Things Remembered (18 page)

Chapter

13

I
'm fine,” Heather said to Bill as she rolled to her side. Not being able to sleep any way she wanted was the one thing that truly annoyed her about being pregnant. The rest—the morning sickness, the heartburn, the backaches—were reminders of the life growing inside her. Her precious little girl. The baby she'd been told not to have.

“I talked to Dr. Agostini yesterday,” she added. “He said that as long as I don't overdo it, there isn't any reason I can't go to Grandma's for Thanksgiving.” Not the exact words, but close enough. She'd finagled his permission by promising she wouldn't be gone more than a day and that she would rest and let everyone else prepare the meal. What she hadn't told him was how long a day that would make, which was why she'd decided that as long as she scheduled plenty of down time, it actually would be better if she stayed a couple of days instead of just one.

Bill snuggled against her back spoon fashion, his hand splayed on her belly. After several seconds, he adjusted his hand to better feel the baby's movement. “She's up already.”

“She's been up since four.” After almost two weeks of little movement, Anna Marie had finally decided to make her presence felt again—big time. She woke Heather out of a sound sleep two or three times a night now, a clear preview of things to come.

“I'll be glad when she's here. It seems like you've been pregnant forever with this one.”

Heather put her hand over his and curled her fingers into his palm. He'd fought having this baby, terrified he would lose them both after the warnings the doctor had given them about having other children when Jason was born. He rarely talked to her about it, but she could see the fear in his eyes in unguarded moments when he didn't know she was watching. He'd stopped trying to hide how he felt at obvious times—when she was slow getting up or slept a little later than usual or put her hand to her back to ease an ache. “Three more months . . . fourteen weeks . . .” She turned and gave him a kiss. “Ninety-eight days . . .”

“But then who's counting?” He smiled tenderly as he brushed the hair from her forehead. “I love you, Heather.”

“I know you do. And I expect you to worry, but not all the time. I swear I'm all right.” She loved the way he looked in the morning, his hair disheveled from sleep, the shadow of a beard, his eyes soft and lazy. This was her time; no one else saw him this way. To the rest of the world he was the crisp, efficient lawyer—from his hair to the shine on his shoes. And handsome, the kind of man women turned to look at again. He had liquid blue eyes, an anomaly with black hair, startling in their intensity, made more so by the unconscious way he used them. He could grill a witness with a look or, with a conspiratorial wink, persuade a clerk to work after hours to find an obscure bit of information.

She touched his lower lip with the tip of her finger. “And I promise you nothing is going to happen to me or the baby.” After giving him a long kiss, she added, “Once she's here and tearing through the house, you're going to shake your head in wonder that you ever thought she wouldn't make it.”

“Right now I don't care if she turns my office into her own personal toy box. I'll even let her play in the closet if she wants.”

She widened her eyes in disbelief. “Not the
closet.
What if she discovers the hidden body?”

He laughed. “Okay, you made your point.” He looked past her at the clock on the night stand. “I gotta get out of here. I'm due in court in an hour.”

“I thought the trial didn't start until Wednesday.”

“We have a meeting with the judge. It shouldn't take more than an hour or two, but something tells me we're going to be there all day.”

“Do me a favor?”

“Anything.”

“Oh, you should be more careful with your answers, Mr. Johnson.” She smiled seductively. “I just might take you up on one like that someday.” Not any day soon, regretfully. Sex was a dangerous activity with this pregnancy, a forbidden, and therefore desperately desired, need.

“You've got a three-month window to take advantage of me. After that I go back to being the hard-nosed bastard you fell in love with.”

When she'd married Bill, she'd thought love was the excitement she felt in just being with him and the sense of loss that came when he was gone. Now she knew it was so much more. Love was getting up in the middle of the night with a sick child, a flower picked on the way into the house, a Sunday drive to Monterey to see the sea lions when a Forty-niner game was on television, and driving a Volvo station wagon instead of a sports car. Love was a series of small moments that made up her days. She was convinced that it was her guardian angel who'd put her foot on the accelerator instead of the brake pedal that summer day nine years ago and let her car plow into the back of Bill's. They'd lived such different lives back then, she was convinced it was the only way they could have met. She never failed to say a little prayer of thanks to her winged protector when she went to bed at night.

“Well? What's the favor?”

“If you have a break . . . and can't find anything else to fill the time . . . would you mind looking to see if you can find some stollen?”

He groaned. “I should have known. Which bakery this time?”

She didn't expect him to understand; it was enough that he went along with her crazy craving. She was trying to duplicate the special holiday bread she'd first had with Anna in San Francisco. They'd gone by bus that year to see the Christmas decorations, and in her mind everything about that day had been magical. Stollen was only available a few months every year, and she'd already tried the bakeries she knew in Carmel and Monterey. Most of them simply stuffed a few raisins and nuts and citron into a loaf of sweet bread, put some frosting or powdered sugar on the top, and passed it off as stollen. “I don't know. Pick one at random. You can't do any worse than I've been doing.”

He got out of bed, dropped his shorts, kicked them up to his hand, and tossed them in the hamper. “By the way,” he called from the bathroom, “I'll probably be late tonight, so go ahead and have dinner without me.”

“Do you want leftovers or are you going to pick up something?”

“I'll pick up something.”

