His Baby (3 page)

The two men turned to face her when she joined them next to
the barbecue. Carl was wearing a big canvas apron.

"Hey, Sis," Carl said, holding a long-handled fork
aloft in one hand and a beer can in the other.

"Hey yourself. How are these steaks doing?"

"Halfway done. How's my wife?"
"She's fine. Watching Lark in the living room."

"Good. She needs to stay off her feet. Did you tell her
that?" He was busy testing the steaks, now. Diana glanced at Zack for a
moment. He was watching her with an intensity that threw her off. She looked
away from him back to Carl.

"She says the doctor says she needs to take
walks," Diana said cautiously, not really answering his question.

Carl sighed. "She does. She doesn't get any exercise
and she eats chips all day and her blood pressure is too high. I'd yell at her
some more but it doesn't seem to do any good." He lifted an eyebrow. "You
yell at her, maybe that would help." Diana started to answer, then
stopped, shrugged and took a sip of her soda.

"Maybe we could take a walk after dinner," Diana
said after consideration.

Carl studied her for a moment. "Before or after her
nap?" he said finally.

Diana didn't have an answer for that. As if on cue, the two
of them looked at Zack who glanced back from one to the other.

"Should I leave? Is there some family business I'm
keeping you two from discussing?"

Yes
, Diana thought.

"No," Carl said quickly. "It's just that Mary
is so tired. I don't know whether its normal or she's having a harder pregnancy
for some reason." Zack pointed out he was the last person to ask this sort
of question.

The three of them chatted their way through the steaks and
setting the table and bringing the food out. Diana went inside to wake up Mary
and change Lark, then the four of them continued their polite conversation all
the way through chocolate chip cookies for dessert.

Carl volunteered to do the dishes. Mary followed him inside.
Zack and Diana ended up settled on the lounge chairs, watching twilight spread
through the trees at the back of the yard, the dark seeping up on them, like a
live thing crawling across the lawn.

Zack's request came after several moments of silence between
them. Diana held the dozing baby comfortably in her arms.

"Can I hold her?" he asked.

She hesitated just a moment too long.

"I want to hold her," he said more firmly,
sounding more hurt than angry.

Diana relented, aware of the tug of fear more than anything
else, that and the cool breeze where before there had been warm, heavy baby.

He fussed for a moment, clearly not sure how to hold the
baby, a little afraid of her. Diana gave instructions, then sat back in her
chair, trying not to stare at them. Zack was watching the baby, studying her
really, with a fierce gaze that surprised Diana.

"She's such a pretty baby, isn't she?" he said
finally. He had one of his fingers threaded through her tiny fist and he was
moving it, shaking hands with her. Lark was waking up a little, considering him.
Lark liked his direct gaze; she locked eyes with him. Diana felt excluded
watching the two of them. She closed her eyes for a moment, wondering how soon
she could escape, take Lark home.

"Since it's just the two of us, well, the three of us,
but Lark won't understand, would you mind telling me why you're so angry about
me and Robin?" Zack asked.

Mind
, Diana thought.
I'll try not to mind
. She
debated how to say it for a moment, then surrendered to the urge to be blunt. "Angry?"
she said. "I'm angry because of the way you handled everything."

"The way I handled what? I don't know what you're
talking about. What was I supposed to do differently?" He protested mildly
enough, but Diana could see his annoyance on his face.

"Show up," she said flatly.
That's what you
could have done differently
. "If you wanted to call off the wedding,
at least you could have had the simple courtesy to show up and tell people,
face to face."

"Ah, I see. The problem is you're mad I didn't show up
the day of the wedding." He said it so simply that she felt anger bloom
again.

"Yes, that's the problem," Diana said
sarcastically.

"Well, obviously I don't know what happened that day,
because I wasn't there. But I wasn't there because Robin called me the night
before and told me she didn't think she could marry me. She said I was the
wrong guy and it was a bad idea."

"I know you weren't there, that's the--" Diana
looked up suddenly and stared at him, then what he said sunk in. "What did
you say?"
"Robin called me about six o'clock the night before. My parents and I were
just talking about going out to dinner with some other relatives who had come
to Chicago to travel down with us for the wedding. Robin told me that she
didn't think it was right to go through with the wedding because she was marrying
me for all the wrong reasons. It wasn't fair to me, that's what she said. She
said more, but that was the gist of it."

"I don't believe you," Diana said flatly. "I
just don't believe you."

Zack studied her for a minute, his dark eyes intense despite
his composed appearance. "When did she tell you the wedding was off?"

