Here With Me (4 page)

She nodded. “I would definitely pay you,” she
said.

He’d never cared all that much about money.
“We’ll work something out,” he said. He looked down at his clothes.
“I guess I’m not really dressed to go calling on family.”

“That’s easy to fix,” she assured him. She
played with the hem of her blouse. Then she did some more circles
in the sand. Finally, she lifted her eyes to the blue sky and he
saw her lips move in what he figured was silent prayer. As long as
she wasn’t asking God for another big wave to wash him away, it
probably couldn’t hurt.

It took her another minute before she looked
at him. “Well, what do you say?” he asked.

She gave him a wobbly sort of smile, stuck
out her hand, and said, “I think we just got married.”

***

On the way to her car, Melody examined her
new husband. His shirt and pants, which had been wet and clinging
to his body last night, had dried stiff. His dark brown hair, which
was well over the edge of his shirt collar, was matted down in a
combination of salt and sand. He wore cowboy boots with a one-inch
heel and it looked like the worn leather hadn’t yet dried all the
way.

Last night, she’d missed the fact that he had
lovely moss-green eyes with dark lashes so thick that if he’d been
a girl, she’d have discreetly leaned over and asked for a
recommendation on mascara.

It had been too dark to see that his skin was
tanned with a few lines around his eyes or that when he smiled, his
teeth were nice and straight with the exception of the slightest
overlap of his lower two front teeth. Had he been the kind of boy
who didn’t have time for a retainer?

What she had noticed was that he had a nice
voice and a wonderful sort of gentlemanly manner about him. That
was hard to miss.

She wondered if he was homeless. It seemed
rather obvious that he only had the clothes on his back. She’d
realized she was taking a chance when she’d offered him a ride. But
she couldn’t leave him stranded when he’d risked his life to save
hers.

They were just a few feet from the steps that
would take them up the steep cliff when he stopped to pick up what
looked to be a ten-by-ten square wood box. It had a latch and a
long leather strap that he looped over his shoulder. “What is
that?” she asked.

“My camera.”

She’d seen old cameras in similar boxes at
flea markets. “Oh, an antique one?”

He looked rather startled, like perhaps he
hadn’t expected her to ask that. “Yes, it is.” He motioned for her
to go first on the steps. She took them slowly, but even so, when
she got to the top she was breathing hard, keenly aware of every
one of the eight pounds she’d already gained.

“Maybe we should rest a minute,” he said.

She smiled at him. “I know this will surprise
you, but I used to live on the tenth floor of this huge apartment
building. I did the stairs every day.”

“Tenth floor,” he repeated, like he could
hardly believe her. She didn’t blame him. Not when she was
practically panting like a dog on a hot summer day.

“Fortunately for me,” she said, pointing to
her five-year-old green Grand Prix, which was the only car in the
small lot due to the time of the day, “we’re driving the rest of
the way.”

He stared at her car and his eyes showed a
myriad of emotions she couldn’t identify. She felt bad for him.
Maybe he’d had to give up his own car when he’d fallen on hard
times. Or God forbid, maybe he’d had to sleep in a car after he’d
lost his home. She kept walking, wanting to give him a moment. When
she reached the car, she looked over her shoulder. He was still
standing in the same spot.

Not sure what else to do or say, she opened
the door and got in on the driver’s side. That seemed to spur him
into action. He walked quickly to the other side, opened the door,
and when he sort of sank, half-dropped into the seat, he almost hit
his head on the roof.

“Careful,” she warned.

When he leaned forward and placed the camera
between his feet, she thought she saw his hand tremble. “I’m a very
good driver,” she assured him. “Just forget what I said earlier
about cutting across multiple lanes of traffic.” She fastened her
seatbelt and he did the same, although he fumbled around with the
catch.

When she pulled out of the lot, he sat up in
his seat and gripped the handle on the upholstered door. “There’s a
Target just up the street,” she said, trying hard not to be
offended. She
was
a good driver. “We can get some clothes
there.”

