Dreams Adrift (A River Dream Novel) (11 page)

Seeing the wetsuit clad surfers, Hans shook
his head. “Now that’s dedication to a sport. You wouldn’t catch me
in the water in February.”

“
Me neither,” I agreed. “Then
again, I was never much of a surfer.”

Hans laughed. “I’ve seen you on a surfboard
Michael. You’re not a surfer at all.”

“
Maybe not,” I said. “Sailing’s
always been my preferred way to spend time on the
water.”

“
And you are a half-way decent
sailor,” Hans said. “I’ll give you that.”

For the next several minutes we concentrated
on eating our chili-cheese dogs without spilling any of the
generous helping of topping on our clothes. After downing the last
bite of his, Hans wiped a dab of chili from his chin and cleared
his throat.

“
I suppose Maeve will tell you
when she gets back, but I don’t think April will mind if I tell you
first. She’s going to ask Maeve to be one of her
bridesmaids.”

My eyes widened in surprise. “Really. How
about that? That’s nice of her considering they don’t really know
each other all that well.”

“
April thinks of Maeve as a
friend,” Hans said, “a good friend. And since you’re going to be my
Best Man, April thought Maeve should be included in the wedding
party, too.”

I chewed and swallowed my last fry and drained
the iced tea from my cup. “I think Maeve will like that. Who are
the other bridesmaids going to be?”

Hans chewed on his lower lip. “She’s only
going to have two. She’s asking Beth to be the other
one.”

I had to ask, even though I thought I knew the
answer. “Who’s she asking to be her maid-of-honor?”

The look on Hans’ face told me I was right.
“She asked Rhiannon, didn’t she? That makes sense. They’ve been
friends practically their whole lives.”

Fourteen

Hans raised his eyes slowly and met mine.
“April did ask Rhiannon, but Rhiannon said no.”

My feelings moved quickly from surprise to
relief to irritation. “She said no. What’s her excuse? April is one
of her best friends.”

“
From what April told me,
Rhiannon’s first question when April asked her was if you were
going to be there. When April told her you were, she asked if your
wife was going to be there. April told her that she planned to ask
Maeve to be a bridesmaid.”

Shaking my head, I said, “I can imagine what
Rhiannon said to that.”

Hans snorted. “Yeah, I bet you can. Anyway,
Rhiannon asked when the wedding was going to be. When April told
her, Rhiannon said she couldn’t because she’d already made plans to
be visiting friends in Africa the last two weeks of
May.”

I sat up and swirled the remnants of ice
around the bottom of my cup. “Rhiannon’s going back to Africa. Do
you believe that?”

“
April doesn’t believe it, but she
didn’t press Rhiannon about it.” Hans tilted his head and looked
hard at me. “April doesn’t think Rhiannon’s gotten over the fact
that you married someone else, Michael. And that’s why Rhiannon
won’t come to our wedding, because you’ll be there with
Maeve.”

I felt bad for April, and for Hans. Hans and
Rhiannon had been friends as long as he and I had.

“
I’m sorry, Hans. Tell April I’m
sorry that Rhiannon feels that way.”

Hans reached across the table and put a hand
on my shoulder. “April doesn’t blame you, Michael. She knows it’s
Rhiannon’s issue to deal with, not yours. And, besides, she’s
already found someone else to be her maid-of-honor. You remember
her college roommate, Theresa.”

“
That makes sense. They roomed
together right from fall semester, freshman year.”

“
Theresa is April’s sorority
sister. April always said Theresa was like the real sister she
never had,” Hans said. “She was going to ask her to be a bridesmaid
with Beth and Maeve. I guess this works out better.”

Theresa, the moms, and the bridesmaids got
together and held a surprise bridal shower for April in, aptly
enough, late April. The groomsman and I had a bachelor party for
Hans the Saturday before the wedding. This was at his request since
he wanted his party at Wrightsville Beach and the wedding was going
to be in Garner. He didn’t want us all to have that long
morning-after drive.

The couple opted for a late-morning wedding
and a luncheon reception. It was a beautiful ceremony and a
wonderful reception. The newlyweds departed late in the afternoon
to catch a flight to their honeymoon destination, Lake Geneva,
Switzerland.

Maeve and I, rather than drive all the way to
River Dream, stayed at the Hilton where we'd spent our wedding
night.

“
It's funny when you think about
it, isn't it?” Maeve commented. “It hasn't been a year since our
wedding, and here we are again, on a wedding night.”

I chuckled. “But it's not our wedding night
this time,” I reminded her.

With a coy look, she said, “We could pretend
it is.”

Fifteen

Hans' wedding fell right in between my
finishing final exams and the end of Maeve’s first year as a high
school teacher. We celebrated with a two-week-long bareboat sailing
charter around the Sea of Cortez, starting and ending in Guaymas,
Sonora.

The idea for sailing the Sea of Cortez came
from one of my professors, Ned Chelte. Dr. Chelte spent months
cruising the waters between Baja and mainland Mexico while studying
the Manta Ray for his doctoral thesis. He described the area as a
sailing and diving paradise.

Summer ended, school started, and life
continued much the same way for the next few years. During football
season we made every Laney home game. The rest of the time we spent
nearly every weekend at River Dream. Each summer we would plan a
couple of weeks of sailing adventure at a different destination
that promised much to see and much to learn.

Because I was taking a light course load, it
took me five years to graduate with my Bachelor's Degree in Marine
Science. Maeve and I celebrated by taking a whole month that summer
and traveling to Australia to sail along the Great Barrier Reef. It
was during that cruise that we first began seriously talking about
starting a family.

“
Michael, can you hear that
ticking?” Maeve asked as we relaxed in the cockpit of our chartered
Beneteau 37.

