Читать книгу And Baby Makes Six - Linda Markowiak - Страница 7

TWO WEEKS LATER, what was left of Jenny Litton’s world fell apart.

She stood at the sink in the ladies’ room at Kyle Development and pressed a cool, wet paper towel to her cheek. That helped some. A moment before, she’d been in the toilet stall with dry heaves, and her whole face was flushed. She swallowed, trying to quell the nausea. As the manager of the real-estate development company, she had no time to be sick.

Perspiration was beaded on her upper lip and she dabbed there, too. Then she wadded the paper towel and took out her lipstick. She smeared Plantation Rose across her lips with a hand that quivered slightly.

Giving in to a sudden impulse, she leaned forward and pressed her forehead to the glass of the mirror. Cool and smooth, it felt comforting. She opened her eyes and stared at her own face a fraction of an inch away. Apart from the redness in her cheeks, she looked much the same. Her makeup understated and carefully blended, her silver-blond hair well cut and turned under at the ends. Small studs in her ears. Nothing flashy for Jenny Litton. Nobody from here to Savannah would ever accuse her of flash.

But even as she looked at her own reflection, even as she should have felt satisfaction at that last thought, her eyes filled with tears.

Sad tears, because she missed Kathy. Kathy had been her best friend, the only one who’d known about the baby. And she missed Crystal. She’d talked to the little girl every night by telephone. Crystal didn’t have too much to say, and the words unsaid bothered Jenny a lot.

She straightened, wishing she hadn’t let Crystal go with Mitch Oliver, even though Jenny’s lawyer had insisted it was the only thing she could do. You don’t have a case. You’ll hurt the child more if you fight for her—let her think she’s going to stay—and then lose her anyway. If Kathy really hadn’t wanted Mitch Oliver to be Crystal’s guardian, she would have changed her will. The lawyer had reminded Jenny—as if she’d needed any reminders—that she had enough to worry about in her own life.

Jenny’s stomach gave another quick heave, and she pressed a hand to it. At any moment one of the other women who worked at Kyle Development might walk through that door, and it wouldn’t do for the polished-up and buttoned-down Jenny Litton to be standing in front of a mirror watching herself cry.

She pasted on a smile and headed out the door.

“Oh, there you are.” Her secretary, Yvonne Rolland, looked up from her desk as Jenny passed. “It’s eight o’clock. I thought maybe you weren’t in yet. That would be strange, non?” Yvonne had a French mother and was given to sprinkling in a little of the language.

Jenny nodded, taking a stack of mail Yvonne handed her, wondering when Yvonne would notice how much time she was spending in the ladies’ room. In a few weeks it wouldn’t matter anyway; everyone would know her secret.

She’d told Kathy. Kathy, I’m pregnant and I’m scared. Delane doesn’t want the baby. Kathy had looked shocked for less than a second and then she’d hugged her friend. Well, I never thought this would happen to you. Okay, I know how much you loved Delane. It’s going to be tough seeing him at the office, but you’ll be okay. Women have babies on their own these days.

Well, maybe other women made those kinds of mistakes, but Jennifer Litton didn’t, and the shame of it washed over her.

She’d slept with her boss.

She bit her lip, took a few steps away and pretended to sort through her mail. As office manager, Jenny supervised a relatively small staff—just a couple of secretaries, the payroll clerk and the eight-person sales crew that sold upscale properties in Hilton Head. Her co-workers knew she’d broken up with Delane a month ago, but not why.

“Uh, Jenny?” Yvonne hesitated, then said, “I thought you’d like to know. Delane is back in town. He’s coming by the office today at ten. He wants to have a meeting with everyone. It’s important, he said. You’ll need to be there, too.”

She squeezed her eyes shut for a second. Not today, she thought.

“I’m sorry,” her secretary said softly.

“It’s all right.” She’d fallen out of love with Delane Kyle for good the day he’d offered to pay for an abortion, but not offered to take any responsibility for their baby. Reflexively, she put a light hand on her belly. Don’t worry, baby, I want you very, very much.

“Well, I’m glad you’re not mooning over him. I know it’ll be awkward.” Yvonne averted her eyes.

Jenny put her chin up. “I can handle it.” She’d known that if she kept her job at Kyle Development, she’d certainly see Delane from time to time.

