Sweet Laurel Falls (16 page)

This couldn’t be real. Her daughter talking about abortions and
trimesters as if she were discussing the latest movie trailer. Maura felt by
turns icy cold, fiery hot, then completely numb.

“You’re looking pale. Are you ready to kill me now?” Sage
whispered.

“No. Oh, no. It’s a…shock, that’s all.”

She suddenly remembered being seventeen and pregnant and alone
and having to tell her own mother. Mary Ella had been just months away from
James McKnight walking out on the family. She had
hated
adding to her mother’s stress and had put off telling her as
long as she possibly could.

“It was a shock to me too. We, uh, used protection, but I guess
it failed. Obviously.”

Sage gestured to her abdomen, which now Maura could plainly see
was bulging. A baby. Her daughter was going to have a
baby
. She still couldn’t wrap her head around it. She was only
thirty-seven years old. Certainly too old to be a
grandmother,
for heaven’s sake.

“I’m sorry,” Sage said, her voice small. “I know this changes
everything.”

“Yes. Yes, it does.”

Sage looked so defeated, so small, that Maura did what she
should have done in the first place, what she
would
have done if she hadn’t been reeling from the concussive grenade her daughter
had just thrown in her lap. She leaned across the desk and wrapped her arms
around Sage.

Her daughter smelled of wool from her sweater and
watermelon-scented shampoo. When Sage was first born and they were living in the
little apartment above String Fever she had rented from Katherine, Maura used to
hold her daughter for hours, her face buried in her neck as she savored the
scent of baby powder and breast milk and a world of possibilities.

“You’re not mad?” Sage asked.

She hugged her more tightly. “No, honey. How could I be? I
would be the world’s worst hypocrite to yell at you about an unexpected
pregnancy, wouldn’t I? I just wish you had told me.”

In her ear, Sage sniffled a little, which made Maura sniffle as
well. Sage eased away to grab a tissue from the box on her desk and handed one
to Maura too.

“I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to tell you,” she
admitted. “I just… With everything I’ve been dealing with—Jack and working here
and my online classes—it just seemed easier to put it out of my head. I guess I
figured I would deal with everything later.”

She had vivid memories of having the same instinct. For a long
time after she finally figured out she was pregnant with Sage, she had wanted
nothing more than to hide in her bed with the covers over her head and pretend
none of it was real, that Jack was still there, that she wasn’t pregnant, that
she wasn’t alone and terrified.

“You can’t do that, not when you have a pregnancy to consider.
Deal with everything later, I mean. Somebody else is now depending on you to
make sure you’re filling your body with proper nutrients and doing everything
you can for a healthy baby. Are you taking prenatal vitamins?”

Sage nodded and tucked her hair behind her ear. She looked
impossibly young for this conversation. “The clinic doctor prescribed them for
me, and I’ve really been trying to eat better since I found out. I also made an
appointment to follow up with a doctor over in Telluride to start on all the
prenatal visits. It’s next week. Now that you know, would you…could you come
with me?”

“Yes. Of course.” Maura squeezed her daughter’s hand. “I’ll do
whatever you need.”

“Thanks, Mom. That…means a lot.”

How much more stress could she endure in a month? First having
Jack come back, then Sage leaving school and now this, all on top of the grief
that seemed her constant companion.

“I know you said you didn’t want to talk about it, but have you
told the baby’s father?”

“No. I haven’t talked to him since…that night. I told you, it
was a one-time thing. Nothing serious.”

Again she felt constrained from offering advice in this arena.
How could she tell Sage she shouldn’t withhold this information from the child’s
father when Maura had done just that for twenty years?

She glanced at the closed door. “What about your, uh, Jack?”
For a crazy, fleeting moment, she wished desperately that he were here to help
her know what to say, how to respond. Theoretically they were supposed to be a
team now.

She hadn’t wanted him back in Sage’s life, but since she
couldn’t change that now, it seemed only fair that he help her face this now,
after twenty years when she had to shoulder every crisis on her own.

With inordinate care, Sage wrapped her mostly uneaten sandwich
and tucked it back into the bag. “I haven’t told him yet. I wanted to tell you
first. I thought that was only right. I mean, I like Jack and everything
but…it’s different than my relationship with you. I still barely feel like I
know him. I’m not quite sure how to sit down with him and say,
hey, looks like history is about to repeat itself. Funny,
isn’t it?
”

But Sage would eventually have to face her father with the
news, no matter how difficult. Maura’s heart ached a little, remembering well
the strain of knowing she was disappointing so many people who had different
expectations for her.

