Baby Under The Mistletoe

CHAPTER TWO

SOLEIL NEEDED WEST showing up right now about as much as she needed a few more holes in the fence. Not only did she have to keep up her five teenage interns-without the help of her assistant, Michelle, who was out with the flu-but she had to act as their counselor, friend, warden and supervisor all day, too. She didn’t have time for a major life drama on top of everything else.

She hadn’t physically recovered from bumping into West. She was shaky still, and desperately wanted to hide out here in the barn with a box of Twinkies and a glass of milk until he went away.

But gastro-self-indulgence would have to wait. Right now she had to negotiate Silas and a teen terrified of all dogs.

“The dog won’t hurt you, I promise.” She reached for a dose of patience that seemed in short supply at the moment.

Tonio stood on the far side of the fence, refusing to enter the field and help with the goats so long as Silas was there.

“I already told you, I hate dogs.” He eyed Silas and shook his head. “No way you’re changing my mind.”

She didn’t want to deal with this. Not now, not with West lurking nearby, threatening to upset the balance of her universe.

“I understand how you feel. Dogs can be dangerous. Did you have a bad experience with one?”

He kept watching the dog as he answered. “Something like that.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it.”

He shook his head.

“Here’s my problem,” Soleil said. “Silas is a working dog. He has an important job here at the farm, and if I keep him penned up in the barn, he can’t do the work I need him to do, and more goats could wander off.”

“I’m not helping with the goats then.”

“Fair enough. For now, I’ll find other work for you to do.”

She didn’t add that later, she’d get to the bottom of his dog fear, but she intended to. It was hard to go through life terrified of dogs, especially when that very fear could put Tonio in danger around aggressive canines. She took note of the pale, barely visible scars on his arms and neck and realized he’d likely been mauled.

A moment later, West appeared, striding toward them in that confident, ready-to-conquer-the-world way he had, and her hunger pangs morphed to anxiety.

She wasn’t ready for him. Wasn’t ready for this conversation. She’d known it was coming, but she’d thought she had more time. She’d expected him to show up in town for the holidays, and she’d planned to approach him in her own time, prepared to give him a firm talk about how she intended to raise the child on her own, and how he could have as much or as little involvement in the child’s life as he wanted, but that she didn’t need his help.

It all sounded so perfectly reasonable in her head, and yet, she was terrified of saying any of it aloud.

“Oh, hey,” Soleil said stupidly. “You’re here.”

To Tonio, she said, “You’ve got chicken duty. You won’t have to worry about the dog if you’re in the chicken zone.”

The chickens would keep him busy for a little while. They needed to be fed, and their coop cleaned once any fresh eggs had been collected. He’d already done the job twice thanks to his dog fear, so he knew the drill.

His shoulders slumped. “Do I have to? The chicken coop smells.”

“Your other choice is mucking out the barn. Which would you like?”

“Chicken duty,” he said sullenly, then slunk away.

West watched the boy go. “How’s your current batch of kids doing?”

He’d spent enough time at the farm with her during the summer to have a rough idea what she did here-take the most promising applicants who applied to her program and give them an internship at the farm, where they could learn skills to take back to their community and help run urban-garden projects.

“They’re doing well,” she said, glad to focus on something innocuous.

He nodded. “I’m going to repair that fence. Where can I find a hammer and nails around here?”

She thought of protesting his help again, but really, she needed the fence fixed, and there wasn’t much sense in turning down a free hand today. And if he was occupied away at the property line, she’d have time to mentally brace herself for the inevitable baby conversation.

“Just inside the barn, to the left, you’ll find what you need.”

He nodded, and strode toward the barn without another word. Something about his expression had been a little off. He hadn’t looked as happy and relaxed as he had during their initial encounter.

Had he figured out the truth on his own? Well, duh. How could he not have?

She chewed the inside of her cheek, a nervous habit since childhood, and headed for the house to prepare lunch.

As she approached the porch, which was bedecked in wreaths and holiday garland she and the kids had hung the day before, it hit her that her own child would be playing here in a few years, toddling around after the ducks, swinging on the porch swing, pulling up flowers from the garden.

She may not be able to give her baby a perfect, intact nuclear family, but she could give the child this place-the happiest moments of her own childhood had happened here at this farm, and the same would be true for her baby. This idea, she loved.

Her own child.

The notion still made her a little dizzy sometimes. But she’d already felt the baby’s fluttering first movements, had seen its tiny heart beating on an ultrasound screen, and she knew that soon enough, her reality would be permanently, drastically altered.

