A Baby for Easter (8 page)

“It didn’t sound like it.” He was frowning as he handed Cara
to her. “I’ve got a battery tester, though. I check it for you real quick.”

He popped the hood and then went into the garage, coming out
with something in his hand. A minute later, he shook his head. “It’s not the
battery. I wonder if it’s the—”

“It’s not going to be something that can be fixed easily, is
it?”

He straightened up from where he’d been leaning over the
engine. “Not in a few minutes, no.”

She sighed, feeling droopy, although she wasn’t sure why she
expected anything to go right for her. “I’ll call and hope they’ll reschedule
the interview.”

“Just take the SUV,” Micah said. “I can figure out what’s
wrong with your car while you’re gone.”

Alice loved the idea of someone else dealing with her car
problems—since she dreaded messing with broken cars more than anything else—but
she wasn’t at all comfortable with the suggestion.

“Thanks, but I’ll try to reschedule. I don’t want to drive
someone else’s car. If it was yours, maybe. But it would be just my luck to
back Rick’s SUV into a pole or something. I’d be nervous the whole time.”

He gave a faint smile. “But you’d be okay with backing
my
car into a pole?”
 
Before she could reply, he must have thought
of something. “Why don’t I just drive you there? Cara can come too. She likes
to ride in the car.”

“I can’t ask you to drive two hours and then hang around
just to—”

“You’re not asking me to do anything. I volunteered. I don’t
have anything important to do today. Why shouldn’t I?”

“You were going to work on the woodwork.”

“There’s no hurry on that. There’s no reason for you to miss
your interview. Let me put on some shoes on and grab a cup of coffee and Cara’s
stuff.”

He turned around and was walking back into the house before
Alice could object any further.

Disoriented by this new development, Alice just stood there,
bouncing Cara slightly.

Then she realized this was actually happening—Micah was
actually going to drive her to the interview—so she better go make sure he
packed all the stuff Cara would need.

Taking a baby on a road trip involved a lot of
paraphernalia.

***

An hour later, Alice was in the
passenger seat of the SUV, tugging on her skirt to make sure it didn’t ride up
too high on her thighs.

For the first hour, Alice had sat in the back with a
babbling Cara, but when the baby had fallen asleep, Alice had moved up to the
front seat.

“Do you know anything about this college?” Micah asked. He’d
been pretty quiet since they’d started off, so she was surprised by the
question.

“Not a lot. It’s a Christian liberal arts college. Less than
a thousand students. They seem to have a decent library, though. And maybe,
since it’s a Christian school, I’ll have less competition for the job.”

“Do they only hire Christians?”

“I don’t know for sure, but a lot of Christian colleges do.”

“Would this job be a lot different from your old college?”

“I think so. Since it’s so much smaller, I’d probably have
to do more kinds of work, rather than having one fairly narrow job
description.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“I don’t know. It might be good. It might be more
interesting to not always do the same thing.”

He looked over at her briefly before he turned back to the
road. “What was your favorite thing about your old job?”

She’d never really thought about it before. No one had ever
asked her that question. “I don’t know. I guess it was teaching the library
classes.”

“You taught classes?”

“When professors took their classes to the library to learn
how to use it, I would teach those classes. It would be just one day of class,
but I really liked teaching the students how to do good research.”

He looked genuinely interested. “I can’t imagine that would
be the kids’ favorite thing to learn about.”

“No. Most of them were bored stupid. But I think I did a
pretty good job of making it a little interesting. It was fun.”

“Would you be able to teach classes like that at this
college?”

“I don’t know. It just depends how they handle them here.”

“Did you ever think about being a teacher?”

“Yeah. I did. In college, I thought about going into
education. But I don’t think I would like to be a regular teacher. It’s
different, just teaching the students that come to the library.”

“You were really good with the kids at camp,” Micah said,
his tone different. “You were really good at teaching them the crafts. I
remember being amazed that my Dormouse could get up in front of all of those
kids and make them listen to her.”

