His Baby (13 page)

"The quandary we have," she said without turning,
"is deciding which dining room rug to use."

It was a quandary they managed to solve, after Zack had
rummaged around a bit. They got the rug downstairs, the bedroom furniture in
the dining room onto the porch and the dining room table into a corner of the
front porch. Too heavy to steal, Mrs. Johnson pronounced when she showed up. She
was impressed at what they'd managed to move. They decided to leave the bedroom
furniture for Carl to help with later and left Mrs. Johnson to polish up the
nearly empty dining room while they took Lark to lunch with Mrs. Hampton at
Nellie's.

Mrs. Hampton walked slowly back with them to the house and
labored up the stairs, professing a deep interest in the attic. They didn't
hear another word from her all afternoon until Carl and Zack struggled up with
the bed and dresser. She was settled in a battered old armchair by the front
windows of the attic, reading an old diary in the pale light.

She made them scones and cookies in return for tea and a
ride back to her house. Diana agreed to loan her the diary and to let her back
into the attic again soon. Carl got her into his truck and promised to drop her
off when he left for home, carrying a bag of cookies for Mary.

When the house settled down again, Zack was upstairs,
getting Lark up from a nap. Diana fussed around in the kitchen, newly polished
by Mrs. Johnson and warmed by Mrs. Hampton's baking, until she couldn't bear it
anymore. The dining room was nearly set up, rug, table, and china cabinet in
place. The old heavy brocade drapes had been taken down so that Mrs. Johnson
could drop them off at the cleaners. No one had won the debate about under
curtains. Diana wanted lace curtains but Mrs. Johnson told her that was
hopelessly out of date. Mrs. Hampton liked them but said lace was hard to find.
Zack argued for sheer curtains but Carl said that sheer curtains were boring. Safe.

She sat at a chair at the head of the table, debating, when
Zack walked in with Lark. Zack moved through a strong beam of late afternoon
sun, slanting across the room, across the table. He chose a chair and sat down,
talking to Lark, telling her about the room and (
braggart
, Diana
thought) how hard he had worked to set it up. For her, of course. Diana thought
for a moment her heart would break.

Just for a moment, she wanted Lark to be her baby and Zack
to be her man. She wanted this to be their house, the house they lived in, the
house they loved in, the safe place they went into the world from.

But then the yearning was overwhelmed with logic.

Life didn't work like that for her. Lark was her niece and
Zack was her niece's father and they had a tangled set of relationships, like
all the tangled relationships in her life. Diana had been responsible,
practical since she could remember. She'd never raged against fate, not until
fate took away Robin, anyway, and she'd always felt that what she had was
enough.

There had never been time for play. There had never been any
real time for boyfriends. There had never been time for dreaming. Now she
realized that she had stumbled into an impossible dream, one she couldn't have
in reality. She had thought, for a long time, that she wasn't made for sex or
that kind of love, that she was too practical for the silliness and too
distracted for romance.

Now she wanted to kick up her heels.

"Are you enjoying your dining room?" Zack asked.

Diana felt like shaking herself. She looked at Zack, the
tall, strong, handsome man who had insinuated himself into her life, and she
realized one thing very clearly. She wasn't keeping him in range because she
was afraid he would take Lark away. Not anymore. She was keeping him in range
because she was afraid he would leave.

She decided she would think about that one later.

"Actually," she said slowly, "I was trying to
decide about those dishes."

Zack groaned. "Your Mama is trying to break my
back," he told Lark. "I know she wants me to carry those dishes down.
I'm going to be so sore, but I'll be at work. She won't know I'm
suffering." Lark giggled at him.

Diana sat very still. The urge to keep him close faded away
with the renewal of her fears and her doubts. "Don't Zack," she said.

He looked up at her, puzzled.

"Don't call me Mama. I'm Diana."

"Auntie Diana," he said bitterly.

"If you want," she said as mildly as she could
manage.

