opinion, but his sister hadn’t asked for it. “I’m hoping their house is high enough to be dry, but they may have gone to a shelter. I wasn’t working that part of the county.”
“And you couldn’t call them.”
“I tried my sister’s cell, but it was off. She tends to let the battery die down.”
“Are you worried?” She scrutinized him carefully.
With a stir of amusement, he thought, She’s persistent. A bird after a worm.
“If I’d been really worried, I would have taken a break to go look for them. I wasn’t.”
After a minute, she said, “Okay.”
“You?” he asked. “Anyone you wish you could call?”
Her eyes widened. “You mean…him?”
“No.” His voice was rough. “I didn’t mean him.”
“Oh. Um…no. Except Molly. I mentioned her, didn’t I? She’s my best friend. We were college roommates.”
“No family?”
“Nobody who’ll worry about me.”
What did that mean? He didn’t ask, because she was having another contraction.
The world outside ceased to exist in any meaningful way. She had contractions. They talked. Alec suggested she walk around a few times. He poked in boxes to see if he could find anything useful to add to their meager stash, but found mostly the kind of useless crap people shoved in their attics: picture frames with the glass long broken, plastic food containers and lids, none of which seemed to fit with each other, Christmas ornaments and carefully folded bits of wrapping paper, saved from long-ago holidays, canning supplies… He paused at that one, and removed a couple of jars. He could piss out the window, but Wren might not feel comfortable doing that.
Mostly they didn’t talk about anything important, but it occurred to him as every hour melted into another hour, then another, that he couldn’t remember ever sharing quite so much with another woman—or anyone at all, come to that—as he was with her. She told him her favorite books, but in sharing that much offered memories, too. He heard a wistful story about her dreams of being a ballerina. Her mother had eventually put her into lessons, but then the shy girl Wren was had learned she would have to perform in front of an audience at the recitals and had refused.
“I kept dancing,” she said, “but only for myself. Dreaming, yet knowing I’d never go anywhere with it.”
Bothered by his impression of a lonely childhood, he talked, too.
He told her about fishing with his dad, of triumphs on the football field, of the first Thanksgiving after his father died, and then of how responsible he’d felt for his younger sister, Sally. Trying to disguise how much he’d admitted to, he ended on a light note. Smiling, he said, “My favorite part was scaring the crap out of any boy who looked at her twice.”
Too bad he hadn’t been around when Sally met Randy. Ancient regrets played on a spool that should have been long since worn-out. What if he’d moved to rural Arkansas from St. Louis ten years ago, when his mother and sister came here to live with Aunt Pearl, instead of waiting until a year and a half ago when Mom was already dying of cancer? If Alec had been around from the beginning, would Sally have made better decisions? Would Mom still be alive?
Great timing to ask himself unanswerable questions.
Unsettled, he realized if Wren was really listening, he’d given away too much. He grunted. If? He knew damn well she’d heard everything he said, and everything he didn’t. Just as he’d heard her.
Contractions were four and a half minutes apart, then four. She walked some more, grumbled, “Cupcake isn’t in any hurry, is she?” and groaned through yet more pain.
“I hope you weren’t looking forward to that epidural too much,” Alec commented.
She rolled her eyes and sang, off-key, from the Rolling Stones’ song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
As expected, he laughed. It occurred to him, as morning became afternoon, that he’d laughed more today than he had in a couple of years.
She did finally confess that she needed the canning jar, and he turned his back when she used it. He pretended he couldn’t hear the tinkling sound that ensued. Finally, a small voice said, “Do I dump it out the window?”
He turned around. “I can do it.”
Expression defiant, she held the jar behind her. “Not a chance.”
Alec grinned. “We’re going to get to know each other even better, you know.”
Wren scrunched up her face. “I don’t want to think about that. And I don’t want you carrying a jar of my pee around, either.”
“All right. I’ll open the window for you.”
He muscled it up, then, smiling, looked away while she did the deed. Only when she gave her permission did he turn back and tug the window down again. Cheeks flushed, she set the wet jar—which he guessed she’d rinsed out with rain—some distance away and then retired to her pallet.
Three and a half minutes.
Three.
The contractions were growing in intensity, seizing her and shaking her in great, vicious jaws. Alec would have given one hell of a lot to be able to do something, anything, besides hold her hand, count for her and smooth hair from her damp forehead.
She kept shifting on the pallet as if she was increasingly uncomfortable.
“Shall I find something to make that softer?”
“I don’t know if it would make much difference. My back hurts.”
“Ah.” She’d said that earlier, hadn’t she? He wished he’d remembered sooner. “Roll over,” he said, disengaging his hand from hers and helping her heave onto her side to face away from him.
Grateful for something useful to do, he gently worked the flannel shirt up, careful to keep the blanket covering her hips—although her body would hold no secrets from him by the time they were done. Then, starting tentatively, he spread his hands over her back and began to knead taut muscles.
Wren moaned, and he stopped. “Did I hurt you?”
“No. Oh, no! It felt so good.”
He relaxed. “Okay.”
It was the first time he’d touched her much, beyond holding her hand. She was a dainty woman, her vertebrae delicate, her shoulder blades sharp-edged, her neck so small his hand would engulf it. In fact, he could splay the fingers of one hand and cover her entire lower back. That’s where the pain seemed to be centered, although she sighed with pleasure no matter where he squeezed. He dug his thumbs in at the small of her back, and she arched as if in ecstasy. When he gentled his touch, she made a funny little noise in her throat that sounded for all the world like a purr.
Alec
