The Color of Joy (6 page)

I noticed at least a half-inch of dark roots, which concerned me because Sylvie was always on top of her hair appointments. She was gorgeous and took great pride in her appearance. The last time I saw her roots showing, she was heading into a severe depression and ended up on suicide watch.

“Oh, hell,” she said, tipping her head back. “Maybe you’re right. I should get out of there. I’m sick of meeting guys like John. I just don’t know what else to do. I never finished college so I’m not qualified for anything except maybe retail. But I couldn’t live without my tips.”

I followed her into the living room where she continued to pace around. I wanted to tell her to slow down with the wine, but knew I needed to tread carefully to get through to her. I needed to connect and build up her confidence.

“What would you
like
to do?” I asked in a more cheerful, uplifting tone. “Could you see yourself working in an office? You could wear skirts and heels every day, meet smart professional men. It’s not too late to take your life in a whole new direction, you know. You’re only thirty-two and you’re smart. You could do anything you want.”

“I can’t just quit my job,” she argued. “I have rent to pay.”

I sat down and patted the sofa cushion beside me. “Let’s take this one step at a time. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

She let out a heavy sigh and sat down.

“What do you love doing?” I asked. “Let’s focus on that first.”

She thought about it for a moment, set her wine glass down on the coffee table and shifted to face me. “You know what I love? All those decorating shows on TV. Maybe I could be one of those home stagers for houses that go on sale.”

I glanced around her apartment which was tiny but tastefully decorated. “We could definitely look into that. I’m sure there are courses you could take. And you’re good with people. You have gorgeous taste. That’s obvious from the way you dress and present yourself. I think you’d be amazing at that. Do you want me to Google it?”

I pulled out my phone and searched for some programs she could enroll in. Most of them were six months to a year in duration. Some of them were offered by correspondence.

She picked up her wine again. “I don’t know about this.”

“Why not?”
Please, Sylvie
.
Give it a chance.

“I don’t want to do anything by correspondence. Like you said, I’m in a rut. I’d be kidding myself if I thought I could wake up in the morning and break out the books. You know I work late. I need to sleep in the day.”

Though she was hesitant, the fact that we were even discussing this was astounding to me. I knew I couldn’t drop the ball now. Not while she was actually considering a real change.

Maybe it was a mistake not to think it through, but suddenly I found myself blurting out another option. “What if you moved in with
me
?”

Sylvie inclined her head doubtfully. “Seriously? I don’t think Jake would be too happy about that.”

“Well…maybe not under normal circumstances, but things aren’t exactly normal right now.”

“What do you mean?”

Should I be doing this?

A part of me worried about telling Sylvie the truth. It wasn’t exactly the best timing after her break up with John. Nevertheless, I carried on.

“No one knows this yet,” I said. “I haven’t even told Mom, but Jake just found out he’s getting deployed to Afghanistan. He’ll be gone for nine months, and on top of that…” I paused. “Well…I’m pregnant.”

My sister stared at me, expressionless. “Pregnant?”

I forced myself to smile brightly and nod, hoping my joy would somehow reflect back at me. “Yes!”

My news was met with silence. Then Sylvie finally spoke. “That’s amazing. Really. But I thought Jake didn’t want kids.”

I tried to keep the mood light. “It wasn’t exactly planned.”

She blinked a few times, then at last, she leaned forward to hug me. “Congratulations. I’m happy for you.”

“Thank you.” I knew my sister too well, however, and felt an emotional thundercloud roll into the room.
Here we go
.

Sylvie rose from the sofa and looked down at me. “Well, this definitely calls for a toast.”

With a sigh of defeat, I watched her stride into the kitchen, pull another bottle of wine out of the rack on the counter and hunt around for a corkscrew.

“Here it is,” she said to herself as she opened a drawer. With trembling hands, she pulled the cork out with a
pop
. Still seated on the sofa, I was surprised when she poured me a glass.

“I can’t drink that,” I reminded her.

She stopped, set the bottle down and let out a silly laugh. “Oh, what an idiot. Of course you can’t. That sucks. Cheers anyway.”

Raising her own glass, she took a deep swig, then glanced around the kitchen as if she were searching for something, but didn’t know what it was.

I rose from the sofa and joined her. “Jake’s going to be gone for a long time. I could really use your company, Sylvie. It would be good for both of us because I don’t want to do this alone. You could get out of your lease, quit your job and live with me rent free until you get back on your feet. Think about it. You could go to school and take whatever kind of course you want. It would be a fresh start, and you wouldn’t be alone either.”

Her gaze dipped to my belly, which was still as flat as a pancake. “I don’t know, Jenn. I’m not sure I could handle being around you.”

I swallowed uneasily. “Why not?”

She scoffed. “You
know
why.” She gestured toward my belly.

Of course, I understood that she was referring to the abortion she’d had when she was sixteen. The two of us had always spent our summer holidays with our grandparents on the coast of Maine, and during one exceptionally hot summer, Sylvie fell fast and hard for a handsome eighteen-year-old. She didn’t find out she was pregnant until October, after we’d returned home to Montana and gone back to school.

She still considered that boy from Maine to be the great love of her life. Unfortunately things didn’t work out for them.

“I always wanted babies,” she complained to me, “but look at my life now.” She glanced around her apartment. “It might really depress me to see you pregnant in
your
perfect life.”

I strode closer. “Just so you know, my life isn’t all roses and sunshine. Jake’s not exactly happy about this, and I’m really worried about him going away for so long. But that’s not the point. What matters is that a change like this could really turn things around for you, open up new opportunities you never imagined.”

There it was—my unstoppable optimism. My belief in something better just around the bend. If only she could see life that way, too, but sadly she was crippled by regret. She limped along through life because she couldn’t let go of the past.

