He rose, took her shoulders and nudged her onto the stool. “You’re all right? I mean it doesn’t hurt or anything.”
“Of course it doesn’t hurt. For Christ’s sake.”
“Look, don’t crawl up my ass.” He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck as he studied her. Much, she thought, as he did his plants-in-progress. “It’s my first day on the job. How much are you pregnant?”
“Pretty much all the way.”
“Damn it, Hayley, I mean how far along, or whatever you call it?”
“I think about six weeks. Five or six.”
“How big is it in there?”
She dragged a hand through her hair. “I don’t know. About as big as a kernel of rice.”
“Wow.” He stared at her belly, laid a hand on it. “Wow. When does it start to move around? When does it get, like, fingers or toes?”
“Harper, can we focus here?”
“I don’t know any of this stuff. I want to know. You need to go to the doctor, right?” He grabbed her hand. “We should go now.”
“I don’t need to go to the doctor now. Harper, what are we going to do?”
“What do you mean what are we going to do. We’re going to have a baby. Holy shit!” He plucked her right off the stool and a half a foot off the ground. The face he tilted up to hers was split with a dazzled grin. “We’re going to have a baby.”
She had to brace her hands on his shoulders. “You’re not mad.”
“Why would I be mad?”
Now she felt dizzy, overwhelmed, shaken to the core. “Because. Because.”
He lowered her, slowly, back onto the stool. And now his voice was careful and cool. “You don’t want the baby.”
“I don’t know. How can I think about what I want? How can I think at all?”
“Pregnancy affects brain waves. Interesting.”
“I—”
“But, okay, I’ll do the thinking. You go to the doctor so we’re sure everything’s okay in there. We get married. And next spring we have a baby.”
“Married? Harper, people shouldn’t get married just because—”
Though he leaned back against the worktable, he still managed to hedge her in. “In my world, where the sky’s blue, people who love each other and are having babies get married all the time. Maybe this is a little ahead of our regularly scheduled program, but it’s the kind of bulletin you pay attention to.”
“We had a regularly scheduled program?”
“I did.” He reached over to tuck her hair behind her ears, then tugged gently at the ends. “I want you, you know I do. I want the baby. We’re going to do this right, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”
“So you’re ordering me to marry you.”
“I had planned to charm you into it, at some point a little farther down the road. But since the timing’s changed—and pregnancy’s jammed your power of thought—we’re going this way.”
“You’re not even upset.”
“No, I’m not upset.” He paused a moment as if taking stock. “A little scared, a lot awed. Man, Lily’s going to love this. Baby brother or sister to torment. Wait till I tell my brothers they’re going to be uncles. What till I tell Mama she’s going to be a . . .”
“Grandmother,” Hayley finished and nodded, subversively pleased to see a flicker of doubt in his eyes at last. “Just how do you think she’s going to feel about that?”
“I guess I’ll find out.”
“I can’t—just can’t take all this in.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her temples as if it would stop her head from spinning. “I don’t even know what I’m feeling.” Dropping her hands in her lap, she stared at him. “Harper, you don’t think this is a mistake?”
“Our baby’s not a mistake.” He gathered her in, felt her breath give a hitch as she struggled with tears. “But it’s one hell of a surprise.”