Runaway Bridesmaid (14 page)

So that's what he did. He wasn't sure who was happier about the outing, Katey or her mother. Apparently, his aunt had been correct, as usual. Vivian had a picnic lunch packed for them
within five minutes, tucking a change of clothes for Katey into the old-fashioned wicker hamper.

“In case she falls in. Which she always does,” Vivian said with a wink for her baby girl, who was hopping from one foot to the other. With impatience, Dean figured.

Vivian figured otherwise. “You gotta pee?”

Katey nodded once, then dashed to the bathroom.

“You'd think by this age she'd figure out what the pressure meant without being reminded,” Vivian said with a chuckle, handing Dean the basket. “So…you send the flowers?”

“Two dozen red roses. Hope that's okay.”

“Okay?”
A low whistle spun from Vivian's lips. “Nothing like going for broke, boy.”

He frowned, shifting the heavy basket to his other hand. “You really think it'll make a difference?”

Vivian sighed. “Shoot, honey, I don't know. One thing I learned a long time ago was to never try and second-guess my children…. Hey, baby,” she said to Jennifer, just coming in the back door, looking uncharacteristically hot and frazzled in a brightly patterned sundress, her upswept hair coming loose from her topknot. “What're you doing home?”

“Hidin' out,” Jen said, sweeping through the kitchen, her arms full of shopping bags. “Do me a favor, y'all—” she dropped a bag as she backed through the swinging door, muttered something unladylike as she contorted herself to pick it up “—and shoot me if I ever decide to get married again.”

With a low laugh, Vivian returned to rolling out a piecrust at the counter, the chore Dean interrupted when he'd arrived twenty minutes earlier.

“You don't regret at all having a baby late in life, do you?”

She twisted to him, her eyebrows raised. “Now, where on earth did that question come from?”

With a nervous half laugh, he replied, “I'm not really sure.”

Vivian lay down the rolling pin and turned to him, arms crossed, her eyes fixed on his with a steadiness that was almost unnerving. “Katey was a surprise, certainly, but a gift all the
same. I've never had one moment's regret about her being here.”

“Wasn't the pregnancy hard on you, though?”

Her mouth twitched at the corners. “At my age, you mean?” Before he could apologize, she resumed her task. “Lots of ladies have babies past forty, Dean. Doesn't mean they have problems.”

Jennifer reappeared, hair subdued, outfit changed to a pair of shorts and a prim little cotton blouse, just as Dean said, “Oh…I didn't mean anything by it. It's just that Lance said you had to go to Montgomery for the last few weeks because there were some complications…?”

“Y'all talking about when Mama had Katey?” Jennifer asked, pouring herself a glass of iced tea. “Shoot, Mama was healthy as a horse the whole time she was carrying Katey.” She glanced over at Vivian, who was peeling the piecrust off the floured counter, folding it into quarters. “Weren't you, Mama?” Vivian tossed her a brief smile, then went about unfolding the piecrust over a mountain of peaches. Jen settled back against the counter, the ice tinkling in her glass, addressing Dean again. “But you know about Sarah's having mono, how she'd gone to stay with Aunt Ida over in Montgomery, on account of they didn't want me to get it, for one thing, and, anyway, Daddy didn't think Mama should have to take care of her with the baby coming and all—”

Out in the living room, the phone rang.

“You want me to get that?” Jen asked, but Vivian had already wiped her hands on a towel.

“No, baby,” she said, oddly subdued, it seemed to Dean, and went to answer the phone.

Jennifer craned her neck for a minute, to see if the call was for her, presumably, then went on. “See, it was a long, drawn-out affair. Sarah's mono. Most cases are over and done with in six weeks, but Sarah had let herself get run down some, so she kept having these relapses. So Daddy and Mama decided it would be better for her to stay over there while she recuperated. Only, Mama couldn't stand it, being away from her
so long, so she asked if Daddy and I wouldn't mind if she went on up for a while.” She laughed. “And of course, Katey decided to come while she was there. My nose was bent out of shape for months about that one!”

Vivian returned, immediately returning her attention to crimping the edges of the pie's two joined crusts. He noticed her face was flushed, but then that was hardly surprising in the oven-heated kitchen.

