Aurora 06 - A Fool And His Honey (10 page)

“We’ll take care of that soon,” Amina said, with the confidence that comes of getting pregnant on your honeymoon. “Thank God I’m not pregnant now, since I have to take care of her and measles are so scary if you’re expecting. Oh hell, I hear her calling. Again.”

I cocked an eyebrow. Amina was wearing a little thin in the nursing department. I wasn’t surprised. Tall, energetic, and attractive, Amina had always been a person who had to keep moving, had always had a project in the wings and another to keep her currently occupied.

“I’ll let you go in just a minute,” I promised, “but I need some information first.”

“What can I help you with?” Amina’s voice had fallen even lower.

“What supplies do you need to take care of an infant for maybe two or three days?”

After a moment’s thoughtful silence, Amina began, “Four sleepers, about twenty diapers...” I wrote furiously on the notepad I kept by the phone. Bless Amina, she didn’t ask any questions. If I wasn’t going to get to cry on her shoulder, I might as well not go through the whole explanation.

After I hung up and checked on Hayden, I found my coat slung over a chair in the dining room. I put it on and grabbed my purse. Martin and Rory had a football game on in the den. I didn’t think either of them could have told me the score if I’d asked, but I wouldn’t have put money on it. To make sure I had their attention, I stood in front of the screen.

“Martin,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound like a total shrew, “the dishes are still on the counter from lunch. Please do them by the time I come back. Rory, you listen for the baby. He’s asleep upstairs.” They both stared at me groggily, so I didn’t move until I had confirming nods from both of them.

It was a real pleasure to leave the house.

I turned a country music station up real loud as I drove to that new southern cultural center, Wal-Mart. Somehow, country music seemed to fit the low-down strangeness of the past two days. “My Husband’s Niece Done Shot Her Man”—how would that play? Or “Whose Baby Am I Feeding?” Nah, couldn’t think of a chorus for that one. What about “There’s a Dead Man on My Stairs and a Baby ‘Neath the Bed”?

That kept me smiling until I got past the greeter (who happened to be a cousin of my husband’s secretary and always had to pass the time of day with me due to that connection), got my cart (known locally as a “buggy”), and set off down the main aisle. I wheeled my buggy toward a corner I seldom visited, the corner full of baby paraphernalia. I had my little list with me, the list I’d scribbled while I was on the phone with Amina, and I studied it with care. I bought: a package of Pampers, a can of powdered formula, some baby bottles, three more sleepers in what I estimated was Hayden’s weight range, one rubberized bib, another baby blanket, an extra set of fake keys, and four spare Binkys. I thought pacifiers were the most wonderful inventions on earth, and I planned to boil them and put them in little plastic bags and stow one in my purse, my coat, Martin’s coat, and keep the spare in the diaper bag.

I paused, my hand resting on a box of wet wipes. I looked down at the fuzzy sleepers in the buggy. Why did Hayden need clothes? I put the wet wipes in the buggy very slowly, wondering.

I recalled the look of the apartment, the open suitcase, the spill of clothes.

Clothes for Regina. Not clothes for the baby.

Aimlessly, I began pushing the buggy around the store, trying to figure out what that meant.

Regina had known she was going on a trip. But she hadn’t planned on taking Hayden? Or—she hadn’t had a baby when she started on the trip? That didn’t make any sense.

Shaking my head, I realized I’d plowed into men’s wear. I slipped a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt into the cart. They were smaller than Martin’s usual, but I hoped no one would think of noticing. Probably Rory also needed underwear, but I’d be damned if I’d pick it out. I tucked the “no clothes for Hayden” thought into a side pocket of my mind, to pull out and reexamine later.

While I was in the men’s section, I was lucky enough to run into our closest neighbor, Clement Farmer. He was staring dubiously at a rack of silk boxer shorts. Clement was a small man, almost bald, with a few wisps of white hair over his ears. He had a red complexion, and very white even teeth, which made him look overall like a Christmas elf.

“I told Padgett I saw a car pulling out of your drive the other night,” Clement said, without any preliminaries.

“Is that so?”