“Maybe I'll take Jason and Jamie out for pizza. I promised them we could go to the park today and we could go from there.” She'd started detailing her days for him when he'd tried calling her several months ago and had panicked when he couldn't reach her. She'd accidentally left her cell in the car when she went shopping. Thankfully she'd been found by an understanding policeman whose wife was also pregnant.

“There's supposed to be a storm moving in tomorrow, so it may be a while before we can go again,” she said.

“Don't—”

“—overdo it,” she finished for him. The phrase had become a mantra between them.

Heather sat on a hard metal bench and watched Jason climb to the top of the tube slide. Her heart in her throat, she waited until he was seated and came out the other end. It was everything she could do not to hover. Only knowing her fears would become theirs kept her from shouting warnings to be careful every time one of them climbed to the top of anything.

When the baby was born and Anna came to live with them, Heather planned to take them to the park whenever possible. She believed in sunshine and vitamin D and singing birds—all the good things that came with being outside. She knew Anna couldn't live forever, but she also knew that under the right care she would live longer than she would if she stayed by herself, maybe even long enough to see her namesake take her first step and speak her first words. Heather refused to think it was unreasonable to believe Anna might even be there for Anna Marie's first day of school.

Even though she knew it was something that had to be done, she was angry with Karla for insisting that Anna put her estate in order. She didn't want Anna to spend time thinking about dying; she wanted her to concentrate on living.

She shifted position on the bench, making a mental note to put the pillow she normally brought with her to the park back in the car. She wasn't a “sitting” kind of person, so even with the baby as a constant reminder, it was hard to remember she was under doctor's orders to do so as much as possible. The sitting was a compromise. The doctor would prefer she was in bed.

Heather didn't know what she would do without Anna in her life. Who would she call to share the intimate joys that came from a day no different from any other but made special because Jamie had scored his first soccer goal, or Jason had said something funny, or Bill had sent her a bouquet of flowers for no reason except he'd seen them and thought of her? Anna cared in a way no one else did, not even Karla. When Anna died, she would take a part of Heather with her, a part so special Heather was afraid she would never be whole again.

The ten-year-old girl she'd been when she first came to Anna had been in desperate need of love and attention. Karla had drawn fire from their father's family for her stubbornness, Grace had charmed them all with her smile, no one had bothered with Heather at all. She'd been lost in the middle, left behind by her mother and father, left alone by everyone else.

Somehow, Anna saw this in her and found a way to make her feel special. In time she actually grew to believe she was.

Bill thought she was paranoid the first time they made plans to go somewhere without the boys and she refused to fly in the same plane with him. He quoted statistics proving it was safer to fly than to drive to the local grocery store, but she was adamant and told him they either went separately or not at all. She lived with the fear that something would happen to her and Bill and that Jamie and Jason would be left without anyone to raise them. There were no other Annas in their lives. Bill's parents would never let themselves be tied down with children again, his brother had sent his own children off to boarding school, Karla was too busy figuring out who she was to be much good to two little boys who needed help finding out who they were, and Grace couldn't take care of herself, let alone anyone else.

“Mom. Look how high I'm going,” Jamie shouted from the swings.

“Be—” The “careful” caught in her throat. Not even for her own peace of mind could she steal his pride in his accomplishment. “Wow,” she said instead. “You're almost to the top of the bar.”

“Look at me, Mommy,” Jason called from the slide.

“I see you, Jason.”

“Watch what I can do.” He went into the tube backwards and slid down on his belly.

The competition had begun. It was time to go for pizza.

“What is that fantastic smell?” Bill asked. He went to the chair where Heather sat, her feet propped up on the coffee table, and gave her a kiss.

“Applesauce cake. It's Anna's favorite. I thought I'd take one for Thanksgiving.” She smiled at his look of disappointment. “Don't worry, I made one for us, too.”

“I decided what I had left to do could wait until tomorrow. Where are the boys?”

“Cleaning up their rooms. I told them we could go out for ice cream when you got home if it was before their bedtime.”

“If they cleaned their rooms?”

“I know, I swore I'd never use bribery, but damn it, it works.”

“Hmmmm . . . if that's the case, what are a couple of stollens worth to you?” He held two bags aloft.

She put her feet on the floor and sat up straight. “You got them. I knew you would. How do they look?”

“I'll let you be the judge of that. Frankly, I still can't see what's so great about a wannabe fruitcake.”

Taking the bags from him, she headed for the kitchen and the cutting board. “Just wait. When I find one that tastes the way it's supposed to taste, you'll understand.”

“Hey, don't I even get a thank you?”

“Oh, you'll get a lot more than that as soon as I'm through with these.”

“Now that sounds promising.” He leaned against the doorframe and watched her cut into the loaves.

She tasted one slice and then the other and went back for another bite of the first. She crossed the room to give him a kiss. Holding a square out for him to take a bite of the first slice she'd cut, she said, “Your turn.”

He did as instructed. “Hey, that's not bad.”

“See, I was right.” She could hardly wait to tell Anna what they'd found. What had been a memory between just the two of them had grown to include Bill. Someday, she would find a way to make Jamie and Jason and Anna Marie a part of the memory, too.

Chapter

14

M
ark slid the key into the ignition and backed out of Anna's driveway. “Be prepared to eat your way into another size. The food at this place is incredible.”