Almost Forever (26 page)

Andie wanted to break down and cry. But she didn't. Now was not the time for indulging herself. Now was the time to tell the truth and tell it with dignity.

As much of the truth as
could
be told, anyway.

She had considered holding off telling them until she was
in her second trimester. But last night had changed her mind about that. Somehow, the moment she'd told Clay the truth, she'd seen that there was no point in postponing telling the rest of them. The sooner they knew, the sooner they could start to get used to the idea of having a single mother in the family.

Andie looked from her father to her mother, thinking that there were a lot of women in the world who'd give anything to have a close-knit family as she had. But there was a price to pay for being part of such a family. If she were all alone in the world, she wouldn't have to tell painful truths like this to people whose love and respect she craved. If she were all alone in the world, the fact that she was going to have a baby without being married would be nobody's business but her own.

“Andie, what is it?” Andie's mother had set down her fork, leaving her cake only half-eaten.

“Well, I—”

Her father now pushed his own plate away. “All right. What's going on? Something's going on.”

“I think,” Thelma said rather faintly, “that Andie wants to tell us something.”

“What?” Andie's father demanded. “What does she want to say?”

“Just wait, Joe. Let her get to it.” Thelma patted her husband's hand.

The wifely gesture sent a sharp pang through Andie. She thought of the tiny baby that slept within her and couldn't help wishing there was a good man like her father at her side.

But there wasn't. She was on her own. That was reality. And she had made her choice.

Andie straightened in her chair. She forced a smile to meet her parents' worried frowns.

“I don't really know how to go about telling you this. I know you're not going to like it, and that it will probably hurt you. And I'm sorry, so sorry. But I've made up my mind.”

“What?” Joe impatiently wiped his mouth with his napkin. “You've made up your mind about what?”

“Oh, Dad…”

“What? For God's sake, Andie. Tell us.”

“I'm going to have a baby.”

There. The words were out.

And Andie felt as if she'd dropped them down a bottomless well.

Her father's face went unhealthily pale. And then beet red. Andie thought of Uncle Don. Of heart attacks and strokes and all the things that happen to men in their late fifties who are a little overweight and a little overstressed and then receive a nasty shock.

Andie looked at her mother. Thelma's eyes were very wide. And then they softened. Great tenderness filled them.

“Oh, honey…” Thelma reached across the table, groping for her daughter's hand.

Andie responded without hesitation. She met her mother's hand halfway and was glad for the unconditional love she saw in her mother's eyes.

“You should have told us right away,” Thelma whispered.

“I had to have time to think. I had to be sure.”

“I know, I know.”

“It's what I want, Mom.”

“Of course you do.”

Suddenly, Joe found his voice. He used it to point out the obvious. “You're not married, Andrea.” He was clearly so upset, he'd called his daughter by the name she was born with.

Still clasping each other's hands, both women looked at him.

“Don't you two give me those looks,” Joe said with some
testiness. “I'm stating a fact, here. You don't have a husband, Andie.”

“Now, Joe,” Thelma began in her most placating tone.

Andie pulled her hand from her mother's warm clasp. “It's all right, Mom.”

“But I—”

Andie drew herself up. “No. It's all right.” She faced her father. “You're right, Dad. I don't have a husband.”

“Are you
going
to have a husband?”

“Joe…”

“Quiet, Thelma.” He narrowed his eyes at his daughter. “
Are
you?”

“Maybe someday, yes.”

“What about right now, Andrea? It seems to me a husband is something you could use right away. It seems to me that the father of your baby might be a good choice as that husband, as a matter of fact.”

Andie felt her skin going prickly and her heart beating a sharp, erratic rhythm in her chest. She told her body to calm down. She reminded herself that she'd never expected this to be easy.

But having known it wouldn't be easy didn't make her like it. She'd hated seeing the disapproval and concern in Clay's eyes and she hated seeing them in her father's eyes, as well.

“Look, this is
my
baby.” She tried to keep her voice from rising out of control. “No one else's. The father isn't involved. I'm going to have it alone and I'm going to raise it the very best I can on my own.”

“Oh, dear,” Thelma said to no one in particular.

“But a baby needs a father,” Joe insisted gruffly. “And what about money? It's only fair that the man—”

“Just drop it, Dad. I mean it. I'll manage, as far as money goes.”

“What about your job? Clay is counting on you to—”

“I've worked things out with Clay.”