He kept staring out the front window. Ten
minutes later she pulled into a crowded strip mall lot and found a
space. When she turned to look at him, she was surprised to see how
pale he looked. “Oh no,” she said. “You’re not the carsick type,
are you?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He sat
bone-straight in his seat.

Oh this was going to be such a fun drive. As
weird as her stomach had become, if he threw up, it would be a
matter of seconds before she joined him in sympathy.

How the heck had one little lie turned into
this? Okay, it wasn’t
one
lie and none of them were that
little
.

She’d always gone home for Christmas. But she
hadn’t this past year. On the twentieth of December, when her
period, which always, always, came every twenty-eight days, was six
days late, she’d taken a home pregnancy test. She’d promptly gone
to the store and bought two more and repeated the test on the
twenty-first and twenty-second of December. All three of them had
said the same thing. She was pregnant. On the twenty-third of
December, still reeling from the shock, she’d called her
grandmother and told her that she had to work at the restaurant
over the holidays and wouldn’t be able to come home this year. That
had been the first lie.

On the fifth of January, her grandmother had
called for her weekly chat. A day earlier, Melody had seen her
doctor and he’d confirmed that in late August or early September,
her child would be born. She’d left the doctor’s office and called
Alexander, the man she’d met a month after Miguel had died.

When she’d told him about the pregnancy, he’d
gotten very quiet, not at all like the fun and carefree man who had
swept her off her feet when she was still reeling from grief. After
a minute, he’d blurted out that he already had a sixteen-year-old
and a nine-year-old. Oh yeah, and a wife, too. That had come up
some time later in the conversation. That’s when she’d felt really
stupid. Of course, he’d been fun and carefree with her. His worries
were back home in Ohio.

So when her grandmother called less than
twelve hours later, hurt and fear and pure craziness had spilled
out of her mouth. She’d told her grandmother that an old boyfriend
had surfaced a few months earlier and that one thing had led to
another and they’d eloped on New Year’s Eve. Lie number two.

Her grandmother had been surprised but
gracious, offering her congratulations first and then second,
demanding to know when she could meet the new husband. Melody had
promised soon, hung up the phone, and cried for an hour.

In mid March, she’d played the
we’re
pregnant
card. In a rare moment of truth, she’d told her
grandmother that she was already almost fifteen weeks along. Her
grandmother had quickly done the math and realized that Melody had
already been a month pregnant on New Year’s Eve, when she’d eloped.
Her grandmother had taken the news in stride and Melody had
understood. It wasn’t important when she’d gotten pregnant. What
was important was that she was married now. The baby would have
legitimacy—something that her grandmother had never had.

Her grandmother had begged her to come home
but she’d come up with one excuse after another. More lies. Her
plan had been to have the baby, and then, quietly, without much
fuss, claim irreconcilable differences and get a quick divorce. It
wasn’t perfect but it could have worked.

But she hadn’t ever dreamed that her
grandmother was sick. There’d been no mention of it. When Tilly had
told her, the word
cancer
had seemed to vibrate in her ear,
to go on forever. When Tilly had said that grandmother wanted
Melody and her husband to come home now, Melody had agreed without
question. It was only hours later, when she’d finally stopped
crying and started thinking, that she’d realized what a truly
horrible predicament she was in.

Then she’d met George, and now she was taking
her new husband home to meet the family. They were going to be
late, however, if he wouldn’t get out of the car. He had relaxed
his death grip but he continued to just sit and stare out the front
window at all the cars going past.

“I told my aunt I’d be there for lunch,” she
reminded him. She started to reach for the door and stopped
suddenly when she felt the movement of new life. She’d first felt
the delicate flutter around twenty weeks and every day in the two
weeks since, the movements had become stronger, making it more
real.

She pressed her hand to her stomach and like
always, joy blossomed, pushing despair aside. However it had
happened, whatever had been the consequences, what mattered was
now. She was having a baby.

But first she needed to take her new husband
home. “Let’s go, George.” He didn’t answer but he did get out. Once
inside the store, he wandered up and down the aisles, like a little
kid, touching things, looking at price tags. When they got to the
men’s section, she turned to him. “What size of pants do you
wear?”

