Morgan's Child (26 page)

"I suppose so. It will probably take me that long to set something up," Kate said, twisting the handkerchief in her hands.

"So you could possibly leave right after the baby is born?"

"I'll need a couple of weeks to recover, of course," Kate said.

"Of course," Morgan repeated after her.

"If I prepare some letters, will you take them down to the ferry landing so Gump can get them in the mail right away?"

As unwilling as Morgan was to aid and abet her in getting this job, he uneasily agreed. Kate sat down at her laptop, and he sat at the kitchen table ostensibly poring over papers from the office. What he was really doing was studying the letter she had received from the FHF.

It made no mention of the fact that Kate was going to be offered her old job back. Of course, the Federal Health Foundation would have no way of knowing that; it wasn't any of their business. The only reason that Tony Saldone had been privy to the information was because of his relationship with the talkative Penelope, who worked for Kate's former employer.

Now was the time to inform Kate. If she knew she was going to be rehired at the marine lab, she wouldn't need to be writing letters of application to other research facilities.

And yet if he told Kate what he had learned from Tony, she would immediately know that he hadn't called Tony off her case. Kate would realize that Tony had been checking up on her in Maine and that she had in fact been the subject of Tony's ongoing investigation.

Morgan felt slightly sick to his stomach.
Maybe this is what morning sickness feels like,
he thought.
Maybe this is how Kate felt all those months.
But he knew that this was no sickness of the body—it was a sickness of the heart.

He looked up when Kate came in from the sitting room, waving the letters fresh out of the printer.

"Will you read these, Morgan, and tell me what you think?" she asked.

His heart went out to her. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, and her lips, devoid of lipstick, were so red that he knew she'd been biting them as she so often did when she was thinking. Her hair, long and loose and flowing, billowed out behind her, and he was suddenly struck with the vision of how it had looked the night before, strands of gold adorning his pillow. She was so beautiful, and she was his wife.

He took the letters from her, automatically reaching his other arm out and encircling her hips, his hand massaging the curve of her abdomen.

Deftly she slid out of his grasp. He looked up. "Anything wrong?" he asked.

She shook her head. "No," she said.

"Then come back here," he said.

She heaved a sigh. "I'm afraid we're getting too comfortable with all—all this," she said.

"All what?"

"This—this marriage stuff," she said.

"We are married, Kate."

"I know, but we've agreed that it's not going to last," she said.

"It so happens that I like to touch you," he said patiently.

"Well, I like it, too. I don't want to get too accustomed to it, that's all." Kate turned around and began to stow in the cupboard some of the food they'd brought from the Charleston house.

Morgan tried to concentrate on the letters Kate had written, but he found himself bombarded by confused thoughts. This was his wife, but she wasn't going to be his wife for long. She carried his child, which was really his child, only she wasn't really its mother. They had been married only the day before, but it wasn't really a marriage.

"I'm not sure this is even really a life," Morgan said, clearly and distinctly, throwing the letters down on the kitchen table.

"What?" Kate said, whirling in alarm.

"I think I'll go for a walk," he said. He tried not to see the bewilderment in Kate's eyes as he slammed out the door.

* * *

If Kate had felt like running after him and encouraging him to talk about it, she would have. But she felt heavy, ponderous. The baby seemed to have slipped lower, and even the thought of navigating the path through the dunes to the beach, which was where Morgan had probably gone, was depressing.

When she walked, her feet splayed sideways. Her center of gravity seemed to be somewhere around her knees. She had heartburn. And the weather was hot, unbearably hot.

To pass the time until Morgan came back, Kate looked for something to do. Most of her possessions, as well as her father's, were neatly boxed and ready for storage in Gump's house in preparation for Kate's final departure from Yaupon Island. On the spur of the moment she decided to clean out the refrigerator. A lot of the food was moldy, and she tossed it in the garbage with a grimace and concentrated on scrubbing the interior. Why she bothered, she didn't really know. Willadeen and the historical society would inherit this refrigerator, and she didn't particularly care whether it was spotless for them or not.

Funny how she had become accustomed to Morgan's presence; it seemed lonely here in the quarters by herself. She switched on the one-station TV for company, trying to figure out who was winning the baseball game being broadcast, and during one of the breaks she heard a short weather bulletin.

"...tropical depression," the announcer said, and "...storm reaches the mainland."

Oh, great,
she thought, piling boxes of butter and containers of outdated tofu on the kitchen table.
That must be the storm that Gump mentioned.
And Yaupon Island was always harder hit than the mainland when these things headed toward shore.

She cocked an eye out the window and saw a few ominous clouds piling up out to sea. She might as well give up any idea of getting those application letters to Gump. He would almost certainly decide to ride this storm out, as he had so many others, at the Merry Lulu. She glanced at her watch, wishing that Morgan would come back.

Kate had no idea what time the first raindrops fell, but it was shortly after she'd finished with the refrigerator and had turned her attention to cleaning the ancient stove, scouring and polishing as if driven to the task. Maybe it was because she didn't want the ladies of the historical society to think she was a bad housekeeper when they finally took possession of the lighthouse, or perhaps she felt especially housewifely now that she and Morgan were going to live here, or—

Or maybe she was about to go into labor.

Kate sank onto one of the kitchen chairs, trying to remember something a friend of hers had said once about her peculiar urge to clean out every closet in her house when she was in labor.

That was when Kate felt the beginnings of pressure in her lower back.

