скачать книгу бесплатно
“You bet it’s a miracle,” Laurel said sarcastically. “It’s damn near close to being an immaculate conception. In the last six months, I can count the number of times Jason and I made love on the fingers of one hand.”
“Now there’s your problem,” the doctor teased with a laugh. “The bed’s much more comfortable for that sort of thing.” And then, because her patient looked so sober, so upset by the news that usually brought tears of joy to so many of her other patients, Rachel sat down on the examining table beside Laurel and placed an arm around her patient’s shoulders. There was compassion in her eyes as she asked, “Is there trouble between you and Jason?”
Jason was one of those easygoing men who was hard to ruffle. But this should definitely do it, Laurel thought. An ironic smile curved her mouth. “There will be once I come home with this.”
The doctor shook her head. “Besides ‘this.’”
Laurel knew she’d lucked out the day she’d haphazardly picked Rachel Kilpatrick to be her doctor. She could come to her with anything, even after hours. It made her wonder how the woman managed to maintain a private life. But somehow she did. Laurel knew for a fact that the woman had a husband and children.
“No ‘trouble.’ Jason’s just gotten caught up in his old hobby. Trains,” she explained.
Her husband had been a collector when they’d first met. At that time, he had only three engines to his name. Over the years, under the guise of building up sets for their sons, he’d bought more and more. But they hardly ever even got out of the box once he brought the trains home. He was storing them. And then suddenly, last Christmas, they’d all come out of their boxes, every last one of them, and began showing up in almost every room in the house. She’d managed to convince Jason that he needed to have them all in one place. He settled on two, the bonus room and the garage, both of which looked like miniature Grand Central Stations these days.
“We’ve got tracks all over the garage. The cars are parked outside.” She’d had to find a cover for hers because she didn’t want the elements getting to the paint job. “Now he’s talking about setting up something outside in the backyard.” Actually, he was doing more than talking about it, but she didn’t want to take up the doctor’s time.
“So, see, this will work out just fine.”
Laurel looked at her, not following the doctor’s reasons. “And how do you figure that?”
“Well, if you give him a son, Jason will have an excuse to play with the trains. Give him someone to run the trains for.”
They already had a son, Laurel thought. As a matter of fact, they had three of them. Three big, strong, strapping boys. None of whom were in that getting-on-their-knees-and-playing-with-trains stage anymore. Besides, Jason didn’t want another son—he wanted a heavy-duty transformer to help run his trains over longer distances without losing power.
Laurel looked at the doctor, feeling overwhelmed and helpless as well as exhausted. “What I’ll be giving him an excuse for is leaving home.”
Dr. Kilpatrick rose from the table. “I think you’re selling your husband short.”
It wasn’t so much a matter of selling Jason short as it was having been privy to his dreams all these years. He had a plan for their future. And that plan definitely didn’t include morning sickness and swollen ankles.
“You don’t understand, Doctor,” Laurel sighed. “Jason and I are in a different place now than we were twenty-five years ago.”
“Yes, for one thing, you’re far more experienced now than you were then.”
That wasn’t what she meant. “Twenty-five years ago, Jason wanted enough kids to populate his own professional baseball team. Now he’s satisfied with just enough to play four-handed poker with. Occasionally. What he wants to do is travel, do all the things we couldn’t do back then because we had kids.”
Oh God, pregnant. I’m pregnant.
“How am I going to tell him that after all these years, we’re back to square one again? Less than one. Zero. How am I going to tell him that he’s got to wait another eighteen years before we go on that road trip he’s been planning? By then, they won’t let him drive because they’ll have taken away his driver’s license.”