“Who was on the phone?” Jen asked.

“What? Oh, nobody. Wrong number,” Vivian said, looking very relieved when Katey came bounding out of the bathroom, ready to go. “Oh, honestly—would you look at yourself?” she said, grabbing her youngest daughter to straighten out her crooked shorts.

“Hey, Jen,” Katey said as her mother jostled her this way and that, “you wanna come fishing with me and Dean?”

“In a word—” she bent over, kissed her sister on top of her head “—no.”

“Okay, you two.” Vivian gave Katey a quick hug, then wagged her finger mockingly at Dean. “You take care of her, young man, you hear?”

“Like she was my own,” he replied, and something in Vivian's eyes set off a whole mess of alarms in his head.

 

Dean hadn't been around kids much since he'd left, except for Forrest's two babies, whom he adored. But even so, he had the distinct feeling Katey was not your average child. To begin with, conversing with her was like talking to a forty-year-old trapped in a little girl's body. Not that she was obnoxious or anything. She just had this
calmness
about her, as if she'd figured out most of the important stuff already, and the rest of it was simply not worth losing sleep over.

Not surprisingly, Sarah quickly became the topic of conversation.

“I told you about her and Dr. Stillman,” the child said shortly after they arrived at the creek.

“Excuse me?”

“That there was nothing going on between them.”

“Oh, yeah. No, I could see that.” He baited Katey's hook, then set up her pole so she wouldn't have to tend to it if she didn't want to.

“So…what're you going to do?”

“Do?”

Her sigh spoke volumes. “About Sarah.” She rolled her eyes as if to say “Men are
so
slow.”

Part of him wanted to change the subject. Part of him didn't.

“What is it you think I should do?”

Katey squatted on the edge of the bank and dangled her fingers in the bubbling water, clearly unconcerned that her actions might keep the fish away. She hitched shoulders that were more bone than substance. “You like her?”

Dean settled on the grass a few feet behind her, leaning against a tree. “Yes, Katey,” he admitted. “I like her very much.” He paused. “I've known her since I was five. Did you know that?”

She turned to him and nodded, one eye narrowed in the glaring sunlight. “Mama told me, last night. Said you two used to be best friends.”

“That's right. We were.”

After a moment, during which the child studied him as if he were a new species she'd just discovered, she asked, “What happened?”

“Our lives just…took different paths,” he answered simply. “That's all. Grown-ups sometimes lose touch.”

Another several seconds' scrutiny, then Katey turned back to the water. “Mama says that her and Daddy were best friends, too.”

If there was more to her thought, she didn't elaborate. Instead, she fell into a silence that with any other child would have indicated sullenness or pouting. With Katey, long silences simply meant the child had nothing to say at the moment. He wondered what she was thinking. And he was sure she was, probably a great deal, he'd lay odds. Probably as least as much as he was.

As he approached thirty, the concept of fatherhood—
his
fatherhood—had been occupying his thought with increasing regularity and intensity. Forrest and Nicki's last baby, just now a year old, had a lot to do with it, he supposed. The baby had been born at home, earlier than expected, so Nicki's mother was en route from Greensboro when the baby made her appearance. Dean had drawn baby-sitting duty with two-year-old Leanna while Forrest and Nicki and the midwife brought Leanna's new sibling into the world, which meant Dean saw the baby right after her birth. The little chocolate drop of an infant had opened her black marble eyes and looked up at him, pursing tiny lips and frowning as if to say, “Who the heck are
you?
” and Dean had felt his heart swell with the incredible sweetness of holding this tiny, new person in his arms. And he realized how much he wanted one of his own. Shoot, he wanted a whole
passel
of his own.

Now, watching Katey, thinking about Sarah, the regrets began a new song and dance, as he thought about the children that he and Sarah might already have if he hadn't…

This was ridiculous, this constant “if he hadn't” nonsense. The fact was, he
had
left, he
had
broken Sarah's heart, he
had
screwed up. Whether or not he could patch things up was anybody's guess, but there was no point belaboring the past. It wasn't going to change just because he was sorry. No matter how much he wanted it to.

