Suzanne Carey - When Love Walks In

At first she’d tried to tell herself he was playing it cool, attempting to throw her parents off the scent. Yet, as the days had stretched into weeks, marking a bleak Christmas and a bereft New Year’s, a feeling of dread had invaded her gut. Maybe he hadn’t understood. Or decided she wasn’t worth the indignities he’d had to suffer. Maybe he’d simply abandoned her.

A short time later, she’d come down with what she’d initially regarded as a case of the flu, brought on by her disheartened emotional state. Against her wishes, her mother had insisted she see their family doctor. Shock waves had reverberated through Cate’s anguish when the kindly, gray-haired physician had informed her she was pregnant. Her need for Danny had escalated to critical mass in less than a single second.

Predictably, her parents had gone crazy at the news. Her father had stormed and raged, threatening variously to murder Cate, Danny and anyone even remotely related to him, the first person who dared to look at them sideways once the story got out. Susan McDonough had wept copious tears and accused Cate of breaking her heart.

For her part, painfully convinced at last that—for whatever reason—Danny wouldn’t come back for her, Cate had sunk into an anguish so deep daylight couldn’t penetrate it. Meanwhile her parents had circulated the story that she was suffering from mononucleosis and needed bed rest. Forbidden to attend classes or work in her father’s hardware store, she’d sunk into a helpless lethargy punctuated by fits of weeping. She’d spent most of her time in an upholstered chair beside her bedroom window. Staring down at the occasional passing car and the bare trees that framed Sycamore Street’s snowy ruts, she’d tried to imagine a future for herself and the child she was carrying.

It had been around that time that quiet, deferential Larry Anderson had overheard his employers anguishing over their daughter’s dilemma and astonished them by stepping forward with an offer to marry her. Cate’s parents had relayed his proposal to her that evening at the dinner table. “We won’t force you to accept,” Cate’s mother had told her with a quick, imploring glance at her husband. “But we think it would be for the best. The Finn boy isn’t coming back, and your baby needs a father. Larry may not mean anything to you, but he’s decent and hardworking. He promised us he’ll love and care for you and your baby if you’ll only let him.”

Flabbergasted, Cate had stared at her parents. “How did he find out…that I’m pregnant?” she’d demanded. “Did you tell him? Offer him money to take me off your hands?”

Susan McDonough had denied it with a violent shake of her head. “He overheard us talking about your…situation,” she’d insisted. “And volunteered. We were as surprised as you are. We’d never guessed he felt that way about you. It would resolve a lot of things.…”

Cate had cast a surreptitious glance at her father. “Better think it over, miss,” he’d warned. “The way I see it, you don’t have any other options.”

Stunned by Larry’s proposal and unable to imagine herself married to anyone but Danny, Cate had asked for a little time. To her astonishment her parents had granted it, provided she didn’t draw out the decision-making process too much. The following day, a Sunday, she’d borrowed her mother’s car without asking permission while her parents were at church and driven out to the Finn place, determined to find out whatever she could concerning Danny’s whereabouts. It had been then that Ned Finn had made his taunting remarks, then that Danny’s grandmother had snatched up a broom and chased her from the premises.

A few days later, at her parents’ urging, she’d accepted Larry’s proposal during an oddly formal meeting in the McDonough living room. Though she hadn’t known him well or even given him much thought, Larry had always seemed like a decent person to her—the kind of principled young man who would make some young woman a good husband. They’d been married shortly afterward, in a bare-bones ceremony at the Catholic rectory in Ryersville flanked by both sets of parents, and left immediately for Minneapolis.

Unaware of the true situation, their neighbors in the lower-middle-class neighborhood where they’d landed had befriended them. One of the men had helped Larry find a job and fix up their rental house. The women had rounded up baby clothes and dispensed advice on how to have a healthy pregnancy.

At its inception, Cate’s married life had been a quiet one. No one but she, Larry and her parents had known she was carrying another man’s baby. Or that their union hadn’t been consummated. Later, it had been, of course. Aware that eventually, intimacy would be part of the bargain, she’d submitted to Larry’s gentle lovemaking without complaint. And after a while it hadn’t felt so strange to her. To her surprise she’d even enjoyed the closeness it brought. But she’d never climaxed, never felt the sweet, self-annihilating pleasure Danny had taught her to crave.

The McDonoughs had insisted Cate and Larry mustn’t tell his parents they were expecting a child until a few months had passed. Similarly, they weren’t to send out birth notices until their baby was at least five or six months old. People could count and, if they wanted to move back to Beckwith someday without revealing their child’s true parentage, it was essential to falsify his or her age. That way, people wouldn’t talk. Should he ever return, it wouldn’t occur to Danny Finn to seek the child’s custody.

Larry had decided for the sake of keeping peace in the family, that they should comply with the McDonoughs’ wishes. And Cate had deferred to him, though she’d been uncomfortable about the subterfuge. For as long as she lived, she would never forget the embarrassment she’d felt over the Andersons’ exclamation about what a big boy Brian was for his age the first time they’d visited.

She and Larry had remained in the Minneapolis area until Brian was officially ten years old. At that juncture, recently diagnosed with leukemia, Larry had broached the subject of “going home.” He liked small-town life and wanted Brian to finish growing up near his parents, given the fact that he himself might not be around to help raise the boy to adulthood.

Loath to return to a place where memories of Danny might catch her by the throat, yet with a heart aching for her husband, Cate had allowed him to talk her into it. Though Brian’s height had caused some comment about a possible starring role on the local basketball team when he reached high school age, it wasn’t so far out of range that anyone guessed their secret.

By that time, Cate had long since finished high school and gone on to college, where she’d earned her baccalaureate degree in English and qualified for her teaching certificate. Beckwith High School had been only too happy to hire her. His health as yet only moderately compromised, Larry had taken a sedentary job as a police dispatcher.

No one had mentioned Danny to Cate. And Cate hadn’t asked about him. Pleased to be near Brenda again, she’d discouraged any mention of him in their private conversations. Settling back into a life she’d once hoped to escape, and doing her best to be a good wife to a man she liked a great deal but could never love the way she’d loved Danny, she’d focused on making a home for him and Brian. Helping him deal with his illness. The everyday routine of their life together.

I can’t start over with Danny now, even if I’m still wild about him and Larry’s gone, Cate told herself miserably for the second time that evening. If I did, Danny would have to know the truth about Brian. And that might be more than Brian and Larry’s parents could accept. Somehow she’d have to make Danny understand that the past was past—not to be tampered with.