Wishes and Stitches (27 page)

Chapter Forty-seven

I
t was a foggy walk, but Naomi didn't feel the chill—her emotions kept her warm as she walked the familiar sidewalks. Anger—he should have known better. Embarrassment—what was to keep townspeople from gossiping about her? Sadness—she wasn't really sure where that was coming from, and she pushed it away. Naomi was good at that.

She'd already had enough to do in this town just trying to be accepted as a good doctor, but now they'd never, ever trust her. Sex in public, good God. In view of the local bar. She curled her fingers tightly, the nails biting into her palms.

But . . . it
had
been amazing sex. With an amazing man. At Naomi's core, she felt a flare of heat, remembering the feeling of Rig being inside her, his eyes focused only on her.

No
. She reached again for her anger, her feeling of betrayal, and walked faster.

In front of her house, she got her keys out as quietly as she could, praying they didn't jingle. She'd forgotten about her mother and Buzz staying with her until she saw Buzz's white truck parked in front of the house, taking both the parking spaces.

She did
not
want to talk to Maybelle right now—she wanted to take a shower, wash Rig's smell off her body so she'd stop having that dizzy, floating sensation whenever she thought about how he'd touched her, how he'd made her body feel.

And how he'd made her heart feel.

She shut the door behind her, willing the latch to click silently. Instead it shot home like a bolt with a loud
snick
. Naomi waited.

And it came: “Is that you?” Maybelle's voice called from down the hallway.

“No, Mom,” Naomi said. “It's not.”

“Very funny.” Maybelle entered the room wearing a long pink nightgown that looked like it was made of nylon. It clung to her hips and belly, and there was no way Naomi would ever have imagined her mother wearing anything like it.

“I'm scarred for life, Mom.” Naomi opened the bathroom door and tugged her fuzzy red robe off the hook. “Cover up, would you?”

“Oh, honey, it's Buzz's favorite.”

“I don't want to know that. Good night, Mom.” Naomi went into the kitchen, hoping her mother wouldn't follow her. No such luck, of course. Maybelle trailed behind her, her eyes wide and innocent.

“What's wrong? How did things go with Rig?”

“Fine.” Naomi poured herself a glass of water. What did her mother know? God forbid they'd driven down Main on the way home and looked at the health center's windows . . . It wouldn't have been on the way, not from Jake's, but would they have . . . ? Oh, lord. “Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered. I sensed a real chemistry between you two.”

Naomi drank her water too quickly, and some of it went down the wrong way. She coughed, and then managed, “Oh.”

“Are you choking?” Maybelle pounded her on the back.

“Mom, stop!” Naomi kept coughing.

“Do you need the Heimlich? Put your hands to your throat, and I'll go get Buzz. He knows how to do it.”

“Mom. You can't choke on liquid.” Naomi coughed again and tried to stifle it.

“I'm sure you can.” Maybelle sniffed.

“I'm the doctor, Mom. You can drown, but liquid eventually goes down. I don't need the Heimlich.”

“You may be the doctor, but you don't always have that much sense.”

Her mother had just found out that her sister was knocked up, and she was the one getting the criticism? “It's late, Mom. Is Buzz asleep?”

Her mother smiled slyly. “I gave him the old knockout one-two.”

“Jesus! Mother!” She'd have to buy new sheets for the guest bed. Naomi closed her eyes. Maybe if she pretended she were somewhere else . . .

“And anyway,” Maybelle continued, “I don't mind setting a good example for you. You and that Rig, what's the story?” She sat at the kitchen table and looked at Naomi expectantly. “Will you get me some water, too? Please?”

No getting around this one. Naomi accepted her fate.

“Here,” she said, setting the glass of water on the table.

“Now sit down, yes, right there. I want to hear everything about Rig. He's very handsome, isn't he?”

Rig was the best-looking man Naomi had ever seen, and even more, he was the
best
man she'd ever known. Kind, and smart, and completely unbothered by what other people thought. Ridiculously hot. And he cared about her. She could feel it.

