Baby Under The Mistletoe

CHAPTER SEVEN

SOLEIL COULDN’T KEEP excluding West. She’d avoided the inevitable all weekend, taking long naps and wrapping up loose ends around the farm’s operation and finances before the end of the year. Today was going to be the first day she did things right.

She found his number in her cell-phone address book and hit the Call button. A moment later, his voice was on the other end of the line, sounding clear, as if he’d already been up for a while.

“West,” she said tentatively. “I know it’s early, but I’m calling because I have an ultrasound appointment today, and I thought you might like to join me for it.”

Silence.

“I mean, you know, because you’d get to see the baby on the ultrasound screen.”

“Oh, um…of course,” he finally said, sounding strange. “I’d love to go. What time?”

“It’s at noon in Santa Rosa. Sorry for the short notice.”

“So, an hour to get there…” A pause. “I’ll pick you up at ten-thirty, if that works for you.”

She blinked, stunned. “Uh, sure. That would be great.”

“I’ll see you in two hours then.”

She hung up. In two hours, she’d be driving to the city with West, just like a real couple on their way to see their real baby on an ultrasound screen.

Maybe he’d also want to join her for her Bradley childbirth classes at the community center. Of course he would, and he’d have some definite ideas about what to name the baby-something traditional like Elizabeth or Michael, or maybe even after his own parents…

She had always dreamed of having a normal name that people could spell, instead of the bizarre hippie name her mother had actually chosen. As a girl, she’d dreamed of being a Melissa or a Jennifer. Probably the kind of name West would like.

Okay, stop. You need to calm down and get a grip. Quit getting so far ahead of yourself.

The two hours zipped by as she got ready, answered a few phone calls and made a list of things she needed to buy. Most important, she needed to find a crib. Her father had sent her a check-his way of apologizing for being at a conference in Europe instead of anywhere accessible for the holidays-and intended to use that money to start outfitting the nursery.

When she finally heard West’s car in the gravel driveway outside, she was seized by a moment of terror. This wasn’t just any trip to the doctor they were embarking on. This was something huge. This was the thing Soleil had been avoiding ever since she’d first learned she was pregnant.

She’d been lying to herself all this time, convinced that somehow the pregnancy, and the baby, belonged to her alone. Now she had to face the truth-West was going to be a big part of her life from here on out, whether she liked it or not.

She heard the vehicle stop out front and a door shut. She barely had time to check herself in the mirror before hurrying out the door. West was a few feet from the SUV.

He smiled and said hello.

“I could drive if you want,” she said.

He patted the hood of the Toyota Highlander. “Great gas mileage. I’ll drive.”

He opened the passenger door for her. She climbed in, then dug a package of saltines out of her purse for emergency motion-sickness use.

“Cracker?” She offered the package to West as he got in the driver’s side.

“No, thanks. You still get morning sickness?”

“No, but I do get carsick sometimes. I probably won’t, but crackers seem to head it off at the pass.”

He drove toward the main road. “So have you seen an ultrasound of the baby before?”

“Once, at twelve weeks. It looked like a tiny alien with a heartbeat.”

“Do they give you a photo or anything to keep?”

“Sure,” she said. “I bet they’ll give a copy to each of us.”

Their baby now. Not hers alone, but theirs.

She watched him sideways, a little surprised how quickly he’d gone from shock and awe to asking for baby pictures.

“So…um, do we get to find out the sex of the baby?”

“If we want to.”

“Do we want to?”

We?

Do we want to?

She popped a cracker into her mouth and chewed furiously as her freak-out quotient shot through the roof of the vehicle.

“I’m not really sure what I want to do. I mean, a surprise is fun, I guess, but part of me is dying to know.”

“Okay, well, it’s up to you. I’ll go with whatever you want.”

Awfully diplomatic of him.

“Have you thought about names at all?” he asked.

Soleil recalled her earlier fear about his naming preferences and popped a second cracker in her mouth. Why hadn’t she thought to bring some seltzer water, too?

“I have a few ideas.”

He glanced over at her. “Care to share them?”

“Maybe later. I’m feeling a little carsick right now.”

“Should I pull over?”

“No, no, that’s okay. The crackers are helping.”

“If it’s a girl, I’ve always liked my mom’s name, Julia.”

Of course he did.

She tried not to visibly wince at how right her fears had been. West was doing exactly what she thought he’d do-barging right in and taking over the whole baby-preparation process as if gearing up for battle. Leaving no detail to chance.