She wanted more than anything to turn tail and run, to go someplace where nobody would ever need to know about the circumstances of her pregnancy.

But she was hanging on to her job. Overseeing the Hilton Head office was a respectable job, one with good pay and benefits. Benefits the baby would need.

Besides, she wasn’t the only one who ought to be ashamed. Let Delane Kyle feel the good hot scald of it. Let him watch her belly grow and go home and try to sleep at night!

The thought of his discomfort gave her some satisfaction, and by the time she and her co-workers gathered in the large conference room, Jenny felt more in control.

“Wonder what’s up?” That was Rick Caldwell, one of Kyle’s best salespeople. He poured himself a cup of coffee and took his seat at the shiny conference table facing Jenny. “I mean besides the obvious.”

Sales of the expensive condominiums ringing Hilton Head’s newest golf course had hit a bit of a snag.

Rick stroked his mustache. “I can’t understand it. The economy’s good, and the population’s aging and playing more golf. Hilton Head’s been overbuilt, but hell, when hasn’t it been?”

No one answered. People stirred their coffee or shuffled papers. Jenny finally spoke up. “Things will work out. I really think this slump is just a hiccup.”

Rick gave her a thumbs-up. “Yeah, you’re right. Not like me to be so down, and really, I do think with some more time, some more advertising in the bigger newspapers…Hell, maybe if Delane would stop being such a playboy in Charleston and pay a little more attention to what’s going on down here—” He stopped abruptly.

“That’s all right,” Jenny said quickly. She looked around the room, and realized people were watching her while pretending not to. “Don’t worry about it. I told you, Delane and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.” She swallowed. She was respected at the office, but she knew what people thought—she was a good manager, fair and organized, but a little cool, a little unapproachable. Even though she’d got used to it, the realization sometimes hurt.

One of the sales staff, an older man, cleared his throat. “I wish Delane didn’t have so much on his plate. So many projects going forward so fast, we could use him here…”

There was some generalized grumbling, and Jenny was grateful she was no longer the center of attention. She checked her watch. Ten after ten. Delane was late as usual. The conference room was glass on three sides, bright with a nice view. But the sun streaming in made it warm. That was the reason she had perspiration on her lip again. She took a quick swipe with her finger and her eye caught the portrait that hung on the one solid wall.

Delane Kyle, the youngest son of one of Charleston, South Carolina’s, premier families. He’d apparently been considered a bit wild in his younger days, but when he’d come into his trust fund, he’d turned into quite a businessman, with holdings here and at Myrtle Beach to the north. Kyle Development, the company he’d founded, had grown very fast.

Delane Kyle was handsome in a lean, smooth kind of way.

Not like Mitch Oliver.

Jenny’s mind conjured Mitch. He was not smooth. He was tall, with shoulders as wide as the island, and everything about him was big. Dark hair, a little shaggy, an emphatic wedge of a nose, a faint scar below his eye. Though his features were blunt, they were as regular as if they’d been carved by a sculptor who’d really known what he was doing. She pictured his unmanicured, competent-looking hands, that masculine, barest stubble of a dark beard—

For heaven’s sake! She’d been thinking about Mitch Oliver for two weeks. Didn’t she have enough on her plate without mooning over a man she barely knew? She pulled out the schedule of the week’s sales presentations and made herself concentrate.

At ten twenty-five, Yvonne opened the door and stuck her head in. “Sorry, folks. I just got word. Delane isn’t coming.”

There was some low-key grumbling before Yvonne continued, “His lawyer’s here.”

At that moment, Timothy Suddington stepped around Yvonne and into the room.

The staff exchanged glances as Suddington went to stand directly in front of the portrait of Delane.

He plunked a briefcase down on the table, and an eerie kind of quiet settled over the room. “I think y’all know who I am,” Suddington said. “You know that I handle Delane Kyle’s legal work, both business and personal. This morning, Kyle Development filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. District Court, Bankruptcy Division, in Columbia, South Carolina.”

There was silence. Hot shock ran through Jenny, and she pressed a quick hand to her lower belly.

Then everyone spoke at once.

“Hell, I knew we were down on sales but—”

“How can he be bankrupt? He’s got a Ferrari and a yacht docked right here in Harbor Town—”

Jenny’s thoughts were racing, but she managed to put up a hand. “Wait, everybody. Wait, this can’t be as bad as it sounds—”

“Easy for you to say,” one of the women said. “You don’t have a kid to watch out for.”

