Watermelon Days and Firefly Nights: Heartwarming Scenes from Small Town Life (8 page)

Save for Patricia’s breathing, nothing broke the silence in the room.

Then the doctor stood up and said in a flat voice, “We need to do a sonogram.”

But they already knew.

Patricia went into the hospital for a D and C the next morning.

“I’m so sorry,” said the doctor.

“So very sorry,” said the nurses.

That night, Patricia dreamed she was in a snowstorm. She saw the faces of her five lost little babies. As she trudged through deep drifts, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get to them.

For several weeks, Patricia and Todd intermittently mourned and questioned and cried. But finally, as before, the two of them settled down into their prepregnancy routine. It did not take long for all talk of babies to come to a stop.

I
N
M
ARCH OF LAST YEAR
,
the Scutters moved to Ella Louise. Todd was hired by the city to be the new animal control officer. He’s good with animals and good with kids, which is great since problems with the two often run together.

Patricia, an attorney, opened an office just down from the Grace Street church. Ella Louise had never had a female attorney before Patricia, so some people didn’t know what to think. But when citizens figured out that Patricia was not, as was initially rumored and feared, one of those rabid, bra-burning feminists, they concluded that she would be an asset to the community. When folks around town met her, they found the new attorney to be a gentle-voiced little thing with freckles and straight, sandy hair that constantly fell in her eyes.

Ella Louise had been without a lawyer for more than ten years. Those who had needed legal help had to travel at least forty-five minutes to get it. For many, this was a hardship. Within weeks of moving into her new office, Patricia’s appointment book filled up.

It was a good thing Patricia had never settled on one particular area of law to practice, because every day she found herself tackling a wide variety of legal problems. The folks of Ella Louise needed all kinds of legal help. There were wills to write, transfers of property to be accomplished, traffic tickets to contest, and also divorces, child support, and rowdy teenagers who landed in jail.

Even the occasional adoption.

“Have you and Todd ever thought about it?” asked Sugar Fry. She was Patricia’s secretary and one of the first people to make friends with Patricia after she and Todd moved to Ella Louise.

“Thought about what?” They were eating lunch, and Sugar had caught Patricia with a mouth full of ham sandwich.

“Adoption. You know. A baby. Or an older child.”

“Not really. If we did adopt, I’d want a newborn, and the chances of getting one are terrible. Remember the Osgoods? That adoption we did early in the spring? It took them three years to get that baby. Mrs. Osgood told me that during the course of those years, two adoptions fell through. By the time the birth mothers told them that they had changed their minds, she and her husband had already fixed the baby’s room up—bought toys, clothes, formula, and everything. It
was wrenching for them.” She wiped her mouth. “Sugar, I have already done wrenching. I don’t plan to do it again.”

“I know, and I don’t blame you after all you’ve been through. But think about it. In the end, they did get a child. Remember how the three of them looked when it was finally done? Like a family. A real family. I bet they would do it again in a heartbeat.”

Patricia didn’t answer. What Sugar said was true. She took another bite of her sandwich.

“What about a foreign baby? I hear there are lots of overseas babies, girls especially, who need good homes.”

“I don’t know. . . . Todd and I wanted children so badly for so long. When it didn’t happen, we sort of resigned ourselves to not having any. And you know, after all this time, it really is okay. We have a good life.”

“Not that I mean to get in your business,” fibbed Sugar, “but you would make such a good mother—and Todd a wonderful father. It’s a crying shame that you two don’t have a house full of kids.”

“Maybe so. But we don’t.”

Sugar had gone too far. Signaling that the conversation was over, Patricia stood up and brushed sandwich crumbs from her skirt. “What’ve we got going this afternoon? Is the book full? Wouldn’t hurt my feelings to get out of here a little early this evening. How about you?”

T
HAT NIGHT AS SHE LAY SPOONED
in Todd’s arms, Patricia replayed the noontime conversation in her mind. Though she’d brushed Sugar’s words off at the time, now, in the quiet and the dark, they swirled around and around in her mind.

“Been a long time since we talked about babies, hasn’t it?” she whispered. “Do you think about them? Ever? About the children that we would have had?”

“You’re not . . . ?” Todd tensed.

