Cherished Beginnings (8 page)

Maura rose with the sun. She scrubbed her face with soap and water and brushed her hair until it hung instead of snarled in what her mother used to call rat's nests. Pulling on her robe over her pajamas, she hurried to the kitchen. So far she was the only one up, so she plugged in the coffeepot for Kathleen and Scott, although she never drank coffee herself.

"Good morning," Kathleen said agreeably as she swept into the kitchen wearing an expensive negligee of dusty-rose chiffon with flowing sleeves bordered in marabou. It was a striking contrast to Maura's own worn bathrobe. Otherwise, the sisters resembled each other greatly, although Maura was taller than Kathleen and the planes of her face were less rounded. They could have been twins, although at twenty-six Kathleen was the younger by two years.

"I hope you didn't get up just because of me," protested Maura.

"Oh, no. Scott has an early tennis game this morning. And besides, I have wonderful news!" Kathleen poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down at the table beside Maura, grinning as though she'd swallowed the proverbial canary and its feathers were tickling her throat.

"Well, don't tell me, make me suffer," Maura said dryly.

Kathleen's eyes danced. She'd never been good at keeping secrets. "What if I told you that your money problems are over? That you'll be able to set up your practice without worrying about the financial end of it?"

"I'd say you'd lost your mind."

Scott came into the kitchen. He was dressed in tennis whites, which contrasted with his deep tan and set off his sandy hair and mustache. He dropped a kiss on the top of his wife's head and went to pour his own coffee.

"I was just telling Maura that she won't have to worry about financing her birth center," Kathleen said.

"And I was just saying that she'd lost her mind," Maura replied.

"My wife may have lost her mind, but it's true," he told Maura with a grin that twitched his mustache upward at the ends. "I'll arrange for the O'Malley Family Foundation to finance your venture. No strings attached."

Maura's jaw dropped. She had never hoped for anything like this and never dreamed that such a thing was possible. "Scott?" she said, her voice quavering. "You're not joking?"

"Would I joke about a project so near and dear to your heart that you've scarcely stopped running on about it ever since the first time you drove that broken-down old car of yours through Shuffletown?" Scott eyed her with amusement.

"So, sister mine, all you have to do is find a place of business and
voila!
Shuffletown has its very own practicing midwife." Kathleen's face shone with satisfaction.

Maura was out of her chair in a second, embracing her sister before hugging Scott. "Oh, thank you!" she exclaimed, happy tears springing to her eyes.

"And now," said Kathleen, "tell us your plans. I'm sure, knowing you, that you've made them—lots of them."

Maura blinked the dampness away. "Well, first I'm going to find a suitable place. I've been thinking about one of the old houses in Shuffletown. A big one with lots of rooms that can be converted to examining rooms and so forth." Then she frowned. "I'd go out looking for such a place first thing this morning if I had my minivan."

Kathleen looked puzzled. "I hadn't realized it was gone."

"It isn't," said Scott, joining them at the table. "It's parked right where it always is, beside that stand of palmettos. I saw it when I wheeled out the garbage can."

"You're sure?" Maura was taken aback.

"I'd know that heap anywhere. When you get the O'Malley grant, how about buying a new vehicle? Or at least having the old one painted?" Scott grinned at her affectionately.

With a peculiar look on her face, Maura went to the window. Sure enough, there was her minivan parked in its usual spot. "He must have brought it back early," she said.

"Who? And what was wrong with it?"

"Oh, it broke down again, this time on the Shuffletown highway, and it was at the garage being repaired," she said. "I'm surprised to have it back so soon, that's all. Now that it's here, I might as well get busy looking for a home for my birth center." She beat a hasty retreat before Kathleen and Scott could ask any more questions.

While she was dressing, Maura wondered about Xan. Had he delivered the minivan this morning himself? When? And how much money did she owe the garage, anyway?

She wished she'd thought to bring up all relevant questions last night, but it was a night not to be remembered for its overabundance of rational thought. She could at least have asked Xan for his phone number.

