Lucifer's Lover (28 page)

“Er…no.”

Gillian cocked her head to one side. “That’s a shame,” she said breezily. “The first scan is always so exciting. I’ll videotape it for him, then, okay?”

“Oh…uh…sure.” She could feel her cheeks starting to warm. It was the first time she had been confronted with the fact of her single-parenthood and the natural assumptions that people would make about her and she hadn’t really rehearsed the words to explain it all.

Gillian pushed a videotape into the maw of a bank of high-tech equipment and settled onto a stool. She smeared a gel onto the handpiece and slid Lindsay’s gown back to reveal her belly.

“Did you drink plenty of water?” she asked.

“Six cups, as they said.”

“Good. Then things should show up nicely.” Gillian pressed the handpiece into her flesh just above the pubic bone and quickly made a few adjustments on the console, before nodding happily. “There we go.”

She moved the handpiece around a few more times, pausing here and there to study the monitor in front of her. And a couple more times she nodded, as if she was pleased.

“Let me just measure the cranium here.” She punched buttons. “I calculate you’re about ten weeks into the pregnancy. Does that sound right to you?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve got a nice, healthy baby growing there, Ms Eden. Everything looks good.” She swiveled a monitor around so Lindsay could see the screen and the grainy black and white triangular image. “There’s your baby.”

“Really?” Lindsay couldn’t make head or tail of the mass of snow.

Gillian pointed to a vaguely solid line, a thin moon shape. “That’s the head there, see?”

“Sort of…” Lindsay offered doubtfully.

Gillian smiled. “I work with this stuff all day. It’s as plain as print to me. But hang on…” She moved the handpiece around again, small adjustments, until she froze.

“There,” she said, tapping the screen. Where she tapped was a cloudy patch that seemed to pulse frenetically. “That’s your baby’s heartbeat.”

“No! Already?”

“Oh yes—there’s a heartbeat from a very early stage. That’s life you’re looking at.”

Lindsay lay back, as thick, heavy shock settled into her bones.
My child
. Abruptly the nebulous concept of a baby somewhere in her future coalesced into a concrete, undeniable reality. Her child lived. It was here already. And she could not put off its future any longer.

“Do you want to know the sex of your baby?” Gillian asked softly.

“Can you tell that?” Her voice was husky and she could feel tears pressing at her eyes.

“Not always but this time, yes, I can definitely tell.” Gillian smiled, with a twinkle in her eyes and waited for her decision.

“Tell me.”

Her smile broadened. “You’d better stock up on blue, honey.”

“It’s a boy?”

“Absolutely.”

A son. Luke’s son.

And suddenly, she began to cry in weak, breathless little hiccups that hurt and made her cry more.

All her high-minded principals, all the agonizing and decision making she had been putting off, all melted away beneath the tangible reality of a child.

“Oh, hey! Ooops…where’s the box?” Gillian exclaimed, reaching for a tissue box sitting on top of the equipment. She handed Lindsay a few tissues and patted her shoulder. “It’s okay, honey, you go ahead and cry. You’re not the first one to turn on the waterworks in here, by a long shot.”

“I’m sorry…” Lindsay managed to blubber.

“Pshh! Like your hormones aren’t already messed-up big time by the baby, anyway. You ain’t got much choice over what’s going to upset you and what isn’t for the next little while.”

“I wish—I wish Luke could see this.”

Gillian grinned. “Oh…all those big men—they’re even worse than the moms, let me tell you. I’ve seen ’em break down and sob.” She started punching keys furiously. “Tell you what—I’m going to put an annotation on the screen.”

“For what?”

“So your Luke can see it for himself. I’m going to put a great big arrow to the heartbeat and add a note. See?” And on the monitor, a white arrow did appear and HEARTBEAT floated next to it.

“That’s on the videotape?” Lindsay asked.

“Everything that shows up on this monitor is. Even the head I showed you. You’ll have to show him that one, though, okay? I can’t back up the tape on this.”

Lindsay mopped at her face but tears were still oozing from her eyes and the tight constriction in her chest and squeezing her throat told her she wasn’t finished yet.

Gillian removed the handpiece and wiped away the excess gel from Lindsay’s stomach and lowered the gown. “And now, I know, you’re dying to go to the washroom.”

“Yes!”

Gillian pointed and Lindsay hopped off the table and raced for the indicated door. When she returned to the examination room, Gillian held out the video cassette. “They’re going to charge you an extra twenty dollars for the tape, okay? Just letting you know so you don’t get a shock when you get the bill.”

Twenty dollars? For a blank tape? It was an outrageous price but Lindsay would cheerfully have paid double.

* * * * *

She found a bench beneath a bare tree, out in the grounds of the hospital. She sat in the weak sunshine, hugging the videotape and occasionally wiping at her eyes.

Just like the almost-spring day, she was waking up. And her perspective was a new one.

All the lethargic thoughts that had been plaguing her for weeks, begging for an answer, came back now in a rush and the answers supplied themselves readily. Easily.

After twenty minutes, she rose and walked back to her car, to drive home. But she detoured downtown and stopped off at the tiny film production company that made its living from supplying footage of mountains and snow to other productions in the east and in California. There, she paid another exorbitant fee to have the tape copied.

The copy she slipped into a padded mailer, along with a note she wrote on some old Derwent notepaper she found at the bottom of her bag.

Freud sucks. Logic doesn’t count. This is reality. L
.

And, after a moment of chewing her lip and hesitating, she added at the bottom,
I’ve finally figured it out
.

Quickly, before she could change her mind, she stuffed the note into the mailer, sealed it and took it to the postal counter to get it weighed and posted.

