Once Around (16 page)

"
Well, there you go," Molly said as she carried their salad plates to the table. "Who needs obstetrics, right?"

"
I saw you coming out of Dr. Rosenberg's office day before yesterday," Jessy said as they both sat down. "Regular appointment?"

Molly nodded and unfolded her napkin.
"He did a sonogram, but we couldn't tell the baby's sex. I'm kind of glad, in a way."

"
And you're doing well?"

"
Very." She seemed genuinely concerned, but Molly assumed it was as much professional curiosity as anything else. "I'd had a few problems last month, but they've resolved themselves."

"
Stress, no doubt," Jessy said.

"
No doubt," Molly said dryly. "This isn't exactly the way I'd planned my pregnancy."

Molly
's words were innocent enough. She was talking about her marriage, about the husband who'd walked away from a miracle. She couldn't possibly have known those words would find their mark in the hidden part of Jessy's heart.

"
I didn't plan my pregnancy at all." Jessy heard the words tumble from her lips, but she couldn't quite believe them. What on earth had possessed her?

Molly
's eyes almost popped out of her head. "Your pregnancy?"

"
It was a long time ago," Jessy said, tapping her fingernails against the side of her iced tea glass. Why couldn't it be a glass of hemlock? "I don't know why I even mentioned it to you."

"
Me neither," said Molly. "You don't even like me."

"
I never said that."

"
You didn't have to. It's right there on your face."

"
That's ridiculous. I don't even know you."

"
You don't like what you do know."

Good Lord
, thought Jessy. Molly sounded like Granny Wyatt, who read your mind by reading your tea leaves.

"
You're too much like everyone at the hospital," Jessy said bluntly. "You make me feel as if I'm the last one at the table."

"
You make me feel as if you'd rather be at any table but mine."

"
You're right."

Molly
's face turned bright red and she looked down at her salad plate.

Jessy was instantly overcome with remorse.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to say that"

"
Don't apologize," Molly said. "You'll only make things worse. You said what you meant. Stick with it."

Jessy wanted to crawl under the card table and stay there. Just three weeks up north
, and already she'd forgotten everything she ever knew about good manners. "Look," she said, "it's my problem, not yours. It's not your fault if I'm pea-green with envy."

"
Now you've lost me," Molly said. "I thought we were talking about why you didn't like me."

"
We are," said Jessy. "I don't like you because you have everything."

Molly started
to laugh, that same full-bodied laugh that seemed so out of keeping with her delicate beauty. That laugh probably brought men to their knees. "Oh, yes," said Molly, "I have absolutely everything a woman could want. I can understand why you'd be pea-green. My husband left me for a judge's daughter, I can't afford this house so I'm taking in boarders, and—here's the best part—I'm pregnant."

"
You forgot the most important thing," Jessy said. "You get to keep your baby."

Molly pushed away her plate and leaned across the table. There was nothing comforting about the expression in her big blue eyes
, nothing warm and fuzzy. "If you want to tell your story, tell it," she said. "I'd like to listen. But if you're looking for a punching bag, you'll have to look elsewhere."

"
You're a lot tougher than you look," Jessy said after a moment.

"
I'd better be." Her expression softened just the slightest bit. "So tell me what you want to tell me, or let's change the subject."

Molly had her dead to rights. She
'd dropped two enormous tidbits of information already. She'd look like a fool if she didn't tell the rest of the story. "I think you've figured it out already," she said, careful to keep emotion from her voice. "I made a mistake, got pregnant, and gave the baby up for adoption." She didn't flinch when she said the words. Some things really did get easier with time.

"
How long ago?" Molly asked.

"
Twelve years," she said casually, as if she didn't know the answer to the minute, day, and hour. "I wasn't supposed to hold her, but the nurse-midwife made a mistake and gave her to me."

They fell silent. Wha
t was there to say anyway? Those three minutes with her baby cradled in her arms had defined her life. Nothing that had happened before or since could compete with it. "I don't think about her very often," she said, looking to fill the silence. "I know she has a good life. I know that."

"
I'm sure she has," Molly said. "It took a lot of courage to give your baby a better life."

"
I gave myself a better life." The last of her ugly secrets rolled across the table and fell into Molly's lap. "I was about to start college, premed. A baby would have slowed me down."
Think of your future, Jessy darlin',
her mama had said to her.
There's time enough for you to have a family.

"
You were a baby yourself," Molly said. There was nothing patronizing about her tone, nothing insincere. She almost wished there was. "How would you have supported a child?"

"
Other women manage."

"
You wouldn't have been able to manage med school."

"
I know," she said. Her mama's dreams would have come crashing down around her own seventeen-year-old shoulders. "Sorry for droppin' this on you. I don't know why I did it."

"
Maybe you needed to talk to someone."

She shrugged.
"I don't usually talk to strangers," Molly looked away, and Jessy felt immediately contrite.

"
I didn't mean that the way it sounded," she said. "I'm just not much of a talker."

