I step closer, holding up my hand in a wave. “Hi, I’m Charlotte Keller. Paul’s wife.”
The woman gives me a polite smile, but her gaze flits to Paul. She murmurs something, and I’m pretty sure it’s “Keller.”
The hairs soldier on the back of my neck, even though I’ve never been the jealous type. It’s always seemed like such a waste of energy to me, being possessive and suspicious of a man who claims to love you. Either you believe him or you don’t—or so I’ve always thought. Paul tells me he loves me all the time, and I believe him.
But this woman wouldn’t be the first around these parts to try to snag herself a Keller.
“Are you ready?” I say, looking at Paul. “Because I came in the boat, and we need to get home before this weather blows in.”
The talk of rain does the trick, and Paul snaps out of whatever I walked into here. He gives me that smile he saves only for me, and a rush of something warm hits me hard, right behind the knees.
People who say Paul and I are wrong together don’t get that we’ve been waiting for each other all our lives. His first wife’s death, my convict father and meth-head mother, they broke us for a reason, so all these years later our jagged edges would fit together perfectly, like two pieces of the same fractured puzzle. The first time Paul took my hand, the world just...started making sense.
And now there’s a baby, a perfect little piece of Paul and me, an accidental miracle that somehow busted through the birth control. Maybe it’s not a fluke but a sign, the universe’s way of telling me something good is coming. A new life. A new chance to get things right.
All of a sudden and out of nowhere I feel it, this burning in my chest, an overwhelming, desperate fire for this baby that’s taken root in my belly. I want it to grow and kick and thrive. I want it with everything inside me.
“Let’s go home.” Without so much as a backward glance at the woman, Paul takes my hand and leads me to the boat.
* * *
We’re smack in the middle of Lake Crosby when it starts to snow, lazy fat flakes dancing down from a canopy of white. Flurries, but there’s more coming. Those are snow clouds spilling over the mountaintops.
Paul has the bow pointed to home and the throttle buried, and I don’t blame him. His fleece was bad enough in town, where there were warm shops to duck in and brick buildings to huddle behind. Out here on the open water the wind is fierce, and he might as well be shirtless.
He’s hunched low behind the windshield, steering the boat with his knees, his hands shoved deep in his pits for warmth. I take in his blue lips, his chattering teeth, and wince. I should have brought his coat.
Tell him. Just open your mouth and say I’m pregnant. Do it now.
“Hey, Paul?” The words get lost in the roar of the engine, but there’s no stopping now. Not when I’ve finally summoned my courage. I tap him on the shoulder and try again. “Paul.”
He pulls back on the throttle, slowing the boat to a crawl. “What’s wrong? Did you forget something?”
I shake my head. An hour ago, I left the house with exactly two items, the boat keys and my cell phone, both of which are here with me now. The keys dangle from the ignition, and I tucked my cell in the cubby by my seat, along with the Curtis Cottage drawings.
“You know how I’ve been feeling kinda out of sorts?” I don’t have to tick off my symptoms—the bouts of nausea, the bone-tiredness I can’t seem to shake. Paul brought me chicken soup from the market in town, covered me with blankets whenever I’d nap on the couch.
“You had the flu.”
“That’s what I thought, too. But who has the flu for three whole weeks?”
I stare at him hard, waiting for the realization to hit, but Paul’s face is a complete blank. I can’t tell if it’s because he doesn’t understand where I’m going with this, or if he’s trying to contain his panic—or worse, suspicion. Will he accuse me of flicking my pills into the toilet, of forgetting to take them on purpose? His mother certainly will.
I look away. “Anyway, it wasn’t the flu.”
He reaches up and kills the engine. All around us, the air goes quiet the way it can only here, in the middle of a lake cradled between mountains and trees. A strange kind of muffled silence punctuated by the far-off cry of a hawk.
Paul swivels on his seat to face me, his voice laced with worry. “What is it? Are you sick?”
“No.” My answer is swift, and I make sure to look him in the eyes. Paul’s already lost one wife. Of course his mind would go there. I probably should have led with my good health. “No, I’m fine. Better than fine. Healthy as can be.”
My heart is pounding now, but that’s to be expected. I think of the matching pink lines on the sticks, wrapped in toilet paper and buried at the bottom of the wastebasket. The instructions said one line may come out lighter than the other, but any hint of a second line meant I was pregnant. All three times I pulled a new one from the wrapper and peed on it just in case the ones before it were defective, the lines were so pink they were almost purple.
I see the second the quarter drops. Paul huffs out a breath, and the twin lines between his eyebrows smooth out. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” He sounds stunned, not angry. In fact, he kind of sounds the opposite, happy and hopeful—but maybe that’s just me.
Still. I bite down on a smile. “That depends. What do you think I’m saying?”
“Charlotte McCreedy Keller, don’t play games with me. My brittle old heart can’t take it.” He stands, reaching for me with icy hands, pulling me out of my chair. “Are you going to make me the happiest man on the planet? Are you going to make me a father?” He wraps his hands around my biceps and gives them a little jiggle. His eyes are gleaming, his smile stretched clear to his sideburns. “Are you?”
After a second or two, I nod.
Paul whoops, and a flock of swallows bursts from a bush on the shore, birds and batting wings swirling in the air. Suddenly I’m in the air, too, my legs wrapped around Paul’s waist, his hands firm on my backside. He twirls me around in the tiny space between the seats, and I laugh, from relief and at Paul’s reaction—a stunned but unapologetic joy.
“You’re pretty strong for an old man.”
“I’m not an old man. I am the man. My swimmers are badass. They are fierce.” I laugh, and he puts me down. “How do you feel? Any other symptoms?”
“A little tired still, and kinda pukey in the mornings. Once I eat something, I’m usually fine.”
“This is...this is amazing. I can’t wait to tell everybody. Let’s go home and make some calls.”