Passing Through Midnight (11 page)

No response.

"Mom? Mother?"

"Dorie?"

"Mother, are you all right?"

"I'm fine, dear. Are… are you all right?" There
was a note of panic in her voice.

"Of course. Is something wrong?"

"No. Not here. Has something happened there?"

"No."

"Then why are you calling me?"

It wasn't that Dorie had to keep reminding herself that
she loved her mother, but it was moments like this when she'd remember
the fact most forcefully.

"Mother, I'd call you every day if you ever gave me a
chance to dial the phone. But I never have to call you because you call
every morning before my eyes are open."

"I like having coffee with you."

"I like having coffee with you too," she said, an honest
answer for the most part. "But you don't have to have a heart attack if
I happen to beat you to the buttons once in a while."

"Well, I was just so surprised." Dorie could almost see
her placing a hand over her heart.

"I'm sorry I startled you. And I'm fine. I called to ask
if you'd go to that little hobby shop you like so much and see if they
have a cake pan shaped like a cow. Like the rose-shaped one you used
for my birthday last year and the dinosaur one you made for the little
boy next door?"

"Cow, did you say?"

"Yes. I want to make a cow cake."

"A cow cake?"

"A cake? Shaped like a cow?"

"Like a cow?"

"Yes, Mother, a cow. I'm going to make Baby Emily a
birthday cake."

"Who's Baby Emily?"

"She's a cow. A calf, actually."

"You're making a birthday cake for a cow?"

"Well, it'll be a belated birthday cake, but if you can
find a cow pan and send it to me overnight express mail, I'll have it
by tomorrow, and that's not too late for a belated birthday, is it?"
Silence. "Mother?"

"Darling, would you like me to come stay with you for a
while? I know you said you wanted to be alone, but, truly, sweetheart,
being all alone in the middle of nowhere can't be good for too long a
time. Especially if you're used to having people around and considering
what you've been through…"

"Mom? Mother? I love you, but please don't come. Just get
dressed, run downtown, and see if you can find me a cow pan, and I'll
explain everything to you later. Okay?"

"All right." She sounded resigned. "But if they don't have
a cow would you like a cat or a dog? They have them shaped like fish,
too, as I recall."

"A cow, Mom. Just a cow."

Before she'd called her mother that morning she'd stood at
her bedroom window and watched the Howletts come and go. It was fast
becoming her habit if she'd spent a sleepless night and was still awake
when they arrived.

Gil had ruffled Baxter's hair and laughed at something
he'd said, then he'd done a little shadowboxing with Fletcher. He
probably didn't live his life for his children, but he also had no idea
how empty and useless life could feel without them, she thought, not
too surprised when he turned to look back at the house from the barn
door as if he could feel her watching him.

She and Gil Howlett were like opposite sides of the moon,
very much alike and very different. They were stuck in a common orbit,
floating through time and space, alone and lonely, one in darkness, the
other in light, creating an attraction and a mutual need.

Were loneliness and desire enough to risk upsetting the
fine balance of their common orbit? They had respect and a fledgling
friendship to consider. An impressionable teenager and a
mother-seeking child to think about too. Was wanting enough? Or did the
future need some sort of guaranty?

Selfishly, she'd reminded herself that the future had
never given her any guaranties. Or Gil either, for that matter. Once
upon a time, she'd made a lot of assumptions about the future. Like it
would always be there and it would be good. She knew better than to
make those kinds of predictions now. Tomorrow might not come and it
might not be good.

All anyone really had was today. Today was the midnight
you survived to get from yesterday to tomorrow. Today was the final
hour during which you tested your personal strengths; expending your
energies, fortifying your weaknesses, finding the courage to pass from
a dark yesterday into a brighter tomorrow.

Hopefully.

And hope seemed to be the answer to all of it.

Without hope no risks are taken; no battles are fought; no
babies are made. For the first time in months, Dorie felt the warmth of
hope in her soul. It was like finding a tiny ember, still hot and
glowing beneath the ashes of her dreams and of what she believed in and
the perception she'd had of who she was.