He shrugged and she had no choice, really
none, but to take a really good look at his body. His belly was
flat, his hips trim, and his legs long. “I’m sort of out of my
element here,” she said, “but I’m guessing about a 34-inch waist
and a 36-inch length. How’s that sound?”

“Fine,” he said, but made no move to pick
anything out. She looked at his ugly flannel shirt. “Large in
shirts, right?”

“I imagine,” he answered.

She waited another minute before she simply
picked out a pair of tan pants, some jeans, a couple shirts, and
shoved them all into his arms. “Okay?” she asked.

He nodded. As they walked up to the checkout,
she’d added a package of briefs and some tee shirts, never making
eye contact. At the last minute, she detoured to the sundry items
and picked up a handful of the basic things he’d need.

It cost her a hundred and forty-two dollars
and when she handed over her credit card, George’s mouth literally
dropped open. When the clerk handed her the sack, she pulled him to
the side and pointed to the restrooms at the front of the store.
“Why don’t you change here,” she suggested.

Fifteen minutes later, she realized he
cleaned up real well. When he walked out of the men’s room, she
barely recognized him. He’d put on the jeans and tucked the
long-sleeved white shirt into them. He’d shaved and maybe even
washed his hair. It was wet and pushed away from his face.

She’d been right about the sizes although the
jeans looked just a little loose at the waist.

Easy for a lover to slip her hand inside.

Damn. Where had that thought come from? She
sat down so hard on the red plastic bench lining the wall that she
felt the vibration all the way up her spine. He crouched in front
of her and reached for her hand. “Is it the child?” he asked, his
voice thick with concern.

How could she tell him that she’d just had a
thought that no woman who was pregnant with another man’s baby
should be having about a man that she’d met just a day before? “I’m
fine,” she said. “I get tired when I stand too long,” she lied.

He helped her up and kept his hand under her
elbow as they walked out of the store. When they got to the car, he
opened her door, waited until she got in, then carefully shut
it.

She thought it was so sweet that she didn’t
even get mad when he got in, fastened his seatbelt, and grabbed the
door handle again, like he was hanging on for dear life.

He didn’t let go for three hundred miles. He
held on and stared out the front window and every so often sucked
in a breath of air like he was gasping for oxygen.

He’d spoken once. They’d been on the road for
several hours when he turned to her and asked, “Should you eat
something? It’s been more than three hours.”

She looked at her watch and realized he was,
give or take fifteen minutes, right on the mark. That freaked her
out since she’d noticed he didn’t even wear a watch. It freaked her
out even more that he’d remembered what she’d said the day before.
Like he really cared.

She reached her hand behind her seat and
fished a box of crackers out of a bag. “Want some?” she asked,
holding up the box.

He shook his head. “You go ahead.”

She dumped ten or so onto her lap and then
tossed the box over her shoulder. “I guess we should get our
stories straight,” she said.

“Probably be a good idea.”

“We got married on New Year’s Eve. A small
ceremony at City Hall. You’d recently returned to the Los Angeles
area and we’d rekindled an old college relationship.”

“I see.” He paused. “We’d courted for some
time in the past?”

Courted
? “Yes, I guess we did.”

He was quiet for the next few miles. “Were
you and your child’s father together for a long time?”

“I met Alexander shortly after Miguel had
died. With Sarah gone, too, I was lonely and sad and when I was
with him, I could forget that.” She glanced over and he was
studying her with interest, and perhaps a little sympathy. It was
the latter that she couldn’t stand. It was the kind of look she’d
gotten too often after her parents had died. She hadn’t deserved
the sympathy then, she didn’t deserve it now. Alexander had fooled
her and she’d been careless. “It wasn’t love. We both knew that,”
she lied.

The tip of his nose got pink and she wondered
if she’d shocked him. Good. Shock was way better than sympathy. But
if that shocked him, her family and its very strange dynamics would
push him over the edge. She gripped the wheel with a growing sense
of dread. This was never going to work.