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“I’ll be in touch,” he said.
He thought she nodded. Hoped to God she wasn’t crying. And couldn’t wait to hear the door shut behind her.
He didn’t breathe much easier after it happened. Her news lingered. He was going to be a father. With a woman he barely knew.
He, who was no longer capable of caring about a living human being, was going to be a father.
John had to get out. Go somewhere. Find an escape.
He made it to the window in time to see Caroline drive off.
The sun was still shining.
CHAPTER THREE
CAROLINE TOOK the first room she looked at. Her landlord, Mrs. Bea Howard, reminded her of old Mrs. Thomaswhite who ran the bakery back home in Grainville. With graying hair and wrinkled hands, she was plump, cheerful and seemed to know everything there was to know about everyone in town. A good source, Caroline surmised, for stories about her sister.
And someone to stay away from, in case she revealed more of herself than she wanted anyone to know.
The room was fairly small. The predominant piece of furniture was an old-fashioned four-poster bed that stood a good three-and-a-half-feet off the ground and boasted a down-filled homemade granny-square quilt in all the colors of the rainbow. There was a long dresser with a white lace runner, six drawers and a full-size mirror, plus a nightstand that had a lamp bright enough to read by. There was also a closet in which she could store the few belongings she’d brought with her. Best of all was the desk along the far wall directly beneath a window that looked out over the quiet street. Behind the desk was a high-speed Internet hook up. And a plug. Her computer could be up and running by nightfall.
There was no room for Jesse’s old bassinet, waiting at home in Grainville.
Mrs. Howard lived alone but had two other tenants—both of them single women who worked at Montford and had not yet returned from visiting family over the holidays. Caroline handed over first and last month’s rent and didn’t ask if Mrs. Howard allowed children.
Monday morning, after a sporadic night’s rest accompanied by a couple of long nocturnal visits with her computer, Caroline quickly showered in the bathroom she shared with the other tenants—both women she had yet to meet—pulled on her daily attire of loose-fitting jeans, sweater and boots. Then she grabbed the instructions she’d printed off an Internet map service to get to Montford University. Craning her neck, she absorbed every impression of Shelter Valley that she could process. Harmon Hardware looked like a slightly smaller, and equally old, rendition of Jim’s Hardware back home and the Valley Diner a larger, more modern place than the diner cum pub in Grainville. Weber’s Department Store had a display of baby equipment in the window.
With butterflies swarming in her stomach, she made the last turn into the university parking lot. Large old buildings lay before her amid a breathtaking expanse of perfectly green lawns broken up with the occasional cement table and bench. While the place was currently deserted, she could envision students sitting at those tables, enjoying the sunshine while they grabbed a quick lunch or studied. She imagined couples huddled together on the benches, having private conversations. She counted at least three cement-mounted swings on white latticework gazebos—a far cry from the splintery version that hung on her porch at home.
It was only the second week in January, still the semester break, so there was little chance that her sister was anywhere in the vicinity. But as she filled out the necessary papers, retrieved required signatures, met with the proper people to register for her college classes, Caroline strained for a glimpse of a not too tall, fairly thin redhead with green eyes and an opal on her finger.
“Here you go, ma’am—this is your copy.” The skinny young dark-haired man behind the counter at the registrar’s office smiled almost condescendingly as he handed Caroline a copy of her first-ever college schedule.
“Classes start on the nineteenth. A week from Wednesday.”
“Thank you.” She smiled back, not because she appreciated his making her feel like an incompetent dinosaur, but because she’d seen the schedule. Relaxing for the first time in months, she almost skipped out into the Shelter Valley, fifty-degree sunshine. Right there on the first line, it guaranteed that she’d meet her sister. Along with a couple of required freshman courses and two English classes, Caroline had been admitted to Phyllis’s Introduction to Psychology.
CAROLINE HAD BEEN in town three days. She’d spent much of the past twenty-four hours staring at her meager wardrobe, hot with humiliation at the prospect of sitting in class with eighteen-year-olds, looking like a bumpkin off the farm. But she’d need most of the cattle money for rent, and panicked at the thought of spending any more of her little nest egg from Randy’s life insurance than she had to—even at a secondhand store. She had no idea how long that money would have to last.