How would she do it? She didn’t exactly have any great role models for motherhood to turn to. Her own mother’s drinking, raging, depressive style was not one she would ever emulate. Or at least she hoped she wouldn’t. With every ounce of her being she wanted to be a better mother than her own had been-more loving, more attentive, more centered.

And yet she didn’t know how she’d do it.

Her train of thought was interrupted by a scream from inside the house, then someone else yelling, “Bitch!”

Soleil headed down the hall to the kitchen, where she found Lexie with milk dripping down the front of her, and Angelique looking as though she wanted to throttle her.

“What’s going on here?” Soleil demanded.

“She called me a crack whore.”

“You are one!” Lexie cried.

“Both of you, stop! Lexie, you go to the bathroom right now and get cleaned up. Angelique, you sit down,” Soleil commanded in her most authoritarian tone.

At five feet six inches and a hundred and forty pounds of pure pregnancy, she doubted she was all that intimidating, but she’d never had a discipline situation get out of hand in all the five years she’d been running the farm.

Lexie rolled her eyes and stormed out of the room, and Angelique stared after her for a few moments before relenting and sitting down at the table.

Soleil sat opposite her. “Tell me your version of the disagreement,” she said calmly.

“She’s such a spoiled bitch.”

“Without profanity,” Soleil added.

“Okay, she’s such a spoiled female canine.”

Behind all her street attitude, Angelique was wickedly smart.

“Why do you say that?”

She crossed her arms over her chest, slumped in the chair and refused to say anything more.

Soleil leaned forward and put her elbows on the table. “She hurt you, and you wanted to lash out.”

Angelique narrowed her eyes. “Don’t give me your dumb social-worker strategies.”

Soleil sighed. Why hadn’t she learned by now? “Okay, keeping it real,” she said in her best south Berkeley accent. “She dissed you, and it pissed you off, which is understandable. But we have to live here together without fighting. Part of this program is learning to work and live cooperatively.”

The girl shook her head, sending a cascade of long cornrowed hair, accented with white beads, across her shoulder. “I want to go home.”

Was there a full moon? Between the escaped goat, the fighting teenage girls and West showing up out of the blue, Soleil was beginning to feel weary beyond measure. And she wanted ice cream.

“I need you here,” she said calmly. “And your neighborhood needs you to go back ready to help run the garden.”

“Nobody gives a damn about that stupid garden. I just came here to get out of school.”

Soleil tried not to feel insulted by this-Angelique was pushing her buttons. It was no easy feat getting chosen to come to Rainbow Farm. The kids were referred by teachers or social workers, yes, but they still had to show the interest to apply, write a compelling essay to compete for an internship and commit to a year’s service in their local garden afterward.

For teenagers who were otherwise usually not salt-of-the-earth nature lovers, this was a huge commitment.

“In your application essay, you said you wanted to be the change you hoped to see. You said you wanted your neighborhood free of guns and full of healthy kids playing in the street.”

Angelique blinked and rolled her eyes, unable to conceal the dampness there all of a sudden. Beneath her tough facade, she was a soft, sensitive girl, full of wide-eyed idealism the likes of which Soleil hadn’t seen since she herself had been that young.

“I just made all that crap up,” she said weakly.

“I know you and Lexie have some differences. She grew up in a wealthy family and never had to worry about money, while you grew up never knowing if your mom would come home, let alone whether there’d be anything to eat for dinner.”

Angelique’s face hardened when she looked at Soleil again. “Yeah, so?”

“It can be hard to understand each other when you come from such different upbringings.”

“No kidding, Einstein.”

“You two will work separately for the rest of the day, and later tonight, once you’ve both calmed down, I want both of you to talk and work through your disagreement.”

Soleil was afraid the girl would stick with the idea of going home, but she was relieved when Angelique simply crossed her arms over her chest and shrugged.

“After you’ve cleaned up the milk on the floor, you’ll go out and help Tonio with the chickens. I think he could use the company.”

“Whatever,” she answered, then got up and grabbed a towel from the counter to wipe up the mess.

Soleil went in search of Lexie, whom she found lying on her bed upstairs, staring at the ceiling.

“You and Angelique are going to work separately for the rest of the day,” she said as she sat on the bed opposite Lexie’s.

In response, the girl sighed but said nothing.

“Do you want to tell me your side of what happened?”

“I got sick of her bragging about her rough life and how hard she has it and all that crap.”

