All the Little Liars, Page 2

  And there were also plenty of actual, physical books that needed to be dealt with right that moment. I finished the overdue notices before I arranged the checked-in books on the cart in the order in which they’d be shelved. I popped a stool on the bottom shelf of the rolling cart. Though stools were available throughout the stacks, I found it was quicker to simply take one with me. When you’re barely five feet tall on a good day, you have to think ahead.

  I steered the cart carefully. The library was busy. Most of the patrons were adults, since school was in session—though in two more days it would be Christmas break. I took my time, and said hello to everyone, because I thought that was part of my job and I enjoyed it.

  About halfway through shelving, I felt the sudden necessity to rush to the bathroom. A pregnancy book had told me this was a common occurrence, though I was entering that phase more quickly than I’d estimated.

  I didn’t have time to make it to the employee bathrooms in the back, so I dove into the closest ladies’ bathroom and into a stall. A couple of minutes later, I emerged feeling a lot better. As I approached the sink, I saw Perry’s mother staring into the mirror.

  “Sally?” I said. I hadn’t talked to Perry lately about what the doctors had said after he’d taken her to her long-awaited appointment. Sally had turned fifty-one only a month earlier.

  “Roe, I haven’t seen you in a year,” Sally said brightly.

  While I was standing there, nonplussed, Tiffany Andrews came out of another stall. I didn’t know Tiffany very well. She had a daughter named Sienna, I remembered, and she owned and taught dance at one of the local studios. Tiffany was wearing a white sweater and a black skirt, and my first thought was that she looked like a hostess at a nice restaurant.

  She gave Sally and me a casual nod and washed her hands. I’d hoped she’d leave, but she began to root around in her handbag for makeup, and then to do repair work to her face.

  “Sally, you saw me at the Carriage House about two weeks ago,” I said gently. Robin and I had been celebrating our secret good news. Sally had been sitting across the dining room with Perry and his boyfriend, Keith Winslow, a financial adviser.

  “The Carriage House?” Sally said uncertainly.

  “The restaurant,” I said, maintaining my smile with some difficulty. Sally was worse, clearly.

  “Um-hum,” she said, clearly deciding I was making this up. “Well, see you later.” She looked at me with suspicion.

  I risked another question. “Are you here to see Perry?”

  Sally looked at me blankly.

  “Okay, see you later!” I said, trying not to sound too bright, too cheerful. Tiffany Andrews was looking from me to Sally.

  I left the ladies’ room to search for Perry. I was relieved to see him returning to the check-out desk. I took a deep breath or two as I went behind the counter to talk to him. “Perry,” I said, trying to be very quiet and very calm.

  It was clear that Perry was used to getting shocks now. “What is it?” he said, whipping around to face me, his voice equally low.

  “Your mom is in the ladies’ room. She’s confused,” I said, not knowing any way to make it more palatable.

  “Why didn’t you bring her out?” he asked.

  “She didn’t seem to trust me,” I explained. I’d been scared that if I tried to steer Sally into a course of action, she would rebel and cause a scene. I felt like a coward. I was a coward.

  Tiffany Andrews emerged from the ladies’ room and walked briskly to the staff door. She breezed by the STAFF ONLY sign on the door. Maybe she was also being interviewed for the secretary’s job? But the next moment, I forgot all about her when I saw how sad Perry looked.

  Perry went into the ladies’ room while I stopped a twenty-something who’d been about to enter. I asked her nicely if she’d go to the other ladies’ room, on the second floor, and she flipped me off. Even ten years earlier, that would never, ever have happened. At least she walked away in the right direction.

  It didn’t take Perry long to coax Sally out the door.

  It was like someone had flipped a switch. Sally seemed perfectly all right.

  “Son, I cannot believe you came into the ladies’ room,” Sally said, smiling but startled. “What did you think could happen to me in there?”

