Chapter 25
After church the next afternoon, Stan took his sons to the barber shop, which had opened on Sunday to accommodate clients who would be traveling out of town for Thanksgiving. Michael and Marcus, who’d gotten fresh haircuts before leaving Atlanta, had opted to stay at the house with Prissy until the others returned.
While the boys entertained themselves in the basement, Prissy started dinner and washed linens and towels in preparation for the arrival of more houseguests on Tuesday. She had just carried a fresh load of laundry into her bedroom when the telephone rang.
Setting the basket down on her bed, she grabbed the phone from her nightstand and answered, “Hello?”
“Pris?” came Celeste’s subdued voice.
“Oh, hey, girl.” Prissy smiled ruefully. “I’m glad you called, because I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you—”
“The baby’s gone, Pris.”
Prissy froze with shock, thinking she’d heard wrong. “What did you say?”
“My baby…It’s gone.”
“Oh, my God,” Prissy breathed. Struck by a sudden horrible suspicion, she demanded accusingly, “What did you do?”
When she heard muffled little sobs on the other end, she realized that Celeste was crying. “I had…a miscarriage,” she choked out.
“Oh, God.” Stunned, Prissy sank weakly onto the bed. “I’m so sorry, Cel. Are you okay?”
“No! I’m not okay! I…I lost my baby. A baby I didn’t even want. Oh, God, Pris. I didn’t want her, so God took her from me!”
As Celeste began sobbing harder, tears welled in Prissy’s eyes, blurring her vision. “I’m so sorry, honey,” was all she could say.
“She was a girl, Pris,” Celeste whimpered.
“How do you know?” Prissy whispered hoarsely. “It was too early to tell, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, but I know in my heart she was a girl. She felt like a girl to me. And now…now she’s gone. And it’s all my fault!”
“Shhh,” Prissy soothed. “Don’t say that. It’s not your fault.”
“Yes, it is! I didn’t want her, Pris! You know that. I was devastated when I found out that I was pregnant, and I thought about getting rid of the baby just about every day. So God decided I didn’t deserve her, and He took her away from me!”
Celeste’s anguished wails tore at Prissy’s aching heart. “Where are you, honey?”
It took several moments before Celeste could compose herself enough to choke out a fragmented response. “I’m at…the condo. Grant went…to the store…to pick up some things…for me.”
“You shouldn’t be alone, sweetie. Not at a time like this.” Prissy stared up at the ceiling through a sheen of tears. “When…when did this happen?”
“Yesterday morning. I came back from the hospital last night. I’ve been in bed ever since.” Celeste inhaled a deep, shuddering breath and released it slowly. “I…I wanted to surprise Grant. I’d bought a beautiful painting of an old farmhouse in Vermont…I knew it would remind him of his childhood. I was trying to hang it on the wall when I felt a sharp pain in my back and stomach. I dropped the painting and fell to my knees. I-I knew something was terribly wrong. By the time I crawled to the bathroom, there was so much blood…So much blood, Pris.”
Prissy was silent as tears rolled down her face, one after another.
“Grant came home and found me lying on the bathroom floor, bawling my eyes out. He was so scared he turned white as a ghost. He took me to the hospital—” Celeste broke off with another choked sob.
Prissy waited for her to continue. Somehow she knew the worst was yet to come.
“The baby wasn’t Grant’s,” Celeste confessed.
Prissy’s grip tightened on the phone. “How do you know?”
“He had a vasectomy four years ago. He doesn’t want any children, but he told me that his thinking at the time was that if he ever met someone he loved enough to marry, he’d be willing to get the vasectomy reversed.”
“Dear God.” Prissy brought trembling fingers to her mouth, stunned by the import of Celeste’s revelation. “So the baby was Sterling’s.”
“Yes.” Celeste was weeping again, and so was Prissy.
Minutes passed without either of them speaking. The raw outpouring of grief was too much.
Celeste was the first to finally regain her composure.
“About eleven years ago,” she whispered brokenly, “I was going to ask Sterling for a divorce. We’d been unhappy for a while, and I just thought it was time for us to go our separate ways. And then I found out I was pregnant with Marcus. No way could I leave Sterling after that.”
While Prissy was still reeling from this new revelation, Celeste continued in a low, haunted voice, “Every time I think I’m done with Sterling Wolf, something else happens to keep me tied to him. Once again I tried to leave him, and once again I wound up pregnant. That has to mean something, doesn’t it, Pris?”
Prissy shook her head sorrowfully. “I don’t know, Celeste.”
Celeste sighed. “Maybe we are meant to be together. Maybe when it’s all said and done, time will reveal that Sterling and I are truly soul mates.”
“Maybe,” Prissy murmured.
A long, mournful silence passed between the two women.
“You know,” Celeste said reflectively, “we used to say that if we ever had a girl, we’d name her Savannah because some of our happiest times together were at Mama Wolf’s house. This summer when we were driving home from there, do you know what Michael said? He was staring out the window, and all of a sudden he cheerfully announced that if he had a daughter someday, he would name her Savannah because it was one of his favorite places in the whole world. Sterling and I just looked at each other and smiled.”
Prissy smiled, too.
“Why don’t you come here for Thanksgiving, Celeste?” she gently cajoled. “Michael and Marcus are already here, and everyone else is coming on Tuesday. You need to be around family right now.”
