An Accidental Mom (16 page)

Not clearly, anyway. But he was thinking rationally now. He downed the coffee in one gulp, then headed for the door, stopping near the corkboard. He snapped the slip of paper bearing the name and number of Missy’s owners from under its peg, shoved it into his shirt pocket.

Georgia smiled. “Careful, son.”

“Why?”

“People are gonna get the idea you have a heart, after all.”

Truth was, he didn’t care what people thought. Aside from his mother and son, the only opinion of him that really mattered was Lily’s.

And he intended to do everything in his power to prove it to her, starting now.

When he’d left River Valley before his trip to Chicago, Max had seen Hank’s sister at the house across
the road, carrying a For Sale sign to the front porch. He’d heard that Gladys and George were thinking of moving to Florida; evidently, they’d made their decision.

Now Max had more than enough time to check things out. Nate was playing happily with Georgia’s old baking pans when he left his mom’s apartment. Georgia’s plan, she’d told Max, was to “teach that boy to make his
own
chocolate-chip cookies, since he eats them by the dozen!” As he pulled into the driveway, he remembered that when others commented on Lamont London’s regal ranch house, Lily always shrugged. “I’d rather live in a house like the Morgans’,” she’d say. “It’s my dream house.” If he’d heard that once, he’d heard it a hundred times.

He fully intended to keep the diner, but Max didn’t want to live in the apartment upstairs anymore. He yearned for a lush green lawn, a yard for Nate to play in, a vegetable garden, a garage where he could putter with his woodworking tools. If he bought the Morgan place…

He’d gone to high school with Pat; maybe she could help him cut through some red tape.

“It needs some work,” she admitted, showing him around inside. “But it’s a good, solid house. I’d bet it’ll still be standing here when both of us are six feet under.”

“Now, there’s a cheery thought,” he teased. He walked outside, grabbed the For Sale sign. He handed it to her. “I want it.”

Laughing, she said, “You don’t even know the asking price.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’ll take it.” He handed her a business card, scratched out his Chicago information and scribbled in his new numbers. “Call me when you’ve drawn up the paperwork.”

“Max, don’t you want an inspector’s report?”

“Yeah, but whatever is wrong can be fixed. You said yourself it’s a good solid house.”

“Well…”

“How long will it take?”

“Couple of hours, if the Morgans take your offer.”

“Make them an offer they can’t refuse. Top their asking price by five grand.”

“Max!” Pat said, fanning herself with his business card. “You’re supposed to talk them
down,
not jack the price
up!
”

He glanced at the wrought-iron archway across the road. If Lily said no the first time he proposed, he’d be nice and close; it would be real easy to show up unannounced and pop the question again and again ’til he wore down her resistance and she said yes, if only to shut him up.

“I want it,” he said again. “I’ll pay cash.”

She opened her mouth to protest, but he held up a hand to stop her. “Have the papers ready by morning and I’ll double your percentage.”

Pat didn’t need to think about it. “Done!” she said, grinning.

Now, as he pulled into a space in the hospital parking lot, he smiled to himself. He wasn’t going to let Lily get away this time. He’d waited twelve years to make her his own. If it took another twelve before she said “I do,” so be it. And in the meantime, he
wouldn’t have to wake up to the smell of frying bacon every morning of his life!

He stopped at the desk, asked where he might find Reid and Cammi and the rest of the Londons. Third floor, Maternity Ward, the lady in the striped smock told him. That seemed cruel, Max thought, putting a woman who’d just lost her baby among new mothers and newborns….

On his way to the elevator, he spied the gift shop. Inside, he bought two bouquets of flowers: pink roses for Cammi, red ones for Lily. He bought chocolates, too, and a card that said “My thoughts are with you.” He signed it while the cashier rang up his order, tucked it into Cammi’s blooms. “If you need anything,” he wrote, “just say the word.” Max drew a line under
anything,
and signed his name.

What does a man say in a situation like this? he wondered as the elevator took him up two floors. “I’m sorry,” while sincere, seemed weak and inadequate. Might be best to say nothing, shake Reid’s hand, hand Cammi the roses—tell them how he felt, just by being there. Maybe something profoundly genuine would strike him once he was in their presence.

