The Carson Springs Trilogy: Stranger in Paradise, Taste of Honey, and Wish Come True (92 page)

“Sam, meet your son.” Gently, she lowered him onto Sam’s chest while a nurse propped her up with a pillow.

Gerry didn’t know who started it, her or Sam, but all at once they were both bawling.

“He’s beautiful,” Sam choked, tracing a finger over the back of his head, with its tufts of damp hair like kitten’s fur. His skull was perfectly formed, one of the perks of not having come into the world the hard way. “He looks like his dad.”

Gerry wiped her eyes. “He’s got the Delarosa chin.”

“I wish Ian were here.”

“He will be soon enough.” Gerry half expected him to come bursting through the double doors in a wheelchair any minute.

Sam relinquished the baby to her while they finished stitching her up. “Don’t worry. You’ll get him back,” Gerry promised, noting the hungry way she tracked him with her eyes.

She looked down at the baby nestled in her arms, and the memory once more came flooding back. Only this time it didn’t hurt. She felt as if in some ways she’d come full circle. Her daughter
had
come back … just not the way she’d imagined.

Then, like a wave rolling out to sea, the fullness in her heart receded, leaving it bare and glistening like a shell. She thought of Aubrey, who might have been right for her if the circumstances hadn’t been so wrong. Would he miss her in the months to come? Would he wonder what might have been?

Gerry pushed the thought away. She’d have enough on her mind, looking for a job, without obsessing about her love life.

“I should put Mom and the kids out of their misery,” she said when the baby was once more ensconced in Sam’s arms. They’d be frantic with worry, fearing the worst.

“Mmm … yes.” Sam wasn’t listening. She was too besotted with the new man in her life.

As Gerry made her way down the corridor, she had to concentrate in order to navigate a straight course. Her legs felt wobbly and her head seemed to float several inches above her neck. Anyone looking at her in her scrubs might have mistaken her for a doctor coming out of a long, complicated surgery.

She spotted a familiar figure up ahead, chatting with Mavis and the kids, and froze. Aubrey. What on earth was
he
doing here? Shouldn’t he have been on his way to Brussels by now? Too dazed to think straight, she floated the rest of the way down the corridor. The only thing she was aware of was the bubble of warmth expanding in her chest, filling her with a giddy joy.

He rose to greet her. “Everything okay?”

“It’s a boy.” Gerry turned to Mavis and the kids, seated on the sofa eyeing her anxiously. “He’s a little on the small side, but with a pair of lungs you wouldn’t believe.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Mavis made the sign of the cross. “That’s fifty rosaries I owe.”

“Can we see him?” Andie wanted to know.

“You can even hold him … that is, if you can pry him away from Aunt Sam.” Gerry smiled. “She’s like a mother tiger with her cub.”

Justin grinned. “A boy.
Awesome.”

“A few more and we’ll have our own team,” Aubrey teased.

Gerry looked at him in happy confusion. She was scarcely aware of her feet touching the ground. All she knew was that she’d never been so glad to see someone.

“How did you know to come?”

“I called him.” There was a note of defiance in An-die’s voice.

Aubrey smiled at her. “A wise decision, I might add.”

“But your flight …” The sentence trailed off. Gerry couldn’t think straight with Aubrey looking at her that way—as if it had been months, not hours, since he’d last seen her.

“Never mind my flight.” His tone made it clear it was the furthest thing from his mind.

She met his gaze. Something had changed. He was studying her with an unsmiling frankness that was disturbing—and at the same time exhilarating. She thought of what it must have taken for him to come, the painful memories it had to have unearthed. Another man would have kept on going. The simple courage of it was overwhelming.

She groped for something familiar, something that would anchor her against this feeling that was about to come untethered, and found it in her old bantering lightness. “Well, since you’ve come all this way, the least I can do is buy you a cup of coffee.”

“You two go on. I’ll stay with the kids,” Mavis urged. When Justin opened his mouth to protest, she shot him a stern look. His mouth snapped shut.

They found their way to the cafeteria on the second floor. Gerry remembered from the last time she was here, the year Andie had had her tonsils out, that the coffee was terrible. It hadn’t improved in the intervening years. She took a sip and set it down to stir in another packet of sugar.

