Holiday Trilogy Special Edition Page 11

  "Listen to yourself, Rob," Maddie said softly. "You said had. You've already made up your mind, you just don't want to admit it. You're the one walking away. From the best thing you've ever had, and you're having second thoughts. Well, that's too bad. I hope you suffer miserably from your decision, because I know I will." She walked to the front door and opened it for him. "But at least you'll have Sophie, and Dee."

  Rob took a step out the door and Maddie continued, "But I'll have Mr. and Mrs. Peabody. So there's that."

  He looked at her sadly. "Goodbye, Maddie." He appeared so grief stricken, yet he was the one who'd caused this whole mess. She could only imagine how she looked to him.

  "Goodbye, Rob." She let the door slam in his face.

  She returned to her bedroom and lay on the bed. The TV played softly, people laughed about something funny going on in their lives. Maddie wished something funny was going on in her life, but she could think of nothing to laugh about. She touched her stomach and remembered the new life growing inside her. It wasn't funny, but it was definitely worth a smile.

  I'm going to have a baby. A part of Rob that she could keep, forever. She still didn't know when, or even if, she'd tell him. Telling him would change things between them. They'd have this connection for the rest of their lives.

  She let her mind wander through various scenarios. Rob wanting to come back to her because of the baby. Not a good reason, but she knew she'd have him back. Rob staying with Dionne, but wanting to be part of the baby's life. Maddie would have to see him regularly when they exchanged the baby for visits. She could make Dionne's life hell, as Dionne had done to her, but not just for a few months, for years and years. Maddie chuckled at the evil thoughts running through her mind. She and Rob might have an affair, because he wouldn't be able to keep his hands off her. Dionne would be miserable.

  Maddie fantasized all the crazy thoughts before coming back to reality. She didn't want things that way. She wanted a man of her own, one who wanted her, and only her. She wasn't even sure she wanted to share her baby with Rob, evenings, weekends, summers, such a pain to negotiate. Maybe she'd move away and keep the baby all to herself. She didn't know what she was going to do, but she knew she had time. Plenty of time.

  Rubbing her stomach, she felt comforted knowing she wasn't alone. She tried to watch TV, but it all seemed so trivial. Sleep was impossible. She tossed and turned, then rose and paced the floor. She finished off a box of crackers she found in back of the kitchen cabinet. She dozed. She dreamed. She woke up crying, sweating and choked with fear. Finally, she slept.

  Monday afternoon, Rosa approached Maddie outside on the playground. "I had lunch with Leonard today. He said Coop looks like hell, and he's grouchy as all get-out."

  Maddie frowned. "That's too bad, since I'm doing so well here myself." She'd spent one hour throwing up that morning, as compared with the three hours she'd thrown up on Sunday.

  "At lunch, Leonard wondered if there wasn't something we could do to—"

  "There's not, but thanks," Maddie cut her off. She thought about going to 'lunch' with Rob, the day they spent twenty five glorious minutes making love at her place. Back when things were good. Back when things made sense. "Where'd you go?"

  "What?"

  "For lunch. Where'd you go?"

  "Oh. The Burger Barn on 6th Street."

  Maddie smiled.

  She saw a doctor and confirmed her pregnancy. She'd conceived in July; her baby was due in April. The doctor started her on a regimen of prenatal vitamins and iron, since Maddie appeared so run-down. Heart-broken was the more accurate term for her condition, but the doctor could offer nothing to ease the pain of that malady.

  She slowly formulated a plan. She had her mail forwarded from Rob's house to a post office box. She'd have to move, so she investigated other suburbs of Oklahoma City. She wanted to make a fresh start, but held the notion, deep in her heart, that if she eventually told Rob about the baby, it would be nice if they lived in fairly close proximity.

  She was careful to keep her plans secret from Rosa. It hurt Maddie not being able to discuss things with her best friend, but she couldn't now that Rosa and Smoky were so close. Maddie knew her every movement was being reported to Smoky then on to Rob, if he even wanted to know. She, for one, did not want to hear the daily status report that, "Coop is miserable." She finally informed Rosa that she was not interested in hearing about him, and to please stop bringing him up. Rosa was miffed for a brief time, but she got over it.