The exaggeration made Dr. Kilpatrick laugh. “Jason’s what, one year old than you?” Laurel nodded, letting another from-the-bottom-of-her-toes sigh escape. “That makes him forty-six. I don’t think he’ll be ready to be put on an ice flow just yet. Besides, haven’t you heard? Forty-six is the new thirty-six.” She patted Laurel’s shoulder. “Forget about this early-retirement business,” she advised, referring to something Laurel had told her earlier about her husband’s plans. “It’s highly overrated. Being involved keeps you young. Babies keep you young,” she emphasized. “This way, he still has retirement to look forward to.” Crossing to the door, Dr. Kilpatrick paused for a moment, a fond expression on her face. “Sometimes, the looking-forward-to-something part is even better than actually getting that ‘something.’”
“You want to come home with me and explain that to him? Maybe he’ll believe it if he hears it coming from you.”
Her hand on the doorknob, Dr. Kilpatrick stopped and turned around. “What, that you’re pregnant?”
“No, that looking forward to something is better than having it.”
Dr. Kilpatrick smiled. “Look at the positive aspects—”
What possible positive aspects could there be about being pregnant at forty-five? “Right, I’ll be the oldest mother in kindergarten.”
The look the doctor gave her said she knew it was just the shock talking, nothing more. “No, you’re better off financially than you were when you had your other children. And you’re definitely more experienced. You know what to expect.”
“Yes, morning sickness for five months.” And one hell of an explosion when she broke the news. She couldn’t think of one person who was going to be happy about this unexpected twist.
“Afterward,” the doctor gently prodded. “Remember how afraid you were when you brought that first baby home? How you thought you’d drop and break him? How everything was this big mystery? Every rash, every cough had you fearing the worst? Now you’ll have the advantage because you’ll know what you’re doing.”
Laurel remembered the early years and, yes, she’d learned from them. Learned that she could survive and, most of all, learned to expect the unexpected.
She laughed drily. “Obviously you’ve had an easier time with motherhood than I have. Each one of the boys was different. Each one refused to play by the rules his brothers set down.” She had great kids, but it had been an uphill battle with each one of them. There’d never been any coasting, not even with the youngest one, Christopher, who’d been the most like her.
He wasn’t going to be the youngest one anymore, she suddenly thought. How was Christopher going to like that? “Every time I thought I knew what I was doing, I didn’t.” And it had been exhausting, physically and emotionally. Laurel raised her eyes to the doctor’s. “How am I going to go through that again?”
The doctor answered her question with a question. “Would you change anything if you could?”
“What do you mean?”
Just for a second, Dr. Kilpatrick moved back into the room. “If you could erase one of your sons, go back and not have him, would you?”
Laurel didn’t even stop to think. “No.”
It was obviously the answer the doctor had expected. “Then how do you know you won’t feel that way about this one?”
Laurel shook her head. Things were getting jumbled, twisted. “Because with this one, I’ll be forty-five years old. Because with this one, I won’t be able to run and play.”
The doctor opened her chart and glanced down at the notation she’d made earlier. “You still get in a game of tennis now and then, don’t you?”
It had been an exaggeration. Wishful thinking on her part. She was too busy with the demands of her career and personal life to spend much time on the courts. “More then than now.”
The doctor closed the chart again, accepting the correction and going from there. “Running is not a requirement with children.”
The hell it wasn’t, Laurel thought. “I guess your kids were less active than mine. Mine were born running.” At least it felt that way. “I get tired just thinking about it.” And then it suddenly dawned on her. “Is that why I’ve been feeling so tired lately? Because I’m pregnant?”
Dr. Kilpatrick’s smile filtered into her eyes. “That would be my diagnosis.”
One mystery cleared up—and she wished with all her heart that it’d had an easier solution. “I beat you to it. That means you can’t charge me.”
“All right,” Dr. Kilpatrick agreed, tongue in cheek. “I’ll just bill you for the urinalysis. And the friendly advice.”
She could use some advice, Laurel thought. Real advice. “Which is?”
“Enjoy.”
Laurel rolled her eyes as she crossed her arms before her. “Easy for you to say. You don’t have to face a man who’s stockpiling tons of brochures on summer cabins from three different states.”
“He’ll be thrilled,” the doctor promised.