This isn’t the time for another trip to the bathroom! Jenny told her stomach firmly. “Nobody’s said anything about our jobs. Tim, you need to tell us more. I happen to know Delane came into his trust a few years ago. It was a lot of money.”

They were all looking at Timothy Suddington now. He said, “Jenny, you know I can’t talk too much about Delane’s personal matters. I’m his lawyer. Just his lawyer.” He looked genuinely sorry to be fulfilling that role today, and in that second, Jenny realized that any money Delane had had was gone.

She pressed a protective hand to her stomach again.

Suddington made a fist, brought it down lightly on his briefcase. “I’m sure you all know that appearances can be very deceiving. Delane—with good intentions—tried to play with the big boys. He expanded Kyle Development too quickly. The business was fundamentally sound, but no matter how hard he tried, Delane had cash-flow problems—”

“Skip the bullshit.” It was Rick, the man who had been concerned about sales. “What’s happening here?”

“The office will close at four today. Please make sure that when you clean out your desks, you take your personal belongings home. Anything left here at the close of business today will be tagged and taken by the court as a business asset.”

There was a roaring sound in Jenny’s ears. She managed to say, “At least I have the payroll checks done.”

Suddington said, “I’m sorry, Jenny. You can’t distribute those checks. I’m sure if there are any assets, the bankruptcy court will eventually see that everyone’s paid—”

Dear God, the man was saying they couldn’t even meet the last two weeks’ payroll. As the reality of that sunk in, people gasped. One of the women started to cry.

Jenny felt like weeping, too. She had a big mortgage and a baby on the way.

Emotions zoomed through her: anger, fear, determination, fear, fear, fear. Shame again—after all her work and planning, she was out of a job! Then for a second, she felt hysterical laughter well in her, and she fought the sensation down, scared anew at how out of control she was.

It was a good thing after all that she’d let Crystal go with Mitch Oliver. At least he could give the little girl a place to live. Which was more than Jenny might be able to do.

WHEN CRYSTAL GOT HOME from school, she saw that Jason was in his room. Jason wasn’t as big as the other boys. And he was pretty nice except he didn’t like it when her cat sat on his desk and looked at his hamster. He always said, “That cat looks hungry. Get that cat outta my room.”

But the kitten wasn’t around today. Crystal thought maybe she was hiding from Face-off again. So maybe it was okay to look in Jason’s room now, and see his hamster. She really liked Nosy. Nosy had eyes like shiny black beads and fur that was very soft. Jason let her pet him sometimes.

She stopped in the doorway to see if Jason would ask her to come in. All the boys went in and out of each other’s rooms, but she didn’t know if she should. Her momma always said to knock, but here if the door was shut and you knocked, the door would probably come open just from your knocking. Most of them were busted.

She stopped in the doorway. Jason was sitting there looking at the computer real hard. Then he looked up at her and said, “Whatcha looking at?”

That was just his way of talking. Crystal said, “Can I see Nosy?”

“So, like what’s stopping you?”

She came into his room. Jason was kind of her friend. Uncle Mitch was nice, he let her call Miss Jenny every night. Crystal was happy to call Miss Jenny, but sad too because she didn’t know when she’d get to see her again. Miss Jenny had said Crystal had to come here and Mrs. Winters had said Crystal had to come here, and once, she heard Mrs. Winters telling Miss Jenny that the judge would say Crystal had to come here and live, and so she knew it didn’t matter if she wanted to stay with Miss Jenny.

Uncle Mitch said maybe Miss Jenny could come for a visit some time. Crystal was happy and sad about that. She didn’t want to cry when Miss Jenny left and she was pretty sure she would.

She was trying and trying not to cry about anything.

Besides, Uncle Mitch was nice, and when he came home from work at night he always asked her about what happened that day, just like her momma used to. It wasn’t Uncle Mitch’s fault that even if she felt like talking, one of the boys would talk first.

Luke was nice, too, but he played hockey and that seemed to take a lot of time for a game. The twins were big and wild and she didn’t like them at all. But that very first night when she came here, Jason had said, “My mom died, too, and I was sad,” and then Crystal knew he would be her friend even though he was a boy.

