Once Around Read online

  "I use that card so often it probably has whiplash," she announced to no one in particular. "I'm surprised steam isn't rising from it."

  An older man in a gray fedora laughed. Encouraged, Molly met his eyes and smiled. See? her smile said. There's nothing to worry about. This kind of thing happens all the time.

  The clerk reached for the telephone receiver adjacent to her register and said a few words into the mouthpiece.

  Molly's smile faltered for an instant. "What now?" she asked, keeping her tone light. "Am I over the Haagen-Dazs limit?" When in doubt, make fun of yourself before anyone else has the chance.

  "The manager will be here in a sec," the clerk said, avoiding her eyes. "Just wait."

  Her mind went blank. She could almost hear the air whooshing between her ears. She told herself to take a deep breath, but her lungs refused to cooperate. Things like this didn't happen to her. They happened to other people every day of the week, but not to her.

  The manager, a harried-looking man with an overgrown mustache and tired eyes, approached. His khaki trousers rode low over an enormous belly that strained against his white cotton shirt.

  "Your card was rejected," he said without preamble. "We've been asked to confiscate it."

  Her backbone stiffened in response. This used to happen to her mother every time outgo outstripped income. It was always an error, the kind that a call to the bank rectified one, two, three. "There must be some mistake. I just used it yesterday, and there was no problem."

  "There's no mistake," he said. "We'll be keeping your card."

  "No!" The word shot from her mouth like a bullet. "You can't do that."

  "We have no choice," he said, sounding bored, as if he'd done this a thousand times before. "Now, if you'd like to pay cash for your groceries, we can all get back to work."

  If she could pay cash, why would she have whipped out her plastic?

  "I can give you a check."

  "We'll need two forms of ID." He paused. "A driver's license and something other than a credit card."

  "I don't have anything other than a credit card."

  "Then you'll need cash."

  Her eyes burned, and she felt the telltale twitch in her chin. Oh, God, she was on the verge of crying. And not just crying, but sobbing like a baby. She had to get out of there fast.

  "I'm afraid paying by cash is impossible," she said in as calm and cool a voice as she could manage. She placed her hands on her nearly flat belly and let her gaze sweep over the manager and the clerk and the nosy people on line behind her. "I didn't think I'd need cash when I went to see my obstetrician today." It was a cheap shot, and she knew it, but it was the best she could come up with on short notice. They wouldn't embarrass a pregnant woman, would they?

  Head high, she turned and walked slowly past the pimply-faced clerk at Express Line One, paused a half second until the electronic door swung open, then strode through the parking lot to her car. She couldn't let her control falter for an instant, or they'd see right through her.

  Her hand shook so hard that it took three tries to fit the key into the ignition. "Damn," she whispered, keeping her head down. The key had worked a half hour ago. There was no reason it shouldn't work now. She almost cried with relief when the engine started up.

  Her mind was a tangle of questions. Had she paid last month's credit card bill? Come to think of it she wasn't sure she'd paid the mortgage or the phone bill or the other utilities. Hadn't Robert said not to worry, that he'd take care of everything? For all she knew, she'd get home and she'd have no phone or electricity. What on earth was the matter with her? She wasn't a stupid woman. How could she have let this happen?

  She backed out of her parking space and headed for home. Robert had said he would take care of everything, and she'd believed him. Same as she'd believed him when he said he'd love her forever and always, until death did them part. A horn honked behind her, and she realized she'd been stopped at a green light. "Get with it," she muttered, moving forward again. "Pay attention."

  The last few weeks had been an endless loop of Robert's voice telling her he'd never really loved her at all. She heard him saying those words when she went to sleep at night, and he was still saying them to her when She woke up in the morning. But no matter how badly he wanted out, he wouldn't turn his back on his own child. No decent man would.