  It was late August when Rob appeared in the doorway of Sunny Days Childcare Center, and Maddie's heart skipped a beat, much as it had done the first time she saw him. He still looked amazing, with his scruffy blond hair and deep blue eyes. But he was clean shaven. It was the first time she'd ever seen him that way. She walked up to him and smiled. "Finally found your razor, I see."

  He gave her a small smile in return. "Yeah, it was buried under a mountain of female stuff in the bathroom. I finally got around to packing up the rest of your things. There's a little bit of mail, but nothing important."

  Maddie's heart skidded with a thud to the pit of her stomach. Deep down, she'd known why he was there, but a little part of her hoped it was for a different reason. "I changed my address at the post office," she replied, for lack of anything better to say.

  He nodded. "If you'll give me your keys, I'll put the boxes in your car."

  "Okay." She dug her keys from her purse and handed them over. "You should take your house key off my ring."

  He looked at the keys and nodded. "Okay. I'm closing the place up this weekend."

  "Not selling it, I hope?" Maddie asked, concerned.

  "No." He smiled. "I could never sell it. I'll be back someday. But right now, it's haunted with that damned sexy red-headed ghost."

  "Good." She nodded. "It should be."

  He held up the keys. "I'll just go do this."

  She motioned to the table by the door. "Leave the keys there when you're done. We're going outside."

  "All right then. Take care, Maddie."

  "You too, Rob." She started to return to her kids, but added as an afterthought, "You should lose that razor again. Really." She gave him a genuine smile.

  "I'll take that into consideration." He grinned, rubbed his chin, and left.

  When Maddie returned to the playroom, later that afternoon, her keys were lying on the table with a single red rose. She smiled as she smelled the fragrant flower, and looked at her keys. His house key was still on her ring.

  Chapter Seven

  Six months later

  Maddie waddled into the TLC Childcare Center. She didn't walk anymore, she definitely waddled. "Oh, my gosh." She dropped into a chair. "It's such a long walk from the parking lot. Couldn't I just drive right into the room here?"

  Her co-worker, Sandy, smiled and shrugged. "I'll ask the boss about it for you. So, what did the doctor say?"

  "Slightly effaced, slightly dilated, could be one week or two at the most." Maddie rubbed her huge stomach, and winced when the baby kicked her. "Geez, it's got to be a boy. He's already started football practice."

  Sandy grinned. "The doctor could have told you if it was a boy or girl, but you didn't want to know."

  "I still don't. I want to be surprised."

  "The only surprise I got was when the doctor told me I was pregnant a third time." Sandy shook her head. "By then, I had one of each, so the sex of the last one didn't really matter. We had everything we needed, pretty much."

  "I have everything I need, too, thanks to the surprise baby shower you gave me last week. I still can't get over all the great stuff you guys got me. I washed all the little clothes and put them in the dresser. They're so tiny; they don't take up much room."

  "The baby won't stay tiny for long, and you'll need bigger clothes before you know it."

  Maddie rubbed her stomach and smiled. "He just has to stay tiny long enough to fit through here." She pointed between her legs. "After that, he can grow like a
weed, I don't care."

  They were laughing when the center director entered the room with another young blond woman in tow. "Hey, Maddie." Suzie smiled at her. "What did the doctor say?"

  "One or two more weeks."

  Suzie nodded. "This is, Tammy, the replacement I hired for your maternity leave. I convinced her to start early, so you could train her before you go. Plus, if it happens during the day, with Sandy as your birthing coach…"

  Sandy spoke up. "Hi, Tammy, I'm, Sandy. Thank God, you met the 'name ends in ie or y requirement' to work here."

  They laughed as Suzie rolled her eyes and said to Tammy, "Don't let them give you too much trouble. They can be ornery. Let me know if you need anything." She returned to her office.

  Tammy smiled at her new co-workers. "She seems like a nice boss."

  Maddie nodded. "She's great. A real improvement over my last employer."

