Birthday Girls (43 page)

And maybe—just maybe—the arrival of this child would finally end his obsession and he could truly be the friend that Kris wanted and deserved.

He took her hand again. She laced her inch-long acrylic fingernails through his fingers. He felt the warmth of her skin, the softness of her flesh. Then he thought about Claire and his three wonderful kids and let the big tears roll down his cheeks. Through them, his smile now was real.

The next
morning Kris tried not to fix her eyes on Sophie, the woman who’d been forever positive and upbeat, who now paced from the window to the chair to the magazine rack and back again, eyes flicking to the clock, jaw set rigid.

“How long did they say?” she asked Kris for the fourth or fifth time in the past three hours, as though her eighty-two years had suddenly caught up with her in a rush and she’d become an old, old woman. “I wanted the boys to leave, to go to school. Do you think that was all right?”

Maddie’s twins had arrived early this morning with Sophie; she’d wanted them to see their mother in case …

“Yes, Sophie,” Kris said now, having decided somewhere in the past hours that she should call Maddie’s mother by her first name—Maddie’s aging mother who had so suddenly become the reflection of a vulnerable child. “Would you like me to get you some tea?”

Sophie stopped pacing and looked at Kris as if she had no idea what she meant.

“I’ll go,” Kris said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Kris was, she realized with some guilt, glad to get away from Maddie’s mother, glad to escape the nervous sparks that flooded the air like dust specks ignited by the sun. She walked down the long corridor toward the nurses’ kitchen, where they’d told her she was welcome to help herself. In
the room, Kris leaned against the shiny white counter and closed her eyes.

It had been a long, long night. After Devon left she’d slept in the chair beside Maddie’s bed and awakened with a crick in her neck, an ache in her gut. In Maddie’s bathroom, she’d thrown up.

No sickness at all
, she thought now, holding her hand to her still flat stomach and thinking it was weird that until she’d known she was pregnant, she’d felt terrific. She opened her eyes, sighed, and put the water on to boil.

She was glad she had come. Being there for Maddie—being “there” for anyone—was something new for Kris. She’d begun to realize more and more how she had spent her life; so isolated, always, it seemed, so alone. Even in a crowd of people, even in the throngs at bookstores surrounded by fans and those who claimed they “loved her,” Kris had been alone. Once she had needed it that way; once it had been the only way she could stay in control of her life and block out her pain. Things would be different now. She would be alone no more.

Dropping tea bags into styrofoam cups, Kris poured in the hot water.
Time to get back
, she commanded herself. Time to sit with Sophie and not think about Maddie who was sound asleep on a hard table in a cold operating room and didn’t know they were thinking about her at all.

With one cup in each hand, her eyes studying the liquid so it wouldn’t spill, Kris turned from the room and stepped into the corridor.

And smacked right into someone.

She hadn’t seen anyone coming.

The hot liquid splattered on her arms. She screamed. She dropped the cups. More liquid scorched her feet. “Shit,” she cried. “Shit. Shit.”

The man she’d run into bent down to help. As she leaned down to retrieve a cup, their heads almost collided.

“Kris,” he said quietly, “are you all right?”

She lifted her eyes, inches from his. She forgot about her burning skin. She forgot about Maddie and Sophie. She forgot about everything as she looked into Edmund’s eyes.

“Maddie
called me last night,” he said, after they’d cleaned up the mess and stood alone in the kitchen. He raised his hands to her shoulders. “She told me not to come. She told me to wait until you got in touch with me. She only wanted me to know you were here … Kris …”

She couldn’t look at him. She stared at the third button down from his neck, the third button down from his neatly pressed collar. She found herself wondering if Sondra had ironed the shirt for him, now that the servants were all gone, now that he and Sondra were a family again.

“Kris,” he repeated. “Maddie said she thought you might want to see me.”

An ache flooded through her. She wanted to scream again. She wanted to run from the room. She wanted to kill Maddie, if Maddie didn’t die first.

“What is it, Kris? What’s wrong?”

She raised her chin and averted her eyes. She could not lie to him. She simply could not. “Nothing is wrong, Edmund,” she said steadily. “I’m pregnant, that’s all. I’m going to have your baby.”

He reached his hand under her chin, then tipped her face toward him. She blinked and finally looked into his eyes.

“You’re pregnant?” he asked. “My God, you’re really pregnant?” His mouth grew wide with a grin.

She knew her eyes were glistening; she knew they were about to overflow with tears.

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

She chewed on her lower lip. “I only found out last week. I didn’t know …”

“I am happy,” he said. “I am so happy, I just can’t believe this. We are going to have my baby.”

“A baby who’s part black.”

“A baby who’s part mine. And part yours.”

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to turn out. Kris Kensington, once having decided she wanted to have a child, should have gone off, become pregnant by the nameless, faceless stud from UCLA, raised her child alone, the two of them, with no need for a man. That was how it would have happened in one of her books. That was how Lexi Marks would have handled it. Independent, strong, Lexi Marks.

Just as she was beginning to gain some resolve, Edmund drew her to him.

“I do believe I love you,” he whispered, stroking her hair. “You are the most remarkable woman I have ever known.”

The wave began somewhere deep inside her. Slowly it rolled to the surface; slowly the pressure unleashed. He loved her. He accepted her. Black and white, he loved her. Kris leaned into him and succumbed to his warmth, his love. And then she wept into his shoulder, safe in the knowledge that she would never again be afraid of who—and what—she genuinely was.