“I know, and I’d love nothing more than to spend the holiday with my boys. But I can’t come. I…I can’t be around Sterling right now. It’s too painful.”
Prissy nodded with sympathetic understanding. “Are you going to tell him…about the baby?”
After a prolonged silence, Celeste answered quietly, “There’s no point now, is there? If I tell him that I miscarried our third child, he’s going to be as devastated as I am. Why hurt him any more than I already have?”
Prissy closed her eyes on a heavy sigh. “You have a point, but aren’t you tired of keeping secrets, Celeste?”
“Yes,” she admitted sadly. “But this is one I’m willing to take to my grave to spare Sterling any more pain.”
Prissy nodded slowly, accepting her decision. “I won’t tell a soul, either,” she promised.
“Thank you, Pris,” Celeste whispered. “For everything.”
Prissy swallowed tightly. “Get some rest, sweetie, and I’ll check up on you tomorrow.”
“All right. And Pris?”
“Hmm?”
“Will you kiss my boys for me?”
Prissy had already intended to do just that. She smiled softly. “I sure will.”
After she hung up the phone, she padded to the bathroom to rinse her face and blow her nose. When she felt sufficiently composed enough to face her nephews, she ventured downstairs to the basement.
Michael and Marcus were playing with the pinball machine, their boyish laughter blending with the noisy ping-ping-ping sounds radiating from the flashing contraption. Although Prissy had told them to change when they all returned from church, the two brothers still wore their white dress shirts, which were untucked from their dark pants with the sleeves rolled to their elbows.
For several moments Prissy just stood on the stairs watching them, these beloved boys who looked so much like her own that she could have given birth to them.
Marcus was the first to glance up and notice her. “Hey, Aunt Prissy! Are they back yet?”
She smiled indulgently. “No, baby, not yet. There’re six of them, so it usually takes a while.”
“Yeah. That’s why me and Mike decided not to go with them.” Marcus made a disgruntled face. “It takes forever at the barber shop.”
Prissy laughed. “You should try coming to the hair salon with me one day,” she teased, descending the rest of the stairs.
“No way,” Marcus said with a vigorous shake of his head. “My mom used to—” He broke off abruptly, his expression darkening with pain and anger. After shooting a glance at Michael, he returned his attention to the pinball machine, but with far less enthusiasm than before.
Prissy’s heart broke.
She looked at Michael, who’d been studying her with that keenly perceptive gaze that always reminded her of his father’s and Stan’s. “Is everything okay, Aunt Prissy?” he asked in concern.
She nodded quickly, even as tears crowded her throat. “If my eyes look a little red,” she lied, “it’s from chopping onions for dinner.”
Michael nodded, though he didn’t look entirely convinced. “What’re you making?”
“Oh, nothing fancy. Just a pot roast with garlic mashed potatoes and honey-glazed green beans.”
“Sounds good,” Michael said approvingly.
“I think you might enjoy it.” Prissy smiled fondly at him. “Your father tells me you’ve been cooking for him and Marcus.”
Michael shrugged dismissively. “Dad works long hours, so….” He trailed off with another shrug of his shoulder.
Prissy wasn’t at all fooled by his attempt to downplay the way he’d been taking care of his broken family. “Your dad says whenever you come home from a tough practice, or if your basketball team loses, you march straight to the kitchen and start cooking up a storm to work off your anger and frustration. He says by the time you’re finished, the kitchen looks like a disaster area, but you’ve made enough food to last for two weeks.”
Michael fought a smile, looking embarrassed. “Dad tends to exaggerate.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Marcus interjected without glancing up from the pinball machine. “You do cook like that. And his food’s pretty good, Aunt Prissy.”
“I bet it is,” she agreed, affectionately rubbing both of their backs as she stood between them. “I still remember the delicious omelet he made for us over the summer at Mama Wolf’s house. Best omelet I’ve ever had. Maybe one day you can become a chef, Michael.”
“Nah.” He shook his head. “I’m gonna be an engineer.”
Prissy smiled softly. “Well, whatever you decide to be, I know that your parents will be very proud of you. Of both of you,” she added, turning to Marcus. “They love you both very much, and your happiness means more to them than anything else.”
When her nephews said nothing, she thought of the family experiences they would never again share with their parents, the memories they would never make. And she thought of the brother or sister they would never get to meet and bond with.
Suddenly the tears she’d been struggling to contain broke free and began streaming down her face.
Marcus eyed her worriedly. “Why are you crying, Aunt Prissy?”
“Because I love you and your brother so much,” she whispered achingly, tenderly kissing their foreheads. “And I hope you know that I will always be here for you, no matter what. If there’s anything I can do for you, anything at all, you pick up the phone and call me. Will you promise me that?”
The two brothers looked at each other, eyes bright with unshed tears, nostrils flaring with suppressed emotion. As proud and vulnerable as wounded eagles trying to soar above the darkest storm clouds.
Without a word they turned to Prissy, Marcus wrapping his arms tightly around her waist while Michael drew his arms around her shoulders. She closed her eyes, her heart expanding as she savored the precious connection.
She wasn’t their mother, and she would never try to be. But from that day forward, she vowed to do her damnedest to ensure that Michael and Marcus would never lack the warmth of a mother’s love.