  And Robert was a decent man. No matter what else he was, she knew that for a fact. "It's a mistake," she said out loud as she tried to concentrate on the road. Computers were only as good as the people operating them. A payment must have been overlooked or posted to the wrong account. She was getting herself upset over something that would probably turn out to tie nothing more than a minor blip on a computer screen.

  Still, the episode in the supermarket had managed to shake her up, and maybe that was a good thing; She'd been in a state of suspended animation since Robert walked out on her. The baby was the only reason she got up in the morning and washed and dressed and ate well. Sleep was a tough one, though. Sleep eluded her for days at a time, until she was punchy with fatigue. She felt as if she'd been living inside a glass bubble, and the slightest movement would shatter the only barrier between her heart and unbearable pain.

  Maybe this was exactly what she needed, a small reminder that it was time she started to pay attention to her own life, before she found herself in real. trouble. She'd get out her checkbook as soon as she got home and take stock of her situation, no matter how much the thought scared her.

  Traffic was light on Route 206. She, sailed through Princeton proper and made her way to the pricey cul-de-sac she and Robert had called home. Their house sat on top of the rise called Lilac Hill, a nice blend of stone and shingles and high expectations. Her neighbor Gail called Lilac Hill a corporate ghetto, populated with doctors, lawyers, and scores of executives from Johnson & Johnson and AT&T. Molly hadn't paid too much attention to Gail's assessment of the neighborhood. All she'd cared about was her home and the family she and Robert would raise there.

  They'd planned to build a life together in that house. That house was where the hard work and long hours would finally pay off. She'd found out she was pregnant the day before closing and she'd sailed through the afternoon on a cloud of wonder and excitement. Every single thing they'd dreamed about, every miracle they'd dared hope for was coming true. Could life be more perfect than this? She told Robert over supper in their old apartment, and you would have thought she was announcing the arrival of the Four Horsemen. His face closed in on itself, and he didn't talk to her until they went to bed.

  "Are you sure?" he'd asked under cover of darkness as the air conditioner clanked in the background. "Could there be a mistake?"

  "There's no mistake," she'd whispered. She'd told herself that he was worried, that's all. Not unhappy or disappointed or angry. "I'm positively pregnant."

  He'd thrown back the covers and left the room, and she didn't see him again until the next afternoon when they met at the real estate office to close on the house. She should have known then. She should have seen the signs, made changes, loved him more before it was too late.

  Maybe that was one of her problems. She'd spent her early childhood with her head buried in the sand. She pretended she couldn't hear her parents arguing late into the night. She told herself that all families lived in deep silence. The only thing that mattered was that they stayed together.

  The sun was beginning to set as she pulled into the driveway, but it was still light enough for her to see everything that was wrong with the place. Dandelions speckled the front lawn like an old man's whiskers. The azaleas and rhododendrons were overgrown and leggy. The property looked, neglected and in need of tender loving care. If Robert hadn't walked out on her, she would have called the landscaper and had him send out a crew to mow and weed and trim, but those days were gone. Right now she couldn't even afford to pay for her groceries.

  Next time she needed groceries she'd drive up into Hillsborough where nobody knew her. S
he could even use coupons without having her neighbors laugh at her or speculate about her fiscal health. Maybe this embarrassment wasn't such a bad thing after all. Not if she learned something from it.

  Her neighbor Gail had left a stack of self-help books on her doorstep the day after the news of Robert's defection became public. Most of them were a waste of paper, but the one message they aft had in common was learn from your mistakes. Molly wished someone would write a book about how to avoid making those mistakes in the first place. Now, that would be a book worth buying.

  Gail was standing in her front doorway. Molly lifted her hand to wave, but Gail apparently didn't see her. She slipped back inside and shut the door after her. At least one thing had gone right today. Root canal rated higher than a friendly chat with Gail.

  She pressed the remote control and waited for the garage door to roll up. When it didn't, she pressed it again. Still nothing. Robert used to see to it that their electronic devices always had fresh batteries in them. Another thing she'd have to get used to doing on her own. She shut off the engine and climbed out of the car. Okay, no big deal. She'd go in through the front, then open the garage from the inside.