  Vastly relieved, I turned around to go back to the desk while Perry dealt with his mom. But Sally said, “Roe Teagarden! I haven’t talked to you since Moses wore diapers!”

  “Sally, good to see you. I have to get back to work, but I’ll give you a call.” And I cast a smile over my shoulder and sped away.

  Yep. A coward.

  Forewarned, I intercepted Lizanne when she came in for her interview. To my relief, she was dressed just right, in wool slacks that fit her (which meant, not too tightly) and a blouse that also was not too snug. Sam didn’t like women who emphasized their femininity. Tiffany had been on the wrong track with her heavy makeup.

  “Roe?” she said when I bore down on her right inside the front door.

  “You want this job?” I said in a low voice. I looked up into her gorgeous brown eyes.

  She nodded. Lizanne had always been beautiful, and motherhood hadn’t changed that, though of course she’d matured … we all had.

  “Then dodge into the ladies’ room and blot your lipstick,” I said. “And when Sam’s asking you questions, just assure him that you can do everything he asks, and that you will only disturb him when there’s something really urgent. Be balm on the waters. What he wants is a barricade.”

  She nodded. “I can do that.” And it was true that Lizanne had always been the most relaxed person I’d ever known, and quite capable.

  I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask my old friend, but her glance at her watch told me she was worried about the time, so I pointed to the staff door. Lizanne was in the process of ending her marriage to a local lawyer and budding politician, Bubba Sewell. The pending divorce had caused a flurry of gossip, almost none of it accurate.

  I didn’t see Lizanne again, though I ate my salad lunch in the break room in the hope of catching her when she left. I worked for another two hours. Then it was time for me to go to my doctor’s appointment, finally. As I gathered my coat and my purse, I texted Robin to tell him I was on my way. I saw I had a text from Phillip. I nd to tlk to u, he said. I texted him back, Great. See you back at the house in an hour, or hour and a half?

  MayB, MayB not, he answered. Josh coming by after school.

  Josh Finstermeyer and his twin sister, Joss, had become instant friends of Phillip’s. They lived a short distance from my house. The twins went to the public high school, and they were both bright kids. And as a bonus, since they were sixteen (a few months older than Phillip), they were both able to drive without an adult in the car.

  K, see you later, got news, I said.

  He answered with a surprised emoticon.

  Pretty typical message exchange with a fifteen-year-old, I thought, and then concentrated on what the doctor might say.

  Chapter Two

  As Robin and I filled out a million forms in Dr. Garrison’s waiting room, I whispered, “This is definitely blowing my cover. We have to go directly to my mom’s house from here.”

  Robin nodded. “You’d think they’d told people we were going to be here,” he muttered back.

  I’d already seen three women I’d gone to high school with, though they’d all been a few classes behind me. In fact, there weren’t any women my age in the waiting room. They were all either five to ten years younger or twenty-plus years older. It was almost embarrassing. Luckily, I got to look down a lot to the clipboard in my hands. I’d already completed some paperwork online; I hadn’t realized those had been only the warm-up forms.

  At last the nurse, whose name tag read “Jennings, R.N.,” called me back. Robin went with me as a matter of fact. Blood pressure, height, weight, more questions. It was a lot of work, going to a doctor. I felt like I’d passed some kind of test when Nurse J
ennings showed me into an examining room.

  There was a little curtained cubicle with a tiny bench in one corner, and I climbed out of my clothes and into the rose-colored paper robe. All of a sudden, I was absolutely terrified. What if all the pregnancy tests (I’d ended up taking three) had been mistaken? What if I had some disease that made my boobs swell and hurt, instead of having a baby inside? What if something was wrong? I came out to perch on the end of the examining table. I tried to smile at Robin. I was actually relieved that Robin looked just as anxious. I couldn’t have endured his trying to tease me out of my apprehension.

  After about a year, Kathryn Garrison came in and shook my hand. She was a solid woman in her forties with short blond hair and some truly hideous black-rimmed glasses. She wore very little makeup. And she was wearing Nikes. Well, okay.