"When you didn't show up at the church. About fifteen
minutes after the wedding was supposed to start, she started sobbing and said
she knew you weren't going to come. After a while, Carl had to go out and tell
everyone in the church to go home, there wasn't going to be a wedding."

When he didn't say anything, Diana looked up. Zack looked
stunned.

"I just don't believe you, Zack," Diana went on,
studying her hands again. "Why would she cancel the wedding the night
before with you and then
not
tell any of us?"

"I don't know. It doesn't make sense."

"Why didn't you call her later, say something?"

"What was there to say? She told me there was no way,
that she wasn't going to change her mind, and she was very sorry, but that was
that."

"I just don't believe you. She cried for days then she drove
off for a couple of days and when she came back she said she didn't want to
talk about it anymore, that it was over."
Zack was staring off across the narrow back yard towards the line of trees.

Diana went on. "Then two weeks later she told me the
home pregnancy test was positive. At first she didn't want to keep the baby but
I convinced her we'd work it out."

Absently, Zack touched the top of the baby's head.

"I didn't know," he said finally. "I never
heard from her after that night. I didn't want the ring back, I didn't care. I
just went into the center city in Chicago and spent a week there, visiting the
museums, hanging around. I gave my parents the tickets to the Bahamas."
"So you just did what you were going to do anyway?" Diana said,
losing steam a little. For a moment she was afraid. What he was saying was so
logical but it couldn't be right.

"No, actually," he was saying, "I was going
to take a job with another company in Chicago but instead I gave in to my
mother's nagging and took a job in my father's company." Which distributed
stationary supplies throughout the Midwestern United States.

"So that's where you work now?"

He nodded, his face closed, turned away from her.

She tried to decide if she believed him. All she could think
about right now was Robin, her long wedding veil streaming behind her, sobbing
into her hands, then later complaining that she was getting tears all over that
beautiful satin dress.

Lark was whimpering. Diana's head came up, but Zack was
already attending to her, murmuring. The baby reached up and swatted at his
face until he gave her a finger to hold. She studied him intently, sniffling a
little until he smiled tentatively at her; Lark rewarded his efforts with a
radiant smile.

She was worried, Diana thought, Lark was reacting to Zack's upset
and wanted to calm him down. Diana felt foolish all of a sudden. All she could
remember was the pain, Robin's pain and unhappiness. Could that all have been
pretense? Could it have happened the way Zack described it? Diana sat very
still in the chair, facing the hedge, trying to make sense of what he'd told
her. She didn't even hear Carl come out and join them until he spoke.

"Everything okay out here?" He dangled a full baby
bottle in front of Lark, who reached for it. Between the two of them, Carl and
Zack got Lark started on the bottle. The three adults watched the baby until
she was feeding steadily.
"Well," Zack said slowly, "I just learned something pretty
amazing." He told his story to Carl.

Carl sighed heavily when Zack was done.

"It makes more sense than you not showing up, not
calling, not saying anything," Carl said slowly. "Man, I don't want
to believe it of Robin, but what you're saying makes sense."

"You believe him?" Diana said incredulously.

Carl turned his head slowly to look at her for a long
moment, studying her face carefully. "I just said I believe him, Diana, I
think what Zack's saying makes more sense than him just not showing up that
day."

"You saw how upset she was. How can you believe that
she lied to us all, told us a complete fabrication?"
"Sis, think about it for a minute," Carl said reasonably.

"Think about what?" Diana snapped at him.

"Think about the church. You were in the choir balcony
with Robin, but I was up front, facing the people. Maybe you didn't even notice.
None of Zack's guests were there."

Diana remembered the image of her brother in his rented tux.
"I don't believe that," she said.

"I do," Zack said. "My mother and I divided
up the guest list and called everybody that night. We sent out for food instead
of going out to eat. I missed a couple of the guys from school, but we reached
everyone else."

"That's impossible."

"It wasn't that big a list, Diana. Mostly family. Everybody
was driving down on Saturday morning. The wedding wasn't until two o'clock,
remember?"

Diana knew she was staring but she couldn't help it. She
couldn't remember any strangers in the crowd gathered in front of the church
after they made the announcement but she hadn't stayed in the yard long, just
long enough to walk Robin to the car, to let Mary drive them home. Diana
remembered sitting in Robin's darkened bedroom with her, handing her cold
towels, listening to her talk until finally, exhausted, Robin had fallen asleep.

When Diana went downstairs, Carl and Mary had put everything
away, all the food they'd prepared for a wedding lunch out on the grass behind
the house.

