Mabel’s concern that Emma would be “looked down upon” in her new line of work did not take into account the other side of the Panhandle character that deemed folks who worked hard to do their best with the hand they were dealt deserved respect. The Benson women found their stock gradually returning to their former heights in the eyes of Kersey County. The awkward situation of her nephew’s abandonment of the mother of his child prevented Mabel from having a baby shower for Cathy, but Paula Tyson, the sheriff’s wife, was bound by no such embarrassment. She hosted a Sunday afternoon party attended by classmates of Cathy’s still in the area, a sizeable number of the town’s elite, including Coach Turner’s wife, and Bebe and Melissa, who drove in from their colleges.
Trey had not come home to spend the Christmas holiday with his aunt. The town frowned over his neglect of the woman who had done so much for him. It did not matter that he had asked Mabel to Coral Gables to join the family whose invitation he had accepted. The feeling was that Trey’s place at Christmastime was at the fireside of his loving and lonely aunt. The tide of public opinion slowly turned in Cathy’s favor and against Trey, who, so local judgment went, “was showing he wasn’t man enough to come home and face the music.”
As February rolled toward Valentine’s Day, Cathy wrote John that
“the way people around here are keeping a watchful eye on my due date gives me some idea of how the world awaited the birth of Mary’s son—no comparison intended.” She realized that much of the town’s anticipation was as much out of curiosity as concern. Would her son look like Trey Don Hall?
Cathy believed the material she read that said women’s bodies were designed to grow, birth, and nourish babies, but she was prepared for a difficult birth. Her pelvis had been diagnosed as small, and the sonogram indicated the baby could weigh as much as ten pounds. Against her obstetrician’s advice, Cathy had elected to deliver her son naturally rather than agree to an early induction or a C-section. She’d thoroughly educated herself on the complications of both and believed the benefits of a vaginal delivery outweighed the pain and risks involved.
“You understand that your baby can be injured in the birthing process,” the doctor warned her. “For example, big babies can fracture their collarbones. It’s rare, but it does happen.”
“Are sonograms always correct in determining a baby’s weight?”
“No.”
“And wouldn’t I have to have an MRI to determine the size of my pelvis?”
“I see you’ve been doing your homework.”
By her doctor’s calculations, Cathy was a week away from her first labor pains. Her one piece of luggage was packed and in the Toyota Camry Father Richard had sold to her grandmother, its gas tank full and tires checked for immediate departure to the hospital in Amarillo. If all went well, Cathy would be hospitalized for no more than two days, the financial reason for opting for a natural delivery. Her main worry was the weather. Freezing high winds and ice accumulation on the highways were not uncommon in the Panhandle in February. As a precaution against the worst possible scenario, they had packed the trunk with blankets and food and emergency medical supplies.
Cathy could now feel the full weight of her baby, especially when she turned over in bed. Their game-playing days were over. She could feel her son was cramped and wanted out. From the minute she’d felt him kick (
Hi, Mom
) she’d press her thumb on the spot (
I’m here, Son
), and as he got bigger, when she pressed he’d push back. She’d tickle his foot and he’d move in a way that made her think he was giggling just beneath the skin of her muscles and nerves. She’d call him John, sing to him, talk to him, and no one could have convinced her that he wasn’t listening.
She would expect no less sportiveness from Trey’s son, but his frolics unleashed the ache for his father she’d managed to control. How could Trey turn his back on the baby they had made? In moments when her guard was down she’d fantasize that Trey would rush into her hospital room after the delivery, find their baby in her arms, begin to cry, and say as he had that day in June,
Catherine Ann, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I’m the biggest jerk in the world. I love you so much. Please forgive me.
Once she left the hospital, she hoped to be back at work after a couple of weeks, since she could bring the baby with her. Bennie had ordered her to take even more time. “We can manage,” he said. “You are not to come back until you and the baby are completely well.”
“We’re not sick, Bennie, just neonatal. Women used to drop their babies in the fields, put them to their nipples, and keep on working.”
