Raising Rain (26 page)

“You didn't expect this early night either, did you, Noah?” she asked, shaking out crunchies into his bowl. “Better get used to it.”

She turned on the television for noise and headed back to her bedroom, flicking on light switches as she went. It was ridiculous, being creeped out like this for no reason. She turned on the bedroom overhead light and went to her dresser. As she unhooked her earrings, she looked down to the plush carpet and froze when she saw a trail of deep footprints.

Rain blinked and her skin tingled with a heightened sense of fear as she glanced around the room, pushing down a rising sense of panic. Nothing looked out of place. She forced herself to take a deep breath. They could be her footprints, she reasoned. She placed her foot beside one of the impressions. It dwarfed her small shoe.

She groped behind her to the baseball bat that she kept propped in the corner by her bed for security. She hefted the cold metal and wrapped both fists around the base of the bat in a tight grip. She crept
silently to the bathroom and quickly pushed the door open with the bat. Nothing looked different from when she'd left that morning. She glanced into the shower, but saw that it was empty and she pivoted to turn back to the bedroom. The only sound she heard was the distant voices from a television commercial.

She went to the phone, thinking to call the police. But what would she say—that there were footprints in her carpet? She silently crept down the hall, kicked open the spare bedroom door, and flipped on the light switch, like an action hero. She sidled in and did a visual scan, opening the closet and sweeping beneath the bed with the bat. Next, she crept up on the guest bathroom, stepped in, flipped on the light, and whacked the closed shower curtain with the bat. The bat hit air and shower curtain, and she jumped when the shampoo fell down from the corner rack and rattled in the tub.

She checked every door and window for signs of entry, but found none. Why would someone enter her house and leave without disturbing anything? There was one solution—it could have been Hayden. He had a key, but there was no other sign that he'd been there.

Feeling satisfied that she was alone, she wandered back into her bedroom and checked all her secret hiding places, which she knew were not secrets to real thieves. She checked a locked box in the bottom drawer of her dresser. Both his birth certificate and his Social Security card were missing.

She sat there looking at the contents feeling stupid and incoherent. Why did Hayden come and go, using his key to get these documents, thinking she would never know? Maybe he didn't want to see her again. Maybe he just wanted to avoid her.

She locked up the box and went back out to the kitchen, picking up her cell phone. She punched in his number, but when she heard his voice, she fumbled for words.

“Hayden. Hi. Did you . . . were you over here today?”

“Rain? Hold on.” He turned away from the phone and said something to someone. Did she hear a female voice?

“Uh, why?” he asked, his voice a little too perky.

“Just wondering. It looked like someone had come while I was gone.”

He cleared his throat. “Well, I did actually, when you were at work. I hope it didn't alarm you.”

“No problem. I can take care of myself. I mean, it could have been someone else.” She winced. Shut up, she told herself.

“Sure.”

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“Yes, I think I have everything now,” he said. “In fact, I left the house key on the counter by the coffeepot.”

Rain looked up to see the small silver key lying by the sugar bowl on the beige tile.

“Okay, well, I need to go,” she said. “If you think of anything else, call me.”

He hesitated for a moment. “I will,” he said. And she hung up.

She went around methodically turning off excess lights and curled up on the couch with Noah, who wouldn't stay to be petted for long. He jumped down and left her alone to stare at the key from across the room.

She hugged a throw pillow to her chest. The thought occurred to her that he may have remembered the tickets to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and come for them at a time when there would be no argument over them.

Why did it have to be like this? She hadn't stopped loving Hayden, she just wanted a baby. She just didn't want to kick herself years from now because she hadn't tried hard enough.

She knew she would be a better parent than her mother had been to her. She wasn't afraid to show affection or to risk being vulnerable with someone, or to put the child's best interests before her own. She had loved watching Scott and Dylan grow and being part of the process. Hearing their little voices, their fresh logic and never-ending questions. She remembered Scott beaming when he finally rode his bike without training wheels. Dylan always made pictures for her to take home with his name printed in wavering letters. He would climb up beside her on the couch to read a picture book and then correct her
if she skipped any words. She was lucky that she'd had great examples of the parent she would be in Bebe, Neil, and William.

She wondered again what her biological father was like. Would her childhood have been dramatically different if she'd had a dad around? Perhaps Jude would have been a better mom with someone else around to share the load. Even someone to love her. Or maybe they would have fought. Probably, they would have fought. Maybe Jude had been lonely or scared and all her harshness was only bluster.

When Rain looked at the way her mom raised a child on her own, what made her think she would be any different? As she'd heard Bebe's mom say before, the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree.

Neil tossed the morning paper onto the kitchen table in front of Bebe and poured himself a cup of coffee. “There's enough for one more cup,” he said.

“No, thanks, I've had enough,” she answered. She scanned the headlines while she ate her blueberry yogurt. The aftertaste of the coffee lent it an unpleasant tang. Almost every day, somewhere in the world there was a car bombing or an assassination or a government being overthrown. Her attention focused on a story about the probability of sending more troops into Afghanistan. She spread out the paper on the table, folding it back to read the article.