“Yes, it was a dark red car with Ohio plates.”

Regina’s car.

“Who was in it?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“Two people. I couldn’t see the driver very well, but the passenger was a dark-haired young woman.”

Sounded like Regina.

I was in more of a hurry than ever to get home and tell Martin. I thanked Clement for telling me (though I wondered why he hadn’t called us on the phone) and asked him to feed Madeleine for us while we were gone. She hated to be checked into the vet’s almost as much as the vet’s staff hated to see her coming.

“Sure!” Clement agreed, obviously pleased. He was the only person I’d ever met who seemed to genuinely like Madeleine. “Think she’ll need a brushing?”

“Oh, I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt.” I’d made one person happy today, anyway.

I loaded my purchases into Martin’s Mercedes, stopped by the filling station to top up the tank. Home again, this time to find the dishes done and in the drainer; Rory watching television in our den (still, or again); and Hayden continuing his nap. Martin was packing in his usual efficient pattern, and I noticed he’d gotten out his extreme-cold-weather gear that he seldom needed in Lawrence ton.

It seemed grossly unfair that Hayden slept when he was alone with Martin.

I told Martin what Clement Farmer had seen the night before.

“So she’s a hostage, if it was Regina Clement saw,” he said.

“Could be, Martin.” I wondered how he’d gotten that out of the story I’d told him, but shook my head and decided not to pursue it. I thought of sharing my wonderment about the lack of provision for Hayden with Martin, but he looked so distracted I decided I’d be wasting my breath. I turned and went downstairs.

I sat at the kitchen table studying the directions on the can of formula powder. I read them over and over, determined not to do Hayden harm with my ignorance. I assembled everything I’d need, down to the same pan I remembered Regina using. I had a hard time believing I’d talked to Regina while she prepared formula right here in this kitchen, less than twenty-four hours before.

While I waited for the water to boil, I called John’s hospital again, talked to my mother once more, found out John was out of the room having a test.

Our telephone persisted in its curious silence. I did get a call or two from older friends of my mother’s, asking about John; but other than our priest Aubrey no one seemed to want to know how Martin and I were handling our own little corner of Craig’s tragedy. I wondered forlornly at that, but then I decided that no one knew quite what to say.

A brusque rap at the back door made me look up sharply while I was sealing bottles of formula to put in the refrigerator. I’d made enough to last us the trip to Ohio, I estimated, having no idea what I’d do if I’d figured wrong. Could you buy formula ready to serve? I hadn’t remembered to check while I was at the store. I was so lost in worries about feeding Hayden that it took me a second to realize I was happy to see my friend and former employee Angel Youngblood, and to translate that happiness into a smile.

Only the fact that Angel was preceded by a huge bulge kept me from hugging her, which would have surprised both of us. Angel is almost a foot taller than me, and golden and rangy as a leopard. Though now she looked like a really pregnant leopard, the effect was still striking. I couldn’t remember exactly how old Angel was, but I was sure she was at least six years younger than I, and her husband Shelby was a few months older than Martin. Shelby and Martin had been buddies in Vietnam, and had met sporadically after the war and their covert activities in South America had concluded. Now Shelby worked for Martin as a crew leader at the Pan-Am Agra plant.

“Where’s the baby?” Angel was always direct. I called up the stairs softly, to alert Martin, and led Angel up to have a look. Martin, who’d been reading a magazine (or at least staring at its open pages), rose when Angel came in, seemed to pull himself together a little. Angel just nodded at him. She was absorbed in the tiny face. She put her long fingers around the curve of Hayden’s skull, and she laid her other hand on the mound of her pregnancy. The mound constricted—that’s the best way I can describe it—and after a long moment, relaxed.

Angel smiled at me. “This one doesn’t even have room to move around anymore,” she said, her voice quiet and smooth so as not to wake Hayden.

“Isn’t it almost time for you?”

Angel nodded. “Time, and a day over. But I’m feeling fine, so today’s not the day, I guess.

I’m sorry about your stepfather,” she added, jumping mentally from her own hospital stay to John’s. “How’s he doing? How’s your mother holding up?”