And there was a baby to think about….
For once the Internet produced no solution. Tuesday afternoon, sitting at her desk in a room that was spotlessly tidy in spite of the cramped quarters, with paper stacked neatly on the floor beneath the desk, and all the other supplies she’d brought from home beside her, Caroline didn’t know whether to cry or get angry. Web site after Web site was only confirming what she already knew. Her appearance was wildly out-of-date. She could pull her hair up into a ponytail—a fashionable clip would cost a couple of dollars—but after that…
Even if she was lucky enough to find more fashionable clothes at a secondhand store, she’d have to spend fifty dollars or more to update herself, and that fifty dollars could go toward the coming doctor’s bills.
A tinny rendition of Beethoven’s Fifth sounded and she jumped, looking around to figure out where the sound was coming from. Then she remembered the cell phone in the drawstring bag she’d made out of one of Randy’s old shirts a couple of years before.
Only three people had that number. Her mother. Her son. And John Strickland.
Scrambling for the phone, her fingers tangled in the rope threaded through a casing at the top of the purse, holding it closed. If it was Jesse, she didn’t want to miss his call. Talking to her son made her happier than anything else on earth.
And if it was her mom—if there were more problems with her dad…
The number on the display had a Shelter Valley area code.
She answered it anyway.
“Caroline? This is John Strickland.” Even on the phone, his voice sounded just as she remembered it.
“Oh. Hi.”
“Am I bothering you?”
Her hands were shaking, her stomach queasy. Did that count? “No.”
“I’d like to see you.”
Glancing around her room with desperate eyes, Caroline said, “Why?”
“To talk.”
She didn’t want to talk to him. She’d done her duty where he was concerned. He made her uncomfortable. Unsure of herself. Around John Strickland, pregnant Caroline Prater felt like an idiot.
She heard herself saying, “Okay.”
“Would you like to go for dinner? We could drive down to Phoenix.”
She’d driven through Phoenix on her way to Shelter Valley. She’d told herself she’d go back to explore as soon as she could afford the gas. Which wouldn’t be until she had a better idea of how much having this baby was going to cost.
Growing warm with embarrassment, Caroline said. “I was planning to eat here.” Board was included with the room.
“Can’t you let me take you out? I’d like to. My treat.”
She opened her mouth to deliver an adamant no, turned away from the bed where she’d dropped her bag and caught the trapped look in her eyes in the mirror attached to the dresser across from her.
“You don’t owe me anything,” she said.
“I know you really believe that, and maybe that’s why I really want to.”
Hot again, she sat down. “I’m not…um…that woman you were with in December. She was just…” Caroline swallowed. Silence hung on the line. “I was—it was my first Christmas without Randy…um, my husband…and, well I don’t usually act like that.”
“I’m not sure what you’re trying to tell me.”
“I’m not interested in you—like that.” Her palms were sweaty with the effort of asserting herself. This was all so new to Caroline, a woman who’d spent the first thirty-four years of her life trying to fit in by giving in. Who’d grown up in a small town where people still defined a woman’s worth by how happy she made her husband.
He didn’t say anything, and Caroline half hoped he’d decided against dinner. Or ever talking to her again. Except that might be difficult considering the circumstances.
“I can’t go on a date.”
John sighed—which sounded as if it was accompanied by a slight chuckle. “Caroline, you are unlike anyone I’ve ever met.”
Was that a good or bad thing?
“We need to talk. I need to eat. You’ve already spent at least some money on a test to diagnose a condition for which I am half-responsible. I can pay back my half with tonight’s meal. From there on, hopefully, we’ll have reached some other arrangement.”
“I told you, I don’t want anything from you. This is my…situation. I’ll deal with it.”
“The child is mine.” There was a certain hardness to his voice now. “I will share in the responsibility.”
Caroline sighed, too. She didn’t mean to—at least not out loud. But he was right; there was no way of avoiding a conversation between the two of them.
God, what a mess.
“Okay, do you want me to meet you somewhere? Or I can drive to your house.”
“Call me old-fashioned, but I’d rather pick you up.” John’s deep voice brought peace even while his words frightened her. “What’s your address?”
She didn’t want to give it to him. Didn’t want to give anyone more information about her than necessary. She had too many secrets.