It wasn't long after that that Carl and Mary got married,
but they didn't plan a big wedding, just went to the justice of the peace and
came home with the news. Robin had announced her pregnancy already.

"Tell me it doesn't make more sense, Diana," Carl
said quietly.

"I just have trouble believing Robin would lie like
that."

"I'm sorry, Sis," Carl said, "but I don't. I
don't think she could face you. I think the longer she put it off, the harder
it was to tell you to stop, to cancel the wedding."

Despite his soft tone, the words hurt.

"You're blaming it on me?"

"No, Robin lied, not you. In her defense, I think she
just wasn't strong enough to tell you the truth."

Diana realized she was crying, that tears were running down
her cheeks
. It was my fault
, she thought, the accusation racing around in
her head. She was glad daylight was fading fast. Perhaps no one would notice.

But Carl had said no. It was Robin's fault, not hers. That
was even more upsetting somehow. Diana didn't know what to think. She decided
she didn't want to think about it now, maybe she didn't want to think about it
at all. What good would it do?

I'll think about it tomorrow
, she thought, then had
to repress a giggle, remembering the line in
Gone with the Wind
, at how
they had laughed at the melodrama of it.

A little later, when it was full dark, Diana didn't protest
when Carl drove her car home with her in the back seat with Lark. He declared
she was too tired to drive. Without much discussion, Zack followed them in his
shiny sedan, to take Carl back to his house. She didn't argue when Zack
suggested that he would come pick her up for breakfast, well, brunch really, at
about noon the next day. She ignored Carl and Zack, sitting in her kitchen over
a fresh pot of coffee, discussing where the two of them should go the next day.

She left them there and took Lark upstairs, put her to bed,
then crossed the hall, kicked her shoes off, and laid down on her bed, too
tired to do anything more.

Late Sunday morning, Diana and Zack ended up driving the 18
miles to Masonville to have lunch at the big restaurant next to Mason Lake. Zack
had already found a car seat and installed it in the back of his car. He put
the convertible seat that Diana usually used in the trunk but yielded
gracefully to Diana's instruction that the diaper bag needed to go up front
with them.

After all that, Lark promptly fell asleep in the car.

Before they left the house, Diana had decided to ignore him
as much as possible, to focus on Lark. Her plan fell through when the baby fell
asleep. To her surprise, Zack was hard to ignore. There were practical matters.
The car wasn't as big as it had seemed from the outside. The two of them were
pretty close together in the front bucket seats. When Diana turned to check on
Lark, she found that she was uncomfortably close to Zack.

She could smell his aftershave, for heaven's sake, and study
his smooth cheek and the well-defined line of his jaw, especially when he
spread a local map across the narrow center console and had her describe the
route for him. She watched him shift smoothly through the gears, then settle
back as they drove on the mostly empty country roads.

He complimented her dress and admired the little shorts and
shirt that Lark wore. Before she could return the compliments, he had nestled
back into the curved seat and somehow seemed to have changed the subject. She
was aware of his long, lean legs, tucked up a little around the steering wheel,
and conscious of his broad shoulders, under still another clean broadcloth
shirt.

He was wearing sunglasses, so she couldn't really see his
eyes and that bothered her more than she wanted to admit. He seemed to glance
over at her regularly, at least at first, and she didn't know what he was
looking at, couldn't guess what he was thinking.

He seemed comfortable making small talk about the scenery, the
farms, the small towns they drove through. He asked her politely about her job
and she told him about being promoted to office manager in Whitney's only
accounting firm. She had started with them as a bookkeeper, a trade she had
studied for after high school, and rapidly advanced to managing everything the
boss didn't want to deal with.

She liked her job, although sometimes she felt that being
the supervisor isolated her from the other women in the office, made her the
bad guy in several situations. But it was a good job, especially good in a
small town struggling through the current economy. Zack nodded and kept up his
end of the conversation.

He was behaving as though this visit were more social than
anything else. Last night he'd seemed willing to address the hard questions. This
morning?

At the lake, he helped her get Lark out of the car and got
them settled around a round table in a little alcove with windows all around
them. They had a beautiful view of the lake through graceful floor to ceiling
windows, set off by soft translucent curtains pulled back and tied at each wood
frame. The waiter pulled a similarly gauzy curtain across their alcove, giving
them a modicum of privacy. If they didn't have Lark, Diana thought, it would be
the perfect romantic setting. It wasn't bad even with the baby, although this
wasn't supposed to be romantic, was it?

