This Heart Of Mine

'I haven't thought about it. The baby wasn't real to me like it was to you.'

'She! The baby was a she, not an it!'

'I'm sorry.'

The unfairness of attacking him silenced her. It was wrong to condemn him for not sharing her suffering. Of course the baby hadn't been real to him. He hadn't invited Molly into his bed, hadn't wanted a child, hadn't carried the baby inside him.

'I'm the one who's sorry. I didn't mean to yell. My emotions keep getting away from me.' Her hand trembled as she pushed a strand of wet hair from her eyes. 'I won't bring this up again. I promise you.'

'Come on out now,' he said quietly.

Her limbs were clumsy from the cold, and her clothes heavy as she swam toward the bank. By the time she got there, he'd climbed out onto a low, flat rock.

He crouched down and pulled her up beside him. She landed on her knees, a cold, dripping, miserable wreck.

He tried to lighten the mood. 'At least I kicked off my shoes before I dove in. Yours flew off when you hit the water. I'd have gone after them, but I was in shock.'

The rock had retained some of the day's heat, and a little of it seeped through her clammy shorts. 'It doesn't matter. They were my oldest sandals.' Her last pair of Manolo Blahniks. Given the current state of her finances, she'd have to replace them with rubber shower thongs.

'You can pick up another pair in town tomorrow.' He rose. 'We'd better head back before you get sick. Why don't you start walking? I'll catch up with you as soon as I rescue my own shoes.'

He headed back up the path. She hugged herself against the evening chill and put one foot in front of the other, trying not to think. She hadn't gone far before he came up next to her, T-shirt and shorts sticking to his body. They walked in silence for a while.

'The thing is…'

When he didn't go on, she looked up at him. 'What?'

He looked troubled. 'Forget it.'

The woods rustled around them with evening sounds. 'All right.'

He shifted his shoes from one hand to the other. 'After it was over… I just… I didn't let myself think about her.'

She understood, but it made her feel even lonelier.

He hesitated. She wasn't used to that. He always seemed so certain. 'What do you think she-' He cleared his throat. 'What do you think Sarah would have been like?'

Her heart constricted. A fresh wave of pain swept over her, but it didn't throb in the same way as her old pain. Instead, it stung like antiseptic on a cut.

Her lungs expanded, contracted, expanded again. She was startled to realize she could still breathe, that her legs could still move. She heard the crickets begin their evening jam. A squirrel scuffled in the leaves.

'Well…' She was trembling, and she wasn't sure whether the sound that slipped from her was a choked laugh or a leftover sob. 'Gorgeous, if she took after you.' Her chest ached, but instead of fighting the pain, she embraced it, absorbed it, let it become part of her. 'Extremely smart, if she took after me.'

'And reckless. I think today pretty much proves that. Gorgeous, huh? Thanks for the compliment.'

'Like you don't know.' Her heart felt a little lighter. She wiped at her runny nose with the back of her hand.

'So how come you think you're so smart?'

'Summa cum laude. Northwestern. What about you?'

'I graduated.'

She smiled, but she wasn't ready to stop talking about Sarah. 'I'd never have sent her to summer camp.'

He nodded. 'I'd never have made her go to church every day during the summer.'

'That's a lot of church.'

'Nine years is a lot of summer camp.'

'She might have been clumsy and a slow learner.'

'Not Sarah.'

A little capsule of warmth encircled her heart.

He slowed. Looked up into the trees. Slipped one hand into his pocket. 'I guess it just wasn't her time to be born.'

Molly took a breath and whispered back, 'I guess not.'

Chapter 11

'Company's coming!' Celia the Hen clucked. 'Well bake cakes and tarts and custard pies!' Daphne Makes a Mess

Molly set the alarm clock Kevin had left for five-thirty, and by seven o'clock the smell of blueberry muffins filled the downstairs of the B &B. In the dining room, the sideboard held a stack of pale yellow china plates with a ginkgo leaf at each center. Dark green napkins, pressed-glass water goblets, and pleasantly mismatched sterling completed the setting. A pan of sticky buns from the freezer baked in the oven while the marble slab on the worktable held a brown pottery baking dish filled with thick slices of bread soaking in an egg batter fragrant with vanilla and cinnamon.

For the first time in months Molly was ravenous, but she hadn't found time to eat. Preparing breakfast for a house full of paying guests was a lot more challenging than making smiley-face pancakes for the Calebow kids. As she moved Aunt Judith's recipe notebook away from the French toast batter, she tried to work up some resentment against Kevin, who was still asleep upstairs, but she couldn't. By acknowledging the baby last night, he'd given her a gift.

The burden of the miscarriage no longer felt as if it were hers alone to bear, and her pillow hadn't been tear- soaked when she'd awakened. Her depression wasn't going to vanish instantly, but she was ready to entertain the possibility of being happy again.

Kevin straggled in after she'd given John Pearson his second serving of French toast. His eyes were bleary, and he bore the look of a man suffering from a lethal hangover. 'Your pit bull tried to corner me in the hallway.'

'He doesn't like you.'

'So I've noticed.'

She realized something was missing, but it took her a moment to figure out what it was. His hostility. The anger Kevin had been holding against her finally seemed to have faded.

'Sorry I overslept,' he said. 'I told you last night to kick me out of bed if I wasn't up when you got here.'

Not in a million years. Nothing would make her enter Kevin Tucker's bedroom, especially now that he was no longer looking at her as if she were his mortal enemy. She tilted her head toward the empty liquor bottles in the trash. 'It must have been quite a party last night.'

'They all wanted to talk about the draft, and one topic led to another. I'll say one thing for that generation, they sure know how to drink.'

'It didn't affect Mr. Pearson's appetite.'

He gazed at the French toast that was turning golden brown on the griddle. 'I thought you didn't know how to cook.'

'I phoned Martha Stewart. If people want bacon or sausage, you'll have to fry it.'

'The Babe thing?'

'And proud of it. You're also waiting tables.' She shoved the coffeepot at him, then turned the French toast.

He gazed at the coffeepot. 'Ten years in the NFL, and this is what it all comes down to.'