“ARE YOU SURE you’re up to this?” Finn glanced across his Explorer as he pulled into Wegmans’ parking lot the next day. Dark smudges underlined Jordan’s eyes. “You look tired.”
She lifted one shoulder. “I told you, I’m fine. This is your grocery store? It’s gigantic.”
Finn let it drop. “For a chain grocery store, this place is amazing.” He’d fed everyone Sunday breakfast, but wanted to fulfill Amelia’s pumpkin pie craving. Plus he had an idea to break up the monotony of her day, but he needed Jordan and her video camera to do it.
Inside, he offered the cart to Jordan. Whenever he took one of his nieces to the store, she always wanted to push the basket. Jordan shook her head. “Mom says the handles on those things are like, one of the worst places for germs.”
Finn steered it to the wall, pulled a sanitizing wipe from a dispenser, and thoroughly cleaned the handle. “Okay now?”
Jordan shrugged. “I guess.” She leaned onto the basket as she maneuvered it through the store’s foyer, dodging a mom pulling a shrieking toddler by the hand. The scents of coffee and fresh roasting chickens filled the air.
A bunch of pink roses caught his attention in the flower section. Amelia didn’t strike him as the pink roses type. But if he was going to try to live up to family responsibilities...a little sugar went a long way. He veered left, away from the produce. “Does your mom like flowers?”
“I guess.” Jordan bent over a pale blossom, inhaling deeply. “This one smells nice.”
“Don’t your mom’s boyfriends ever bring her flowers?”
Jordan snorted. “Boyfriends? My mom doesn’t have any boyfriends.”
“Now? Or ever?”
“Ever.”
Interesting. “She never goes out on dates or anything?”
“Mom says she’s got enough on her plate without adding the trouble of a man to her life.”
“Trouble, huh?” Finn dismissed a pot of orange flowers, purple orchids on their long, curvy sticks and fuzzy violets. Amelia’s lack of male companionship could have been a contributing factor to her willingness to...help him...when she’d arrived on her mission with the specimen cup last fall. Maybe she only got involved when she was out of Jordan’s sight, not wanting her daughter to know about it.
His brother Derek kept any meaningless dating he did well off his kids’ radar, not wanting them to be hurt. Or get the wrong idea.
“What about these?” Finn held up a bunch of bright yellow lilies. “Think your mom would like these?”
Jordan nodded. “Yes. They’re pretty.”
“Good.” He reached across her and lifted a cellophane-wrapped bouquet of the pale pink roses from the tall vase. “And these—” he handed them to her “—are for you.”
“For me?” A faint blush the same color as the flowers appeared on her cheeks. She glanced at the floor, a small smile playing on her lips. “Th-thanks. No one’s ever given me flowers before. Well, Joey Greenwald gave me some dandelions when we were in first grade, but that doesn’t count.”
“Joey Greenwald better mind his manners around—” the words got stuck but Finn forced them out “—my girl, or he’ll have to answer to me. Dandelions. What was he thinking?”
Her smile grew larger, and she shifted, her sandals squeaking.
He set the lilies in the basket, reached for Jordan, then abruptly changed his mind, instead commandeering the cart she’d let go of. Basket wobbling because of a faulty wheel—kind of the way he felt at the moment—he headed for the natural food section.
“I think the canned organic pumpkin is around here somewhere.”
“Here it is. I found it!” Jordan called from the far end of the aisle. She stood on tiptoe to reach.
The turquoise top she wore rode up in the back as she stretched.
Revealing an ugly purple mark.
“Jordan.” He rushed to her side, grabbed the hem of the shirt and lifted it. The mottled mark was the size of a silver dollar. “How the heck did you do this?”
She twisted, looking over her shoulder. “Oh. I bumped into the end of the island the other day. It’s just a bruise. I’ve got plenty of them.”
“This is normal?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“Oh, my,” a wavering voice said from behind Finn. “That’s a nasty looking bruise.”
Finn turned to face the gray-haired woman, and Jordan pulled the bottom of the shirt from his grasp and tugged it down.
The woman stared hard at Finn, and to his surprise, she shook her head and gave him a wide berth, blue basket tucked on her arm.
“Don’t say anything to my mom, okay?” Jordan pleaded. “I’m going to the doctor tomorrow. She doesn’t need to know how bad the bruising is again.”
“Uhhh...no. While there are certain things your mother might not need to know, when it comes to your health, I will not keep anything from her. No way. I will be asking her about this later so I know what to tell the doctor tomorrow.”
“The blood count will confirm it.” Jordan sighed as she set the can of pumpkin in the cart. “More transfusions for me.”
This time he did pull her into an embrace, placing a kiss on the top of her head. Sometimes it was hard to remember she was so sick.