  The front door was unlocked. That hit her as strange. Robert was as fanatical about locks and alarms as she was. She couldn't imagine him forgetting to lock up when he left. She pushed open the door and stepped into the foyer. The faintest hint of sweat and aftershave lingered in the cool air. Lagerfeld, she thought. Robert's scent. The sweat, though, puzzled her. Robert didn't sweat. Not even at the gym. And never in bed.

  She was about to chalk that up to imagination when she moved into the living room and what was left of her world came crashing down on her.

  Chapter Two

  Rafe Garrick had just climbed out of his pickup when he heard the sound. He stood by the open door, pinned to the spot by the woman's cry. It was deep and anguished, so filled with pain that his gut twisted in response. The last time he'd heard a sound like that was years ago on a Montana mountaintop. A wolf had been hopelessly caught in a trap, and Rafe, just fifteen at the time, had had to put the animal out of its misery with a weak blast from his 16-gauge shotgun. Sometimes, late at night when the hours lay heavy against his mind, he could still hear the wolf keening in terror and pain, still hear the blast and the deadly silence after.

  This sound was dark with anguish. Unrestrained. Definitely at odds with the prim beauty of the surroundings. Did people feel pain in Princeton? Up until that moment, he would have said no. How could you feel anything when you were cushioned by three hundred years of money and tradition and privilege? Last week he'd done some repair work for a jeweler on Nassau Street and he'd found it hard to keep his mind on what he was doing. For five hours he watched as a stream of Princeton elite marched through the door in search of tiny diamond studs for a granddaughter or a perfectly matched set of pearls for a new baby. He was supposed to be fixing the shelving in the supply closet—not exactly the toughest job he'd ever had—but it took all of his concentration to bring hammer to nail.

  They all looked alike. Why didn't anyone ever mention that? The men were all tall and lean, and they all carried tennis racquets. The women were all rich-girl blondes. Even if they were brunette. They spoke like television news anchors, as if they'd been born somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and didn't know which way to swim. The jeweler didn't have any trouble telling them apart, but Rafe would've been hard put to match names to faces without ID. Of course, they wouldn't have been able to identify him either. He was invisible. Just some faceless, nameless guy with a hammer and a tool belt who was doing all of those things that keep a rich man's life running smoothly.

  Bitter? Yeah, he was. Sometimes it swooped down on him like a hawk in a field of mice. That was how he'd lost a wife, wasn't it? Some rich man swooped down and snatched her up, took his daughter, too, and nobody said a word. Not even him. He stood there and watched them go, and maybe, just maybe, deep in the black hole he called a heart, he was glad to see the last of them. Glad to forget what a fucked-up failure he was. This is for the best, Karen said. He can give Sarah things you can't even dream about. Sarah was only a year old. He hadn't made an impression on her. He wasn't sure if Karen made sense or if he'd just wanted a way out. It didn't much matter. Either way he'd ended up alone.

  He'd been waiting five weeks for Robert Chamberlain to pick a start date for the work on his basement. Twice he'd called Chamberlain's office, but so far the SOB hadn't bothered to call him back. So he'd decided to show up at the guy's front door and see if he could get an answer out of him that way.

  He tilted his head slightly to the right and listened. The woman's cry had been absorbed by the quiet neighborhood, as if it had never happened. He wasn't sure which of the three huge houses the cry had come from, but his gut told him it was the Chamberlain house. Something about the place didn't look right to him. The yard was overgrown. One of the shutters hung slightly at an angle. The front door was ajar. Small things, but here in Stepford small things signified. He took off across the rise of lawn and a minute later found himself in the middle of a foyer the size of a hotel lobby. The skylight centered in the cathedral ceiling could. have been a window to heaven.

