“’NIGHT, MOM.”
“Good night, imp. Sleep well.” Leaning over, Juliet kissed her daughter’s cheek, pulling the covers up to Mary Jane’s chin. No matter how hot the weather, she wouldn’t sleep without being completely covered, at least by a sheet.
She forced herself to stand in the doorway until the child opened her eyes for one last blown kiss, a ritual they’d started when Mary Jane was a toddler. Never had bedtime taken so long.
More often than not, she let Mary Jane talk her into staying up past her bedtime. Mary Jane didn’t seem to require as much sleep as most children. A characteristic of precocious children, her pediatrician had said when, at two, the little girl had played happily in her crib all through naptime.
She gave her daughter another fifteen minutes to settle into sleep before she could no longer stand the tension and called her twin. From a cell phone, sitting in her bedroom with the door closed, just in case Mary Jane got up.
“He’s a criminal, Marce!” she blurted as soon as her sister picked up.
“Who’s a criminal?”
She could hear voices in the background. The television. Again.
“Blake Ramsden.” The father of her child. “What kind of defense attorney am I that I didn’t even suspect?” The thoughts that had been torturing her all evening came tumbling out in no apparent order. “What kind of mother? I’ve been working on this case for months and not once did I have even an inkling that the road to Eaton’s freedom was paved by Ramsden Enterprises. It’s like I was blinded by a nine-year-old memory that might have cost a man several years of his life.”
“So what bothers you more, Jules?” Marcie’s voice was soft yet tough. “Your ego, because you might not be as infallible on the job as you think? Or your heart, because you might have made a bad choice for the father of your child?”
“I didn’t choose the father of my child. The child chose me.”
“You used the same condom twice!”
“I was drunk!”
Marcie didn’t say another word. It was a silence that drove Juliet insane every single time her sister used it on her.
“Why are you doing this?” Juliet whispered a full thirty seconds later. “You’ve never said anything like this before.”
“It didn’t matter before. He had a life in another world.”
A laugh track exploded in the background.
“You think I got pregnant on purpose?” Because if Marcie thought she’d ever consider something as cold-blooded as that—to go out looking for a man for the express purpose of having his kid—then her sister didn’t know her at all.
“I don’t think you consciously chose the course.” Marcie’s reply came quickly. “But I’ve always suspected that somewhere, in the back of your mind, the thought was there.”
Juliet leaned her head against the wall, legs straight out, and studied the subtle texture of her nylons. She really shouldn’t be sitting on the floor in her suit.
“You need family, Jules,” Marcie said slowly. “We both do. And there was no way you could possibly contemplate marriage—not until you’d proven to yourself that you had a full life on your own.”
“I made it through law school by the time I was twenty-five. I had a life.” The carpet was making her legs itch.
Marcie nodded. “You had the beginning of a life. But not enough of one to take away your fear. I’ve wondered if maybe part of you needed to know that even if you were in Mother’s position—pregnant and alone—you had what it took to make it. You couldn’t live with the fear of thinking you might not be able to handle it,” Marcie was saying. “You were afraid of finding out that if it ever happened to you, you’d do exactly what Mom did.” She was going to hang up now. “I don’t think you got pregnant on purpose, no.” Marcie’s words went a little way toward calming the panic in Juliet’s heart. “But I don’t think it was completely a mistake that you didn’t insist on a new condom the second time around. We make little subconscious choices all the time and then act on them without even knowing that’s what we’re doing.”
It was Juliet’s turn to use the silent treatment. Mostly because she was speechless.
“You know,” Marcie continued, “like when you pull into the parking lot of an ice-cream shop without even realizing that you were hungry for ice cream.”
“I hardly think craving a hot-fudge sundae can be in any way likened to having a baby.” She pulled off her pumps, one by one.
“The brain’s ability to see to the needs of the subconscious can be the same in both cases.”
None of this was making sense. And it wasn’t anything she’d needed, or expected, when she’d dialed her twin’s number. “Is Hank there?”
“No.” Of course not. It was Thursday and Hank worked late at the hardware store on Thursdays doing inventory.
With one hand, and leaning from side to side where she sat, Juliet pulled off her panty hose, wadded them and tossed them in the wire-framed designer laundry basket in a corner of the closet.
“So you’re accusing me of going out that night with some thought in the back of my mind that it was time to get pregnant?”
“No! Of course not, Jules.” Marcie’s voice gentled. “I know you better than that. I’m only saying that when the proper circumstances presented themselves, you acted on them. You were with a man who attracted you. He was intelligent and confident enough to argue with you, he was gorgeous, he was from a stable family well known for honest dealings, and—the crèmede la crème—he was leaving the country for an indefinite period of time! There’d be no one to get in touch with, to answer questions from, to avoid, or to call. No one to turn to in case you got cold feet about going it alone.”
“You actually think I thought all that through?”
“No. But I think the sense of freedom spoke to you.” Juliet’s heart sank when it became obvious that Marcie wasn’t going to budge on this one. Usually when that happened she was at least partially correct.
The laugh track sounded again.
Except for her insistence on staying in Maple Grove.
Juliet started unfastening the buttons on her blouse. “Can I have some time to think about this?”
“In other words, you want me to shut up and never mention it again?”
“Yeah.”
“Only if you promise to…no, forget that. Yeah, I’ll let it go.”
“Only if I promise to what?”
“Nothing.”
“What?” Her blouse hung half-open.
“I was just going to say that I promise to