Which was exactly what Sarah had been trying to get through his thick head, wasn't it?

“Oh!” Katey exclaimed, jumping up to her feet. “I think I got a fish!”

Shaken from his reverie, Dean lunged for her pole before the fish dragged it downstream, pulling out a good-size crappie. “That's my girl!” he said, unhooking the fish and putting it in the ice chest. The lovely, excited face that met his when he looked up twisted his heart, bringing up all the “if onlys” all over again.

A
t three-thirty, arms overflowing with roses, Sarah nudged open the back screen door with her rear end. “Mama? I'm home,” she called, like she'd done every day, just about, since she was old enough to say the words. The kitchen was redolent with thick, golden midafternoon sunlight and the scent of fresh-baked pie. Peach, Sarah thought, her stomach rumbling at the thought. With some difficulty, she hung her shoulder bag on the little wooden hook shaped like a calico cat that Katey had given her for Christmas a couple of years ago, then flopped the fragrant ruby blossoms into the sink.

They really were exquisite, she mused as she plugged the sink, then ran warm water over the cut stems. Hesitantly, she fingered one of the still-closed buds—the air-conditioning in the clinic had kept them tight all day. Here, in the warmth and humidity, they'd probably open pretty fast.

Like her heart ached to open to Dean again.

“Hey, baby,” Vivian asked from the doorway. “How come you're home?”

“It was slow, so Doc threw me out. Said he'd call if he needed me.”

Her mother sidled up to the sink, brushing back a wisp of hair. “Whoo-ee! Aren't those pretty!”

“Who sent them?”
should have been the next question. But it wasn't. Which meant she knew. Sarah's shoulders instantly tightened. “Where's Katey?” she asked offhandedly.

“Down at Sadler's Creek for the afternoon.”

Sarah shot her mother a glance. “Alone?”

“No. With a friend. An older friend, too, so she's okay,” Vivian said, answering the unsaid concern, while cupping one bloom in her fingers. “Look at how perfect this is. Sure wish I could get my Mr. Lincoln to look this good.”

Sarah stretched to open a top cupboard, searching for something classier to put the roses in than the milk jug they'd used at the clinic. “Hey, if you could do that, then
you
could charge eighty bucks a pop for two dozen roses, too.” Her hand closed around an old porcelain thing that was stained and chipped, but at least it was big enough. She clunked it onto the counter.

“What'd you do…call the florist to see how much they cost?”

Sarah pulled out a large carving knife from a block near the sink and began slicing off an inch from the bottom of each stem. “As a matter of fact, I did.”

Vivian let out a resigned chuckle. “I'd ask why, but I don't think I want to know… Oh, you can't put those beautiful flowers in that old thing. Hold on a minute.” She stepped out of the kitchen, reappearing almost immediately with a large cut-glass vase from the living room. “Here. Use this.”

How many times had this vessel actually held flowers? Four, five times tops that Sarah could remember. Without a word, she took the vase from her mother and filled it with water.

“Who sent them, anyway?”

Finally. Calmly arranging the delicate stems, Sarah replied, “As if you didn't know.”

Her mother picked up one of the roses and slowly twirled it around in her fingers. “And…how do you feel about that?”

“Other than that Dean Parrish is the biggest fool this side of Texas?”

“Now, come on…” Vivian picked up the full vase and carried it out into the living room, setting it in the center of the oval marble coffee table in front of the sofa. “You have to admit it was a sweet gesture.”

Sarah followed, leaning against the door frame, arms crossed. “You put him up to this, didn't you?”

Vivian spun around, her palm pressed to her sternum. “Put him up…? Oh, Sarah,” she said on a little choked laugh as she pushed away the comment with a sweep of her hand. She fiddled again with the roses, which apparently weren't sitting just the way she thought they should. “You're talking nonsense.”

“Am I?”

No reply.

“Okay,” Sarah said on a sigh. “Clearly, all that stuff I said yesterday at breakfast about wanting to be left alone was wasted breath. Not that I'm surprised,” she added with a short laugh, then sank into a down-filled armchair opposite the sofa. “What you want…it's not possible, Mama.”

