Читать книгу The Sweetest September - Liz Talley - Страница 10
ОглавлениеTen and a half weeks later
THE DUST BOILED up around her rental car making Shelby squint to see the tractor rolling along the rows of tall plants. Sugarcane. That’s the crop John Beauchamp grew on the thirteen-hundred acres owned by the Stanton trust. Or at least that’s what Annie Dufrene had told her when she’d called with the report...and unstated questions.
But Shelby hadn’t given any answers.
For one thing, the private investigator was her ex-boyfriend’s sister-in-law. For another, Shelby hadn’t told a soul the reason she had to find John Beauchamp.
Yeah.
The gravel road wound through the green fields leading her to a white-columned farmhouse with a wide front porch. The hedges out front needed a good trim and the flower bed had long gone the way of despair. A patch of gravel indicated a parking area, so Shelby rolled to a halt there, sucking in deep breaths of air-conditioning and tried to still her pounding heart.
You can do this, Shelby. You have to do this. It’s only right and fair.
With shaking hands, she pulled down the visor and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked good. The Louisiana humidity had been chased away by a cold front and so her bouncy blond hair looked like something out of a shampoo ad. She’d applied her makeup with a careful, light hand, and the taupe-and-orange-striped wrap dress emitted a polished vibe. She looked just right to tell a man she’d met only once that she was having his baby.
Yeah.
She still couldn’t believe she was pregnant, but the visit to the obstetrician a month ago had confirmed what she’d tried to pretend away when the monthly bill hadn’t arrived. She had no clue how it had happened. Even in the drunken haze, she remembered the condom being tossed into the trash can, the torn package she’d scooped up. Proof she’d been responsible.
The fact the stick had awarded her with two blue lines had caused her to literally drop to her knees.
Pregnant.
She’d immediately lost the lobster she’d choked down at dinner with her parents and afterward had lain half dressed in the bathroom of her parents’ guesthouse wondering how in the hell something like this could have happened. Then she convinced herself it was a false positive. Had to be. But to be certain, she’d schedule an appointment with her doctor, where three weeks later the wub-wub of the fetal heartbeat had crushed her with reality and some other feeling she couldn’t identify...something that had led her back to Louisiana to find the man she’d wrapped her legs around in a moment of desperation.
Before she’d heard the heartbeat, she’d planned to make the mistake go away. Abortion wasn’t a pretty word no matter how one dressed it, but Shelby thought it best for everyone concerned. She’d made the appointment with her doctor in Seattle, researched the procedure on the internet and told herself it was the right thing to do. She’d even cleared her substitute teaching schedule in order to have the procedure on a Thursday and be able to return to school on Monday.
Not easy, but best.
Until she heard the heartbeat.
She hadn’t known what the doctor was doing when she squirted cold lube on her stomach and moved that thing around. And then...there it was.
Whoosh, lub, whoosh, lub.
And that’s all it took—Shelby fell in love with her baby.
Simple as that. Never would she imagine the pull to be so visceral. But at that moment, she knew there would be no abortion. She couldn’t erase this mistake the way she erased assignments from the dry-erase board at school.
Armed with a prescription for prenatal vitamins and various pamphlets, Shelby had strolled out of the doctor’s office a different woman than when she’d strolled in, for now she was an expectant mother.
She felt different than being an accidentally knocked-up loser who didn’t even know who the father of her baby was. Correction. She knew the father was a guy named Josh or John Beau-something who’d been in Boots Grocery, the unfortunate grocery/bar/bait stand, the second Friday in September.
Of course, it had crossed her mind to forget all about him...and the uncaring way her child had been conceived. Yes, her child. Not his. But that didn’t sit well with her. In the past, she’d tried to slide around corners and hide from truth, and if she was going to have a baby and raise him or her to be a good, productive, honest citizen, she had to start out on the right foot.
And that meant finding the man who’d cried after having raunchy, impetuous sex with her...and telling him she was pregnant.
So when Thanksgiving break had rolled around, she’d bought a plane ticket back to the state she’d hoped never to see again. Then she’d called Annie Dufrene. Two days before Shelby was set to fly back into Baton Rouge, Annie sent her a fax on one John Beauchamp. Thirty-four years old. A widower. Sugarcane farmer. Resides at 308 Burnside Hwy 4, Breezy Hill Plantation. No children. Parents living. Two brothers and one older sister. Registered driver, organ donor and no arrest record.
