have the flu or food poisoning. He’d remarked that it was a pity, but she’d be all right in a week or so. That information coupled with Sherri’s current meal of dill pickle slices eaten with gusto, a whole hotdog devoured in four bites, an apple turnover dipped in yellow mustard and declared delicious, and a sick stomach that wasn’t sick anymore led Hannah to one conclusion.
“Sherri,” Hannah leaned close across the table. “Maybe this isn’t exactly a polite question to ask, but I have to know. Are you pregnant?”
Sherri’s face turned white and her hands began to tremble. “Please don’t tell anyone,” she begged, and Hannah saw her blink back tears. “I should be so happy, but now I just don’t know what to do!”
“Please don’t cry. I’ll help you any way I can,” Hannah promised, reaching out to pat Sherri’s hand. “You have options, you know. There are places you can go, people who will help you. If you can’t keep the baby, you can give it up to a reliable agency for adoption.”
“No!” Sherri cried. “I’ll never do that! Look what happened to Perry and me. I’ll never let my baby grow up without a mother and a father.”
“How about the baby’s father? Do you love him?”
Sherri nodded, and when she spoke her voice was husky. “Oh, yes! And he said he loved me. He promised me we’d always be together.”
“Can you marry him?”
Sherri shook her head and that action seemed to bring about a flood of tears. They rolled down her cheeks and fell on the table, making dark, painful-looking splotches on the wood.
“Help me understand,” Hannah said, reaching out to touch Sherri’s hand again. “You love the baby’s father, but you can’t marry him?”
Sherri made a soft, strangled sound in the back of her throat. “Yes,” she gasped.
“He’s already married?”
“No!” Sherri covered her eyes with her hands. “No, no, no!”
“He’s not married, but you can’t marry him.”
“Yes! I thought I could, but I can’t marry him…not now!”
And with that anguished cry, Sherri was up and fleeing, her dancer’s legs churning across the parking lot and around the corner of the school building, leaving Hannah to sit there wondering what she could possibly do to help her young friend.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hannah sat there for a long time after Sherri had fled, attempting to decide the right thing to do. Since she didn’t know the name of the baby’s father, she had to forget about contacting him. She had to go to the person who cared most about Sherri’s welfare, her twin brother, Perry. He’d be shocked when Hannah told him about Sherri’s pregnancy, but he loved his sister and together they could work out some way to help her.
A quick survey of the bleachers confirmed that Perry was not at the Donkey Baseball fundraiser game. Hannah was just crossing the road to the parking lot to get her cookie truck and drive to the college apartment he shared with Sherri when she remembered his job schedule. Perry worked on the city maintenance and grounds crew every Friday afternoon. This was Friday afternoon and he’d be at work somewhere right here in Lake Eden.
Almost as if she’d willed it, a city maintenance truck pulled into the school parking lot. Hannah hurried over to talk to the driver, intending to ask him where Perry was working, when Lady Luck smiled upon her. The driver was Perry.
“Hi, Perry,” she said, approaching the open driver’s window. “You’re just the guy I need to see.”
“Hold on a second.” Perry looked apologetic as he pointed to the cell phone on his dash. “I’ve got to take this call. It’s work.”
“Go ahead,” Hannah said, stepping back slightly. Because the window was open, she could still hear the call, but it was the polite thing to do.
Perry answered the phone, listened for a moment, and then he spoke. “I’ll run out there right now, before I finish that street sign. You say you need the distance between the first five light posts and the gate?”
There was another silence while Perry listened to the reply. “Okay. I’ll call it in as soon as I measure.”
When he’d clicked off the phone, Perry turned to Hannah. “Sorry. That was another assignment for me. I have to run out to Spring Brook Cemetery. We’re putting in motion lights and they need to confirm a measurement someone made this morning.”
“I understand, but I really need to talk to you, Perry.”
“How about later this evening? They need this measurement right away.”
“This is something that shouldn’t wait. It concerns Sherri.”
“Oh. Well…you can ride along with me if you want to. We can talk while I’m measuring, and then I can bring you back here.”
“That’ll work fine,” Hannah said, walking around to the passenger side of the truck and climbing in.
She hadn’t thought it was a good idea to bring up the subject of Sherri’s pregnancy while Perry was driving. Hannah waited until they got to the cemetery and took the road that separated the new side of the grounds from the old.
Perry parked under a towering oak and went around to the back of the truck to get out his equipment. Hannah stashed her purse under the passenger seat and got out of the truck to wait for him.
It was shady and much cooler than it had been at the school baseball field. A breeze was blowing from the direction of the brook, and trees dotted the carefully manicured grass. A stately elm spread its leaves like an umbrella over the top of a grassy knoll, tall pines pierced the sky in a bid for a celestial home, and a silver maple rustled its delicate leaves beside the alabaster statue of an angel. The grass lay like a thick green carpet over rolling hills, and even with the headstones to remind her of its purpose, Hannah could see why teenagers might want to park in this beautiful place.
She turned to look at the family mausoleums on the older side of the cemetery. The one directly across the road, a pink granite edifice with crumbled stone columns in front, was in bad repair. The granite blocks that made up the building had separated slightly as the ground had settled, and from where she was standing, she could see a triangular-shaped wedge of the dark interior. It was a real pity the gravesite hadn’t been maintained. The bas-relief carving of cherubs on the front was lovely.
Perry got out of the truck with his rolling tape measure, the kind the flooring salesman had used to measure her condo for new carpets. “Do you mind if we talk while I measure?” he asked.
“Not at all. It’s really beautiful out here.”
“I know. That’s why we have to secure the place with motion lights. People are just dying to get in.”
Perry grinned, Hannah groaned at one of the worst jokes she’d ever heard, and they set off for the gate. Once they got there, Perry zeroed his measuring device, set it on the ground, and began to walk to the first light post. “So why do you want to talk about Sherri?” he asked her.
“She’s in trouble, Perry.”
“How is she in trouble?” Perry asked, not looking up at her. He kept his eyes on the rolling measuring tool, making sure the wheels were in contact with the ground as they walked.
They’d covered half the ground to the first light post, an ornate metal base with filigree at the top that supported a large globe. Hannah knew that there was no time to waste if she wanted to accomplish a plan to help Sherri. “I don’t know if you know this, and I hope it’s not too much of a shock, but Sherri’s pregnant.”
Perry arrived at the first light post and stopped to jot down the measurement. “I know,” he said, walking on toward the second light post. “Doc Knight told me right after he examined her.”
Hannah drew a deep breath of relief and let it out again. The fact that Perry knew made things a lot easier.
“So is that all you wanted to tell me?” Perry asked.
“No. There’s got to be something we can do to help Sherri.”
“Help her how?”
“I’m not sure. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. When I saw her just a couple of minutes ago, she was distraught and frightened.”