Julia was a lovely name. And a lovely woman. But Soleil wasn’t exactly ready to have this kind of lovey-dovey-couple discussion with a man she didn’t love.

“Not that I’m saying we should use that name. I really haven’t ever thought about what I’d name a kid, frankly.”

“Okay,” she said with another stab of guilt over her lateness in telling him he was about to be a father.

“How about your mom? What’s her name?”

“My mom?”

Naming a baby girl after Soleil’s mother wouldn’t be so different from naming her after a barracuda.

“Anne,” she finally said. “Her name is Anne.”

“You know, you’ve never told me about your mother, or any of your family.”

Yeah, it hadn’t exactly come up when they were sweating and rolling around in bed together.

Ahead, the road curved through a valley between pale yellow hills that bulged like pregnant bellies against the horizon. The sky had mercifully turned blue again today, a clear crystalline blue that promised warm weather. So much easier to focus on than the circumstances of her life.

“Hello? Don’t want to talk about your family?”

“Not really,” she said, staring at a herd of cattle on a distant hillside.

“I understand. But it might be weird if I don’t know anything about my own kid’s grandparents.”

“Anne Bishop,” Soleil said. “That’s my mom. She’s a poet.”

“Wait, you mean like the Anne Bishop? The one I had to study in college?”

“That would be her.”

“Wow. I didn’t realize.”

“When I went to school at Berkeley, there was a whole class devoted to her work.”

“Did you take it?”

“Hell, no.”

“Are you close to her?”

“Close…isn’t exactly what I’d call us. I mean, we tend to butt heads a lot. We’re frighteningly similar people, both way too headstrong and stubborn.”

“You? Headstrong and stubborn? No way.” His wry smile betrayed his earnest tone, and Soleil chuckled.

“I know it’s hard to believe.”

“What about your father? Were your parents married?”

“My dad is a civil-rights attorney. My mom cheated on him when I was a kid, and they split up. But they were so different, I don’t think they’d have survived even without the affair.”

“Different how?”

Soleil laughed at the absurdity of her parents together. “My dad was a Black Panther for a while in the seventies. Having a white wife didn’t exactly fit with his radical leanings back then.”

“Oh.”

“Oddly enough, my parents gave me plenty of reason to swear off interracial relationships.”

West’s eyebrows shot up. “I don’t understand…If you’re half black and half white, which race are you swearing off?”

She couldn’t help but laugh. “Touché. My experience going through the world with light brown skin is, people tend to classify me as black, African-American, whatever you want to call me, and that’s how I identify myself.”

“I guess that makes sense.”

“No, it doesn’t totally make sense, but it’s the way the world works.”

And the one time she broke her own rule and let herself fall hard, she’d gotten her heart shattered by a guy who didn’t have the balls to defy his ass-backward white family and stay with her.

“So where does that leave us?”

She shrugged. “I guess the universe has a few lessons to teach me about how we’re all a rainbow of people or some crap like that.”

“Are you close to your father at all?”

“Sadly, no. He moved to Chicago after the split. He’s the type who lives and breathes his work. So it’s hard to develop the distance father-daughter thing.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay. If he’d stuck around, my mom probably would have killed him. So he saved her a prison sentence. He’s a good guy, if absorbed in his life.”

Soleil’s motion sickness hadn’t completely disappeared, so she fixed her eyes forward on the horizon as she ate another cracker.

She normally reserved discussing the family for guys she was really serious about…which was why she’d never talked to West about her parents before. And yet, whether she’d intended to be serious about him or not, they were on their way to see their baby together for the first time.

Just like a real couple.

Wasn’t this about as real as it got?

The truth of their situation struck Soleil again, and a cold sweat broke out on her face. She dug another cracker out of the package and ate it as if it would save her life.

WEST TOOK ONE LOOK around the waiting room of the doctor’s office and swallowed hard. Pink walls decorated with black-and-white photos of naked babies surrounded them. He fit in this place about as well as a foot fit into a glove.

Three pregnant women besides Soleil occupied the chairs, each one looking more ready to pop than the next. A tired-looking woman with a brand-new baby-so new it was still kind of red and wrinkled-sat closest to the door. The baby was in one of those big plastic car-seat things that had a handle, making the baby more convenient to carry around, apparently.

West was the only guy in the room-possibly the only guy in the entire building-and the estrogen in the air was enough to make him want to go do something manly like check under the hood of his car, or maybe hunt for wild boar.