Bachelor Bennie blushed from the image. “The café ain’t no cotton field and I’m no Simon Legree. We can manage, I tell you.”
But how? The staff of five ran their feet off now. Juan was turning out to be better help than expected, but he attended Canyon College three evenings a week. Her grandmother would be in and out attending to her, and with Cathy gone, Bennie would have to wait tables and man the cash register while Odell would have his hands full in the kitchen dishing up orders. Word had spread of their new look and menu, and diners were driving over from Amarillo and Delton and
towns in the adjoining counties. Cathy hated to disrupt the flow of customers who might not try them again if things were not as advertised or—God help them—Bennie had to resort to serving his hamburgers and fries.
Within days of believing her baby was turning in position to be born, a godsend walked through the door. The staff was between lunch and dinner. Bennie was at the cash register, chatting with a customer.
“Bebe Baldwin, what are you doing here in the middle of the semester?” Cathy said in surprise when she saw her friend from high school take a seat at the lunch counter. They had visited over the Christmas holidays and at her baby shower, and Cathy had listened like a diabetic craving sweets to Bebe’s wails of discontent with her professors and classes and higher education in general.
“I quit,” Bebe said. “I gave it a go, but college isn’t for me. No sense in wasting my dad’s money. Cissie Jane is lapping up the life, of course. She’s majoring in Kappa Kappa Gamma.”
Cathy chuckled. “Sounds like her.” She set a cup of coffee for her friend on the counter. “So what are your plans now?”
Bebe shrugged. “I’ll be looking for a job. I wish it could be around here, but with the job market the way it is…”
“Would you like to work in Bennie’s?” The question popped from Cathy’s mouth before she could think about it. “As you can see, we’ve spiffed up the place, and I’m expecting my baby—” A sudden gush of liquid warmed the inside of her legs. She clasped her abdomen and caught the smell of a musky odor. “Like… like… right now.”
Bebe shot off the stool. “Oh, my God, what do I do?”
“Call my grandmother. She’s in the kitchen.” At the cash register, Bennie whipped his head around and let out a bark of dismay. “Bennie, meet your new waitress,” Cathy gasped when he rushed over. “Right, Bebe?”
“Right,” Bebe said.
The weather threatened but held off as Emma drove the Camry out of Kersey. The afternoon had lost the little sun that had managed to penetrate the low-cast clouds. A winter storm was expected to roll in at midnight. “How are you doing, sweetheart?” Emma asked, her hands clenching the wheel, her body pitched forward as if the tense position might help her better navigate the road.
Cathy’s eyes were on the stopwatch she held to time her contractions. “So far so good,” she said. Her cramps were regular in duration and spacing, but she had no doubt that labor had begun. She rubbed her abdomen, determined to remain calm and relaxed.
It’s all right, John. Mom will have you out in no time.
They were a mile out of Kersey when, “Oh, shit!” exploded from Emma’s mouth. Cathy looked at her grandmother in surprise, then behind her to see what horrible thing in her rearview mirror had provoked the unprecedented outburst. “ ‘Oh, shit!’ is right,” she groaned. A squad car, blue lights twirling, siren released, had drawn up close behind them.
“What the hell is he stopping me for?” Emma said furiously. “I was driving the speed limit.”
Through the precipitation collecting on the back windshield, Cathy could make out only the outline of a broad set of shoulders in the leather jacket of a law-enforcement officer and the dull glow of a medallion on the crown of his western hat. He stuck his hand out his window and motioned they were to follow him. Cathy went limp with relief. “It’s okay, Grandmother,” she said, feeling the stab of another contraction. “It’s Sheriff Tyson. He’s come to lead us to the hospital.”
F
rowning, Trey took a seat next to the girl he’d agreed to meet for coffee in the University Center. They’d been dating since December, and he’d spent the holidays with her and her family in their mansion in Coral Gables, where her father owned an important advertising firm.
The glow that had heightened the loveliness of the girl’s face when Trey walked up faded when she saw his ill-humored expression. Beside her pastry plate was a small gift-wrapped box tied in red and white ribbon. “What’s the matter?” she asked. “You look… put out.”
