Loving Laura (The Cantrelle Family Trilogy) (24 page)

“You and your charmed life,” he said, “you made me sick. I was older, and I was just as smart, smarter even, and all my life I’d had to take a back seat to you. This was my chance to show everyone you weren’t quite so great. So I let Erica believe you weren’t really on a stakeout. It was easy. I dropped a hint that you were with another woman those nights when you said you were working. I even planted the idea she should follow you.”

“Didn’t you stop to think that maybe Erica might get hurt?”

“If everyone had done what they should have done, no one would have gotten hurt.”

“Except me,” Neil said quietly. When Willis made no response, he said, “What if Erica had told someone you goaded her into following me?”

“I pretended to try to talk her out of it. I figured I could always say she’d misunderstood. She didn’t have a great track record anyway. She was always callin’ you up, causin’ trouble.”

“But what did you think would happen when she got to the stakeout?”

“I didn’t know! I didn’t have any plan. It wasn’t like that. I just knew it would cause trouble for you. That’s all. I just wanted to cause trouble for you.”

Neil stared at him.
Our illustrious mayor.
A weak, stupid man. Neil was sorely tempted to expose him.

“Wha.. .what are you gonna do?” Willis said.

“I could still take my chances in court.”

“You can’t prove any of this!”

“There’s the little matter of that check. That should raise a few eyebrows, don’t you think?”

“I sent that check out of the goodness of my heart.”

“Okay, Willis. You’re right. I’m not going to bring all that up again. But don’t think you’re getting off scot-free. I want something from you.”

Willis sneered. “I should’ve known. How much?”

“I don’t want your money, Willis. But I do want my pound of flesh. I want you to set up, anonymously of course, an annuity for Alice Kendella and a college fund for her two kids. If you do that, I’ll forget all about what you told me today.”

“Now wait a minute, I’ve got some money, sure, but I’m not a rich man. You’re talking about an awful lot of money. I’m not sure I can manage it.”

Then Neil leaned down until his face was on a level with Willis’s. “You’ll manage, jerk. I’m offering you a way out, a way to make Jimmy’s death worth something. But I could change my mind very easily.”

Everybody in Patinville agreed that the past winter had been the worst one in years. First, there had been torrential rains in December and January. Then, once the rain finally stopped, the mercury plunged down to set all-time low temperatures throughout the month of February. When March tiptoed in with sunny skies and mild breezes, people were almost afraid to believe spring had finally arrived.

Laura usually loved spring. Her natural optimism would bloom along with the flowers poking their faces up through the ground in joyful release. But this year was different. This year, when she flipped the calendar page each morning, the hope she’d nurtured for weeks would dim just a bit more. This year, the passing of each day inched Neil’s departure from Patinville twenty-four hours closer. This year, all she saw ahead was a lifetime spent without the man she loved.

Even her desire to put the past behind her and look toward the future and her newfound friendships with Bobbi Cameron and Alice Kendella couldn’t lift her flagging spirits for more than a day or so.

“Laura, what’s wrong?” Alice asked. “Everytime I see you, you look more unhappy.”

The two women were sitting in Alice’s kitchen. Their friendship had cemented solidly over the past weeks. Laura had quickly fallen into the habit of dropping in at Alice’s two or three times a week on her way home from work. They both looked forward to Laura’s visits—Laura because she had missed the close daily contact she used to share with Celeste, and Alice because she spent too much time with children, and most of her other friends were mothers like her whose conversation was mostly about
their
children.

Laura wanted to tell her. She needed to tell her. But she couldn’t. It was one thing to talk to Celeste about Neil. Celeste wasn’t here in Patinville. Celeste could be an impartial listener, and Laura didn’t have to look into her eyes and know she knew. Alice was a different story. Alice was here, a close friend of Neil’s. Laura was afraid. What if she yielded to the temptation to spill everything to Alice and Alice’s opinion of her changed? What if Alice no longer liked her or respected her? She couldn’t take that chance. Even though she knew Alice was a fair and open-minded person, Laura didn’t want to risk losing even one notch of esteem in Alice’s eyes.

