Читать книгу His Best Friend's Baby - Molly O'Keefe - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

JULIA WOKE to the smell of pancakes and coffee and—she took another sniff of the air. Oh, boy. Bacon. It wasn’t so much the food that had her eyes flying open, it was that she didn’t have to make it. All that food waited for her.

She stared at the ceiling and luxuriated in the faded blue sheets. She had slept like a rock on this soft mattress with all the extra pillows. It was heaven.

This was definitely the right place for Ben. She could feel their roots growing already.

Growing up as an army brat, Julia had worked hard for years to never form material attachments. But one night in this room and she coveted everything—the mahogany bed frame that matched the old washstand in the corner and the five-drawer dresser on the far wall. She wanted the mirror hanging over the dresser that reflected the small window and the perfect California day outside.

Everything was so beautiful. So permanent and substantial.

She’d even take the Michael Jordan posters.

This is a brand new day. Opportunity was here, glimmering like dust motes in the sunlight. She could shed the past and try something new. Try to be someone new.

Try to figure out who I am.

She rolled over to see how her son had slept, but he was nowhere to be found. She sat up and searched the floor around the bed. Where did he go? How could he have woken up and left the room without her noticing? She didn’t trust him entirely on his own with stairs, and they had followed Agnes up a steep wooden flight last night to this bedroom.

Julia rolled out of bed and ran downstairs, her bare feet slipping across the polished hardwood floors on her way to the kitchen. She burst into a scene right out of Norman Rock¬ well.

Ben sat in an ancient high chair, cheerfully shoving blueberries in his mouth.

“Airplane!” he cried. “Big airplane.”

“And what else?” Agnes asked.

“On a bus.”

“You were on an airplane and a bus in the same day?” Agnes asked, her eyes wide as though no one had ever done such a thing.

Ben nodded.

“Such a big boy!” Agnes cooed and Ben smiled, his teeth blue. He lifted his hands above his head to show her how big he truly was. Julia loved this game, loved wondering if he was broadcasting how big he felt, the size of his cheerful spirit.

Ron laughed. “All done?” he asked.

Ben nodded, his blond curls waving, and Ron leaned in to wipe Ben’s face and hands. “Let me atcha.”

Agnes picked up a camera and took a couple of pictures of Ron attempting to clean Ben up.

“Smile, Benny,” she cooed and Julia tried not to cringe at that nickname.

Julia had only sent them one picture of their grandson. A family shot of her, Mitch and Ben taken six months ago—the night Mitch was on leave from Iraq.

Jesse had taken the picture.

Shame and regret trickled through her.

She should have been the bigger person, tried harder to breach the gaps between her and the Adamses. But she was too much like her mother, maybe. Too proud.

New beginnings, she reminded herself.

“Momma,” Ben cried, dodging Ron’s washcloth. Agnes and Ron turned toward her, their smiles radiant.

“We heard him wake up and knew you needed your rest so we brought him downstairs, hope you don’t mind,” Agnes said with a bright smile before focusing on her grandson again.

“Of course not,” Julia croaked, her voice rusty from nearly twelve hours of sleep. Despite her assurance, something in her chafed at the idea that they had come into her room while she slept.

Really, you’re gonna get mad because they let you sleep an extra hour? She tried to relax. Clearly she had been on her own for too long.

Ben struggled to lift himself out of the chair with one hand and reached for Julia with the other.

“Stay there, Ben.” She walked over to kiss his cheeks and his hands, rub her nose with his damp one. All of their morning rituals. He laughed and clapped in response.

“Hog heaven, huh, buddy?” she asked, letting him put his hands on her face leaving sticky hand-prints on her skin. “Pancakes and blueberries.”

“Nana,” he said, pointing to Agnes, but watching Julia.

“That’s what I told him to call me,” Agnes said with an embarrassed laugh, pulling at the neck of her yellow T-shirt. “I’ve always wanted to be a Nana.”

“Sounds good.” Julia swallowed a lump of emotion.