While Soleil checked in at the front desk, he zeroed in on the magazine selection and tried to find something to distract himself. Parenting, Baby, Woman’s Day, Fit Pregnancy…a far cry from the waiting rooms on the air force base, where Soldier of Fortune and Sports Illustrated dominated the tabletop selections. So he decided to embrace the femininity and grabbed the latest issue of Baby.

He sat and was about to start flipping through the magazine when Soleil put down her purse next to him.

“I’ll be right back,” she said, holding up a little plastic cup and wincing.

“Where’s my cup?” he joked, and she rolled her eyes before disappearing through a doorway.

As West watched her walk away, something unexpected stirred in him. The way Soleil walked said everything about her. She knew who she was and where she was going. She was comfortable in her skin, and even as her body changed with pregnancy, her walk maintained that signature confident, sexy stride he’d found so attractive in the summer.

Some part of him still wanted her.

It wasn’t the time to be thinking that way. Not yet, anyway. He needed a distraction, so he turned his attention back to the periodical.

The first article he encountered was “Ten Painful Breast-feeding Problems Solved!” and if it hadn’t been for the buxom breast barely concealed by a baby’s head covering the page facing the article, he would have moved on to something else. Instead, he lingered and learned all about what “latching on” meant and how important it was to make sure the baby was doing it properly.

By the time Soleil returned, cup free, he’d also learned about engorgement-ouch!-and mastitis.

She read over his shoulder.

“You’ll be relieved to know,” she whispered after a moment, “you won’t actually have to do that. It’s mostly the mom’s job.”

“I just want to be educated in case you come to me with complaints about your chafed nipples.”

He started to read the next article, “What Your Baby Is Telling You Without Saying a Word.”

Beside him, Soleil produced an issue of the New Yorker from her purse, apparently disinterested in the unspoken language of babies.

He glanced over her shoulder and caught her chuckling at a David Sedaris essay.

“That’s not going to teach you anything you need to know about babies,” he whispered, only half joking.

She looked at him as if he was crazy. “Just because I’m having a baby doesn’t mean I have to turn into a boring dolt who thinks and talks about nothing but my child.”

Part of him took offense at her tone and wanted to bring her down a notch. “Do you know what to do when your milk duct gets clogged?”

“No, but I’m sure you’ll be right there to tell me.”

West resisted making any more inflammatory comments, because Soleil suggesting that he might be around to tell her such things was progress enough for one day. No need to push his luck.

But, was that what he actually wanted? To be around, giving her breast-feeding pointers?

A day ago, he’d never given a moment’s thought to the complications faced by nursing mothers, and today he was claiming to be educated on the subject.

Was this who he was becoming?

West had always thought of himself first and foremost as an air force Special Forces officer. He lived for his work. He’d always thought of it as who he was, as well as what he did.

But it was only his job. It was something he did for a living. He was also a guy who loved rock climbing, camping, backcountry hiking, kayaking and distance running. Of course that was all more stuff he did. It wasn’t really him, was it?

Becoming a father though-that felt like a change in the core of his very being. It wasn’t something he could pick up for a while, like tennis, and discard when he tired of it.

For the rest of his life, no matter what else changed, he would always be a father.

As he stared at the magazine on his lap, his vision went blurry for a few moments. He focused on an article about how to make organic baby food. He closed the magazine and looked around. The women who’d been here when they’d arrived had all been called in without his noticing it. Across from them, another couple was just sitting down.

The guy caught his eye. The same deer-in-headlights expression that West was sure he wore was faintly visible on the other man’s face. West smiled and nodded, and the man nodded back, then looked at the selection of magazines and opted to sit and stare at the wall.

West watched the other couple, who were whispering to each other now. They were far enough away that he couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he could tell by their body language and gestures that they were in love.

The man placed a hand on his wife’s huge belly, on a spot she indicated, and smiled at her. He must have been feeling the baby kick.

Had Soleil felt their own baby kick?

He wouldn’t know.

How did they look to others? Each of them sitting stiffly, not touching, not talking, they must have looked as if they were waiting for grim news.

He didn’t want it to be like this. Okay, he’d never imagined how it would be to await a baby’s arrival, and he’d never imagined getting a woman pregnant by accident. But now they were in this predicament, so it was time to figure out how he wanted circumstances to unfold.

Soleil giggled again at the article she was reading.

“Mind reading it to me?” West dared to ask. “I think I’ve learned all I need to know about breast-feeding for now.”

“Hold on,” she said, not even looking up. “I’m almost done. You can read it yourself.”

How were they supposed to make the best of it when she shot him down at every turn?

The door to the examining rooms opened, and a nurse called, “Soleil Freeman?”

