Читать книгу Rebel In A Small Town - Kristina Knight - Страница 14

CHAPTER FOUR

MARA STOOD LOOKING around her suite at the B and B on Friday morning, trying to find anything that could delay her trip to the orchard. There was nothing. The beds were made, the breakfast dishes on the tray in the hallway. Zeke was clean and dry and happy. Cheryl had left a half hour before. There was nothing more Mara could do on the Mallard’s account until Mike returned from vacation on Monday. She straightened the shampoo and body wash containers on the small vanity.

She had been in town for only a few days but had yet to make the trip to the orchard. Had spoken to Gran and Collin briefly on the phone once, but hadn’t told them about Zeke. Hadn’t told them about James.

All that would change in less than twenty minutes. She could only hope they wouldn’t walk away from her as James had done last night.

There was a big chance they would, and that would be on her. Because she hadn’t told them how very much she had missed them over the past year and a half. She had just cut them out. She’d invented reasons to cancel trips to the orchard, skipping phone calls and video chats. She had avoided them just as she had avoided James.

Damn it, if she could do the past two years over, she would have done them differently. Scratch that—not just the past two. The past ten, because from the moment she left Slippery Rock for college, she had been avoiding any kind of emotional entanglement, especially those that might mean pain. She kept their interaction superficial on those quick holiday visits. If her time with them wasn’t light and fun, her family would realize just how much she wanted to be part of their unit, and that would make it harder to stay away. Back then, she couldn’t be part of them, though, not without putting James’s future at risk because of that stupid prank. With her out of town, the investigation into what had happened that night had gone cold. But the town had their assumptions and even those quick trips home at first had started the talk up again. Then, once she was pregnant, she couldn’t because that would entail revealing the baby’s father. Telling them about James would put her—and him—right in the middle of town gossip. Could land one or the other of them in jail, and what good would that do? Was there a statute of limitations on vandalism?

Mara crossed the room to fluff the pillows on the bed and watched Zeke for a moment. He was sitting up, banging his baby fists against the tiny piano keys on his favorite mirrored activity set. His hair was the same color as James’s, but his eyes were more hazel. He was a good boy, a smart boy, and he deserved a father who would love him.

James was meant to be a lawman, destined to be sheriff. At some point he would find a pretty woman who would make the perfect sheriff’s wife, who would work with local charities alongside the ministers’ wives. He deserved that kind of life and, while she might crave the June Cleaver fantasy of life, Mara knew fairy tales rarely came true for people like her. If James couldn’t love Zeke, then she would love Zeke enough for both of them. But James had to be the one to walk away, and not just because he’d been caught off guard by the news. She would have to talk to him again, and soon. Right now, though, she needed to talk to her family.

She would have to face not only her lies of omission to James but also her family’s judgment. And she could only hope the gossip about graduation night would stay buried. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t matter that she was now a security expert or that James was a fine sheriff’s deputy. The only thing that would matter to Slippery Rock was that they had put the school in jeopardy.

Once she repaired her relationship with her family, she would fix this thing with James. Would make him understand that she’d needed to get herself into an emotionally healthy place before she could face him. God, that sounded like a lame, made-up excuse. She really hadn’t thought this whole thing through. There were thousands of times she could have told James he was a father. Phone call, text message, Skype, social media. She had all his contact information.

And if those weren’t immature solutions to an all-too-adult problem, Mara wasn’t sure what was. Her therapist would have a field day with her trying to tell James he was a father by cell phone, social media or Skype. She might as well fully revert to her teenage self and break up with a guy by text message.

She considered contacting him to set up one of their clandestine meetings, and then telling him once she had him alone. That had seemed just as awful as telling him over the phone. So she didn’t call at all. The longer she’d put off contacting him, the harder that call became until she’d convinced herself she would simply go home to break the news. There had been plenty of reasons not to come to Slippery Rock—her work, her therapy, Zeke cutting teeth, having a bad cold. Damn it, it was Cheryl quitting that had finally started Mara seriously considering coming back. Not because she needed babysitters, but because of Cheryl’s commitment to her family. Mara wanted that connection, that commitment for herself. Then the tornado hit, and she’d known she couldn’t keep making excuses. She had to tell James. Had to face her family. She couldn’t continue to be the kind of runaway her own parents were.

James had already walked away, and, God, why suddenly did James not wanting to be part of Zeke’s life hurt so bad? Until she’d seen him do it last night, the possibility of him stepping out of Zeke’s life had seemed so much simpler than sharing parenting duties.