There was a tiny pause. Andie saw the flicker of a look that passed between her mother and her father.

Her father said carefully, “You've talked to Clay about this?”

“Yesterday evening, yes.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said he wants me to keep working for him. So that means I'll be able to support myself and the baby. It won't be easy, but it will certainly be manageable.”

“Well.” Her father slid a glance at her mother again, then said to Andie, “At least you still have a job.”

“Yes, I do.”

Joe scrubbed a hand down his broad, lined face. “Well, that's something. You're lucky there.”

“I am not
lucky
there, Dad. I'm good at my job, and Clay doesn't want to lose me.”

“Well, certainly. Of course. But I still think the father ought to—”

“That's enough, Dad. Really. I wanted you to know the situation, because I love you both and don't want you to be in the dark about something so important. But it's
my
situation. I'll handle it the way I think best.”

“It's crazy.”

“Joe, please…”

“No, it's crazy, Thelma. And you know it. Women having babies without a man beside them. It's not right.” Joe looked at Andie, a weary look.

A look that hurt. It was a look she used to see on his face all the time, back when she was growing up, back when he'd considered her flighty, willful and irresponsible and was always saying he didn't know what he was going to do with her.

In the past few years, Andie knew, her father's opinion of her
had changed greatly. He looked at her with pride now, and he often told her how pleased he was that she had finally grown up.

“It will work out,” Thelma said, her voice brittle with forced cheer.

Joe shook his head. “Andie, Andie. What are we going to do with you?”

T
hat Saturday, Clay's father called him and asked him to dinner.

The first thing Clay noticed when he pulled up in front of the house where he'd grown up was that his mother's little four-by-four compact car wasn't in the driveway where she usually parked it. His Uncle Joe's truck, however, was.

Clay knew right then that dinner wasn't the only thing cooking here. He recognized all the ingredients for a “man-to-man” talk.

His uncle and his father were going to pump him for anything he might know about Andie's predicament. He could feel it coming.

Since there was nothing to do but get it over with, Clay left his own truck and went up the front walk past the snowball bush at the front gate. Right now, in the last third of winter, the bush looked like a dead weed.

There were still patches of melting snow in the yard from the
last storm a few weeks before. As Clay picked his way around them, the first flakes of a new storm were beginning to fall.

Inside, there was a cheery fire in the new pellet stove Don had put in two years ago. The walls of the living room were pale blue, instead of the light green they used to be when Clay was growing up.

Not much else had changed, though. The same family pictures decorated the walls and the tall vase with the big fake flower arrangement erupting from it still stood beside the front door. Clay hung his heavy jacket in the coat closet and told his dad he'd love a beer.

They settled in the living room. Don and Joe held down either end of the couch. Clay took the wing chair that had been reupholstered in a pattern of blue flowers to complement the walls.

Apprehensive, Clay refused to speak first. As the two older men tried to figure out how to begin, Clay watched them, very much aware of the closeness between them, of their solidarity as long-time members of the same family.

Their wives were sisters and they were best friends. The four of them—Clay's mother, his aunt, his father and his uncle—had grown up together right here in Meadow Valley. And when it had come time to settle down, Don had married Della and Joe had married Thelma. Joe and Thelma had had one child, Andie. And when Della and Don had realized they would have no children of their own, they had set out to adopt a baby.

But then they'd come to understand how many older, less “desirable” children needed families. They'd been introduced to Clay. And they'd taken him to their hearts.

Joe glanced at his brother-in-law. Almost imperceptibly, Don nodded.

Joe shifted a little and adjusted his belt more comfortably under the paunch he'd developed over the past few years. He cleared his throat.

Clay ached to get this over with. He almost volunteered,
It's about Andie, right?

But he held the words back. What if it
wasn't
about Andie, after all? Then Cautious Clay would have really put his foot in it, but good.

Clay's father, seeing that his brother-in-law couldn't think how to begin, suggested, “We might as well get it right out there, Joe.”

Joe looked down at his beefy hand, which was resting on his knee. “I know, I know.”

Don reached out and touched Joe's shoulder. “Do you want me to…?”

Joe nodded. “Yeah, would you?”

Don squared his shoulders and turned his level gaze on his son. “Clay, Andie says she's explained to you about her situation.”

Clay looked at his father warily, knowing now that he'd been right all along. It
was
about Andie. Still, he didn't want to reveal anything that she hadn't already disclosed. “What situation?”