My mother and Angel had developed an arm’s-length mutual respect.

“She’s doing pretty well.” You know my mother, my voice said.

Angel nodded, her eyes back on the baby’s face. “There’s something about them,” she said, the smooth low voice almost hypnotic. “You’d kill for them.” Her hands caressed her own stomach again, and I saw it tighten again.

“If they’re your own,” I said, a question in my tone.

“Maybe not just then. Look at him.” And Angel crouched over the pale-green-and-blue portable crib, her blond hair framing her narrow face.

“What are you gonna do with him, Roe? If I understand right, his dad is dead and his mother is missing,” Angel said as we went back downstairs to the kitchen. She sat at the table while I poured her a glass of orange juice.

“We’re planning on driving to Corinth, where Regina and her husband were living,” I explained. “Then, I guess we’ll see if Craig’s family will keep him. Or maybe Regina will have turned up by then, and we’ll know what happened. Or . . . we’ll be able to get in touch with Barby, and when she flies back from her cruise, she’ll be coming into Pittsburgh, which is the closest airport to Corinth.”

It sounded pretty thin and uncertain, even to me.

“Wouldn’t it be better to stay put?” Angel drank her juice in one long gulp, and set the glass down. She eased forward in her chair, and her hand rubbed her back absently. Her face tightened suddenly, then relaxed. “After all,” Angel said slowly, with effort, “if Regina does escape, or return . . .” Her face did that tightening and relaxing thing again. “She’d come back here, for her baby...” This time Angel’s face stayed tight for a while.

“Angel?”

“I think,” she said slowly and thoughtfully, “that maybe it will be today, after all.”

I was on my feet in a flash. I’d seen one baby born, and I wasn’t about to do that again. “Let me drive you to the hospital,” I said. “I’ll get my jacket.”

“No, that would get the cars all confused,” Angel said, but as if she hardly knew what she was saying. All her attention seemed to be focused inward. “My car would be out here, and who knows when I could come back to get it. I can drive home, and wait there for Shelby to get off work.”

“Call him from here.”

“Okay,” she said, to my surprise. My concern deepened. Easy capitulation was not one of Angel’s characteristics. “Let me use the bathroom first.”

I hovered outside the door.

When Angel emerged, she said, “Today for sure.” Her voice was still calm and flat, but I sensed all kinds of suppressed excitement just trying to bubble to the surface. She went to the telephone on the kitchen wall, walking in a kind of tentative way, as if she expected something to grab her at every step. I bounced around her like a rubber ball, anxious to help, trying not to get in the way, scared to death she’d have the baby here.

Angel punched Shelby’s work number, waited for an answer, all the while that inner-directed look on her face.

I heard a squawk from the other end of the line.

“Jason Arlington, that you? This is Angel. I need to talk to Shelby,” Angel said.

I could hear the tiny voice squawk some more.

“Yes, you can sound the siren,” Angel said, sounding as if she was holding on to her patience by a very taut leash. The siren’s wail was audible from where I was standing.

“Shelby’s crew think it’s real funny that he’s going to be a father for the first time,” Angel explained. “They set up this siren to call him if he’s far out in the plant when I phone to tell him the baby’s on the way.” Her face tightened again, and her fingers clenched the receiver until they turned white. Then, gradually, she relaxed. She smiled into the telephone. Her husband was on the other end.

“Shelby,” Angel said. “I’m going to leave right now to drive back into town. I’m at Martin and Roe’s. Meet me at our house.”

This time I could hear Shelby’s words. “You stay right there,” he bellowed. “I’ll come get you. Don’t you try to drive!”

To my amazement, Angel said, “All right.”

I think Shelby was startled, too, because there was silence on the other end of the line. Then he said, “I’ll be right there,” and the line went dead.

I caught a glimpse of Rory Brown stepping quietly down the hall. Angel’s back was turned, and frankly I don’t think she’d have cared if a real leopard went through the house, at that point.

I went to the foot of the stairs and called Martin, who came down with a newly awake Hayden. Martin tried not to look dismayed when I explained the situation. He handed me the baby immediately.