West looked at Soleil. “Come on back with me,” she said, so he stood and followed her through the door and down the hallway to the room the nurse indicated they enter.

“You can change into the gown behind the curtain,” she said. “When you’re ready, pull back the curtain and the doctor will be in to see you shortly.”

West took a seat in a pink plastic chair against a lavender wall. Was there anything in this place that wasn’t designed to look girlie?

On the wall next to him was a bulletin board filled with pictures of new babies, some alone and some in the arms of grinning parents. A few lay in cribs with siblings standing next to them or propped on the laps of awkward-looking children who clearly had never held a baby before.

Soleil stepped behind the curtain and drew it as the nurse closed the door.

“No peeking,” she said, only half joking, he suspected.

“I’ve already seen you naked, you know.”

“Trust me, I’ve got a daily reminder.”

He heard her shuffling as she disrobed, and he tried to imagine how her body had transformed in pregnancy. Fuller breasts, rounder curves…She’d once had a waist so small he could put his hands around it and nearly touch fingers on both sides.

He shifted in his seat, aroused by his train of thought. Turning his attention back to the photos on the wall, he found instant relief.

Soleil pulled back the curtain to reveal an examining table with some complicated-looking equipment and a video screen next to it. She was wearing a hospital gown-pink, of course-and gave him a look that made it clear she didn’t need any cute comments about her attire.

The doctor knocked, then came in and introduced herself as Dr. Singh.

“This is West, the baby’s father,” Soleil said by way of introduction.

West smiled. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” the doctor said. She turned to Soleil. “Do you have any questions or concerns before we get started?”

“I’ve been getting eczema lately. Do you think that could be related to the pregnancy?” Soleil asked.

West was too nervous now to pay close attention to the answer. He watched Soleil, who was both familiar and foreign to him, and he wondered again about the strange twists of fate that had brought them here together today.

Deep down, something tugged at him. He recalled the laughter they’d shared last summer, the passion, the carefree way they’d come together for two short weeks-some of the best times of his life.

Did Soleil feel the same? If she did, she’d never admit it. She was more disturbed by their differences than he had been. She was the one with the temper he’d so enjoyed toying with. She took him seriously, which was both charming and a source of endless strife.

But he’d enjoyed their fights, too. He loved watching her tense for battle. When she was angry, her green eyes glowed as if a fire burned inside her, and she could hurl an insult like no one else he’d ever met. The freedom of saying exactly what they felt-no dancing around anyone’s feelings-was one of the most liberating sensations he’d ever experienced in a relationship.

Soleil, on the other hand, had merely found him infuriating.

Dr. Singh went through the motions of a routine exam, then she asked Soleil to lie back on the table. She squeezed a bunch of clear jelly on Soleil’s stomach and began poking around with an ultrasound wand.

“Come closer,” she said to West, “so you can see.”

He stood and went to Soleil’s side. Before he could brace himself for the shock, a blurry image appeared on the video screen. Dr. Singh pointed to one end of the blob.

“That’s your baby’s head…and there’s the heart, the spine, the arms, the feet…”

West’s mouth went dry, and everything he thought he knew and felt was suddenly turned upside down.

There was his baby.

There was their baby.

A wave of dizziness hit him, and he sat on the edge of the examining table to steady himself.

Their baby.

He could see the baby’s too-big head, and its delicate limbs curled up like a spring bud waiting to bloom. He could see the tiny spine, and the blip-blip of a heart pumping.

His own heart stopped for a beat.

He looked at Soleil, and she was smiling in a way he’d never seen her smile before. She glowed like a child on Christmas morning who’d gotten her heart’s desire.

This was not the Soleil he knew. This was a glimpse of someone new.

She caught his eye, and for a moment they were looking at each other instead of the baby. Then they both looked back at the video screen.

“Would you like to know the baby’s gender?” the doctor asked.

West and Soleil looked at each other again, and simultaneously they said, “Yes.”

“You’re going to have a little girl. Congratulations.”

The sheer joy that he’d seen a moment earlier in Soleil’s expression was replaced by something else entirely. Something like amazement.

He was sure it matched his own expression.

“Really?” West said. “A girl? You’re sure?”

“As sure as I can be,” the doctor said as she moved the ultrasound wand around on Soleil’s belly.

She was attempting to get a better image of the baby’s bottom half.

“Let’s see if I can get her to shift a bit, so we can make sure nothing’s hiding behind the umbilical cord.”

“It’s a girl,” Soleil said, sounding certain. “I’ve been thinking it was a girl since the moment I knew I was pregnant.”

