Finding Home (22 page)

We were lounging together on the Fox and
Geese quilt from my room, on the carpet in front of the living room
fire. Nick was drinking Scotch and I had some warm milk with honey.
Neither of us wanted to move to answer the phone. “Could be Kiera,”
I said, “calling to tell us how hot and beautiful it is in Hawaii.
Which we don’t want to know.”

“Could be my office,” Nick said. “I’d better
get it.”

“No,” I could hear him saying from the
kitchen, “she’s not taking any calls.” Silence, and then, “Sorry,
she doesn’t want to talk to you.” And then, louder, “Listen
asshole, just fuck off!”

I didn’t need to ask who it was. When Nick
came back I just said, “Thanks. Maybe he’ll finally get the
message.” But I didn’t feel right about that. It would have hurt to
talk to Jay, but I could have, should have, done it myself. Nick
should have called me to the phone. He wasn’t trying to protect me,
he was just being possessive, and I resented that.

“He’d better get the message.” Nick lay back
down beside me. “I want you all to myself.”

“No problem.” nestled into his arms and drew
the quilt around us.

Nick fixed a pillow under my head and stroked
my hair. “When’s your next check-up with MacLaren?” he asked.

“What?” I’d almost drifted off to sleep. “Oh,
Wednesday, I think.”

“Does he look at you naked?”

“
What?
”

“Does he?”

I tried to sit up but he held me down. “Nick,
are you feeling okay?”

“I don’t want that guy ogling you.”

“Let me go, Nick! I’m not comfortable on the
floor anymore.” I struggled away and hauled myself up to stand over
him. “Now, what are you talking about? Angus MacLaren is my doctor!
He checks my weight, my blood pressure, my urine sample, feels my
womb, listens to the baby with a stethoscope. That’s it.”

“Hey, sorry, sorry. That guy calling just hit
me wrong.”

“Wrong is right!” I wanted to hit him. “Don’t
ever talk to me like that.”

“Sorry.” Nick held out his arms to me. “It’s
because of Kiera, too. She’s screwing around with MacLaren.”

I slumped back down beside him. “You know
about that?”

“I make it my business to find out know what
my wife’s up to.” Nick rearranged the pillows and quilt for me.
“Not that I care, I just like to know. And it was no big secret
anyway, you obviously knew.”

“God, no wonder you’re suspicious.” I kissed
him gently on the forehead, in the little angle where his hair was
receding. “Don’t worry, Nick, I only want you.”

“Promise?” He looked like a scared little boy
then, like the kid I’d known hanging around the Castle. “Promise
you won’t ever leave me?”

“Nick! You big baby!” I didn’t say I’d never
make that kind of promise to anybody. Not even Jay. And I didn’t
try to make him discuss his fear of being abandoned. I knew enough
about his mother and his sorry past and I couldn’t make up for
that. Instead I used my mouth to distract him in another way, and
we slid back into greedy voluptuous oblivion.

* * *

After that I spent another long, lonely week
unable to think straight. Malagash lay shrouded in thick fog, which
hid the heartless ocean, obscured any view of the outside world at
all. It was as if a curtain had been drawn around my life. The days
seemed to have no real beginning or end, just flowed into each
other, gray and dreary.

On Wednesday I walked to Airdrie Bay for my
check-up. I tried not to think about the stuff Nick had said. He
hadn’t mentioned Angus MacLaren again, but it scared me that he
could be so jealous, so irrational over nothing. Much as I desired
and cared for Nick, I wasn’t sure I wanted to live with somebody
who was that insecure. And did I want him around my baby? And did I
want a baby who might grow up to be like him?

At first Dr. MacLaren and I pretended nothing
strange was going on. He did all the medical things in a remote,
clinical way. e talked about Holly, the midwife, and setting up her
visits to the house to teach me breathing exercises. He told me
everything was fine with my pregnancy, and arranged my next
appointment. I was wondering how long he would keep up this
professional exterior when he said, “You’re looking very well, you
know.”

I slid off the examining table, adjusting my
tights and straightening my dress. “Nick’s been coming down
weekends,” I said. My whole body felt warm and glowy, just thinking
about him.

“Oh?”

“Yes. Oh.” I sat in a chair by his desk. “But
we don’t need to talk about Nick. I’m sure Kiera told you I want to
keep my baby?”