The sun was high overhead, brilliant in a bright blue sky,
but the dark blue water of the lake was shadowed by the high trees surrounding
three quarters of the small, nearly round body. The water looked cold and still.
Other lakes in the area were used for recreation, but this one was a private
lake, apparently owned by the restaurant, intended to be just a view, a beautiful
little lake which served as a backdrop for diners.

 Well, Diana thought, bringing her attention back to the
table and her company, she'd made the ride here a polite one, she'd answered
his inane questions, but they needed to talk about what she had learned last
night. To her surprise this morning, his revelations didn't seem so outrageous.
It did make sense Robin hadn't wanted to tell Big Sister the wedding was off. What
didn't make sense was why Zack had wanted to marry Robin in the first place. Despite
his declarations of love last night, Zack didn't seem like a man whose heart
had been broken.

After they had been served coffee -- and juice for Lark --
Zack leaned forward a little, putting his elbows on the table, tilting his head
a little to one side.

Charming, she thought disdainfully, then realized that he
was. He was a good looking, well-mannered man, who dressed beautifully, behaved
decently, and seemed to be doing well for himself. If he lived in town, she
thought, he'd have been snatched up a long time ago.

"Have you had time to think about what we're going to
do?" he asked, his voice an intimate burr.

She shook off her thoughts and brought herself to the
present. "What we're going to do. What do you mean?" Diana asked,
annoyed, then felt contrite.
Why do I want to make this difficult for him? Other
than the fact that he had thrown her life into turmoil!
"I'm sorry. I'm
not trying to be difficult," she lied. Diana had pulled a small package of
animal crackers from the diaper bag. She put a couple of them on the tray of
Lark's high chair. The baby reached for one, smiling to herself. She didn't
seem to mind the rolled towel that Diana had put around her to hold her steady
in the restaurant's chair.

 "I didn't think you were," Zack said. She turned
to look at him, trying to remember what they were talking about. Right, she was
being difficult. He went on. "Saturday morning you said you wanted to set
ground rules. I just wanted to know what you meant by that." He sat back,
leaving his hands folded, resting between the heavy silver setting on the white
tablecloth. He spoke again before she could answer. "After all, I don't
even know if you have legal custody of Lark."

Diana stared at him. Legal custody? Of course she didn't
have legal custody. The matter had never come up. When Robin died, Diana
started taking care of Lark. There hadn't even been any discussion in the
family, just Carl asking if she was going to be all right. She felt cold, numb,
and very afraid.

"You can't have Lark," she said flatly.

"Of course I can," he said reasonably. "I'm
her father." He stared at her then, his hard look at odds with his
reasonable tone, then looked away, staring out the lovely windows towards the
shadowed lake. His face changed.

"You can't take her away from me," she said into
the silence.

"I'm not going to take her away from you," he said
finally, not looking at her.

"I'll fight you. I'll say you aren't the father, that
Robin lied. I'll make you do paternity tests. I'll-- "

"I'm not going to take her away from you," he said
again, no louder, she thought, but it had taken that long to sink in.

"Then why did you say that?" Moreover, why did he
say it here, in public, where she couldn't easily escape? Where she was less
likely to scream at him, to throw something, to rant? At least he thought she
wouldn't. She took a breath. All right, she wouldn't. She would simply fight
for Lark.

"Because my father said I should demand custody." Zack
didn't sound happy about it.
Not
, Diana thought,
that his unhappiness
excused him
.

"He doesn't think you should pay child support? I don't
care. Did he suggest you just walk away? Then walk away, Mr. White. We don't
need you. We don't want you around. We don't care to ever see you again." She
swallowed, tried to unclench her tight jaw, just a little. Lark was studying
her, as if puzzling out the meaning of that tone of voice.

He sighed. "You don't understand. My father said I
should demand custody. No matter what you said, what you offered."

"Do you always do what your father says?" she
asked bitterly.

"Pretty much," he said without hesitation.

Diana stared at him, annoyed, then a little confused. Was
this all supposed to be his father's fault?

"Time you grew up," she said. "A baby is not
a package."

"I know. Lark is a person. Her own person," he
said quietly. The little person was staring at both of them, her crackers
forgotten. Diana chose a plastic toy from the selection in the bag and put it
on Lark's tray.

"Why did you even tell your father?" she asked
Zack. "About Lark, I mean? I don't understand what happened."

"Was I not supposed to tell him? He's my father. He's
Lark's grandfather."