And by tomorrow, everyone in town would know she'd screwed him in a window. Way to create a connection with the locals.

She reached for her knitting, still in its basket where she'd left it on the kitchen table. Thank God for the lace. It might keep her from going stark raving insane during the next few moments she had to spend with her mother.

“Have you had sex yet?”

“Mom.” Naomi pretended to search for a dropped stitch when it was actually a simple knit-back row.

“Fine. Don't tell me. But this is what I have to tell you, darling: don't wait too long. You need to get a man like that on the hook, and catch him. Pull him into your boat before—” Maybelle stopped speaking and looked down into her ice cubes. “You can keep it from him that you're not perfect until you snare him.”

Naomi exhaled sharply. “You sound like a magazine article from the fifties. Do you really believe that? Did Buzz think you were perfect when you got married?”

Maybelle nodded, confidence exuding from every tight pore. “He thought there was nothing better than me. I've still never once farted around him.”

Naomi winced. “That doesn't sound healthy.”

“Healthy for the relationship, though. And that's what I'm trying to say to you. Keep the romance alive, keep that spark, make him wonder a little, never show him all the mystery. A little suspense adds spice.” She shot a sharp look at her daughter. “And get your hair done. You've got a little gray coming in now, haven't you? You get that early silver from me, poor thing.”

Naomi moved the salt shaker, a little pink girl owl, away from the pepper, a little blue boy owl. Since she hadn't known her mother was coming to town, most of the owl things were put away. At least these were out.

“That's a game, Mom. I don't want that.”

“Not a game so much as a clever plan. Nothing wrong with that, right? Didn't you have a plan when you wanted to be a doctor?”

Of course she had. But Maybelle wouldn't know much about that plan. Her father had been the one who had plotted and schemed with Naomi late at night while she was in high school, critiquing her college entrance essays, and planning which college campuses to visit on school break. After he'd died, even though no one else she knew worked full-time through medical school, she had, picking up whatever waitressing job would provide her with the most flexibility. She'd worked as hard as she could, at everything.

“Of course I had a plan,” said Naomi.

“There.” Maybelle tapped the top of the table with her French-manicured nail. “That's what I'm talking about. No different from when you were in college. You were so
good
at things then.”

“And now?”

Maybelle took a sip of water and looked up at the ceiling.

“Okay, Mom. I think I'll—”

“No, don't go. I have more to say.”

Naomi should have known she wouldn't get off so easily. Her head ached, throbbing in time with her heartbeat, but she stayed at the table. Just a few more minutes, a few more stitches, and then she'd be able to cry in bed. “I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Anna. But I'd just found out and—”

“You
should
have told me. I'm furious with you about that. But no matter who that father is, I know one thing: it's going to be a gorgeous baby. I can't even imagine what I'll feel, holding my perfect little grandchild. I wonder if I can talk her into coming home with me this time . . .”

“Are you kidding me?”

Maybelle looked at her hot-pink-tipped manicure.

Naomi went on, feeling almost frantic. “I don't get it. I've never done anything right on your terms in my whole life. I've been screwing up, left and right, from the moment you left me with Dad. At least he loved me, just as I was. You've always pushed and
pushed
me. Now that Anna's knocked up, you're supporting her? You're not going to be mad, even a little bit? But you're mad at me for not telling you, when it wasn't my job in the first place?”

“I just—”

“What, Mom? You just what?” Nothing her mother said could change the fact that she was always going to play second fiddle in her mother's estimation, and yeah, that hurt. Like hell.

“I just never expected any more from her.” Maybelle's words were flat, without affect.

The words shocked Naomi into closing her mouth, into swallowing the retort she hadn't quite come up with. Finally she managed, “What do you mean?” But she knew. In a small, ashamed part of her heart, she wondered if she'd felt the same way about Anna as her mother had. God, she hoped she hadn't. But it was possible.

