Jane's Harmony (Jane's Melody #2) (30 page)

“Am I really heavy?” she asked.

“Not at all, babe,” he answered hoarsely as he strained beneath her weight.

And Jane knew it was the only time he would lie to her, and she loved him for it. Then he kissed her before he carried her through the door and into their home.

Caleb paced in the waiting room, mumbling wild prayers and pulling at his hair. Sweat glistened on his brow and when he clawed his fingers through his hair, his hands were shaking.

He leaped at the doctor as soon as he appeared. “Is she okay now? Can I go back in?”

“We need to do a cesarean section, but you can scrub up and come into the operating theater. The anesthesiologist is there with her now.”

The doctor led Caleb down the hall and into a room, where they both washed their hands and arms, then put on gowns and caps. When they walked into the operating room, Caleb saw Jane on the table and his heart skipped a beat. There was a half curtain suspended from the ceiling, blocking the lower half of
her body, where two nurses and the anesthesiologist were busy working. Jane’s face was pale and her hair was drenched with sweat. But she smiled when she saw him.

“Hi, honey,” she said. “How are you holding up?”

Caleb returned her smile as best he could, brushing a loose strand of hair away from her face. He looked at her with such concern, it nearly broke her heart.

“I’m holding up okay,” he finally answered. “How are you doing, baby?”

“I’m all right. They gave me a spinal and I can’t feel my legs. They say they might remove my appendix if it looks infected.”

“Both of them?” Caleb asked, slightly panicked.

Jane couldn’t help but laugh. She reached up a finger and poked his nose. “You’re silly. Appendix isn’t plural. A person only has one.”

“But if you only have one, don’t you need it?”

“No, I don’t need it,” she assured him. Then she looked at him in his gown and hat and said, “You know, it’s too bad you don’t even know what an appendix is, because you would have made a really cute doctor.”

“I’ll be happy to just be a really cute father,” he told her.

He took her hand in his and Jane could feel that he was shaking with nerves. She looked into his sweet green eyes and she wished she could somehow reassure him that everything would be fine, but she was in need of reassurance herself.

The anesthesiologist’s head appeared above the curtain. “Can you feel that?”

“Feel what?” Jane asked.

“That’s the answer we want to hear,” he replied.

Then the ob-gyn joined the others, and they were all there working and talking beyond the curtain for a while—nothing urgent, just a quiet murmur.

Time seemed to pass in strange intervals to Jane.

She looked up at Caleb and waited and wished and prayed.

“I’m making the uterine incision now,” she heard.

Then there was a lot of tugging and pulling, so much that she thought she might be ripped beneath the curtain, and she squeezed Caleb’s hand to her chest and looked into his eyes. A minute passed, maybe two. Then she heard the most beautiful sound in the world. She heard her baby cry. Her heart filled with joy and her eyes filled with tears.

She felt Caleb’s lips on her forehead.

“Congratulations,” the ob-gyn said from beyond the curtain. “If you look to your right there, you’ll see your beautiful baby girl on her way to the warm room.”

Jane lifted her head slightly and blinked away the tears just in time to catch a glimpse of the nurse carrying their baby from the cold operating room into the attached warm room. Then she leaned her head back onto the pillow and closed her eyes, and thanked God and the universe and modern medicine and the doctors and the nurses and her sweet, sweet Caleb, the father of her healthy child. When she opened her eyes again, she saw that he was crying too.

“I can’t believe it, Jane,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m so happy, I can’t believe it.”

She squeezed his hand. “I couldn’t have done it without you. And what did I tell you about painting that room blue?”

He smiled and wiped away a tear. “Maybe she’ll like blue.”

“Maybe she will,” Jane said. “Maybe she will.”

Several minutes later, while the doctors closed her incision, the nurse came out and called Caleb into the other room. He looked at Jane, hesitating.

“Go ahead,” she said. “Go see our little girl.”

