Charlaine Harris - A Fool and His Honey

“I told Padgett I saw a car pulling out of your drive the other night,” Clement said, without any preliminaries.

“Is that so?”

“Yes, it was a dark red car with Ohio plates.”

Regina’s car.

“Who was in it?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“Two people. I couldn’t see the driver very well, but the passenger was a dark-haired young woman.”

Sounded like Regina.

I was in more of a hurry than ever to get home and tell Martin. I thanked Clement for telling me (though I wondered why he hadn’t called us on the phone) and asked him to feed Madeleine for us while we were gone. She hated to be checked into the vet’s almost as much as the vet’s staff hated to see her coming.

“Sure!” Clement agreed, obviously pleased. He was the only person I’d ever met who seemed to genuinely like Madeleine. “Think she’ll need a brushing?”

“Oh, I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt.” I’d made one person happy today, anyway.

I loaded my purchases into Martin’s Mercedes, stopped by the filling station to top up the tank. Home again, this time to find the dishes done and in the drainer; Rory watching television in our den (still, or again); and Hayden continuing his nap. Martin was packing in his usual efficient pattern, and I noticed he’d gotten out his extreme-cold-weather gear that he seldom needed in Lawrence ton.

It seemed grossly unfair that Hayden slept when he was alone with Martin.

I told Martin what Clement Farmer had seen the night before.

“So she’s a hostage, if it was Regina Clement saw,” he said.

“Could be, Martin.” I wondered how he’d gotten that out of the story I’d told him, but shook my head and decided not to pursue it. I thought of sharing my wonderment about the lack of provision for Hayden with Martin, but he looked so distracted I decided I’d be wasting my breath. I turned and went downstairs.

I sat at the kitchen table studying the directions on the can of formula powder. I read them over and over, determined not to do Hayden harm with my ignorance. I assembled everything I’d need, down to the same pan I remembered Regina using. I had a hard time believing I’d talked to Regina while she prepared formula right here in this kitchen, less than twenty-four hours before.

While I waited for the water to boil, I called John’s hospital again, talked to my mother once more, found out John was out of the room having a test.

Our telephone persisted in its curious silence. I did get a call or two from older friends of my mother’s, asking about John; but other than our priest Aubrey no one seemed to want to know how Martin and I were handling our own little corner of Craig’s tragedy. I wondered forlornly at that, but then I decided that no one knew quite what to say.

A brusque rap at the back door made me look up sharply while I was sealing bottles of formula to put in the refrigerator. I’d made enough to last us the trip to Ohio, I estimated, having no idea what I’d do if I’d figured wrong. Could you buy formula ready to serve? I hadn’t remembered to check while I was at the store. I was so lost in worries about feeding Hayden that it took me a second to realize I was happy to see my friend and former employee Angel Youngblood, and to translate that happiness into a smile.

Only the fact that Angel was preceded by a huge bulge kept me from hugging her, which would have surprised both of us. Angel is almost a foot taller than me, and golden and rangy as a leopard. Though now she looked like a really pregnant leopard, the effect was still striking. I couldn’t remember exactly how old Angel was, but I was sure she was at least six years younger than I, and her husband Shelby was a few months older than Martin. Shelby and Martin had been buddies in Vietnam, and had met sporadically after the war and their covert activities in South America had concluded. Now Shelby worked for Martin as a crew leader at the Pan-Am Agra plant.

“Where’s the baby?” Angel was always direct. I called up the stairs softly, to alert Martin, and led Angel up to have a look. Martin, who’d been reading a magazine (or at least staring at its open pages), rose when Angel came in, seemed to pull himself together a little. Angel just nodded at him. She was absorbed in the tiny face. She put her long fingers around the curve of Hayden’s skull, and she laid her other hand on the mound of her pregnancy. The mound constricted-that’s the best way I can describe it-and after a long moment, relaxed.

Angel smiled at me. “This one doesn’t even have room to move around anymore,” she said, her voice quiet and smooth so as not to wake Hayden.

“Isn’t it almost time for you?”

Angel nodded. “Time, and a day over. But I’m feeling fine, so today’s not the day, I guess. I’m sorry about your stepfather,” she added, jumping mentally from her own hospital stay to John’s. “How’s he doing? How’s your mother holding up?”

My mother and Angel had developed an arm’s-length mutual respect.

“She’s doing pretty well.” You know my mother, my voice said.

Angel nodded, her eyes back on the baby’s face. “There’s something about them,” she said, the smooth low voice almost hypnotic. “You’d kill for them.” Her hands caressed her own stomach again, and I saw it tighten again.

“If they’re your own,” I said, a question in my tone.

“Maybe not just then. Look at him.” And Angel crouched over the pale-green-and-blue portable crib, her blond hair framing her narrow face.

“What are you gonna do with him, Roe? If I understand right, his dad is dead and his mother is missing,” Angel said as we went back downstairs to the kitchen. She sat at the table while I poured her a glass of orange juice.

“We’re planning on driving to Corinth, where Regina and her husband were living,” I explained. “Then, I guess we’ll see if Craig’s family will keep him. Or maybe Regina will have turned up by then, and we’ll know what happened. Or… we’ll be able to get in touch with Barby, and when she flies back from her cruise, she’ll be coming into Pittsburgh, which is the closest airport to Corinth.”

It sounded pretty thin and uncertain, even to me.

“Wouldn’t it be better to stay put?” Angel drank her juice in one long gulp, and set the glass down. She eased forward in her chair, and her hand rubbed her back absently. Her face tightened suddenly, then relaxed. “After all,” Angel said slowly, with effort, “if Regina does escape, or return…” Her face did that tightening and relaxing thing again. “She’d come back here, for her baby…” This time Angel’s face stayed tight for a while.

“Angel?”

“I think,” she said slowly and thoughtfully, “that maybe it will be today, after all.”

I was on my feet in a flash. I’d seen one baby born, and I wasn’t about to do that again. “Let me drive you to the hospital,” I said. “I’ll get my jacket.”

“No, that would get the cars all confused,” Angel said, but as if she hardly knew what she was saying. All her attention seemed to be focused inward. “My car would be out here, and who knows when I could come back to get it. I can drive home, and wait there for Shelby to get off work.”

“Call him from here.”

“Okay,” she said, to my surprise. My concern deepened. Easy capitulation was not one of Angel’s characteristics. “Let me use the bathroom first.”

I hovered outside the door.

When Angel emerged, she said, “Today for sure.” Her voice was still calm and flat, but I sensed all kinds of suppressed excitement just trying to bubble to the surface. She went to the telephone on the kitchen wall, walking in a kind of tentative way, as if she expected something to grab her at every step. I bounced around her like a rubber ball, anxious to help, trying not to get in the way, scared to death she’d have the baby here.