Then again, what does it matter? It’s not as though Jarrett is apt to ask her about the plot or lyrics or acting. He’s about as interested in Broadway shows as he is in art galleries, fine dining, the Yankees, window-shopping on Fifth Avenue . . .
Anne Marie frequently tells him that he might as well live on a desolate prairie for all the time he spends enjoying the city during nonworking hours. Jarrett’s interests are confined to the stock market, his antique sword collection, and his children.
Yes, and sometimes, it seems, in precisely that order.
To be fair, she knows he loves the boys, just as she knows, deep down, that he loves her.
She loves him in return. Jarrett Egerton saved her when she was at her lowest, a drab shell of the vibrant woman she once was.
Seven years ago, she was working in a Revolutionary War museum on the Hudson River, spending her days, fittingly, in isolation, cataloging dusty relics as she attempted to come to terms with her own past.
There was a time when she longed to be an archaeologist, but of course, college was out of the question for her. She had to earn a living, and until ten years ago, she earned it working as a salesclerk by day, a waitress by night.
But there she was, finally employed by a museum—not as an archaeologist, of course; by then she had long since given up the childish dream. She was content simply to support herself, to exist in relative anonymity.
Then Jarrett came along, a longtime patron interested in donating historic weaponry from his private collection.
He took her to dinner; he took her to Paris; he proposed. It was an unexpected fairy-tale ending to a bleak existence . . . or so she foolishly believed.
She should have known her newfound happiness could be little more than a temporary bandage on a festering wound.
She doesn’t expect it to heal, even now. But she must find a way to cope with the chronic suffering, if only for her children’s sake.
So stop feeling guilty about today.
On Jarrett’s account, anyway.
She only regrets that she had to leave her cherished boys at home all afternoon with a father who isn’t accustomed to being solely in charge. But she had no choice.
She has to see this through.
She owes it to herself . . .
And I owe it to you.
She closes her eyes in brief, painful remembrance, only to open them abruptly as the careening train screeches around a curve in the dark tunnel.
Anne Marie instinctively adjusts the position of her black leather pumps to keep her balance with the ingrained expertise of someone who hasn’t ridden a two-wheeler in decades, yet finds that her body instantly remembers how.
These days, she’s far less accustomed to the subway than she is to the upholstered seats on MetroNorth’s commuter trains. She certainly wouldn’t be riding the downtown local now if cabs weren’t so sparse in the neighborhood she just left. Within the circles she travels as an Egerton of Bedford, nobody rides the subway. Few ever did.
The moment she passed through the turnstiles that now demand to be fed fare cards instead of metal tokens, Anne Marie’s senses were seized by familiarity. Tokens may have fallen by the wayside but the rest is intact: dingy mosaic signs and bare-bulb lighting; the passing roar of express trains one track away from the platform dragging newspaper and food wrappers into the dark tunnels; the pungent, distinctively dank odor of the universe far beneath the city streets.
This almost feels like home.
But of course, it isn’t.
Home is a three-story brick colonial fortress forty miles and a world away from here. It won’t be long before Anne Marie finds herself on another train—a regular, commuter train—back to Westchester.
Home.
Home to a life that has nothing to do with any of this, a life where nobody—including her husband—knows about her past, or about the secrets contained in the unmarked manila envelope.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
Peyton looks up from the clothing rack to see a svelte salesgirl whose plastic name tag reads
Sue.
Cripes. You’d think a maternity boutique would make a conscious effort
not
to hire model-thin help.
Trying to ignore the blatant contrast to her own burgeoning waistline, Peyton lifts a hanger-draped arm and says, “I’d like to try on a few things.”
“Sure. Do you want me to take those and start a room for you while you keep browsing?”
“No, thanks, I’m through browsing.” And highly disappointed in the pickings, she might add.
It isn’t that the clothes aren’t well made, because they are. They’d better be, given the price tags.
