Things plummeted from there, snowballing to encompass other topics, stupid topics, things Derry was once able to live with.
His grammatical skills. His ever-present monosyllabic pal Richie. His snoring.
“What are we going to do when the baby comes?” she demanded. “How is the baby going to sleep through all that noise?”
“What the hell can I do about it?”
“You can see a doctor, like I’ve been telling you for years.”
He dismissed that idea with a curt “What the hell for?”
“So you can have an operation to fix your nose so you won’t snore!”
“An operation? Where are we going to get the money for that?”
“Oh, stop it, will you please? Stop harping on me about money. It’s always about money with you.”
That was when he grabbed his bedding and stormed out of the room, leaving her to flip over and mutter a heartfelt “good riddance” into her pillow.
But she couldn’t sleep. She was too worked up. She couldn’t just leave it alone.
“I told you I’d look for a job this week, remember?” she spits at him now.
“Yeah, well, I’ve got news for you. This week is already happening.”
“Well,
I’ve
got news for
you.
It isn’t over yet,” she shoots back at him. “Or as you would say, it
ain’t
over yet.”
A week ago, that would have been a lower blow than she’d have been capable of dealing to the man she promised to love, honor, and cherish. The man with whom she once had everything in common. Everything that mattered, anyway, from a unique shared affinity for retro rock music to a mutual vision of their ideal future.
Not anymore. Things have changed.
These days, they seem to have very little in common. Derry is no longer sympathetic to Linden’s underprivileged upbringing, his typical excuse for not being as polished as she would like. Her usual gentle hints and good-natured teasing about his grammatical lapses have given way to white-hot anger.
He used to make an attempt to speak properly. Now he seems to deliberately choose the wrong words, just to get on her nerves.
It’s working.
Linden glares at her from the couch.
She glares back. Then, seething, she marches back to the bedroom, so blinded by fury that she accidentally bumps her fake stomach into the doorjamb.
“Ouch!” she blurts, though it more or less bounces off like the rubber ball it technically is.
Linden snorts.
How dare he?
“You wouldn’t think it was so funny if our baby had been injured,” she snaps at him over her shoulder.
“I hate to break it to you, Derry, but our baby isn’t in there.”
“It could be!”
“But it isn’t!”
“No kidding!” Those last two words, screeched, are met by a loud pounding on the wall.
Old Mrs. Steiner next door again. She banged earlier, during the bedroom argument. She bangs whenever there’s the slightest noise from the Cordells’ apartment, which would be forgivable if she didn’t pretend to be deaf whenever they pass her in the hall.
“Will you please just shut up?” Derry hisses at Linden. “What if she hears what we’re saying about the baby?”
“You’re the one who’s screaming,” he says with a maddeningly docile shrug before pointing the remote at the television.
He turns up the volume to spite Mrs. Steiner, and Derry.
She spins on her heel and storms into the bedroom, somehow resisting the urge to slam the door.
“Wanda?”
“Yeah. Were you on the other line?”
Ignoring the question, Peyton clutches the phone against her ear and poses one of her own. “Any news?”
“No. I just couldn’t sleep, and I knew you’d be up, too. Were you on the other line?”
“It’s okay. I hung up.” Deflated, Peyton sinks into a chair. “I was hoping you were calling to say they found her. I can’t believe this.”
“I know. I keep thinking she might be out there somewhere. . .”
“Or she might be . . .” Peyton can’t say it.
She doesn’t have to.
“I know,” Wanda says again, her tone hollow. “I talked to her uncle Norberto just now. He answered the phone there. He started crying so pitifully when I told him I was a good friend of Allison’s.”
Uncle Norberto. The bald uncle who teasingly called Allison and her lookalike newborns
Peludo.
Peyton swallows hard over a painful lump in her throat, remembering her friend’s tale that afternoon in Tequila Moon barely a month ago. Will she ever see that mischievous grin again?
Wanda is still talking; Peyton forces herself to listen when all she wants to do is break down and sob.
“He said her parents weren’t there. They’re keeping a vigil in church.”
“I can’t imagine what they’re going through,” Peyton says, although in truth, she can. She rests a trembling hand on her stomach. “What about Allison’s kids?”
“I guess they’re home with the uncle. You’d think the parents would stay with them at a time like this.”
“But they’re not tiny children,” she points out. Remembering her herbal tea, she stands and returns to the galley kitchen. “Allison’s kids are teenagers, right? They don’t need a babysitter.”
“No, but still . . .” Wanda sighs. “You know what I mean. Allison always said that with her mother, God comes first and foremost.”
“That’s not such a bad thing, Wanda,” Peyton says cautiously, knowing Wanda is a self-proclaimed atheist.
“Well, I think her priorities are messed up and so did Allison. God has always come before Allison’s father, before Allison, before the grandkids.”
Knowing it’s best to get off the hot-button topic, Peyton says simply, “I think Allison can use all the prayers she can get right now, wherever she is.”
“I know. It’s just that she just always resented her mother’s holier-than-thou thing. She’d probably be pissed about this vigil. She never even went to church.”
“I know, but I don’t think she resented her mother for going,” Peyton murmurs, finding Wanda’s words harsh no matter what her beliefs.
She dangles a tea bag into her cup and swishes it around at the end of its string, absently watching the tinted swirls permeate the clear water.