Vivian sat on the edge of the coffee table, facing Sarah, the roses framing her shoulders. “Anything's possible if you trust enough. And it's obvious how much he still cares about you….”

“That's
guilt,
Mama, plain and simple. And the ironic thing is, he's bending over backward to try to make things up to me, thinking
he's
the bad guy in all this.” Sarah looked at her mother, her hands spread. “And just how long do you think that ‘caring' is going to last when he discovers the truth?”

A fragile thread of silence spun out between them.

“That why you keep pushing him away, honey? Because you're afraid to tell him about Katey?”

Tears flooded Sarah's eyes.

Vivian leaned over and tried to take Sarah's hand in hers, but she pulled it away, pressing her knuckles to her lips. “It's only going to get harder, the longer we wait,” Vivian said, her
words laced with equal parts sorrow and contrition. “As it is, we should have told Katey long ago—”

“And you know damn well why we couldn't,” Sarah shot back, her voice trembling. “As soon as she knew, she'd've let it slip to one of her little friends, and then somehow, Dean would have found out. That would have been disastrous.”

But Vivian was shaking her head. “I never said we needed to tell her about Dean. Just that you're her real mother. She needs to know.” Vivian sucked in a deep breath. “And you need to hear your own daughter call you ‘Mama.'” Sarah's gaze leapt to her mother's. “I know it's eating away at you. Almost as much as Dean's being here is.”

Sarah shook her head, her eyes burning. “Not that I'm exactly innocent here, Lord knows, but don't you think it's a little odd that you're so determined to ‘fix' things?”

“Oh, honey,” Vivian said, her face contorted, “it's like to have killed me, watching you watch her all these years—” Her bottom lip caught in her teeth, she looked away, her brows knit tightly together.

Sarah went on instant alert. “What?”

“I told Ethel.”

“You did
what?
”

“It was time.” Vivian's timorousness seemed to have vanished; now she met her daughter's horrified gaze without compunction. “Time she knew.”

Sarah's stomach plunged; she held her hand to her mouth as she sprang from the chair, paced over to the window seat, back to the center of the room. “We
promised
each other that neither of us would say a single word about this unless we
both
agreed! What's to prevent her from telling Dean…?”

“She won't. Ethel may be a meddlesome nuisance, but she is neither a gossip nor is she malicious. She was shocked, of course, but it was the only way I could get her to understand how important it was to get you two back together—”

“
Meddlesome?
The woman's an amateur compared with you!”

“Sarah!”

“I'm sorry, Mama!” she cried, wiping her cheeks. “But you've gone too far this time.” She crossed the room and tore a tissue out of a box next to the phone. “Has it ever occurred to you that maybe I don't
want
to get back with Dean? That maybe I've moved beyond whatever he and I thought we had—”

“Oh, please, Sarah!” her mother huffed, then said, “Has it ever occurred to you that you're just being stubborn? As stubborn as you were nine years ago?”

Sarah stepped back as if she'd been slapped. Her cheeks flaming, she spun around and strode to the window, her arms folded tightly across her aching stomach. She heard Vivian come up behind her, felt her hand on her waist.

“Look, I'll be the first one to admit I made a mistake, honey. A horrible mistake, even if I truly did think it was the best thing at the time. But
you
were the one who refused to let him know you were pregnant. All I did was bail you out.”

Tears tracking down her cheeks, Sarah could only shake her head. Not because what her mother said wasn't the truth, but because it was. The look on Dean's face when he told her he was leaving, the way he'd mocked their intimacy… She'd been stunned, and confused, at how he could suddenly turn on her after all their years together. All she knew was that if he really wanted nothing more to do with her, why would he have wanted their child…?

“This is your chance to make things right,” her mother was saying. Sarah humphed. “All right,
our
chance. The man obviously still cares about you, he wants to patch things up—”

“And he's going to be devastated when I tell him. Not to mention furious. And what about Katey? How am I supposed to explain this to her?”

“We can't pretend anymore, baby,” her mother said simply.

Sarah finally got around to blowing her nose, then managed an approximation of a laugh. “All you kept saying all those years ago was to back off, to be careful, that maybe we weren't right for each other…”

“I was wrong, honey. Dead wrong. Which is something I'll
regret all my days.” She let out a huge sigh. “I should have trusted you more. Maybe if I had, you wouldn't have felt the need to sneak off and…” She stopped.