Concerned that she had noted something wrong
with the boat, I perked up and listened intently. “What
ticking?”

Maeve laughed lightly at my confusion. “My
biological clock is ticking. I think it’s time that we started
thinking about having a baby.”

Annoyed at having been fooled, I asked, “What
in the world brought this on all of a sudden?”

Judging by the look on her face, I asked a bit
too hastily.

“
What do you mean?” Maeve
responded, her voice tinged with a trace of her own annoyance. She
sat up straight and put her glass on the table. I swallowed hard as
she glared at me. “You do want children, don’t you?”

“
Yes, of course I do,” I said
quickly. Knowing I had to repair the damage already done, I reached
out and gently took her hand. “I guess you just kind of caught me
by surprise. My thoughts weren’t exactly on the parent track
tonight.”

Maeve visibly relaxed and leaned closer to me.
“No, I don’t imagine they were. But when we saw that pod of
porpoises with their young today it got me thinking about us having
a baby,” Maeve said wistfully. “Michael, I would really like for us
to have a child.”

I slid closer on the seat and put my arm
around her. “Babe, I would love for us to have a baby. If you’re
ready, then I’m ready,” I assured her. “In fact, why don’t we go
below and get started right now?”

“
Fresh!” Maeve exclaimed, but she
was smiling when she said it. “It won’t be quite that easy. I’ll
make an appointment with my doctor when we get home, before going
off the pill. Then we can start working on a baby.”

Hugging her to me gently I said, “All right,
that makes sense. We could still go below and practice.”

“
Yes, we could,” Maeve agreed as
she stood and reached for my hand.

As it was a couple of weeks before we got back
to the States and another couple of weeks before Maeve could get an
appointment with her doctor, it was well into the school year
before we were able to start working on having a baby. Even then we
had to wait until spring to get the good news that we were going to
be parents.

We began to suspect it near the end of March.
On the first day of spring, the doctor confirmed it. Maeve was
pregnant; we were going to have a baby.

“
I guess this makes it official,
Michael,” Maeve said with a warm smile as the doctor told us the
news. “We’re going to be parents.”

“
Yes, you are,” said the doctor,
looking up from her chart. “I’d say you’re about seven weeks
along.”

There was a lightness and joy in my heart like
nothing I'd ever felt before. “We’re having a baby, sweetheart,” I
said to Maeve as if she hadn't heard.

Maeve graced me with a tolerant smile. “Yes,
Michael, I know.”

“
You’re due near the end of
October,” the doctor told us.

We left the doctor’s office that day with a
bag full of brochures and pamphlets. On the way home we stopped by
the bookstore to see what sort of books they had for couples about
to become parents. Maeve and I were giddy with anticipation. When
we got home we couldn’t wait to call and tell her
parents.

“
That’s wonderful news,” Phyllis
said, clearly excited. “Congratulations to you both. When can we
expect to meet our grandchild?”

After getting all the details from Maeve,
Phyllis finally put Ted on the phone so he could hear the news from
his baby girl himself.

“
Yes, Daddy, it’s true. Your baby
is having a baby,” I heard Maeve say. She paused briefly,
listening. “Daddy, I’m not much of a little girl anymore.” She was
quiet for another moment. “Yes, Daddy, I’ll always be your baby
girl,” Maeve said as a tear escaped her eye. “I love you too,
Daddy.”

Once she got off the phone with her folks, we
headed down island to my parents’ house to give them the news in
person. My parents were thrilled. Malori was ecstatic with the idea
of becoming an aunt.

“
What wonderful news!” my mother
said, in an echo of Phyllis’ response. “Now when did you say you
were due?”

I sat up a little straighter and said with a
touch of pride, “The end of October.”

Mom smiled tolerantly at my preening. She
turned to my father. “Is that not wonderful, Owen? We are going to
be grandparents!”

“
And I’m going to be an aunt!”
Malori exclaimed. She was practically dancing with excitement and
bombarded Maeve with questions.

Now that we were going to going to be parents,
we would have to make some adjustments. The Nadeau house, being a
three-bedroom house anyway, would require the least amount of work.
Maeve had no trouble with the idea of turning my den slash workout
room into a nursery.

River Dream would take a little more work.
When I designed it, I never thought about the idea of children
living there someday, but that day was upon us. Changes would have
to be made.

“
We could change the office into a
nursery,” I suggested.

“
Then what would we use for an
office?” Maeve countered. “I do a lot of work in there on the
weekends, Michael. That’s where I spend Sunday afternoons grading
papers and writing lesson plans while you while away the hours
feeding worms to fish.”

This was a bit of an exaggeration. I spent
almost as much time in the office doing work for the master’s
degree classes I was taking as she did for the classes she was
teaching; however, I’d learned not to take exception to Maeve’s
occasional forays into hyperbole.

I tried to picture the layout of the house in
my mind, something at which I've never been good. My friend Hans
could have done it easily enough. That's what made him a good
engineer.

“
We could build up the back porch
screened room into an office,” I offered.

“
Then where would we grill out?”
Maeve asked. “And where would we sit out with our guests to enjoy a
nice ice tea on a warm summer evening?”

I started to point out that we also had a
screened room on the front of the house and a screened house at the
head of the dock but thought better of it.

“
What I think, Michael, is that we
should just add a room off our bedroom,” Maeve said with a sweet
smile.

I grimaced as I thought of what that would do
to the symmetry I had tried so hard to build into the design, but I
bowed to the inevitable. Standing behind her chair, I rubbed her
shoulders and kissed her lightly on top of her head.

“
Of course you’re right,
sweetheart,” I conceded. “That would be the most practical
solution.”