LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER TWO

      MARA HAD RENTED a suite at the Slippery Rock B and B. Well, suite was a bit of an exaggeration, but there were two rooms with an adjoining door. It was the best option she had. The only other hotel in town looked like it had been through a war, and she didn’t think it was entirely due to the tornado. This B and B was one of the few buildings on the west side of the downtown area that hadn’t been hit hard by the tornado. Joann, the new owner who had moved to town a couple years before, told her they lost the roof and a little bit of siding, but that was the extent of the damage. She didn’t question Mara about why she was staying at the B and B instead of the orchard—the question Mara knew James had been dying to ask at Mallard’s.

      Mara opened the door to her suite with her happy mommy smile plastered to her face, ten minutes after Zeke’s usual wake-up. When Mara started to say something, Cheryl Johnson, Zeke’s nanny, shook her head.

      “Still sleeping,” she whispered. “I think the drive tuckered him out.”

      Mara crossed the room to the small Pack ’n Play she traveled with, wishing for the thousandth time that Zeke had a proper crib. Cribs didn’t transport well, not even in an SUV. Since her work required regular travel, this was the best solution. She ran her fingers lightly over the little boy’s brown hair. It was soft and silky and baby-fine, unlike the thick mass of hair his father had.

      She blew out a breath. The office of Mallard’s Grocery hadn’t been the right place to tell James about Zeke. She knew that. So why did she feel so guilty about her silence? She’d come here to tell him about his son, to introduce them, and she would do it. But not when she was on the verge of being arrested for stealing a carton of milk and a box of generic cookies.

      Mara took the items from her bag, put the milk in the small fridge inside the oversize bureau and tossed the cookies on top.

      “Thanks for sticking around until I got back. You didn’t have to do that.”

      “Are you kidding me? If today and tomorrow are the last days I have with Zeke, I’m going to pack as much of his sweet baby face as I can into them. Are you sure you don’t need me to stay? My contract with the school district in Tulsa doesn’t start for another two months—”

      Mara held up her hand. “And you’re going to spend two of those weeks helping your sister plan her wedding, and after the wedding, you’re taking your father on that trip to Ireland he’s always wanted. Zeke and I will be fine.” She couldn’t ignore the little spike of fear that hit her belly, though.

      She’d hired Cheryl to be Zeke’s nanny when he was three weeks old. Cheryl had traveled with them all over the United States, but earlier this year her father had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Cheryl wanted to be closer to her family, and Mara couldn’t blame her, especially with a wedding coming up and a parent whose health was in decline. She might not have the close familial ties her nanny had, but Mara could empathize.

      Part of her hope for this trip was that she would be able to repair those ties with her own family. That, and tell James he had a son. She also planned to tell him she could raise Zeke on her own so he could continue with his postcard-perfect, fairy-tale life as the heir apparent to the Slippery Rock Sheriff’s Department and forget he’d ever been so reckless as to have an affair with her.

      “But you’ll send me pictures, right?” Cheryl’s hazel eyes clouded with tears, and her voice cracked. Mara wrapped her arms around the woman who was her only friend.

      “Are you kidding? Who else is going to understand just how cute the little monster is when he’s destroying his dinner like Godzilla destroyed Tokyo?”

      “Okay. Okay then.” Cheryl pulled back, grabbed a tissue from the box on the bureau and dabbed at her eyes. “I swore I wasn’t going to get choked up. This isn’t forever. The contract is only for a year, and then, who knows? Dad will be settled by then. He might not need as much attention.”

      “Sure,” Mara said, pushing more confidence into her voice than she felt. She had no doubt that she and Cheryl would stay in touch, but she was very doubtful this sabbatical would last only for the length of the school year. Cheryl’s father wouldn’t get better, and her sister would begin having children. Unlike Mara, normal people weren’t made to live out of suitcases in a series of boring hotel rooms. “Until you come back, I’ll text and email more pictures than you ever wanted to see. You’ll have to block my numbers to stop the flow of toddler silliness.”

      Cheryl dabbed at her eyes again, but she seemed to have regained her equilibrium. “I’m going to collect those takeout menus the manager promised when we checked in.” She closed the door, and Mara was alone with her son.

      She sat on the edge of the bed and sighed. She could do this. She’d taken all the parenting courses, enrolled herself in therapy to deal finally with the baggage from her childhood. She was now in the same town with her baby’s father, and she was ready to tell him that he could have a place in his child’s life or not. Either way, she and Zeke would be just fine. Simple enough conversation.

      Zeke made a small noise, and his little fingers began their usual scrape-scrape-scrape down the mesh sides of the playpen. His favorite stuffed toy, an ugly black-and-brown lemur, was wedged under his hip, but he wrestled it free and began talking in mumbles to it.

      She was stronger now than she had ever been. She could do this.

      * * *

      “BUT WHY ISN’T she staying at the orchard?” James called himself ten kinds of

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