  But heaven didn't sound like tears. He followed the low weeping past the winding staircase to a sun-filled room with cream-colored walls and more pain than a heart could bear.

  She was bent over at the waist, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. A cascade of vibrant, sun-streaked auburn hair almost brushed the floor. He couldn't see her face but he knew she was beautiful. The graceful curve of her back, the long elegant arms—they told the tale.

  He approached her the way he'd approached the wolf all those years ago. She was in agony, that much was clear. He wanted to reach out and gather her into his arms and hold her while she cried, but he knew he didn't have the right to touch her. She didn't seem to have any idea he was standing there, not ten feet, away from her.

  He cleared his throat. "Mrs. Chamberlain." She gasped in surprise. "Don't be scared. I--"

  She straightened up, pushing her heavy curls back from her face with both hands, then took a step away from him. He was right. She was so beautiful she made his teeth ache. "Who are you?" Her voice was low and clear. "How do you know who I am?"

  He hated the look of fear in her big blue eyes. Even more than he hated the tears. "Rafe Garrick," he said.

  He noted the subtle shift in her posture, the way her right and slid across her belly. A protective gesture, he thought, then noted the barely rounded swell beneath her blue jacket.

  "Should I know your name?" she asked.

  "Your husband didn't tell you about me?"

  "My husband isn't here anymore." The fear in her eyes gave way to something even more disturbing. He saw anger, fierce and hot. "He didn't tell you?" She threw his words back at him, and he wondered what kind of mess he'd stepped into..

  "Look," he said, "I thought you knew about this. I'm here to finish the basement."

  Her laughter held an edge of hysteria. "I don't think so," she said, both arms wrapped around her midsection now. "I don't know what Robert told you, but I can't afford a finished basement." Another burst of wild laughter. "In case you haven't noticed, I can't even afford furniture."

  He glanced around the room. The rug bore the outline of couches and chairs and tables, but there wasn't a stick of furniture anywhere. "You were robbed?"

  "You could say that." She seemed to sway on her feet then caught herself. "I'm sorry you made the drive over for nothing, but the basement's going to stay the way it is."

  "I've already been paid."

  The anger in her eyes battled with a burst of curiosity. "Robert paid you?"

  "Half. We could negotiate the difference."

  "Or you could give me a refund."

  "Nonrefundable deposit," he said. He'd used most of it to pay his back mortgage and buy supplies.

  "Then I'd say we have a problem."

 
; Her face was pale, and he didn't like the slight hesitation between words when she spoke. What he did like was the way her hair tumbled over her shoulders and down her back in ribbons of red and gold. He fought back the urge to reach out and glide his hand down the fiery length of her hair. He'd never been this close to anyone like her before. He could smell the faintest traces of perfume and shampoo. He wondered if she smelled that way all over, then forced the darkly erotic images from his mind. This was a pregnant woman. Another man's wife.

  "If you want furniture, I'll build you some furniture." Anything, he thought, if it meant he could stand there and watch her breathe.

  "I can't think about this right now," she said, her voice softer than it had been a minute ago. "I—"

  He watched in horror as her legs crumpled beneath her and she started to slide toward the floor. He caught her long before she reached the ground, just gathered her up in his arms and felt the warmth of her body against his, and he knew that in that one singular moment something in him had changed and wouldn't change back no matter how hard he wished it would.

  #

  "I'm fine," Molly managed as the stranger swooped her up into his arms. "There's no need for this." What was his name? He'd told her, but she hadn't been listening. She wished she could remember what it was, especially since he had her cradled against his chest, so close that she could hear his heart beating beneath her right ear. The last time she'd been this close to a man was the night she and Robert conceived the baby. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed it until right this minute. "You can put me down now.'

  "And watch you drop like a rock? Just hang on, and I'll find you a chair,"

  He had a husky, very male voice and right now he sounded unbearably kind. She wasn't in the mood for kindness. She wished he would just go away and leave her to her misery the way her husband had.