Biggest relief ever—he hadn’t lied when he said he was no longer married. At least that small thing had gone right.
So here she was in the middle of Louisiana on a nice fall day about to shock the boots off the poor man.
For a good five minutes Shelby fiddled around in the rental, double-checking her phone messages, updating her GPS and wadding up gum wrappers and tucking them in a tissue. Finally, with nothing more to piddle with, she opened the car door and climbed out into the cool Louisiana afternoon. The tractor still ambled along in a half-planted field. Behind it trailed several men, tucking what looked to be sticks into the furrows. In another field, a huge combine thing cut sugarcane, or at least that’s what she assumed.
She knocked on the door twice, but no one seemed to be inside. Or anywhere around the outside of the house.
Maybe she should have called. But how awkward would that have been?
“Yes, hello. John? It’s Shelby...Shelby. You remember me? Mid-September, Boots Grocery, watermelon-colored panties?...Yeah, well, guess what? I’m having your baby.”
Didn’t seem too kosher...not that Shelby was Jewish. Still, seemed like something a woman should tell a man face-to-face. But she’d been here for almost fifteen minutes and no one was around. Surely someone should have seen her driving up. How long should she wait?
Shelby glanced back at the field. Tractor still churning...or doing whatever tractors do.
Sighing, she sank onto the top step of the porch. There were rocking chairs framing a bank of windows, but sitting in one seemed presumptuous...like she was an old friend, familiar enough to sit on his porch. But she wasn’t an old friend...or even a new one. Shelby was nothing to this man...and he likely wouldn’t feel too “friendly” when she delivered her news.
She glanced at her watch. Twenty minutes had passed. Hadn’t someone seen the car come up the drive?
“Hey,” a voice came from her left.
Shelby turned and peered over the overgrown sweet olive bush to find a young sunburned guy in sagging jeans and a flat-billed cap staring at her with suspicion. She stood. “Oh, hey. I wondered if anyone was around.”
“If you’re sellin’ something, we don’t want it,” he said, wiping his brow with a soggy blue bandanna.
“Well, how do you know you don’t want it?” Shelby asked.
“If I ain’t offered nothin’ I don’t have to choose whether I want it or not. Stands to reason it’s easier to say I don’t want to buy nothin’.”
Roundabout logic, but it made sense.
Shelby walked down the five concrete steps. The guy with the bowlegged gait, stained T-shirt and bright blue eyes narrowed his gaze.
“I’m not selling anything, but I am looking for John Beauchamp,” she said.
“Out there on the tractor.” He pointed at the big green tractor. It was so far away Shelby could see only the outline of a figure inside the cab.
“Oh,” she said, licking her lips, trying to look calm.
“You here from the church, then?” he asked, shoving the bandanna in his back pocket.
“The church? Uh, no.”
He lifted his brows. “Well, the boss—”
“But I do need to speak to Mr. Beauchamp. It’s important,” she interrupted.
The kid shook his head. “We in the middle of harvest and don’t quit for nothin’. Not even a pretty lady.”
Shelby didn’t know what to say. Seemed evident the worker wasn’t about to fetch John off the tractor. “But this can’t wait.”
“Guess I can take you out if you want. Boss will have to stop then.” He gestured to a golf cart on steroids. “I’m Homer. Been working for the Stantons forever. Reckon I can decide you’re all right and take you out to do whatever business you got with Boss Man.”
Boss Man? Had she entered a time warp? “Thank you. I’m Shelby.” She stuck out her hand, but Homer waved it away, lifting his hands and showing streaks of grease on his palms.
“I’ll just say how you do.” He bobbed his head.
Southerners were weird sometimes. And charming. But mostly weird. “You called Mr. Beauchamp Boss Man but you said this land belongs to the Stantons?”
“The boss married a Stanton and runs the place for the family. Ain’t nobody works this land the way Boss Man do. Even ol’ Mr. Stanton, who died right there in that tractor of a heart attack, didn’t love it like Boss, and there ain’t nobody left to run this place, which is a shame since this land’s been worked by Stantons for long as I can remember and way past that. Boss’s wife died last year in an accident.”
“Oh,” Shelby said, not really wanting the history lesson, not really wanting to soften over John losing his wife. She wanted to get on with telling John about the baby and go back to a place that made sense to her.
