was pregnant. Nearly five months. And she’d spent a whole lot of time gnawing around about whether she should tell Seth Hardin he was a father. She’d tried once to track him down through the military, and had been extraordinarily relieved when she couldn’t find him. She didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to face it, but she kept feeling she at least owed it to him to tell him he was going to have a kid.
She didn’t need child support, she didn’t want a stranger intimately involved in her life. Lots of good reasons for just keeping her mouth shut. Except for that feeling that a father needed to know he had a child. Whether he wanted to be part of this kid’s life or not.
She couldn’t seem to get around that, and God knew she had tried. Maybe the thing that had hit her hardest was the idea of having to tell this child that his father didn’t even know he existed. Boy, wouldn’t that make her feel like slime.
So okay, she’d drop the bomb on his parents—easier than telling him—and leave. Just leave. Get her duty done then forget about it. If Seth wanted to hunt her up someday and meet his kid, nothing would stop him. It wasn’t as if she was impossible to find.
Damn, everything was all messed up. Pulled off flying status, stuck behind a desk until after her maternity leave, superior officers hinting that she might want to consider some other career path with a kid to consider. She didn’t want to give up flying. She loved it. And maybe she had a hankering for the adrenaline, too.
Regardless, she was feeling an adrenaline rush as she reached town at last, and houses sprang up, most close together, most older. The time was getting close.
She wondered how she’d be received. Probably like an unwelcome messenger. Probably with anger and doubt. Well, she didn’t care. She would do what was right then shake the dust from her heels.
She would try to put back together a life and a career that had been shattered by unwelcome news. Her rise to the top had probably come to a halt. How could it not, unless she gave up the baby. She couldn’t do that, though. Those thoughts had danced around in her head, even pummeled her at times, but somehow she couldn’t bear the idea of giving up that little life growing in her, a life that had seemed real almost from the instant she learned of it, that had become very real from the first little bubble of movement she felt.
Abandon the kid so she could continue rising? No way. She might be tied to a desk from here on out, but she’d be the best damn desk jockey in the air force, if it came to that. Maybe she had enough behind her to keep her going up, but she doubted it. Kids weren’t supposed to be a factor in what assignments you could perform. You were supposed to have someone who could step in to parent while you had to be away.
She had no one. Raised by her grandmother after her mother had died of a drug overdose, she was now alone in the world. No one to turn to except herself. She was used to that. But farewell to her career, most likely. She’d make it twenty years, realize the promotions wouldn’t come again, and she’d have to pull out.
Well, she wasn’t going to abandon her kid the way her mother had abandoned her. That was the strongest determination in her right now.
And all of these thoughts had long since been worked out. All of them. She was just trying to avoid thinking about the uncomfortable conversation ahead. A conversation that she hoped would happen on a doorstep. Then she would turn and leave for good.
The town had slid into autumn. Leaves shone in brilliant gold. Those that had already fallen tumbled along sidewalks and streets in a light breeze. Here and there pumpkins, skeletons and waving white ghosts announced the approach of Halloween. Pretty place, she supposed, if you wanted to turn the clock back. Of course, she was a lousy judge. Sterile military environments had been her only home for a long time now.
The voice of the GPS, silenced so often in the empty prairies, resurrected and offered her no mercy. It told her to turn left, and she did, until she reached what she supposed was a newer subdivision. Post–World War II at least. Maybe post-Vietnam. Despite looking like it had tumbled out of a box that contained only one design, it was neat and even colorful. She guessed no one here thought about deed restrictions. Some of the houses were almost blinding in their brightness.
“You have arrived.”
“Shut up,” she said to the GPS. She slowed and stopped and looked at the house number. No escape. She was here.
The house was a white ranch-style, sprawling, set on a well-tended lawn that was beginning to fade with autumn. Rose bushes, barren of all but a few flowers, climbed a trellis beside the door. A sporty little car sat in the driveway.
She turned off the ignition and sat listening to the engine tick as it cooled. Hell, she didn’t even feel this much trepidation before a dangerous mission. The neighborhood might have been empty. Not a soul in sight, not even a moving car. Unknown territory.
Well, maybe the Tates didn’t live here anymore. If so, that would be the end of her search.
She realized she was thinking like a coward. Just do it. What was the worst that could happen? She got called a liar and a door slammed in her face? Hardly an incoming rocket-propelled grenade.
Sighing, she at last climbed out of the car and straightened her cammies. She refused to wear the air force’s ugly pregnancy jumper, and she’d just started to show enough that she had to cover up somehow. A bigger cammie shirt, a larger waistband, they’d do for now. Later? She didn’t want to think about it.
Her feet felt like lead as she walked up the path to the front door. She might be ruining someone else’s life here. She didn’t even know if Seth was married. Still, the sense of obligation drove her. He had a right to know, even if he wanted to forget it immediately.
And her kid had a right to know that his father had been told. If Seth wanted no part of him, she figured that would be easier to explain than not telling the kid’s father at all.
Maybe.
Drawing a deep breath, she raised her hand and pressed the bell. For a minute or two there was no response, and just as she was beginning to hope no one was home, the door opened.
A pleasantly plump woman regarded her with a smile. Graying hair that still showed threads of red, bright green eyes. And damn, Edie could see Seth in her face.
“Yes?” the woman asked.
“Mrs. Tate, I’m Major Edith Clapton. I met Seth Hardin once. He’s your son, right?”
“Of course he is. Would you like to come in?”
Edie shook her head quickly. “I just wanted him to know...I guess I need to tell him...well, I’m pregnant.”
The woman’s hand flew to her mouth. Then in an instant everything changed. Before Edie could march away as she intended, a hand clasped her arm and started drawing her inside.
“You have to come in,” Mrs. Tate said. “Coffee? Tea? Maybe some milk and cookies? Oh, dear, this is...probably upsetting for you, but a pure delight to me. At least I think it is.”
A delight for her? Edie felt stunned, which was probably the only reason she allowed herself to be ushered into a cheerful living room, seated on a sofa and then served cookies.
“Milk, tea, coffee?”
“Coffee if you don’t mind,” Edie said, almost numb with amazement.