Maybelle sighed heavily, and it sounded real. “It was the same with me, you know. When I got pregnant with you. She's just repeating her mother's mistakes.”

“But you were with Daddy.”

Her mother laced her fingers together so tightly Naomi could see her knuckles going white. Again, she remained silent.

“Mom. You were with Daddy. It was totally different from the situation Anna's in.”

Maybelle met her eyes, and with a thunk, Naomi felt something drop heavily into place.

“You weren't with Daddy.”

“I couldn't . . .”

“You couldn't
what
, Mom? Tell me the most important truth of my life?” Naomi took a deep breath around her tightening chest. “Who was he, then?”

“Naomi, I can't just . . .”

“You
have
to.” Naomi had never felt such a combination of shock mixed with grief. If the one person who'd ever really, truly loved her wasn't her father, then where did that leave her in the world? Who was she?

Nobody.

Maybelle, looking more miserable than Naomi had ever seen her look, said, “He was a young man I met while I was traveling, trying to see the world. He was married to a woman he loved but who didn't love him. He already had a son. When he found out I was pregnant, he said he couldn't see me again. He cut off everything.”

“I have a
brother
?” This was just too much. “Where is my . . . father now?”

“He died. A long time ago.”

“Oh, good. Just like my fake dad. How did you know? Were you keeping track of him the whole time?”

Maybelle looked like she was about to cry. Her fingers still fought each other, the acrylic ends clicking, an echo of Naomi's needles that, astonishingly, were still moving. “Facebook.”

Naomi let out a sharp-edged laugh. “Are you serious?”

“Not that long ago, an old friend of a friend put together a list of the people we'd been traveling with that summer. He wasn't on it, and another friend asked why.”

Naomi would never have a chance to know him. She'd never meet him. Naomi stopped knitting, finally, and wound the leading yarn around her fingers, wanting them to go as white and bloodless as Maybelle's knuckles. “Do you know where my . . . brother is?”

Maybelle bit a nail tip between her teeth. “No, I'm sorry. I haven't tried to find out. And honey, you have to understand that Daddy is still your father. He was that, in every single way,” Maybelle said, panic rising in her voice.

“Except he wasn't my father. Ever.”

“He
was.
He loved you so much, Naomi—I wish you could know how much—he was there when you were born. He chose you as his from your first breath. He held you first. Before I even did. He claimed you as his.”

“Daddy was the one thing that buoyed me up in the face of your indifference. Why didn't you tell me? What possible excuse could you have had for keeping the most important thing in my life a secret?”

“You loved your father. If I was bad at being your mother, I could always rest easier knowing I'd given you the best father in the world.” Maybelle paled even further. “I know you think . . . Anna told me. But—”

“Anna told you what?” A fear crept into Naomi's heart that she didn't know how to name.

“That you've always thought you were second best to me.”

Naomi's blood felt icy. “Where did she get that information?”

“She said Rig told her. When they were working on a surprise for you. But, honey—”

“Stop.” Naomi let the right needle go. “Stop for a minute.” She'd told Rig in confidence, when she was sick, her secret belief that her mother loved her two daughters very differently. It was something she'd never said out loud, until she said it to him. And he'd gone and told
her sister
? Anna had of course run and blabbed it to their mother, which made it a million times worse.

“Is that why Anna called you? To talk about me? Not to tell you that you were going to be a grandmother?”

Maybelle flinched. “What matters is that she called. And that I came. And now I can tell you that you're wrong; even if I've never been good at showing you, I do love you as much as I do Anna.”

“Words, Mom. That's all those are.” The feeling of betrayal was like a scalpel, one slick, fast cut letting the blood spill out. She stood, throwing her shawl onto the table with a metallic clatter and
shush
of wool. “No matter what you tell yourself, you never, ever loved me like Anna. No matter what I was or how well I did. Your love for me was different. Conditional. Contingent on my being the good daughter, on my grades, on my being the one who never screwed up. And now I finally get it.”