“Maybe she doesn’t resent her for going to church,” Wanda concedes, “but trust me, Allison’s mother’s been in her face preaching at her from the second she found out she was pregnant.”
That, Peyton doesn’t doubt. She heard the same thing from Allison, time and again. But she says nothing, allowing Wanda to continue her tirade, sensing that she needs to vent.
“I mean, give me a break. She even left a Bible under Allison’s pillow, for God’s sake, all marked up with references to illegitimate children.”
Peyton cries out as hot water sloshes off the side of the teacup, burning her hand. She flings the cup into the sink, where it shatters against the porcelain.
“Peyton? What was that?”
On the verge of hysteria, she asks shrilly, “Are you sure her mother left it there? The Bible?”
“That’s what she said. Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, I just . . . I burned myself. I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Peyton hangs up on Wanda’s protest.
She clutches throbbing fingers to quaking lips.
A Bible.
References to illegitimate children.
Peyton’s brain whirls with thoughts so terrifying, so utterly impossible, that she fears not just for Allison’s life . . .
But for her own.
“You’re doing great, Jessica.” Rita wipes the panting woman’s head with a cool washcloth.
“. . . can’t . . .”
“Yes, you can, sugar pie. You’re almost there.”
Taking Rita’s cue, Jessica’s husband leans over and says, “You did it before, honey. You can do it again.”
“. . . hospital . . . please . . .”
The husband, Kevin, looks up at Rita. “Is it too late to take her in?”
“Yes, and it isn’t what she wanted.”
“She just said it. Maybe she needs drugs. She’s been at it for hours. How much more can she take?”
“She doesn’t need drugs or the hospital,” Rita informs him, checking the birth canal again, shuddering inwardly at the sight of the deep scars from Jessica’s episiotomy.
She doesn’t want one this time, and she doesn’t want drugs like they gave her with her son two years earlier. That’s what she told Rita when they met last winter, and Rita assured her that neither would be necessary.
“Promise me,” Jessica said with absolute conviction.
And Rita promised.
“Beautiful,” she says now, lifting her head and smiling at her patient, whose face is contorted in agony. “We’re almost there.”
“No . . .”
“Come on, Jessica. This push can be the one. Kevin and I are going to hold your legs and we’re going to count to ten.”
“No,” Jessica wails pitifully. “Please . . . stop . . .”
Kevin looks at Rita with tears in his eyes. “Oh my God, can’t you see she can’t take this? Please help her.”
“I’m helping her. We both are.”
“But you’ve got to do something.”
“No, she’s going to do it,” Rita assures him with the serenity of somebody who has been here before, hundreds of times. “Now.”
“No! Not now!” Jessica protests, yet her body is straining forward, bearing down on its own accord.
“You take her other leg, Kevin,” Rita commands, gently but firmly lifting Jessica’s ankle. “Come on, let’s go. One . . . two . . . three . . .”
A piercing scream fills the room.
And then, moments later, the warbling cries of an infant who just took her first breath.
The proud daddy cuts the cord, freeing his child at last.
“It’s a little girl,” Rita gently tells the exhausted mother as she places the blood-slicked newborn against her mother’s warm, bare breasts.
“Oh my God. Look at that. Look at her.” Kevin peers into his daughter’s solemnly alert gaze. “She sees me. She’s turning her head. She knows I’m her daddy.”
“Of course she does. She’s heard your voice for the last nine months,” Rita tells him with a smile, as she gently dabs a smear of blood from Jessica’s inner thigh.
“She’s beautiful,” Jessica whispers in awe. “Thank you, Rita. Thank you for being here. I needed you. You’re . . . you’re like a guardian angel.”
A guardian angel.
Rita nods and looks away, unable to find her voice, haunted once again by memories of Allison.
“And you say you didn’t see the Bible that was left under your friend’s pillow?”
Peyton shakes her head, wishing the police officer were a little less . . . dubious.
Well, at least he’s older and kinder than the last one who was here.
Aloud, she says, “I don’t even know if there’s a connection between mine and hers. But it seems like an odd coincidence, doesn’t it?”
He doesn’t answer, merely leans over the counter to scribble more notes on his report. If he’s noticed the broken china in the adjacent sink, he hasn’t mentioned it.
“So what you’re saying, ma’am, is that your friend’s mother might have broken into your apartment and left a Bible for you, same as she did for her daughter?”
“No! I mean . . . maybe. I don’t know.” Peyton rakes a hand through her hair, exhausted. “What do you think?”
“Frankly, I don’t know what to think. It’s definitely an odd coincidence.”
Terrific. That’s precisely what she just said. Isn’t the policeman the one who’s supposed to put the clues together?
“You say you’ve never even met this woman?”
“Allison’s mother?” Peyton shakes her head. “No.”
“But she’s some kind of lunatic Holy Roller who—”
“I don’t think she’s a lunatic,” she interrupts.
“So she’s some kind of Holy Roller,” he amends, though it’s clear from his expression that he thinks Holy Rollers qualify as lunatics, “and she goes around quoting the Bible, and you think she might have—”
“I don’t think anything,” Peyton cuts in again, frustrated. “I just know that I found this Bible after the break-in, and Wanda told me Allison found one, too. I haven’t seen hers, and I don’t know which quotes were highlighted, but if they’re at all similar, I think it would be obvious that there would be a connection.”
“So you think your friend’s mother disapproves of both of you for being unmarried and . . .” He pauses, as though trying to figure out how to put it delicately.