have to have you and Piper to dinner some evening. I’d like to meet her.”
I held up my hand. “That won’t be necessary.”
Mary’s shoulders sank and her smile flat-lined.
Darn, I did it again. Said something before thinking. “I mean, I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”
Mary shook her head. “It wouldn’t be any trouble. Besides, I’d enjoy the company. I hate eating alone.”
“Before Piper came along, I always ate alone. I miss it sometimes.” I looked away, thinking about how I divided my life into two eras, Before Piper and After Piper. I was struggling with the After part.
Mary poured some more tea. “Do you like to cook?”
I laughed. “No! If I could take a pill that had all the nutrients I needed to be healthy I would. I think I was the only kid in my seventh-grade cooking class that burnt the sticky buns. After that, the teacher made sure I was with a more skilled student. Before Piper, I pretty much ate whatever came out of a can or a box. But now I try to cook. For Piper. But she’s sneaky. She hates vegetables.”
Mary sipped her tea. “Was Piper excited for the first day of school?”
“She was scared,” I said. “Afraid she wouldn’t make any friends. But when I dropped her off at school, she met a girl in her class. They became fast friends.”
We talked some more about everything and nothing. I glanced at the antique cherry grandfather clock sitting in the corner. “I’d better go. I have some errands to run before Piper comes home.”
I stood.
“So you’ll come again on Friday, right?” Mary stood.
I nodded.
Mary walked me to the door. “Thank you, Rachel.”
I furrowed my brows. “For what?”
“For listening.”
As I drove away I glanced into my rearview mirror. Mary waved from the crack of the front door. I wondered what she was going to do the rest of the day. It made me sad to think she was all alone in that big old house. It was obvious she loved children and I wondered why she apparently had none.
Mary
I watched as Rachel pulled away from the house. I really liked her. It sounded like the poor girl had had it even worse growing up than I did. I’ve always been a decent judge of character, and she seemed like a hard worker. It was a shame she’d had to drop out of college, though. But I admired her for giving up her dreams to take care of her little sister.
And it was nice that she and Claire had maintained their friendship. I wished June and I had. It bothered me that I allowed us to drift apart. We chatted off and on over the years, but it was never the same. Life sometimes unfolds in ways we’d rather it didn’t, and before you know it too much time has passed to go back to the ways things were.
I carried the tea set into the kitchen and washed the dishes. Then I sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out the paperwork I’d picked up at the hospital. I had to fill it out and return it in order to volunteer in the neonatal intensive care unit. I learned that when nurses are busy with other patients and parents cannot make it to the hospital, volunteers step in. They hold the babies, sing and coo to them, rock them and treat them as if they were their own. It sounded like a volunteer position I’d love. But first, I had to fill out the paperwork and undergo a thorough background check. I hoped it wouldn’t take long because, after seeing the teeny tiny babies in the NICU, I wanted to be able to help right away.
I knew James couldn’t have children. He’d told me that the day he proposed to me. We were sitting on the bench in front of the fringe tree.
“Mary,” he had said. “We’ve been going out for months and I know you don’t love me, but I can give you a comfortable life. I need a wife, someone who will be by my side in public and take care of this house and grounds. I promise I’ll be good to you. You can have anything you want. New furniture. New wardrobe. Anything.”
It wasn’t how I’d imagined being proposed to. It was more like a plea or an offer. While James and I were fond of one another, it was obvious neither of us was in love. He continued making his case for why getting married would be advantageous to both of us.
“I’m not home much and I work a lot, so I wouldn’t be in your way and you’d have your own space. As long as everything is taken care of, I’ll be happy.”
I looked into his eyes. “What about children? Can I have children?”
James sighed. “There’s something I have to tell you. When I was young, I got hit hard in the groin. I’m unable to father children.”
I gulped. “But you can, uh…?”
“Yes. But I can’t give you what you most want.”
“But we could adopt, right?”
James nodded. “If that’s what you want, of course.”
That night, as I lay in bed, I weighed my options. Father had been nice to me ever since I’d started dating James. James did have a beautiful house and I really believed he’d take care of me. I didn’t love him, but I doubted I’d ever love anyone as much as I loved Teddy. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. And if we adopted children, I could give them a chance at a better life.
Still, it saddened me to think I’d never lie in the arms of someone I loved. And I was desperate to feel a baby growing inside of me again. Night after night I tried to remember that first tickle, the first time I felt the baby’s little fist poke through my abdomen. I constantly wondered about my daughter. She was nearing her first birthday and I wondered if her parents would have a big party for her. Would they make her a special cake and shower her with presents?
I thought about James’s proposition for a few days before accepting. I went back and forth, weighing all my options. In the end, I thought that someone was better than no one and James was nice enough, so I settled. I shouldn’t have. Never in my wildest imagination could I have predicted what was to come. In a few short months, my life would never be the same.
Rachel
“Can I have dippy eggs for dinner?” Piper had asked.
“Would you like bacon?”
She nodded.
I made Piper’s dinner and arranged the dippy eggs on the plate so they looked like two eyes and the bacon strips so they looked like a mouth, just like Miss Evelyn used to do for me and Claire. I smiled at the memory of Claire seeing the smiley face on her plate. She’d started to cry.
“What’s wrong, Claire,” Miss Evelyn had said. “Don’t you like your breakfast?”
