Days Like This (44 page)

“A baby?” he said, looking
thunderstruck.  “We made a baby?  You and me?”

“I can assure you there were no
third parties involved.”

“But—when?  How?”

“I trust you can figure out the
answer to that second question.  The answer to the first is sometime in late
August or early September.  Right before you left.”

“So you’re—”

“Ten weeks along.  The baby’s due
the first week of June.”

“You’ve seen a doctor?  Everything’s
okay?”

“That’s where I was coming from
yesterday, when you saw me at the cemetery.  And yes, everything is just fine. 
We did it, my love.  She cupped his face in both hands and pressed a soft kiss
to his lips.  “We did it!”

She’d actually had the crazy idea
that when he cooled off, her father would return, he and Casey would have a
tearful reunion, and everything would be back to normal.  Hah!  She was clearly
a moron.  Oh, he had come back, for sure.  While she pretended to be asleep
behind her closed bedroom door, he had rattled around the kitchen for ten
minutes before he went upstairs to face his wife.  But there was no tearful
reunion.  The shouting started within minutes.  Even though she turned up the
stereo to drown it out, she could still hear it.  She couldn’t decipher their
words, but who needed words when the voices spoke so clearly for themselves? 
So loud they could probably be heard down on Main Street?

It was all in the toilet.  Her
whole life, swirling down the drain.  First her mom, then Mikey, and now her
new family was imploding.  She’d been so angry and bitter when she came here. 
But her father and his wife had worn her down with their kindness.  To her
amazement, she’d actually thought that she and her dad were making headway. 
That they’d started to build a relationship.  A connection.  And Casey was big
sister, mother, and best friend all rolled into one.  Attentive and caring and
fun in a way that Paige’s own mother had never been.  Not that Sandy hadn’t
cared.  It was just the opposite.  She’d cared too much, had felt the weight of
responsibility too heavily.  She’d spent her entire life overworked, overtired,
and underappreciated.  Those dark circles under her eyes had sunk deeper and
deeper, until one day, they just swallowed her whole.

Paige knew better than most that
fairy tales weren’t real.  Her mom’s death had taught her that.  So why had she
believed, for even one second, that she might find a real home here with these
people?  It looked like she’d been right all along about her old man, and the
weight of disappointment lay heavy in her chest.  How could she have trusted
him?  After Mikey ripped out her heart and shredded it, how could she have
trusted any guy, ever again?

Upstairs, the yelling continued,
and she wrapped her pillow around her head to shut out the sound.  She would
probably end up homeless.  Or worse, once Casey ousted them from her house and
her life, she would be dependent on her old man to take care of her.  Not that
she needed to be taken care of.  But barring emancipation, she had to answer to
somebody until she turned eighteen.  If what she’d witnessed tonight was any
indication, his parenting skills probably weren’t any better than his
relationship skills.  And those needed some serious work.  It was a shame that
stupidity was going to sink his marriage, but it was pretty obvious that the
ship was going down.

Angry, she tossed the pillow onto
the bed.  “To hell with him,” she said to Leroy, who rolled his eyes and wagged
his tail.  “To hell with both of them.  I bet if I left, they wouldn’t even
notice I was gone.”

Leroy wagged again, and she
patted him absently while she gave the idea some thought.  She could leave. 
Take Leroy, pack a suitcase, and never come back.  Hit the open road, thumb
out, and make a new start in some faraway, exotic place.  If Mikey could do it,
why couldn’t she?

Paige sighed.  Who was she
kidding?  The open road might sound exotic and alluring, but reality would
prove otherwise.  What she needed was to get away from the fighting.  Maybe
things would look better in the daylight.  She could just drive around, killing
time, until they stopped fighting and it was safe to come home.  For as long as
this was home.  And who knew?  Maybe Casey wouldn’t throw out the baby with the
bath water.  Maybe, in spite of Rob MacKenzie’s idiocy, she would let his
daughter stay, at least until she was eighteen. 

