The Homecoming Baby

Her voice trailed off. But she didn’t need to finish. Celia knew why Trish had kept them. She’d kept them because they were all she had left of her glamorous older sister, a sister who had disappeared thirty years ago.

“Oh, Trish,” Celia breathed. “That was unbelievably generous.” She knew how hard it must have been to let them go. Only Trish, so schooled in self-denial, would have been able to do it.

“I thought they might bring in quite a bit of money. And you know the Teen Center needs all the help it can get.”

“They must have been absolutely thrilled.” That was an understatement. Heaven only knew what Angelina’s wardrobe must have been worth.

The Lindens had once been the premiere family of Enchantment. Angelina had disappeared before Celia was even born, but everyone knew the story of the rebellious princess who roared through the night on the back of the town bad boy’s motorcycle, silky black hair flying in the wind, red sequins flashing in the moonlight.

“No,” Trish said. “They definitely weren’t thrilled. This box was delivered to me an hour ago. The Women’s Club thanks me for the offer, but they’re afraid they won’t be able to use the dresses after all.”

“What?”

Trish pointed to the box again. “They returned every one of them. Apparently they think Angelina’s clothes are…tainted.”

Celia was speechless. She looked at Trish’s pale face, and then she knelt next to the box on the floor.

She opened it carefully. Inside, wrapped in crisp white tissue, were at least a dozen of the most magical dresses Celia had ever seen. Peacock-green chiffon and Mandarin red silk. Deep gold satin encrusted with pearls. Ivory lace edging lavender ruffles. Wedgwood-blue and sunshine-yellow, sequins and flounces, daring necklines and flowing skirts.

Celia found herself holding her breath. She’d heard a hundred stories about Angelina Linden—who in Enchantment hadn’t?—but these dresses made the stories come almost eerily alive. As she touched these fabulous fabrics, she understood that Angelina had been exquisite and sensual, daring and vain and elegant. She’d been in love with life, color, movement, texture, sex.

And with an uncomfortable flash of insight, she realized that it was no wonder the Women’s Club had rejected them. Everyone who saw these dresses would ask the same question. Had she been wearing one of these that night? That terrible, bloody night the baby was born?

Even Celia, who loved poor Trish so much, found herself imagining that night. And wondering how a girl must have suffered, starved, squeezed her poor young body to fit it into her normal clothes when she was nine months pregnant.

A small catch in Trish’s breath warned Celia that tears were near again. Celia fought back a wave of fury toward the judgmental old bats who had refused these dresses. It was too cruel.

Trish deserved to be happy. Someone needed to take her in hand and force her to have a little fun.

On the spot, Celia appointed herself that someone.

“I’ve got an idea,” she said. She folded the box shut again and stood with a smile. “There’s a full moon tonight. They say that if you stand on Red Rock Bridge at the full moon and make a wish, it’ll come true. Let’s go out and wish that every member of the Women’s Club goes prematurely gray.”

Trish smiled. “I’m pretty sure the legend says you have to stand out there naked with a live rattlesnake wrapped around your neck.”

“Well, one out of three isn’t bad.” Celia raised one eyebrow rakishly. “Maybe just every third member of the Women’s Club will go gray. That’s enough for me.”

Trish threw her tissue in the trash, obviously having overcome her momentary weakness. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “We can’t do that.”

Celia frowned. “Why not? It’s Friday night. If you can’t be silly on Friday night, when can you?”

Trish didn’t answer that directly, of course. Trish didn’t think that being silly was ever appropriate. Which was why her lovely face was always so pale and faded, Celia thought with a sudden frustration.

“I’m serious. Let’s go out there. We can stop off and buy sandwiches and some white zinfandel and eat dinner by moonlight on Red Rock Bridge. It will be beautiful and pointless and kind of scary—and great fun.”

Trish was already shaking her head. “I can’t,” she said. “This is the night I pay my bills.”

