Her face lit up when she saw them, and she flew inside. “You came! Ohmygod, I can’t believe it!” She hugged them fiercely, then backed away and tried to act cool. “I mean, it would have been okay if you’d gone right to Yosemite. How long are you going to stay?” The shadow of anxiety appeared in her eyes. “You’re going to stay, aren’t you?”
“For a couple of days. There’s a real nice campground right outside town. As long as Nell and Mat don’t mind having us around, of course.”
Lucy turned to Mat, and all her cool faded as a pleading expression came over her. “They can stay, can’t they?”
Nealy hid her amusement as Mat struggled to sound enthusiastic. “Sure they can stay. It’ll be great having them around.”
Lucy’s smile spread. Then she reached for a muffin.
“Stop right there, young lady, and go wash those hands.”
Lucy grinned at Bertis and shot into the house. Button, who was trying to waddle across the Oriental rug without holding on to anything, fell on her bottom and scowled.
Charlie chuckled. Bertis gazed after Lucy with a smile. “She’s really something, isn’t she? You can just tell by looking at her that she’s special.”
A flash of pride shot through Nealy. “Yes, we think she’s pretty special, too.” We. As if Lucy were hers and Mat’s.
Charlie carried his coffee mug to the couch. “I guess Bertis and I are worried about her. Worried about both the girls.”
“They’re fine.” Mat sounded more than a little defensive.
“For now.” Bertis brushed a speck of muffin from her bright pink shorts. “But what about after the three of you get that paternity test Lucy seems so sure she can prevent? I don’t like speaking ill of the dead, but your ex-wife was a very irresponsible woman.”
“You’re right about that.” He carried his mug to the door that led to the back step and leaned against the frame, subtly distancing himself from them.
“Mat thinks we’re nibby,” Bertis confided to Nealy as if Mat weren’t standing right there. “We’re naturally curious, but we don’t pry. People just tell us things.”
“It’s mainly Bertis,” Charlie said. “People know they can trust her.”
“Now, don’t you sell yourself short, Charlie. Remember that truck driver yesterday at the rest stop.”
Nealy smiled. Bertis and Charlie had the girls’ best interests at heart, and she couldn’t see any reason to keep them in the dark. Maybe they could come up with a solution.
She reached down and brushed a hand over Button’s dandelion fluff. “Mat’s taking the girls to Davenport today for blood tests. Then they’ll be going back to Pennsylvania.” She didn’t mention foster care, but Bertis’s next words told her she didn’t have to.
“Those girls will be split up as sure as anything. Somebody’ll adopt Button, but Lucy’s too old.” She toyed with the chain on her glasses as if it were a string of worry beads.
“I can’t keep them,” Mat said, and Nealy could feel the guilt trickling from him.
Bertis turned to Nealy. “What about you, Nell? You already act like they’re your own. Maybe you could take them.”
That tantalizing thought had been tugging at Nealy since yesterday, but every time it appeared, she rejected it. Bringing them into her world would set off a media feeding frenzy that would ruin their lives.
She knew what it was like to grow up without any privacy—having every part of your life reported by the press. Her father had pounded the doctrine of obedience into her at an early age, so she’d managed to cope, but Lucy wasn’t like that. The intense pubic scrutiny she’d receive wouldn’t give her any room to make mistakes. Although her quick mind and stubborn spirit were her strengths, they would also inevitably get her into trouble. She needed to be able to finish growing up without the world watching.
Nealy shook her head. “I’d love to keep her, but I can’t. My life is . . . it’s complicated right now.”
Mat must have sensed her inability to lie to them because he sat down and began unwinding the story of her imaginary ex-husband and nefarious in-laws. Lucy came back out onto the sunporch while he was talking and attacked the muffin.
Bertis and Charlie listened carefully until Mat was finished, then Charlie regarded Nealy sympathetically. “You know you can count on us.”
She felt so guilty for deceiving them that she could barely manage a nod.