He stared at her for a few long moments. She felt her heart
thudding in her chest, the slow movement of her breath.

"We make a good team, you know," he said finally.
“We’re good together.”

"What do you mean?" That came out of left field,
she thought.

"If you married me, you could be Lark's Mama."

"But I can't marry you," she said automatically.

"Even if we don't share a marital bed?" he asked,
his voice a little prim. "For Lark? Would you marry me for Lark?"

"And live here while you live in Chicago?" she
asked angrily. He was mocking her and that hurt.

"You can live wherever you want," he said
flippantly. "It would just be a marriage of convenience."

"You would still have girlfriends?" she asked.

"You could still have boyfriends," he countered.

"I don't have boyfriends," she snapped.

"You will, someday. If I ever leave you time to
date," he said. "Besides, I don't have girlfriends."

"It doesn't sound like a marriage to me," she told
him.

"It was just an idea," he said, "just an
impulse."

"It was a bad idea," she said, staring down at the
rich wood of the dining room table.

"Marry me for real," he said quietly. She brought
her head up to look at him.

"You know I can't," she said, more anguished than
she wanted to reveal.

"You say I can't. But you won't. That's it. I don't
know why I even brought up the idea." She started to protest, to tell him
all the reasons she couldn't, but he got up from his chair and started out of
the room. "I'm going to call for a pizza," he said, "our usual. When
I go pick it up, I'll pick out a movie, okay? I'll put Lark in her
playpen."

He stopped at the dining room door.

"Unless you want me to go away," he said.

No
! she thought, but she couldn't say the word. It
would be foolish, anyway. She had been angry at him, sniping. Why did he even
want to stay? She tried to think of something to say, but he left the room,
talking to Lark.

When she heard the kitchen door slam, she got up and went to
check on Lark, who was lying in her playpen, looking as if she might wind
herself up to cry.

"Me too, little one," Diana said, then looked up
through the big window, watching Zack's car head out the driveway, turn towards
town. She thought she should set the table or figure out what Lark could eat or
do something but instead she sat down in the chair and watched Lark play with
her toes while she tried to make the logic clear in her mind.

When he came back, with a large pepperoni pizza and a murder
mystery she had been drooling over two weeks ago, she tried to talk about it,
about his proposal. He busied himself with Lark, getting her into her high
chair, choosing some baby foods from the pantry.

"Look," he said finally, "I spoke out of turn.
It was a bad idea. I was being flippant and I hurt your feelings. I'm sorry,
all right?. Let's not talk about it anymore tonight, please."

"I think I should explain," she began but he cut
her off. She felt hurt suddenly.
It was a bad idea?
Okay
, she
thought,
I got the message. You changed your mind
.

"No explanations," he said angrily. "I don't
want to talk about it. Not tonight."

"All right," she said finally, trying to be fair. She
tried to relax enough to enjoy the pizza. She tried to keep her head clear of
all the arguments and debating. She tried to focus on the movie, which he'd
chosen for her, but of course, he ended up enjoying.

She had managed to push the topic out of her mind for the
rest of the evening and through the morning distracting herself with the usual
Sunday morning routine as well as a new dessert for Sunday dinner. Carl and
Mary showed up a little early, around two o'clock. Zack had called and suggested
that Carl come by for some attic duty.

Mary, Lark and Diana hid out in the kitchen, officially
keeping an eye on the roast and getting potatoes ready for the oven but
actually trying to stay away from the men and large furniture. The two women gossiped
for a while, then, when Carl and Zack had stomped back upstairs, Mary asked the
question.

"Did you check out the yearbook?"

Diana stopped what she was doing and set down the potato
peeler. "Yes, actually I did."

"What do you think?"

"I think it's pretty shocking," she said.

"But do you think Lark looks like Jay?"

"A lot more than Lark looks like Zack, or even
Robin."

"Are you going to tell Zack?"

"I'm going to go look up Mrs. Peters first," Diana
said.

"Are you going to tell her?"