But Peyton can’t help noticing that everything in this place, from work suits to jeans, seems to be vaguely frumpy. Allison must have very different taste in clothing. The way she raved about Baby Blue, Peyton was expecting Dolce and Gabbana meets A Pea in the Pod.
“When are you due?” Skinny Sue asks conversationally, leading the way into a large, carpeted dressing room.
“October. I guess it’s a little early to be trying on maternity sundresses and bathing suits, right? Maybe I should just come back when I’ve got more of a belly so I’ll know how things will fit.”
“Oh, that’s not a problem. Hang on a second.” The girl disappears around the corner.
Peyton slips out of her loafers, noticing that the room is furnished with two guest chairs and a little table stacked with magazines.
Sports Illustrated
is on top of the pile, a not-so-subtle reminder that most occupants of this cubicle are apparently accompanied by a male companion.
“Here we go.” Sue reappears in the doorway with an armload of what looks like cushions. “These are prosthetic tummies. You strap one on underneath whatever you’re trying on to see what you’ll look like in a few months. Here’s a six-month one to start.”
With that, she leaves Peyton alone in the dressing room with a fake belly and floor-to-ceiling mirrors, saying to call out if she needs any help.
“I will,” Peyton promises, eager to get down to business.
She hurriedly strips down to her bra and panties, then pauses to inspect the faint swelling across her stomach. Yes, she’s definitely starting to show—but only when she’s naked. It’ll be quite some time before anyone can tell, just by looking at her, that she’s expecting.
She straps on the prosthetic device with surprisingly little effort, then reaches for the nearest stretch-panel pants and T-shirt, putting them on over the belly.
Wow.
So this is how she’s going to look in just a few months.
Unexpected tears spring to her eyes.
Pregnancy hormones. Lately she finds herself misty at the slightest provocation. Anything can set off a wave of sentimentality. Romping puppies at a pet shop. Children’s choirs on PBS.
And now fake bellies.
It’s just . . .
Here’s the proof that it’s really happening. After all these years, motherhood is happening.
Peyton turns from side to side, admiring her reflection. She looks like Allison. All right, not as big as Allison is; Allison seems inordinately tremendous, anyway. But Peyton is wearing the six-month tummy, and boy, is it convincing! Nobody looking at her would have a clue that she isn’t really pregnant.
After examining herself from all angles, she exchanges the six-month tummy for the nine-month tummy. It looks just as real, filling Peyton with giddy anticipation.
This will be me, next fall. This is how I’ll look, and how I’ll feel.
She leans back a little, resting a hand in the small of her back, emulating Allison’s frequent stance.
“How’s it going in here?” Skinny Sue knocks and pokes her head in. “Oh, you look adorable!”
“Thanks.” Peyton smiles, wholeheartedly agreeing. “I don’t suppose you sell these things?”
Sue looks mystified. “The clothes? Of course we—”
“No, I meant the belly. I want to wear it from here on in.”
“Are you serious?”
Kind of.
“Not really,” Peyton says reluctantly. “But it’s so cute.”
“It is, isn’t it? Sorry to say we don’t sell them. But we have had people smuggle them out of here, if you can believe that.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No, it happens every couple of months or so. Really. And we did officially loan one to a customer’s husband last Halloween. He was a big hit at the masquerade party.”
“I’ll bet.” Peyton turns to the side again, marveling at her rounded profile that looks for all the world as though a baby really is growing there. The couch pillow she tried on once or twice at home doesn’t hold a candle to this prosthetic, that’s for sure.
“Can I help you with any sizes?” Sue asks, still hovering.
“Sizes?” Oh. Right. She looks down at the pants and top, not about to admit she’s been so busy with her fake tummies that she hasn’t bothered to try on anything else. “No, I, um . . . I’ll just take this outfit.”
“Do you want to wear it home?”
No way. The stretch pants and T-shirt are decidedly dowdy once she’s reluctantly removed the belly and handed it back to Sue. These pieces will be relegated to the back of her closet for a few months, until she can fill them out with an authentic tummy of her own.
