Wedding Series Boxed Set (3 Books in 1) (The Wedding Series) (77 page)

“You think she’s cracking up?” Leslie asked the increasingly silent April, the reluctant tail of their group now, as she had been all during the shopping trip.

“Dunno,” was the only response.

“I heard him.”

“You probably did,” said Bette. She held up a plastic gadget about the size of her hand. “Through this. It’s the baby monitor. We can hear any sounds in her room, but noise where we are won’t disturb her—Listen.”

She turned a tiny knob and they all heard the rhythmic creak of a rocking chair, then Michael’s voice.

“Hey, this isn’t all that hard.”

“Yeah?” Grady teased. “Then how come you turned stark white and had to wipe your hands on your pants before Paul handed her to you.”

“Sounds like you want to be next,” said Paul.

“Oh, no, wait a minute, I didn’t say—” The women grinned at one another at the change in Grady’s voice. Beneath her grin, though, Leslie felt a strong pull of sadness.

“Sure sounded to me like somebody itching to hold a baby. Here, Paul, you take the baby so I can get up, and Roberts can have his turn.”

Tris giggled softly. “He’s got the hang of it, but he won’t try to stand up holding her!”

Muffled sounds of movement mingled with Grady’s protests.

“I have got to see this,” said Bette. “C’mon. Just watch out for the second step from the top. It squeaks.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” promised Tris. “I wish I’d seen Michael holding her, but you’re right, this will be too good to be missed.”

Leslie followed Bette and Tris, needing to see and wishing she didn’t.

Upstairs, they silently made their way to the open nursery door. April hadn’t followed, and her conscience pushed at her to find the girl. But across the room, Grady was seated in the rocking chair, his total attention focused on the bit of humanity Paul held out to him, and she couldn’t make herself leave.

“Not yet. I’m not ready yet.”

Michael chuckled wickedly, and Grady cursed under his breath, then added a hurried apology to Anna, which made both Paul and Michael laugh.

Michael spotted the added spectators but heeded their fingers-to-lips signal, and the lesson went on.

“Just open your right hand and put it in your lap, and open your left hand and put it up a little bit,” instructed Paul. “Good. Okay, now...Relax your hands, Roberts—I’m not going to drive spikes through them. Okay. There!”

“Omigod.” Grady seemed to barely breathe the word, but Leslie thought it sliced right to her heart.

“You are now officially holding a baby,” announced Michael.

“And doing very well,” said Bette, stepping into the room.

“Bravo!” Tris called softly. She went directly to Michael, slipping an arm around his waist as he looped his around her shoulders. “And it sounded as if you’re well on your way to becoming a baby-holding virtuoso yourself, Michael.”

Amid explanations of how they’d heard part one of the lesson and merciless teasing of both Michael and Grady, led by Paul, Grady started to gently rock, looking down at the baby in his arms. The tension had disappeared; he looked like a natural holding a baby, and Leslie wanted to find a refuge where she could let the tears slide down her cheeks. Instead she smiled at the jokes, and tried not to openly stare at Grady and Anna.

“All right, I think we’ve taken enough abuse here,” Michael finally declared. “Let’s talk about what happened when the first sound came over that baby squawk box.”

“Oh, no, that’s not necessary. Not necessary at—”

“Sure it is, Paul. I think the ladies would be very interested to hear how you leaped out of your chair—”

“Probably have a dent in the porch ceiling from his head,” Grady interposed without looking up.

“—hurdled the chaise longue and ran down the hall so fast that when he tried to make the turn for the stairs he almost slid right out the front door, then thundered up the stairs like an elephant stampeding. Then he screeches to a halt outside the nursery and tiptoes in—as if Anna might not have heard him!”

When the laughter died down enough that he could be heard, Paul retorted, “Let me point out that these two clowns wouldn’t have known what I did if they hadn’t been right on my heels doing the exact same thing.”

“Maybe so,” conceded Grady. “But we weren’t the ones who tried to change her diaper.”

Michael took up the tale then, drawing more laughs, though Paul staunchly maintained he’d progressed a lot in a skill that obviously couldn’t be mastered overnight. Capturing a squirming bottom in a diaper fiendishly disposed to slipperiness took a lot of practice.