"
Don't worry," said Molly. "It takes more than that to hurt my feelings."

But she was lying. Jessy could see it in her eyes
, and she felt terrible. All she'd meant— oh, hell. She didn't have any idea what she'd meant: Seeing Spencer had completely unhinged her defenses, loosened her tongue, turned her into a bundle of unruly emotion.

She poked her fork into the tuna salad. She
'd heard about awkward silences, but this had to be the world's longest and most awkward. It sat on the table between them like an overwrought centerpiece of gladioli and lilies that you had to stand up to see over. She'd talked to Molly Chamberlain as though she were a friend or something, as if they'd grown up together or been college roommates. She'd talked to Molly the way she'd never talked to anyone in her life.

Well
, there was no hope for it. She'd be looking for a new place to live tomorrow.

#

You'd make one swell therapist,
Molly thought as she choked down her tuna salad.
The woman opens up to you, and now she looks like she wants to bungee jump without a cord.
The last time she'd seen someone that unhappy had been in the IRS waiting room when she and Robert were being audited.

If somebody didn
't break the silence soon, they could apply for membership in a monastery.

"
Ten days until the dinner-dance," she said, adding a tad more sugar to her iced tea. "Have you decided what to wear?"

The stricken look on Jessy
's face grew more tortured. "Oh, come on," Molly said, starting to smile. "We're talking clothes, not nuclear disarmament."

"
I'd rather talk nuclear disarmament."

"
Uh-oh," said Molly. "Nothing to wear?"

"
Not unless sequined scrubs are the going thing."

Molly wrinkled her nose.
"I think you can do better than that."

"
Maybe you can do better than that," Jessy said.. "For me that's high style."

"
You must have something," Molly persisted. "Doctors must go to a lot of cocktail parties."

"
Lowly interns don't go anywhere," Jessy said, "and so far neither do residents."

"
Well, we have ten days to find you something."

"
I'm also broke."

"
These days I specialize in broke." She motioned toward Jessy. "Stand up.. Let me get a good look at you."

Jessy hesitated
, then pushed back her chair and did as Molly ordered. "Not much to work with."

"
You're tiny," Molly said. "What—maybe a size two on a good day?"

Jessy. nodded.
"When I dress. up, I look like a little girl in her mama's clothes."

"
I have a slew of things in my closet but I don't think we could make them down for you." She was almost a foot taller than Jessy and three cup sizes bigger. Alterations on that scale would ruin the line of the garments. "There's a designer consignment shop in Rocky Hilt," she said. "That's a possibility."

"
Rocky Hill?"

"
One town north of here, right on Route 206. I'd be glad to show you."

Jessy
's spine stiffened. visibly. "I don't want to put you out."

"
You're not putting me out. It's my idea, remember?"

"
We'd better be careful," Jessy said. "We might become friends."

"
Anything's possible," Molly said, but she didn't really believe it.

#

"Spencer." The woman's voice held the sharp edge of annoyance. "You haven't heard a word I've said."

Spencer opened his eyes. He was still in that drowsy
, post-coital state that rendered him monosyllabic. "I heard you, Court."

Cour
tney Wainwright, of the Boston Wainwrights, propped herself up on her left elbow and considered him. Except for the fact that she was naked, you'd never have known she'd spent the last hour making love with him in various exotic positions. She looked as sleek and composed in his bed as she did in the courtroom. He wasn't sure how he felt about that He wasn't sure if he felt anything at all.

"
I can have the cottage the weekend after next. So, if you're available ..." She trailed one perfectly manicured fingertip through his chest hair. He resisted the urge to capture her hand and put it back on her side of the bed. Not a good sign.

"
Can't make it," he said, aiming for the right level of sincerity. "I'm really sorry."

"
I thought we'd blocked out the weekend of the seventeenth quite .a while ago," Courtney said, her tone losing some: of its practiced appeal. "I'm very disappointed."

Jesus
,
he thought.
Let's not go there.

"
I'm disappointed, too," he said, "but I have something else on the calendar."

"
You could change your calendar."

"
Afraid not."

She gathered the top sheet around her breasts and rolled away from him.
"Not exactly the attitude I was hoping for, Spencer."

"
Not exactly the understanding I was expecting from you, Court."

"
Who is she?" Courtney's voice was flat. You wouldn't catch her emotions bubbling to the surface.

She
'd whipped them into submission a long time ago. He used to think that was one of the things he liked about her. "You're not as practiced a liar as you might think."

He started to protest
, to tell her that there wasn't anyone else, at least not at the moment, when he realized this was the opportunity he'd been waiting for. "I didn't mean to hurt you." He liked to think of himself as a good guy. He never fooled a woman into believing there could be a future with him. He usually looked for women who were unavailable in some very basic way.

"
Don't worry about that," Courtney said, reaching for a cigarette on the nightstand. "I never let you close enough to hurt me."

She was right. He did the same thing. It wasn
't that hard to hide behind a facade of charm. He'd been doing it now for thirty-five years, and it suited him down to the ground.