Somebody's Baby

A chill swept through Caroline. She brushed some twigs off the top of the chipped porch rail and wrapped her arms around her midriff.

“And there I go again, putting my foot right in it,” Jesse said, bringing a slow grin to his mother’s face.

“So…does this, uh, talk about Shelter whatever have to do with the letter?”

“Yes.” With the thumb of her left hand she reached for the sapphire on her ring finger. According to the letter from Caroline’s birth mother, her twin had been given a ring, too. An opal. Apparently their mother had liked jewelry. “Her name is Phyllis Langford Sheffield. She’s a professor of Psychology at Montford University in Shelter Valley.”

“She married?”

“Yes. To a man named Matt Sheffield, Fine Arts Technical Coordinator at Montford.” She wasn’t too sure about her brother-in-law. She’d found an article about him, too. A disturbing one. Several years before Mr. Sheffield had taken the job at Montford, he’d been charged with statutory rape and sentenced to prison. He’d allegedly impregnated one of his students. That was a piece of news she was definitely not going to share with her son.

“They have any kids?”

“Two.” She thought of the grainy newspaper photo she had in her wallet. “Twins. A boy and a girl. They’re three.”

“Damn!” Jesse said again. “Must run in the genes, huh?”

Her heart gave a little flip at his mention of genetics. “Yeah.”

“Okay, I can see why a trip to Shelter Valley’s important,” Jesse said, almost magnanimously. “I’ll be home for spring recess the last week of March. We can go then.”

Pulling open the buttons on her coat, Caroline went inside, letting the screen door fall shut behind her. Randy had bought her year-round windows for the door a few Christmases ago, so she could leave the big old wooden door open, even in winter, and see out into the yard.

“I’m moving to Shelter Valley, Jess. This weekend.”

“No way, Ma! You can’t! You’re being ridiculous. I get it about wanting to see your sister. Hell, I even get that you’re feeling lonely, what with Dad dying and me gone almost right after, but you can’t just up and move! What about the farm?”

“I’m going to hang on to it for a while. At least until I see how I like Shelter Valley. It’s all paid for and the taxes are practically nothing….”

“We have cattle, Ma,” Jesse said, as though speaking to a child. “They aren’t just gonna wait around to see how you like life on the other side of the country. And we sure as hell can’t afford to pay someone to look after them for us.”

Us. It sounded so good. Too good. Because it wasn’t true anymore. Jesse was off starting a life of his own. And Caroline had her own life to tend to. Whether she wanted to or not. She had some consequences to pay.

“I sold the cattle.”

“You what?”

Even with the phone at arm’s length, she could hear Jesse’s yelp. She’d wanted to talk to him about the cattle—had thought he deserved to be a part of the decision—but she knew he’d talk her out of selling. And going.

And sister aside, she had to go. There was more reason to go to Shelter Valley than she could tell her son. He’d have to know eventually, her saner side kept reminding her.

But there was only so much she could handle at a time. And right now, that didn’t include Jesse’s likely reaction to her other news.

“I sold the cattle to give me enough money to live off until I get settled.”

“I can’t believe this!” He was sighing and whining and groaning all at once. “How do you expect to support yourself?” he asked. “You never even graduated from high school!”

“I got my equivalency years ago, you know that.”

“And that’ll get you a great career for sure,” he said sarcastically.

In the tiny kitchen she’d lived in her entire adult life, Caroline poured a cup of coffee into her favorite mug, careful to miss the chipped part of the rim as she took a gulp.

“I’m planning to enroll in college,” she said quietly, trying to control the fear and the doubts clutching at her heart. There was no one else on earth she’d have dared tell. “The semester doesn’t start for another two weeks.”

“You have to apply, Ma.” Jesse’s voice was equally soft. And loving.

“I did.”

“And?”

“I’ve been accepted, Jess.”

This time the silence was almost unbearable. With a shaking hand, Caroline lifted the mug again, took another sip of coffee that had been kept too hot by the old warming plate she’d been using with the old metal pot since high school. And burned her mouth.

She poured the stuff out. She shouldn’t be drinking it, anyway. Not for the next eight months, at least. Although she’d drunk coffee when she’d been pregnant with Jesse.

“Congratulations, Ma.” The pride in Jesse’s voice was her undoing.

“AH, MERI, HERE I AM AGAIN…”

With an embarrassed look, John Strickland slid into the bubbling spa in his professionally landscaped private and walled yard. He leaned back and closed his eyes. It wasn’t late, just dark. He’d had a long day. But his inner vision wasn’t restful. Meri was there, her memory filling his mind. She was dressed in his favorite red gown, diamonds glittering at her throat and wrist, laughing.

And then not.

Now the glittering came from the lights of the fire truck, police cars, the ambulance. Meri was lying inside the ambulance, wearing the red gown. But she wasn’t laughing.

“Breathe,” he said aloud. “Breathe.” He could almost feel her struggle for air.

And then he opened his eyes. As long as he opened his eyes, she’d still be breathing.

“I know I promised we’d quit meeting like this.” His words fell into the not-quite-freezing Shelter Valley January night, becoming part of the air around him, floating aimlessly in space. Just as he was.

“I’m supposed to be at dinner at Will’s,” he told his wife, as he imagined her sitting across from him. “Instead, here I am again, forgoing life to sit and talk to a dead woman.”

A cold breeze wafted over the water. And his face.

“I need a drink.”

He hoped to God his neighbors couldn’t hear him over the bubbling water. Not that there was much chance anyone would be lounging around a backyard in what, for Shelter Valley, was considered a major cold front. Any time you could see your breath, it made the news.

“I’m still traveling more than you liked.” He squinted at the empty space across from him, an idiot who was weak and disappointing himself even as he gave in to the overwhelming need to connect with the woman who’d left his life more than six years before.

He wiped at a trickle of sweat making its way from his forehead down between his eyes.

“Business is good. Finished another signature Strickland design last week.”

The water was hot, but it didn’t warm the blood in his veins. Nothing was going to do that. He’d resigned himself to the truth.