So she made herself smile. “I’m all right, really. I.. .1 just haven’t been feeling well.” Then she thought, oh, Lord. Why did I say that? Because it wasn’t even remotely true. For the past six weeks, Laura had felt physically better than she’d ever felt. It was only her heart that was sick, not her body.

“Have you been back to the doctor since you were released from the hospital?”

Laura felt like a worm when she saw the concern shining in Alice’s eyes. “No.”

“Laura! Why not? Maybe something didn’t heal properly. Do you hurt anywhere?”

“No, no. It’s nothing like that. I just feel tired.” She should never have said she didn’t feel good.

“Maybe you’re anemic, although your color is good. In fact, you even look like you’ve put on a few pounds.” Alice grinned. “You’re more well-rounded than when I first met you. I noticed it the other day, when you were wearing a sweater.”

“Well, I’ve been eating like a horse,” Laura admitted, realizing that her appetite hadn’t suffered from her dawning realization that perhaps there was no hope for a future with Neil. She grinned back. “Part of the reason I’ve been eating so much is your insistence on feeding me mountains of food.”

Alice was a wonderful cook, and she’d laughingly confessed a few weeks earlier that she had a need to feed people. “It makes me feel like I’m doing my job, or something. Oh, it’s stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Laura had protested. “It’s perfectly natural.” But Laura knew Alice was on a pretty strict budget, so after the second or third time Alice fed her a delicious meal, Laura began bringing groceries with her when she came to visit.

“I still think you should see a doctor,” Alice insisted.

“It’s too much of a hassle to drive to Baton Rouge.”

“Why would you have to drive to Baton Rouge?”

“The only doctor I know is the one who treated me at the hospital.”

“You mean you don’t have a doctor in Patinville?” Alice said incredulously.

Laura shook her head, feeling more ashamed of herself by the minute.

“Laura! Honestly, how can a woman as smart as you be so dumb?” Alice said. She jumped up. “How long have you been living here?”

“Three years.”

“Three years! You mean you haven’t had a checkup, or a PAP smear in three years?”

“No,” Laura said meekly, knowing Alice was right. She
had
neglected herself.

“I’ll bet you don’t have a dentist, either!”

Again Laura shook her head. Even though she knew nothing was wrong with her, that both doctor and dentist would give her a clean bill, she also knew it really was dumb not to have yearly checkups. She should probably even schedule a mammogram. If she remembered correctly, her grandmother had died of breast cancer.

Her heart speeded up as she suddenly realized her breasts had been tender lately. She’d noticed it when she was showering. Maybe she
already
had breast cancer.

“Well, we’re going to take care of both these little details right now,” Alice said and disappeared into the other room. Minutes later she was back, clutching an address book. She tore a sheet off the notepad mounted by the kitchen phone and sat back down at the table.

“Here,” she said, handing the scrap of notepaper to Laura. “Here’s the name of my own doctor—she’s wonderful—you’ll love her. Her name’s Margaret Winslow, and her office is right down on Main Street, upstairs, over the furniture store. And the other name—Dr. Marianne Theeson—that’s my dentist. She’s wonderful, too. But her office is a little farther away—in Port Allen.”

“You have a female doctor
and
a female dentist?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“I don’t know. It just seems funny.”

Alice smiled. “Trust me. You’ll never want to go to a male doctor again.”

“Okay. I’ll call and make an appointment with both of them.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Do you promise?” Alice said stubbornly.

“I promise.”

And the next morning, she did call. Dr. Winslow’s office, and they said they could see her on Friday morning. Dr. Theeson’s office said she’d have to wait until the end of March.

“I should have been a dentist,” muttered Laura when she hung up the phone.

Later that day Alice called. “Did you make those appointments?” was the first thing she said.

“Yes, Mom,” Laura answered.

Alice laughed. “Somebody has to look after you if you won’t do it yourself!”

“I know, and I appreciate it. I really do,” Laura said, some of her unhappiness fading as she realized what a wonderful friend she’d found in Alice.

“So when are you going to see Dr. Winslow?”

“On Friday morning.”

“Good. Listen, checking up on you wasn’t the only reason I called this morning. I wanted to invite you to a little party I’m giving Saturday night.”

“A party?”