* * *
Despite his grumbling, Mat seemed to enjoy having another man around, and he and Charlie were engaged in a discussion of Chicago sports as they went off to get the Explorer Mat had rented the day before. As soon as they returned, Mat took Nealy aside and told her he’d finished arranging the paperwork for the blood test, and he wanted to leave for Davenport as soon as possible. He seemed to take it for granted that Nealy would come with him, but she refused to have anything to do with it. He ended up threatening her with the wrath of God—meaning his own—if she stuck her head out of the house while he was gone. She knew how concerned he was, so she gave him her word.
Lucy was a different matter, and Mat locked horns with her in the backyard. Nealy couldn’t hear what either of them said, but he must have come up with something because Lucy finally made her way to the Explorer, her feet dragging. Button needed no convincing. She was more than willing to go off with her favorite man.
After he’d loaded her into the car seat he’d moved to the Explorer, he turned to Bertis. “Promise me you’ll keep her inside. Her ex-husband’s as crazy as a loon.”
“We’ll watch out for her, Mat. Now you go on.”
He looked at Nealy. “Bertis and Charlie said they’d keep the girls company tonight so we could go out to dinner without you worrying about them. How about it?”
She smiled. “Okay.”
“Good. It’s a date.”
Thinking about the evening ahead, along with the limitations of her wardrobe, kept her from obsessing over the girls. She didn’t want to go out on her first date with Mat wearing shorts, but she’d also said she wouldn’t leave the house, so she consulted Willow Grove’s yellow pages and made some phone calls. Before long, she had a list.
Bertis agreed to pick up everything for her while Charlie did some maintenance work on the Airstream. By late afternoon, the older woman had bustled back in with the items Nealy had chosen over the phone.
The straps on the high-heeled shoes pinched, but they were sexy and she didn’t regret them. And the short tangerine maternity dress had a deeply scooped neckline, so at least it looked good from the bust up. Her favorite item, however, was a delicate black and gold choker with a tiny beaded heart that rested in the hollow of her throat.
She put everything away until later and settled in the kitchen with Bertis. They were drinking glasses of the sun tea she’d made earlier when Lucy charged in, extending her arm to display the bandage.
“It was so gross. You should have been there. The needle was this big, and they took out a ton of blood, and it really hurt, and Mat fainted.”
“I didn’t faint!” Mat was trying to placate a very fussy baby as he came into the kitchen, but his eyes were on Nealy. He seemed to be reassuring himself that she was still safe.
“Almost,” Lucy retorted. “You got real white and your eyes shut.”
“I was thinking.”
“About fainting.”
Button’s matted hair and creased cheek indicated she’d just awakened. She had a bandage on the inside of her small arm, just as Mat and Lucy did. On a baby, however, it looked cruel, and Nealy felt an irrational stab of anger at Mat for having forced her to undergo something so painful.
The baby squirmed in his arms. Her whimpers turned into sobs, and Lucy went to her. “Come here, Button.” She held out her arms, but the baby batted them away and howled louder.
Mat shifted her to his shoulder. “I swear she screamed for forty miles. She only fell asleep about ten minutes ago.”
“If your arm was as small as hers, you’d be crying
, too,” Nealy snapped.
Guilt ruined the scowl he tried to give her. He began to walk the baby around the kitchen, but she refused to settle down, so he took her into the living room. Before long, Nealy heard the faint sound of a cow mooing, but the baby’s screams continued unabated.
“Bring her here and let me try,” Bertis called out. But when he returned, Button only screamed louder and twisted her head until her teary eyes came to rest on Nealy.
Her bottom lip protruded, and she looked so pitiful that Nealy could hardly bear it. She rose and moved toward the miserable infant, although why she thought Button would come to a second-stringer like herself after she’d already rejected her favorite people, she couldn’t imagine.