“My family was here for me when I was pregnant with you, Sage.
My mom was a pillar of strength, and my older sisters were wonderful. They all
backed me up and supported me. Even Riley. Rumor had it he got in a fight at
school once when somebody called me a particularly nasty word.”

She didn’t feel compelled to add that Riley was always on the
lookout for any excuse to fight in those days. That wasn’t the point anyway.

“I hope you know I love you. Nothing will change that.
I’m…concerned about the difficulties ahead of you and the choices you’ll have to
make, but I love you and trust you to do what’s best for you and the child.”

“Thank you. Thank you so much.” Sage sniffled again and wiped
at her eyes with the tissue. “Sorry. You know I’m not usually such a baby, but
lately it seems like I cry at everything.”

“It’s the hormones. Get used to it. You’ve got twenty-something
weeks to be an emotional wreck.”

“I’ve been so worried about telling you. I thought you would
yell and scream and tell me what an idiot I’ve been.”

“We’ve got time for that too,” Maura said with a wry smile.

Sage smiled back, and Maura was happy to see much of the
tension she had sensed in her daughter over the past few weeks seemed to have
seeped away. “I just never thought you’d be so…cool about this.”

There she was being cool again. This was definitely an Academy
Award–caliber performance. Apparently these past months of pretending she had
her life together had given her serious acting skills useful in other areas of
her life.

She wasn’t
cool
with her daughter’s
unwed pregnancy. She was sick, physically sick. Sage had such natural talent for
architecture. Jack had told her so, and he would know. Sage had dreams and goals
for her future, and Maura didn’t know how any of those were attainable now, with
another life to consider.

CHAPTER TEN

“T
HANKS
AGAIN
FOR
COMING
with me, Mom. I didn’t think
I needed moral support, but now that we’re here, I’m so glad you came.”

“So this is it?”

“I think so. Aspen Ridge. He’s in unit twelve.”

The town-house development was one of the more luxurious in
Hope’s Crossing, all glass and cedar and river rock, set on an exquisitely
landscaped sprawl of land that provided a beautiful view of the town and the
mountains beyond.

How was he adjusting to living here? Was it difficult for him
to look out that picture window toward Silver Strike Canyon, a vivid reminder of
all the reasons he had left?

She pulled into a visitor parking lot near his town house. “Are
you sure you don’t want me to wait in the car?”

“Do you mind coming in?” Sage asked.

Yes. She really didn’t want to be part of this conversation
with Jack. Sage was here to tell her father about her pregnancy, an embarrassing
discussion for any girl, not to mention one who hadn’t known her father existed
a little over a month ago.

Maura preferred to stay right here instead of having to face
him with the inevitable awkwardness. How could it be anything else?
She
hadn’t told Jack about her own pregnancy. How
weird was it to find herself here with Sage while their daughter told him
she
was pregnant?

“I don’t mind,” she lied. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Thanks, Mom.” Sage smiled nervously and Maura reminded herself
this wasn’t about her. It was about Sage and her fledgling relationship with
Jack. “I thought about waiting until tomorrow at work, but after his text this
morning while we were at breakfast it just seemed like a sign that I shouldn’t
procrastinate something so important. I’ll feel better when it’s done,
right?”

“Have I told you how proud I am for the way you’re facing all
of this? I know telling Jack is going to be hard, just as it was rough when you
told your grandmother last night, but you’re confronting it head-on and trying
to make the best of it. It’s exactly the right way to handle this.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Sage still seemed reluctant to open the door, and Maura made
sure it was unlocked, then opened her own. Though the day was mild for early
February, the outside air rushing in was still much colder than her
climate-controlled vehicle interior, and she shivered a little but forced a
smile anyway.

“You’ll do fine. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“He could shove me out the door and tell me he doesn’t want
anything to do with me. I mean, come on. What father wants to find out his
daughter is knocked up?”

Maura tried not to think very often about her own father, who
had betrayed and abandoned his family to pursue his own dreams. When she had
found she was pregnant, James McKnight had been so self-involved, so entranced
with his new life as a fancy-free bachelor and award-winning archaeologist, that
he hadn’t seemed to care about the lives of any of his children. She could count
on one hand the number of times he had even
seen
Sage before his death.

“Jack seems like a decent guy. I haven’t had much to do with
him since he came back—but that alone should be proof. He’s here, isn’t he?
Despite his personal feelings about Hope’s Crossing, he came back for you, to
establish a relationship with you. I don’t think he’s going to shove you out the
door, not when he has made such an effort to make sure that door is in the same
general vicinity as you.”

