The Second Time Around

There were crystal glasses on the coffee table and he quickly filled first one, then the other. Once he put down the champagne bottle, he picked up both glasses and offered one to her.

“Here.”

But Laurel kept her hand at her sides and she shook her head. “No, I can’t.”

Jason was nothing if not tolerant. “I know, I know, it’s not five o’clock yet, but this is a special occasion, honey. I promise I won’t tell the alcohol police. They won’t bust you.” Picking up her hand, he tried to press the glass into it.

But she kept her hand clenched, refusing to take the glass even though there was nothing she would have rather done right now than down its contents—maybe even the whole bottle. But the reason she wanted the drink was the very reason she couldn’t have it.

“No, Jason, really, I can’t. I can’t have a drink of champagne. Or anything alcoholic.”

The perfectly shaped eyebrows she had always envied drew together in a concerned line as Jason looked at her. “Why? Aren’t you feeling well?”

She felt inches away from recycling her lunch. “So-so.”

And then he remembered. The excitement left his voice. “That’s right, you went to see Dr. Kilpatrick today. What did she say? Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” he guessed, afraid to let his imagination go any further. “Can you take something for it? Can it be cured?”

Terminated, maybe, but not cured. And she wasn’t about to consider the former. So she shook her head. “Not really.”

Jason’s festive mood was gone. “Honey, is it something serious?”

She pressed her lips together. The moment of truth was here. “That all depends. Do you think a baby is serious?”

It was his turn to repeat words in confusion. “A baby?”

Laurel nodded. It was time to drop the bomb. She couldn’t stall any longer. “Jason, I’m pregnant.”

The glass he’d been holding slipped from his suddenly numbed fingers. Champagne pooled on the light gray carpet, then slowly sank in.

Like a drowning man going down for the fourth time.

CHAPTER 4

Laurel swallowed the few choice words that sprang to her lips regarding the pool of champagne swiftly vanishing into her recently steam cleaned rug. Hurrying into the kitchen, she made a beeline for the sink and opened the cabinet doors beneath it. Housed there were all the cleaning products she needed for any emergency.

She snatched up her ever-faithful can of extrastrength rug cleaner and a clean cloth. The red can and its brethren had served her in good stead, eradicating pizza, spilled cans of soda and beer and the very pungent evidence of not one but three very intense cases of stomach flu.

Stunned and overwhelmed, Jason came to and followed her into the kitchen. He moved like a lost traveler in a foreign land.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Turning on her heel, Laurel narrowly avoided colliding with him as she went back into the living room. Time was of the essence when it came to fighting any and all stains. The carpet was no longer new and not nearly as resilient as it’d once been.

Moving around Jason, she dropped to her knees by the coffee table and sprayed the stain. She knew he was waiting for an answer and wished she could give him the one he wanted. But that wasn’t possible.

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

Jason found himself addressing the top of her head. “You look frazzled,” he told her quite honestly. “But it’s not a look I haven’t seen before.”

Dabbing at the stain, she glanced up at him. “I’m frazzled because I’m pregnant.”

Jason seemed about to slip into shock. “Stop saying that.”

She began to rise to her feet again. He took her elbow and helped her up.

She didn’t feel pregnant, Jason thought, remembering how heavy Laurel had been during the last pregnancy. She’d gotten so large, he was afraid she’d never get her figure back. But she had. And he liked it. Liked having her as shapely as she’d been the day they got married. Ralph Peters, one of his associates, lamented that his wife looked twice as large as she had when they were first married. Ralph always spoke about Laurel wistfully, telling Jason what a lucky dog he was. He was lucky, no matter what her size.

Laurel drew her elbow away from him. As she’d left the doctor’s office, she’d been ambivalent. More in shock than anything else. She certainly hadn’t wanted to get pregnant again. Didn’t want to be pregnant. But listening to Jason, she suddenly felt very protective of this tiny seed within her. Protective and defensive. And suddenly, despite her condition, very alone. She and Jason had always been on the same page no matter what the issue. Sometimes he was at the top and she at the bottom, or vice versa, but always the same page. The look in his eyes told her they were volumes apart.

She didn’t like the feeling.

“The baby’s not going away if I stop saying I’m pregnant, Jason.” She went back to the kitchen to return the can and the cloth to their rightful place. Housework could be handled better if it was divided into a thousand small components rather than tackled on a grand scale.

“Pregnant,” Jason echoed again, shaking his head. “How could this have happened?”

“The usual way, Jason.” Laurel shut the cabinet again and returned to face him. “There’s a mama bee and a papa bee and the papa bee pollinated the mama bee.”

He still couldn’t believe it. “You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure you’re pregnant? There’s no mistake?”

There was no mistaking the hopeful note in his voice. She closed her eyes, feeling increasingly alone by the second. Maybe she should have told her best friend or her sister first. Or her mother. But Jason had given her no choice. He’d been here when she hadn’t expected him to be.

“The doctor’s sure.” She opened her eyes again. “The stick turned blue, the rabbit died, how many different ways do you want me to say it? I’m pregnant.”

He stared at her, confused. “The rabbit died? They still use rabbits?”

He would latch onto that, she thought. He did things like that when he didn’t like what he was hearing. Focus on a minute, extraneous tidbit and blow it out of proportion.

“It’s just a figure of speech, Jason. But I am pregnant.” She took a breath to try to calm down. Her stomach remained queasy. “Now that I think of it, this is just the way I felt with Luke.”

Jason tried to put the cork back into the bottle and failed. A perfect afternoon had suddenly fallen apart. He gave up with the cork, tossing it aside. “You had Luke over twenty-three years ago.”

She waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she pressed, “Your point being?”

Jason shrugged uncomfortably. He felt like a man walking through a minefield. But he had to make her understand. “My point is that women with twenty-three-year-old sons don’t get pregnant.”

And what the hell was that supposed to mean? she thought, struggling to keep from losing her temper. She began to pace back and forth around the sofa. She’d been through this often enough to know that it was the hormones talking. They were playing Ping-Pong with her emotions. Having her husband say asinine things didn’t help, of course.

“Is that some kind of a law?” she asked. “Because if it is, I was out of town the day Congress passed it.”

“Laurel, stop pacing.” Then, when she didn’t, he caught hold of her shoulders and held her in place. Or tried to.

She pushed away his hands. “Why? So you can get a clear shot at me?” Okay, that was over the top, she told herself. “Sorry, I can’t help it. I’m exhausted and yet, there’s all this pent-up energy inside of me. Just like with Luke,” she repeated, her tone daring him to deny her statement.

“Pregnant,” he repeated again. The word kept attacking him from all angles, seeking entrance into his brain. He just couldn’t handle it and he sank onto the sofa.

Because she had nowhere else to go, Laurel lowered herself down beside him. Deep within her soul, she wanted her husband, her partner, her best friend of so many years, to tell her everything was going to be all right. That he wasn’t upset or angry about this bizarre twist their lives had taken. And that he was going to stand by her, no matter what. Stand by her and rub cocoa butter onto her swiftly expanding abdomen to prevent stretch marks, the way he had all the other times.

All the other times, she reminded herself silently, they had been much younger. Jason had been much younger.