LITMIR.BIZ

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Friends, right?”

      At the word death the twitch had stopped. Karl left the peaches on the display and moved on to the pears. When he’d bagged five pears, he turned his attention to her. “This is not how I expected to have a child.”

      He pushed the cart away from the produce, leaving her wishing she had a bag of potatoes she could bean him over the head with. She caught up to him in the bread aisle as he was reading nutritional information.

      “This wasn’t how I expected to have a child, either.” All through adulthood, she’d held on to her dream of a perfect nuclear family, raising children in a house they would own into retirement, the memories made in the home impossible to distinguish from the stuff cluttering the shelves. When she’d decided she couldn’t abort the baby, no matter how desperate her situation seemed, she’d surrendered that dream. Karl hadn’t been offered the same choices she had, and he probably had completely different dreams.

      She grabbed one of the loaves and added cinnamon-raisin bread to the cart, as well. “I suspect there’s more to your reaction.”

      As they passed the fancy cheeses, Vivian added Gruyère to the cart.

      “No cheese.” Karl put it back in the cooler.

      “No soft cheese.” She put it back into the cart.

      “Huh.” He added a couple more cheeses to the pile, then crossed his arms on the cart handle and pushed his way along the aisle. She’d never seen a man look so uncomfortable while trying to look so relaxed, and again she had to hurry after him.

      “Is the cheese for you?”

      “No. You seem to like cheese.”

      “I can’t eat all that. It’ll go bad.”

      “You’re supposed to eat more, and a variety of foods.”

      She put her hand on the front of the cart and turned it before he could knock down a display of potato chips with his manic forward progress. “After the second trimester, I should eat an extra three hundred calories a day. That does not mean I get to gorge myself on cheese.”

      He sighed. “I’ll help eat the cheese.”

      “And the fruit? And the bread? And whatever else you plan to buy me and Jelly Bean while we’re in the store?”

      “Jelly Bean?” Finally, she had his attention. “You call our baby Jelly Bean?”

      “You call our baby the fetus.”

      “Apparently I should be calling it an embryo for another three or four weeks.”

      She sighed. “Can we talk about this possessed shopping trip and what happened in the doctor’s office?”

      “Not here.”

      “Fine.” She navigated the cart past the dairy and around several displays until she’d dragged Karl and his cornucopia in front of the shoe polish and laces. “This is as empty as a grocery store gets. Spill.”

      He looked over his shoulder. She wanted to smack him, but she also needed him. No one could call her actions patient, but she was waiting. “Hearing the heartbeat was the first time this became real. Until then I expected to wake up. But it’s not a dream and we’re in this together. I want to make sure you have all you need.”

      The warmth in his voice glided above the soft hits that were playing over the loudspeakers. For the first time since she’d sat on her bathroom floor in Vegas looking at the third positive pregnancy test in a row, Vivian felt like something other than a problem. She’d come to Karl because he was the father and he was a fixer. But now...she and Jelly Bean might be something more than a speed bump in his perfectly ordered and sterile life.

      His hand didn’t feel cool to the touch when she grabbed on to it—a phantom warmth she attributed to the hope rising in her own chest. “We won’t be left communicating with each other through notes about Jelly Bean’s progress in school.”

      “What?” Karl hid his emotions most of the time, but puzzlement was clear on his face.

      “I had visions of us as divorced parents exchanging notes through Jelly Bean’s backpack.”

      “Oh.” And then he laughed. “What a ridiculous thing to think. That’s what text messages are for.”

      She laughed along with him, ignoring the looks they got from passing shoppers.

      “Vivian.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I may not have imagined this as how I was going to have children, but I’m finding I could do much worse.”

      “It’s not much of a compliment, but I’ll take it.” She lifted up onto her toes and kissed him once on the lips. Then she headed for the cereal aisle before he could read anything other than humor in her expression.

      CHAPTER SIX

      DINNER EATEN AND the dishes done, Vivian followed Karl around the bar and into the living room. She sat at one end of the couch and picked up her knitting. He sat on the other end of the couch and picked up his book. It was progress. Only a week ago, he’d never been home while she was still awake. Only a couple of days ago, he was sitting in the armchair rather than sharing the couch. They were getting to know each other and, slowly, coming to trust each other.

      Sometime in the near future, Karl might even tell her about his day as they sat down to dinner. She might talk about the jobs she was applying for. They might have a relationship outside of the shared parentage of their child.

      The rich green wool slid through her fingers. The hat’s shape was slowly emerging out of the yarn and she could begin to picture it on Karl’s head. He needed something more than the righteous fire burning within him to keep his ears warm.

      With a child on the way, she should probably be knitting baby blankets and little sweaters, but she wanted to give Karl something that didn’t originate in his own largesse. The yarn was one of the few possessions she’d brought to Chicago that wasn’t a necessity. The wool was soft, and she had needed something comforting with her.

      The metal of her needles clicked. The pages of Karl’s book rustled. If, on the other side of the city, someone with a telescope was scanning windows, they would see what appeared to be an old married couple so comfortable with each other they didn’t need to talk—not two strangers with no idea what to say to each other.

      “What book are you reading?” Vivian was struck by the sudden and silly fear that a stranger looking in the windows with a telescope knew what Karl was reading while she, sitting next to him, had no idea.

      “Hmm?” Karl looked up and it took a moment for his eyes to focus on her across the cushions. “It’s a collection of Herman Melville’s short works. He wrote Moby Dick.”

      “I know who Melville is. I may not have graduated, but I’ve taken some college classes. I’m not stupid.”

      He turned his head back to the pages, giving her snippy comment all the attention it deserved.

      “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’ve never said or even implied I was stupid. I don’t know why I reacted so poorly.”

      Only she did. The uncertainty of her existence and unwanted helplessness wore on her, coming out in bile when she was least prepared to stop it. Feeling close to, yet so distant from, the man on whom her life currently depended on was unsettling.

      Which was no reason to be a bitch when all he’d done was answer her question.

      He lifted his head and turned to her again, his face as expressionless as desert sand. “Not knowing who Melville is would only imply a deficit of education. It wouldn’t say anything about your innate intelligence.” Then, though there was no discernible change in his expression, his eyes softened. “I didn’t know you went to college. What did you study?”

      “Nothing.” His expression hardened and he was

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