Sage nibbled her bottom lip, looking about ten years old again.
“I guess you’re right. He didn’t
have
to move back
to Hope’s Crossing and open an office here. I figured out the first day I worked
for him that everything we’re doing here in town probably could have been done
more efficiently from San Francisco.”

“Right. He’s here for you, and I don’t think this pregnancy
will change that. You need to trust him now more than ever.”

Sage sighed. “Even though I know that intellectually, it
doesn’t make telling him any easier.”

Maura forced another smile. “You’ll do fine. Come on. Let’s get
this over with. Rip off the Band-Aid and all that.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Sage finally opened her SUV door and climbed out, then headed
past snow-covered ornamental pine trees toward Jack’s town house. Maura followed
more slowly, making her way carefully up the curving path. The temperature was
still cold but above freezing for a change, one of those teaser days that made
her long for spring.

Sage waited until she reached her on the doorstep before she
rang the bell, then tucked her arm in the crook of Maura’s elbow as if they were
taking a casual stroll along the parkland trail that ran parallel to Sweet
Laurel Creek.

They stood that way, arm in arm. The two of them against the
world, as it had been from the moment she was born and again the past year since
Layla died.

Jack answered the door in jeans and a casual tan shirt with the
sleeves rolled up to his forearms. He had reading glasses on, and his wavy dark
hair was slightly messy, as if he had just absently run one of those strong,
long-fingered hands through it as he read.

Despite her tension, she was aware of a completely
inappropriate—and unwelcome—stir of attraction. Drat the man for still twanging
her strings after all this time.

“Hello. This is a surprise.” He quickly removed the reading
glasses and tucked them in the pocket of his shirt, and she tried not to be
charmed by his embarrassment.

“We were in the neighborhood, sort of. When you sent your text,
we were just finishing up brunch with Grandma up at the resort at Le Passe
Montagne. Have you tried it yet?”

“I haven’t.”

“Well, you need to,” Sage said. “It’s really excellent. They
have these crepes on the weekends that are just fantastic. Melt-in-your-mouth
fantastic. All these weird fillings you wouldn’t think would be good but are,
like asparagus and sweet potatoes, truffles, artichokes. Any combination you can
think of. I love the savory ones, but my favorites are the sweet. They make a
blackberry crepe that is totally delish.”

Sage ground to a halt as if she had suddenly remembered their
purpose there. “Sorry. We’re letting all your heat out. Can we come in?”

Curiosity flickered in his blue eyes, but he opened the door
wider. “Of course. Please.”

They walked inside and she was astonished at the size of the
townhome. Most of her house could probably could fit in the great room, with
it’s sweeping post-and-beam ceiling and two-story river rock fireplace.

“Let me take your coats,” Jack said. Sage quickly shrugged out
of her fluffy parka and handed it to her father. Maura dug her curled fingers
into the pockets of her wool coat, driven by the ridiculous urge to clutch it
around her in some sort of feeble protection. He was waiting for her, though,
his head curiously turned, and she finally pulled her arms free and handed it
over.

His hand brushed hers as he took it, and a little spark jumped
between them. Just a current, she knew, but his gaze seemed to catch and hold
hers until she couldn’t breathe. She saw a flicker of heat there, as if he were
remembering their kiss too, but he turned away to hang their coats on a rack
made of entwined elk antlers near the entryway.

“Sit down,” he said when he returned to them, and gestured to
the rustic leather sofa and chairs arranged in front of the fire.

Sage took one edge of the sofa and sent Maura a silent plea to
sit next to her. She couldn’t ignore it, as much as she might have wanted to
pick a chair halfway across the room, away from Jack.

Sage reached for her hand. Her fingers were trembling and Maura
squeezed them for support and comfort.

“We don’t want to bother you. You’re probably working, aren’t
you?” Sage said.

“Just trying to catch up on a couple of projects. It’s
fine.”

“Well, we won’t stay long.” She was silent for several beats
while Jack continued to watch them curiously. Finally Maura squeezed her fingers
again, and Sage drew in a sharp breath.

“I…need to tell you something. That’s why we’re here. I should
have told everyone earlier but, well, everything has been so crazy. I just… I
needed to figure things out on my own first.”

Alarm replaced the curiosity in his eyes. “What is it? Are you
okay?”

The concern in his voice and expression touched something deep
inside Maura. He hadn’t intended to be a father, but she couldn’t deny he was
trying hard here to do the right thing by Sage and seemed to genuinely care for
her.