“Ron.” Ben pointed to Ron and everyone laughed.

“Grandpa is for old men,” Ron said with a grin. The metal frame of his glasses caught the sunlight and winked, making him seem particularly merry. “Besides, Ron is easier to say.”

He looked young, trim and healthy with his blond hair shot through with a little silver. He appeared younger than his wife and Julia wondered if Mitch would have looked that way. Respectable. Dependable.

She doubted it.

“Ron, it is.” Julia nodded definitively as if she were checking that off a list. What to call Grandfather—check.

“Ron,” Ben mimicked Julia’s nod and tone.

“He’s such a sweet baby,” Agnes said.

“The sweetest,” Julia said, smiling in agreement. She ran her fingers through her son’s hair to try and work out a knot of maple syrup near his ear.

“Look at us, forgetting our manners.” Agnes stood, suddenly a flurry of activity.

“Would you like something to eat, Julia?” Ron patted the chair next to him at the small kitchen table. “Some coffee?”

“Coffee would be a dream.” Julia sat and an uncomfortable silence blanketed the room. They had covered the basics last night. Weather. Flights. How they must just be exhausted. This morning all the unsaid things and the hurt they had caused each other in the past pulled up chairs and sat at the table.

Julia curled her bare toes into the braid rug under the table and folded her hands into her lap, trying to look the opposite of a gold-digging whore. She felt shabby in Mitch’s old army T-shirt and pajama bottoms.

I should have worn something nicer, she thought, when unease and doubt slipped under her guard. I don’t have anything nicer.

“How did you sleep?” Ron asked.

“Like a rock,” Julia said brightly and wondered how she could stretch that answer for another hour of conversation. “Very well, thank you.”

More silence.

“You have a lovely home.” She hoped that didn’t make her sound like a gold digger. She was only telling the truth. Every room was filled with books and art and warm rich colors, rugs, beautiful wood floors, light stucco walls with dark wood support beams across the ceiling.

“Thank you.” Ron nodded and took a sip of coffee.

Kill me now, Julia thought.

Agnes cleared her throat and Julia looked over to where the woman, short and round, stood in a pool of light from the window above the double ceramic sink. Tears glittered on Agnes’s cheeks.

“I am sorry, Julia,” she whispered and shook her head. Squeezing her eyes tight. “I was horrible to you and—” She stopped and a single sob came out.

Julia leaped to take the coffee mug out of her mother-in-law’s hands. She wrapped her arms around Agnes’s curved shoulders. “I wasn’t the best, either,” she said.

“I was just so upset that you got married without telling us,” Agnes went on. “Mitch is—” another sob escaped “—was our only son and I know we expected a lot but it was just such a shock. The marriage and then the news of the baby—it was just such a shock.”

“Tell me about it,” Julia said dryly, relieved when Agnes gave a watery chuckle. “Trust me, getting pregnant and marrying a helicopter pilot was the last thing I expected to happen.” Or wanted to happen, she didn’t say. Her life tended to be made up of things she had to make the best of.

“You know how your son was,” Julia said softly. “He was so—” She stopped, at a loss for words, trying to remember exactly what it was that had attracted her so ferociously to Mitch Adams. “Bright, you know? Shiny and bold. Like the world was there just for him to enjoy.”

“Yes,” Ron agreed. “He was like that.”

“He just swept me off my feet.” Swept wasn’t even the right way to describe the sensation. It was as if she had been blinded by the light that always shone around Mitch.

“When I got pregnant—” she cleared her throat, uncomfortable with the topic “—we hadn’t known each other very long.”

“A month,” Agnes said, obviously casting judgment on Julia’s loose morals. Julia swallowed the protestations of her innocence. They seemed pretty stupid, in light of what had happened. What did it matter if Mitch had been her first? She’d been so completely paranoid about pregnancy that they’d used two forms of birth control.

She’d gotten pregnant anyway, after only knowing Mitch for three weeks. She had been so stupid and silly with lust and love.