She pays for her purchases and a baby name book she plucks from a rack beside the register.
“So you don’t have any picked out yet?” Sue asks, handing Peyton the shopping bag.
“Names? No, not yet. Not officially, anyway. I like Whitney for a girl.”
“As in Houston?”
“As in the museum, actually.” Peyton immediately crosses the name off her mental list. She can’t have people thinking her daughter is named after an erstwhile pop diva.
“Well, good luck with the names. I have two boys, and my husband and I had the hardest time coming up with names for them. We agreed on girl names, but boy names . . .” She shakes her head.
For some reason, Peyton feels compelled to say, “Well, I don’t have a husband, so it’s my call.”
There she goes again, confiding her private business in a perfect stranger. What is
with
her lately?
“Lucky you.” Sue seems unfazed. “Well, come back and see us again when you’re ready.”
“Oh, I definitely will, thanks.”
Swinging her paper shopping bag along, she steps out into the April dusk, too absorbed in thoughts of baby names to notice the chill creeping into the air, or the person who waits only a few moments before falling into step behind her once again.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sloshing along down Fifth Avenue past the vast International Toy Center at the western edge of Madison Square Park, Peyton finds herself noticing every child she passes.
Babies pushed along in tarped strollers; toddlers clinging to mothers’ hands; school-aged kids in groups, too young, in her opinion, to be unsupervised on city streets.
Maybe that will change by the time the little one inside her is that age.
She smiles, picturing a demure little girl in pigtails and kneesocks, or a spirited, freckle-nosed boy romping in dungarees.
Right now, she can’t imagine ever wanting to let her child out of her sight. Right now, all she wants is to cradle her baby safely in her arms.
But she’ll have to wait. Five months at least, perhaps almost six, according to the measurements at her last physical examination.
With every day that passes, she finds herself more enchanted by the miracle inside her.
Dr. Lombardo’s office did an ultrasound on her yesterday. Not one of those fancy new 3-D ultrasounds that look like a picture, but the old-fashioned black-and-white variety.
The technician couldn’t tell the baby’s gender, but he did identify the snowy streaks on screen as a head, a spine, limbs, as Peyton lay with tears rolling down her face. This is real. The sonogram, its grainy prints tucked into her shoulder bag, provides tangible proof that she’s carrying a child, that she’s going to be a mother.
For the rest of her life, no matter what happens, she will be joined with this precious, precious person. Already, she’s enveloped in a swell of emotion never before experienced in such profound permanence.
Love. Earth’s oldest love
.
Maternal love, powerful enough to brighten even this gloomy Sunday morning with its abiding warmth.
She smiles at a little boy splashing toward her in bright yellow rain boots; at another stomping in a pond-sized puddle to his mother’s vocal dismay.
If April showers really do bring May flowers, Manhattan will be one big blooming garden in just a few more days. The last three weeks have been nonstop soggy grayness, to the point where she could hardly get out of bed this morning.
But of course she did, despite the fact that it’s a Sunday, because she spontaneously and stupidly made this brunch date with Gil.
Why on earth did she have to go and call her first love?
Because you’ve been feeling nostalgic lately,
she reminds herself, holding her umbrella closer to her head as a wet gust tries to slip beneath it.
It’s as though certain details, innocuous relics, of her past have been locked away in a dusty attic that she suddenly has the urge to explore.
Is inexplicable nostalgia another bizarre pregnancy symptom, like the enhanced sense of smell Allison warned her to watch for?
It must be. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be eating canned Spaghetti-os every day for lunch, just the way she used to back in elementary school. Nor would she have spent last Saturday night sorting through old photos while watching a
Green Acres
marathon on cable.
And she certainly wouldn’t be reuniting with Gil Blaney on this gloomy Sunday—or ever.
He sounded so surprised when she called the other night. Pleasantly surprised—but only after initially telling her to hold on a moment, then apparently closing the door to whatever room he was in. She heard the click, and realized that he wanted privacy to take her phone call.