The doctor smiled as she continued to watch the screen. “Never argue with a mother’s intuition.” She held the wand still. “See there?”

She was indicating an area of the screen that just looked like a bunch of blurry nothing to West.

“I think we can rest assured you’ll be having a little girl in a few more months. Would you like a picture of her?”

“Could you make a copy for each of us?” Soleil asked.

“Certainly.” Dr. Singh typed something on the computer keyboard. “You can pick up your prints from the nurse at the front desk.”

She used a mouse to measure the baby’s head circumference and length, then added, “And judging by the baby’s size, I’d say your due date of May 1 is right on.”

May 1.

He’d somehow neglected to ask Soleil about the exact due date.

May 1 was the day he’d hold his little girl for the first time. She would no longer be a possibility-she’d be an actuality, a real live person whose life he was responsible for.

Soleil caught his eye. Her gaze searched him for the answer to some question she hadn’t asked. Maybe she wanted to see how he felt.

How did he feel?

Overwhelmed, terrified, thrilled, overjoyed, sick to his stomach and as shaky as a drunk without his booze.

She must not have liked what she saw in his eyes, because her expression darkened, and she shifted her focus to the ultrasound screen, which was now blank.

Dr. Singh was wiping away the gel she’d put on Soleil’s belly with a cloth. “Everything looks to be progressing fine. Do you have any questions?”

Lots. Such as, how was he supposed to be a good father? And, why did babies have to happen by accident like this? And, how badly damaged would his daughter be if her mother and father couldn’t get along?

He shrugged and gave Soleil a questioning look.

“None for me,” she said. “When is the next ultrasound?”

“Unless something unusual comes up, we may not need to do another.”

“Okay. I was thinking for West, but-” she seemed to realize too late that she’d touched upon a controversial subject, and her voice faltered “-you’ll be gone again.”

She busied herself with sitting up and rearranging the gown, while West absorbed the truth. He would be gone. He’d be back in Colorado, or wherever his next assignment took him, and she’d be here. At least he presumed she planned to be here. And why wouldn’t she, when her life and everything she loved was wrapped up in the farm?

“Oh? Where do you live?” Dr. Singh asked, confused now.

“I’m in the air force, stationed in Colorado at the moment but waiting for my next assignment.” Which could take him anywhere, at any time, with little notice.

He caught the tightening of Soleil’s expression, and a deadweight settled on his chest. How had he been stupid enough to assume anything would be simple from this point forward?

A moment ago, he’d been imagining himself holding their newborn baby in his arms, when the reality was, he was far more likely to be thousands of miles away, cradling an assault rifle. He wouldn’t even be present at his child’s birth.

And it was no wonder Soleil was reluctant to depend on him for anything.

“So, you’re…” Dr. Singh said, trying to piece together the situation, “not planning to be together?”

“No,” Soleil said, her tone final.

West felt the word like a punch in the gut, although it shouldn’t have surprised him. It was exactly what he’d have expected her to say, wasn’t it?

“We’re still trying to work out how we’ll share parenting duties,” he said.

“I see.” the doctor said. “Well, I hope to see you again,” she said to West as she went to the door.

To Soleil she said, “I’ll see you next month.”

“I’ll go out to the desk and get our pictures while you change,” he told Soleil, and she nodded.

He needed to get away from her right now. The contrast between the high of seeing their baby for the first time and the low of getting slapped in the face with the truth was too much. He needed a chance to regroup before she nailed him with any more of her harsh reality.

In the safety of the waiting room, he asked the woman at the reception window for the ultrasound photos, and he felt a bit of the tension drain from his shoulders. As he gazed at an image of the baby, he almost couldn’t bear the enormity of it. Tears came to his eyes, and he blinked stupidly.

Tears?

What the hell was happening to him? He wasn’t the kind of guy who got choked up at the sentimental parts of movies, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt the sting of tears in his eyes.

He faked interest in something on the wall and forced his mind to go blank for a moment until he’d recovered. As he studied the framed print, he slowly allowed himself to consider what he needed to deal with next.

Soleil, their future, his career, hers, how to join their lives for the sake of the baby…Was it even possible?

It had to be. He had to be involved in his child’s life. The alternative was unimaginable. And yet, he couldn’t quite imagine how to make it happen, either.

That was why he and Soleil needed to talk.

In that brief moment of hopefulness, when they’d seen their baby together on the ultrasound screen, he’d felt a powerful connection to Soleil. That connection was evidenced by the photos in his hand. He had to hold on to that feeling of hope, because there had to be some way they could make a family.