The Big Bang (38 page)

She ran out her open patio door, out the side gate, and into the street to meet Frank, Tim, and Will.

Will, smashing through the glass with his fist.

Rope.

Blood.

Hope, in shock, sprawled out amid the shards of chandelier glass that sparkled like diamonds.

The scramble for towels, first aid.

Paramedics.

Hope trying to explain how she was trying to clean the chandelier when it collapsed.

Emergency room.

The ER noise swirling around Maryellen, broken only by the sound of Will, Tim, or Frank dropping a coin into the coffee vending machine or unwrapping a candy bar.

Wondering out loud how long before they got word.

Sniping, ostensibly, over their interrupted argument.

“We can’t sit back and pretend nothing’s wrong anymore.”

“Things may be much more serious than they seem.”

“No need to overreact until we see.”

All three men looking grim as the doors to the triage area opened and a doctor appeared. “Who here’s responsible for Hope Jordan?”

“I am,” all three said.

In unison.

“J
im,” Hope said, the emotion of thirty-six hours’ worth of both dreading his
arrival and desperately needing him by her side filling her voice. “You’re here.”

“Came straight from the airport. I can’t believe I couldn’t get a flight from London any sooner.” Jim scooped an arm beneath the pillow and hugged and kissed her with an enthusiasm that caught her off-guard.

As though she could ever be any more off-guard.

He handed her a bouquet that dwarfed the substantial arrangements already sent over by the Trautmans and the Pierce-Cohns. “Can’t believe this happened.”

“I’d learned some nautical knots for a nursery job and I thought I’d try one to help me keep my balance so I could clean the chandelier because I was trying to get everything done before I—”

“It’s okay,” he said. “We’re lucky you escaped with just an ankle fracture.”

“Didn’t expect…” Hot tears ran their familiar path down her cheeks. “The chandelier to collapse.”

So much she didn’t expect.

“Everything’s okay, honey. More than okay.” His face was unadulterated happiness. “You’re okay. We’re going to have a baby!”

***

Maryellen exited the elevator on Hope’s floor, a vase filled with flowers in hand. She rounded the corner, headed past the nurse’s station, tiptoed down the hallway toward room 314, and peered inside.

She couldn’t see around the curtain to confirm that Hope lay in the bed, but even in the darkened room there was no missing Jim Jordan’s broad shoulders and wheat-colored hair.

Before she could knock on the doorframe, she heard the voice of a third person in the room. “How ’bout we give the daddy a look?”

After some rustling, whoever it was added, “There’s the gestational sac and the yolk sac inside. We have a four-point-three-millimeter-long fetus,” he said, “and I didn’t think we’d be able to get it yet, but there’s a heartbeat.”

“Heartbeat,” Hope repeated.

Maryellen set the flowers beside the door and tiptoed down the hall.

***

She’d slipped, broken her ankle, had shards of glass tweezed from everywhere, and the baby’s heartbeat was still strong as could be.

“I really can’t believe this is happening.” Jim patted her cast gently. “I think I’m actually kind of nervous.”

Hope cracked the car window, took a deep breath of fresh, nonhospital air, and looked out toward the mountains. “Me too.”

No one knew.

No one wanted to know.

Wasn’t it better in a way, if there was more than one
donor?
How would anyone, including Hope, know for sure the baby was or wasn’t theirs?

“Do you have any feeling yet whether it’s a boy or a girl?” Jim asked.

“I’ve dreamt about a girl,” Hope said.

“A daughter would be really cool.” Jim turned, headed down Parker Road toward the subdivision. “But so would James Jordan Jr.”

Jimmy.

When he or she wasn’t born a tow-headed blond, or even blond at all, she’d claim the dark hair and small stature came from some distant, long-deceased relative on her side of the family. Like the grass, details of house and home usually escaped Jim anyway.

“It’s too early to start making plans, but if my job gets extended, which I should know here soon, we should look into renting out the house and have you come to London.”

“Definitely.”

“How great would it be to have my first child born in England?”

She couldn’t tell him any more than she could hand down a marital death sentence to Maryellen, Meg, and/or Theresa. What would she even say?
There’s a small addendum to the fabulous news? The baby is totally ours, but not exactly yours? I have no idea how it happened, but
…

They pulled into the cul-de-sac.

All she’d ever really wanted was a baby.

Maybe she just had to accept that she was getting her dream in a different way.

Wood covered the spot where Will must have punched through the glass.

An anything but normal way.

Jim pushed the garage door clicker and eased the car into his parking spot.

There was always a chance the baby could turn out to be blond after all.

“Let me help you inside,” Jim said.

All she had to do was get the note that said otherwise, and life would simply go on in a new incarnation of normal.

“I’m good.” She got out of the car, ignoring the zing of pain up her leg. “If you’ll bring in the flowers, I’ll get a broom.”

“You sure?” he asked.

“I just wish I could have come home first to clean things up before you saw—”

“Honey,” he hugged her. “Accidents happen.”

While Jim headed for the trunk, she hobbled past the glass-filled front hall and into the kitchen. Stepping over the dishtowels splayed across the floor, she reached the counter and riffled through the toppled pile of paperwork that lay mixed in with odds and ends from her first-aid kit. She collected the violation notice, bills, and information for the warranty company. She picked up the towels, checked the floor, the first-aid kit, and the towel drawer.

Her good-bye note was missing.

“I
t’s against company policy to touch, move, or otherwise disturb any item unrelated to an accident or assistance of the victim,” the ambulance representative said.

“So they wouldn’t have taken anything with them from the scene?” Hope asked, the word
victim
buzzing in her head.

“What day did you say the incident occurred?”

“June twenty-eighth.”

Keyboard taps punctuated the silence.