I must have strained something when I was bending over to clean the refrigerator,
she told herself, but when the pressure tightened and became a cramp, she sat up straight and put a hand to the source of the pain. She was sitting like that when Morgan burst through the door, his hair damp with rain.

"Kate, I've been thinking—" Morgan began until he saw the odd expression on Kate's face.

"Kate?"

"Something's happening," she said.

"The baby?"

"I don't know." She looked worried.

"I'll get the childbirth book," he said, running for his bag, which he'd left in the bedroom. He rushed back into the room, leafing through pages until he found one that pertained to the first stage of early labor.

"What does it feel like?"

"Like a vise on my backbone," she muttered.

"It's too early for you to have the baby," he said.

"Three weeks before my due date," she said through tight lips.

"Then you can't be in labor," Morgan said hopefully.

"Maybe not," Kate said, relaxing again.

Morgan waved a hand at the food on the table. "What's all this?"

"I decided to clean out the fridge and ran out of space in the garbage can," she said.

Morgan scooped all of the things into a large plastic bag to get them out of the way. "The wind is picking up," he said.

"It's a tropical depression," Kate said, getting up and pouring a glass of cold water from the bottle in the refrigerator. "Did you read my application letters?"

"I read them," he said. "They're good."

"There's no use trying to mail them today. Gump won't be coming back until tomorrow."

"What about tourists stranded here during the storm?"

"Maybe you'd better go check at the landing and see if any stragglers show up. They can stay with us," Kate told him.

"I don't want to leave you," he said.

"Don't worry, it won't take you more than ten minutes to go to the ferry landing," she said.

"Maybe I'll see Gump, and if so, I'll caution him to stand by just in case you decide to have the baby today," Morgan said, dashing out the door. While he was gone, Kate felt another jab of pain, which lasted part of a minute and then was gone. The back of her legs ached something fierce.
Well, baby, is this it?
she asked it.
If so, maybe we'd better lie down for a while.

Morgan came stomping into the house before she made it to the bedroom. "Tookidoo Sound is getting choppier by the minute, the ferry isn't around, and no tourists are in sight," he reported.

"They must have seen the storm brewing and caught the last ferry." For the moment, Kate was relieved that they wouldn't have anyone else to worry about.

"Any more pains?"

"One. I'm going to lie down."

"You might as well. Want company?"

"No, thanks," Kate said, waddling into the bedroom. But Morgan followed her anyway. He looked jittery. Kate lay down on top of the bedcovers and stared out at the silvery gray slice of sky framed by the window until her eyes drifted shut.

The next contraction ripped through her, clamping her like the jaws of a giant animal, which Kate, who was dreaming, thought it was. When she opened her eyes, it was to see Morgan's alarmed face hovering over her.

"You cried out," he said. "Is anything wrong?"

"Another pain," Kate managed to say, trying to push herself into a sitting position. "Morgan, I think I'm really in labor."

She heard Morgan's sharp intake of breath. "You can't be," he said jokingly. "Not until the ferry resumes."

Kate groped for a pillow to stuff beneath the small of her back, and Morgan wedged it in the proper place.

"Don't worry," Kate said. "I'm not planning to have this baby on Yaupon Island. I intend to give birth in a nice clean hospital with Dr. Thomas in attendance."

"I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that," Morgan said, thumbing through the childbirth book.

He sat on a much-painted straight chair beside the bed. "The book says we should time the contractions," he said, glancing at his watch.

"Start timing right now," Kate said breathlessly. The next contraction started at her back and came around to her front. After that, they arrived regularly.

Morgan pulled the curtains wide and stared out at the falling rain. "I wish this storm would let up. I wish Gump would get the ferry running. I should put up the SOS flag anyway, don't you think?"

"Not yet," Kate said. "Would you please get me something to drink? Sweet iced tea would be nice."

She heard Morgan clattering around in the kitchen as another contraction came and went. The tea sloshed over the side of the glass when Morgan set it on the table beside the bed, and he ran to get a rag.

"The book says you might feel nervous, energetic or excited," he said as he mopped.

"All I feel is calm. You're the one who's acting nervous, energetic and excited," Kate pointed out.

"Me? Well, perhaps. I never expected you to go into labor this early."

"Maybe my labor will stop."

"Maybe," Morgan said, but she knew he didn't believe it either.

"It's happening again," Kate said.

"You should breathe," Morgan told her.

"What do you think I'm—oh, oh," she said, focusing on the pain. She tried to think of the baby, how it would look, how pleased Morgan would be, but it was hard to think about the baby when the pain was building to a majestic crescendo. At least she tried to think of it that way, but in reality the pain was more like a hard brick wall.

Outside the wind was picking up. It howled around the walls of the quarters, flinging rain against the windows.

"Sounds like a hurricane," Morgan said.

"Hurricanes are much worse than this," Kate said when she had caught her breath again.

"I'm going outside to run the flag up the pole. Maybe if Gump sees it, he'll come to get you."

"Gump won't be seeing anything unless it's the bottom of a beer mug," Kate said. "Could you get me some ice to hold on my tongue? My mouth feels so dry."

As Morgan chipped the ice in the kitchen, lightning split the sky over the ocean and, seconds later, thunder rattled the quarters.

"You'd better not go out in the lightning," Kate cautioned.

"I'm going to raise the SOS flag, no matter what you say," Morgan told Kate.

"I'd rather you get a cold cloth for my forehead," Kate said fitfully. "Anyway, if you get zapped to a crisp by lightning, who's going to help me?"