Now she looked into Nosy’s cage, but he wasn’t running on his Ferris wheel or sniffing at his wood chips. He was just sitting there breathing. So she looked at Jason. “Are you doing your homework?”

“Nah, sending e-mail to my friend who lives in New York. I’m good on the computer. See, I’ll show you.”

Jason sounded like he was bragging, but she looked anyway. E-mail looked boring, not like the games they played on the computer at school, but when Jason said you could write things and send them and they got there in seconds, she changed her mind. It was neat how you could send stuff to your friends.

“See, this is the address line. It looks weird but it works. Want to try it?”

So Crystal tapped out the address and pushed the buttons that Jason told her to and then she pushed Send and Jason said in a second his message would be in New York.

“Hey, hey, hey! We’re playing football. Come on, Squirt.” Ryan was standing in the doorway with Tommy, and Tommy pushed him into the side of the door, but Ryan only laughed and punched him in the stomach. Squirt was what they called Jason.

Jason jumped up and bumped Crystal’s chin real hard and didn’t even say he was sorry. Crystal said, “You hurt me.”

“Oh. Sorry.” For a second, he looked as if he’d forgotten she was there.

“Come on. We need another body to crush.” That was Ryan, who was bigger and had blonder hair than Tommy, and a bigger nose, and that was how you could tell them apart. Because other than that, they acted the same. Two big boys who were always pushing each other.

“I’ll whip your butts,” Jason said, bragging again.

“Oh, did we say we were going to let you on a team?” Ryan laughed. “We’re going to let you be the football, Squirt.”

Jason said, “Cut the crap.” Crap was a bad word, but nobody paid attention.

Jason grabbed his sweatshirt. When he pulled it over his head, it was like he noticed Crystal again. “Hey, guys. Remember what Dad said. We gotta be nice to our cousin.” Then Jason looked at her and said, “Do you want to play? We’ll go easy on you.”

Crystal couldn’t believe that. Nobody wanted to play with her here, not even Jason. Her chest kind of pounded. They wanted her to play. But they were all so big and football was rough. She said, “I don’t know how to.”

“We’ll do touch. No tackling. We’ll go easy and then when you get tired and quit we’ll do tackle.”

“But I’ll get knocked down.”

“She’ll get knocked do…wn,” Ryan said in this voice that made fun of the way she talked, and then he and Tommy laughed.

All of a sudden, Crystal couldn’t stand it. She said, “Cut the crap.” Her face went hot but it felt good because Ryan and Tommy stopped wiggling and they all stared at her. She knew her momma would be mad that she’d said a bad word, and Miss Jenny wouldn’t like it, either. But her momma was in heaven, and Miss Jenny was in Hilton Head, and Crystal was in Ohio, and even the judge said she had to live here.

It seemed like a long time that they stared at her, and Crystal felt so funny with them looking at her that she almost took it back. But she didn’t.

Tommy finally said, “Well, okay, you can be on Squirt’s team.”

They went downstairs, and Jason said stuff like it’s not fair to have the big kids against the little kids, but it didn’t seem to really bother him a lot. When they got out in the yard, Jason said, “Tommy, you’re on Crystal’s team.” Tommy came right over to Crystal. She couldn’t believe it.

Tommy stood behind her and held her arms and showed her how to hold the football. The football was big and hard. Then Tommy showed her how to pass the football. He stepped away and Crystal tried it. The football went up sorta high and then it squiggled and fell down not very far from her. The boys laughed. Crystal thought about saying cut the crap again, but decided once a day was enough.

They told her the rules, which didn’t make sense. But that almost didn’t matter—now they weren’t laughing at her any more and they were playing with her. She felt better than she had since she came here. The sun was shining even though it was cold, and the sunshine felt good, making the top of her head warm.

Ryan and Jason went into what they called a huddle, and then Ryan came running. Before Crystal could blink her eyes, Tommy had touched him, which was a tackle when you played touch football. Well, Tommy did more than touch—he grabbed Ryan on the arm and twirled him around.

Football was rough.

They played some more. Once Crystal got the football and she held it to her stomach even though it was covered in mud, and ran as fast as she could. It took a long time until Jason touched her and she had to stop. That felt good, especially when Tommy said, “All right, kid. You gained us some yards.”

Then the football was up in the air, and it was spinning, spinning down toward her. Tommy yelled, “Catch it,” and Crystal held up her arms.

Wham!