In a voice that was thick with tangled emotions, Caroline gave John her address.
“I’VE DONE A LOT of thinking in the past couple of days.”
They were having dinner at a somewhat dark restaurant off the I-10 freeway in Ahwautukee, a suburb, John had explained, in south Phoenix. This was the first bit of personal conversation he’d offered.
“I can imagine,” she told him, studying the dinner salad she’d ordered and had only picked at. Across from her in the maroon leather booth, he was finishing off a cup of potato soup. He’d dressed casually, in jeans and a beige pullover with slip-on casual leather shoes.
She’d never been out with a man with slip-on casual leather shoes.
At least in Phoenix, with all the Old West cowboy overtones, she didn’t feel so out of place in her boots. And her blue jeans, faded flower blouse and brown cardigan were clean.
He glanced over. “Would you like to wait until after dinner to talk?”
The drive had been spent on a horticulture lesson about desert cacti and other flowering plants—much more information than she’d already learned from the Internet.
“No, this is fine.” Anything not to prolong the evening.
Nodding, he set down his spoon. “It occurred to me that I need to tell you some things about myself so you can understand what I have to say.”
Caroline took a bite of lettuce and cucumber. The baby that had yet to make itself physically known in any way other than through a little queasiness and two solid lines on a home pregnancy test, needed sustenance.
There were quite a few patrons in the restaurant, which, she’d been glad to note, had a varied but not too expensive menu. And the booths were far enough apart, private enough with pillars and high backs between them, to allow for intimate conversation.
Still, she would’ve been more comfortable in a fast-food hamburger joint.
“Other than determining that we were both unattached in December—and because of that, lonely going into the holidays—we never broached any information about our romantic lives.”
Glancing up at him, Caroline nodded, uncomfortable with the direction he seemed to be taking. His dark eyes were open and sincere.
Would her baby’s eyes be that brown? Jesse had green eyes like hers.
“I’m a widower.”
“Oh.” And when surprise didn’t seem an appropriate response, she said, “I’m sorry.” She paused, then added, “So am I. A widow, I mean.” Her fork hung suspended in midair, clasped in fingers that were holding it so tightly the metal was leaving indentations in her skin.
Her widowhood certainly wasn’t a secret. She just felt so vulnerable, talking about it.
Forearms resting on the table, he toyed with his fork. “How long’s it been for you?”
“Six months.” And she hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours at a time since.
“Six years here.”
She wanted to ask him if it got any easier, but couldn’t get that intimate.
“Sometimes it feels like it’s only been six months,” he continued, staring down at the fork he still fingered.
The man’s lost look drew Caroline’s sympathy. “What happened?”
He raised his head and then lowered it again. “Car accident.”
“Was she alone?” Randy had been. And visions of him lying there hurt, frightened, needing her, haunted her daily.
He shook his head, dark brown hair falling over his forehead as his gaze met hers. “We were in a cab in New York, coming from a Broadway show.”
Oh, God. She’d never been to New York. Or to a play, for that matter, if you didn’t include the elementary-school variety. But she could imagine being on vacation, having fun, completely unsuspecting of the tragedy that would occur.
“She lived for a couple of hours,” he continued. The food was taking too long to get there. Caroline wanted the interruption more for him than for herself.
“I begged her to hold on. All the time we were in the ambulance, trying to maneuver through Manhattan traffic, I pleaded with her to breathe.”
Caroline had a feeling the woman would have done everything in her power to honor this man’s request.
“What was her name?”
“Meredith.” His eyes grew vacant, and Caroline had a pretty good idea he’d fallen into what she’d come to know as the dark abyss. A place where lost lives and broken dreams waited to taunt those left behind.
“My husband’s name was Randy.”
He blinked, an expression of compassion and understanding replacing the emptiness. “Was he sick?”
She shook her head. Not unless you counted a lack of self-esteem and the resultant relationship with a bottle. “Tractor accident on our farm.”
“How old was he?”
“Same as me. Thirty-four.”
“Meredith was thirty-one. We were planning to have kids,” he said, more to himself than to her. “She was an investment broker and wanted to build a clientele so she could work from home and be able to stay with the babies.”