“Report lists one dishtowel, assorted Band-aids, and glass shards from the chandelier in addition to any unknown items on the victim’s person.”

She’d checked every cabinet, rooted through the trash, gone through the drawers, even stuck her hand down the disposal.

No note. Anywhere.

“Nothing like a bill or a letter or anything?”

“Nope,” the woman said. “Wish I could help you.”

***

Maryellen shouldn’t have sent in an application, especially when she couldn’t ever really consider taking the job.

She did fit all the criteria, except for a single sentence that kept hanging her up:
Ability to creatively problem-solve, negotiate, and handle stressful situations in a positive manner…

“Leaving for a meeting at Henderson Homes,” Frank yelled from the back door.

“Okay,” Maryellen said, not feeling that way.

While he somehow seemed to be taking the Estridges’ misfortune, the playground problem, and Hope’s accident in stride, she couldn’t shake the unsettled feeling.

The Estridges were doing better and the structural engineer was in the process of preparing a report that recommended insurance coverage for their damage and medical expenses. The sinkhole would be fixed. And, Hope, thank God, was okay.

More than okay. Expecting.

If only she hadn’t heard the ultrasound technician in Hope’s hospital room.

A heartbeat.

With the sound of Frank’s car backing down the driveway, Maryellen reduced the job website and typed
fetal heartbeat detection
into Google Search. Seemed like she was further along with Eva before the doctor could detect a fetal heartbeat, but the technology had undoubtedly improved.

Via ultrasound, a heartbeat can be detected, at the earliest, by around 6–7 weeks.

Frank told her that Hope had gotten her period the Monday after Mother’s Day at the rec center. The day after Jim left for London. If a pregnancy definitely “started” on the first day of the last period, two weeks before conception…

Not daring to look down at her desk calendar, or count back weeks in her head, she clicked out of Google and enlarged the library job website.

Must be fearless, flexible, and fun
.

***

Will waited by his side gate for the forensic engineer he’d hired to come out the Estridges’ back door, work his way through their rear gate, and meet him up the street beside his plain white van. “Sorry for all the secrecy.”

“Not the first time I’ve had to investigate on the down low.” The engineer handed Will the Estridges’ spare key and began to unzip his hazmat suit. “But the first time in a while I’ve seen a house in this bad of shape.”

Will wasn’t going to get involved. Lien warranty or not, his house was fixed. He was no longer obligated by his role on the homeowner’s board. No matter how much Roseanne urged him to call her contractor friend to hear for himself how suspicious the cluster of damaged homes were, or Meg egged him on about doing what they both knew had to be done, he wasn’t about to set himself up for ridicule again.

And then the sinkhole opened on the playground.

“Foundation’s seriously compromised in that house,” the forensic engineer said.

“Is it fixable?”

“Anything’s fixable.”

“Expansive soils?”

“Are just the beginning.”

“Meaning what?”

“A combination of under-engineering and possibly a bad concrete pour, for starters.”

“Apparently the engineer from Henderson Homes agreed. The owners told me extensive repairs have already been authorized by the insurance company.”

“Glad it’s not my house,” the man said.

“If it were your house, how concerned would you be about the surrounding homes with cracking problems,” he pointed to the yellow taped area on the edge of the playground, “and that sinkhole over there?”

“Very,” the man said.

“That’s what I was afraid you’d say,” Will said. “That area was something of a marsh before it was a playground.”

“Not surprised,” he said.

“Why’s that?”

“Water table’s pretty high around here.”

“Would that cause these sorts of problems?”

“Given all the rain, it could definitely lead to the problem on your playground.”

“And be related to whatever’s going on with the Estridges’ house?

“Under certain circumstances.”

“Like?”

He opened the door to his truck and threw in the hazmat suit. “I want to check into a few things and I’ll get back to you.”

***

Hope waited for a call, a message, anything to save her from having to ask about the note.

For the answer.

No one stepped forward.

She collected herself and stepped out onto her front porch.

Will, who was talking to the driver of the white windowless van parked up the street, turned immediately as though he’d sensed her.

She began to negotiate the front steps, still adjusting to her walking cast, silently practicing the question:
Did you, by any chance, in the midst of all the confusion, happen to take any of the paperwork lying on the kitchen counter?

She had the foggiest memory of him tucking her into bed.

Nothing before.

Nothing afterward.

If he said yes, he’d taken the note, what would she say?
Sorry, I don’t remember, but guess what happened?
Or,
Thanks. Oh, and by the way, I’m pregnant with your baby.

The van headed up the cul-de-sac and Will crossed the street and was waiting for her when she reached the sidewalk.

He looked perturbed. “Hope.”

She was more than perturbed. “Hey.”

“How are you?”

Mortified. Terrified. “Hobbling along,” she said.

“You’re so lucky it wasn’t worse.”

Or unlucky.

“I don’t know what might have happened if you guys hadn’t been there,” she said.

He glanced over at the yellow tape beside the playground and shook his head. “I’m just glad you’re on the mend.”

“Thanks,” she said, noticing the tiny cuts on the back of his hand from smashing his fist through her window. She took a deep silent breath. “Did you, by any chance, in the midst of all the confusion, happen to see or move any of the paperwork lying on the kitchen counter?”

Time stopped between her last word and his response.

“Was never in the kitchen,” he said.

Their eyes met.

“I never left your side,” he said.

She immediately felt both better and worse.

“I can’t seem to find an important letter that was part of the stack,” she managed.

“That’s weird,” he said, his attention shifting to the van that had just left as it headed back down the cul-de-sac toward them.

“I’m sure it’s somewhere, it’s just that—”

The van stopped beside them.

“Sorry to interrupt,” the driver said through the open passenger window. “But, I didn’t want to take off without mentioning something.”