Of course she could reach him at his office. That, however, didn't seem like a course she wanted to take after her sudden leave-taking yesterday afternoon. Whoever answered the phone might hang up on her.

"Maura?" Kathleen knocked lightly on the open guest-room door.

"You don't have to tap so politely," Maura informed her sister with a smile. "Remember when we were kids? You barged into my room whenever you wanted, no matter what I was doing."

"Barging in on a big sister is a little sister's prerogative. But we aren't kids anymore," Kathleen reminded her, looking fondly at Maura. "You look wonderful in those clothes you're wearing. That shade of navy looks marvelous against your hair."

"This pant suit was yours," Maura told her. "Don't you remember giving it to me? That's probably why it looks good, if it does. Our hair is practically the same shade." She somehow felt that she had to make excuses for her wholesome good looks. Nuns were supposed to remain humble.

Kathleen looked at the suit again. Both jacket and pants clung ever so gracefully to Maura's curvy figure, and Maura was taller than Kathleen, so the two-piece effect was perfect for her. It annoyed her that Maura was so self-effacing about her natural beauty.

"Maura, you must learn to accept compliments," she said. When Maura looked flustered, Kathleen went on more gently. "That suit looks much better on you than it ever did on me. And you do need clothes now. When can we go shopping?" Kathleen, with her love of fashion, was forever trying to organize a shopping trip.

Maura smiled and shook her head. "I hate shopping, and besides, the only clothes I'll need for what I'm going to be doing is a good supply of clean smocks and a few pair of yoga pants for when I'm teaching pregnant women their exercises. Give up on me, Kath. I'm not going to stay here with you and Scott on Teoway Island, even though you're a most accommodating host and hostess."

Kathleen's eyebrows flew up in alarm. "You're not? Where are you going?"

"Don't look so horrified. It's important to me to live among the people with whom I'm working."

"Maura—" Kathleen was clearly about to protest.

"Don't Maura me." Maura kissed her sister swiftly on the cheek. "And don't expect me back any time soon. I have no idea how long this project of scoping out possible homes for my birth center will take."

"I was about to ask you to go with me to a luncheon and my garden club meeting," said Kathleen, impatient with Maura's cheerful unwillingness to become a part of normal Teoway Island society.

"Such frivolity is not my idea of an afternoon of fun," chided Maura, sweeping her midwife's bag off the chair where she'd tossed it last night. She blew Kathleen a kiss. "See you later," she said, breezing out of the room.

"Good luck," Kathleen called bemusedly after her sister. Frivolity! She couldn't wait to repeat this conversation to Scott. The activities Maura considered frivolous were considered normal everyday pastimes for Teoway Island women. Scott would consider Maura's reluctance to get involved as just another attempt by his nonconformist sister-in-law to forsake worldly glory. Which, Kathleen thought, was all very well and good. But certainly this was an unrealistic attitude in the real world to which Maura had returned.

As Maura stepped outside into the morning air, its softness freshened by a wispy salt-scented wind, she had no such thoughts on her mind. The most important thing this morning was to first figure out the situation with her car.

The key hung from the minivan's ignition. Maura checked the space above the visor in case Xan had left a note or a bill, but there was nothing. As a matter of habit, she opened her midwife's bag for a routine check of the contents.

And it wasn't her midwife's bag.

It was a medical bag, all right. Black on the outside, stethoscope on the inside. And other objects, too, but they weren't her objects. This was a doctor's bag.

Stunned, she looked at the outside of the bag. It could have passed for her own. She recalled last night, with Xan fumbling with the saddlebag in the dark and pulling out her bag. He had put her bag in his saddlebag at the Bodkins' place, she remembered it clearly. It was when she had seen the twin moons in his eyes.

This medical bag must have been in his saddlebag then; in his right-hand saddlebag. He had put hers in the left.