“That she's going to have a baby,” Uncle Joe said in a rush, as if he had to get it out fast, or it wouldn't come out at all.

Now that it
was
out, Clay allowed himself to nod. “Yes. She's told me.”

Clay's father and his uncle exchanged another glance. Then they both stared at Clay, their expressions expectant.

Clay couldn't think of a single appropriate thing to say right then, so he said nothing.

After a moment, his father prompted. “So then what else?”

“I don't know what you mean, Dad.”

“I mean, did she tell you anything else?”

“Like what?”

Joe grunted, then muttered darkly, “Like who the hell the father is.”

Ignoring the image of Jeff that flashed through his mind, Clay took a long drink from his beer, which he then set down very carefully upon a blue crocheted coaster atop the spindly-legged side table next to his chair. “No, she didn't tell me who the father is.”

“It must be someone she really cares for,” Joe insisted, looking rather piercingly at Clay. “We all know how she is. She's always been adventurous. But when it comes to men, she's choosy. She's just not the type for any one-night stand. She'd have to love the man first.”

Clay had to force himself not to look away, out the picture window, where the snow was now coming down more steadily and the wind was starting to blow the white flakes into flurries.

His mind felt as if it was stuck. Stuck on Jeff.

And all of a sudden, it was starting to seem that there were only two possible ways to get
unstuck.
He could go to Andie again and demand she tell him who the father of her baby was. That might or might not get him an answer, depending on how stubborn Andie was going to end up being about this.

Or he could fly down to Brentwood for a little heart-to-heart talk with Jeff.

Of course, Jeff's new wife, Madeline, whom Clay really liked, would be there. Madeline had loved Jeff since the two of them were children. And now that Jeff was finally settling down and starting a life with her, Madeline was the happiest woman in the world.

“Don't you think so, Clay?” Joe was asking.

“Excuse me. Say that again?”

“I said, don't you think Andie would have to be in love before she would…become intimate with a man?”

Now what the hell was he going to say to that? Clay himself didn't believe in the kind of love his uncle was talking about.
Being in love,
as far as Clay was concerned, meant
sexual attraction, plain and simple. It was nature's way of ensuring survival of the species and that was all. In Andie's case, he supposed, nature had done her job pretty well.

“Clay?” Joe was leaning forward, waiting for Clay to give some kind of answer.

“Yes,” Clay said at last. “You're right. I'm sure Andie would have to really care for someone first. But honestly, I don't know who the man is. Andie told me she's going to have a baby and that she wants to stay on at Barrett and Company. That's all I know.”

“Did she tell you she wants to raise the baby herself?” Joe's disapproval was painfully clear.

“Yes, she said that.”

Joe shook his head. “I don't know how she'll manage. She's a good person, Andrea is. She means well. But where does she get her crazy ideas? The past few years, she's finally settled herself into a good job.” He saluted Don with a quick nod. “Many thanks to you, Don—and you, too, Clay. Her mother and I are finally thinking we can relax—our Andie is all grown up now. And then, out of the blue, she comes to us and tells us she's going to be a mom—without a husband.”

Clay sat up straighter in his chair, a strange emotion gripping him. It took him a moment to realize what he felt. It was defensiveness. For Andie, of all people.

“She's turned out to be damn good at her job,” he heard himself saying. “Right, Dad?”

“Definitely,” Don agreed without hesitation.

“I'm lucky to have her,” Clay went on. Then he found himself paraphrasing Andie's words of the other night. “And since the father refuses to be a husband, then if Andie wants the baby, she has no choice. She has to raise it on her own.”

Joe was sitting forward now. “She told you that? That the father didn't want her?”

Clay reached for his beer, found it empty and set it back on the coaster. “Uncle Joe, I respect you more than any man in the world, next to Dad, here. But these aren't questions to ask me. You should be asking Andie.”

For a moment, Joe stared at him, a look so intense that Clay felt the short hairs rise on the back of his neck. Then Joe shot Don a speaking glance and Don took over again.

“Son, we've got to ask you…”

“What?”

“Is it you?”

Clay's mouth dropped open. He stared from one man to the other. “Me? The
father,
you mean?” He was baffled—and deeply hurt that his family could ever think he would betray their trust this way.

“God, Clay.” Joe looked miserable. “Don't be insulted. We just felt we had to ask. It always seemed to us that there was…a little bit of an attraction between you and Andie.”