With the teasing continuing around them, Leslie met Grady’s eyes.

“She’s asleep. She fell asleep while I was holding her,” Grady said in quiet awe, and he smiled.

Leslie looked away.

Nancy Monroe’s dinner was so delicious and so plentiful, they all ended up lazing on the patio. But this time, April excused herself almost immediately. Leslie supposed the girl could have simply had her fill of grown-ups. Still, she’d better check on her—though not right away or April would feel nagged. In a little while.

A little while turned into an hour. The fading light, soft breeze and easy conversation left her relaxed almost to the state of limpness. Though the interlude at Grady’s apartment might have had something to do with that, too.

She turned her head to look at the man next to her, and felt a start of surprise. She forgot what a good-looking man he was. Which was silly, considering the amount of time she spent with him. Or maybe it wasn’t silly. He’d let her see beyond his surface. And she was repaying him with secrets and dishonesty.

She stood, blinking against fullness in her eyes.

“Do you need something, dear?” Mrs. Monroe asked.

“No. Thank you. I’m going to check on April.”

“Want me to come with?”

“No. Thank you, Grady. It’ll be better if I go alone.” Better for herself, if not April, she thought as she climbed the stairs.

But every other thought disappeared as she stepped into the spacious room they shared.

The closet doors stood open, one half of it gaping empty.

Two drawers were only partly closed and the nightstand was cleared of April’s Walkman and cassettes.

She didn’t remember getting down the stairs, but she was standing at the doorway to the patio.

“April’s gone. She’s run away.”

Bette had pointed out it made more sense for Leslie to stay in the house, by the telephone, since she didn’t know the area and would be the logical one to get the most information if April called. Bette also stayed, in case the baby woke.

Leslie and Bette checked the house in futile hope, then sat in silence while Mr. and Mrs. Monroe, Grady, Michael, Tris and Paul fanned out for a quick look around the neighborhood. They turned up nothing.

“I’m going to call the police.” Leslie’s voice was calm, and her answers succinct as she gave the police dispatcher a brief description of April, but her hand shook.

The searchers went out again even before the police car arrived. The police officer was polite and reassuring, suggesting that a girl who didn’t know the area probably hadn’t gotten far. But Leslie didn’t feel reassured, even after he left with as many of his questions answered as she could, even with April’s description broadcast to other patrol cars, even with everyone else out looking.

Time became her enemy. Creeping by as she waited, while each minute added horrible possibilities to what had happened to April.

When Anna’s hungry cry demanded Bette’s attendance upstairs, she gave Leslie a hard hug before leaving.

The back door opened to Grady, and Leslie stopped her pacing and spun to face him.

“You found her?”

“No. I wanted to—”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see how you’re doing.”

He reached for her, but she moved away and kept on pacing. “Don’t worry about me. Worry about April.”

“We’ll find her,” he said with an utter certainty that slashed her nerves. How could he be so certain? How could he be so certain everything would always work for him?

“Leslie,” he went on soothingly, “you need to—”

“I can tell you what I don’t need, Grady. I don’t need you.” He winced. She ignored it, turning away to keep on pacing. “Somebody to find April, that’s what I need.”

“Look, I know you’re upset. Scared about April, but it’ll be all right, Leslie, everything will be all right.”

“Why?” She spun on him and repeated it. “Why? Because you want it to be? Because you’re accustomed to having things the way you want them? Well, let me tell you something, Grady, things don’t always turn out the way you want them to. Things—”

“I know that.” But he said it too softly to penetrate her fear and frustration and sorrow.

“—don’t always go the way you want them to or the way you plan them or the way you pray they will. Things don’t always . . .” A shuddering breath stopped her words, but her eyes were dry.

“Leslie, let me hold you. Let me make it better. Just for a moment, I know, but—”

“No! Don’t you understand? There are things you can’t make better. But you don’t know that, do you? You think having children of your own and bringing them up the way you think you should have been brought up is going to make everything better. It isn’t. It’s not going to make your parents into loving people, it’s not going to erase your lonely childhood. And it’s a horrible reason to want to have a child. Horrible and selfish. And even if I could give you a baby, I don’t know if I’d want to because that’s not the reason to want a baby. But I can’t...God, I can’t.”