Lamont and Nadine, Violet and Ivy had gathered in the waiting room. Max studied their joyless faces and waited for something wise and comforting to come to mind. When it didn’t, he sat in the nearest empty chair. “Sorry to hear what happened. Is Cammi okay?”

“Physically, she’s fine,” Nadine said.

No one needed to spell out how she was doing emotionally.

“Nice of you to come,” Vi said. “Are the flowers for Cammi?”

He nodded, shoved the vase of pink roses closer to her. “You can take them to her. I don’t want to intrude.”

“We appreciate your being here, son,” Lamont said.

His deep voice was foggy with grief, something Max understood only too well. Watching a child of your blood suffer was hard and painful, especially if there wasn’t a blessed thing you could do about it. Parents were supposed to protect their kids from harm, dads in particular….

“Lily is in the chapel,” Ivy said. She smiled sadly. “I take it the other bunch is for her?”

Max nodded.

“Well, go on,” Lamont instructed. “Take ’em to her before they wilt. And don’t forget the chocolates. Lily has loved the stuff since before she cut her first tooth.”

He got to his feet, hesitated.

“Chapel is one floor up, end of the hall,” Ivy told him.

“Thanks,” he said, and headed for the elevator.

“Lord,” he whispered, “get me through this.”

He couldn’t believe his own ears. Had a
prayer
really just come out of his mouth? No wonder, he thought as the elevator doors closed, with all the tragedy and trauma that had been going on lately.

What would he say when he found Lily?

Would words even be necessary?

He’d get down on his hands and knees if that’s what it took, because he wanted her to be a permanent part of his life—the sooner the better.

When he peered through the arched window carved into the door, the chapel appeared to be empty. But then he saw her, seated in front, her head bowed.

Easing the door open, Max stepped inside, the bloodred carpet dulling his footfalls. He walked up the center aisle and stopped beside her.
Hi, Lil,
he wanted to say. Instead, he tucked the box of candy under his arm and laid a hand on her shoulder.

She didn’t move, save for the slightest intake of air. For a moment Lily merely sat, staring straight ahead. Then she placed her warm hand atop his, gave it a gentle
pat, pat, pat,
and slid over in the pew to make room for him.

“Peace offering?” she whispered, pointing to the candy on his lap, the roses in his hand.

He tucked in one side of his mouth. She had a knack for reading his mind, and he said so.

“What you saw in Chicago,” he started.

She held up a hand to silence him.

“It wasn’t what you think,” he continued.

Lily met his eyes and he read the hopeful expectation there.

“I was explaining to Susan that…” He coughed. “I was…”

“…telling her goodbye?” she finished for him.

Max smiled. “That, and then some.”

He watched her left brow rise slightly, as if the unasked question was too much to bear. This wasn’t
the time or the place for romantic admissions. He’d tell her the “and then some” when the time
was
right. He gently changed the subject.

“I’m sorry, Lily, about Cammi’s baby, about…” He blew a stream of air through his lips. “About a lot of things.”

Lily opened the box of candy, popped a vanilla cream into her mouth. “So am I,” she said around it.

“You?” He turned slightly in the seat, draping an arm along the pew back behind her. “What could you possibly have to be sorry for!”

“Just…things.” She held out the box, offered him a piece. When he shook his head, she bit into a solid chocolate.

“What things?”

She met his eyes. “Does it matter?”

He could see that she’d been crying, that she was struggling to staunch tears, even now. Max wanted to wrap her in his arms, protect her from pain of any kind. Instead, he grazed his knuckles across her satiny cheek.

“No,” he whispered. “It doesn’t matter.”

She tilted her head, hugging his fingertips to her shoulder. Such a sweet gesture. So sweet that he shifted, intending to hold her close, to start the litany of excuses for his awful behavior.

But she lifted the flowers to her face, closed her eyes and inhaled. “Amazing, aren’t they?”

“Amazing?” Max sat back.
All in good time,
he thought. “How so?”

“Well, they’re so delicate. Soft as velvet. You could crush one with your bare hands. And yet…”
She sighed, drew in their perfume again. “And yet they’re tough enough to slice through denim. I know, because it’s happened to my blue jeans when I hiked in the—” She looked up at him again. “I’m boring you.”