Homer cracked another smile. “You ain’t from here, are you? You talk funny.”
“I’m from Washington State.”
“Well, tell the president ‘hey’ for me when you see him.”
Okay, she wasn’t touching that one. “Will do.”
“I’ll get a towel outta the barn for you to sit on. Don’t want to mess that fancy dress up,” Homer said, loping off toward the barn.
Shelby waited, fiddling with the key chain and double-checking she’d locked the rental car since she’d left her purse on the floorboard. Of course no one was around to make off with it, but living in Seattle most of her life had ingrained certain precautions.
But then, sometimes taking precautions failed. She stood here living proof about to climb into a cart and bump out to a tractor operated by a man who was going to get the shock of his life. Yeah, sometimes in spite of a best effort, shit happened.
Like getting pregnant.
When Homer came back around, he carried a faded striped beach towel, which he placed on the seat of the cart. “Here ya go.” He patted the towel.
Shelby eyed the new boots she’d bought before peeing on the pregnancy test stick and learning her life would go from single, focused substitute teacher to single, unfocused mother. Somehow the sleek knee-length boots she’d bought to make her feel better about the whole Darby fiasco seemed frivolous for her new role, but that didn’t mean she wanted them spattered with Louisiana mud.
Minutes later they took off, rolling over ruts in bone-jarring fashion. Shelby clung to the handrail attached to the roof of the cart and focused on not sliding out since the seat belts looked to have been cut out.
She watched the green tractor in the distance grow larger. It still chugged along, workers scurrying behind. Finally, when the motorized cart Homer called a mule got within a hundred feet, the big tractor stopped. Seconds later the stranger from the bar climbed out, looking tired and puzzled.
Homer hopped out of the cart and jogged over to John Beauchamp whose edges looked sharper than she remembered. Sobriety did that. “Brought you a pretty lady who says she needs a word with you. I’ll come back for her in a few. Gotta get this part over to Henry.”
John glanced over to Shelby, his eyes narrowing, face bewildered. Shelby wondered what he thought. Probably had that same sinking feeling she’d had when her boobs had grown heavy and achy and the telltale crimson flow hadn’t appeared. Pure dread.
“Thanks, Homer, but you better give me the part. I’ll drive it over to the combine. Can you take over here for me?”
Homer saluted before scrabbling up the tractor into the cab. He called down, “Sure thing, Boss Man.”
John frowned, shaking his head. “Stop calling me that.”
Homer cackled. “Hey, it’s what you are.”
Shelby sat still as a puddle, watching John walk toward where she held a death grip on the handle. This wasn’t going the way she’d planned, but then again, things were all over the map in regards to plans lately.
Readjusting an old ball cap on his head, John stopped beside the driver’s seat, glancing back at the men standing behind the tractor, drinking water. They all stared, questions in their eyes, at the woman dressed for brunch sitting in a mucked-up cart in the middle of a cane field. “Go on, fellows. We need to finish this field today. Already late on this planting.”
The men leaped into action as the tractor lurched forward with Homer at the helm.
Shelby took a moment to take stock of the man she hadn’t seen since he’d slipped out of the bathroom that fateful night. John’s boots were streaked with mud and his dusty jeans had a hole on the thigh. A kerchief hung from his back pocket, and the faded chambray shirt he wore stretched across broad shoulders. He looked like a farmer.
She’d never thought a farmer could look, well, sexy. But John Beauchamp had that going for him...not that she was interested.
Been there. Done him. Got pregnant.
He looked down at her with cautious green eyes...like she was a ticking bomb he had to disarm. “What are you doing here?”
Shelby tried to calm the bats flapping in her stomach, but there was nothing to quiet them. “Uh, it’s complicated.”
He slid in beside her, his thigh brushing hers. She scooted away. He noticed, but didn’t say anything.
“Complicated,” he repeated as though tasting the word. “You didn’t go back to...Seattle, was it?”
“No, I went back.”
“But you’re here again.” His words held the question.
She glanced at him and then back at the men still casting inquisitive looks their way as they followed the tractor down the furrows.
John got the message and stepped on the accelerator, this time heading toward the huge combine sitting silent in the opposite field.
Shelby yelped and grabbed the edge of the seat with her other hand, nearly sliding across the cracked pleather seat and pitching onto the ground rushing by the wheels. John reached over and clasped her arm, saving her from meeting the hard ground.
