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If glares could incinerate children, Suzie’s oldest son would have been nothing but a pile of ash. But he just grinned unrepentantly and shoveled a forkful of potatoes into his mouth.
“Jack Kerouac was not even fifty when he died inebriated, still living with his mom,” I said. “I’m not sure we should be taking his advice.”
“Is this about Nora wanting to climb Hart Mountain?” Suzie asked. She turned to me. “Are you really going to do that?” Before I could answer, Suzie grimaced. “Actually, I don’t care. That was a contraction.”
Sam pushed back his chair with a loud scrape and jumped to his feet. That might be considered a wee bit dramatic, considering this was their fourth, except for the fact that with Suzie, there had never been more than three hours between the first contraction and the baby being born. And the hospital was twenty minutes away.
Sam darted from the room.
“He’s going to get the hospital bag,” Suzie explained.
Sam returned a moment later with paper and pen. “The bag is waiting by the door. Make your list, honey.”
“Baby names?” Michael asked, amused. “Shouldn’t you have done that already?”
“All the things you might need to know tonight and tomorrow if we can’t answer our phones right away,” Sam said.
“Not all the things.” Suzie scribbled so fast I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the pen start to smoke. She paused briefly and her face screwed up. Another contraction. I glanced at the clock. Six minutes apart. “There’s not time for that. Critical things, like doctor phone numbers, and bed times, and Dimitri and Becca have soccer camp tomorrow. And Carly—oh, God. Carly.” Suzie looked up, stricken.
“What?” Michael asked. “I’ll be fine. I remember how to change diapers, thanks to Dimitri and Becca. I can definitely brush her teeth, read her a book, and all that sh—stuff.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about. She’s never been away from us at night. And she doesn’t even know you. She’ll be so upset and then it won’t even be better when we come home, because it will all be different, and she won’t be the baby anymore…and…” Her chin wobbled.
Good Lord, she was going to have a meltdown.
“I’ll stay,” I said hastily. “I mean, if that’s okay with Michael. He really doesn’t need my help, but Carly knows me. She’s comfortable with me.”
“Really?” Suzie asked hopefully.
I nodded. We both looked at Michael.
“Sure, stay.” His eyes glinted at me. “We’ll have fun.”
Something about the way he saidfunmade me think he was remembering that I had unwittingly issued a challenge, which he had quite wittingly accepted. Well, he could keep that heated, knowing look to himself, because he was wrong on two counts.
One, there was no way anything sex-related was going to happen while we were on babysitting duty, because nothing killed libido faster than kids, not to mention it was irresponsible.
And two, getting me into bed really wasn’t going to be a challenge.
Maybe I would put up more of a fight if I thought he intended to keep me there, but anything that happened between us could only be temporary, and we both knew it. My divorce was too fresh for me to want a real relationship, and he wouldn’t be in Hart’s Ridge long enough for anything to become real, anyway. Michael had agreed to stay for a couple months, and then he would be gone to…I didn’t know where. And, truth be told, neither did I care, so long as it wasn’t here.
“Go,” I said to Suzie. “If you wait any longer, you’re going to have that baby here, and none of us wants to clean up the afterbirth.”
Suzie grimaced, whether from the thought of all that blood and goo or from another contraction, I didn’t know. “Okay, we’re leaving now.”
There was a flurry of activity as Suzie and Sam said goodbye to their kids followed by the low rumble of their car pulling out of the driveway. And then silence stretched as we all stared at each other.
“Well,” Michael began, but he never got to finish that thought.
Carly opened her mouth and wailed.
Despite the inauspicious beginning, two hours later all three kids were sound asleep. Carly had decided to sleep with Becca, and Becca, sweet child that she was, allowed it. Michael and I took glasses of iced tea onto the front porch, leaving the door open so they could hear anyone call for them through the screen door.
It was a warm summer night—probably one of the last of the season. In a few short weeks, it would be October and the nights would turn cool. It was hard to believe, sitting there in my sundress, still reasonably warm after the sun went down, that summer was almost over.
And in the distance, Hart Mountain loomed.
“What’s on your mind, Nora?” he asked, stretching one arm so that it rested on the back of the swing.