To her astonishment, Button reached out. Nealy took her in her arms, and the baby gripped her as if she’d come home. Shaken, Nealy set her to her shoulder. As she stroked her back, her tiny spine shook beneath her palm. Nealy felt like crying herself. She carried her out to the sunporch where they could be alone and settled the two of them in the big wooden rocker.
The porch was warm from the afternoon heat, but the rocker sat in a corner that was shaded by a maple growing at the side of the house, and the ceiling fan stirred the breeze coming through the screen door. Button curled against her breast as if Nealy were all she had left. Gradually the hiccuping sobs faded as Nealy stroked her, kissed her Band-Aid, and crooned nonsense. She heard the low voices of Lucy and Bertis in the kitchen, but nothing from Mat.
Button finally looked up into Nealy’s eyes, her expression full of trust. As Nealy gazed back, she could almost feel her heart expanding until it filled all the dark, cold spaces that had been carved out inside her. This little baby had absolute confidence in her.
Nealy heard a rushing in her ears, the sound of great black wings beating a final retreat, and as she looked down at the beautiful little girl curled in her lap, she finally felt free.
Button gave a triumphant chortle, almost as if she could read Nealy’s mind. Nealy laughed and blinked away tears.
Button was finally ready to address what had happened. She settled herself more comfortably in Nealy’s lap, grabbed her toes, and began to talk. Multisyllabic words, long sentences, complex paragraphs of baby chatter, detailing the injury, the insult of her experience.
Nealy gazed into that small, expressive face and nodded in response. “Yes . . . I know . . . A terrible thing.”
Button’s chatter grew more adamant.
“He should be hung.”
More outrage.
“You think hanging’s too good for him?” Nealy stroked her cheek. “Well, all right. How about torture?”
A bloodthirsty squeal.
“All his veins at once? Yes, that sounds about right.”
“Enjoying yourself?” Mat wandered onto the sun-porch, both hands shoved into the pockets of his shorts.
Button shot him a look of betrayal and turned her face into Nealy’s breast. Nealy felt so blissfully happy that she wanted to sing. “You’ve got some big making up to do. With both of us.”
Guilt oozed from him. “Come on, Nealy. She’ll recover. And it had to be done.”
“Button doesn’t think so, do you, sweetheart?”
The baby stuck her fingers in her mouth and glowered at him.
He tried to brazen it out, but he was so obviously upset that Nealy took pity on him. “She’ll forgive you soon.”
“Yeah. I guess.” He didn’t sound convinced.
“How did you manage to get Lucy to go along with you?”
“Bribery. I promised her we’d stay a couple of extra days if she cooperated.” He looked uncomfortable. “It probably wasn’t smart since I’m just postponing the inevitable, but I did it anyway.”
Her emotions shifted from joy at having a few more stolen days to growing dread over the girls’ future.
If only . . .
The Willow Grove Inn was an old stagecoach stop that had been recently refurbished with lots of warm wood and chintz. Mat cased the place for terrorists and stray lunatics, then decided she’d be safest outside on the enclosed flagstone patio.
Nealy’s frivolous haircut floated in wisps around her face as she walked toward the table, and her dress swirled above her knees, while the little beaded heart tickled the hollow of her throat. Her heels clicked on the flagstones and Armani’s newest fragrance drifted from her pulse points. The vaguely stunned look on Mat’s face when she’d come downstairs had been her reward.
She wasn’t the only one who had taken special pains with her appearance. He looked devastatingly handsome in light gray slacks and a pale blue shirt. The gold watch at his wrist glimmered against his suntanned arms as he seated her, then picked up the wine list to study. Although the decorative wrought-iron chair was too small for his big body, he settled back into it with perfect ease.
The waiter gave Nealy a disapproving look when Mat chose an expensive wine. “Doctor’s orders,” Mat told him. “She has a hormonal condition that requires alcohol.”
