water sitting on the table before her. Tess closed her eyes in mortification. Rumors in Marigold, Indiana, traveled faster than the speed of light. What was worse, though, the things piped over the Marigold grapevine almost always ended up being true. A little more embellished than usual, maybe, but still essentially true. If you heard it over the backyard fence in Marigold, Indiana, then, by golly, you could pretty much count on its reality, in one form or another.
By midafternoon, everyone in town was going to be certain Tess was pregnant. And they would be sure it had come about after some sordid one-night stand. She had to put a stop to this now.
“It wasn’t a one-night stand,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Then it was someone special,” Susan surmised.
“No, it wasn’t,” Tess insisted. “It was nobody. I’m not pregnant.”
But Susan was having none of it. When Tess opened her eyes, it was to see the other woman sitting back in her chair with a dreamy little speculative look in her eyes. “Let’s see now, who could it be…?” she murmured. “Last time I saw you out with a man, it was at the Christmas bazaar. Donnie Reesor brought you.”
“Donnie’s just a friend,” Tess said. “And you know it. And as everybody in town knows, he’s about to ask Sandy Mackin to marry him.”
Susan chuckled. “Well, this just might put a little crimp in those plans now, mightn’t it?”
Tess closed her eyes again. “Susan, please…”
“Fine,” the other woman relented. “Like I said, I won’t tell a soul. I’ll let you break the news to everyone when you’re ready. ’Course, you won’t be able to wait too long,” she added jovially. “These things have a way of…showing themselves.”
“There’s no news to break and nothing to show,” Tess said. “I—”
“Oh, but I can’t wait to see how your brothers are going to respond to the news,” Susan interrupted again. “Those Monahan boys were always ripe for a fight when we were growing up—anytime, anywhere. They’re going to pound the father of your baby once they hear.”
Although she was beginning to understand that the gesture was pointless, Tess tried one last time to deny Susan’s assertion. “Susan, there is no father,” she stated as levelly and forcefully as she could. “Because there is no baby. I’m sick, that’s all. The flu, food poisoning, something. Not pregnancy, I assure you.”
Susan leaned forward, wrinkled her nose in something akin to a smile and patted Tess’s hand. “Don’t you worry, Tess,” she said. “Your secret is safe with me. Oh, look, there’s Sister Mary Joseph. I absolutely must speak to her about a matter of grave importance.”
And before Tess could stop her, Susan Gibbs rose from the table and scrambled across the room toward a gaggle of nuns. Tess buried her head in her hands and wanted to cry. The Award for Excellence in Teaching wasn’t the only thing she would be up for today, she thought. No, by day’s end everyone would be thinking of her in terms of Mother of the Year.
Two
The mood in the third bay of Will Darrow’s Garage and Body Shop was, as always, laid-back. He had officially closed shop over an hour ago, at his usual weekday 6:00 p.m., and he relished the end of a productive day—a day of good, honest labor—like he relished nothing else in life. Cool jazz wafted from a portable CD player that sat atop the cluttered desk in the attached office, Will was sprawled beneath the chassis of a ’68 Corvette that just so happened to belong to him, and his best friend, Finn Monahan, sat leaning back in the rickety desk chair he’d pushed into the bay, enjoying a long-neck bottle of beer.
Life, Will supposed, didn’t get any better than this.
He had his own business—which was thriving nicely, thank you very much—and his best friend from childhood was his best friend in adulthood. Matter of fact, Will was still close to the whole Monahan clan, and although he hadn’t thought it would be possible, he’d been drawn even closer into the circle of their affection since his father’s death ten years ago. His old man had never remarried after his mother’s death when Will was four, so the Darrow family had never numbered more than two. The Monahans, however, had always welcomed Will with open arms. They were the family he’d never had himself, right down to little Tess.
Of course, little Tess wasn’t so little these days, which was something Will tried really, really hard not to notice whenever he saw her. Or whenever he thought about her. Or whenever he fantasized about—
Not that he ever fantasized about Tess, he quickly reminded himself. Not much, anyway. Well, hardly ever. Maybe just on those occasions when he saw her and tried really, really hard not to notice how she wasn’t so little anymore. Unfortunately, with her looking the way she did now, it was pretty much impossible not to notice, because she was just so damned—
Best to think about something else, he told himself quickly as a vision of not-so-little Tess unwrapped itself in his mind. Because, as was frustratingly common nowadays, whenever visions of not-so-little Tess appeared in his brain, she was always not-so-little dressed. In fact, this particular image was one of her wearing a skimpy little scrap of pale-yellow lingerie and some of those fuzzy high-heeled things and—
Oh, boy. Not again.
Will squeezed his eyes shut tight and concentrated on other things—anything—that might make the vision of a scantily clad Tess Monahan go away. The capital of Vermont is Montpelier, he thought. Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs in his career. The atomic weight of Boron is 10.81. A Scout is brave, trusty, kind, cheerful, obedient, thrifty, lusty…
No, wait. That wasn’t it. Where was he? Oh, yeah. Tess Monahan in wispy lingerie and—
No! That wasn’t it, either.
Will sighed with much exasperation, reminded himself that Tess’s oldest brother was in the room and started over again.
Marigold, Indiana, had been his home since he was seven and a half, and Finn Monahan had been his best friend since he was seven and a half and a day. Hell, Will could still remember when Mr. and Mrs. Monahan had brought Tess home from the hospital when he and Finn were ten, a tiny bundle of pink lingerie…uh, pink flannel…surrounded by five raucous little boys—six, if you counted Will. And Mr. and Mrs. Monahan always had.
Nope, Will thought as he twisted a wrench and loosened a lug nut—and recalled a faint image of Tess wearing that yellow lacy number—life definitely didn’t get any better than this.
“Hello? Anybody home?”
Oh, great, Will thought. As if fantasizing—or, rather, thinking—about Tess Monahan wasn’t enough to mess him up, now she had to come calling at the garage.
“Hey, Tessie!” he heard Finn call out from the corner of the room. “How was school today?”
How was school today? Will replayed the words in his head and smiled. He could almost erase ten or fifteen years from their lives and hear Finn asking Tess that very question as she bounded through the front door all scrawny legs and tattered braids. He settled the wrench onto the oily concrete and pushed himself out from beneath the ’Vette.
“Hi-ya, kid,” he said as he rose, nearly choking on the last word when he got