“It was good of you to come,” she told him. “You didn’t have to.”

“Because you’re strong enough to bear the weight of the world on your own?” He spoke lightly, but his expression was serious. “I didn’t come because Andie asked. I came because I had to.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say I had some old business to settle.”

Gerry tensed. Was he here because of Isabelle? Because of some need to put his demons to rest? “What will you tell them in Brussels?”

He shrugged. “That it’s taking a bit longer than expected to wrap things up.”

She felt the warmth expanding in her contract suddenly. Was that what she was, an item on his agenda to be wrapped up?

But when she looked into his eyes, it wasn’t Isabelle she saw. Suddenly, she had trouble catching her breath.

“I’m not putting it very eloquently, am I?” he went on, smiling. “What I’m trying to say is that I may have made a mistake.”

Gerry’s heart was pounding so hard she could feel it in her cheeks, a steady hot pulsing. On this night of surprises, was she up for one more? “About me? Or leaving in general?”

“Both,” he said.

She frowned. “I need you to be a little more specific.”

A man nursing a cup of coffee at the next table glanced over at them with disinterest. His eyes were blank, and his jaw stubbled as if he hadn’t slept in days. When she brought her gaze back to Aubrey, his eyes were the opposite—so full of raw emotion she could hardly bear to look into them.

“I realized something tonight—that I’ve been a fool,” he said. “I imagined that if I let myself love you, I’d somehow be erasing Isabelle. But it doesn’t work that way, does it?”

“You’re not the only one to blame.”

“Then maybe it’s time we both took another look.” He gestured in a way that made her think of how he looked when he was conducting, the way he’d seem to pluck a note from midair, as delicately as he might have a butterfly. “Tonight, on the way here, I was reminded of something I’d forgotten—that great music often comes from great sorrow.” He smiled sadly. “I’m better for having loved Isabelle. Just as I am for loving you.”

Gerry couldn’t bring herself to move or even speak. She wanted to say the words beating in her head to the rhythm of her pounding heart:
IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.
But something was stopping her. At last she gave up and said with a crooked smile, “We’re a fine pair, aren’t we?”

Aubrey reached up to tuck a stray wisp behind her ear, waiting for her to go on.

“I was thinking of Sam just now,” she said. “When Martin died, she didn’t expect to fall in love, but I wasn’t at all surprised when she did. She’s built to be a wife and mother.” She idly stirred her coffee. “Me? I wasn’t much of a wife, and aside from the fact that I’m crazy about my kids, I’m not even sure I’m much of a mother.”

“I doubt your children share that opinion.”

“What about you?” She eyed him cautiously. “Don’t you want kids?”

“They wouldn’t have to be mine.”

Gerry felt a seed crack open inside her and send out a pale tendril. She’d always gone her own way, and had paid the price in having to shoulder the entire burden. Now here was Aubrey offering what no man before him had been able to provide: enough love to go around. Her eyes filled with tears and she angrily brushed them away.

However much she might want to, she wasn’t ready to trust.

“Speaking of which, I should go see what mine are up to.” She pushed herself to her feet.

In the lounge, they found Andie and Justin sipping sodas and watching a
Seinfeld
rerun on TV. “Grandma’s with Aunt Sam,” Andie informed them.

“We saw the baby through the window.” Justin sounded vaguely disappointed. It would be a long while before Sam’s baby was old enough to be of much interest.

“I think he looks like Aunt Sam,” Andie observed.

“He looks more like Ian,” Justin disagreed.

“I think he looks like both.” Gerry didn’t have the energy to light a match, much less mediate one of their squabbles. But looking at them—Justin with his head resting close enough for Andie’s hair to tickle his cheek—she thought that maybe she hadn’t done such a bad job of raising them after all.

Which reminded her of Claire. She should phone and let her know what had happened. But the enormity of it all piled on her all at once, and she sank down in the nearest chair as abruptly as if a karate chop had been delivered to the backs of her knees. “I don’t know about you guys,” she said, “but if I’m not home in the next half hour, you’ll have to check
me
in.”

Aubrey bent down, offering her his arm. “My car’s waiting downstairs.”

Gerry opened her mouth to decline, she couldn’t just leave hers in the parking lot, when Justin popped up off the sofa, crowing, “Oh boy, we get to ride in a limo! Wait’ll I tell Nesto.”

