Bombshell (10 page)
“I think I do.”
“I loved him, too,” she whispered. “And I hurt him. I broke his heart.”
Graham rose to his feet and shook his head. “Do you want me to send him in?”
Annalee shook her head. Sobs burned her throat. “Please tell him I’m sorry. For everything.”
****
John Calaway took in Dr. Graham’s kindly spoken words but couldn’t make sense of them. Sorry? For everything? What did that even mean?
“Go home, son. No sense in you hanging around,” the old doctor said. “I’m not going to let you see her just yet.”
“But she’s gonna be all right, isn’t she?”
“Long as she has a chance to rest.”
“And the child?” he asked. Calaway held back a sniffle, but his bottom lip trembled terribly. “Annalee told me, but I didn’t want to believe it. It makes sense, though, the way she’s been acting.”
“She and the child are fine for now.”
“Can I see her?”
Graham shook his head. “Bad enough that manager got her worked up into a state—I won’t have you pouring out your broken heart to her. She knows what she’s done.”
“I don’t think she does.”
A nurse approached and nervously took Dr. Graham by the elbow. “Doctor, Mrs. Gale in 204 was asking after you.”
“That child of hers ready to pop yet?”
“She’s got a ways to go,” the nurse said. “But she’s scared, this being her first. A word or two will do her some good.”
Graham glanced at Calaway. “Husband’s out on the river. Never fails. They always get to birthing when their men are away...”
“Go on, Doc,” the sheriff said, and thought of how afraid Annalee must be, thinking she was alone.
“Go home, son.”
“Yeah,” he said with a nod, but stood still and waited until the old doctor had traipsed down the hall with the nurse before turning his eyes toward Annalee’s room.
His feet were moving before he realized what he was doing, disobeying a doctor’s strict order, and though he half-feared he would find her hooked up to a dozen monstrous machines, what he found instead was infinitely more heartbreaking.
She was asleep.
Calaway stepped silently into the room and sat down in the chair next to her bed, marveling at her beauty yet ready to weep at the sight of her. She looked like nothing more than a fragile little girl.
He reached out with a softly trembling hand, brushed a silky lock of platinum hair from her face, and would have given anything to hear her laughter again.
****
Annalee opened her eyes and felt a dull pain in her head as the bright morning sunlight filtered through her eyes to her groggy brain. Her mouth was dry as tinder and her head ached mercilessly, but the terrible pain in her abdomen had ceased. Instinctively her hands traveled to her belly, and when she found it still filled with child, she took a deep, thankful breath.
“Were you ever gonna tell me?”
She opened her eyes wider, and tried to focus on the source of the voice, wishing at the same time he would have just gone home. The hurt in John Calaway’s voice was just a little more than she could bear.
“I wanted to,” she whispered. “When I saw where things were headed with us, I tried.”
“You tried,” he answered with a nod. There was no hint of accusation in his voice, rather it was a soft agreement.
“I was supposed to tell you I was running with a bandleader for a while and got myself into trouble,” she said in a soft voice. “Something like this would be the end of my career, but Sully came up with a plan, see? I was on my way to Chicago to hide out. I didn’t mean to come here and cause such a ruckus. I told you I was bad, John, and there’s no fixing this trouble I caused.”
“What now?”
What now? Indeed, what now.
Annalee tried to focus her eyes on him, but in the end thought it best not to look into the deep blue eyes she loved so much. “I suppose I go away,” she said quietly. “Maybe I’ll go to Chicago after all. Nobody cares about you in the big city.”
“And everything here gets left behind?”
“Molly and Earl can run the diner just fine.” She opened her eyes once more, but the light brought fresh pain to her aching head.
“I ain’t talking about the diner,” he insisted. “Goddamn it, Annalee, I’m talking about
us
.”
“You’re better off, John.”
“No,” he whispered. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t walk into someone’s life, make him fall in love with you, and then just leave. And you can’t tell me you don’t love me back. You’re not that good of an actress.”
Annalee would have laughed, but tears filled her eyes.
“I was gonna ask you to marry me last night.”
“And I would’ve said no,” she told him. Though it was a struggle, she managed to sit upright and finally looked into his eyes. The hurt she saw in them made her heart ache. “Knowing you didn’t know about this baby, afraid you’d just walk away once you found out—or even worse, that you’d stick around and do what you think is the right thing because that’s the kind of guy you are. Wouldn’t take long for people to find out, John. And the whole town would have you figured for a chump.”
Calaway looked down, but she saw the tears glistening in his eyes. “You think I care what anyone in this town thinks?”
“You’re the sheriff. You ought to.”
“I sat here all night, watching you sleep and thinking about what it all meant. I know you don’t really want to go back there, to that life.”
Annalee brushed the hair from her eyes and took a deep, quivering breath. “You think you know me so well, John. But you don’t. You don’t know me at all. You see some delicate little thing who needs saving, but you can’t save me. Sometimes I think even God can’t save me. I’ve done wrong, and this is what comes of it. I accept that.”