Alice shifted in her seat, feeling a swell of nostalgic
feeling and something deeper at his words, at the memory.

Feeling like she needed to say something, she mumbled, “That
was a long time ago.”

“I know.” Micah’s voice was slightly rough with some sort of
texture.

They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, and Alice kept
remembering walking with eighteen-year-old Micah around the camp in the
evenings, ostensibly to check that everything was ready for the night, but
mostly just spending time together.

He would hold her hand, and his had always been warm when
hers was cool.

She’d thought he might want to hold her hand for longer than
the summer.

But he hadn’t.

Finally, he said, “Do you think you could do any sort of
teaching in the Willow Park library? I bet they’d be interested in reading
programs and things like that.”

She stared at him in surprise.

He saw her expression and glanced away. “I mean, if this job
doesn’t work out for you. While you’re waiting for a job you want. I was just
thinking, if you like teaching like that, there might be something you could do
even in Willow Park.”

“Yeah.” She leaned back against the seat. “I’ve thought
about that. They just need to find room in the budget to pay me. As you might
imagine, Willow Park has a very small budget.”

“I guess so. You could teach Sunday School. I bet you’d be
great at that.”

“I taught middle-school Sunday School in Asheville. I liked
it. I just don’t want to get into that here if I’m going to just move away.”

“That makes sense.” He stared at the interstate in front of
him and didn’t say anything for another minute. Then he changed the subject.
“What was your church like in Asheville?”

“It was fine. Smaller than ours. And even more
conservative—I mean, about things we’re not so conservative about.” It hadn’t
been a bad church, but the truth was she wouldn’t have chosen that one if Bill
hadn’t already been going there.

As if he’d read her mind, Micah asked, “Why did you start
going?”

Nothing to do but admit it. “My boyfriend…and then fiancé
went there. It wasn’t the best fit for me, but the people were really nice.”

After another stretch of silence, he murmured, “What was he
like?”

“Bill?” She fiddled with a button on her sweater. “He was
hard-working and really committed to his faith. He was smart and...sometimes he
was funny.”

“So what happened?”

Micah obviously didn’t know. She’d told her parents, but
she’d asked them not to share the details, so no one else in Willow Park knew
why the engagement had been broken.

It made her feel stupid and embarrassed, but there didn’t
seem to be any good reason not to tell Micah the truth. “We didn’t have the
same views on…on the role of women. In marriage. And out of it, really.”

He looked surprised and glanced at her. “What were his
views?”

She sighed. “He didn’t want me to work outside the home. He
thought I was responsible for all the housework. He wanted me to homeschool our
kids. I’m actually not opposed to that, but I think it should be a decision
both of us make, given our circumstances at the time. He didn’t want us to use
any sort of birth control.” She shuddered, thinking of some of their arguments.
“It’s not like there’s anything intrinsically wrong with those views. I know a
lot of great people have them. But
I
didn’t have them. And he thought I should just change my views to match his. It
wasn’t even a discussion. It was series of instructions I was supposed to
follow. I couldn’t live like that.”

“Of course, you couldn’t.” Micah was scowling. “He sounds
like an ass.” He glanced back hurriedly at Cara, who was still asleep. “You
didn’t know any of that about him when you were dating?”

“I knew he was more conservative than me, but I assumed we’d
work through the differences. Compromise.” She gave a huff of laughter. “I was
stupid. I’ve been stupid a lot.”

“What are you talking about?” His scowl got even deeper. “It
was obviously his fault.”

“No.” Before Micah could object, she hurried on, “I mean, he
was not everything he should have been in our relationship, but I was the one
who ignored all the signs I’d had from the beginning that the relationship
wasn’t going to work. I always do that. I put on these blinders because I want
a relationship to work, and I end up making bad decisions and then getting
crushed because I misinterpret what’s really going on in a man’s head. And
heart.”