There was every chance her family would walk away, too.

“Okay, Mara, you have the plan. Now get out of this B and B and set things in motion,” she said, standing. She turned off Zeke’s activity stand, and he shook his fists at her in annoyance. “We have an appointment,” she said, and he grinned as if he knew what that meant. Probably it was just gas. He still smiled when he had gas.

Mara blew out a breath, picked up Zeke and slung the colorful tote she used as a diaper bag over her shoulder. She could keep looking for a reason to stay holed up in the B and B or she could be a grown-up and face the music with her family.

She was saving the rest of her conversation with James for another time, though. After last night, she was unprepared to tell him he had no responsibilities where Zeke was concerned. Where she was concerned. She gently tweaked Zeke’s nose.

“Okay, little guy, here we go. Don’t worry. They’re going to love you,” she said, hating the slight emphasis on that last word. Gran hadn’t turned her, Collin and Amanda away when they were little, but Mara was an adult now. An adult who shouldn’t have kept this part of her life secret for so long.

Zeke put his pudgy hands on her cheeks and mumbled something that sounded peculiarly like, “Don’t worry, mama.” It was impossible. Zeke had two words in his vocabulary at this point, and neither was don’t, worry or ma. He said dog periodically and had said ball a handful of times.

Still, his mumbling steadied her, and she rested her forehead on his for a moment, breathing in the scent of powder and lotion and little boy. After a moment, her stomach muscles relaxed, and breathing no longer felt as if she were dragging air through passages lined with sharpened sticks.

Downstairs, she locked Zeke into his car seat, then buckled herself into the driver’s seat. He waved his hands as he watched the world go by out the rear window. The narrow streets of downtown Slippery Rock rolled by, opening up to the wider state highway that led to the orchard. Despite being a weekday, there wasn’t much traffic on the road. She passed a couple of farm trucks and a few minivans, but the cattle and alpacas—she would have to ask Collin when alpacas had come to Slippery Rock—outnumbered the humans she passed. Everyone lifted their fingers in the familiar steering wheel wave she remembered from her teenage years.

No one staffed the small roadside stand her grandfather built the year Collin turned twelve and she turned eleven, and she pulled into the drive leading to the orchard.

A few stumps were still visible in the apple orchard, but saplings outnumbered the stumps. She spotted the red roof of the big barn in the distance, and as her SUV cleared the drive, the old house came into view. Red-roofed like the barn, the two-story farmhouse hadn’t changed. A porch swing rocked in the light breeze. The steps leading up to the door were lined with Gran’s snapdragons. The tall oak still stood in the middle of the drive with a rope swing hanging from a branch.

She’d learned to swing on the old tractor seat. Had pushed Amanda when she was little. Had hidden in the branches with Collin when their parents had shown up unexpectedly one spring. She and Collin had been petrified their parents would make them go to whatever cramped and dirty apartment they lived in, but a few hours later their parents drove away. Granddad came to sit in the swing, pretending to talk to himself as he reassured the two of them that they didn’t have to go anywhere.

She wanted to go inside. Wanted to push open the door and announce herself like she belonged there. Well, Gran had always said this was her home.

Mara gathered Zeke and the baby bag and walked up the steps and into the house. The same hardwood floors greeted her, the same overstuffed furniture. The TV was still in the corner near the fireplace, the sofa under the big picture window. To her left, the dining room led to the kitchen and the family room.

“Anybody home?” she called out, because usually there was some kind of noise inside the house, but today there was nothing.

“Back here, sweetheart.” She heard her grandmother’s voice from the kitchen and started in that direction. “Just putting a pie for the weekend farmers’ market in the oven. They’re finishing up the new roof this afternoon and—” Gran stopped talking when Mara crossed the threshold. “You have a baby.”

Gran’s blue eyes, so similar to Mara’s own, widened. Zeke waved his fist in the air, then buried his face in Mara’s shoulder. He was a happy, well-adjusted baby, but new people always made him a bit shy.

“I do.” Mara was unsure what to say, how to read the shock on Gran’s face. Good shock? She seemed a little pale, and the knuckles had turned white from their tight grip on the countertop. Gran broke her hip earlier this year, and Collin had been very worried. Mara didn’t want Gran to collapse. Maybe she should have waited until Collin was at the house before walking in. “Gran, why don’t you sit down?” Mara took her grandmother’s arm, leading her to the Formica-topped table while balancing Zeke on her hip.