  Tammy looked from one of them to the other. "So, you're her birthing coach?"

  Sandy nodded, and they noticed Tammy looking at the wedding ring on Maddie's hand.

  Maddie spoke up, "I'm a widow. It was a hunting accident. Very tragic."

  "I'm so sorry!" Tammy said sincerely, and Maddie looked away before she cracked a smile.

  Sandy took Tammy by the arm. "Why don't I show you around a little while Maddie rests up from that long walk from the parking lot?" She winked at Maddie and took Tammy across the room.

  Maddie smiled and put her feet up on the footrest by her chair. She decided before she ever moved to Lapham, another suburb of Oklahoma City, that she'd need to say she was divorced or widowed to maintain respectability. She wanted to get another job at a childcare center, so she could have the baby close to her when she went back to work. People had funny notions about unmarried, pregnant women watching their children, even in the current day and age. So; Maddie worked on her story, but never quite got it figured out until she went to tell it for the first time. Then, suddenly, a vision of Rob making love to Dionne popped in her mind. Maddie saw herself with a shotgun blasting a hole cleanly through the both of them. The 'tragic hunting accident' story was born.

  Her demented daydreams about ways to make Rob and Dionne pay had pretty much come to an end since she moved to Lapham. She still had the occasional warped fantasy about how things might go if she told him about the baby, but she tried not to think about that too much.

  She had a couple of bad nights, really bad nights, when she was still living in Meridan. During those nights, Maddie knew if she hadn't been pregnant, she would probably have ended up really, really drunk or dead. They were that bad.

  The first nightmare was set off by a romantic movie on TV. Maddie enjoyed the movie until the hero ran his hands through the heroine's hair, and the director of the movie had to make a big stinking deal of it. He must have focused on it for five minutes. Maddie closed her eyes and tried to block out the image, but it was powerful and hit very close to home. She could almost feel Rob's hands running through her hair, dragging her head backwards so he could lower his mouth to hers for a kiss. She let herself delight in the image for a moment, but then the bubble burst, as it always did for her these days. The woman she saw kissing Rob was no longer her, but Dionne.

  Maddie sobbed for a while, and when she got up to wash her face, studied herself in the mirror. Before she knew what she was doing, she grabbed the scissors and whacked off her long braid with one stroke. She stared at it and her reflection for a little bit, alternating between laughing and crying. Eventually she called Rosa, who had completed seven months of a nine-month beauty school program before going to work at the center.

  Rosa came over immediately, and her first words were, "What in the hell have you done?" Thankfully, her second set of words were "We can fix this." She gave Maddie bangs, layers, and evened out the length, which now hit at the base of her neck. "I like it!" Rosa turned Maddie toward the mirror. "It's kind of a Reba, flippy thing."

  Maddie liked it too, and worked with the style until she got it just the way she wanted. With a little mousse and some hot rollers she had cute, full, fluffy style, or she could wear it more casual and flat.

  She liked the style enough to continue paying a stylist to cut it, once she moved away from Rosa. Moving away was hard. Not just because Rosa had kept her scissors that night; and Maddie had to pack and move with no scissors in the house. It was just hard.

  The second quasi-suicidal night was not too long after the haircutting incident. Feeling sorry for herself, and lonely, Maddie picked up the phone and dialed. When the person on the other end of the phone said, "Hello," Maddie was silent.

  "Hello?"

  More silence.

  "Madison, is that you? The Caller I.D. said M. Stewart."

  "It's me, Mom," Maddie said quietly.

  "Michael! It's Madison!" her mother yelled away from the phone, and Maddie heard the extension pick up.

  "Maddie?" her father's familiar voice came on, anxious.

  "Hi, Daddy," she said simply.

  "Madison," her mother said again. "Are you okay? We tried to call you, but you never got back to us."

  "I know, Mom. I got the messages."

  "What's wrong?" her father sounded concerned.

  Maddie burst in to tears. "I got my heart broken, Daddy." Maddie sniffled, and wiped her nose.

  "I'm sorry," he said. "Is there anything we can do to help?"

  "I just wanted to hear your voices."

  "Madison, come home."