It seemed like forever, lying there being stitched up and watching that door. Then Caleb reappeared with the largest smile she’d ever seen on his handsome face, holding a tight bundle of blankets in his arms. He walked to the bed and gently held their baby up for her to see.

It was the most darling little face Jane had ever set eyes on. She reached her arms out to take her from him, but then hesitated and looked to the nurse who had followed Caleb out and was standing behind him. The nurse nodded that it was okay. Jane’s arms were trembling, and Caleb helped guide the baby until Jane had her cradled to her breast.

They were quiet there together for several minutes. A new family on one side of the curtain, the doctors finishing up their miraculous work on the other.

“I guess now we’ll need to come up with a name,” Caleb finally said. “All the ones I had picked out were for boys.”

Jane looked at Caleb. He seemed both older and younger than he had just minutes before. As if he’d taken on a new responsibility for something very important, but in the process had shed some sense of responsibility for everything else. She decided that fatherhood looked good on him.

Then Jane looked down upon this perfect little life in her arms, this miracle that she and Caleb had created together.

“Her name is Harmony,” she said with a smile. “Harmony Grace Cummings.”

“You don’t want her to have your last name too?”

Jane looked up at the man she loved and smiled. “No. Because as soon as she’s old enough to walk me down the aisle, we’ll be making an honest man out of you.”

Caleb smiled. “Harmony Grace Cummings it is, then,” he said.

And then he bent over the bed and kissed them both.

Epilogue

T
hree years later, the cars were lined up on the street for three blocks in both directions, and the laughter coming from the backyard was so loud that the courier didn’t even need the address or the white and purple balloons on the gate to find the place.

He straightened his tie and knocked on the door. When no one came, he knocked again. At last it opened.

“You’re just in time,” the woman said. “Come on in.”

“Oh, no,” he replied. “I’ve only come to make a delivery. Is Miss Jane McKinney here?”

“She’s busy right now. I’m Marj, how can I help you?”

He bent and picked the box up from between his feet. “I have a delivery for her.”

Marj reached for the box, but he pulled it away, saying, “Miss McKinney needs to sign.”

“Can’t I sign for her?” Marj asked. “It’s an important day.”

“I know it is,” he said, “but this is an important delivery and it needs to be signed for by her.”

“Wait here, then,” Marj said, pulling the door closed.

When the door opened again, a beautiful woman wearing a lavender lace Renaissance dress and a matching flower in her hair smiled at the courier and said, “May I help you?”

“Are you Jane McKinney?”

“I am for another few minutes,” she said.

“I’m with the law firm of Douglas and Cooper, and we’re making a delivery on behalf of the Seattle attorney handling Mrs. Hawthorne’s estate.”

“Her estate? I knew she had passed, but . . .”

“Yes, she left instructions for this to be delivered today.”

He handed Jane the box. It was heavier than it looked. She set the box just inside the door, then took the pen he offered and signed the delivery receipt. He folded the paper, slipped it into his breast pocket, thanked her, and left.

When the door was closed, Jane knelt and pulled back the tape, then opened the box. It was filled with packing peanuts, and on top was an envelope. She opened it and removed the letter, written in a shaky script.

Dear Jane:

I know I’
m showing up unannounced, and with two husbands to boot, but a promise is a promise. I hope you and Caleb won’t find us a burden on your special day. Feel free to pour us out into any old Texas river after you’ve said “I do.” Or keep us on your mantel. Either way, I’ve enclosed a small token of my sincere appreciation for the kindness you and your thoughtful, hardworking man showed to a lonely old woman.

If I’ve learned anything worth passing on in these ninety-three years, it’s that life is filled with questions, and love is the answer to every one of them. So I wish you lots of luck, but above all else, I wish you lots of love. And don’t you dare be at all sad over me—I’m starting my new life as well.

