Brenda Novak - A Family of Her Own

“She’s gone,” Delbert said, and Booker felt a trace of hope. He’d been planning to offer her a bookkeeping job at his garage. Even though he knew it wouldn’t be easy to spend so much time around her, he hadn’t been able to think of anything better. But maybe someone had come to pick her up. Maybe she’d found another place to stay and a job that wouldn’t require her to be on her feet. If so, her problems, which had become his problems, might already be solved….

If only he could be so lucky.

Heading upstairs, he knocked on the walls as he neared Katie’s bedroom to announce that he was coming. “Anyone home?”

No answer. Darkness had fallen outside, but her door was shut, and there wasn’t any light glowing beneath it. “Katie?”

“Did you find her?” Delbert asked, standing at the bottom of the stairs.

“Not yet.” Booker turned on the hall light and knocked softly on her door. No answer. He looked inside to see a round lump in the middle of the bed—a round lump that was beginning to stir.

“What? Who is it?” Katie sounded groggy. Shoving herself into a sitting position, she blinked against the light spilling into her room.

Booker let the door swing wide, and leaned against the lintel. “This shouldn’t come as any kind of a shock, since I own the house, but it’s me.”

“Booker?”

“You got it.”

She groaned and fell back. “God, I thought I was only dreaming that I was pregnant and broke and having to rely on the pity of someone who hates me.”

Booker felt a wry smile claim his lips, and stuck his toothpick in his mouth to stave it off. He wasn’t about to let his heart soften where Katie Rogers was concerned. Not after the way she’d thrown his proposal back in his face two years ago. “What did you do today?”

“Nothing.”

“Is she there?” Delbert called up to him.

“She’s here,” Booker said. “Go ahead and make yourself a sandwich.”

“Oh, good, she’s here,” Delbert told Bruiser, as though the dog was especially worried, and galloped to the kitchen.

“What time is it?” Katie asked.

“Six-thirty.”

“Six-thirty!”

He pulled the toothpick from his mouth. “Time flies when you’re having fun, hmm?”

“Ugh.” Her voice sounded muffled because she’d ducked completely under the covers.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I just slept the whole day away and I still feel too tired to move.”

“Tell me that has something to do with the pregnancy.”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been pregnant before. But then, I’ve never been shunned and penniless, either. This is all new to me.”

Booker couldn’t help chuckling. “You’ll get through it.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” she told him, now sullen. “You’ve never been pregnant.”

“No, but I’ve been shunned and penniless most of my life.”

No response.

“Are you getting up?” he asked.

“No.”

“Do you think you might get up later?”

“No.”

“You’re not making me feel particularly comfortable here.”

Nothing.

Booker searched his mind for something he could say or do. “Can you feel the baby move yet?” he asked at last.

The question obviously took her off guard. Rising onto one elbow, she stared at him. “I felt the baby move for the first time while I was driving here.”

“What did it feel like?”

Her expression mellowed. “Like…like a butterfly’s wing inside my belly. Why?”

“Because you need to remember that moment. Tomorrow you’ll get up for the baby,” he said and left.

LETHARGY WAS SPREADING through her like a slow-moving drug, incapacitating one muscle after another until she felt almost paralyzed. She’d been in bed for two nights and a day, but it didn’t seem to matter how long she slept. She was more tired now than when she’d first hit the sack. Worse, she knew she looked terrible, but she didn’t care. Brushing her teeth was suddenly too much effort.

There was a brisk knock at her door.

Katie didn’t respond. She was afraid it was Booker coming to make her get up, and she wasn’t ready. She needed more time.

He didn’t seem to receive her telepathic “Stay away,” because he came in anyway. But he didn’t say anything. He paused briefly at the foot of her bed. Then he opened the blinds and left.

Grateful for the reprieve, Katie rolled over on her side and stared at the square patch of sky he’d revealed. The sun was just beginning to rise, painting the horizon a delicate pinkish-orange. Booker had said she’d get up today—for her baby—but he didn’t understand. She couldn’t get up for anything.

Booker’s truck started outside.

Tomorrow, she promised herself as he drove away. She’d get up for her baby tomorrow. Surely she’d feel better by then.

“THAT OLD CADILLAC’S RUNNING, but I can’t promise how long it’s going to last,” Chase said, standing in the doorway of Booker’s office.

Booker glanced up from his cluttered desk to acknowledge his mechanic’s words. Chase was only nineteen, but he had a real talent with engines. “It’s old. There’s nothing we can do about that.”

“You wanted the keys?”

“Yeah.”

Chase tossed them over. Booker caught them and slid them in his pocket. The Cadillac might be running, but Katie wouldn’t be driving it anywhere if he couldn’t get her out of bed.

“Go ahead and start the tune-up of Lila Bronwyn’s Jeep,” he told Chase. Then he turned down the radio they had blasting and tried to reach Katie. He let the phone ring nearly twenty times, hung up and called again. But she wouldn’t pick up.

“Answer, damn it,” he muttered, losing patience.

“What’s wrong?” Delbert wiped his grease-covered hands on a rag as he and Bruiser came into the office. “Are you mad? Are you mad at me, Booker?”

“I’m not mad,” Booker said, but he was getting worried. What was he going to do with Katie? She’d completely withdrawn from life. She wasn’t getting up. She wasn’t eating. She wasn’t doing anything.

He thought of her parents. Should he have told them that she couldn’t work? Would it have made a difference?

He certainly wasn’t the best person to handle this, but remembering how Tami had treated Katie at the door, how both her parents had reacted to him at the donut shop, quickly convinced him that they were part of the problem, not the solution. And it wasn’t as if he saw anyone else stepping up to help her…. She’d been gone too long and apparently hadn’t kept up with relationships. Which meant, crazy as it seemed, he was the closest thing she had to a friend.

Mike Hill’s new Escalade cruised by out front, catching Booker’s eye. Watching Mike turn on First Avenue, he thought of all the times he’d heard, from almost everyone in town, that Katie had had a crush on Mike nearly her whole life. She’d once told him herself, flat out, that she wanted to marry Mike Hill someday. But Booker hadn’t taken her too seriously. He’d never seen Mike show any interest in her, couldn’t imagine them together. They were both…good. In his opinion, they each needed a counterbalance.

But Mike was rich and dependable. Maybe the best thing Booker could do for Katie and her baby was to throw them into Mike’s lap. A friend would do something like that, right?

Picking up the phone, he called Rebecca at the salon.

“Hello?”

“Is Rebecca there?”

“Hi, Booker.”

From the voice, it was Ashleigh Evans. “How’s it going?”

“Good. Where’ve you been? I’ve missed you.”

They’d danced last Friday at the Honky Tonk, but Booker knew if he pointed that out, she’d just say Friday seemed too long ago. “I’ve been busy.”