"No, I don't think so. I just want to meet her. I don't
think I have the nerve to ask her any questions."

"Are you sure it’s fair to Zack?"

"To check this out? Isn't it fair to find out if he's
really Lark's father?"

"In theory. But Zack really seems to love Lark. What will
happen if he finds out he's not her father? You see, I never quite agreed with
Carl contacting him, not exactly. I think Carl was acting out of grief for
Robin. I think he acted too soon. Carl still doesn't want to think that Robin
could do anything, I don't know, unseemly. He doesn't like to believe that
Robin would lie."

"I don't either." But I’ve gotten used to the
idea..

"But you do now. I always did," Mary said slowly,
"but I never thought it was my business. Or that you or Carl wanted to
know about the lies. Now, I don't know. It's very confusing, to know what's
right. Maybe I shouldn't have told you," Mary said.

"No," Diana said, putting her hand on Mary's
shoulder, "I'm glad you did. But I don't know what to do. I just know I
want to check it out. Find out now, before Lark gets too attached to Zack, if
he's going to leave, I mean."

"I'm attached to Zack," Mary said sadly. "I
don't want him to leave."

Diana sighed, unsure what to say. She went back to peeling
the potatoes.

"But you know," Mary went on, "I think Carl's
pretty unhappy about the situation at the plant. He's been talking about
working somewhere else, but there isn't anything else going on in town. Or
nearby. He's even talked to the Marine recruiter downtown."

"He wants to join the Marines?"

"Maybe. Maybe he'll change his mind. He knows I'm not
happy about him going away. He'll end up going for basic training while I have
a baby around. I don't like that at all," Mary said, "and” she took a
deep breath, “well, he might have to go to war."

You can move in here
was on the tip of her tongue,
but for the first time in her life, faced with a situation like this, Diana
held the words back.
Of course
, she thought,
Mary can move in here.
Suddenly she felt uncertain about it.
If Mary moved in for a few months
--
Diana stopped the forward motion of that thought.
Maybe Mary wouldn't want
to move in here, but would she want to live on her own with a new baby?

Diana stopped the peeler, afraid suddenly she was going to
cut herself. She wasn't going to jump the gun, make new plans for her life, or
Carl and Mary's life, until she talked to Carl.

Later on that evening, sitting in the living room, she got
her chance. Mary had gone upstairs briefly and Zack was right behind her, gone
to check on Lark, who had been whimpering.

"Carl," Diana said, and waited until he turned his
face from the windows facing the fields. They were, she realized with some
degree of sadness, the fields that Grandmother Stonehouse had sold to give Carl
money for a start in life. He had said at the time he didn't want to be a
farmer. Was that true now? Did he feel cheated ?

"Hey, sis," he said, "I've been ignoring you,
I'm sorry."

"It's okay. But Mary was saying something about a
Marine recruiter."

He sighed. "I'm thinking about it, Diana. There isn't
anything for me in this town anymore. Except you and Lark."

"Are you upset I got the house?"

"No, there still wouldn't be any work. That's what
bothers me. I put up with what goes on at the plant or wait until another plant
has a job that opens up. If they'll hire me. Let's see what happens."

"You won't do anything before Mary has the baby will
you? If you need to quit, you know I'll do whatever I can."

"I know, Diana. But when are you ever going to have a
life of your own? That's the problem with leaving to join the Marines," he
said. "You'll want Mary to move in here while I'm at Basic Training and
frankly, I would feel better about leaving her for a while if she were living
with you, but it's too much to ask of you."

"I don't mind," Diana said fiercely.

He looked at her, reaching for her hand. She felt small and
vulnerable all of a sudden, feeling his big, callused hand. He was younger than
she was, a baby when she had been in school, her responsibility from the time
he got out of diapers, or before.

"I know, Sis, I know," he said sadly.

