As the other woman passes, Derry does her best not to stare. Or glare.
“Thanks again, Nancy,” the woman says over her shoulder to the nurse.
“Congratulations again, Peyton,” the nurse replies, beaming.
Congratulations? In this office, that can only mean one thing. The woman is pregnant.
Derry is momentarily stilled by a fierce stab of jealousy as she stares after the retreating stranger in dismay.
You should feel hopeful, not resentful,
she chides herself.
If she’s pregnant, you can get pregnant, too.
But what if the woman paid a fortune for infertility treatments? She looks as though she can afford it. Derry, in five-dollar Kmart clearance sneakers and too-snug ten-year-old jeans, cannot.
She shouldn’t even be here, really. Her regular ob-gyn is up in the Bronx, where she lives. But one of her neighbors recommended this fancy Manhattan doctor, saying that if it weren’t for him, her daughter couldn’t have given her three grandchildren.
Derry would like nothing more than to give her aging mother three grandchildren. Then perhaps they could find the common ground that has eluded their relationship, particularly since Derry moved across the country against her parents’ wishes.
“Right in here,” the nurse says pleasantly, indicating an empty examination room.
“Thanks, Nancy.” Derry nods, as though she and Dr. Lombardo’s nurse have always been on a first-name basis when in reality, she never even paid attention to the woman’s name tag in the past.
You should be more aware of things like that from now on,
she tells herself.
Not that being casually friendly with the fertility specialist’s staff has any bearing on whether or not she’ll eventually find herself on the receiving end of pregnancy congratulations. But it can’t hurt, right?
Linden steps back to allow Derry to step over the threshold ahead of him.
She’s careful to do it with her right foot.
Yes, if she steps over the threshold with her right foot, everything will be all right.
Out on the street, Peyton is greeted by a burst of icy air. Overhead, the midtown skyscrapers are outlined against a pastel blue backdrop, milky February sunshine cascading down between them to cast her lanky shadow on the dry concrete sidewalk.
She smiles at the notion of how drastically that silhouette is going to change in the coming months. Glancing down at her stomach as she buttons her long cashmere coat over it, she imagines that it’s the tiniest bit swollen. She knows it isn’t, not yet. But soon enough, it will be.
A man in a trench coat brushes by her, jostling her slightly with his briefcase. Peyton’s arms automatically cross in front of her, shielding her midsection and its precious cargo. In that momentary instinct, she grasps the scope of the tremendous responsibility that awaits.
Another human life is in her hands. Forever.
How can she do this alone?
Too late to turn back now,
she reminds herself, reclaiming her staunch Somerset mentality.
And you can do it. Plenty of people do it, these days.
Single motherhood may still bear a stigma back home in the Midwest, but it’s become commonplace—almost trendy—here in the city, not to mention in the media.
Reassured for the time being, Peyton checks her watch, then looks around for a vacant taxi. The only yellow cab in the immediate vicinity is occupied and trying to back its way out of a turn down East Fifty-second Street, and no wonder. The block is clogged with traffic, funneled down to one lane at the corner because of construction. Jackhammers vibrate, car horns blare, pedestrians jaywalk, bike messengers weave in and out . . . typical midtown midday pandemonium.
There are times when she inexplicably longs for small-town Kansas, wondering why she ever traded serenity for chaos. But that always passes quickly.
Especially today, she thinks, absently watching the hapless yellow cab attempting to retreat to the avenue. Nothing is going to burst her bubble today.
Peyton is happy to be right where she is, just as she is, Kansas and her past a mere speck in a rearview mirror she rarely bothers to check.
And that, Peyton tells herself, again resisting a strange pang of foreboding, is just as it should be.
Startled by the sudden screeching of tires and the discordant clash of metal against metal, she looks up to see that the cab has backed into another car. Both drivers are already out in the street, shouting at each other in two different languages, neither of them intelligible.
So much for not checking the rearview mirror, Peyton tells herself with a wry shake of her head as she heads on down the block on foot.
Anne Marie Egerton would kill to have a nanny on days like this.
Or at least, to have a husband who isn’t currently somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, flying off to London—
again
—on business.
Since the second option is out of the question, she collapses into the nearest kitchen chair and briefly considers the first.
Again.
Jarrett has been telling her for months to hire somebody to help her with the boys. He doesn’t understand why she won’t. Money certainly isn’t an issue. His latest promotion has pretty much guaranteed that money will never be an issue for them.
Not that it ever was.
It’s just as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is a poor one.
Grandma was right about that. As for the rich man falling in love with Anne Marie in return . . . well, she’s always been certain that her Italian grandmother had a hand in that. There’s no doubt in Anne Marie’s mind that Grace DeMario is as controlling in death as she was in life, a celestial puppeteer. That would certainly be her idea of heaven.
This—being married to Jarrett Egerton III, the mother of his children, living in Bedford, wearing the finest designer clothes and Italian leather shoes—would have been Anne Marie’s idea of heaven, at least in theory.
She ruefully remembers another of her grandmother’s favorite sayings.
Be careful what you wish for
.
She takes a deep breath to steady her nerves, gazing out the tall, arched window at the sunken brick terrace and the barren white trellises of her landscaped rose garden beyond. The New York winter has been harsher than usual. It’s hard to remember the lush foliage and fragrant blossoms that have been replaced by clumps of brown, thorny stalks.