“You couldn’t bore me, not even if you tried. Now go on. You were hiking…”

“The point is, nothing is what it seems.”

When she looked at him this time, he read the challenge in her eyes. So many things she could be referring to… But Max didn’t dare ask what, for fear he’d mention the wrong one, give her a whole new reason to avoid him.

“Get your cell phone fixed?” he asked, changing the subject.

Lily blinked. “It isn’t broken.” Then a slow smile broadened her mouth as she realized what he was getting at. “I’ve been…busy.”

“So I take it.” He stroked her cheek again. “I’m sorry about Cammi’s baby.”

Lily nodded. “Me, too.”

He took his arm from the pew, rested it across her shoulders. “Is there anything I can do?”

When she smiled up at him, his heart lurched.

“You’re already doing it, Max.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Pretty good, all things considered. They’ll be sending her home in the morning. Nothing more the doctor can really do.”

“I guess she’s taking it pretty hard?”

“No harder than would be expected. But she’s been through it before. She’ll be okay, in time.”

Max faced forward, pressed the pads of his fingertips together to form a spider that squatted and stood, squatted and stood. “Doesn’t seem fair.”

“What doesn’t?”

“With a world of wicked, evil people to pick on, why did God choose Cammi to do this to? She’s as good as gold.”

“He isn’t picking on her,” Lily corrected. “It just…” She shrugged again. “It just happened. It isn’t God’s fault.”

“Then, whose fault is it?”

“I guess if we need to name a culprit, we can choose life.”

He shook his head. “I’ll never understand you people.”

“‘You people’?”

“Believers. Followers. Born-again, saved, baptized, in-the-spirit Christians—whatever you’re calling yourselves these days.”

She pursed her lips, tilted her head. “I like to think we’re the faithful.”

“See, that’s where you lose me.”

“Where faith comes in, you mean?”

He nodded.

“You can’t have faith by taking a pill, Max. It doesn’t magically show up in some people, skip over others. It’s something that develops, over time. Something that you learn to
do
as much as you learn to
feel
….”

“Through suffering?”

“Not necessarily, but that’s one road.”

“Thanks, but I think that’s one road I’ll stay off of. Too many potholes.”

“You put them there. You should be able to avoid them.”

He turned to her. “What?”

“Well, you did.” She replaced the top on the candy box. “Every time you feel doubt, or fear, or worry, you’re digging a new hole. See, that’s where I was going before, with all that ‘rose’ talk. We’re a lot like those flowers. We sometimes look weak and fragile, but we’re really not.

“Because God made us of strong stuff, gave us what we need to fend off things like doubt and fear and worry. You have all the tools you need to avoid those potholes—right here.” She laid her hand over his heart. “
That’s
where faith is born, Max. You can’t get it simply by showing up at church, or by reading the Bible. You won’t find it by donating money to charity or doing good deeds.”

She patted his chest. “You’ll find it
here,
within yourself.” A last shrug. “If you choose not to look, then you have no one to blame but yourself when your tires go flat.”

“Tires?”

“Well, the potholes metaphor was yours….”

He chuckled. Leave it to her to make him laugh, even at a time like this. Max put his arm around her again. “So you’re really okay with what happened to Cammi’s baby?”

“I didn’t say that. I’m heartbroken. I’m sad. Angry. It shouldn’t have happened. She’d make a wonderful mother.” She took his hands in hers, gave them a
gentle shake. “Don’t you get it? I have faith that things will turn out all right in the end. I have no idea
how
they’ll turn out, mind you, but I know everything will be all right.”

“And that’s faith.”

“My version of it, anyway.”

He pulled her into a sideways hug. “How’d you get so smart?” he asked, kissing her temple.

“Not smart…”

“Faithful,” they said together.

“I’m not sure I get it,” he admitted, “but I promise you this—I’m going to give what you said a lot of thought.”

“Why the sudden change of heart?”

He could almost feel the warmth of her little hand against his chest, above his heart. “Truth?”

Eyes wide, she pointed to the cross up front. “You’re in a church,” she said, grinning. “I strongly advise it.”