"What's the downside?" her boss used to say all
the time. Diana thought about the concept of a downside a lot that week. Jay
Peters' wife wasn't that hard to locate. Diana went to the library during one
lunch hour and looked up the report of the accident that killed Jay and Robin. Susan
was listed in the obituary a couple of days later and her address was given, a
street which turned out to be located just a couple of blocks from the office
where Diana worked.

A Jay Peters was still listed in the phone book, living at
the same address. After two days of debate with herself, Diana walked by the
house at lunch time and found herself on a block that seemed to be all houses
which, like Mrs. Hampton's, had been split up into apartments.

However, the houses were much smaller and closer together. In
a few front yards, there were toys, bicycles, and children's sport
paraphernalia. There were two apartments for rent on the block but no place to
park, even in the middle of the day. Perhaps people parked here instead of
fighting over the meters downtown.

The house number that was listed for Jay Peters had four
apartments in it. There were mailboxes on the front porch, but Diana couldn't
tell from their arrangement which apartment was which.

Someone was watching her through a window next door. She saw
a curtain move and a small, wrinkled hand hold it back. For a moment, Diana
felt frozen on the porch, as though the spotlight had been turned on her. She
waited for someone to call out, to ask her what she was doing but the curtain
closed.

What was she going to ask Susan Peters anyway? Why would
this woman want to answer any questions? This was a crazy idea. She retreated
from the porch and walked briskly back to work.

Her boss, standing at her desk when she walked in, frowned
at her for a moment, then suggested that she join him in his office when she'd
settled in. Diana went into the ladies room and washed her hands, brushed her
hair and stared at her face. She had looked wild and windblown when she came in.
Now she looked a little more normal but inside she felt confused and a little
sick with anxiety.

She and the boss talked about what he needed to finish
before he left for a conference on Friday and then moved into what the office
was going to work on while he was out of town next week.

She called Mary that night, as soon as she could, before
Carl was likely to be home.

"I can't do it," she said, spooning a little food
into Lark's mouth.

"Can't do what?" Mary asked her.

"Talk to Jay Peters' wife," Diana said. "I
don't know what to ask her. I don't know anything about her. Can I say, look, I
don't mean to disturb you, but I want to know if your husband had an affair
with my sister? I can't do it, Mary. There's no reason to believe she would
talk to me."

They debated the possibilities for a while, but each of them
gave Diana the creeps, at least a little bit. How could she approach Jay
Peters' widow and ask the questions she wanted answers to? The woman would
probably think she was crazy.

She was crazy to pursue this. It didn't matter, did it? Would
she allow herself to be interested in Zack, to be involved with Zack if Lark
weren't his baby? Would she expect Zack to disappear if she told Zack Lark
weren't his baby? Would she retreat from her defensive position if she found
out Lark was his baby? She couldn't come up with an answer for any of these
questions.

The next day, at lunch, she took another walk down the
street, this time, out of sheer impulse, stopping to ask about an apartment
advertised as available. An old man answered the bell, thin and stooped in a
pale blue cardigan sweater. The fall wind tossed around what little hair he had
left. He showed her the apartment, a one bedroom upstairs, and asked her a
number of questions.

The landlord said he knew the Stonehouse family and was
mostly interested in finding out if her looking at an apartment meant she
wanted to sell the house or was that fellow looking to move out of Mrs. Hampton's
apartment? That rattled her. Diana wondered what town gossip was about Zack. She
retreated, saying she wasn't sure what she was looking for right now, she was
just curious.

This time she went directly to the ladies room in the office
and brushed her hair and washed her hands to warm them before heading for her
desk. Her boss came back a few minutes after she pulled out her desk chair. He
remarked on how cold she looked and was she coming down with something but said
nothing else. For a minute, she was tempted to ask him if he’d heard about
Zack, or more likely
what
he had heard about Zack.

Sometimes, Diana thought, I forget how small a town Whitney
is.