He nodded, cleared his throat. “We’d still be
glad to have the baby though, if you change your mind.”

“And you’d pay me the fifty thousand, if I
give my baby up to you and Kiera instead of to Nick?”

“That makes it sound vile, but yes, that’s
what I mean.”

“But you won’t try to fight for my baby, now
that Kiera’s pregnant?”

“No, we won’t. It’s really up to you.”

I picked up an antique paperweight from his
desk. “Okay” I said. “But I need more time to think about it.” I
examined the round glass orb as if I’d never seen anything so
fascinating. Trapped at its greenish center, surrounded by tiny air
bubbles, hung a tufted milkweed seed. “Where is Kiera, anyway?”

As if on cue she stepped through from the
inner office. “How are things?” she asked, too quickly. Had she
been in there listening? Or merely admiring all the pictures of
herself?

I set the paperweight back in its place.

“Wait, don’t tell me,” she said. “I can see
from your face. Oh my god, you’re in love with him, aren’t
you.”

I felt my face going pink. “What can I
say?”

“The less the better, from the looks of you,”
she said. She stood behind Angus’s desk and draped her arms over
his shoulders, rested her cheek against his. “But there’s something
I should tell you. Nick’s going broke. I thought it was only on
paper, when the market crashed last summer. But now I think he
might have lost everything.”

I didn’t want to believe her. “How do you
know?”

“Oh, I have my sources.” She fiddled with
Angus’s collar. “But I just wanted to prepare you, in case it makes
a difference to your decision.

“Right,” I said. “Thanks.”

“And you can still come here anytime, you
know that? I mean if Nick gets, well, if you change your mind or
whatever. We’ll be here for you.”

Something in her tone made me uneasy. “And?
What else, Kiera?”

“And,” Kiera said. “Well, you see…”

I waited.

She stepped back a bit, so she was almost
hidden behind Angus. “You see,” she said, her voice trembling,
“It’s only fair you should also know Nick’s not the father. You’re
not carrying his baby.”

“Oh my god,” I said. “I think I know what’s
coming.” I turned to Angus. “It’s your child, isn’t it? You guys
planned to go for custody all along, so of course you didn’t want
the baby to be Nick’s.”

Angus just nodded, looking both ashamed and
proud. Kiera said, “I’m so sorry, but you can understand, can’t
you, why we did it? I mean, try to think how it seemed to us, it
was our chance for a child and we never dreamed it would turn out
like this and, well, we really are very sorry …” her voice trailed
off as she watched for my reaction.

“Oh. My. God. What a mess!” I paced around
the office, indignant. “That’s malpractice, isn’t it?” I cried. “I
could sue you guys, get far more than fifty thousand.”

They didn’t argue.

But as I stood there thinking about it, I
felt a growing relief. Yes, what they’d done was deceitful and
cruel. Yet if I wasn’t having Nick’s baby, he would have no claim.
I didn’t ever have to see him again if I didn’t want to. And I
wouldn’t have to worry about my child ever acting like him. But it
bound Kiera and Angus to me. It made them at least partly
responsible for my baby and her future.

* * *

On the way back to Malagash I picked up the
mail. There was another package for me, this time from the Canadian
Camping Association. But even though that information was in
English, I couldn’t focus on it any more than I had on what I’d
been sent from Quebec.

I sat in my room with the papers and plans
strewn all over my bed, trying to make sense of Kiera’s news. What
if Nick didn’t have any money? And how would he react if he ever
found out he wasn’t the father? What was I supposed to do now?

But all I really wanted right then was for
Nick to come back.

Nothing else mattered.

When Nick returned the next weekend, he
surprised me by declaring as he walked in the door, “I love you.”
He threw his arms around me. “I want to divorce Kiera and marry
you.”

I laughed and hugged him, led him upstairs. A
few hours later, lying in my bed in the late afternoon dusk, he
asked, “Well, what do you say? ill you marry me?”

I didn’t want to have this conversation. I
couldn’t choose. Not yet. So I snuggled up to him under my Fox and
Geese quilt and yawned. “Oh, why get married? This is just pure
lust.”