“I was twenty-one—”

“So young,” Agnes said, lifting watery brown eyes to Julia.

“Mitch didn’t hesitate. He wanted to get married. He wanted to give our child what you guys gave him.”

He just never managed to be around enough to do it.

Agnes, who had been weeping silently, buckled a little and put a hand on the counter to brace herself.

“We wasted so much time with him.” Agnes sighed. “Three years. I would give anything to have them back.” Her face twisted in agony that struck a chord in Julia’s own grief. “Anything.”

“Nana!” Ben yelled. “Don’t cry!” Ben hated when Julia cried. He got angry and fussy. But when all three of them turned to the little boy he looked away, confused and embarrassed. Julia wondered if he’d ever had the undivided attention of three people.

“You want more pancakes?” Agnes asked Ben and he broke into a beatific grin, revealing all of his little teeth.

“That’s a yes,” Julia translated needlessly.

“Well, sit and drink your coffee,” Agnes said, drying her eyes with a dish towel. “I’ll make some more pancakes.”

Agnes put a steaming mug of coffee in front of Julia and darted a quick look at Ron. It was a cue of some sort and Julia braced herself. Not for any particular reason; it was the conditioned response of a woman who had never felt as though she really belonged anywhere.

“Julia,” Ron started uncomfortably. He drummed his fingers on the table briefly and cleared his throat. There was a glacial undercurrent in the room suddenly and she was not so sure of her welcome here. “What are your, ah, your plans?”

“Plans?” she croaked. This was it. This was “the good to see you, don’t be a stranger, but could you move on?” speech. Her stomach churned bile. Maybe Mitch was right. She was a fool for believing in the good things.

“I mean, how long will you be—” Ron and Agnes shared a look “—in California.”

Julia put her mug on the table. “I don’t have any plans,” she said coolly. “We can be on our way today.”

Agnes gasped and dropped a plate in the sink, a discordant crash that made all of them jump and Ben fuss. Julia turned to her son and tugged on his ear.

“Nana’s bringing you more pancakes, buddy,” she whispered, staring at her son to stall for time.

No rest for the weary. She quickly shifted to survival mode. She had the money that the army gave her each month as a widow, but she was still paying off most of Mitch’s debts. The remainder might cover rent some place, although she wasn’t sure she wanted to live in a place that could be rented for next to nothing. She’d need to find a job. She would have to get daycare for Ben.

She’d come all the way to New Springs and now didn’t have enough money to leave immediately. She’d have to stay until next month’s check—

“Do you have to go so soon?” Agnes asked, her hands clenching the counter. “I mean it would be wonderful to have you stay.”

“Stay?” Julia asked, not sure she’d heard correctly.

“As long as you like,” Agnes insisted. “You can stay here however long. Ron used to teach at the community college over in Lawshaw. I’m sure he could talk to someone there. Get you enrolled in the fall and you could get your degree. I remember Mitch saying something about you wanting a degree.”

And another lie from Mitch. Thank you, sweetheart.

“I hadn’t given it much thought,” Julia said and she really hadn’t. Mitch’s death, the phone call from Agnes, getting out of Germany, all of that had taken up every minute of her life.

“Well, you can be here and think about it. This house is so empty with just the two of us,” Agnes said. Ron stared at Julia levelly, his eyes warm and steadfast.

“You can get your associate degree for just about anything at Lawshaw, can’t she, Ron?”

“We would like you to stay,” Ron said, cutting through his wife’s chatter. “We would like to get to know you and Ben.”

“You know,” she said with a bright smile, solace like a cool stream of water sliding through her, gently eroding the tension that had built in the last few moments. “You had me with the coffee.” She lifted her mug and took a sip while Agnes and Ron laughed.

“What do you think, buddy?” Julia asked her son. “Should we stay?

Ben smiled, his face radiant and beloved and threw his arms in the air. “Pancake!”

“Sounds unanimous,” Ron said.

Julia watched her son clap his hands and she took a big sip of coffee, using both hands so that she wouldn’t do the same.