She was reminded the next evening as she walked out to the
cold, dark parking lot to get in her car after work. As she left the building,
locking the door and waving at the janitor, who had just arrived, she heard
someone call her name. She turned to see a tiny young woman approach her, well
bundled up against the cold.

"Do you have a couple of minutes to talk, Ms.
Stonehouse?" the woman asked.

"I don't know who you are," Diana said cautiously.

"I'm Susan Peters, Jay Peters' widow." She had a
small, heart shaped face, reminiscent of Robin's face, although this woman was
blonde and Robin's had been dark hair, like all the Stonehouse family.

Diana knew that her shock must have shown on her face.

"My next door neighbor saw you earlier this week. The
old gentleman down the street said something to her yesterday. I figured I
should look you up before you paid me another visit."

"I'm sorry," Diana said, "I hope I haven't
caused you too much trouble." She glanced around the parking lot, then
made a decision. "Do you want to get in the car?" Diana offered. "It’s
a little warmer in there. Or we could go inside, but I have just a few minutes.
I have to go pick up Lark."

Susan Peters nodded, so they climbed in Diana's car. The
other woman put a small shopping bag down in between her feet.

"Is that the baby's name?" Susan asked. She
sounded a little pained.

Diana could only nod. Susan looked up at her, waiting and
Diana realized she wouldn't have seen the gesture.

"Yes, that's my sister's baby's name."

"Isn't it funny," Susan said flatly, in a voice
that reflected no amusement whatsoever. "Robin, Jay and Lark."

"I never thought of that," Diana said truthfully.

"I don't know how much you've figured out," Susan
said slowly, "so let me save you a lot of time. What do you want to know? Just
ask me and I'll tell you."

"Do you think that Lark is Jay's baby?"

Susan just nodded slowly and carefully, as if the movement
caused her pain. "At least, Jay thought Lark was his baby."

Diana couldn't say anything. She didn't know how she felt. "Did
you want to know anything else?" Susan said.

"I don't need to know anything. I mean, I couldn't
figure out how to ask you."

"Why did you want to know?" Susan asked.

"Because my brother contacted the man whose name is on
Lark's birth certificate. Robin had never told him about the baby. Now this man
thinks he has a baby to take care of."

"And you want to get him off the hook or make him go
away?"

"Yes," Diana said, thinking unwillingly of Zack,
"no, I don't, but it doesn't seem fair."

"Of course it isn't fair," Susan said angrily. "None
of this is fair. Jay married me, then went right back to seeing her, first
chance he got. I didn't want to go back home so I put up with it, thinking he'd
get tired of her. Then he died. He died with her in the car. Everybody was very
nice, but they talk. They wonder. They look at me strangely. I keep thinking I
should just leave town but it isn't that easy. I don't know where to go
anyway."

"It's not your fault," Diana said. "You
shouldn't have to leave town."

"I shouldn't have to, but I'm getting tired of the
looks."

"People will forget."

"I doubt it," Susan said bitterly. "And by
the way, there's no money left."

"What do you mean?"
Money?
Diana thought.

"Don't think that you can make a claim for Lark. There
was a little bit of insurance but it paid for his burial and it paid off a
couple of debts."

"I don't care about money," Diana said, trying to
reassure Susan.

"That must be nice."

"Look, Susan, it's not that I have a lot of money, it’s
just that I didn't want to know because of money."

"My neighbor said that this guy, Lark's father, drives
down every weekend from Chicago, has a new car. Just leave well enough alone. He
can afford to pay for Lark. I'm certainly not going to. You aren't going to try
to put her off on me, are you?"

"No," Diana said, angry now. "No, I'm
not." She struggled for a breath to calm herself down. "Look Susan, I
have to pick up Lark. Do you want a ride somewhere?"

"No thanks. My car's over there."

"I'm sorry to cause you any trouble. I just had to
know."

Susan nodded, then spoke up again. "I don't understand,
really, what difference does it make?"

"I don't know if it makes a difference. But I don't
want him to feel obligated if she's not his baby."

