“For heaven’s sakes, Jane, I’m not concerned about your bill,” the doctor said, clearly insulted. “I’m worried about the stress you’ll be putting on yourself and the baby.”
“Oh.” She flushed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Look, if there’s anything I can do to make it easier for you, if you need a letter for the school, whatever, let me know.”
“Thank you.”
“What about the father?”
“What about him?”
“Will you tell him? He could help out if you’re out of work.”
“No,” Jane said quietly. “I won’t be asking him for help.”
That night, though, as she sat in the room she already thought of as a nursery and contemplated her wonderful news, an image of Mike kept intruding. He would be happy about this. She knew he would. And he had a right to know. Common decency told her that. It didn’t have to mean marriage or child support or any of those things. He just had a right to know he was going to be a father.
It took her a week to work up the courage to call. When she’d left three unanswered messages at his apartment, she guessed that he was off on an assignment. She finally took a deep breath and forced herself to call his office, bracing herself for an inquisition from that ogre who answered his phones and guarded his door.
“Mr. Marshall is out of town,” Kim told her, giving away nothing about his whereabouts.
“Can he be reached?”
“In an emergency.”
“This qualifies as an emergency,” Jane insisted. “Ask him to please call Jane Dawson as soon as possible. He has the number.”
“I’ll give him your message when I hear from him.”
Jane lost patience. “Is that how you handle an emergency? You just sit around and wait for him to check in?”
“Those were his instructions.”
Suddenly Jane was a twelve-year-old girl again. She’d fallen from a tree and broken her arm. She remembered desperately wanting her daddy, needing him, crying for him, only to be told by her mother that they had no way at all to reach him. It wasn’t going to be that way for her child. She would see to that.
“Never mind,” she said dully. “Don’t bother telling Mr. Marshall I called.”
That night, for the first time since she was twelve, she cried herself to sleep over a man who was too far away to care.
* * *
The Canadian project took forever, far longer than anyone had anticipated. Mike could have left someone else in charge once the work was underway, but his boss agreed with him that the client deserved Mike’s personal attention. And Mike had no reason to go back to a lonely apartment in a city that had lost its luster. It was early December before he finally returned to San Francisco.
Spring, summer and fall had passed in a blur. Not a moment had gone by, though, that he hadn’t thought about Jane. He’d missed her, longed for her and cursed himself for the weakness.
Obviously, though, she hadn’t been thinking about him. If she’d called, Kim would have given him that message.
On his first night home, he knew he would be too restless to sleep. He drove straight from the airport to the office and found himself faced with a mountain of files and old message slips. He was about to toss the messages, when Jane’s name popped out at him. He glanced at the date: May 27. Cold fury ripped through him. Why the hell hadn’t he gotten the message way back then? Why had it been left on his desk all these months?
He noted that Kim had first written “emergency” in the message space, then crossed it out and written, “never mind.”
Dear God in heaven, what sort of emergency had there been? Why hadn’t Jane been given his Canadian number at once? Oblivious to the hour, he called his secretary at home, waking her from a sound sleep.
“Kim, I’m at the office. There’s a message here from last May from Jane Dawson. Why wasn’t I told about this? She said it was an emergency. What kind of emergency?”
“Wait, let me think,” she said, instantly alert. “It was right after you left. Oh, yes, I recall. When I told her you’d left instructions that messages were to wait until you called in, she told me to forget it. I should have just thrown the message slip away, sir. I’m sorry.”
“No, what you should have done was give me the damned message,” he shouted. “Never mind,” he said, slamming the phone down, then dialing Jane’s number. His heart pounded, thinking of her needing him and then being brushed off.
It had to be nearly dawn in Virginia, but Jane’s phone rang and rang. Not even her answering machine picked up. At least the number hadn’t been disconnected, he told himself, but that was small consolation.
He had a bad feeling about this, a very bad feeling. He called the airlines, then left the office. At home he heard three more messages from Jane, probably left months ago, as well. More panicked than ever, he threw some clean clothes into a suitcase and headed straight for the airport. He would be on the first flight out in the morning.
On the long drive from the airport to the riverfront town about eighty miles away, he told himself over and over that there was no reason to worry. Her answering machine was probably just broken. She’d probably just left the house earlier than usual that morning. He would find her at home when he arrived.
As he drove into town, he tried to see it through her eyes, tried to imagine it as a safe haven. True, the streets were clean and lined with large homes with gracious front porches. The old oaks were bare now, but in spring and summer their shade would provide welcome relief from the penetrating glare of the sun. Instead of being gray and