She hadn’t really meant to say all that, and she twisted her
hands in her lap anxiously when Micah didn’t respond right away.

Finally, he murmured, “You’re trusting. That’s a good
thing.”

“It’s not when you trust the wrong man.”

He shook his head. “The man should live up to your trust.”

She cleared her throat, trying desperately to keep her
fourth rule and not read anything into that comment that wasn’t actually said.
“Anyway, sometimes it’s not about trust. Sometimes it’s about investing in a
relationship that doesn’t actually exist, one I just make up in my head, based
on reading things into it that aren’t there. That’s kind of what happened with
Jeff. We dated in college, and I don’t know if he was ever really serious about
it. But he kept asking me out, and in my mind it had to be serious, so I kept
acting like it was. Then, when it was almost time to graduate, I cornered him
because he hadn’t said anything about the future. I really think he was
expecting for the relationship to just end naturally when we left college, but
I kept asking about it so he said marriage was in our future. So then we were
engaged, but I’m not sure he ever actually wanted it.”

“That definitely sounds like his fault and not yours. If he
wanted to break up, then he should have just done it.”

“Yeah. I agree. But I was an idiot for investing in the
relationship when he never did anything to pursue it himself. But I did. All
through college and grad school. We lived in different cities for grad school,
so it really was a relationship entirely in my head. Finally, I think he found
another woman who came on stronger than I did, so he could be even more
passive. He dumped me for her.
 
I was
such a little idiot.”

“Don’t call yourself that. He was your fiancé. You were
allowed to trust him.” He stared at the road, shaking his head. “I had no idea
that’s what happened with your engagements.”

Alice was sure people had talked about it in Willow Park,
but she wouldn’t have assumed Micah would have given it a second thought. “What
did you think happened?”

“I don’t know. People said you weren’t the one who ended
them, but I didn’t believe that.
 
I
couldn’t imagine two different men would have been engaged to you and then just
chosen to...” He trailed off.

Alice swallowed hard, forcing herself not to read too much
into that comment.

“Anyway,” she made herself say, “the good thing is they
ended before we actually got married.”

“Were you—” He broke off the question and rephrased. “It had
to be hard, to have engagements end that way.”

“Yeah. It was.”

“Do you miss them? Either one?”

She thought about that. “Not as much as I would have expected,”
she admitted at last. “It sounds terrible, but mostly I’m glad to be rid of
them.”

She’d been looking at the mountain scenery out her window,
but she glanced over to see if Micah thought she was a cold bitch for not
missing her lost fiancés.

To her surprise, she caught what looked like a little smile
on his face.

She had no idea what would explain that, and her rules
wouldn’t let her speculate.

***

They arrived at the campus early, so
they got coffee at a nearby fast food and sat in the SUV waiting until it was
time for Alice to head to the office where she was supposed to make an
appearance. The interview would last at least a couple of hours, since it
involved several different meetings and conversations, so Micah and Cara were
going to a building supply place in Asheville that he said stocked antique
fixtures he couldn’t find anywhere else. He told her to call and let him know
if she was done earlier or later than expected.

The interview went well. She had good answers to all the
questions, and the people she met were all kind, intelligent, and interesting.
The time flew, and she was surprised when she realized it was noon when she
walked out of the building.

She was pulling out her phone to call Micah when she saw him
on a blanket on one of the wide green lawns nearby. Cara was in her carrier,
clapping her hands at the two female college students who’d stopped by to ooh
and ah over the baby.

Or maybe over Micah.

Alice headed over and knelt down to the grass beside him,
hiking up her skirt slightly in the process.

“How did it go?” Micah asked, waving half-heartedly at the
girls who left as soon as Alice arrived.

“It was fine. Good, I think. What are you all doing?”

“We were trying to have a picnic.” Micah gestured at the
bowl of infant cereal he’d evidently tried to feed Cara, but most of which was
flung over the blanket.