Mourning Becomes Cassandra (46 page)

His discomfiture made me wonder how long he’d been in my room. For all that the Palace was his, he never ventured upstairs, as far as I knew. “Sorry to startle you,” I answered. “I was…praying. Did you want to talk to me?”

He nodded, running his hands through his hair. When I gestured toward the window seat, he sat down, and I sat on the cushion across from him. Daniel cleared his throat. “I just didn’t get a chance to talk to you alone this week, and I was wondering what was going on with Nadina.”

“She’s pregnant,” I said shortly.

“Did you—have you asked her what she’s going to do?”

“She’s going to have the baby and give it up for adoption,” I replied. My voice was steady and calm. Maybe this was good practice for telling James.

His face lit up, and he reached in his shirt pocket. “That’s great news, Cass. The best you could have hoped for. I got the business card for my spoon-chested, harelipped, law-school friend with the three eyes.” He grinned at me, holding out the card.

Ordinarily I would have laughed, but his joke reminded me that adoptive parents usually paid all the legal fees. “Thank you,” I said automatically, “but I don’t know if I could afford her.”

“What do you mean ‘you’? It would be the adoptive parents who paid.”

Unable to find words, I merely looked at him, and after a second, his hand dropped. “You’re going to adopt the baby.” It was a statement, not a question.

I nodded.

Daniel inhaled sharply and ran his hand through his hair again. He put the business card back in his pocket and stared out the bay window.

The silence made me uncomfortable—why should he be upset? “You must think I’m crazy,” I ventured. “Joanie does. She hasn’t made a secret of it.”

“Will you and James get married before the baby comes, then?” was his abrupt question.

Somehow, whenever Daniel spoke of James, there was always that implied criticism, and I felt myself rallying defensively. “He doesn’t know yet. I haven’t told him. This was my decision.”

The blue eyes met mine. “It won’t matter, will it? If he wanted to marry you before this, this won’t change his mind. Because he loves you.” How did he know James wanted to marry me?

I shook my head, flustered. “I don’t know. It hardly seems fair to expect him to honor an offer that was made under completely different circumstances—an offer I didn’t even agree to at the time.”

“Would you agree to it now?”

Would I? The reasons I gave James for not marrying him when he asked a couple weeks ago now seemed moot. How could I balk at marriage and children and say it was too soon, when I had since agreed to an equally lifelong, binding relationship? If anything, Joanie was right, and James would feel hurt that I jumped at one opportunity after refusing the other.

“I would,” I said slowly. “If James will still have me.”

Daniel made an impatient sound. “If he loves you, he will.”

“Honestly, Daniel,” I reproved, “who are you to lecture James on love?”

Anger flashed across his face, and I sat back, startled, but an instant later it was gone, wiped clean. “Of course not, Cass,” he said coolly. “You’ve always been very up-front with your opinion of me, and I know you think me incapable of love, as you define it.”

It was the day at the Café all over again, when I hurt him by calling him my landlord. Fumblingly, I tried to smooth things over. “Forgive me. How would I know what you’re capable of? You’ve been so kind to me lately.” Rather than appearing mollified, Daniel grimaced when I called him kind, and I hastened on. “I’m just a little anxious about how James will respond. It is a lot to spring on a person, and I wouldn’t blame him if he thought I changed my mind so suddenly because I was scared and thought the baby should have a father.”

“Are you scared? Do you think the baby should have a father?”

“Scared to death!” I admitted. “And I’d love for the baby to have a father—I’d love for all babies to have two parents—but that wouldn’t be why I would marry him.”

There was another pause, and then Daniel stood up. “Well, if you…love him… I’m sure he’s not such a fool—he’ll believe you.” He was almost to the door when he stopped and added, “Let me know if there’s anything you need from me.”

For a moment it was on my lips to beg to be allowed to stay at the Palace if James rejected me. Hearing my intake of breath, he waited, but then I shook my head. How could I? He might even say yes because he liked me and wanted to help, but I shouldn’t ask it of him. Why would a confirmed bachelor want a tenant encumbered by a squalling infant? What would he tell his girlfriends then?