That bothered her. Was he afraid his wife would be upset? Maybe she shouldn’t have called him at home. In fact, she hadn’t even been sure she
was
calling him at home. She merely dialed the number he’d left with her mother.
If he didn’t want her to call him at home because it might upset his wife, why would he have left that number? Why would he have left
any
number?
“I just wanted to say hi,” she said with forced breeziness, trying to think of a reason to hang up quickly.
But as those first awkward moments turned into what felt for all the world like a casual conversation between two old friends, she found herself relaxing. Relaxing to the point where she agreed to have brunch with him.
She reaches the historic Flatiron Building and makes a left along Twenty-third Street, glad she picked this particular dining spot amidst the row of trendy bistros and bars across from the park’s southern entrance. He had mentioned a restaurant on the Upper West Side, but she stepped in and insisted on a place she’s frequented on business lunches, a place that isn’t the least bit intimate or romantic. That would be awkward, should the conversation lag. Better to be on familiar turf; noisy, bustling, familiar turf.
“That sounds fine,” Gil said, more accommodating than she expected—or remembered. “Is eleven okay?”
“Noon would be better.”
He laughed. “So you’re still calling all the shots. It’s nice to know some things never change. I’ll see you at noon.”
She doesn’t expect to spot him the moment she steps in out of the dismal drizzle. She thought she’d have a moment to make herself presentable, to gather her thoughts.
But he’s right here, sprawled on a seat by the door, his lanky legs stretched in front of him and one arm hooked casually over the back of the chair. Peyton pauses to take in the familiar posture, the upturned Kevin Bacon nose, the shock of sandy brown hair that betrays not a strand of gray.
He looks up, sees her, smiles. “You look exactly the same, Runt,” he says, standing and crossing over to her.
Runt.
The word, his tone, the way he looks at her when he says it . . .
Memories burst unbidden from the dim recesses of her mind. Fond memories.
“So do you, Gil. You look great.”
He squeezes her upper arms, and she sees that up close, there’s a network of fine lines around his blue eyes and his smile. He’s gotten older. Not
old,
just older.
Well, so has she.
Time is running out.
The ominous thought strikes out of nowhere. Why?
Time might be rushing by, but it certainly isn’t running out. She’s getting older, yes, but that doesn’t mean her life is drawing to a close. In so many ways, it’s just beginning.
“Are you okay?” Gil asks, putting a hand beneath her elbow as the hostess beckons.
“Sure. I’m fine,” Peyton assures him, trying to shake the strange, sudden sense of foreboding.
The phone rings, and it has to be him. He must have got the latest message by now.
Yes, this time, it
has
to be him.
But it isn’t. It’s a telemarketer.
A rude, pushy telemarketer who deserves to be cursed at and disconnected with an abrupt click.
When the line is tied up, nobody else can call.
He
can’t call.
Then again, how can he, when he’s busy with
her?
It isn’t that he wants to be with her. It’s all part of the little game, remember? He doesn’t really feel anything for her. You’re the one he cares about.
Sometimes, it just doesn’t feel that way. Sometimes, it feels as though he’s really gone.
Abandonment.
Lately, this life feels as empty as a hollow womb.
Yet the work goes on, as it must. Donors and parents have been selected; babies are coming into the world. The donors must be punished and eliminated, the parents established and blessed.
Now that it’s resumed, this important work, this vocation, can go on forever, if necessary.
But it all depends on him.
The restaurant is typical Chelsea: high-beamed ceilings, exposed brick, wide-planked floors. What it isn’t, at least not today, is crowded. Perhaps it’s the weather, or maybe this place just isn’t as busy on weekends. In any case, the candlelit far reaches of the cavernous space could almost conceivably be romantic and intimate.
“Is this okay?” the hostess asks, leading them to a large booth in the corner.
It isn’t as far as Peyton is concerned, but Gil assures the hostess that it is.