"If that's what you want," she said, shrugging. "Look,
there's one more thing." She reached down into the bag she had brought in
with her. "Jay had a photo album, all about them. I don't want it. I've
looked at it enough times and it just hurts. But I didn't want to throw it away.
Now that you know," she shrugged and handed the album over.

Diana took the book. It was cold in her hands, cold blue
vinyl that looked a little like leather. She wanted to open it up, look, but
she couldn't. She put the cold book on her lap, feeling the weight.

"Thanks, Susan," Diana said.

"Look, just forget about it, okay?" Susan said. "I
just want to get on with my life. Maybe this guy is the father. Maybe Jay was
fooling himself."

"Maybe," Diana said slowly.

Susan turned to look at her, opened her mouth to say
something, then got out of the car, bringing in a swirl of chill air. She bent
down to look in. "Look, I don't know what I'm going to tell my neighbors. If
you want to talk to me again, just call me, okay?"

Diana nodded. Susan slammed the door and walked briskly
away. Diana watched her get into a small, battered red car. She waited for a
moment, shivering a little before she turned on the ignition and set the heater.
The chill evening seemed dark, fading quickly to night. She knew she should
move, put the car in gear, but she didn't want to move. She wanted to cry,
thinking it would make her feel better, but she couldn't find tears. She put
her head down on the steering wheel and tried just to breathe, tried to ignore
the weight of the photo album on her lap.

Someone knocked on her side window and she jumped a little. It
was the janitor, standing there in the cold, shivering a little. She rolled the
window down.

"Diana, your babysitter just called. I told her you had
left but then I looked out and saw your car. Are you all right?"

Diana nodded, not sure how much of her face was revealed in
the dim parking lot lights. "I just had a little car trouble, it wouldn't
start" she said, lying with an ease that startled her, "but I'm all
right now."

She wasn't all right, but the janitor seemed reassured. The
babysitter was upset, first about her being late, then about the car. Diana
felt worse about lying again. Lark seemed overtired and cranky and got worse as
they drove home. Diana ordered a pizza while she fed Lark. When the delivery
boy appeared, glancing around for Zack, she realized suddenly that she had
never ordered a pizza before Zack.

Zack
, she thought, and wanted to cry but she didn't
know why, if it was because she might somehow someday have to tell Lark that
the man named as her father wasn't or because she desperately wanted what she
knew to go away.

She thought it would be easy to reject him if she knew Jay
could be Lark's father. But it wasn't easy. Things weren't simpler now, they
were hard, very difficult to understand. Her feelings weren't different, either.

She still hadn't made up her mind what to do when Zack
arrived on Friday night. Turned out he made it easy to postpone a discussion. He
had a surprise for her. His parents were visiting Whitney on Saturday.

Diana paced around her bedroom, trying to distract herself
from the puzzle of what to tell Zack. When to tell Zack, really, because she
was going to tell him. Last night had disappeared in a haze of explanations and
planning. Today Mrs. Johnson was here a little early, cleaning like a madwoman
although Diana swore the house looked wonderful. They had skipped lunch with
Mrs. Hampton.

Zack was with Lark in her bedroom, trying to settle down a
very fussy baby. She was ready for a nap but had picked up the adults' anxiety.
Diana was trying to calm herself down, considering whether she could take a nap.
The Whites were driving to a conference of some sort in St. Louis. Ordinarily,
they would have flown from Chicago, but they talked themselves into driving
through Whitney to see Lark and Diana.

They would be here for the afternoon and evening and leave
in the morning. Zack had already arranged a room at the hotel he'd first stayed
at when he came to Whitney that first weekend. Diana had invited Mary and Carl
for dinner, for moral support and to meet the Whites. Diana had showered and
dressed in a long dress with short boots after trying on and discarding two or
three outfits. There was nothing to do which was why, Diana decided, she was so
anxious. Of course there was also the matter of Susan Peters' revelations, but
she wanted to stop thinking about that.