“Thank you, Daniel,” I murmured at last. “I’ll remember that.”

Sometimes people let you down. Sometimes you let others down. My conversation with James was some of both.

Nadina and I finally agreed that Sunday would be D-Day. I told her that I would be seeing James and didn’t think I could keep my secret any longer, and if James was going to be enlightened, Mike would have to follow. Not to mention Mark Henneman and Nadina’s mother.

“This is totally gonna suck,” she complained. “Mike is gonna freak, and he’s been so cool lately.”

“What’s it to him?” I said for the hundredth time. “So you’ll get a little fat for a few months. He doesn’t have to deliver the baby, and then it’ll all be over.” Yeah, Mike was going to have it easy, compared to James. “Call me tomorrow, and we’ll compare notes. Don’t chicken out on me.”

The weather was warming slightly as we headed into March, and James had it in his head that he wanted to go snowshoeing up at Snoqualmie while it was still possible. After the morning service, where I came within a breath of revealing all to Louella, I waited out front for him to swing by and pick me up.

“Good morning to my favorite girl,” he said, leaning across to give me a kiss on the cheek. “How was church? Did the roof open and angels ascend and descend?”

“For a while.” I had been debating whether to spill my guts on the drive up or to dump the news on him while we were snowshoeing, but his expression this morning was so sunny that I hated to spoil things. “You’re cheerful today.”

“Of course I am,” he teased, “I didn’t have to get up to attend an 8:00 service.” He reached for my hand and held it while he drove. “Not to mention it’s been a great week at work. I was hoping you’d come in so I could brag some because I didn’t want to tell you the news over the phone.”

“It’s been a crazy week,” I answered vaguely. “How did that dinner with the new game publisher go Thursday? We missed you at open house.” A white lie—with Nadina’s gag rule still in effect, I’d been relieved not to see him.

“That’s just it!” James exclaimed. “I think they’re really close to picking up
Antarctiquest!
and maybe one other game from Vil’s team. They were impressed how we managed to get
Tolt
out at the eleventh hour before Christmas. You wouldn’t believe Riley—he’s redone his cube in a polar theme to celebrate. You’ve got to come in next week to give him the pleasure of bragging.”

“And to relieve Jeri,” I laughed. “I’m sure she’s had enough.”

James chuckled. “No joke. I think a couple more days of it, and she might quit. Then you’d have to come on full-time, which wouldn’t be all bad…I could see your gorgeous face whenever I wanted.” I gulped, and he gave my hand a squeeze. “But what’s been going on with you? I feel like I haven’t seen or heard from you in forever. Did you get that chance to corner Nadina and lay a pregnancy test on her?”

I took a deep breath. “Didn’t need to. Pete guessed right—she’s pregnant, and she already knew it. But she hasn’t told anyone.”

Like Daniel, James was excited, knowing how much I wished for such an outcome. “That’s great! And you didn’t even call me to tell me? In between working my tail off this week and meeting with those publishers I’ve been worried for you.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. I thought I’d…tell you in person.”

He whistled appreciatively. “Yeah, that’s good news. I bet Mark Henneman will be relieved. Was she hard to convince? I know it’s tough for anyone to say no to you, but if anyone could, I would bet on Nadina.”

“She was pretty wary and hostile at first,” I remembered. “I think she’d already guessed where I was coming from and what I might say. But there was a turning point in the conversation. It felt like God really wanted me to tell her how much he loved her. When I did, she was more open.”

James shook his head, smiling. “I love you, Cass. You are one in a million. Make that one in a billion.”

“Shouldn’t you make that ‘one of a kind’?” I asked. “Otherwise that means there’s still at least a few other women out there exactly like me.”

“I’m glad to know that, actually,” he countered, “in case I can’t get you to marry me after all.” We laughed, but I had a sinking sensation in my gut for not sharing the whole truth. This couldn’t work. Not with James. But could it? He said he loved me and still wanted to marry me. Maybe Daniel was right, and that would be enough.

At the I-90 East on-ramp we noticed some highway patrol cars whizzing past underneath, headed the opposite direction into downtown Seattle. “Someone’s trying to make it onto the evening news,” James joked, raising his eyebrows at me. Although I wouldn’t know it for several hours more, the attempt would be successful.