Outside
, in the corridor, a brown-haired woman carrying a nondescript shopping bag stood quietly, listening near the kitchen door. Large sunglasses covered most of her face; a wide scarf was wrapped around her head. She stuffed her hands inside the pockets of her wool pea coat and disappeared into Maddie’s room, the empty room that waited for life—if any—to return.

Moments later she slipped from the room, alone, unburdened, and unnoticed.

• • •

Late in
the afternoon, as the early spring sun began its descent beyond the horizon, the surgeon appeared in the waiting room and told Kris and Sophie that Maddie was in recovery, that she was doing just fine, and that the tumor had been blessedly benign.

September 1998

Abigail
rested her feet on the railing of the front porch, tipped her head back, and closed her eyes to the setting sun. She was tired, so tired, and yet felt so good.

The inn had enjoyed an incredible summer, with each of the fifteen rooms booked every night and the dining room filled not only with inn guests but with tourists from the city as well. McKenna’s Inn—as Abigail had renamed it—had become famous in one season: famous for its gourmet cooking, famous for its unique decor.

Even Joel’s daughter—sweet, cooperative, and friendly—had worked hard picking Abigail’s roses every day for all the guest rooms, and setting the tables for dinner. She did such a wonderful job that once Abigail had kissed her forehead in thanks. She didn’t know which of them had been more surprised.

Joel looked over now from his place on the comfortable glider. “It’s finally over,” he said wearily; “the summer people are gone.”

Abigail smiled. It had been right, she now knew, for her to return.

It had not been easy. Standing in the hospital corridor, hearing what she’d heard, her first reaction had been to attack Kris. Kris Kensington was going to give Abigail’s husband the baby that Abigail never had. And Abigail Hardy had wanted to kill.

But then, she’d looked down at the shopping bag she brought and thought about what was inside.

And then she thought of Betty Ann.

“By the time I am seventeen …” Betty Ann had written so long ago, “I will make sure that we are friends forever.”

So Abigail had not attacked Kris. She had not killed her. Instead she’d left the hospital, left New York.

She’d returned to the small island off Seattle, where it was too damn rainy and too damn cold, but where people treated her like they loved her and where they called her Sarah Appleton even though they knew that was not her name.

Louisa had phoned to say she’d heard from Kris, that Kris and Maddie had been stunned to find Abigail’s gift waiting in the hospital room—the gift that Abigail had set atop the photo album on the nightstand, the Cristal champagne bottle with the three small pieces of paper that lay at the bottom.

Kris had found a secret, safe place and had hidden the bottle away.

A few months after Maddie’s surgery, Louisa reported that Maddie had pulled a coup, had ousted Parker from
Our World
, and had regained the magazine for herself. Circulation was on the rise; advertising dollars were bound to follow.

Louisa had also heard from Harriet Lindley, who’d told her that L.C. Howard had finally given up the art world and women under age thirty. His new passion (“Can you believe it?”) was that young, good-looking boy named Grady.

Last week Louisa had other news. She said that Kris had given birth to a healthy baby girl. A girl they named Abigail.

Edmund and Kris, of course, would not marry. Not until Edmund felt he could have his wife declared legally dead.
It was a measure that Kris apparently was not going to encourage.

But I am dead
, Abigail wished she could tell them. Sarah Appleton is alive; selfish, self-centered Abigail Hardy is dead.

Still, everyone seemed happy at last. Louisa said that Edmund and Kris planned to move to London by Christmas; Sondra had opted to stay behind. She told her father it was time she made it on her own. She had accepted a position with the Historical Society as curator of Windsor-on-Hudson.

Joel rose from the glider now and walked toward Abigail. His ponytail had grown longer over the summer, his tan had grown deeper, his eyes softer. He leaned down and kissed Abigail’s cheek. “How about if I treat my favorite partner to dinner in the city?”

She looked into his eyes and saw beyond them. For the first time she wondered if they could be more than just friends. “Does that mean I’d have to put on real clothes and act like a lady?”

“Fresh salmon,” he said, teasingly trying to coerce her, “broiled lightly in a lemon and dill cream sauce … not, of course, as delectable as yours …”

Abigail laughed and swung her legs from the railing. “As much as I hate to get out of these jeans, the prospect of not cooking has won me over.” She stood up and walked across the porch of the huge old house, the house that glimmered now with life and hope and love. She did not know if there was any future between her and Joel; she realized that what she knew today didn’t matter. Today was today and that was all that counted.

She stopped in the doorway and smiled as she thought that maybe sometimes—if we’re very lucky—maybe sometimes we really do get a second chance to do things over. Maybe we really do get a second chance at life.

Quietly Abigail touched her bracelet, touched the locket. Then she turned and looked back to the porch. “I, of course, will demand a bottle of champagne,” she said to Joel.

“Champagne?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “After all, today is my birthday.” She did not add that she was now fifty, and that her wish had finally come true.

Jean Stone
, a native of West Springfield, Massachusetts, was first published at the age of nine in
Jack and Jill
Magazine. Like the characters in
Birthday Girls
—her fifth novel from Bantam Books—she will turn fifty in 1998. Her previous novels—
Sins of Innocence
,
First Loves
,
Ivy Secrets
, and
Places by the Sea
—have been translated into several languages. A graduate of Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York, she is currently at work on her next novel.