She'd watched Gil and his sons cross the yard, and while
she no longer wished for a marriage and children of her own, she fanned
the small hope of loving again, feeling and caring. Reaching out to
human beings and holding them close to her heart once more.

She couldn't give Gil or the boys a guaranty that she'd be
there always, but couldn't she be a part of their life today? She was
an infertile woman with a scarred and broken body, a cynical heart, and
a tendency toward being pushy and shrewd to get her own way, but did
that mean she was unlovable? Was that all there was to her?

Maybe it was time to find out.

Taking Baxter at his word, along with a little medical
knowledge of her own, she waited and watched for the school bus to kick
up a great dust on the road as it brought the children home from school
that afternoon. Moments later, she was va-rooming up the Howletts' road
to visit Baby Emily.

Okay. So it was a lousy excuse. She figured it was the
effort that counted. Reaching out to touch someone wasn't always as
easy as picking up a telephone.

"Hi, Bax! How was school today?" she asked, grinning as
she swung her legs out of the Porsche, delighted to see Baxter leaping
out the back door to greet her.

"Hi! School was okay. Guess what?"

"What?"

"Corianne Smithers lost a tooth today. In her hot dog. At
lunch. She just bit into it and out came her tooth."

"Wow. Those must be some hot dogs."

"They're good. Her tooth was really loose. She let me feel
it once." He seemed rather proud of this, almost macho, as if it were
some sort of kindergarten courting ritual. "Mine are gonna fall out
too."

"Then you'll get big teeth, right?"

"Uh-huh. Like Dad's and Uncle Matt's. And Fletch's. Did you come to see Baby Emily? Are you better?"

"Yes and yes," she said, appreciating his perceptive-ness.
She knew if she used the I-came-to-see-the-cow excuse out loud it would
sound as thin as onion skin. "How is she today?"

"Real cute. Come see," he said, taking her hand and
pulling her toward the barn as he had the night before.

"Whoa there," Matthew hollered from the back door. "Where
are you two going in such a hurry?"

"Dorie's better. She wants to see the calf," Baxter said
without slowing down.

"Hello, Matthew," she called, waving her free hand.

"Stay for supper?"

"Oh, no," she called over her shoulder. "I just came to
see the calf."

Lord. It sounded thinner than onion skin.

"We got plenty. No trouble to set another place."

"No, really…"

"Sittin' down with a pretty woman is a treat in this
house. You'd be doing us a favor."

"In that case, I'd love to," she said with a laugh, as she
was yanked into the barn.

"See. See. She's cute, huh?"

"She sure is."

Dorie was allowed into the stall to pet Emily, then Baby
Emily. The calf had been licked clean and furry, and the hay was sweet
and fresh. Nothing of the night before remained, and when Emily mooed
with concern at having two humans so close to her baby, the sound was
natural and unfettered by pain and fear.

"Here," Baxter said, holding out his index finger. "Stick your finger in her mouth like this, and she'll
think it's a tit and suck on it."

"Do I have to?" she asked, with an involuntary shudder at
hearing the word tit come out of a five-year-old's mouth. But he was a
farm boy. What else was he supposed to call them? She had a lot to
learn.

He laughed. "It doesn't hurt."

Sighing, and unable to keep the grimace from her face, she
held her index finger out and slowly stuck it in Baby Emily's mouth.
The calf wrapped its big pink tongue around it and stepped a little
closer to suckle so hard, there was a popping sound when Dorie pulled
her finger out, half afraid of losing it.

Her hands had done and felt many unusual things, from
minor surgery to reaching inside a thoracic cavity and massaging a
human heart. But Baxter was giggling and having such a wonderful time
with her reaction to the calf's mouth, she decided to play it up a bit.

"Uh, yuck!" she squealed, shaking her hand in the air.

He laughed harder, and she couldn't help but laugh with
him. She took in his curly red hair and freckles, his tiny-toothed grin
and the sparkle in his eyes, and a huge soft spot in her heart opened
up to him. Had she really said she envied Gil his children? She'd
wished for things before, but what she felt was more than a wish or a
hope or envy. It was more like an intense joy emerging from the very
core of her. It didn't matter whose child he was, it was enough that he
was there, that he could laugh like an angel and be a little devil, and
think and feel and… well, and be Baxter. He was a miracle.