“He’ll be in shock,” Laurel countered. Real concern began to set in. What if the news was too much for Jason? “Got any smelling salts I can take with me?”
Dr. Kilpatrick opened the door. “You have my number. Call if you need me.”
Laurel laughed. “That’s all Jason needs. An ob-gyn attending to him.”
Laurel’s smile faded the moment the door was closed again. She slid off the table, trying to stay one step ahead of the numbing shock that threatened to completely swallow her up.
This was absurd.
Unreal.
How in heaven’s name could she be pregnant? Weren’t eggs supposed to dry up at her age? She slipped on her underwear, then hooked her bra. Wasn’t that what the whole ticking-biological-clock thing was all about? Having babies before it was too late? Before she couldn’t have any? It looked as if she could go on having babies until she was an octogenarian.
Laurel pulled her turtleneck sweater over her head, then punched through her arms.
“This breaking news,” she mumbled to herself in disbelief. “Eighty-seven-year-old Laurel Mitchell has just given birth to her twentieth baby. Someone stop this woman for the good of humanity.”
With her panty hose still in her hand, Laurel leaned her hip against the table and sighed. How had this happened? She knew how it happened, she upbraided herself, putting on first one leg, then the other. She’d gotten lax. At the end of last year, she’d given in to Jason’s pressure and finally stopped taking her birth control pills. He thought it wasn’t too much of a risk.
Well, guess what, big guy, we’re pregnant. How’s that for a risk?
She was on the cusp of menopause, experiencing her own personal heat waves while others were bundling up in sweaters and jackets. She’d assumed that her birthing years were over. That any occasional romp she enjoyed with her husband was deemed safe for all concerned.
Well, you deemed wrong, Laurie old girl.
Old girl.
God, she was too old for this. Too old for morning sickness. Too old for prenatal vitamins and too old to be chasing around after a toddler.
Yet, here it was, happening.
She spread her hand out over her as-yet-flat stomach. There was a teeny-tiny occupant inside now, no bigger than a speck. But he was growing. Growing by the moment. Frowning even as she stood here in this nice, pastel-colored room, agonizing over it.
Him, she corrected herself. Agonizing over him. All she’d ever managed to produce was boys. There was no reason to believe this newest passenger would be any different.
Oh God, this was different.
She was forty-five, for crying out loud. What was God thinking, letting her get pregnant?
“This isn’t funny,” she murmured, looking up toward the ceiling. “Not funny at all.”
And the one who would be laughing the least would be her husband.
Slipping on her shoes, she closed her eyes. How was she ever going to explain this to Jason?
CHAPTER 2
Pregnant.
She could remember the first time she’d ever heard that word applied to her. She and Jason had been married just a little over a year. Jason had graduated from UCLA just that past June and she was set to get her liberal arts diploma that coming June. They felt empowered, as if nothing could stop them. The whole world was wide open for them and they were going to take advantage of it. Right after they took a little time off to do some traveling. That had always been the plan: graduate, then travel a little bit before settling down to a job and starting a family.
The best-laid plans of mice and men…
When Dr. Kilpatrick had told her she was pregnant, her reaction had been bittersweet. Being pregnant meant closing the door on being young and carefree. It meant opening the door to parenthood, which was something both of them wanted and anticipated with relish—sometime in the near future, but not right at that moment.
“So we’re a little ahead of schedule,” Jason had laughed when she’d told him the news.
She’d come home with a loaf of French bread and candlesticks, intent on creating as much of a romantic setting as she could before telling him. Jason had gotten the news out of her within ten seconds of her closing the door to their tiny furnished apartment.
He’d hugged her, lifting her off the ground. He’d stopped short of spinning her around when she’d protested, saying her stomach contents were threatening to revisit the outside world.
“What about the road trip?” she’d reminded him when her feet were firmly planted back on the floor again. She knew he’d had his heart set on it and had spent weeks planning it, in between going to work. There were maps littering every available flat space in the apartment, many of them with red lines marking possible routes to take.