And other times, it consumed him.
She squirmed in his embrace, so he released her. “No big deal,” she mumbled, rearranging the flowers in the cart. “Not like it’s the first time.”
“It’ll be the first time for me,” he said. “I think maybe you’ll have to hold my hand.”
“You’ll get used to it.” One corner of her mouth quirked up as she shrugged.
It tugged at his heart that any kid, let alone his kid, had to get used to something like that. But she obviously didn’t want to make a big deal about it. He reached for another can of the pumpkin. “Let’s get out of here and on to the next activity, huh?”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll see.”
###
Given her hectic life as a single mom and career woman, Amelia had often longed for quiet alone time.
She should have been more careful what she’d wished for.
The empty house didn’t even creak. Sunshine battered the deck off her prison, and if she saw one more fluffy white cloud float by over the lake, she was going to lose it completely.
Rain would be much more to her liking.
She checked the clock on the laptop. Ten minutes later than the last time she’d looked. She flipped through the pages of the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine—Sia was forwarding her mail in weekly batches—but couldn’t focus. She tossed it to the foot of the bed.
Not a big fan of television, she nonetheless activated the flat-panel screen. Finn’s satellite dish delivered over a hundred channels. She surfed through the guide past all of them. Grown men driving around in circles. Grown men almost being washed overboard to catch crab. Grown men paid millions of dollars to stand in the outfield and scratch their crotches, occasionally catching a ball.
No, no, and definitely no.
She shut the TV off. The remote joined the discarded magazine. This boredom made the humiliating sponge bath Finn’s RN sister had given her that morning look like a fun day at the spa in comparison.
And it had been only two weeks since Amelia had arrived to get Jordan. Two lousy weeks.
Only twelve more to go to hit forty weeks of pregnancy.
Maybe she could convince Dr. Hawkins to put her into a drug-induced coma for the rest.
Of course, that would leave Jordan alone with Finn. The man who didn’t want to be a dad to a young girl who so desperately wanted one she’d concocted the hare-brained plan that had landed them in this situation.
Amelia could have been stuck at home in her own bed if not for Jordan’s adventure. She sighed.
Chip—at some point she’d adopted Finn’s ridiculous nickname for the baby—shifted and rolled. The fabric over her stomach poked up, to the right of her belly button. Amelia held her breath. Every time he got rowdy in there now, she worried. Every time he settled down for too long she worried.
The coma idea sounded better and better.
The baby used her already-full bladder as a punching bag—or soccer ball, hard to say—and Amelia gritted her teeth and contracted her muscles. Wetting the bed would add another dimension to the fun and games for the day. “Thanks a heap, Chip. Now I have to go to the bathroom.”
She tossed back the sheet, pushed herself up into a sitting position. Black dots swam across her vision. After the dizziness passed, she swung her feet to the floor.
The muscles in her legs protested as she shuffled toward the bathroom. Her right lat muscle spasmed. She dug her knuckles into it.
Medication bottles littered the sink countertop, a minipharmacy. Prenatal vitamins no longer sufficed. Now she also took antinausea meds, stool softeners, plus steroid injections once a week to speed Chip’s lung development in case he did put in an early appearance. Antibiotics played a part, as well.
She’d never taken so much as a Tylenol while pregnant before this.
On the way back to bed, she lingered by Finn’s dresser and a framed photo of four boys in stair-step order, from shortest to tallest. She suspected Finn was the tallest. Which would make this the four middle boys—Finn, Greg, Hayden and Ian. They wore cutoff jean shorts, mud-splattered T-shirts and broad, mischievous grins. Each crooked his arm around the neck of the boy next to him. The smallest held up a tiny fish on a string.
Amelia ran her fingertip over the word Brothers etched into the dark wooden frame at the top. At the bottom “All for one, one for all” was inscribed. Had his childhood actually been as idyllic as this snapshot implied? From what she’d seen of the family so far, the amount of togetherness they still shared, it must have been.
She was consumed with longing. Amelia caressed her belly as she trudged to the far side of the bed. For a moment she pressed her palm against the glass door, heat radiating into her skin. Every once in a while, she spent several hours on a chaise longue on the deck, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine. It was like a tropical vacation, a break from her normal “prison” of Finn’s bedroom.
With a sigh, she turned. Sat on the bed. Resumed the flat-on-her-back position and placed her still-warm hand on her stomach. “Feel the sunshine, Chip? Next summer, I promise, I’m taking you and Jordan fishing. I don’t know how to fish, but we’ll figure it out together.”
###
She woke sometime later to wonderful smells from downstairs, mostly unknown, but one distinctly resembling the spices of a pumpkin pie. The sun had moved lower on the horizon. She dragged over her laptop and accessed the kitchen cam. No one appeared in view.