“Why don’t you call him from the car?” Aubrey suggested man to man. “It has a bit more cachet than having him hear about it after the fact, don’t you think?”

Justin looked up at him and grinned. “Awesome.”

“I’ll get Grandma,” Andie set off down the hall in search of Mavis, and was back moments later with her grandmother in tow.

Then they were all trooping off toward the elevator. When the doors thumped open and they stepped inside, Gerry had the strangest feeling it was going up instead of down.

A
NDIE WAS GOING OVER
the list of doctors Finch had e-mailed her when she felt the first cramp. She rushed into the bathroom and locked the door.
Please, God, let it be what I think it is. I swear I’ll go to mass every Sunday for the rest of my life.
With trembling hands, she unzipped her jeans.

There it was, a streak of blood on her panties.

A wave of relief swept over her, and she sank down on the toilet seat, grabbing a towel off the rack to muffle the sob that escaped her. It wasn’t until this very minute that she realized how scared she’d been. For if she
had
been pregnant, she wouldn’t have been able to go through with an abortion. At the same time, she hadn’t seen a way to keep it.

Like with Claire. Would her life have been any better if Gerry had kept
her
… or just different? It came to Andie then that very few decisions in life were 100 percent right or wrong. Claire’s parents might have been the best ones to raise her, just as Gerry was best for her now. And if the family Andie had grown up in had morphed into something she hardly recognized these days—with different players and a whole new set of rules—it had started long before Claire.

The first time Andie had held Aunt Sam’s baby, a little more than a week ago, she’d realized, too, how perfect it could be when everything was in place. On the birth certificate he was listed as Jacinto Wesley Carpenter, after both his grandfathers, but they were calling him Jack for short. The only boy in a family of women. he already had them twisted about his little finger with those blue, blue eyes and dimpled cheeks. Aunt Sam couldn’t take her eyes off him, and Laura couldn’t stop cooing. Even the coolly elegant Alice wasn’t above making goo-goo noises. And when he’d started to cry and wouldn’t stop, it had been Grandma who’d put him over her knees and patted him until he let out a loud burp.

When it was her turn, Andie had cradled him as if he were made of spun sugar. He’d looked so small, though the tiny fist clutching her finger was surprisingly strong. The thing that had struck her most was the trust with which he’d gazed up at her. He didn’t know yet what it was to be hurt; he hadn’t learned that it was often the people who are supposed to protect you that you have to watch out for most.

She’d wondered then what it would be like to give up her own baby. In that moment she’d understood the sacrifice her mother had made—not a heartless act, but probably the hardest thing she’d ever had to do.

Andie rose on shaky legs. She couldn’t wait to tell Simon. Finch, too. They’d be so relieved.

She fished a tampon from under the sink, smiling at the thought of how she used to hate her period. Her grandmother had told her that in her day it was known as a woman’s “friend.” Now Andie understood. Tearing the wrapper from the Tampax was like opening the best present in the world.

Justin chose that moment to begin hammering on the door, whining, “Come on, I have to go! You’re not the only one in this house, you know!”

She caught a glimpse of herself in the medicine cabinet mirror, cheeks flushed, grinning like a fool. She was careful to rearrange her features into a scowl before opening the door.

Her brother scowled back. “What
took
so long?”

“I’m a girl,” she informed him loftily, as if no other explanation were necessary. “Why didn’t you use Mom’s bathroom?”

“She’s in the shower.”

“Face it, you’re outnumbered.” She took pleasure in reminding him that he was in the minority here.

“I liked it better when you were at Dad’s,” he grumbled, but she knew he didn’t mean it. This past week he’d been nicer than usual, the other day even loaning her his Discman.

Andie brushed past him into the hallway. “I’m surprised you even noticed I was gone. You’re always at Nesto’s.”

“Not
always.
” He grinned, looking smug.

“Okay, so you spent a day at Aubrey’s. Big deal.” Last Saturday Aubrey had had Justin and Nesto over, and her brother hadn’t stopped talking about it since.

“That wasn’t all. We went to a movie and had banana splits.”

“I thought you had to use the bathroom,” she said, her eyes narrowing.