  “Ms. Teagarden,” she said, taking the rolling stool at the little counter. “And Mr. Crusoe, I take it? Hey, you wouldn’t be related to the writer?”

  Robin said, “I’m the writer.” He assumed his public smile.

  “Well, a celebrity! I love your books!”

  I usually took this in my stride, because I loved Robin’s books, too. But today was not the day to admire his talent.

  “I’m glad you do. But today we’re a little anxious, and we’d like to be sure everything is fine and normal,” Robin said.

  “Sure, I get that!” Dr. Garrison said, and turned to me. “Let’s go on and have a quick examination. Now, you’ve taken some home pregnancy tests?”

  “Three,” I said. “All positive.”

  “And this is your first pregnancy.”

  “Yes.” I’d put that on every form that had passed through my hands.

  “We’ll just check you out,” Dr. Garrison said. “Mr. Crusoe, can you step out a minute?” Reluctantly, he did. “Aurora, you slide down to the end of the table and put one foot in each … okay. Relax, please.”

  I wasn’t sure I could, but I tried. Dr. Garrison looked off into the distance while she examined me, as if she could see a ghost in the corner. She gave me a hand to sit up, and called Robin back in. “Oh, my goodness, yes,” she said, smiling. “Pregnant for sure. Congratulations, primigravida!” That meant I was a woman having her first pregnancy, I remembered from one of the many booklets in the waiting room.

  I’d let out the breath I’d been holding. I was grinning like an idiot, and so was Robin. Tears rolled down my cheeks. Our baby was official.

  When I felt more in command of myself, Dr. Garrison resumed her seat on the rolling stool and asked me some very personal questions. “Let’s do an ultrasound,” the doctor said. “That way we’ll have more information before I give you a due date, since you’re not sure about your last menses.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling things were moving very fast.

  “So just lie back again, and I’ll ask Nurse Jennings to wheel in the ultrasound.” She put the stirrups away and extended the footrest. Apparently, Robin did not have to go outside for this phase.

  “Will we see the baby?” Robin asked, as if he hardly dared to know the answer.

  “Oh, yes,” Dr. Garrison said, smiling. “You sure will. But you won’t think it looks much like a baby.”

  Getting ready for the ultrasound took a little longer, but then I had cold gel on my stomach and Dr. Garrison was gliding a sort of disk thing over it. Robin and I watched the screen, terrified and riveted. He gave me a wild look like a horse that’s going to bolt. I probably looked equally nervous.

  “There’s your baby,” Dr. Garrison said, smiling.

  Our baby seemed to be two faintly connected blobs. Friends had told me how disconcerting that was, and now I got to experience it for myself. Then the baby wiggled. It was alive!

  “It can wiggle,” I said, and began crying again.

  Dr. Garrison said, “Let’s see,” and moved the device around some more. Suddenly, there was a rhythmic swishing sound in the room. “Yes, I’m getting the heartbeat.”

  “Our baby has a heart,” Robin said proudly, and I didn’t even think this was strange.

  “It sounds so swooshy,” I said. I’d always imagined heartbeats as sounding like drums or hooves, but this sounded more like water sloshing in a bucket.

  Dr. Garrison nodded. “Perfectly normal,” she said. She let us continue to listen and look while she sat with her laptop.

  “So,” she said. “The baby is approximately ten weeks old.”

  “Our baby,” Robin said reverently.

  “Yes, Mr. Crusoe. You and Ms. Teagarden will be having a baby right around July twenty-first.”

  As we went to my car, I realized I didn’t remember anything else about the visit, though Robin clutched a big envelope containing a prescription for prenatal vitamins, an appointment slip for four weeks later, and about a ton of material about baby development, labor and delivery choices, and how to take care of myself during my pregnancy. A quick peek had told me that not only was I a primigravida, but I was an elderly primigravida. Horrors. (I was over thirty-five.) But Dr. Garrison had assured me several times that my age didn’t necessarily mean I’d have any trouble at all carrying and delivering our baby.