“You think she was bragging?”

“Yeah, ’cause I’m not street enough since I grew up in a nice house and my family has money. She said I might as well be white, for all I know about being black.”

Soleil had seen this dynamic of clashing cultures played out before here at the farm, and there wasn’t always an easy way to engender respect between kids with vastly different life experiences. But sometimes, with patience, she succeeded.

“I know how it feels to be told I’m not black enough. It hurts.”

“Just because I speak using proper English, I’m white? We’re never going to have equality when we’re racist and judgmental.”

Soleil was more intimately familiar with this issue than most people. She’d felt the same pain as a kid. Having a mother who was a famous poet and a Berkeley professor hadn’t done a damn thing for her street cred.

“You know,” Soleil said, “my mother is white and my father is black, but we never lived together as a family after I was six years old. So here I was, this girl with black skin being raised by a white woman in Berkeley, living in a white neighborhood. When I went to school, I felt like I had more in common with the white kids, but I so wanted to be accepted by my black peers.”

“So what did you do?”

“I tried to be true to myself. I am who I am. I’m not a race, and I’m not a racial identity. I’m an individual. I hung out with the kids who accepted me-and I tried not to get beaten up by the kids who didn’t,” she said wryly.

Lexie finally smiled. “I bet you got your butt kicked.”

“A few times, but I won a few fights of my own.”

“I’ve never been in a fight. Today was the closest I’ve ever come.”

“What made you apply to come here?” Soleil asked.

She remembered what Lexie had written in her application essay, but she wanted to hear the girl’s own words. Lexie was her least likely applicant, a resident of the wealthy Oakland hills who attended a prestigious private school. Her life was far removed economically, if not geographically, from the communities where Urban Garden worked to transform empty lots into organic gardens for communities that didn’t have easy access to fresh, local produce.

“I don’t like driving through bad neighborhoods on the way home and feeling like I’m not a part of the solution to the problems around me. It’s like, I’m the opposite of the solution, you know?”

“I don’t blame you for feeling that way.”

Lexie wasn’t interested in being soothed. “It’s stupid, because people like Angelique don’t even want my help.”

“Maybe she does and maybe she doesn’t. That doesn’t change the fact that we need you as much as we need her.”

The girl said nothing as she stared at the ceiling. Stretched out on the bed, her curly black hair was almost dry, and she wore a pink T-shirt in place of the one that had been soaked with milk. Her faded jeans still bore a few milk splatters, and in spite of her simple attire, there was no way for her to disguise the fact that her jeans were expensive, and her T-shirt was designer. She had an elegant polish that made it clear she was an upper-middle-class kid.

Soleil felt her pain, but she couldn’t help but sympathize with Angelique, too. It was hard for such an idealistic kid to understand how the world could dole out disparities in life to people who’d done no more than be born to unlucky circumstances.

“Look,” Soleil finally said, “I have to go make lunch. You’re back on garden duty until lunchtime.”

Lexie shrugged as she sat up. “Okay. So long as I’m working alone.”

Soleil didn’t see any point in arguing now that being at the farm meant working together, whether Lexie wanted to or not. She already knew that, which was why she was so upset in the first place. When she came here, she hadn’t bargained on being the only kid from a privileged background, or on being rejected by her peers for that very fact.

As Soleil went back to the kitchen, she allowed her thoughts to stray to West and the impending discussion she’d have to have with him. Her stomach knotted with anxiety.

It was only half past noon, and already she was exhausted. Being pregnant made her want to take a nap every day, and yet her work didn’t allow that luxury. So she dealt. But, God, what she wouldn’t have given to curl up in bed and shut out the world.

As she passed the rear kitchen window, she could see West walking in from the field, headed right in her direction. Yep, definitely the part of the world she wanted to shut out right now.

PREGNANT, PREGNANT, pregnant, pregnant…

The word would not leave West’s head. It loomed there, bigger than any other thought, refusing to get out of the way. Soleil. Pregnant. With his baby.

No, he shouldn’t have been getting ahead of himself. He needed to wait and hear her story, and trust that if she was really pregnant with his child, she’d have had the decency to tell him right away.

But as soon as that thought formed in his head, he hated the idea of it because it implied that she really was pregnant with someone else’s child.

Which was a stupid way to feel since she’d made it clear that she wasn’t interested in a relationship with him anyway.

Dammit.