  My mother's answer to all problems. She wiped her face and tried to pull herself together. "I'll be fine. So, how's Matt?"

  "Your brother is fine," her mother answered. "We tried to call you when he got married, then again when his daughters were born."

  "I got the wedding invitation," Maddie wiped her face again. "He has daughters?"

  "Two. Melanie and Marcy."

  Maddie snorted amusement. "You should tell him, he doesn't have to carry on the crazy 'M-name' thing you and daddy started. Jesus, what does his wife think about it?"

  "Her name is Marsha."

  Maddie laughed out loud. "Okay, never mind. I'm glad they're doing well."

  Her mother said, "So the construction worker broke your heart? We knew he wasn't good enough for you."

  "He was plenty good enough for me," Maddie retorted then stopped. "How did you know he was a construction worker? I never mentioned that."

  Silence on the home end, this time.

  "Mother? Tell me how you knew about him!"

  "Don't get angry, Madison," her mother said softly.

  "What did you do?"

  "We just kept tabs on you. You're so far away; we were worried about you."

  "How did you keep tabs on me?" Maddie asked, but she knew the answer before she got the question out. The Peabodys. Her extremely friendly neighbors; and her extremely cheap duplex. "Oh my God, mother! Have you been paying my landlords to spy for you?"

  "No! Of course not! We sent them some rent money, to help you out. We've been so worried about you, Madison."

  Maddie knew right then she'd be moving from the duplex and giving the Peabodys nothing more than a P.O. Box as a forwarding address. "All this time I thought I was making it on my own."

  "You were, Maddie," her father said softly. "We just wanted to help you out. It made us feel better to make things easier for you."

  "I can't believe this," she said to herself.

  "Madison, come home." Her mother said again. "No one blames you for what happened to Alec. It was an accident."

  "I don't think Alec's family feels the same as you do, Mom. If I recall his brother threatened to 'make me pay, one way or another'."

  "That was a long time ago," her father said. "They were upset. They've had time to cool off."

  "I'm not coming home. I am moving from this house, though, so I might suggest you stop paying rent. Take care." She hung up, and disintegrated into a brand new flood of tears.

  It had made her feel better to hear their voices,
but they'd managed to piss her off all over again. Such was her relationship with her parents.

  She gave the Peabodys thirty day's notice, and informed them she'd honor her lease and pay her share of the rent until they could find a new tenant, but that her parents wouldn't be sending any more money. They agreed, somewhat embarrassed, and were able to find a new tenant before Maddie left. They were sad to see her go, had apparently genuinely liked her, but she was cool to them, feeling like they betrayed her trust. It was a good time to end their relationship.

  "Earth to Maddie," Sandy interrupted her thoughts. "We're going outside. Come on, you can sit in the sunshine and daydream." She extended a hand to Maddie and helped her stand.

  "I wasn't daydreaming," Maddie said as they headed out.

  "Then why didn't you stop Lauren from eating paste right in front of you?"

  Maddie made a face. "Oops, sorry. I'll try to pay closer attention."

  Sandy chuckled and hugged Maddie from the side. "Just sit. We've got it under control."

  Maddie wrapped up the day, and by five-thirty, was on her way home. Her new house was two blocks from the center, but she didn't walk that far anymore. She got in her car and drove. It was a bigger house than the duplex had been, this one had two bedrooms and a garage. One of the nicest features was that the house was owned by a faceless corporation who couldn't be bribed to spy on her. Maddie was sure the Peabodys had passed along her forwarding address to her parents, but it was just the P.O. Box, so they didn't know much.

  Rosa didn't even have her address. They did talk by phone, and Rosa knew her number. Maddie let it slip one time where she worked, but Rosa promised to keep it a secret. Coop was long gone anyway, Rosa assured her. Maddie knew where he was probably living, but couldn't believe he'd be happy in a condo in the city. If he wasn't there, she felt sure Fred would know where he was. She intended to test that theory when, or if, she decided to reach out to Rob. But for now, she tried to limit the information she passed on to Rosa. Especially about the baby. Rosa did not know about the baby.