The address she wrote on the front she had memorized weeks ago.

* * * * *

After that, her days seemed brighter and her energy and enthusiasm came back in a rush, although she found she was physically tired more often than usual.

She began looking for work, even though she cheerfully accepted that no one was likely to hire her until she’d had the baby and her child-care arrangements were in place. Besides, in a little tourist town like Deerfoot Falls, there wasn’t much call for a masters degree in spatial mathematics—a fact that amused both her and her father.

She also started building a list of necessities for the arrival of the baby and a second list of arrangements she would have to make for the birth and after.

Most of her spare time she spent working in her father’s workshop and these were some of her most peaceful hours. With the world left at the top of the stairs, she worked free of care and troublesome thoughts.

The peace lasted for a week.

Edward had been expecting a friend and fellow woodworker to drop in for coffee and a long ambling discussion about their shared passion. Lindsay answered the door, expecting to find George Waschuk and fell back a step in confusion when the door revealed Luke instead.

“Hi,” he said, simply.

Her heart gave one enormous, hurtful beat, then returned to a fast, furious patter.

Hungrily, she studied him. He was in jeans and a polo-neck sweater. Black, of course, which emphasized the dark eyes and brows. The solid shoulders, built up from constant hard labor on his houses and which his suits always seemed to disguise, were agreeably outlined by the sweater. The jeans were worn and snug around his hips.

She found her gaze lifting to his mouth. She ached to be kissed. She missed his caresses, the marvelous sensations he could provoke in her, the feel of his body against hers. But above all, she missed his kisses.

When he kissed her, it was the hidden Luke who kissed her. There was a fundamental honesty and directness in his kisses that made her yearn for more.

She recalled, fleetingly, the last time she had dared to kiss him. The low, deeply felt “damn you” he had uttered.

All that had happened an eon ago.

She realized Luke was watching her, puzzled. She had been standing and staring at him wordlessly.

She shook her head, to bring her attention back to the moment and Luke’s brow lifted enquiringly.

She spoke the thought closest to the surface. “It’s too soon.”

“It’s been eight weeks,” he said mildly, although she thought she could see confusion in his expression. “Way past time, for most people.”

“You got the tape.”

“Tape?” He shook his head, his confusion more than apparent, now.

He hadn’t seen the tape. Then what was he doing here? And the realization made her mouth open a little in shocked wonder.

He was here for his own reasons.

Her heart, which had begun to slow and steady, suddenly leaped again. Raw, undiluted hope shot through her and she began to tremble.

He pushed a hand through his hair—a mannerism whose familiarity made her breath catch. He was unsure of himself.

“You know,” he drawled, “most people would invite a visitor in on a raw day like this, boss.”

She blinked furiously at the sting of tears in her eyes.

Don’t lose it
, she warned herself.

“You’re here for tea?” she said, fighting for a casual, flippant tone and managing it. Just.

“Hell, no, I just stopped by to change the flat tire on my camel and water my petunias.” He took a deep breath. “Please, Lynds.” It was a softly spoken plea.

She stepped aside and motioned him in.

In the lounge, he stopped in the middle of the floor, looking around.

“It looks bare or something,” he said.

“The last time you saw it, there was a huge great Christmas tree in the corner,” she pointed out.

He nodded slowly. “That’s how I remember this place. From Christmas.”

She reached for the normal to cover her nervousness. “Do you want tea?” she asked. “Or coffee?”

He ran his hand through his hair again. “No. Thanks. The way I’m feeling, I’d spill it or something.”

The confession made her jump a little.

“See, the thing is, Lynds, I finally got around to doing some thinking. I’ve been real short on solid thinking for about six months now. I’ve been wandering around trying to dodge the truth and the problem with truth is that sooner or later it catches up with you. And I learned a long time ago…I have a cousin, called Peter. He tried to explain it to me once.

“He used to have a wife. Shelley. Nice lady. Lawyer in a big fancy law firm on Wall Street. But he was in Macy’s one day, getting her a birthday present. Lingerie. Something in red, he told the assistant. Well, one thing led to another and Peter started seeing the assistant on weekends and arranging out-of-town trips. Pretty soon, she decides she wants to get married and Peter can’t explain why he can’t get married without explaining he’s already married. See, he’d forgotten to mention that in all the time he had been taking Felicity out. So he told her he only had six months left to live.

“And Felicity, instead of understanding and letting him go, gets upset and says it doesn’t matter, she’ll marry him anyway—she loves him and she’ll be his wife for however long God gives them together and in the hereafter too. So he’s really in a bind now and finally, he ducks it and marries her. Are you following me?”

Lindsay sank down onto the sofa. “Bigamy. I’m with you.”

“Well, he didn’t really consider it bigamy because he loved them both. If he stopped to think about it at all, it was to wonder how he was going to keep both households going and bring in an income at the same time, because he was a night shift worker at one and a nine to five suit at the other.”

“Even though he was dying of…whatever it was?”

“Leukemia. Right. But only Felicity knew that. So finally, he got a medical student friend of his in on the whole caper and rigged a couple of dummy appointments so Felicity’s feelings wouldn’t be hurt. He had to quit the job he didn’t have because as he was dying he wouldn’t have been able to keep it anyway. Too weak. And all those chemotherapy sessions tend to drain you. He was researching it, you see. He wanted to keep it as authentic as possible. And his medical friend pointed out that for a man dying of leukemia and going through the third round of heavy chemo, he was way too healthy. Worse, Peter had told Felicity his favorite food in the whole world was pasta just like she cooked it, so Felicity cooked it every opportunity she had to, to feed him up. Comfort food, she said.