The snow at the top of the Pass had icy patches and the occasional tip of a rock showed through, but the ranger promised it got better as you went along the loop trail. Because the guided hike scheduled for 10:00 had left some time ago, with the next one not till 11:30, James and I decided to strike out on our own and possibly catch up with the others.

“It’s more fun this way, anyhow,” he declared, “because now we don’t have to behave ourselves.” Meaning, he could tackle me when we got around the first bend, sending us crashing into the snow bank. Punching him, I scrambled back to my feet, laughing while I brushed myself clean, only to look up and get a snowball full in the face.

“You jerk!” I shrieked. The fight was on. Snoqualmie snow is never ideal for building snowmen and makes for terrible snowballs that disintegrate mid-flight, but we gave it our best. Ten minutes later we were flushed and disheveled, our hair dripping with melting snow. “You missed some,” I said, pretending to reach for his shoulder to brush it off but then dropping a last icy hunk down the back of his neck.

“That’s it!” James roared, floundering after me as I tried to take off running in the dumb snowshoes. If a mountain lion or a Sasquatch decided to make a meal of me, there wouldn’t be much I could do about it with those things on. And sure enough, James caught me after a few yards. “Kiss me,” he ordered. “Kiss me, or I’ll bury you in the snow and leave only your head sticking out.”

Clearly we weren’t going to catch up with the 10:00 guided snowshoe hike, and the 11:30 might even have come upon us not a quarter-mile up the trail, had James not broken off and muttered in my ear, “Let it be today, Cass. Tell me today that you’ll marry me.” I gasped and pulled away from him, and he frowned at me. “What?”

Taking an unsteady step back, I tried to screw up my courage. “James…there’s something I haven’t told you.” The air was cold and thin up here, and when I tried to take deep lungfuls of it, it burned on the way down.

When I didn’t continue right away, he tried to tease me out of my seriousness. “This looks bad. Let me guess: Troy is still alive. You could marry me, but we’d have to move to a bigamist compound. Fine by me—I’m still in.”

“Nadina’s going to give up her baby for adoption,” I said, not able to bear his happy unawareness anymore, “and I’m the one adopting it.”

James grew very still, only his eyes moving over my face, trying to read the truth. I bit my lip, my heart going a mile a minute. Everything depended on this.

“No, no!” I objected. “I didn’t want to have children with anyone,” I tried to explain. “It’s not that I want this child, even—it’s that I feel I’m supposed to take it.”

“Supposed to take it?” he echoed incredulously. “What does that mean? You’re her mentor, Cass, not her mother, not her social worker. You’re supposed to pray for her and encourage her, not bail her out when she gets pregnant by taking the baby!”

“I don’t mean ‘supposed to take it’ as an obligation, James,” I pleaded. “I mean that, when Nadina and I were talking about it, I felt in my gut that this was what was supposed to happen with this baby. This was God’s plan to take care of all three of us: Nadina and the baby and me.”

“God? God? How exactly does this take care of
you
, Cass?”

“Because I didn’t trust God anymore. I didn’t want to invest. But when I was trying to tell Nadina how much God cared what happened to her, I realized that God cares what happens to me, too. That He loves me. That it was okay to invest.”

“Hell, yes, it was okay for you to invest,” said James, his voice hardened with anger and hurt. “What have I been saying to you? I’ve been asking you to invest in us—every step of our relationship. And you’ve been pushing back and pushing back and saying you’re not ready, and I’ve been giving you space and time, and now you go and tell Nadina you’re ready to invest? Why the hell couldn’t this revelation be that you’re ready to invest in us, and you come and tell me?”

I felt the tears coming. It wasn’t just that he had never before spoken angrily to me; it was that Joanie was right. I had hurt James beyond imagining. “Listen to me, James,” I urged in a choked voice, “this is totally separate from what’s going on with us. It wasn’t that I chose Nadina’s baby and didn’t choose you. I did choose you! I have chosen you! Even before I knew for sure she was pregnant, I was already thinking that, yes, I did want to marry you, if you would still have me, fearful and broken and all.”