“Put out?” Trey’s frown deepened. “I’m worried. Can’t you tell the difference?”
“Worried about what?”
“Nothing important. I have… a friend who’s supposed to be going into the hospital today.”
“Who is it? I thought I knew all your friends.”
“Well, you thought wrong. Not from here. From home.”
The girl’s face instantly grew wary. “A him or a her?”
Trey hesitated. “A her. I’m hoping someone will let me know how she is.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s going to have a baby.”
She noticed he’d not removed his jacket and had made no move toward the coffee bar. “Yours?” she asked.
His dark eyes snapped. “Why would you say that?”
She hiked her shoulders in an attempt to make light of her obviously unfortunate remark. What was
wrong
with him today? “I don’t know why I said that, Trey. I suppose because love is in the air—”
“Are you saying it would be okay for me to walk out on a girl having my baby?”
She rocked back from his cold stare, the censure in his tone. “Of course not. That’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean?”
“Trey…” She leaned forward and drew his hand to the red heart on the front of her white sweater. “This is Valentine’s Day. I didn’t mean to start an argument.”
“I don’t feel like going to the dance tonight,” he said. He pulled back his hand from the familiar swell of her breast and pushed back his chair. “I’m sorry, Cynthia, but I need some breathing room from us for a while.”
Cynthia watched him go without undue regret. She couldn’t keep up with his moods lately, and they’d become a bore. Gazes from the other students trailed after him. He’d been picked as next season’s starting quarterback, and at the University of Miami that made him top dog on campus. The information her father’s investigator had gathered on Trey Don Hall must be correct, she thought. Her father had all her boyfriends investigated. She was, after all, the heiress to a fortune when she turned twenty-one. The dossier stated that when Trey Don Hall went off to college he’d left his longtime girlfriend pregnant and had had nothing to do with her since. Her baby would be due about this time. Cynthia had shrugged the information off to her father. What did that have to do with her and Trey’s relationship? But she should have known better than to let herself fall in love with
TD Hall. There was something cold and indifferent about him once you got past the sex. He would only hurt her as he apparently had that poor girl he’d left high and dry. Yet Trey must still feel something for her to be worried about her having his baby. “Nothing important,” he’d said.
Like hell.
She slipped the gift into her purse. He hadn’t even noticed it. It was a framed photograph of her and Trey posing before her family’s enormous Christmas tree. She would keep it among her mementoes of her college days and decide whether to let his boo-boo back home be known. Not that it would make the least difference to his status at Miami.
I
N THE POST OFFICE ATTACHED
to the student center, Trey checked his box. No mail from Aunt Mabel. Since November, she’d written him only twice, punishment for his not going home for the Christmas holidays, he assumed, and her letters contained no news of Cathy or John. He hadn’t heard from John in a long while, either. It was just as well, he told himself. The greater distance he put between him and his two friends, the easier it would be to assimilate into his new life, a world away from the windswept little prairie town he’d left behind.
In the dormitory, he asked at the proctor’s station if he had a message. The student assistant handed him two envelopes, but they were not from his aunt. Today was Cathy’s estimated delivery date and he would have telephoned for a status report, but he couldn’t risk Aunt Mabel misinterpreting the call. She might take it as a sign—and report it to Cathy—that he still cared for her, and he did not. He simply wanted the baby and his… onetime valentine to come through all right.
He read the contents in the envelopes and dropped them in the nearby trash receptacle provided for junk mail. One was from a student reporter of the school paper requesting an interview and the other from a men’s clothing store wanting to know if Trey would be interested in modeling their line of clothes at an alumni event. Six months ago, he’d have been eager to accept, but now he thought such
affairs a waste of his time. He was finding it liberating not to give a damn about anything or anybody but his studies and football. He ought to mind that somehow Cynthia had found out he’d left his girl pregnant back home and worry that the gossip would tarnish his image, but he didn’t. What did image matter to how a quarterback played the game?