With a wide grin, he’d shrugged it off. “Plenty of time for a road trip once this little fella makes his debut.” He’d patted her stomach, then suddenly dropped to his knees, resting his cheek against her abdomen and talking to her belly button as if it was a direct connection to the baby within. “Don’t give your mom any trouble, now. She really doesn’t look very good in green.”
She’d loved Jason so much at that very moment, she’d thought her heart was going to burst. “We’ll go on that road trip as soon as the baby’s old enough to travel, honey,” she’d promised him with feeling.
Jason rose to his feet, a dazed, happy look of disbelief on his face. “It’s a date.”
And then he’d gone on to seal the bargain with a deep, amorous kiss that had made her recall just how it was that she’d gotten into this state to begin with. Because Jason had undone her so quickly, she had completely forgotten all about taking any precautions against this very thing.
But as soon as Luke—named after Jason’s late father—was old enough to take on the overdue road trip, Morgan was more than just a gleam in Jason’s eye. He was a bump in her stomach. A rather large bump.
Christopher came two years later.
Within a few months after her twenty-fifth birthday, Laurel found herself the harried mother of three children, all under the age of five. Her own mother presented her with a large eleven-by-fourteen book meant for the elementary-school set entitled, Where Babies Come From.
Her mother’s idea of a joke, Laurel had thought at the time. “I know where babies come from, Mother,” she told the woman who had only given birth to two children herself. “They come from heaven, holding a small piece of it in their chubby little hands when they arrive.”
And she’d meant that with all her heart. Because holding her babies in her arms was like holding heaven.
But that didn’t mean life was peaceful by any stretch of the imagination. Her three, overactive boys had each been a trial in their own unique way, sending both her and Jason to the edge of their tempers and to the center of their ability to love.
It was, all in all, a trial by fire. Three trials by fire. But there wasn’t a minute of that hectic, insane life that she would have eliminated—with the possible exception of when Morgan had brought home that jar of black widow spider eggs and they had hatched overnight. The babies had gotten loose, crawling out of the holes he’d punched in the top of the metal lid.
Frantic, envisioning them all dying of spider bites in their beds, she’d almost insisted that they move out of the house. Jason had her agree to a compromise by getting an exterminator at a moment’s notice.
But even the black widow spider incident had had its upside. Because of that, when she’d gone to the local real estate agent, she wound up getting friendly with the man who ran the agency. So much so that she began to seriously think about getting a part-time job selling houses as a way to bring in extra money. True to his word, Ed Callaghan signed her up with his agency the very day she passed her course and received her real estate license.
She found that she was good at finding just the right house for people. And just like that, Laurel had a career. A career she still had and a livelihood she could easily count on. When the last of her boys had gone into the first grade, she began to put in more hours. Now she had three plaques on the wall of her cubicle proclaiming her to be the saleswoman of the year. Jason called her his go-getter.
Go-getters didn’t go get pregnant. Not if they didn’t want to be, she thought glumly as she drove onto the main drag within the city she’d called home for the past twenty years. Once upon a time Molten Parkway had been nothing more than a two-lane road that went from one end of the town to the other, the only path to either of the two freeways that went through Bedford. But now they were a city, not a town, and Molten was a major thoroughfare with three lanes whizzing by in either direction.
Whizzing, that was, in the off hours. During peak hours, the road was clogged with cars either intent on taking one of the two freeways back to wherever it was they came from each morning or returning home from some other region. Molten Parkway found itself the scene of the eternal Southern California shuffle of vehicles. And it was getting worse with each passing month.
Laurel had seen Bedford, like her family, grow over the years. Often she found herself wishing that Bedford would finally stop growing and stay the way it was.
She never thought that she’d find herself wishing the same thing about her family. Certainly not at this stage of her life.
She remembered right after she’d brought Christopher home from the hospital and she and Jason had captured a quiet moment to themselves after Luke and Morgan had collapsed into a fitful sleep.
