Christine Rimmer - The Return of Bowie Bravo

He looked stricken. “Don’t even joke about it.”

“Right.” She blew out a hard breath through puffed cheeks. “Sorry.”

He held up the phone. “How about your mom? Should I call her?”

Her mom. Good idea. Rose Dellazola knew a lot about having kids. She’d had nine of her own and been there at the births of every one of her grandchildren. “Yeah, please. It’s number two on the auto dial—and Bowie?”

“Yeah?”

“Tell her if she brings Aunt Stella, I will personally kill both of them.” Her maiden aunt, who lived with her mamma and her dad, was extremely devout. At births, Stella Baldovino spouted scripture and counted off the rosary—like she did pretty much everywhere she went.

He started to dial.

“Wait.” Her cheek still pressed to the cool polished surface of the counter, she held out her hand. “I can do it.”

He regarded her doubtfully. “Glory…”

She fisted her hand and pounded the pretty blue-speckled black granite that Matteo had ordered installed for her birthday last year. “Give me the phone. Now.”

He handed it over. She braced up on her elbows and punched the right number. It rang three times and then the answering machine picked up.

“Hello,” her mother’s recorded voice chirped. “Dellazola residence. We do want to talk to you. Please leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”

Terrific. Her mom, her dad, her great-grandpa and Aunt Stella all lived in that house together. And they all had to choose today not to be home. Where had they gone in a blizzard?

She didn’t even care to know. “Mom,” she told the machine. “I’m having the baby. And I mean right now. When you get this, get over here to my house. I need you—and do not bring Aunt Stella. I mean that. Just don’t.” She turned the phone off and felt the next contraction coming on. “Bowie?” she moaned.

“Right here.”

She cast a quick glance at the kitchen clock. It was ten after ten. “Watch the clock. The second hand. Starting now. Time this contraction…”

“Gotcha.”

Glory started screaming. Bowie moved in close again. He held her up and he watched the clock. She heard herself swearing. Really bad words. Terrible words. It didn’t make the pain any less, but she swore anyway.

When it faded, at last, she asked him, “Well?”

“Fifty-four seconds.”

“Great,” she said, for lack of any other reasonable response. She noted the time. “There’s a pencil and paper in that little desk on the other side of the table. And a Timex watch with a second hand. Get them now.” He didn’t say a word. Just went over there and got what she’d asked for. She instructed, “Write down the time that contraction started and how long it lasted.”

“Got it.” He wrote on the paper.

“Do that every time I have one. Can you handle that?”

“Will do.” He put on the watch and stuck the paper and pencil in a back pocket. “How about a cell phone? Your mom got one? We could try it. Or maybe Angie or Brett has one?”

She shook her head. “My mom never bothered to get one. Angie has one, but they still don’t work here in the Flat. The canyon walls block the signal. You have to go up to the heliport to get any bars.”

“Is there someone else we should call?”

She thought of her three sisters who still lived in town: Tris, Clarice and Dani. She loved them all dearly, but she didn’t see how having them there was going to help her much. She wanted Angie. And Brett. And failing them, her mother.

He said, “My mom?”

Chastity. Yeah. Chastity had been good to Glory over the years. They were friends. And she was definitely the best choice given the options. “Call her.”

He did. “Not answering,” he said after a minute.

Glory said a word so bad that it would have dropped her aunt Stella in a dead faint. “Where is everybody? They’re always underfoot until the moment you need them.”

Bowie left a message. “Mom, it’s Bowie. I’m at Glory’s house. Her baby’s coming—fast. And there’s no one to help. If you get this, she needs you to come over here right away.” He hung up.

Glory shut her eyes and whispered prayerfully, “Please, Brett. Angie. Call me, get over here.…”

The phone rang as if on cue. She held out her hand. Bowie frowned again but he passed it to her. “Angie?” she cried. “Angie, oh God, I’m so glad you—”

“Don’t be alarmed,” said a pleasant recorded voice. “Your credit remains excellent. I’m Amy from Credit Card Services and I’m calling to tell you—” Muttering yet another unacceptable word, Glory hung up.

“What?” Bowie demanded, looking slightly freaked.

“Robo-call.” She passed the phone back to him. “Call Mina again, please. See what the holdup is.” She sighed and laid her head back on the counter as he called the clinic.

When he hung up, he said, “Mina tried to reach Brett and Angie. Twice. It looks like the phone’s out at Redonda’s house. She got dead air when she called over there. She said she’d keep trying.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“Maybe we should just try 9-1-1, see if we get some help that way,” he said.

“Do it.”

He started to dial, then put the phone to his ear. “We’re out, too.” He switched it off and then on again. “Nothing. Deader than a hammer.” He handed it to her.

She listened. And heard only silence. The storm must have knocked down some lines. “No,” she cried. “Oh, no.…” Shoving the useless phone away down the counter, she lowered her cheek to the granite again. “This isn’t real,” she moaned. “This can’t be happening.…”

He loomed above her, wearing that determined look, the same one he’d worn when he stood at her front door. “You don’t look comfortable bending over the counter like that.”

She rolled her eyes and stayed right where she was. “I’m about as comfortable as I’m going to get, considering the circumstances.”

“I think we probably ought to get you to the bedroom, I really do. And shouldn’t I be boiling water or something?”

“Boiling water. He wants to boil water.…” She let out a laugh that was almost a sob. “I’m having a baby and there’s no one to help me.”

“There’s me. I think you’re going to have to work with what you’ve got,” he said with more humor than she could have mustered at that point. “For the moment, I’m it. You’re going to tell me what to do and everything is going to be fine.”

“Tell you what to do?” She pretty much screeched the words. “How can I tell you, Bowie? I don’t even know myself.”

“You’ve had Johnny.”

“Yeah, with Brett there to tell me when to push, with Angie there to hold my hand and coach me through every contraction.…”

“You’ll figure it out. We’ll figure it out.”

Glory yearned to call him a bunch of bad names and scream at him that he didn’t know his ass from up. Unfortunately, he had a point. They would have to figure it out. There was no other choice. She had a couple of books on pregnancy and childbearing. One of them was bound to have a section on emergency births at home. They would refer to the chapter, follow the damn instructions.

She muttered out of the side of her mouth, “I hate you, Bowie Bravo.”

“I know.” He took her shoulders and pulled her off the counter and upright again. “Let’s go.”

Redemption, Bowie thought as he coaxed Glory up the stairs to her bedroom. That was pretty much what he’d come back to his hometown to get.

He wanted to know his son and to try, at least a little, to be an actual father, the kind he’d sure never had. To maybe make peace with Glory. And to help her however he could, with Johnny, with the new baby, with the damn hardware store she’d inherited from Matteo Rossi, if it came to that. He’d had this idea he’d do whatever was needed to make up for all the years he hadn’t been there when his son and his son’s mother needed him.