Calaway met her gaze. “I’m not here to save you, Annalee.”
“It’s what you do,” she said with a quiet sigh. “Since I met you, you’ve been rescuing me from one fix to the next. But I won’t let you take on a problem that’s not yours to take. Every time you look at me, I’ll know you’re only with me because you’ve got some queer notion that all I ever wanted was a knight in shining armor.”
“Is that really so bad?”
“Yes, it is!” she cried. “I don’t want that, John! I don’t need it! People will look at you like you’re some poor dope who took in a used-up floozy and her bastard kid who isn’t worth your last name. People will talk, John, and I can’t let that happen to you.”
All at once Calaway took powerful hold of her hand and brought it to his lips. “Will you look me in the eye? Look me in the eye and tell me you don’t love me the way I love you? Because if you can do that, you can pack your bags and go to Chicago and do whatever the hell it is you think you’re going to do there. Look at me, Annalee.”
“No.” The warmth of his fine lips stirred up the longing in her heart, the terrible wanting to be loved...and the knowing that the love between them could never really be.
“Tell me you want to be alone,” he whispered. “Tell me you never gave a damn, that everything between us means nothing to you.”
“I can’t...”
“Then do you think I give a damn what anyone might say about us? The things you did in the past, the things you think you can’t be forgiven for, they’re in the past,” he insisted. “I hold nothin’ against you, Annalee. All I have for you is love. I will be whatever you want me to be...but don’t ever ask me to abandon you. As long as you still love me, don’t ask me to just walk away. Because I won’t do it.”
Annalee collapsed back into the bed and closed her eyes, overwhelmed by the power of the love in his heart. Calaway sat down on the bed and scooped her into his strong arms.
“Marry me,” he whispered. “Marry me and I will be whatever you need me to be.”
In the warm comfort of his embrace, Annalee felt her troubles slowly start to fade. “Just don’t ever change,” she whispered. “Promise me when it’s time for the two a.m. feedings and I look like hell, or when the child is up all night with the croup, you won’t sit up and figure what a mistake you made.”
“I promise,” he answered with a soft laugh.
“Or when this child grows up and maybe he looks like the man who fathered him...”
“Ain’t nothin’ gonna drag me away from you, Annalee,” he promised. “You might think you look like hell, but you’ll always be a bombshell to me. And as far as that child is concerned, I’m the only father he ever needs to know.”
“Yes,” she murmured, and half-laughed as she wiped at the tearstains she left on his nicest shirt.
“Yes?”
“To everything, John.”
“Yeah?” he asked again. The sparkle in his eyes made her cry a little more, but this time they were tears of happiness.
“And maybe I’ll try to be good from now on.”
“Aw, you’re a lot more fun when you’re not.”
Epilogue
Annalee Calaway was convinced it was a boy she carried for nine months, particularly as the child grew within her and those small tickles started to feel a little more like kicks from a mule. Even Molly Brown, filled with the knowledge that could only come from carrying eight of her own, dangled a pocket watch over her burgeoning belly and after studying the manner in which it swayed, proclaimed the child to be male.
Bets were taken at the Blue Lantern amongst the regular customers, and though gambling was technically illegal in Pike County, Sheriff Calaway put in his five-dollar wager for a girl and looked the other way.
But just as the summer leaves turned brown and the autumn rains arrived, the day came when Kiddo finally had enough of life in his cocoon and decided to make his presence known to the world.
And he, already named John Joseph Calaway, Jr. by his expectant parents, turned out to be a she. A perfectly healthy baby girl who opened her blue eyes and screamed bloody murder the second she broke free of her mother’s bodily confines.
“A girl?” Annalee asked. “Those were hundred-to-one odds, John. You just made us a fortune.”
Sheriff Calaway counted all the fingers and all the toes and fell in love. “Might could grow up to be a singer herself, with a set of lungs like that. Or even one of those Rockettes, much as she enjoyed kickin’ you.”
“No way,” his wife said with a laugh. “Show business is no place for any child of mine.”
“What are we gonna name her?” he asked. “We never thought of any girl names.”
Annalee gazed into her newborn daughter’s tiny pink face, gently stroked her blonde peach-fuzz hair, and the name snapped to mind like a bolt of lightning. “Katie Belle.”
“Are you sure?”
“As sure as I’ve ever been about anything.”
“Katie Belle Calaway,” he announced, his face beaming with pride. “That’s got a mighty nice ring to it.”
“And as long as she lives up to half of what you told me about your mother, we’ll have done a good job.”
“She’s already givin’ me that stern look, Annalee. Think maybe I ought to get used to that?”
Annalee laughed and stared into the baby’s deep blue eyes. “Maybe you ought to.”
Phyllis DeMarco studied filmmaking and screenwriting before embarking on a career as a novelist. Her passions include history, music, classic movies, and writing compelling historical fiction. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.
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