Sarah was quiet for a long moment, then said quietly, “And then Katey wouldn't be here.”

Vivian had no answer to that.

Wiping her eyes, Sarah twisted and regarded her mother briefly, then walked back to the sofa, sinking down on it. “If I live to be a hundred, I'll never believe I managed to get pregnant the first time I had sex.” Another rueful laugh crawled out of her throat.

Her mother laughed, too, softly, and sat down beside her. They both studied the roses for several seconds, then Sarah said on a shaky sigh, “Oh, Mama…how did everything get so balled up?”

“I don't know, baby. But seems to me, maybe this is our little window of grace, our chance to finally heal the whole mess.”

With a grimace, Sarah grabbed a little burgundy velvet pillow and hugged it, picking at a nylon thread that had worked its way loose. “How on earth am I going to get through this?”

Vivian shrugged, with some difficulty, as if her shoulders were too heavy to lift. “I don't know. But I don't see much way around it.”

Sarah doubled over, cramming the pillow into her stomach as she buried her face in her hands. Her mother's voice seemed to be coming from another state. “Would you rather
I
told Katey?”

She shook her head, still in her hands, then raised her face to stare at the opposite wall. “I don't know yet. No. Maybe.” She blew out a long, shuddering breath. “I don't know,” she repeated as she collapsed against the back of the sofa.

“And Dean?”

“Oh, Lord, Mama…give me a minute here, okay?” She pushed herself off the sofa and once again walked over to the window, as if the enemy lay just outside the walls and she was about to go do battle. “This isn't like trying to straighten out
a problem with the bank, you know?” She leaned one hand on the window frame, let her head drop forward as she drew in a steadying breath, then lifted it. “Just…promise you'll be here to pick up the pieces?”

“Oh, honey—” A second later, she was in her mother's arms. “Always, sugar. Always.”

Sarah let herself hide in that strong embrace for a full minute, wanting to be a little girl again, for things to be the way they were before all these nasty grown-up responsibilities had trampled her idyllic life. Suddenly, Sadler's Creek sounded like heaven. She'd always gone to the spot as a child, whenever she was upset about something. And Katey was already there, with one of her friends.

Sarah pulled out of her mother's arms, checked her watch. Older friend or no, Katey should have been home by now. She blew her nose, took a final swipe at her cheeks, and announced, “Think I'll go down and get Katey. The walk will do me good.”

She thought she heard her mother call after her as she barreled down the back steps, but she didn't respond.

 

Sarah heard his laugh before she heard Katey's. Coming to an abrupt halt, she rested one hand on the sappy bark of a pine tree as she saw the two of them pull in a fishing line with a slapping, wriggling prize on the end of it. Their heads were together, spotted sunlight dancing alternately on honey-gold and maple hair, Dean's rumbling baritone underlying the child's sparkling squeals of delight.

Father and daughter.

Her throat tightened with the sorrow she'd denied for so long. It was one thing to know Dean was her child's father, quite another to be faced with
telling
him he had a child. That
they
had a child. She'd only been putting off the inevitable, the past few days. How was he going to feel when he discovered he'd missed out on the first eight years of his daughter's life?

She could no longer consign Dean to her past…but whether
or not he'd still want to be part of her future was up to him. And suddenly, that mattered. More than she would have thought possible just yesterday.

Sarah leaned closer to the tree, watching as Dean unhooked the hapless bream and tossed it inside the cooler sitting a couple of feet away, absently responding to the giggling child as she waded barefoot into the creek, darting this way and that. Chasing crawfish, Sarah presumed. She smiled, wondered if her mother had packed an extra set of clothes for when Katey inevitably fell in.

A single tear made a run for it down her cheek.

She'd been forced to make the hardest decision of her life when she was the most vulnerable. And what choices had there been? An abortion was out of the question. So was telling Dean. Or raising the child on her own, which would have resulted in the same thing. What would he have done? Come home and insisted on marrying her, probably, in spite of their horrendous last meeting, because everyone would have been on his case to do the “right” thing.