“Attraction?” Clay repeated the word in total disbelief. “Between me and
Andie?
But we never could stand each other—you all knew that. You were always begging us not to fight, to try and get along with each other.”

“Strong feelings are strong feelings,” Joe said quietly. “Love and hate can be a lot alike.”

Don added, “And since she works for you now, you two are thrown together every day. We couldn't help thinking that maybe you just got a little carried away.”

“Not that you're the type to get carried away, Clay,” Joe hastened to amend. “You've always been a down-to-earth young man and we all admire that in you.”

“But what we're trying to say here,” Don chimed in, “is if it did turn out to be you, well, that might not be such a terrible thing at all. You're not a blood relation to Andie, after all.”

Clay felt the coiled tension inside him relax somewhat as
he began to understand that they actually
wanted
him to be the one. For a moment, he had the most ridiculous urge to tell them they were right, the baby was his. He'd do the right thing and marry Andie immediately.

But the urge passed quickly, leaving him wondering what the hell his problem was. His cousin, the sworn enemy of his teenage years, was pregnant. And here he was, thinking about marrying her.

And did the family really think that the old animosity between Andie and him covered a mutual attraction? The idea was crazy. Totally crazy.

Clay held up his hands, palms out. “Sorry. It really isn't me.”

Clay's father and his uncle seemed to sigh in unison. Clay thought they both looked older suddenly.

After a moment, Joe muttered, “Well, then. That's that, I suppose. But who the hell is it, then?”

Clay's father said, “I noticed she seemed awfully friendly with your buddy, Jeff, over the holidays.”

Before Clay could think of what to say, Joe argued, “But I can't believe it could be him. He just got married, after all.”

“That's right,” Don agreed. “Clay flew down to be his best man.” He looked at Clay for confirmation.

“Yeah.”

“And that was only a couple of weeks ago, wasn't it?”

“Right,” Clay said, trying to sound normal and unconcerned, though his heart was galloping inside his chest. “Just a couple of weeks ago. On Valentine's Day.”

In that stuck place in his mind, Clay saw Jeff and Madeline beneath an arbor that was covered in white roses, repeating their vows in clear, firm voices.

He also relived that moment when he'd gotten off the plane and Jeff had been there to meet him. Jeff had looked at him so strangely, he'd thought, a look both skeptical and anxious.
But then Clay had reached out and grabbed Jeff in a bear hug. When they stepped away from each other and Jeff met Clay's eyes again, that strange look was gone.

“No, I'm sure it wasn't your friend,” Joe said. “But I just don't know who else it could—”

“Listen, guys,” Clay interrupted, thinking he couldn't take another moment of this. “I've told you everything I know. And, like I said before, it's Andie you should be talking to. I just plain don't like this, discussing her behind her back.”

His uncle and his father regarded him solemnly.

At last his father conceded, “All right, Clay. If that's how you feel.”

 

Clay stayed for dinner, though it was a rather strained affair. His mother kept looking at him hopefully. But he knew she wouldn't ask him any uncomfortable questions. She would be tactful and wait until she had her husband alone to find out what had transpired between the men. He made it easy on her and left early so she could quiz his father in private.

The storm that had started with a few moist snowflakes drifting quietly down had steadily worsened. By the time Clay left his parents' house, the winds were up and the snow was coming down thick and heavy. The roads were a mess, so it took him nearly an hour to travel the fifteen miles to his two-story house on ten acres out at the end of twisting Wildriver Road.

Once there, he mixed himself a whiskey and soda and went out on the top deck outside his bedroom to watch the black storm clouds rise and roll in the night sky. His house was at a lower elevation than his parents' place in town, so he was pelted with freezing rain rather than snow. Within two minutes, he was drenched to the skin.

But he didn't give a damn. Clay loved storms. He was a
very orderly, controlled man, as a rule. But even as a young child he'd always stepped out to feel the rain on his face when he could, to watch thunderheads gather and lightning fork across the sky.

He loved the wildness of a storm. It soothed something inside him.

His biological mother had loved storms. Somewhere, way back in the farthest reaches of his early memories, he could still see her, wearing a cheap red coat, arms outstretched, head tipped up to the sky. She was spinning in circles, laughing, in the middle of a lawn in front of a building where they had a small apartment. The rain poured down on her face and the wind whipped at her flimsy coat.