Gran brushed Mara’s hands away. “You have a baby.” She squeezed Mara’s hand. “He has your grandfather’s chin.” Then she smacked her hand against Mara’s shoulder. She winced, more from surprise than pain. “Why didn’t you tell us, Butter Bean?” Her eyes narrowed and she glared at Mara for a moment, but behind the glare was something that looked a lot like love. Support.

This, this almost immediate acceptance was beyond any of Mara’s expectations. She closed her eyes for a moment. It was going to be okay. It would take time, especially with James, but things would work out. She could do this. She would do this.

“Mara?” Gran’s voice brought her back to the cozy kitchen, and she sat in the chair across from her grandmother.

All the reasons she’d kept Zeke from her family tumbled through her mind. She wanted to get herself together. She hadn’t told James. But all of those reasons skirted around the truth she’d been afraid to admit even to herself. And in this kitchen, the one where she’d eaten butter beans and declared they were the only bean she would ever like, where she’d cried when the school put her in the advanced program, where she’d run after every minor and major scrape in her life, she couldn’t tell a half-truth.

“I was afraid,” she said. She hadn’t even told the therapist about her fear. That Gran would think badly of her, that this would be the thing that caused her family finally to turn away from her. She knew it was silly. Babies brought families together, at least in books and on television. In her specific case, though, babies made adults do crazy, irresponsible, unforgivable things.

Gran’s soft hand cupped her cheek, and her expression softened. “Butter Bean, what did you have to be afraid of?”

So many things. That she would ruin her life or James’s. That Gran wouldn’t understand.

“That I couldn’t do it. That I wasn’t made to be a mother. That you’d be disappointed.” She paused, ran her hand over Zeke’s baby-fine hair and said, “That I’d leave all the child-rearing in your more-than-capable hands.”

Gran clucked at that. “When have you ever left anything you really wanted for someone else to handle?”

“I’m so like them, like Samson and Maddie, though. I like traveling, I like living out of my suitcase, I like not being tied down—”

“I could never be disappointed in you. Worried for you, yes. Disappointed? Not in a million years.” Gran seemed to consider her next words carefully. “I love my son, but I stopped...trying to understand Samson a long time ago. And you are like him, but in all the good ways. You inherited his excitement for the unknown, his natural curiosity. He could never seem to find a balance, but you? Sweetheart, you travel for work, but you’ve worked for the same company since college. You might not live here or visit often enough for my liking, but you call every week. You remember birthdays and anniversaries. You are a responsible, kindhearted woman, and I’m proud that I had a hand in raising you.”

Mara smiled and leaned into Gran’s gentle touch. She closed her eyes and sighed. “I’m here now. Zeke and I are going to stop being afraid of things. We’re going to face everything head-on.”

Gran put her hand over her heart and her eyes glistened. “Zeke?” The word was a whisper in the quiet room.

Mara nodded. “I named him for Granddad. Ezekiel Tyler—”

The back door opened before she could say his last name, which was probably just as well. Until she got things hammered out between her and James, it was best to keep that to herself. She turned and saw her brother, looking tanned and relaxed, in the doorway.

Collin looked from Gran to Mara and the baby. He blinked and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, and then stood a bit straighter. Collin tilted his head to the side as if considering all the options for a baby being in their kitchen.

“I guess you weren’t kidding when you said you had something to tell us,” he said. Collin put the ball cap he wore in the orchard on a peg in the mudroom, then continued into the kitchen. He grabbed a bottle of water from the refrigerator and took a long drink.

“Collin,” Gran began, but Mara stopped her.

“It’s okay. Yeah, pretty big news. Something I thought needed to be shared in person,” Mara said. Her voice shook only a little, and for that she was thankful. Gran was the first hurdle in her family; Collin would be the second and probably the biggest. She and he had been close until she became pregnant. “I have a son.”

“He doesn’t look like a newborn.”

Mara swallowed. “I know. I had some things... I needed to figure out a few things. Before I told you and Gran and Amanda.”

“And the things are figured out now?”

Mara opened her mouth to say yes, but she didn’t want to lie. “Mostly.”

“You’re okay?”

She nodded. “Good job, good health benefits.” Mara wasn’t sure what more she could tell either Gran or Collin without first talking to James. “And now I’m home.”

Collin put the water bottle down and crossed the room. He put his index finger under Zeke’s chin, and the little boy grinned at him. “He looks like Amanda did when she was a baby.”

“He has your grandfather’s chin,” Gran added. “And his name.”

Collin’s eyes widened, and Mara nodded. “I call him Zeke.”

“Hello, Zeke,” Collin said after a long moment. “I’m your uncle, Collin.”