Neil sat down across from her and pulled out the sports section. He glanced up to see what she was reading. “You shouldn't dwell on that.” He opened the paper to the second page and folded it back. “This isn't Vietnam.”

Bebe swirled her yogurt with her spoon. “I just don't want Scotty to go through what happened to Bobby.”

He looked up from the football stats. “You're not responsible for that,” Neil said. “Scotty knows he has our support. We can't answer for the others.”

“I know, but it's my job to worry.” She got up and tossed her empty
yogurt container, rinsing her spoon and coffee mug in the sink. “Come to think of it, he didn't call last weekend. I wonder what he's doing.”

“I think it's the three-day war. He said it's a simulation training.”

She slipped into her coat. “I'll feel better when we hear from him. Are you watching the time?”

He looked up from the paper and glanced at the wall clock. “I've got to swing by The Lone Star Ranch before I go in.” He got up, leaving the paper in a heap on the kitchen table. “Come with me.”

She grabbed her purse. “I have appointments this morning.”

He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her to him. “Come on. Let Janice cover for you. She needs the practice.”

“You're bad. But you're cute.” She kissed him and playfully pushed him away. “See you at the office,” she said, as she went out the door.

Bebe had a long morning of consultations and follow-up appointments that went right through the lunch hour. Even though the office was closed from noon to one thirty, she had paperwork and e-mails to catch up on. Neil brought them back some lunch when he returned from a ranch visit, and they ate it at their desks, sitting back-to-back.

One of the perks of going into veterinary medicine was having classes with Neil. He immediately recognized her from the thrift store the first year, and sat beside her in molecular biology. He moved in with her and Jude the next. Of course, her family never knew. By then, Toni was in grad school in Los Angeles, and Mare had moved in with Arnie. It left just the three of them and Rain.

Rain was a great buffer. She called Neil “Daddy” until Jude nipped it. Mare married Arnie when she was seven months pregnant with Autumn. Once again they had parties, except that the parties were now for birthdays and involved balloons and cake. Jude moved out in June when she finished law school, taking Rain with her. Rain had just completed first grade, and Bebe and Neil both mourned for months.

They got married that September, having graduated from veterinary school, and moved to the foothills above Sacramento to enter a practice. They hated moving that far from Rain, but they arranged for her to spend weekends with them as often as Jude and their schedules
would allow. Bebe agonized over whether Rain understood that it wasn't always their choice whether or not they got to see her.

The fact that she married Neil actually elevated her in her parents' esteem. He was a doctor, never mind that she was a doctor, too. She'd married well, and that helped to erase some of her stigma. Some, but never all.

They were married in her small church in the Central Valley on a Saturday afternoon with a few close friends and members of church who had watched her grow up since she'd been a baby in the nursery. The only thing she truly hated about the wedding was that the pastor refused to call her “Bebe,” but insisted on addressing her as Roberta. She had specifically asked him before the ceremony not to use her given name, and when he said, “Do you, Roberta, take this man,” she almost stopped and corrected him. But she knew that she was treading on thinly veiled ice with her parents, and for her mom's sake, she swallowed her pride.

Her name wouldn't have been so bad, except that she was named after her father, as was Bobby. She had secretly railed against it growing up. How self-absorbed could a man be to name two children after himself? She felt thankful to Bobby for her nickname. It was his childish attempts at saying her name that produced “Bebe.” And much to her father's dismay, it had stuck.

B
ebe chuckled when she saw the chart in the door pocket of room six. Margo and Gigi Weinbrenner. Margo was an overweight silver tabby that reminded her of an aging bon-bon eating secretary of the forties with markings like rhinestone glasses and nails like stilettos. Gigi was a Siamese mix with the sleek furtiveness of a French resistance fighter, who only preened when she had an agenda, like food or freedom. They were here for boosters and to have Margo's nails clipped. Bebe knocked on the door briefly and entered the examining room, greeting their “mommy” over the howls emanating from the cat carriers. She noted that Mrs. Weinbrenner had deep scratches on both arms.

“Did you get those from Gigi?”

“Yes. She didn't mean it, did you, sweetie?” the woman said, reaching a finger through the metal door to rub beneath Gigi's neck. Gigi hissed and moved to the back of the carrier. “You didn't want to go into your nasty cat carrier, did you,” Gigi's mommy baby-talked.

Bebe briefly examined the red welting scratches. Faint white scars
crisscrossed beneath the fresh ones. “I hope you treated those.”

“I always do,” she said, smiling.

“Okay, let's start with Gigi,” Bebe said.

Mrs. Weinbrenner looked at her, expectant. Then she said, “Oh, should
I
get her out?”

Bebe nodded and the woman hesitantly reached for the door latch. “Nice Gigi,” she crooned, “Mommy's going to let you out now.”

When she opened the carrier door Gigi darted, but Bebe grabbed the cat by the scruff of the neck and she went limp.

“I don't know how you manage to do that,” Mrs. Weinbrenner said. “All I get are bites and scratches for my trouble.”