Driving around aimlessly didn’t
sound all that appealing.  Not that she couldn’t handle the car.  She’d
practiced enough times with her father to know what she was doing behind the
wheel.  But driving around this little podunk town in the middle of the night
would grow old very quickly.  There had to be someplace she could go.  She
thought briefly of her Aunt Rose, but nixed that idea.  After the debacle with
Mikey, she couldn’t go there.  It would be too painful, too humiliating.  Aunt
Trish would be a better choice.  She was warm and nurturing and sweet.  If
Paige showed up at her door in the middle of the night, Trish would take her
in, no questions asked.  She’d feed her and give her a warm bed and let her
vent if she wanted.  That was the kind of person Trish was.

Three months ago, leaving Boston
had been so hard.  Now, she barely missed the city.  This place, this stupid,
provincial, barren, dead-end spot at the far corner of the earth, had become
home.  She had family here, and that made all the difference.  How could she
have known?

“Come on, Leroy,” she said.  “Let’s
blow this joint.”

The dog jumped off the bed, eager
to go wherever she was going.  She clipped the leash to his harness, turned the
stereo down to a minimal level, grabbed her coat and tiptoed into the kitchen. 
Standing in front of the key rack that hung on an end cabinet, she debated
briefly.  But there was no real debate.  Her father would probably kill her
when he found out, but she was taking the Porsche.  It was the only car she’d
ever driven, and besides, she liked the idea of pissing him off.  He’d been
planning to put the car in storage for the winter, but he hadn’t gotten to it
yet.  That was probably a good thing, because once Casey threw him out on his
ass, he’d be driving it back to California anyway.  Or, if not California, then
wherever he ended up.  Because there was no way he’d stay in Jackson Falls if
he couldn’t be with Casey.  She might only be fifteen, but she was smart enough
to know that.

It had stopped snowing, and the
sky was clear.  Leroy bounded enthusiastically through the soft, fluffy snow. 
There wasn’t that much accumulation.  Only three or four inches, and she knew
they’d plowed the roads, because she’d heard the plow going back and forth
several times earlier in the evening.  Paige blipped the locks, brushed the
snow away from the door with an old broom she’d found in the shed, opened the
driver’s door and deposited Leroy onto the passenger seat.

She spent a couple of minutes
sweeping snow off the car until her windows were clear, then she leaned the
broom against the side of the house and got in the car.  She fastened her
seatbelt, ran the passenger-side belt through Leroy’s harness and clicked it. 
“Sorry, buddy,” she said, “but we have to keep you safe.”  The engine roared
when she started the car, and for a minute, she panicked.  But their bedroom
was on the opposite side of the big old house, and the way they were yelling, a
747 could crash in the yard and they wouldn’t even notice.

The driveway was a slippery,
slushy mess.  When she reached the road, she gunned the motor a little to take
her through the pile of crap left behind by the snowplow.  The tires spun, and
for a second, she thought she was going to get stuck.  That would be just
ducky, having to go back inside, climb the stairs, knock on that bedroom door,
and tell her dad that his precious car was stuck in a snow bank at the end of
the driveway.

But at the last minute, the
wheels found traction, and she made it out onto the road.  She turned right out
of the driveway, because that was the most direct route to Bill and Trish’s
house.  The windshield was fogged, and she cranked the blower and rubbed at the
glass.  It didn’t do much good, because she and Leroy were breathing inside the
car, and it was so much warmer inside than it was outside that condensation
hung heavy on the glass.  Paige lowered her window.  Cold air rushed in,
freezing her, but this time, when she wiped the windshield, it stayed clear.

Maybe this hadn’t been such a hot
idea after all.

There were no other cars around. 
Nobody else crazy enough to be out this late, on these back roads, directly
after a storm.  Although the road had been plowed, there was very little sand,
and without snow tires, she had to fight to keep the car from spinning in
circles.  Sweat pooled under her arms, and she seriously considered turning
around and going back home.  But in this isolated rural paradise, there was no
place to turn.  Not even so much as a logging road between home and their
nearest neighbors, Will and Millie Bradley.  Their Meadowbrook Farm was two
miles down the road.  By the time she got there and could turn around, she’d be
a half-mile from her destination, and turning would be pointless.  So she
forged on.