Round and round his thoughts went as he strode across the field. The day had remained gray and misty, though no rain was falling. Not too far away, he could see the teenagers overseeing the goats, and for the briefest moment he experienced a surge of misplaced pride in the work Soleil did. Sure, she was a pie-eyed idealist, but she lived by her ideals every waking moment, and she did good work with the kids.

If he had more time during this leave, he’d love to hang out here and get his hands dirty. But that option didn’t seem likely considering the reason why West was on leave. His father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease two months ago, and his mental state had deteriorated drastically in the past six months. Now he needed constant care, but he’d managed to drive away the first three caregivers West had hired, leaving him with no choice but to deal with the situation in person. It was a complicated mess made worse by his complex feelings for his father.

He arrived at the rear door of the farmhouse and knocked.

Soleil called out for him to come in.

As he opened the door, the scent of fresh-baked bread greeted him. He inhaled deeply-he was ravenous.

“Join us for lunch?” Soleil said, though her lack of a smile reminded him that she’d probably prefer he not.

“I will, thanks.”

Would she have been inviting him for lunch if she had any big, life-altering news to report?

“We’re having sandwiches and potato salad. Hope that’s okay.”

“Sounds great. Your fence is fixed, by the way.”

“Thank you so much. I meant to get out there this morning and totally forgot about it. I’ve been pretty forgetful lately-it’s a side effect of…” She trailed off, seeming to realize too late that she’d brought up something she didn’t want to discuss.

“Pregnancy?” he finished for her.

“Yeah.” She smiled weakly.

“You look great. Really glowing and healthy.”

She rolled her eyes. “Everybody says that. I think it’s supposed to make me feel better about my jeans not fitting anymore.”

“I always thought you could stand to gain a few pounds. You were tiny before-you nearly disappeared when you turned sideways.”

This conversation between them felt too weird. Last time they’d talked face-to-face, they’d been in a canoe together, having one of their predictable lovers’ quarrels, then Soleil had given West a possibly well-deserved shove into the lake and rowed away.

The subject matter of that final argument-motherhood and pregnancy-now seemed eerily timed.

Here they were, five and a half months later, talking like casual acquaintances when what they should have been doing was picking up that conversation where it had left off before she’d abandoned him in the lake.

Too, too weird.

She turned back to the loaf of brown bread she was slicing on the counter.

“How can I help?” West asked as he went to the sink to wash his hands.

“Whatever you’d like to drink, you can get for yourself from the fridge. You and I can eat first, before I call the kids in.”

So she was allowing him a few moments alone with her. Did that mean she was ready to confess the truth? Over sandwiches and potato salad? It didn’t exactly sound like Soleil’s style.

“How about you? What would you like to drink?” he asked.

“I’ll have mineral water. It’s in the door of the fridge.”

They were still doing the awkward polite small-talk thing, conversing as though they didn’t really know each other.

Did they really know each other?

It was hard to say. He felt as if he knew the essence of her. But there had to be a lot he didn’t know, such as whether she was a woman with whom he wanted to share a child.

“Listen, Soleil, there’s something I need to say.”

She stopped what she was doing and looked up at him. “Yes?”

“About last summer-what happened between us, I know we had our conflicts, but I’m willing to put all of that aside.”

She leaned against the old Formica counter. Sagged more than leaned, actually. “Okay,” she said vaguely.

“Besides, our conflicts were really more about having fun than they were serious disagreements, right?”

She frowned. “That’s not how I remember it.”

“Oh?”

“I’m a left-leaning organic-farming peacenik, and you’re a dedicated member of the military-industrial complex. We had great sex, but that’s it.”

“Is your beef with me really because I’m in the military?”

“Partly. And it’s also because I know you want the traditional married-with-children life, and that makes us inherently incompatible.”

West laughed. “You’re the one wearing an apron and slicing freshly baked bread, not me.”

Her frown turned to a scowl, and West kept a close eye on the bread knife just to be safe.

“You’re not funny,” she said, her voice flat.

“Oh, and you’re pregnant with a child.”

My child, he almost said.

“But I’m not married, and I never will be. I don’t believe in it.”

They’d have to wait and see about that. If she was carrying his child, they’d be talking commitment. He didn’t see any harm in a shotgun marriage, if the situation called for it. And in spite of all her big talk, he’d have bet the sun and moon she was damn scared of raising a child alone.

It was time to find out the truth-pleasantries be dammed. Speculation was counterproductive. Only with the facts could he make a solid plan for the future.

“Soleil is there something you need to tell me about your pregnancy?”