But the roses will come again. They always do, if you wait long enough.
Anne Marie forces her weary body up out of the chair.
“Mommy’s coming, boys,” she calls, picking up a tray that holds three individual portions of applesauce, three pieces of buttered toast, three sippy cups filled with whole milk, three napkins, three spoons.
Three.
Three of everything.
All for a trio of three-year-olds who almost didn’t make it.
Stepping into the breakfast room, Anne Marie smiles cheerfully at her noisy sons, who are seated at a small table parked directly in front of the enormous, wall-mounted plasma television. The Wiggles video she turned on before she left the room mere moments ago only adds to the cacophony.
“All right, guys, snack time,” she chirps above the din, and begins handing out cups and spoons.
In a matter of minutes, the floor is littered with crumbs, a puddle of spilled milk is seeping dangerously close to the imported wool area rug, and the boys are wearing most of their applesauce, clamoring for more.
Anne Marie surveys the mess with a weary sigh.
This is heaven?
She smiles. It is. It really is.
This is heaven.
If anybody knows that, she does.
Because if anybody has ever truly been to hell, it’s Anne Marie Egerton.
Falling into step in the throng of scurrying New Yorkers, Peyton shoulders her way to the corner of East Fifty-second and Lexington, then turns down the avenue toward Grand Central Station and the subway. If the 6 train is running without delays, she might be back at her desk thirty blocks away before Tara notices she’s taken a two-hour lunch.
She suspects she might be doing that fairly often in the months to come. With any luck, her boss will understand and bear with her. In fact, maybe she should just march right in today and tell Tara she’s pregnant. Get it out in the open from the start.
Then again, maybe she shouldn’t. Maybe that would be a big mistake.
She’s set her sights on a promotion to management rep, aware that a spot will be vacant after Alain transfers back to the Paris office in April or May. Tara might be reluctant to offer it to Peyton if she suspects a maternity leave is looming.
Having seen several of her childbearing female colleagues get passed over for promotions and perks, Peyton concludes that her best bet is to keep the pregnancy to herself for as long as she can. Nobody at work would ever suspect there’s a Mommy Track in her future.
Just a few years ago, when she was still living in Talbot Corners, Peyton herself wouldn’t have imagined it, either. She had long since put aside her dreams of New York, of a high-powered career on Madison Avenue, of motherhood.
She set them aside nearly two decades earlier, the moment her stepfather of five years, Douglas, died on the heels of her college graduation.
Realizing she couldn’t abandon the widowed mother who had raised her single-handedly, Peyton watched her childhood sweetheart head to the East Coast without her. For a while, she convinced herself that she might somehow still marry Gil Blaney and have his children. But while she was writing him long letters and sending her resume to every corporation within a hundred-mile radius of Talbot Corners, he was embarking on a Wall Street career—and on a relationship with the woman he would soon marry.
Mercifully, the wedding was at a New York cathedral, rather than at the First Community Church of Talbot Corners, a stone’s throw from Peyton’s front porch swing.
By then, Peyton was over him, anyway. She had found a job commuting to Eaton Brothers, a Kansas City packaged goods company, where she eventually worked her way from an entry-level position in shipping to marketing and finally, to product manager.
All that time, she was oblivious of the silent ticking of her biological clock. But somehow, she turned into a time bomb on her thirty-seventh birthday—which happened to coincide with a broken engagement, her second since Gil left.
Three shattered relationships. Maybe she wasn’t meant to be married.
Looking back, Scott, who followed Gil, was all wrong for her. He was older, somewhat arrogant, and far too controlling for her. She got cold feet, and it was a good thing. She would never have been happy as Scott’s wife.
But with Jeff, who came later, she was head over heels in love. Who wouldn’t be? He was a former NFL running back, the pride of Topeka. Everyone in Talbot Corners knew who he was; everyone was thrilled that a hometown girl had landed a Kansas hero like Jeff. He’d retired comfortably from football and now traveled as a sports commentator. With his fame, strapping good looks, and financial security, he was too good to be true.
At least, that was what Peyton’s mother said.
Unfortunately, she was right.
Jeff didn’t exactly leave his bride at the altar, but he came pretty damned close. Close enough that the First Community Church of Talbot Corners was already decked out in a thousand dollars’ worth of white roses and organza pew bows, and Peyton found herself with a paid-for white silk gown in her closet and a truckload of crystal and china to send back.
He got cold feet, he said.
What goes around comes around, Peyton’s mother said profoundly, as if she were the one who had coined the stale phrase.
But there is truth in cliché.
What goes around comes around.
Once again, Beth Somerset was right.
In the wake of the fairy-tale wedding that wasn’t, the only way Peyton could escape the probing questions and sympathetic stares was to get the hell out of Talbot Corners.
She might just as easily have found herself in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Phoenix. But an account management job fortuitously presented itself at Kaplan and Kline, the Manhattan ad agency that had long handled the Eaton Brothers account. With her client-side experience, she was a shoo-in for the position.
She’s settled in the big city at last, twenty years after she first dreamed of doing so. Pregnant at last, twenty years after she all but dismissed motherhood as an option.
Scott had two teenagers from a first marriage and didn’t want more children, period. Looking back, maybe that was part of the reason Peyton wouldn’t let herself go through with marriage to him. Maybe somewhere deep down inside, the first fragile tendrils of midlife maternal instinct had already taken hold.