He had given her the wrong bag. And that meant that he must have hers! She rummaged through the bag. Yes, here was his card, Alexander Copeland, M.D. Xan would be needing the bag, and she should see that he got it.

She drove first to the Shuffletown business district and bought a length of plywood to slide beneath Annie Bodkin's sagging mattress. Then she stopped at the grocery store. When she pulled her minivan up in front of the old shack, Cindy came dancing outside to escort her inside.

"Little Maurice is just fine," Annie assured her. Annie was sitting up in bed looking pert and pleased.

Quickly Maura checked the baby, and then she checked Annie. Annie was recovering, and the baby was alert and energetic.

Maura and Cindy unloaded the bed board from the back of the minivan, Maura cursing the nice clothes she wore and wishing she'd worn her usual blue jeans instead. "The bed board is going to keep you from getting a backache," she told Annie as she remade the bed.

"Sure do thank you," Annie said gratefully. "I've got to get back on my feet soon. I need to find me a job."

Ascertaining that Annie had worked as a housecleaner until recently, Maura promised to mention to Kathleen that Annie was looking for work. Kathleen might have some friends on Teoway Island who needed help.

"Anything I can ever do for you, just let me know," Annie told her gratefully.

"You can do me a favor," she told Annie as she started a nutritious stew bubbling on a back burner of the old stove. "I want to open a birth center where I can coach pregnant women on nutrition and exercise and help them to have their babies at home if they choose, just the way you did yesterday. I need a large house or office. Do you know of one?"

Annie thought for a moment. "There's a big old farmhouse about two miles from here," she told Maura. "I think it's for rent. There's a lady at the real estate agency down the road who might be able to tell you something about it."

And so, after pulling off the borrowed apron and instructing Cindy in the completion of the stew, Maura went straight to the real estate office. There she met a plump and interested woman named Grace Murdock, who took her idea for a birth center to heart and said, "Come on, I'll show you that farmhouse right now. It sounds perfect for y'all."

Grace, a lively and talkative lady, drove her vintage compact car down the bumpy unpaved road, explaining as she clung gamely to the vibrating steering wheel. "It's a farmhouse without its own farm. The owners died, and the surrounding land has been bought by developers, who are waiting until financial conditions are more favorable before they do any developing. They've leased the land, so cotton fields run right up to the house, but that may not bother you. For most people, the place is too far out in the country."

"I like the country," Maura assured her, remembering her days in the city. Peace and quiet seemed very appealing after that.

The farmhouse that would become the McNeill Birth Center turned out to be ideally suited. The house was bordered on three sides by a porch, which put Maura in mind of nothing so much as a wide, comfortable lap. The front yard was amply shaded by six immense pecan trees inhabited by a family of friendly chattering squirrels.

"It's perfect," said Maura, captivated by the big, sunny rooms. She and Grace headed back to the office immediately, and Maura waited while the lease was prepared. She signed it on the spot.

By the time she left the real estate office, her head was full of plans. Ideas danced an Irish jig through her mind. She'd go back to Teoway and find a solitary spot on the beach where she'd make lists of the things she'd need and decide on the best way to divide up the space into exercise and examining rooms as well as living quarters.

Then her glance fell on Xan's medical bag. What she should do immediately was track him down and exchange bags with him. But remembering her breathless passion of the night before, she'd feel uncomfortable doing that. She was sure that by this time Xan knew he had her bag.

He'd seek her out because he needed his bag more than she needed hers right now. She'd explain the situation to Kathleen the best she could, and when Xan called, she'd let Kathleen, who was unfailingly adept in awkward social situations, make the exchange. This plan would save Maura the embarrassment, after last night, of seeing Xan again.

In a hurry to get to the cool beach, Maura drove toward Teoway Island as fast as the speed limit allowed, pausing briefly at the Intracoastal Waterway as the old sideways-swinging drawbridge swung closed, then continuing to the Teoway Island entrance, magnificently landscaped with showy red and yellow zinnias.