A sob overtook the words.

Grady stood, frozen. His arms, which had been reaching for her now looked as if they would hold her off.

Over the urge to let the tears come, she drove home the words he might try to tell himself he hadn’t heard: “I can’t have a baby and that’s something you can’t make better, not ever.”

In her heart, Grady’s stunned silence translated to the rejection she’d always known was waiting. But it didn’t change that she owed him an explanation. Bearing an infinite weariness, she tried to pay what she owed.

“I shouldn’t have let this go on so long. I didn’t intend to, but, well, you are used to getting what you go after.” The ironic tone faded to sadness. “The trouble is, this time what you went after wasn’t what you thought it was. I’m not what you thought I was.”

She sighed—tired, so tired—then spoke carefully. “I was married before, Grady. His family and mine have been friends forever. I knew Frank all through school. We went to UVA together and were married right after graduation.

“We had exactly the life we’d planned. I had everything I wanted. We decided to start our family after a couple years. We wanted two boys and two girls, and I got pregnant almost right away. Frank teased me about being right on schedule, then he gave me this watch to celebrate.” She fingered the bracelet watch she always wore. “Everything was perfect...perfect.”

She wrapped one hand around the opposite elbow, a futile instinct to protect her innermost self.

“I was driving back from the obstetrician. He’d just told me—he’d promised me—everything was perfect. It was sleeting. The road was slick. It started with one car barely bumping another, but nobody could stop behind them. It was a chain reaction. I was in the middle, where the impact was worst. That’s what they told me. I don’t remember it. I just remember saying goodbye to the doctor’s receptionist, then waking up in the hospital four days later. They’d tried to save the baby but there’d been too much trauma from the accident. He didn’t have a chance. And I was hemorrhaging...The doctors were very good, I know that. They saved my life. I know they did everything they could. But I can’t ever have another baby.”

Memories spilled in then: the grim words, Frank’s shock, Grandma Beatrice’s strength. The numbing grief.

“Frank never said anything. Never reproached me, never said an unkind word, but I knew how he’d wanted children. And it was there between us. All the time between us. Like a wedge. And once a wedge is in place it opens up spots for more things to come between you. And pretty soon, you’ve drifted apart. That’s what happened to us, we drifted. I asked him if he wanted a divorce, and he said yes. I took my maiden name and left Charlottesville the day my son should have been six months old.”

He said nothing.

She started to walk past him. He put out an arm and she had to stop to avoid having him touch her.

“Leslie—” His voice sounded rusty, ragged. “Leslie, give me a chance. Give me a chance to think, to come up with something to say to you, to—”

“No, Grady.” She held out her arm as if to ward off a blow. “Even if you say all the right things, it won’t work. I walked away from my marriage with only this engraved watch, but with you I don’t think I could bear to keep even that much. I can’t afford to strip myself clean again. I won’t risk it.”

The door opening was like a shot in the silence.

“Grady! Oh, there you are.” Michael looked from Grady to Leslie and back.

“What do you want, Michael?” Grady stepped forward, blocking any view of Leslie.

“A couple of neighbors who’d been out bicycling just told Mrs. M. they saw a girl who looked like April heading to town about an hour ago. I was going to drive in and check it out. Thought you’d want to come.”

“Yes. I’ll be right there.”

Michael took his cue. Grady waited until the door closed behind him. “Leslie—”

“Don’t, Grady. Just find April. Please.”

He hesitated a moment, then walked out.

“Nothing—damn it.”

“Make another circuit, Michael.”

“Okay.” He turned a corner. “Grady, if talking would help . . .”

“If I knew what the hell to say it might. But thanks.”

Silently, both intently squinting beyond the streetlights into shadows, they circled Lake Forest’s business square for the fourth time.

Grady leaned forward, peering across the tracks at the train station. “Let’s check over there.”

Before Michael stopped the car in the parking lot, Grady was out of it, making for the darkest corner of the platform where he’d spotted an even darker shadow.