Something hit her hard in the shoulder. She fell and went skidding along the stiff, frozen grass. She finally stopped and was lying on her side, her cheek in the grass, staring across the yard.

All these feet were coming toward her. Big feet, running.

“Are you okay?”

“Are you all right?”

“Hey, kid, are you hurt?”

She sat up, though she felt weird, like shaky inside.

Tommy was looking down at her. “Ryan hit you.”

“Well, I was trying to get the ball, you dork. Not hit the kid.”

Jason got down by her. “Are you hurt?”

She looked where he was looking, and saw that the sleeve of her sweatshirt had come up and her arm was all full of cuts. When she touched them, they hurt.

“Oh, man, Dad’s gonna be pissed this time.” Ryan stood there, and he was shaking his head at Tommy. “You knew she was too little to play football. How could you have been such an idiot?”

“Well, you wanted to play, too.” They went on arguing, and Jason said what Ryan said, that his dad would maybe get mad. Crystal just sat there on that horrible rough grass in the cold. All she wanted in the world was to be back home.

“She’s not hurt that bad,” Jason said, pushing at her arm and making it hurt more. “See? She can bend her elbow.” He bent it back and forth.

They all looked at her, all those big boys, and she thought of saying cut the crap again, but she didn’t feel as though she could right now because it was so hard not to cry.

“I want my momma,” she said instead, and her voice didn’t sound like it had when she’d said cut the crap. Now it sounded tiny.

“Listen.” Jason got down beside her. “You aren’t hurt that bad. We were only playing. The thing is, we might get in trouble if you tell Dad.” He stopped for a second. “You don’t want us to get in trouble, do you?”

She didn’t care. She wanted her momma. She wanted Miss Jenny!

Tommy got down by Jason, and he had this kind of frown on his face. “Jason’s right, kid. There are things Dad doesn’t have to know, and we don’t rat on each other. We just get even when we can. If you live here, you’ve got to learn the rules.”

That was a bad rule. “He’ll find out. My sweatshirt is all torn.” She was not going to let them see her cry!

“Nah,” Ryan said. “Just throw it out. Dad’ll never notice.”

That was maybe true; some lady came in and washed the clothes and put them away. But Crystal didn’t know what to do. If she told Uncle Mitch, he would maybe get mad, and she didn’t know what he’d do if he got mad. He was big; she didn’t want to find out. Would he maybe blame her for playing with the boys? Or would he be mad at the boys, and then they’d get even with her?

She looked down at her arm, and now the most terrible thing was happening. The red scratches were starting to bleed. Did that mean she was really hurt?

She started crying, and she jumped up and ran to the house. They followed her, so she ran up to her room and shut the door. Her door shut fine. The boys stayed outside the door, calling to her, but she sat on the bed and watched her arm bleed. Finally she said, “Go away! I won’t tell!” and after a while they went away. In a few minutes, she looked out the window and saw them out in the pasture by the ponies. Face-off was out there, and she saw her kitten sneaking around the bushes.

She felt so alone. Everything was quiet, and she didn’t think it had been quiet since she got here. She almost wished the boys were still outside her door. She touched her arm and blood came off on her finger.

That scared her, and she went down the hall to the phone and tried to call Miss Jenny even though she always called Miss Jenny at night before she went to bed. Nobody answered, and her arm kept bleeding. Wasn’t it supposed to stop?

Her momma had been in a car wreck and been so hurt she died.

Something squeezed her in the chest then, and she started crying harder and tried to think what to do.

Miss Jenny would come and get her. She just knew it, and if Uncle Mitch and the judge knew that she was almost dying they would let her go home, wouldn’t they? If she could just talk to Miss Jenny!

Then she had an idea. She went down to the kitchen and got this piece of paper off of Uncle Mitch’s desk. The paper was Miss Jenny’s paper from work. It had her address on it, and then some stuff at the bottom that had never made sense until today. Now she looked at it again. Just what she thought. It was an address like Jason’s friend had.

She took the paper and went to Jason’s room. His computer was still on. She did everything he’d told her to do. She thought about how e-mail was kind of like magic, and she wished you could send e-mails to heaven. But instead, when the square came up, she carefully typed in Miss Jenny’s address. Then it got to the part where you could write the message.

Mis Jenny they hurt me. im bleeeding From Crystal.

Then she found the Send button and pushed.