Sylvie backed away to lean against the counter and regarded me with a look of cool derision. “I’ll think about it, Jenn, but don’t clear out the guest room just yet. I can’t make any promises.”

“Great,” I said with forced enthusiasm, finding it difficult to meet her resentful stare. I glanced around for my purse. “Take some time to think about it. I should probably go.”

She said nothing as I walked out, and I wondered how Jake was going to feel about all this.

Not good, I suspected.

I was in bed with the lights out when Jake returned home after midnight. Hearing the key in the door, I tossed the covers aside and padded in my bare feet to the kitchen where I found him standing in front of the open refrigerator.

“There’s some leftover spaghetti from yesterday,” I said, striding forward to help him find it at the back of the fridge. “There it is.” I moved the milk and juice around to get my hands on it. “Here you go.”

As I held it out to him, I realized he was staring at me intently. Deep stress lines creased his forehead.

Jake and I had always been immensely close; we never fought. Our marriage was solid as a rock, but suddenly I was frightened for the future. A shiver moved through me.

He closed the refrigerator door. Without a word, he took the plastic container out of my hands, set it on the counter and faced me.

“I’m sorry,” he softly said. “I’ve been a jerk.”

Feeling completely dumbfounded, I shook my head. “No, you haven’t.”

“Yes, I have. When you told me you were pregnant, I reacted like…” He stopped and took a moment to compose his thoughts. “I was an ass. What’s weird about it is that I always wanted to have kids and be a dad. That’s the life I imagined, with a woman just like
you
. Then everything went wrong with Chelsea. The whole idea became…I don’t know.
Tainted
.”

I still didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure where he was going with this.

He took my hand, raised it to his lips and kissed it tenderly. “I love you more than anything in the world, Jenn, and I’m happy about this. Really, I mean it. I want to have this baby with you. I want us to be a family.”

A cry of relief broke from my lips and I pulled his hands to my mouth to kiss them, over and over. He wrapped his arms around my waist and held me against his strong body. All the doubts and fears of the past few days flew away as I breathed in the familiar scent of him. My husband, whom I loved with all my heart and soul.

“I’m so sorry,” he said again, burying his face in my neck and laying kisses there. “I promise I’ll be a good dad. I just wish I didn’t have to leave you. I don’t want to miss this, and I don’t want you to be alone.”

Drawing back slightly, I looked up at his face in the glare of the kitchen lights and laid my open palm on his cheek. “You won’t miss it,” I said. “I’ll post pictures online every day. I was thinking about it, and we can do video chats. We’ll be in contact with each other constantly.”

He touched his forehead to mine. “It won’t be the same if I can’t touch you and hold the baby when he comes. Or she, if it’s a girl.”

I smiled as a warm, loving glow spread through my body. “The time will fly by and she’ll barely be three months old when you come home. Think how incredible that will be. Everything will be great and…” I stopped for a moment, wondering if I should tell him about Sylvie now or wait until I was certain she was actually coming.

“What is it?” Jake’s brows pulled together with a look of suspicion. It was impossible to hide anything from him.

Backing away, I moved to heat up the spaghetti. “I got a call from Sylvie tonight,” I explained as I peeled the lid off the container. “John just broke up with her.”

“Uh, oh…” Jake replied ominously. “Was she all right?”

I shrugged. “Jury’s still out on that one.”

“How long did it take you to talk her off the ledge?” he asked.

I slid him a knowing look as I placed the spaghetti container inside the microwave, set it for two minutes and pressed start. “It was touch and go for the first twenty minutes on the phone. She wouldn’t stop crying, so I went over there. Surprisingly, once I got there, she seemed to have pulled herself together. I talked to her again about going back to school or getting a new job and for the first time ever, she actually seemed keen on the idea.”

“Really? That’s a switch.”

“Tell me about it.”

Jake sat down at the table. “Do you think she’ll actually do something like that?”

“Well…” I reached into the cupboard for a plate and set it on the counter. “I sort of made her an offer.”

Jake looked at me with trepidation. “What kind of offer?”

“I suggested that if she wanted to quit her job at the bar and take a course to get a diploma in something, she could move in with me while you were gone. To save money.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You invited her to live here? For nine months?”

The beeper went off and I opened the microwave. “I know, I know. I’m still not sure if it was the brightest move, but I really want to help her, Jake. I just want her to be happy, and even though things are fine now, I’ll probably need some help later on when I’m as big as a barn and I can’t rake the lawn or carry the garbage out. And I’d like to have someone here for when I go into labor and need to get to the hospital.”

Jake thought about that for a minute or two. “Would you make her your birthing partner?” he asked. “I thought you might ask your mom.”

I filled a glass with water at the sink. “I hadn’t even thought about that. I’m still working through issues like getting Sylvie out of her lease or helping her figure out what kind of program would be good for her. And who knows? She might not even want to come. You know how she is. She doesn’t handle change well.”

I served the hot spaghetti onto the plate, sprinkled some parmesan cheese on top and carried it to the table with the water.

Jake picked up his fork to dig in. I sat down across from him.

“What did she say when you told her you were pregnant?” he asked knowingly, lifting a brow.

I let out a sigh. “She congratulated me of course, but I could tell she was shaken up. She wasn’t expecting that.”

We both knew that deep down, Sylvie had never gotten over the heartbreak of her first love and the abortion she later came to regret. Jake was no stranger to her emotional ups and downs. He’d been there at my parents’ house when she went upstairs to the attic in the middle of a family dinner. The next thing we knew, she was lugging a box of her childhood toys outside to set fire to it—because clearly, in her mind, she was never going to be blessed with children of her own.