“No. No. I’m not.”

“Good. I mean . . . It’s not that I . . . It’s just that . . . ”

“Shush. Me too. If I’ve ever been sure of anything in my life, it’s that I don’t ever want to be pregnant again.” Patricia lost her voice for a moment. “But I’ve never stopped wishing we had kids.”

She turned to face Todd. They lay curled on their sides, knees touching knees. “I’m sorry that it didn’t work out,” Todd said.

“I know.” She reached for a tissue to blow her nose. “There’s something we’ve never talked about, and I’m not sure why. How come we never looked into adopting a baby?”

“You think we could?”

“I don’t know.”

“You want to?”

“Maybe. I think that I’d at least like to think about it.”

That night, both Patricia and Todd fell asleep doing just that.

S
IX MONTHS LATER
,
Patricia and Todd’s secret plan was the talk of the town.

“I heard they’re going to Mexico to get a baby,” said Millard Fry.

“Not Mexico. Honduras. It’s in Central America. South of Mexico,” explained his wife, Sugar.

“I know where it is. How come such a faraway place?”

“God’s will,” she said. “No other way to explain it. See, they’ve got some missionary friends living down there who’ve been helping this young woman. Woman’s husband died a few months back, and she’s due to have a baby in December. Poor thing’s got four children already that she can’t afford to feed. When they found out she wanted to find a family who could take care of her baby, the missionaries contacted the Scutters.”

“And they were looking for a baby?” asked Millard.

“Let’s just say they were open to the idea,” said Sugar.

“Sad for the mother, but what a lucky little baby,” said Millard, who liked Patricia and Todd a lot.

“A blessing for them all. But don’t tell anyone. No one knows that they’re doing this.”

But, of course, in a small town like Ella Louise, things don’t stay a secret for long. At the Chamber of Commerce, Mayor Tinker asked his assistant, Faye Beth Newman, what she knew.

“Don’t tell anyone, but I heard that the baby’s due the first week of December. Patricia and Todd are supposed to fly down a little while later just in case she goes past due. Todd’s never flown. Said he never would. But that was before this baby came into the picture.” Faye Beth winked. “From what I hear, one of Patricia’s friends from law school has prepared all of the paperwork. Says they should be able to bring the baby home without a hitch.”

“Bless those kids’ hearts.” Mayor Tinker teared up. “Do they know if they’re getting a boy or a girl?”

“No idea.”

“I doubt that they care.”

At a gathering of the Gentle Thimble Quilting Club, Bessie Bishop, this year’s president, called the meeting to order and moved that the club’s next project be a baby quilt for the Scutter’s little one.

“I second the motion,” said Esther Vaughn.

The motion passed. Everyone agreed that they would have to work quickly in order to have the quilt ready for the surprise baby shower that the ladies of Grace Street Church planned to give.

Rochelle Shartle, too excited to care that the baby was supposed to be a secret, called Patricia right up. “Congratulations! Rocky and I are so happy for you! I want to give the baby a ‘Welcome to Ella Louise’ party as soon as you get home. Everyone who’s come to the café in the past week has said that we ought to do something to welcome that little baby. We’ll have the party here at the Wild Flour, of course. Melissa and I’ll make punch and coffee and coconut cake. ’Course, I need to know what day you’ll be back so I can have it all ready.”

Patricia was touched. As soon as she got off the phone, she gave Sugar the news. “Wonder how word got out that Todd and I were even getting a baby?” she asked.

“Beats me,” Sugar said.

Patricia wasn’t even mad.

W
HILE THE ENTIRE TOWN
of Ella Louise was terribly excited about the coming baby, Todd’s generally agreeable seventy-seven-year-old mother voiced surprising unease. “Honduras? Where’s that?” she asked in a long-distance telephone call.

“Central America, Mom.”

“Where?”

“Close to Mexico. Down south.”

She fell silent.

“Mom? You there?”

“Son, there’s lots of babies right here that need good homes. Why, they had some orphan children on the 10:00 news last night that were looking for families. I don’t see any need for you kids to be going so far off when you can get yourselves a regular American baby.”

“Mom, there’s more to it than that. This baby needs a home too. We can give it a good one. Besides, once we adopt the baby, it will be an American.”