“You good?” he asked, releasing her arm and making no apology for the abrupt launch and turn.
“Yeah,” she said, finding her balance, her stomach pitching more at the thought of revealing why she sat beside him than at the actual bumpy ride.
So how did one do this?
Probably should just say it. Rip the bandage off. Pull the knife out. He probably already suspected why she’d come. If it had been anything other than her being pregnant, she’d have found him before now.
As they turned onto the adjacent path, Shelby took a deep breath and said, “I’m pregnant.”
He made no sound, but she felt his reaction. Glancing sideways, she saw him go rigid, knuckles white on the steering wheel.
“Pregnant?” he said, his voice low, perhaps even angry. “By me?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“That’s very unlikely.”
“Oh, I am. Went to the doctor. Saw the heartbeat on the ultrasound. Pretty sure there’s a baby in there.”
He slowed down and eyed her in the brightness of the afternoon, looking as if he studied an insect that had landed on his windshield. Squash or let it blow away on its own? “I understand the concept, but it’s not mine. We used a condom. I remember because it was bright pink and I’d never seen anything like that before.”
“Yeah, I thought pink condoms were kind of fun, but that’s not important. Or maybe it is, because something went wrong with it. Besides you ran out before—” She snapped her mouth closed, wishing she hadn’t mentioned his running out. The fact he hightailed it like a coward was the least important part of the whole travesty. “The condom must have broken. Or did you notice any, um, leakage maybe?”
His head snapped around. “No.”
For a moment he didn’t say anything and she wondered if he was searching his memory for that night. “Look I don’t remember much, but I’m pretty sure I would remember that. I was drunk but not stupid.”
“I’m not lying.”
John frowned. “I’m not saying you are, but I can’t accept you got pregnant that night.”
“Look, I’m not thrilled, okay? I’m only here because I thought you should know.”
“Are you sure it’s mine?”
She almost slapped him. Would have been melodramatic and very Scarlett O’Hara-like, fitting considering she sat in the middle of a field in the Deep South feeling rather beat down. “Thanks for the unspoken accusation that I’m a whore. And a stupid one at that.”
John slammed the brakes, his arm catching hers before she could slide forward into the dashboard. “I’m not calling you anything. A woman I barely know shows up saying she’s pregnant, I think I’m entitled to ask a few questions.”
Shelby yanked her arm away and shifted even farther from him. “I came to tell you. That’s it. I don’t expect anything from you. I can take care of the baby on my own.”
John sank against the cracked bench seat, looking as if someone had taken the starch out of him. “Just give me a sec, okay?”
Shelby didn’t say anything more. She got it. She’d needed a lot of moments herself over the past few weeks.
For several minutes they sat; the only sounds were the tractor humming, the occasional shouts of the men working the fields and their mingled breaths, which was vastly different from the last time they’d been together. Very sober. Maybe too sober for the reality that had just crashed into both of their worlds.
“So what are your plans?” he asked. “Are you going to, uh, move forward with the pregnancy?” He sounded choked, as if the words stuck in his throat.
“Yeah. At first I thought about taking care of it—”
“Oh, God,” he breathed, rubbing a hand over his face. “I can’t imagine. I can’t—”
“I know, but my first reaction was to erase the mistake we made then I could just move forward, but...” She trailed off, wondering how she could put into words what she’d experienced when she’d seen the heartbeat, heard the rhythm established by a life growing inside her. It was almost sacred.
John’s eyes met hers, his gaze still convoluted, still shocked. “But what?”
“I heard the heartbeat,” she whispered, swallowing the sudden emotion. Something warm crept up her spine. It wasn’t an aw emotion. More like something that might eat her and swallow her whole. Not danger, but something life altering, something that made her palms sweaty.
John said nothing, merely turned his attention to the field full of glossy green leaves of sugarcane stirring in the slight wind. Captured stark against the horizon, he stood in sharp relief. John was a man shaken to his core.
“I’m sorry,” she said, after several more seconds of nothing from him. The knot in her stomach grew tighter. She didn’t know what to do, how to make it better for him. Or her.
“Me, too,” he offered, his eyes fastened on the horizon.
“If you’ll take me to the house now, I’ll let you get back to work,” she said.
John scratched his head beneath the Ragin’ Cajun ball cap. “Not yet. Let me run this part out and then we’ll go back to the house.”
