“Looks like vomit,” Gigi says, squinching up her face.
Joan agrees but knows if she says it out loud that Gigi will never try a bite. “Oh, this is just part of this cake’s walk. Wait till you see what the cake looks like at the end of its journey!” Joan lifts the recipe card again, realizes she forgot to prepare the pans, and groans, wondering if she’ll ever get the hang of cooking.
May 2012
Lauren waits inside the small patient room at the walk-in clinic and flips through the same magazine she’s been reading for the last thirty minutes. When she hears someone opening the door, she looks up to see Debra, the physician assistant who was helping her earlier. “Your urine test results came back,” Debra says, leaning up against the exam table, smiling. “You’re pregnant.”
Lauren’s face drops. “What?”
“Pregnant.”
“Pregnant.” Lauren says the word as if she’s trying to pronounce it for the first time.
“Is this good news?”
Lauren shakes her head as if rattling it so an answer will spill out. “I guess! I mean, yes! We just didn’t plan it.” She looks down at the floor and back up at Debra. “I thought it was food poisoning! Then I thought I had a virus! Did you suspect that I was pregnant when I came in here?”
Debra chuckles. “Do you know how many women I’ve asked if there’s any chance they’re pregnant who have said, just like you, ‘Nope. Not possible’? With the kind of symptoms you had, I knew it was a good possibility, but we always need to make sure.”
Lauren leans her head back against the wall. “I actually think Andrea knew before me!”
“Who’s Andrea?”
“A woman I just met a few days ago. She must think I’m a dope.”
Debra laughs and hands Lauren a prescription for prenatal vitamins. “If you don’t have an ob-gyn, I can recommend some for you.”
Lauren looks down at the prescription. She’s pregnant. There’s a baby growing inside of her, and she’s her mother. Or his mother! The thought terrifies and exhilarates her as she slips the prescription into her purse.
FIVE
May 2012
Travis is using a Weed Eater around each pine tree that was planted in October on the edge of the Grandon ball fields. He’s wearing the tan pants and navy shirt with the sleeves rolled up that the parks department employees wear, and he has a Grandon Parks Department ball cap pulled over his short-cropped brown hair. Earphones prevent his hearing Lauren’s car in the parking lot behind him. She walks through the grass toward the row of pines and stands for a moment, watching him work. Travis has a sense of fun and wonder that she lacks and is kind with an easy way about him. She smiles, thinking about him; this baby will have the best father in all of Grandon. As he moves to the other side of the tree, Travis spots Lauren and turns off the Weed Eater.
“Hey!” he says, pulling off the earphones. “What are you doing out here?”
Grass is clinging to the bottom of each pant leg and bits of grass cover his forearms and hands; his face is wet with sweat, and he runs the palm of his hand across his forehead. Lauren smiles looking at him, thinking him the most handsome man she’s ever met. “You’re awfully cute covered in grass.”
“Then you should go see Tim over on field eight. I bet he’s absolutely adorable right about now,” he says. She laughs, reaching into her purse. “So, what’s up?” Travis says. “I thought you were at Glory’s Place this afternoon.”
“Well, I was, but I thought you should see this.” She hands him the prescription, waiting.
He looks at it and up at her. “What is this?”
She smiles. “It’s the name of a prenatal vitamin the doctor wants me to start taking.”
“A prenat…” He looks down at the prescription again and then to her face. “You’re pregnant?”
She shrugs. “It’s definitely not a virus!”
Travis lifts the Weed Eater into the air, whooping as he does. “I’m gonna be a dad!” he yells for all the pine trees to hear. He grabs Lauren and lifts her off her feet, swinging her around and kissing her as she laughs. Setting her down, he yells across the ball fields. “Hey, Tim! I’m gonna be a dad!”
“What?” Tim shouts, cupping his hand to his ear.
“I’m gonna be a dad!” Travis hollers back.
“I don’t have it,” Tim shouts. “It’s back at the shed.”
Lauren and Travis laugh, and he kisses her forehead. “So, when will the baby be here?”
“In December. A Christmas wedding and now a Christmas baby.” Her eyes open wide at the thought. “Travis! We aren’t ready for a baby! Our extra bedroom is filled with junk and we don’t even have a kitchen table to eat off of!”
He puts his hands on her shoulders. “Then we will get rid of the junk in the spare bedroom and we will buy a kitchen table. Done. Nothing to worry about.” He kisses her forehead again. “You are one hot mama! Do you know that?”
She shakes her head, walking toward her car. “I can’t even with that,” she says over her shoulder.
“Sexiest mom in Grandon!”
“That just sounds wrong!” she says, opening the car door.
“Own it!” he yells, loud enough for her to hear inside the car. She shakes her head, backing out of the spot. “I love you!”
She rolls down the passenger-side window and says, “I love you, too, my baby daddy!”
May 1972
John Creighton taps a nail through a long, narrow piece of plywood and barely taps the nail down into the top of the black walnut slabs he glued together two days ago. “Don’t botch this,” he mutters beneath his breath. Using the jig, he holds a pencil at the side of the plywood and slowly turns the jig around the top of the wood, drawing a seventy-degree circle. He breathes a sigh of relief when he sees that the circle is just the