Poor Lark
she thought, too angry to censor the unkind
thought. Perhaps the elder Mr. White was as callous as he seemed to be.

"Look, you have every right to be angry."

"You noticed," she said even more quietly.

"But you have to understand. My father liked
Robin," Zack said. "He liked her a lot. He approved of our marriage. He
was angry with me, not with her. He wanted to know what I did wrong, that she
would call off the wedding like that. I don't think he's ever forgiven
me." Zack sounded resigned, not angry.
He was just telling the story
,
she thought. Diana felt sorry for Zack, although she didn't want to. She didn't
want to feel any sympathy for him, but if she was to believe him and she was
beginning to believe him, then she felt bad for the way Robin had handled it.

"Was he angry when he found out about Lark?" she
asked, glancing quickly at Lark, who didn't seem to be disturbed by them at all
anymore.

"No. Happy actually. It seems for once I did something
right." He smiled at her but it was a bleak gesture, not a happy one.

"So he suggested you come down here and take Lark
away?"

"Something like that." He looked at Lark and swallowed
hard. Diana thought he looked ashamed more than anything.

"You aren't going to do that," she told him,
feeling almost as though she were scolding him.

"Of course not," he said firmly, almost annoyed
that she would suggest such a thing.

"I won't let you."
"I understand."

"I don't think you do," she began but then their
waiter stepped up to the table and asked about their order. Before Diana could
react, Zack had given him instructions and the waiter had retreated behind the
softly swaying curtains.

She considered Zack, wondering why she wasn't feeling
angrier right now. Maybe all the anger was mixed up with relief and with a
reluctant sympathy. Had all this been a ploy, then, to manipulate her? Well,
she thought, it worked. She was willing to let him see Lark now. But she would
never let Lark out of her sight with him.

She told him as much while he poured himself more coffee
from a silver pot the waiter had left. Zack stirred milk and sugar into the
fresh brew while he listened.

"You won't put any limits on how much I can see
her?" he asked finally.

"Of course I will," she said, "but they'll be
practical limits. You can't see her without me. I work. Therefore you can't see
her when I'm working."

"That shouldn't be a problem. I have a job. But, tell
me, when you work, what do you do with Lark?"

"She stays with a baby sitter. My boss's wife suggested
the woman. We were lucky enough that she had a spot."

"A spot?"

"The baby sitter doesn't take more than two babies,
although she has a couple of toddlers she watches right now, too."

He nodded. "I guess we're saying that I'll pretty much
only see Lark on weekends, then."

"I guess so."

He took a breath. "I think I'll get tired of that motel
pretty soon." He was looking right at her.
No
, she thought,
you cannot
move in with me
. T
here is no room at Carl's house
. "Can you
suggest a couple of places I can check out later today?" he was asking.

"Places? What do you want?"

"An apartment I guess. A one bedroom. It doesn't need
to be very big."

"There are a couple of big complexes downtown,"
she said, thinking of the modern buildings, aggressively new and well appointed.
That seemed about his style.

"What about at the edge of town, closer to where you
live?"

"There's old lady Hampton. She has a couple of apartments
in a building she lives in. I don't know if she has a vacancy. They aren't
modern, it's an old house that was made over into apartments years ago."

"Let's start there," he said, nodding.

"You might not like the place," she warned. "It's
not very," she struggled for a word, "fancy," she said finally. The
apartments were nice enough, but it was a turn of the century house with wood
floors and old wallpaper and strange old appliances. Sort of like her place,
she thought ruefully. "You might want to wait, Zack. Is the motel that
terrible? Give it a couple of weeks, see what you think."

"About Lark you mean, you think I'll get tired of
her?" He leaned back, half smiling.

"Well, coming to town every weekend is a big change. You
have to get on with your life."

"You don't understand. I don't have a life," he
said. They paused there for a moment while the waiter showed up with platters
of food. Eggs, bacon, potatoes, blueberry muffins, and a dish of fruit salad. The
busboy checked on their supply of jams, salt, pepper, cream and coffee. Finally,
they were left in peace. Diana gave Lark a couple more crackers to play with.

"Everybody has a life, Zack."

"Okay, I know what you mean. I drift. That's my
father's accusation and he may be right. Other people have goals, drive,
ambition. They know what they want. I haven't ever been sure. I made good
grades in school without really working that hard, I found decent jobs without
too much trouble, and people seem to think I do a good job. I don't know that I
feel too excited about any of it. Not like some people, who really love their
life," he said bluntly. "Don't get me wrong," he added, "I
think I'm very lucky. I'm not unhappy."