“I am. I will be, anyway. No, I am.” She curled her fingers in
Maura’s.

“You’re worrying your father,” she said gently. “It will be
easier if you just tell him.”

Sage sighed. “This is hard. Really hard. But you’ll, uh, figure
it out soon enough. I guess I just need to come out and tell you. So…I know
you’ve been worried about me the last few weeks and even told my mom you thought
maybe I had a drinking problem.”

“I didn’t know what to think.”

“I don’t have a drinking problem or the mono or the flu or
anything like that. The truth is, um, I’m pregnant.”

Jack’s features turned blank for perhaps five seconds, and then
his eyes widened and his gaze shifted—inadvertently, she was certain—to Sage’s
midsection, then quickly back to her face. For once, she shared a moment of
complete accord and sympathy with him. She completely understand how flummoxed
he must be feeling right now.

“You’re… Wow.”

“I know. It’s a shock for me too. It wasn’t planned, obviously.
And it wasn’t even like you and Mom. You guys were in love and everything.”

Jack met her gaze, and she felt heat seep into her face at the
memory of just how desperately she had once loved him. Something flickered in
his eyes, something soft and almost tender.

Oblivious to the sudden tension, Sage continued, “I wasn’t even
dating the guy, really. I mean, I liked him and everything but he was…is, well,
seeing someone else.”

This was more than she had told Maura. Apparently Jack merited
a little additional information.

“But he was still willing to screw around on her with you? He
sounds like an ass.” His voice was hard.

“He’s not. He’s… We were friends and…”

“More than friends, it sounds like.”

Sage’s cheeks turned pink. “Well, things went a little too far,
obviously.”

His daughter. This young woman he had only barely discovered
was now going to bring new life into the world. How the hell had his world
become so complicated in a matter of weeks?

“Is he stepping up to take care of his responsibilities?”

She looked down at her hands. “I, um, haven’t told him about
the baby yet.”

“Now, that sounds familiar.” The words came out with more of an
edge than he intended. Maura winced and Sage gripped her mother’s hand more
tightly.

“It’s early days yet,” Maura murmured. Her cheeks looked as
pink as Sage’s, and he wondered what she was thinking.

A child. His daughter, barely older than a child herself, was
pregnant. Some bastard had knocked her up and walked away, leaving her alone to
deal with the consequences.

This whole thing seemed like the echo of a particularly nasty
nightmare.

How was he supposed to react? He didn’t know the first thing
about babies or pregnancies. His only experience with either had been through a
couple of his employees—a receptionist who had worked there through two
pregnancies, until she was eight or so months along, and a really talented young
associate who had ended up leaving to do consulting from home after the birth of
premature twins.

With each pregnancy, it seemed like baby talk had taken over
the office. Everybody who came in seemed to want to talk about ultrasounds and
baby names and
circumcision,
for Pete’s sake.

All that opulent fertility had left him more than a little
uncomfortable. When the office chitchat had started to revolve around swollen
ankles and breast-feeding, he had struggled to find any safe, politically
correct thing he could say as the male employer that wouldn’t be misconstrued.
He had finally decided he would be wise to just ignore the pregnancies as much
as possible.

He wasn’t the employer here, though, and he couldn’t ignore
this. Sage was his daughter—and he had no more idea of what he should say to her
than he had known what to say around the office.

He finally settled on something he thought was relatively
innocuous. “Are you, uh, feeling okay?”

“Yeah. I’m feeling pretty good. I’ve been so tired the last few
months, but I’m starting to get some energy again.”

She mustered a little smile. It struck him again how very
pretty she was, this child he and Maura had created together. Her smile was
almost heartbreakingly sweet, with that little dimple that seemed to peek out at
opportune moments.

In the next few months, her life would change completely. Did
she have the first idea how very much? He wasn’t sure
he
did, he just knew Sage didn’t look nearly mature enough to be a
mother.

“This has got to be a shock for you, right?” Her dimple peeked
out again. “I mean, it’s got to be weird finding out you’re a father and going
to be a grandfather, all in the space of six weeks. Two for the price of
one.”

A grandfather. Good Lord. He was only thirty-eight years old.
He stared at her and then shifted his gaze to Maura, who didn’t look any more
thrilled about that than he was.

“It’s certainly…unexpected. A baby. Wow. I’m still
reeling.”

“I am too, if you want to know the truth. And I’ve known for
several weeks.”

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“That seems to be the question of the hour,” Maura said.