Nobody's Baby but Mine (39 page)

But Jim was proud and stubborn. By not capitulating when he’d mentioned divorce, she’d waved a red flag in his face. He never made idle threats, and if she didn’t move back into the house and resume their marriage, he would get his divorce. That’s the way he was, stubborn to a fault, just like his son. Both of them would break before they’d bend.

Her problems with Jim went back more than three decades, but what about Cal? She could read between the lines of what Jane had told her well enough to understand that Jane wanted a lifelong commitment, but Cal wouldn’t give it to her.

What was it about her son that made him fight marriage and commitment so ferociously? He’d been raised in a loving family. Why was he so resistant to having one of his own?

Even as a very young child, competition had been everything to him. She remembered teaching him hopscotch when he was so small he’d barely been able to walk, let alone hop on one leg. She’d been little more than a child herself, and he’d been her play companion as well as her son. She’d drawn a chalk outline on the old sidewalk outside the apartment where they’d been living, and she’d never forget the sight of that bottom lip caught between his teeth, all his toddler’s concentration focused on beating her. Now she suspected that the permanent ties of a wife and family had become one more symbol of the fact that the most important part of his life was coming to an end, and he had nothing to take its place.

Cal would undoubtedly have called his father right after he’d talked with her and told him about the baby. She’d been married to Jim long enough to know he’d be overjoyed at the idea of having new life in their family, and like her, he’d be concerned about Cal’s happiness. Unlike her, however, he wouldn’t be at all concerned about the feelings of the young woman sleeping in the spare room.

Lynn gazed over at her mother. “Cal must care about Jane, or he wouldn’t have lied to me the way he did.”

“Calvin loves her. He just don’t know it yet.”

“Neither do you. Not for a fact.” Even though she’d asked for it, her mother’s know-it-all attitude irritated her. Or maybe she wasn’t yet ready to let go of her hurt that Annie knew Jane better than she did.

“You can believe what you want.” Annie sniffed. “I know some things.”

“Like what?”

“She don’t put up with any of his nonsense for one. He likes that about her. She’s a fighter, too, and she ain’t afraid to go after him. Janie Bonner’s as good as they come.”

“If she’s such a fighter, why is she leaving him?”

“I guess her feelin’s got too much for her. She has a powerful love for that son of yours. You should see the way the two of ’em look at each other when they don’t think nobody’s watchin’. ’Bout set your eyeballs on fire.”

She remembered Cal’s recent happiness, along with the tears in her daughter-in-law’s eyes, and thought there was a good chance her mother was right.

Annie regarded her with shrewd eyes. “That baby of theirs is gonna be a smart little cuss.”

“It seems inevitable.”

“You ask me, it ain’t good for a special child like that to grow up all by itself. Look how bein’ an only child traum’tized Janie Bonner into gettin’ in this predicament in the first place.”

“You have a point.”

“She told me she felt like a freak growin’ up.”

“I can see how she would.”

“A child like that needs brothers and sisters.”

“But the parents would have to be living under the same roof for that to happen.”

“You’re sure ’nough right about that.” Annie leaned back in her rocker and sighed. “Seems me and you don’t have much choice, Amber Lynn. Looks like we’re gonna have to catch ourselves another Bonner.”

Lynn smiled to herself as she walked out on the porch after her mother had gone to bed. Annie enjoyed believing the two of them had single-mindedly laid a trap for Jim. It wasn’t so, but Lynn had given up trying to tell her mother that. Annie believed what she wanted to believe.

It was nearly midnight and chilly enough that she zipped the front of an ancient Wolverine sweatshirt from Cal’s college playing days. She stared up at the stars and thought how much better she could see them from the top of Heartache Mountain than from their house in town.

The sound of an approaching car broke her concentration. All the men in her family were night owls, so it could only be Cal or Ethan. She hoped it was her oldest son come to claim his wife. Then she remembered her promise to Jane that she would keep him away and frowned.

As it turned out, the car that appeared at the top of the lane didn’t belong to either Cal or Ethan, but to her husband. She couldn’t believe it. Not once since the night she’d left had Jim driven up here to see her.

She remembered the bitterness of their parting on Friday and wondered if he’d come to dangle the business card of his divorce lawyer in front of her. She had no idea how anybody got a divorce, beyond making an appointment with a lawyer. Was that how it happened? A person made an appointment with a lawyer, and, before they knew it, their marriage was over?

Jim got out of the car and moved toward her with that long graceful stride that had set her heart to beating for as long as she could remember. She should have expected him. Cal would have talked to him by now, and the prospect of a new grandchild would give him another excuse to browbeat her. She braced herself against one of the freshly painted posts that held up the tin roof of the porch and wished he hadn’t found her so unworthy.

He came to a stop below the bottom step and gazed up at her. For a long time he said nothing—he merely studied her—but when he finally spoke, there was an odd formality in his voice. “I hope I didn’t scare you showing up here so late.”

“It’s all right. As you can see, I’m still awake.”

He dropped his gaze and for a moment she had the curious feeling he wanted to bolt, but that couldn’t be so. Jim never ran from anything.

He looked up at her, and his eyes held that stubborn glint she knew so well. “I’m Jim Bonner.”

She stared at him.

“I’m a doctor in town.”

Had he lost his mind? “Jim, what’s wrong?”

He shifted his weight as if he were nervous, but the only time she had ever seen his confidence shaken was when Jamie and Cherry had died.