Footsteps clattered on the stairs. Just outside the door, Finn’s and Jordan’s voices carried on a murmured conversation for several minutes.
“Hey!” Amelia called. “Either come in here or talk louder.”
Finn entered carrying a vase of yellow flowers. “We have a surprise for you,” he announced.
“I’m not much of a surprise kind of girl,” she said, every muscle in her body tensing. The last man who’d announced a surprise had been her so-called husband. His hadn’t been a very good surprise. Her stomach started to churn. She clenched her teeth and willed the churning to subside.
“I told you,” Jordan said, following him into the room. “Don’t call it that.”
He glanced down at the vase. “These are for you. They’re from Jordan and me.”
“No, they’re not. They’re from you.” Jordan waved a bouquet of pink roses. “And look, Mom. Finn got these for me. Aren’t they gorgeous?” She crawled onto the bed, sticking the flowers in Amelia’s face.
“They’re very pretty, honey. I’d appreciate them more if you didn’t try to shove them up my nose.”
Her child laughed, the sound easing Amelia’s stomach.
“Sorry.” Jordan pulled them back a few inches. Amelia made admiring noises, inhaling the soft perfume of the blossoms. Score one for the antinausea meds.
Finn rounded the foot of the bed. “Where should I put these?”
“Over there, on the media shelves. Where I’ll be able to see them.”
He cleared some DVDs off the top shelf, set the vase on it. “How’s that?”
“Good. Thank you. They’re lovely.”
“That’s not the surprise.”
“It’s not?” She flexed her feet beneath the covers, stretching the muscles in her legs that quivered in fight or flight response.
He shook his head. “Now, we need some cooperation from you. Do you trust me, Amelia?”
She glanced at her daughter. The tentative smile on her face overpowered the paleness, the dark circles under her eyes, the tiredness in them. “Say yes, Mom,” Jordan urged.
Amelia looked back at Finn. His mischievous grin confirmed it—he was the tallest of the fishing boys in the photo. “I suppose,” she finally drawled.
Jordan clapped her hands and scrambled off the bed, bouncing her. Chip started kicking hard.
Finn pulled something out of his back pocket. A navy-blue dish towel. He folded it lengthwise, then held it in front of him as he bent toward her.
“Wait a minute. What are you doing?”
“I’m blindfolding you. We can’t very well set up a surprise in the same room as you without a blindfold, can we?”
Jordan paused in the doorway. “Don’t be a spoilsport, Mom. We worked hard on this. Come on.”
Amelia sighed. “All right.”
“Good choice.” He draped the cloth over her eyes.
She lifted her head, allowed him to tie the ends at the back of her head. His lips brushed her ear. “Wish I had you in my bed under much different circumstances,” he whispered. “Blindfolded. Kinky.”
She opened her mouth to respond, then shut it, not knowing where Jordan was.
“One more thing. We don’t want you listening, either,” he said. “So, we have these.” He settled a pair of large headphones over her ears. The crashing roll of waves blended with gentle instrumental music.
Great. Now she was immobilized, blind and deaf. But Jordan’s anticipation made Amelia lie there and take it despite her rising anxiety.
The bed jiggled. The air in the room stirred as they flitted around. Tantalizing aromas—non-pumpkin pie ones—got stronger. She sniffed, analyzing. What was it?
A finger tapped the tip of her nose. The left headphone was lifted. “What part of surprise don’t you get?” Finn asked. “Do you try to find your Christmas presents before Christmas, too?”
“No. It just smells good—”
“Of course it does. I made it.”
She scowled. “I was trying to figure out what it was by the smell.”
“Well, stop. We need two more minutes. Think you can survive your curiosity that long?”
“If I must.”
“Good.” He let the earpiece drop against her ear, once more shutting her out of the room.
She had no way to tell if it was two minutes or ten or something in the middle when he finally removed the headphones completely. The towel also came off.
She opened her eyes, then blinked a few times. A red-and-white checked tablecloth was spread over the empty side of the bed. On it was a platter of fried chicken, a tossed salad and a watermelon elaborately carved into a basket containing a juicy fruit salad.
“What’s this?” She nudged a long glass pan filled with...she dipped her finger in it. Sand. A partially buried bowl of water was tucked into the corner.
“That’s the beach, Mom. We’re having a beach picnic.” Jordan hovered at the side of the bed.
“A beach picnic?”
Finn pushed open the glass doors, letting in a blast of warmer air. “Yep. We figured if you couldn’t go to the beach, we’d bring the beach to you. Check it out.” He picked up the remote from the night table, aiming it at the big screen and turning on the TV. They’d hooked Jordan’s video camera to it. The beach, dotted with families under umbrellas, kids running along the edge of the water, appeared—the red-and-white checked tablecloth at the bottom of the frame. The camera jerked and wobbled, going out of focus as he turned it around.