“Yes, I think it’s time you met more people in Patinville. I’m not inviting a lot of people. Only about a dozen. And I want you to come.”

Suddenly suspicious, Laura said, “You’re not trying to fix me up with a guy, are you?”

“No,” Alice said quickly, “although there
will
be two single men coming, but one of them’s Neil, so he doesn’t count. The other one’s Paul Fontayne, have you met him?”

Neil. Neil would be there.
“No, I don’t think so. Who is he?” Laura responded automatically, her brain and heart still processing the information that she would get to see Neil, who, since the night she’d run into him at Alice’s, had been avoiding her like someone with leprosy was avoided in the Dark Ages. In fact, it amazed her that he’d been so successful since he was living right upstairs. But he managed to leave for whatever job he was working on before she arrived in the mornings, and he didn’t return until after she’d gone for the night. It had been two weeks since she’d even laid eyes on him. No wonder she’d been so depressed. She needed to at least see him—get her daily fix—she thought wryly.

“Paul’s a sweetie. He’s my lawyer. He’s originally from New Orleans—a Creole—handsome and debonair—and he moved to Patinville about a dozen years ago. Anyway, he’s getting over a pretty miserable divorce, and he needs to get out and see people. That’s really why I’m having the party. To try to cheer him up.”

Laura felt relieved to know Alice wasn’t matc
hmakin
g, but uneasy because of Neil. No matter how much she wanted to see him, she knew the evening would be tough on her. But she couldn’t think of any reason for refusing.

“All right. I’ll be there,” she promised Alice.

“Great. It’ll be fun. You’ll see. And Laura...call me when you get back from the doctor’s office Friday, okay? I want to know what she had to say.”

* * *

Laura walked out of Dr. Winslow’s office like someone in a trance. The steep stairs leading to the street, the warm March sun when she emerged onto the pavement, the bustle of noontime pedestrians on Main Street, the brilliant crimson petals of the clusters of begonias planted along the esplanade—none of these penetrated her dreamlike state. She walked to her car, she unlocked the door, she slid into the driver’s seat, she turned the key in the ignition.

Only one thought pulsed through her mind, wiping everything else from her consciousness.

Pregnant.

She was pregnant.

About eight weeks pregnant, Dr. Winslow had said, her kind blue eyes meeting Laura’s as she gave her the news.

The words had reverberated around Laura, filling all the available air space.
Pregnant.

“Are you all right?”

Blindly, Laura looked up. She blinked. When had the doctor gotten up from behind her desk? She opened her mouth, sucking in air. She tried to speak, but no sound came out.

Pregnant.
The bright afternoon sunlight faded; there was a buzzing in her ears. Dr. Winslow grabbed her and pushed her head down, and gradually, the weakness and dizziness passed.

“Did you have no idea?” Dr. Winslow said gently when she was once more seated after giving Laura a glass of cold water.

Laura shook her head. “No. I... I’ve never had regular periods, so...”
A baby. She was going to have a baby.
She couldn’t believe it. Neil’s baby. She was pregnant with Neil’s baby. Images of all the babies she’d ever seen filled her mind. Chill bumps broke out over her arms; her heart thumped heavily. Tears burned her eyes, and her lips trembled.

Neil’s baby. Her baby. Their baby.
She felt so ridiculously happy and sad and stunned all at the same time. She could feel the tears sliding out of her eyes and down her cheeks, and she hastily wiped them away with the back of her hand.

The rest of the consultation with Dr. Winslow was only a blur in her mind. She knew she was supposed to come back in three weeks, and she remembered that the nurse had given her vitamins and a book of instructions. Everything else had disappeared, and only the knowledge that she carried Neil’s baby remained.

Somehow she reached the roofing company office, but afterwards, she didn’t remember driving there. Suddenly she was just there, sitting behind her desk, the same thought cartwheeling through her mind, over and over again.

In seven months I’m going to have a baby. Neil’s baby.

Nothing would ever be the same again.

* * *

“Laura, you’re awfully quiet tonight,” Alice said. “Are you bored?”

“Hmm? Oh, no, of course not.” Laura shook herself. She’d done it again. For the past twenty-four hours she had lapsed into intermittent daydreams, and the world around her had receded.