Celia squeezed her hand. “To hell with the bills. Be impulsive. Be foolish. It might make you feel better.”

“No,” Trish said, extricating her fingers. She patted Celia on the shoulder. “Being foolish doesn’t make people feel better. Working does. Being sensible and getting things done makes people feel better.”

Celia sighed. This was so unfair. And it was such a waste. Trish was only forty-five. She was healthy and intelligent and a very attractive woman. She wanted to grab Trish by the shoulders and say, No. You don’t have to atone for your sister’s sins.

But she couldn’t. Trish had made it clear years ago that any deep conversation on the subject of Angelina was pretty much off-limits.

For a few minutes, Trish busied herself straightening up the desk, and then she looked back up at Celia.

“Don’t pout,” she said, smiling. She was clearly herself again. “It really is Friday night, you know. Don’t you have a date?”

“Absolutely not. I gave up men, remember?”

Trish was still neatening the desk as she talked. “Of course I remember. I just didn’t believe it would last.”

“Well, it has. And it will. The Scratch and Dent Club is officially out of business.” That was what Trish had dubbed the long string of flawed boyfriends Celia had, over the years, mistakenly believed she could “fix.”

Trish chuckled as she arranged her pens in her drawer and lined up the paperwork with squared off edges. “Oh, sure,” she said. “It’s out of business. Until you meet another cute wounded puppy who needs saving.”

“Nope.” Celia sat on the edge of Trish’s desk, swinging her bare feet. “Never again. I’ve learned my lesson. No more losers. No more melancholics or workaholics, momaholics or liars. If I ever go back to dating—and I may not, I may become a nun—it would be because I found someone who doesn’t need any fixing up. No scratches. No dents.”

Trish raised her eyebrows. “The perfect man.”

Celia nodded. “That’s right. It’s the perfect man from now on. Or no man at all.”

Trish leaned over, hoisted the large box of rejected dresses under her arm and gave Celia a smile that was half-teasing, half-wistful.

“Then you’d better get on out to Red Rock Bridge and wish for one before the moon goes down,” she said. “Because here in the real world, there is absolutely no such thing.”

CELIA DID GO. Though she had been tired, when she got home she realized she’d been cooped up in the office too long. She needed fresh air and open spaces.

She brought along a foot-long veggie sub and a bottle of white zinfandel, a romance novel and a flashlight. She ate half the sandwich and drank a quarter of the wine. She read a few chapters by flashlight.

Then she walked out to the edge, right to where the formation grew narrow, forming the fragile “bridge” between the two red rock columns, and sang corny Broadway love songs at the top of her lungs.

She gazed toward the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, so silent and endless in the moonlight. Then she lay on her back and dreamed up at the purple sky, which looked like one of Angelina Linden’s dresses, velvety smooth, sprinkled with silver sequins and the round cameo brooch of the moon.

She heard a coyote howl in the distance, and she howled back, then laughed at herself because after that every tiny whispering noise startled her, as if the coyote might be loping her way, answering her call.

And then, after she stuffed her uneaten food and undrunk wine back into her bag, she stood up and walked back to the edge of Red Rock Bridge. She looked up at the moon, and she made her wishes.

She wished for rain to come and end Enchantment’s drought. She wished for courage for Rose Gallen. She wished for rest for Lydia Kane, prosperity for the clinic and swift, healthy deliveries for every pregnant woman in their care.

She wished, especially, for peace to come to Trish Linden, who deserved it. After all that, it seemed too greedy to wish for the perfect man, so she agreed to take one with a little dent, if necessary. A tiny scratch that didn’t go too deep would be all right.

Chuckling at her foolishness, she started to climb down from the bridge. But then she remembered one last thing.

“And if you have time,” she called into the vastness of the purple night, “please let every member of the Women’s Club wake up with nasty red zits on their pointy little chins.”

PATRICK KEPT TELLING HIMSELF TO TURN around. Go back. Give up. You must be nuts.