"You were right, Dad. Girls don't like that stuff," Baxter chortled, looking over Dorie's shoulder at his
father.

"I said, some girls don't." His gaze was on Dorie's face
as she turned in the hay to look up at him. "Some don't mind it."

"How can you tell which do?"

"Hell if I know. You got homework?" The boy was in
kindergarten and never had homework, but he enjoyed being asked the
same grown-up questions Fletcher got asked.

"Nope."

"Chores?" His gaze left Dorie's face long enough to give
his son a significant look.

"I was gonna show Dorie Emily Pig," he said, then to Dorie
he added, "She's gonna have babies, too, but not for a while. You don't
have to see that. You can come after."

"Thank you. I'll look forward to it." And to asking her
mother to hunt down a pig pan for the birthday party.

"You can show her the pig later. Chores first, remember?"

"Yes, sir." He shuffled his feet through the hay on his
way out of the stall, then remembered, "Dorie's staying for dinner."

"So I heard," he said, his gaze returning to her face.

He'd seen the way she was looking at Baxter when he'd come
upon them, sitting in the hay, laughing. Before she got sick, Beth had
looked at Fletcher that way. He never saw that look on his second
wife's face and had begun to think it was simply another wonderfully
peculiar thing that had belonged to Beth alone. But here it was again
on Dorie's face. Such a profound expression of infinite tenderness and
pleasure.

"Hi," she said, getting to her feet as the barn door
slammed closed behind Baxter.

"Hi."

She'd expected a smile or some sign of pleasure at seeing
her, but when he continued to stare at her, his gaze skimming down her
body then returning to her face to study and probe some more, she felt
compelled to say it again. "I came to see the calf."

Ugh! Thin as air.

He nodded, and a slow grin curled his lips as an age-old
light danced in his eyes. He knew why she'd come.

"And then Matthew asked me to dinner again," she said
self-consciously. "He's very hard to say no to, you know."

Again he nodded, the grin growing broader.

"He reminds me a little of my mother."

Another cheeky nod, and he slipped his hand into hers
saying, "Come keep me company. I still have work to do."

She had prickling goose bumps waddling all over her body
from the expression on his face. If it were up to him, he would have
taken her there in the hay in front of the cow and the calf, but
clearly—and perhaps thankfully—Chores First was
engraved in stone someplace with all the other Laws of the Land.

He held the small barn door open for her, leading her away
from the house and the fenced-in yard. They crossed a dirt road to a
huge outbuilding, not as tall as the barn but half again its width. A
big, sliding metal door was partially open, and he finally released her
hand once he'd ushered her inside.

"What's this?" she asked, her eyes adjusting slowly to the
darkness.

"A tractor."

"Not that. I can see it's a tractor. What's this place?"
she asked, squinting to make out large heavy-looking objects.

"A machine shed. Harrows. Plows. Tires. Cultivator.
Planter. Spare parts." He looked around. "Junk. Combines don't fit, but
most everything else does."

That appeared to be true. The place was crammed full of
machinery. Most appeared to hook onto something else to be useful; they
didn't all have motors. Tools, ladders, cans, barrels—why,
there was even a kitchen sink in a corner, half full of dirt and dust.

"And what are we doing here?" she asked, scanning the
place, rubbing her palms together as if she were ready to dig in and
help. Her aversion to housework skipped over the sink, but she was
willing to try her hand at most anything else. "Where do we start?"

"Right here," he said, snagging her with one arm and
pulling her close. He smiled as he caressed the thin red scar on her
cheek, his gaze slipping easily into her heart to find the answer to
his questions. "I was hoping you'd come back to see the calf today."

A soft, feeble laugh escaped her as his mouth covered
hers. His tongue slipped effortlessly between her lips to taste and
tease. His hands roamed her back and ribs, settling over the back
pockets of her jeans, pressing her pelvis close to his. Then they
wandered again as if needing to touch all of her all at once.