Nealy smiled and bent her head to study the menu. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been unobserved in a restaurant. Behind them, a trellis holding deep purple clematis and coral roses bloomed, and the nearest table was just far enough away to give them a delicious sense of privacy.
They chatted about nothing until the waiter returned with the wine, then took their orders. After he left, Mat lifted his glass and touched it to hers. His smile bathed her in sexual promise. “To wonderful food, a hot summer night, and my very beautiful, very sexy First Lady.”
She tried not to drink in Mat along with the wine. It was difficult when the knowledge of what would happen between them tonight seemed like a third guest at the table. Suddenly she wanted to rush through this meal she’d been anticipating all day. “You steeltown boys sure are smooth talkers.”
He settled back in the too-small chair. Like her, he seemed to realize that they’d combust before dinner arrived if they didn’t steer the subject toward cooler waters. “Only a minor-league smooth talker compared to your crowd.”
“There’s that cynicism I’ve come to know and adore.”
“It’s amazing how many ways your pals in Washington manage to avoid ever speaking the truth.”
She instinctively responded to the light of challenge gleaming in his eyes. “You’re boring me.”
“Spoken like a born and bred politician.”
When politics had come up that night at the campground with Bertis and Charlie, she hadn’t been able to participate, but tonight she could. “Cynicism is easy,” she retorted. “Easy and cheap.”
“It’s also democracy’s best friend.”
“And its biggest enemy. My father raised me to believe that cynicism is nothing more than an excuse for underachievement.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that it’s easier to criticize others than do your part to fix a tough problem.” She leaned forward, relishing the chance to lock horns with him, especially concerning something she felt so passionately about. “Cynicism gives decent people an out. They can assume a posture of moral superiority without ever getting their hands dirty coming up with real solutions.”
“It’s tough not to be cynical.”
“That’s laziness talking. Pure laziness.”
“Interesting theory.” He smiled. “It’s hard to figure out how such a confirmed do-gooder has survived in Washington for so long.”
“I love Washington. Most of it, anyway.”
“What don’t you love?”
Old habits of privacy began to close around her, but she was tired of her own caution. “I ran away because I burned out. Being First Lady is the worst job in the country. There’s no job description, and everybody has a different idea of what you should be doing. It’s a no-win situation.”
“You seem to have won. Barbara Bush is the only First Lady with approval ratings as high as yours.”
“She got them honestly. I got them by pretending to be some
thing I’m not. But just because I’ve grown to hate being First Lady doesn’t mean I hate politics.” Now that she’d started, she didn’t want to stop. “I know you may find it hard to believe, but I’ve always loved the intrinsic honor of a political life.”
“Honor and politics aren’t words you hear in the same sentence very often.”
She met his skepticism head-on. “It’s an honor to be given the people’s trust. An honor to serve. Every once in a while, I even think about—” Appalled, she broke off.
“Tell me.”
“There’s nothing more to say.”
“Come on. I’ve seen you naked.” He gave her a crooked smile.
“That doesn’t mean you’re going to see into my head.”
He’d always been too perceptive where she was concerned, and a strange alertness came over him. “I’ll be damned. Hillary Clinton’s not the only one. You’re thinking about running for office yourself, aren’t you?”
She nearly knocked over her wine goblet. How could a person she’d known for such a short time understand something she hadn’t completely articulated even to herself? “No. I’m not thinking about it at all. I’ve . . . well, I’ve thought about it, but . . . not really.”
“Tell me.”
His intensity made her wish she’d never started this.
“Chicken.”
She was so tired of always being cautious, and she wanted to talk, damn it! Maybe it was time to give these vague ideas a little fresh air. “Well . . . I’m not serious about this, but I’ve thought about it a little.”
“More than a little, I’ll bet.”
“Just these past few months.” She met those penetrating gray eyes. “I’ve been an inside observer for most of my life—living right at the heart of power, but not having any real power myself. I’ve had influence, sure, but no real authority to fix things. Still, there are some advantages to being an observer.”