Peggy Nicholson - True Heart

He’d treated himself to two cases the year before, when he’d made partner at his law firm. And now it was her turn to rejoice. “For this occasion? I don’t think so.”

“Your department head—what’s the old bat’s name? Henley? She decided to retire,” Richard guessed. “You’re next in line for the job.”

“I am, but this has nothing to do with teaching. Nothing like that.”

“Then tell me. You know how I hate surprises.” He covered the bottle’s cork with a napkin, drew it with a deft flick of his thumbs. The soft pop promised bubbles, but something somewhere, had gone flat.

She held the crystal flutes for him to fill, biting her lip as she studied his impatient frown. He did hate surprises, much as she loved them. Her fault, this. She should have told him the instant he walked in the door. Now she stood torn between blurting out her news and waiting for a happier moment, perhaps after his first glass?

“Come on, spit it out.” He lifted his flute. “What should I toast?”

Why was she worrying? Once he’d heard… At least, once he’d gotten used to the idea… She rallied her smile. “Kiss me first?”

“That bad?” Still, he kissed her—a wary, closemouthed kiss, precisely measured. “Tell me.”

“Well…” She took a breath. “You know I had an appointment this afternoon, with my gynecologist.”

His eyes swept from the candles, to the flowers, back to her radiant face. No one could ever say that Richard was slow. He shook his head. “No.”

“Yes! I told him I was a week late. That’s unusual for me, so he tested and—and—” Her words jumbled into breathless, pleading laughter. Come on, share this with me. All the worries and setbacks she’d suffered through at his side, all the ambitions she’d applauded, the triumphs she’d celebrated. She’d been there for Richard every step of the way, and now couldn’t he just—

“Shit.” He tipped his glass back and gulped, blew out a breath, then smacked the flute down on the table.

She stared at the champagne splash marks darkening the lace, she ought to get a cloth and dab them dry before they soaked through and marred the perfect, polished mahogany beneath.

“I’m pregnant, Richard. We are. And you know how long I’ve been wanting this. You said once you made partner—”

“You’re on the Pill! How could this have happened? Did you stop without telling me?”

“Of course not! I’d never—”

“So you forgot—skipped a couple. Of all the careless, idiotic things to—”

“I didn’t! I didn’t forget a one.” She set down her own glass untasted. “I had that awful earache—five weeks ago, remember? I couldn’t get an appointment soon enough with my GP, so I stopped by a walk-in clinic and the doctor prescribed tetracycline.”

“So?” Richard turned his back on her to pace down the length of the table, then swung on his heel to glare. “What’s that got to do with—”

“Some antibiotics interfere with contraception. I never knew that, and the doctor didn’t tell me.”

“I’ll sue him. And the pharmacist, too—negligence pure and simple. By God, they’re going to regret—”

“Oh, no.” Shaking her head, she met him halfway down the table—clamped her hands over the forearms he’d crossed on his chest. “No. Maybe they were careless, but we’re not suing anyone. Not when the results were just what we wanted anyway.”

“Who says—”

“You said! I wanted to start our family the year I finished college, but you said we should wait. That our condo wasn’t big enough, remember? You said it was no place to raise rugrats.” She shook him gently, smiling pleadingly up into his face, trying to spark some warmth in return. “Then when we moved to our house on Cottonwood I asked you again. And you didn’t tell me no, Richard. You just said we should wait. That you were so close to making partner, that you needed all your concentration and energy to focus on that. That if I’d only wait till you made it, we’d be rolling in bucks and you’d have more time to help me with midnight feedings.”

“I never—”

“You did! That’s exactly what you said… So I did. I waited again.”

He twisted away from her to resume pacing, yanking at the knot in his tie as if it was strangling him.

“Then once you made partner last year,” she said to his back, “you know I said it was time. And remember what you said? You said that now that you’d made partner, they’d want to see you perform.”

“That’s precisely right.” Richard ripped off his tie and dropped it onto a chair back, from which it slithered to the floor. “I’d made it to the big time, but that meant I had to bring in business if I wanted a place at the trough. It meant cultivating the right people, throwing the right kind of parties. I needed you beside me and I needed you to sparkle. It’s hard to wow anybody, babe, if you look like a little blimp.”

“So you asked me to give it another year,” Kaley agreed levelly. “Which I did. But now I’m pregnant and I’ve been waiting eight years. Now it’s my turn. Our turn for family—or what’s it all been for? What good is all this, without family to fill it?” She swept a hand to include the whole house, so much bigger and grander than anything she would have chosen.

Richard stood not listening to her but staring off at the far wall. “You said you took tetracycline…. A drug—a powerful drug, Kaley. Did you happen to ask your gynecologist about side effects?”

She closed her eyes for a moment. Oh, no. Please, please, don’t go there. “I…w-what do you mean?”

“You were on it at conception. What’s tetracycline do to a developing fetus? Did you ask him that?”

Yes, they’d gone over that. She swallowed around the jagged lump in her throat, clasped her hands before her and said huskily, “He said that the odds were g-good—much better than good—that our baby is developing normally. That no…no permanent damage had been done.”

“Ah!” Richard’s finger came up to jab the air between them. “That’s what he said, no damage? But will he guarantee it? No? No, of course he won’t! He’s not entirely a fool. He knows that if anything went wrong, I’d sue him for everything but the fillings in his back teeth—and he knows I’d win.”

“Richard, please.” Her knees were trembling; she was trembling all over. Kaley pulled out a chair from the table and sat. “Nobody could ever guarantee that—”

“Well, if he won’t guarantee a healthy baby, ask Dr. No Problem if he’ll agree to support it for the rest of its life if it’s hopelessly retarded.” He leaned down to look into her brimming eyes. “No? He won’t do that, either? Then why should I—should we—risk it, babe, if he won’t?”

“Because it’s ours!” Kaley cried.

One month later

FEARFUL OF FALLING ASLEEP at the wheel, Kaley opened the car window to the cold rushing air. Now she stretched her gritty eyes wide and said softly, “Kaley Cotter.”

No. That sounded apologetic, and she owed apologies to no man. “Kaley Cotter,” she proclaimed, lifting her chin. The night wind sucked her name through the open window, sent it spinning and tumbling across the desert behind her humming wheels.

“Cotter, Cotter, Cotter,” she chanted, squinting into the headlights of an oncoming truck, the first vehicle she’d encountered for twenty miles or more. “My name is Kaley Cotter.” Again. After eight years as Kaley Bosworth. It would take practice before it sounded right. Her car shuddered in the truck’s slipstream, then surged on through the dark.

Roughly two hours to go. She’d reach Four Corners, where the southwest border of Colorado touched the borders of three other states, by dawn. “Then home before eight,” she comforted herself. She could make it. “Kaley Cotter’s coming home.”