She’d forgotten about the big
hill.  It loomed ahead of her, a quarter-mile of downhill gradient that led
directly to the river.  Paige stopped at the top, feeling like Jean-Claude
Killy about to race down a packed-powder slope.  She’d always wanted to learn
to ski, she just hadn’t planned on doing it in a Porsche.  Maybe she should
park the damn thing by the side of the road and walk back to the house.  But
she was almost there, and the thought of that long trek in the cold was enough
of a deterrent to keep her moving forward.  She wasn’t a chicken.  She was the
fearless Paige MacKenzie.  Hard as nails, and twice as stubborn.  She had
brakes, for Christ’s sake.  No damn snow-covered hill was going to stop her.

Inching forward gingerly, she
started down.  The Porsche fishtailed and, heart hammering, she hit the
brakes.  When the car started to come around sideways, she realized her mistake
and released them.  She struggled with the steering wheel and the car righted
itself.  “Jesus,” she said on a hard exhalation of breath.  “Hang on, Leroy.”

With a white-knuckle grip on the
steering wheel, she inched forward, hopscotching down the hill that had not a
grain of sand on it.  Brake and skid, brake and skid, brake and skid.  If she
made it through this alive, she was going to write a strongly-worded letter to
the Jackson Falls Department of Public Works, which she suspected consisted of
one plow truck driven by a member of the volunteer fire department.  Granted,
this was a back road with little traffic, but considering how many times she’d
heard the plow pass the house, the hill should have been sanded. 

She would have made it if she
hadn’t lost traction two-thirds of the way down, on the steepest portion of the
hill.  The car skidded left, then right.  Paige tried to steer, but it was
useless.  Tried to brake, but that only brought the Porsche around sideways. 
She let up on the brakes and clutched the steering wheel in terror as the car
gained momentum, speeding faster and faster in its sideways journey.  Through
the passenger window, she could see the outline of the telephone pole hurtling
towards her, but there was nothing she could do except wait for death to come
and take her.

If she survived this, her dad was
going to kill her.

“Oh, shit,” she said, a split-second
before impact.

Warm and drowsy beneath the
covers, his arms tight around her as they spooned in the darkness, he said,
“That was one epic declaration of love, Fiore.”

“I’m so glad you liked it.  Did I
manage to get my point through that thick head of yours, or should I get a
bigger sledgehammer?  Because if the concept needs reinforcement, I could
always take out a full-page ad in
Rolling Stone
.  Maybe a big
Valentine’s heart, with the words
CASEY LOVES ROB
stenciled across the
center.”

“I don’t think that’ll be
necessary.  I was so damn pissed at you.”

“Likewise.”

“Just between you and me—”  He
kissed her shoulder.  “—I’m pretty sure it was that hot puddle of lust thing
that was the tipping point.”

“Stop teasing me.  Please.”

“That was the sweetest thing
anybody’s ever said to me.  The whole damn speech was sweet.  I mean, I realize
I’m no Jon Bon Jovi, but at least I have sexier feet than he does.”

“If you don’t stop, I’m going to
slug you.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I deserve it.”

“Maybe you do, considering the
way you left me standing barefoot in the snow.”

“That was pretty bad, wasn’t it?”

“It was.  Bloody Irish drama
queen.”

“Hey, I only have a meltdown once
or twice a year.”

“Do you suppose that from now on,
you could schedule them in advance, so in the future I can plan to be in Aruba during
your biannual breakdown?”

“I’ll try to work it into my
schedule.”

She floated for a time, wallowing
in contentment.  “You do realize I’m going to get fat and ugly?  You’ll
probably rue the day you met me.”

“You could never be fat or ugly.”

“Says the man who wasn’t around during
my third trimester the last time I was pregnant.”

“You’ll always be beautiful to
me.  When you’re nothing but a toothless hag in the nursing home, with your boobs
hanging to your knees, I’ll still be trying to get into your pants at least
once a day.”

“What a lovely picture you
paint.  And what happened to Paris?”

“I’m sure they have nursing homes
in France.”

“Funny boy.”  She wriggled away
from him and sat up on the edge of the bed.

“Where do you think you’re going,
Mrs. MacKenzie?”