He clasped his hands together and then immediately dropped them to his sides. “Well, to be honest, I’ve got a thirty-seven-year marriage that’s on the rocks. I’ve been pretty depressed about it, and instead of taking to the bottle, I thought it might help me if I found a little female companionship.” He drew a deep breath. “I heard in town there was a nice lady living up here with her old battle-ax of a mother, and I thought maybe I’d stop by and see if that lady’d like to go out to dinner with me some time. Or maybe catch a movie.” A flicker of amusement caught at the corner of his mouth. “That is if you don’t have any qualms about dating a married man.”

“You’re asking me out on a date?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m kind of rusty at this sort of thing, so I hope I’m going about it right.”

She pressed her fingers to her lips, and her heart swelled. During lunch on Friday she’d told him she wished they could meet as strangers so they could start all over to see if they liked each other, but he’d been so angry at the time, she hadn’t thought he’d even heard her. After all these years, she had never imagined he could surprise her, but he just had.

She resisted the urge to throw herself in his arms and tell him all was forgiven. She didn’t hold herself so cheaply that this small bit of effort on his part, as much as she appreciated it, could erase decades of not being good enough. She wondered how far he was willing to take this.

“We may not be compatible,” she replied, testing the waters.

“Maybe not. I guess we won’t be able to decide unless we give it a try.”

“I don’t know. My mother might not like it.”

“Now you leave your mother to me. I’m real good with old ladies, even mean and crazy ones.”

She nearly laughed. Imagine stubborn, hardheaded Jim Bonner doing something this romantic. She was charmed and touched, but not completely. Something saddened her, and it took a moment to figure out what. She’d spent most of her life feeling like a beggar for Jim’s affection—always agreeable, always the one to make concessions and appease. He’d never had to put himself out for her because she’d never made any demands. She had never put a single roadblock in his way, and now she was getting ready to run back to him just because he’d made one small effort to please her.

She could still remember the feel of his randy teenager’s hands on her. Those first few times they’d had sex, she hadn’t liked it very much, but it had never occurred to her to say no, even though she would rather have been sitting in the back booth at the drugstore sharing a Coke and gossiping about their classmates. Suddenly that made her angry. He’d hurt her when he’d taken her virginity. Not deliberately, but it had hurt nonetheless.

“I’ll think about it,” she said quietly. Then she gathered the sweatshirt tighter around her and went back inside.

A moment later, a spray of gravel hit the house as he peeled away, driving for all the world like an angry eighteen-year-old.

He also had to face the fact that he wasn’t absolutely sure any of those stubborn women would let him in the house. Apparently the only men welcome there were Ethan, who didn’t count because he was Ethan, and Kevin Tucker, who sure as hell
did
count. Cal seethed as he thought of Tucker driving up to Heartache Mountain whenever he pleased, getting fed and fussed over, of Tucker, who somehow or another seemed to have moved into Cal’s own house!

The first night Cal had gotten drunk at the Mountaineer, Tucker had swiped his keys, as if Cal weren’t smart enough to have already figured out he wasn’t in any condition to drive. It was the same night Cal had swung at him, but his heart hadn’t been in it, and he’d missed. Next thing he knew, he was slumped in the passenger seat of Tucker’s seventy-thousand-dollar Mitsubishi Spyder while Kevin drove him home, and he hadn’t been able to get rid of the kid since.

He was pretty sure he hadn’t told Kevin he could stay. As a matter of fact, he distinctly remembered ordering him out of his house. But Kevin had stuck around like a damned watchdog, even though he had a perfectly good rental house, not to mention Sally Terryman. The next thing Cal knew, the two of them were watching game films and he was showing Kevin how he always went to his first option instead of being patient, reading the defense, and finding the open man.

At least watching films with Kevin kept his mind off the fact that he missed the Professor so bad his teeth ached, which didn’t mean he was any closer to figuring out what to do about it. He wasn’t ready to be married forever and ever, not when he needed all his energy focused on playing ball, and not when he had no other life’s work waiting for him. But he also wasn’t nearly ready to lose Jane. Why couldn’t she have left things as they were instead of making demands?

Crawling on his hands and knees up Heartache Mountain so he could beg her to come back was unthinkable. He didn’t crawl for anybody. What he needed was a reason to go up there, but he couldn’t think of a single one he wanted to admit out loud.

He still didn’t understand why she’d stayed around instead of flying back to Chicago, but he was glad it had happened, since it was giving her time to come to her senses. She’d said she loved him, and she wouldn’t have said those words if she didn’t mean them. Maybe today was the day she’d be woman enough to admit her mistake and come back to him.

The door chimes sounded, but he wasn’t in the mood for company, and he ignored them. He hadn’t been sleeping too well or eating much more than an occasional bologna sandwich. Even Lucky Charms had lost their appeal—they held too many painful memories—so he’d been substituting coffee for breakfast. He rubbed a hand over his stubbly jaw and tried to remember how long it had been since he’d shaved; but he didn’t feel like shaving. He didn’t feel like doing anything except watching game films and yelling at Kevin.

The door chimes rang again, and he frowned. It couldn’t be Tucker because somehow the sonovabitch had gotten a house key of his own. Maybe it was—

His heart made a queer jolt in his chest, and he banged his elbow on the doorframe as he made a dash for the foyer. But when he yanked the door open, he saw his father standing on the other side instead of the Professor.

Jim stormed in waving a supermarket tabloid folded open to an article. “Have you seen this? Maggie Lowell shoved it at me, right after I gave her a Pap. By God, if I were you, I’d sue that wife of yours for every penny she has, and if you don’t do it, I will! I don’t care what you say about her. I had that woman’s number from the beginning, and you’re too blind to see the truth.” His tirade abruptly ended as he took in Cal’s appearance. “What the hell have you done with yourself? You look terrible.”