Faithfully yours forever,

Mrs. Nancy Lou Hawthorne

There was a check inside, and when Jane unfolded it and read the amount, she nearly fell over. Then she reached into the box and pulled the brass urn up from the packing peanuts. She couldn’t resist looking underneath it, and sure enough there was an old yellow piece of masking tape with faded writing that
read:
1949—$9.85
. Jane chuckled. Who would have thought that the woman who knew the price of everything she’d ever bought would end up being so generous?

“What do you have there, baby?”

She looked up at Caleb; he was holding their daughter in his arms. He had never been more handsome than he was today, wearing linen pants with a sash and a puffy white silk shirt. And Harmony had never been cuter, either, her hair curled, her big green eyes filled with wonder.

“It’s Mrs. Hawthorne,” Jane said, nodding to the urn in her hands. “She showed up for the wedding after all.”

Caleb smiled. “She sure was a special woman.”

“Yes, she was. And she sent us a wedding gift too. A check.”

“Really? That’s unexpected. How much was it for?”

Jane grinned. “Let’s just say we’ll be paying off the house sooner than we thought.”

Caleb raised his eyebrows. “Wow. Does this mean we can go on a honeymoon after all?”

“I think it means we can run off to Venice and kiss beneath the Bridge of Sighs.”

Caleb adjusted Harmony in his arms, then leaned in and kissed Jane, saying, “I can’t wait.”

“Daddy’s kissing Mommy.”

Caleb pulled away and looked at Harmony and smiled. Then he looked back to Jane and said, “We came to find you because Harmony here is ready to walk you down the aisle. Aren’t you, sweetie?”

Harmony nodded. “Yes, Daddy.”

He held Harmony out for Jane. “Why don’t you trade me, baby, and I’ll go and find Mrs. Hawthorne a seat in the front row.”

Jane swapped the urn for her daughter, kissing Caleb in the
process. “Don’t put the urn next to my mother,” she warned. “She has strong opinions against cremation.”

“I wouldn’t do that to Mrs. Hawthorne anyway,” he said, grinning and carrying the urn away.

Jane and Harmony watched him go. Both were smiling. Then Jane turned with Harmony in her arms and looked at their reflection in the foyer mirror. They wore matching dresses and had matching lavender begonias in their hair.

My God, Jane thought, how lucky can one woman be?

When Jane stepped from the house into the backyard, the band began playing a simple but beautiful instrumental version of “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”

Jane looked at all the faces of the people turned around in their white chairs. Among them she saw Marj and her husband, Bill. She saw Caleb’s music friends and the warehouse workers. And she saw her mother, sitting next to her brother, Jon, who was finally out of jail and, at least for today, sober. She saw Mrs. Hawthorne’s urn glinting in the sun. And she saw their new neighbors, desperately chasing down their kids, who had abandoned their chairs to play a game of tag around the tree in the corner of the yard. She saw Mr. Zigler in his best Sunday suit, standing proudly beneath the arch he had helped build, his mail-order license in his pocket, ready to marry them. And she saw Caleb beside him, looking very much indeed like a prince.

She and Caleb smiled at each other, fifty feet of grass the only thing in the world left between them. Then Jane set Harmony down on the lawn beside her and squatted to look into her daughter’s green eyes.

“Do you know that I love you more than anything else in the world, sweetie?”

“I love you too, Mommy.”

“Will you take me to your father now so I can marry him?”

Harmony smiled, her curls bouncing as she nodded. “Daddy showed me how.”

Jane stood and took her daughter’s tiny hand in hers. Then she leaned her head back and closed her eyes for a moment. The sun was warm on her face and the music played beautifully in her ears. She could almost feel her friend Grace and her daughter Melody smiling down on them today.

Jane opened her eyes and looked ahead at the man she loved, where he waited for her beneath an arch covered with a garland made of flowers. Then she smiled down at her daughter and nodded.

“I’m ready now,” she said.

Harmony took the first confident step toward the altar and Jane followed, walking down the grassy aisle toward her future.