“Hey, thanks a lot!” Nick cried. “I happen to
think it’s far more than that.” He sat up and crossed his arms and
lectured me. “Lust, Lucienne, is what I felt that day in your room
at the Castle, when we were kids. And on Prom night. And okay, even
later that summer when you came back from camp. But I’m all grown
up now. I know the difference – ”

“Hey,” I said, coaxing him back down beside
me. “You know what? I went to see the Castle, when I was in
Middleford. I mean, I walked by there, I walked in the woods.” I
ran my fingers over his wide, solid shoulders.

“I remember everything,” Nick said.
“Everything we did, everything that happened.” He twisted my hair
as he spoke, sort of braiding it. “And I’ve thought about it, about
you, so much over the years.”

“Oh yeah?” I didn’t know how to respond. This
was leading toward things I wasn’t ready to talk about. So I said,
“God, what I remember is how inhibited I was in high school. Living
with the Wembles, going with Gord.” I giggled like I was fifteen
again. “And avoiding you.”

Nick smirked at me. “Except for Prom night,”
he said.

“When my true nature got the better of
me.”

“Man, that dress!” Nick groaned. “And dancing
with you, feeling your bare skin. I just wanted to take you
somewhere and screw you silly.”

“As I recall,” I said, “that’s exactly what
happened.”

“So why did you disappear?” He tugged on the
bit of hair he’d been playing with, as if he could pull an answer
out of me. “Why’d you suddenly leave town that fall without a
word?”

“I guess I got scared,” I told him. Which was
only part of the reason, but it was still true. “You demanded too
much, you tried to control me.” I wanted to tell him about that
other time I’d been pregnant with his child, and about the
abortion. He had a right to know. But I’d kept my secret so long I
just couldn’t. The past was gone. I needed to focus on the
future.

Not that I could face that, either.

“And now?” He tightened his grip on my
hair.

“Now what? Am I still scared of you?” looked
right into his icy blue eyes. I felt like I’d known him forever.
“No,” I said. “I feel like this was meant to be, that it was our
fate to meet up again that day in Montreal.”

Nick let go of my hair and stroked my belly.
He traced the dark line of pigmentation which had appeared with my
pregnancy, running from my navel to pubic bone. “Can I tell you
something?” He breathed the words into my ear, so softly it felt
like a caress.

I thought I might just melt away into a
little pool of pleasure. “Sure. Anything.”

“You won’t get all mad and upset?”

“I’m easy.”

“Okay. Meeting up with you in Montreal was no
coincidence.”

I cringed. “What do you mean?”

“Well, when I went to the West Grove High
reunion and didn’t see you, I realized you were the main reason I’d
gone.” Nick held me close, as if sensing my need to pull away. “As
I told you, I’d been thinking about you all those years, wondering
what had happened to you, where you went. And Gord refused to talk
about it at all, ever. So I decided the time had come to find
you.”

“And?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the
rest, but I had to know.

“And I hired a detective, a guy who does some
work for our firm, divorce cases and so on, he’s an expert at
finding people who don’t want to be found.”

I sat bolt upright, my body clenched like a
fist. “And he found me.” I felt like I might be sick to my stomach.
“God, Nick!”

“Hey, chill, no big deal.” He dragged me back
under the quilt so we lay face to face. “Yes, he found you. Over
the summer he took a little fishing holiday at a lodge in Quebec.
Auberge Ciel.”

I shrieked in horror. “You mean he was there,
at my lodge?
Spying on me?
” My eyes searched out Jay’s
drawing of Auberge Ciel and the lake, which was propped up on the
mantle. I could barely see it in the darkness, but I knew it by
heart anyway. My mind whirled back to our last guest of the summer.
“Oh god, I remember that guy! He followed me out the day I went to
Montreal!” I waited for Nick to say it wasn’t true, but he didn’t.
“Well, go on, finish the story.”

Nick sort of whispered the rest into my neck.
“When you finally took off in the truck he followed you. You tried
to ditch him on some side road, but he found you again on the
highway. He called me from Montreal. I flew down that night.”

The need to spew surged through me again.
“And you just happened to be out jogging on the mountain the next
morning, when I was.” I felt suddenly very cold, even under the
quilt. I turned my back on him, shivering, repelled by his muscular
body, so attractive just moments ago. “I can’t believe this Nick!
It’s insane!”