He motions for her to slide into the curved seat and she does, careful not to bump her stomach against anything.
A regular table would have been better. At least at a table they’d be sitting on opposite sides, a safe distance from each other. Here, they’re forced to sit ridiculously close, the only way to have a conversation without speaking across an unreasonable expanse of table.
“So,” Gil says, once they have menus in hand, “it’s about time you called me.”
“What do you mean?” She knows exactly what he means. But it’s something to say.
“It took you long enough to get in touch. When I found out you’ve been living here for years—”
“Only a few,” she amends, glancing wistfully at the wine list, the laminated page trembling in her hands. What she wouldn’t give for a nerve-calming glass of that California Pinot Grigio. She’s still feeling vaguely uneasy, and it isn’t just about having brunch with an old flame.
Or is it?
There are times lately when Peyton feels almost like a squatter in somebody else’s body. This pregnancy has changed her profoundly, in ways she never expected. She’s more emotional, less secure. More . . . paranoid. She finds herself scanning the restaurant again, looking for the nameless, faceless
something
she senses lurking nearby.
“But you should have called when you knew you were coming to New York,” Gil is saying, and she forces her attention back to the conversation. “I would have helped you get settled, shown you the ropes . . .”
“Thanks, but I managed to negotiate the ropes and get settled all by my little self,” she assures him, wondering how she could have forgotten about the faint scar beside his eyebrow, courtesy of a childhood playground accident. For all the time he’s crossed her mind these past two decades, she never remembered the scar. Never remembered how she used to touch it gently with her fingertip before kissing it.
“You always were big on figuring things out on your own. You never liked me to do anything for you. Or anybody else, for that matter.”
“I never cared what you did for anybody else, Gil. And it’s a good thing, because you were quite the good-deed doer back then.”
He laughs. “I meant that you never wanted anybody else doing anything for you, either. You had it stuck in your head that accepting help—or God forbid, asking for it—was weak. I guess nothing has changed with you.”
If you only knew,
she thinks, resisting the urge to rest her hand on her stomach.
“Not in that respect,” she says aloud. “Tell me about your life. Wife, kids, job . . . ?”
“Job is great. I’m an analyst now. Kids are great. Josie’s twelve, Randy’s eight. I’d show you pictures, but I didn’t bring them.”
“You mean you don’t carry them around in your wallet?” She thinks of the sonogram stills in her purse.
He shakes his head. “I guess I’m a bad daddy.”
“Well, I would have loved to see them.”
“Next time.”
Next time? As far as Peyton is concerned, this is a onetime event.
“Do they look like you?” she asks.
A shadow crosses his eyes. “Not really. They—”
The waiter appears to recite a list of specials and ask if he can get them started with Bloody Marys or mimosas.
“I’ll stick with coffee,” Peyton says. “Decaf.”
“Oh, come on, live a little.” Gil looks at the waiter. “We’ll have the mimosas. And I’d like to select the champagne.”
“Wait, Gil, no. Seriously, I just want decaf,” she tells the waiter, who, to her absolute irritation, looks at Gil as if for confirmation.
“She’ll have decaf. And I’ll have regular. With a splash of Bailey’s.”
“In both?”
Unlike the waiter, Gil looks expectantly at Peyton.
“Just plain decaf, thanks.”
The waiter leaves.
“You’re no fun, Runt.”
Hearing the old familiar nickname, Peyton is transported instantly to the day they first met, back in grade school. He was throwing a tennis ball against the brick wall behind the gym and it bounced away, over his head, just as she was walking by.
“Hey, Runt,” he called, “can you get that for me?”
They laughed about it later—about her indignation that he assumed she was younger than him just because he was a whole head taller. In truth, he was a whole head taller than everybody their age, having inherited the notorious Blaney height genes.
Not to mention the notorious Blaney fondness for Irish cream, and Irish whiskey, she thinks, shaking her head with a smile.
“What?” he asks.