Shelby didn’t want to spend any more time with him. She wanted to go to her hotel room in Baton Rouge, take a bath and curl up beneath the coverlet with the TV drowning out everything in her life. Escape sounded perfect, but obviously John wasn’t going to let her slink away. The knot inside her tightened and twisted. “Fine.”
After handing off a part to someone named Henry and bumping back along the original path, John headed to the farmhouse. It appeared around the bend, plain and lonely against the cerulean background. A turn of her head showed her John’s stoic profile, jaw squared as he contained his emotions.
Okay. She’d done it. She’d told him about the child growing in her belly. Their child. Mission accomplished. Now all she had to do was go back home, tell her parents, move out of the guesthouse, get a permanent job, take a birthing class, register for preschool, start a college fund....
Oh, dear God.
Parenting wasn’t for wussies...and she’d be alone.
Sweat broke out on her upper lip and her body started to tremble as the enormity of her situation, combined with the residual anxiety from telling John, crashed over her. Her teeth chattered as the knot inside her unwound, releasing some strange hormonal thing that smothered her.
John stopped the cart and climbed out.
But she couldn’t move.
Silly as it was, all the emotion she’d balled inside over the past four weeks rolled over her, rendering her, well, overwhelmed.
“Shelby?”
Oddly enough, during the middle of what was possibly a panic attack she realized she liked the way he said her name. He had a drawled Southern accent quite different from Darby’s soft Acadian dialect. Maybe a slight lilt.
Shelby waved her hands as if she could make the panic enveloping her go away. “I’m just a little—” Gulping deep breaths, she couldn’t finish.
“Jesus,” John said, taking huge steps around the mule to reach her side.
“No, don’t touch me,” Shelby said, brushing away the hand reaching for her, shrinking from him.
“It’s okay. Breathe.”
Shelby wanted to say something biting like what in the hell did he think she was doing, but she couldn’t seem to care enough to be a smart-ass.
“Come into the house,” he said, taking her by the forearm, his touch as gentle as his words. “We’ll have some tea or something and take a few minutes to process all this.”
“I just wanna leave,” she said, teeth still chattering, her breathing ragged. She figured if she didn’t get out of there, away from him, she might hyperventilate. “I told you. That’s it. I’m done.”
He stiffened again, but didn’t release her arm. “I understand, but you need to gather yourself before you drive. Come inside. It will be okay.”
“It won’t be okay,” she said, inhaling deeply, trying to find her calm, trying to find herself in the hysteria edging in. How dare he even imply such a thing? It will be okay. What a fat lie. She might be resolved to her fate, but having the baby of a stranger was not even remotely okay. “This is a screwup of enormous magnitude.”
“You’re right, but it will be okay.”
“Stop freaking saying that.”
He clamped his mouth shut and studied her for a moment. The same perusal he’d given her earlier. Scientific. “You don’t need to drive. You’re upset.”
“Duh. You think?” Shelby drawled, the anger, the lack of control pissing her off. She’d had a plan. Tell him. Leave. But somehow her body...or her mind...or something...hadn’t gotten the damn memo to play it cool.
He didn’t respond. Just stared at her. And tugged on her arm in an insistent manner.
“Fine,” she said finally, struggling to her feet. “I’ll gather myself and have a cup of tea. We can even pretend we’re normal people.”
Again, nothing from him. He released her arm as she stood.
Shelby took a deep breath, relieved her task was nearly over. Now someone other than her doctor knew about the life knitting together within her womb. Of course, she’d shared that information with a man she didn’t know beyond the investigative report sitting in her sock drawer...and the fact he sang off-key to old George Strait songs when he danced.
Wordlessly, side by side, they climbed the steps. When they reached the top step, where Shelby had perched a mere half hour ago, John stopped.
Shelby turned around, still fighting the edging panic.
“You’re not alone, Shelby.”
His words did what he meant them to do. Found their way inside her, creating a small bit of warmth in the midst of the madness of her life.
John stood there, handsome as sin, saying the right thing at just the right moment.
Damn him.
He was still the bastard who had treated her like a fungus, impregnated her with a child and implied she was some sort of whore.
But he knew exactly what to say.
And as he took her hand and pulled her toward the door, she realized he also knew exactly how to make her feel cared for.
And that was more dangerous than any other feeling she’d had since seeing him again.