Jordan waggled her fingers. “Hi, Mom! Welcome to beach six on Presque Isle.” The girl launched into a travelogue spiel, coached at times by Finn’s off-camera, sensual voice.
Amelia’s chest tightened. She held out her hand to her daughter. “This is wonderful. Thank you, sweetheart.”
Jordan carefully settled onto the picnic cloth, squeezing her fingers. “It was Finn’s idea.”
As Amelia opened her mouth to thank him, her stomach growled loudly. She pressed her palm to it, face warming.
Finn laughed. “I think that was Chip saying enough with the chitchat. Feed me.” He took a plate from the media center.
While they indulged in the best fried chicken she’d ever tasted, the video on the flat-screen offered her a guided tour of Presque Isle, alternately narrated by Jordan and Finn. She saw the Perry Monument, the view of the city from across the bay, and the “floating houses.” An otter darted into the bushes after crossing the road. The wild shaking of the camera as Jordan scrambled to capture it made Amelia stop eating and once again give thanks for the antinausea meds. Mallard ducks bobbed on small waves, and turtles sunned themselves on a log.
Sweat dotted Amelia’s forehead as warm, sticky air continued to billow in through the open door. “Do me a favor?” she asked Finn, who’d pulled a chair to the side of the bed. “Shut that door? I think I’d like to enjoy my beach picnic in air-conditioned comfort. Phew, it doesn’t get this warm in Caribou except maybe a few days in the dead of summer.”
After he got up, he set his plate on the chair. The doors trundled shut. He latched them. “Wimp.”
The video continued. Finn excused himself to clean up the food, but left her “beach” and “lake” in the glass pan. Jordan shoved it aside, snuggling into Amelia’s side, laying her head against her mother’s shoulder.
Amelia caressed her long, silky hair, Jordan’s pride and joy. The treatments to this point didn’t include any meds that would make it fall out. She’d already expressed dismay about losing it from the chemo that would precede the transplant. But that was a bridge to cross in the future. Within minutes, the girl’s breathing evened out, and she dropped into sleep.
When Finn came back, Amelia pressed a finger to her lips. He nodded. “Do you want me to put her in her own bed?” he whispered, pantomiming his message as well.
She shook her head.
He moved to the media center, fiddled with Jordan’s camera. The screen filled with static for a moment, then new footage appeared.
An almost deserted beach. A small, lone figure at the water’s edge. Jordan, with her jeans rolled up to midcalf, the water covering her feet, then receding. She extended her arms, the wind blowing her hair. Tilting her face to the sky, she spun in a slow circle.
Finn leaned over to whisper in Amelia’s ear. “She doesn’t know I filmed her. Thought you’d get a kick out of watching her.”
As he straightened, Amelia grabbed his hand, squeezing it. “Thank you,” she said softly. “This...was very thoughtful of you.”
“Enough to make you like surprises?”
“Doubt it.”
He leaned back down, cupped the side of her face in his palm. “Pay up.”
“W-wha—”
His lips brushed hers, a gentle, easy kiss that sent her pulse racing. She glanced down at Jordan as he pulled away.
“Don’t worry, she’s asleep.” He skimmed his fingertips over Amelia’s cheek. “Remember I told you last night, anything you or Jordan need, I want to help.”
“I need shelter. Food. Waiting on hand and foot. And you’re providing all that. I don’t think a bedroom beach picnic counts as a need.”
He stood, lifting one broad shoulder. “Sometimes the soul needs more than the basics, Amelia. There’s bread, and then there’s a homemade garlic oregano sourdough.” After a wary glance at the television, he stopped in the archway, about to leave. “I’ll be back later with dessert.” He eased the door three-quarters shut behind him.
Amelia resumed stroking Jordan’s hair, watching her daughter relish the sun and the water on the TV. A weather-worn wooden table came into the frame at the bottom. The camera wobbled, then was set down, still pointed in Jordan’s direction. A moment passed, and a large, male hand appeared in front of the lens. The focus adjusted automatically.
There was a message in blue ink on his palm.
Wish you were here.
Butterflies that had nothing to do with Chip flitted in Amelia’s stomach, and her whole body tensed.
The hand vanished. A second later, Finn stood in front of the camera, bending over to peer into it. He reached out, made an adjustment, then winked. He turned and dashed down the beach in Jordan’s direction, catching the girl up in his arms and spinning her around at the water’s edge. Her shrieks of laughter carried to the camera’s microphone.
They both staggered a moment, then he draped his arm over her shoulders, pointing toward the camera. He said something, and they both waved.
Wish you were here.