Charlaine Harris - A Fool and His Honey

Shondra was just as spotless as her house; her face was scrubbed, making me feel like a made-up tramp, her rose-tinted sweats were pristine, and even her sneakers were spanky white.

“Such a nice home,” I said quietly, after she’d talked about Craig a little, without much sorrow. Shondra beamed, her conventional expression of grief shucked in a second.

“Thank you,” she said, trying to sound offhand. “Dylan did most of the work on it himself, in the evenings and on weekends.”

“That must have been hard,” Martin commented. He had taken off his coat and was holding the baby while I tugged mine at the sleeves.

“Well, I didn’t get to see a lot of him. So I’d come over with his supper or a snack and just sit and watch, while I was expecting,” Shondra said, a little smile letting us know she’d enjoyed that.

“Where’s your little girl?” I asked politely.

“Kelly. She’s taking a nap,” Shondra said. “Can I hold this little guy? My brother was just here, and I wanted to thank you for bringing him home.”

Martin and I glanced at each other. We were sure slow on the uptake.

Martin, who’d had more sleep, heard the shoe drop first. “Rory? Rory Brown is your brother?”

Shondra looked down at the baby, rocking him gently in her round arms. “Yes,” she admitted, less happily. “Rory is my big brother. He’s, ah, he’s… a good-natured guy, and Dylan and I have been praying hard that he’ll see the Lord’s ways.”

I looked at the little table sitting in the exact middle of the kitchen. There were two mugs on it, one with a spoon beside it with a little circle of brown in the center. The coffee wasn’t dry yet.

“We must have just missed him?” I held out my hands, offering to take Hayden back. Shondra noted my gesture but she stared down at his face for several more long seconds, as if she’d just noticed something that gave her pause.

“Oh, that’s right. You just missed him,” she said absently. “In fact, when we heard your car pull up, he went right out the back door.” Shondra glanced over at some pictures and a vase of dried flowers on top of the composite oak-colored TV cabinet, then back to the baby’s face. She slowly returned Hayden to me. “He’s a beautiful baby,” she said soberly. Her small mouth pursed, as if she was thinking over a problem.

A little wail from the back of the house pulled at her attention like a tractor beam. “My goodness, Kelly is up. Let me go see to her.”

While Shondra was out of the room, I strolled over to the TV cabinet as casually as I could manage. The framed baby pictures were old enough to be from Shondra’s family album, or Dylan’s, and in one grouping was a baby girl about a year old, a baby girl embedded in a ruffled dress with a little bow stuck in her wispy hair, and a baby boy in a tiny suit. “Barf,” I muttered, and then the face of the baby caught my eye.

“Hmmm and double hmmm,” I muttered, turning away right before Shondra came back in carrying a much larger bundle than Hayden.

While we were doing the obligatory admiring of the child, I was nasty enough to be sorry this young couple already had a baby, so perfect would they be to leave Hayden with. And they were blood relations to the baby, one way or the other. Martin and I had not discussed the possibility of finding a temporary home for Hayden with Dylan and Shondra, and after the shock of the Harbors’ house I would’ve been scared to even mention it before I’d met them.

As it was, I hadn’t met Dylan. After a few minutes’ conversation with Shondra, I could see the steel beneath the sweetness and lack of worldliness that were undoubtedly genuine. So it was my impression that Shondra would not marry a charming ne’er-do-well like her brother, or a true rascal like her brother-in-law. But we’d have to check Dylan out, and we could hardly be sure that they’d agree to something as difficult as taking care of another baby.

Martin and I exchanged glances. He’d read my mind. He asked a few questions about Dylan’s job at the John Deere dealership that I knew would give him an idea about Dylan’s income and hours, and he got more information out of Shondra about her brother than I would have thought possible.

“Shondra, excuse me, I was just wondering,” I interjected when Martin showed signs of flagging and Shondra was asking us for the third time if she could get us a drink. “Did you know your sister-in-law was pregnant?”

Shondra’s face flooded with guilty color. “Yes, ma’am,” she blurted, as though she’d been caught in a shameful position. “She called me on the phone and told me, about a month before the baby was due.”

“Did you see her while she was pregnant?”

“No, ma’am.”

I felt as old as the hills because of that ma’am, and I had to nip at the inside of my mouth to keep from protesting.

“Did you know when she had the baby?”

“My brother said she had,” Shondra said, fussing unnecessarily with the baby’s plastic keys. Her baby grabbed the ring and stuffed it in her mouth, gumming the toy enthusiastically-

“Oh, honey, that ain’t real clean,” Shondra muttered to the baby, but let the child keep it.

I noted that Shondra had not said that she’d seen Regina when Regina was obviously pregnant. So far, no one reliable had admitted to that. “Do you know where Regina had this baby?” I asked.

“You sure you couldn’t drink some hot chocolate?”

“No, thank you,” Martin said quite firmly. He was getting impatient, because he was accustomed to people telling him what he needed to know, telling him promptly and in detail. I sent him one of those looks that say back off.

“Did she have Hayden at the local hospital?” I asked, to get us back on the track.

“No, ma’am. Rory said she went to the midwife in Brook County.”

That was what he’d told us.

“And her name is?” I smiled at Shondra as coaxingly as I can smile.

“Her name is Bobbye Sunday,” Shondra said, looking down at the baby fixedly. She spoke so unwillingly that I knew she was telling us the truth.

“Thank you,” Martin said, letting out a pent-up breath and practically jumping up from his chair. He swept the diaper bag up with one hand and held out his other hand to me. I accepted a little yank, to get me up off the couch with Hayden. We said our goodbyes and thanks in a flurry of goodwill and relief that this visit was over, and at Martin’s request Shondra promised to send Dylan out to see us that afternoon when he got off work. Martin strongly suggested that Dylan bring Rory with him.

We returned to the Holiday Inn, gathered our belongings, and checked out, each separately reviewing our little visit mentally. Rory was avoiding us, which meant he had information he didn’t want to give us. That wasn’t exactly news, but it was interesting. Martin hadn’t agreed to bring the young man back to Corinth, in direct violation of the law and common sense, just to have him skip out on us and avoid us at every turn, and I had to promise myself a new pair of glasses if I didn’t let the phrase “I told you so” cross my lips.

I ran into the grocery briefly, and while I shopped Martin bravely took Hayden with him into K-Mart. Then we were on our way to the farm where Martin had grown up, where he’d lived until he’d gone to Vietnam. His father had died when Martin was a boy, and by the time Martin left Corinth, his mother had been married for years another farmer, Joseph Flocken. It was the widowed Joseph I’d had to see in order to purchase the farm I’d given back to Martin as a wedding present.

The Bartell farm was south of town on Route 8, further out than I remembered. You could just see a bit of the roof from the road. “Secluded” was the word for this property, if you were feeling charitable. Actually, the farm seemed forlorn and bleak, out here in the winter countryside. As we reached the end of the long gravel driveway, I saw that Martin had indeed had the house restored. It was trim and painted now, and the barn had been leveled so there was no longer a blight on the landscape. The driveway had been regraveled, too, and we pulled up to the side of the house under a new carport. It was just a roof on four posts, but it would keep the worst of the snow and rain off the car.