  Our house was on the way to my mother’s, so we dropped off Robin’s car there.

  We didn’t go inside. We didn’t check on Phillip.

  I didn’t even think about it.

  When Robin climbed into my car, again carrying the big envelope, we sat looking at each other: stunned, excited, terrified. Then we leaned sideways to hug each other, awkward in our coats. This baby had suddenly become very real. We were too flustered and excited to have a coherent conversation. We threw out remarks at random, though.

  “My next book is due July fourteenth,” Robin said. “I’ve got to make a schedule so I can turn it in early.”

  “Good idea,” I said. “I have to find out if the library has maternity leave. And I guess we have to decorate the room by Phillip’s?”

  “Has to be that one,” Robin said. “Thank goodness we’ve got the study.”

  “Yeah, I’d hate to move again,” I said.

  “Ohhhhh…” Robin thought about that. “Maybe wait till he’s older, ready to start school. There might be a school district we ought to be in.”

  “School,” I said, overwhelmed. “Let’s just think about getting her here safe, okay? We can worry about school in a few years.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Robin said, with the abstracted air of a man who was wondering if his child should go to Harvard. “Do you think he might have red hair like mine?”

  I laughed, and then Robin was laughing with me. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy in my life,” I said, and started crying again. This seemed to be a pattern.

  “Let’s go see your mom,” Robin said, and looked as if he might get teary, too.

  My mother and her husband, John, were surprised when we rang the doorbell at four thirty in the afternoon. My mother was her usual well-groomed self, correct down to the last hair on her head—still dressed as though she were going into the office, though she was now semiretired. I automatically scanned John, and he was looking good, too. He’d had a heart attack a few years before, and I still worried about him.

  Mother said, “Have you come to eat supper with us?” She glanced down at her watch. “I can stand you some grilled cheese sandwiches and minestrone.”

  “No, no, we just dropped by to tell you some news.” I fidgeted around for a minute. I glanced up at Robin. I braced myself and I also smiled hugely. “Mom, I’m pregnant.”

  I had finally impressed my mother.

  Her mouth open, she sank onto a handy couch. John practically leaped forward to shake Robin’s hand.

  “Really? You’ve been to the doctor and everything?” My mother had never trusted home pregnancy kits.

  I nodded. “We just left Dr. Garrison’s. My due date is July twenty-first.”

  “Oh,” Mother said breathlessly, and I swear she had tears in her eyes. �
��This is wonderful news.” Then after a moment of silent absorption, she said, “Thank God you got married already.” Then she sat up. “Wait. Is this why you got married?”

  I’d been waiting for that. But I didn’t know quite how to answer. Luckily, Robin was prepared. First he pulled me over to the couch opposite Mother’s, while John buzzed around aimlessly, beaming.

  “No,” Robin said, smiling. “We would have gotten married anyway. But we got married a little sooner and a little more quietly because we were pretty sure we had a baby on the way.”

  I’d figured Robin and I were in a serious relationship and were headed for an even more serious one. But I hadn’t been sure how he’d react to finding he was going to be a father. To my profound relief, he’d had the ring in his pocket before he’d even discovered I was pregnant. I hadn’t even imagined he was going to propose.

  My mother’s delighted smile morphed into something more like gloating. I knew she was thinking about Arthur Smith, a police detective I’d dated for a few months … until I’d gotten an invitation to his wedding and noticed the bride was pregnant. The next words out of Mother’s mouth were, “I wish that Arthur Smith was still in Lawrenceton. You’d show him.”

  “Beating a dead horse, Mother,” I said. “I didn’t even know he’d gone. Where to?”

  “He got a job as sheriff in a town in northern Arkansas,” she said.

  “Well, I don’t have enough brain to spare to think about him,” I said. And it was lucky Mother didn’t know that Arthur’s marriage was the least of his offenses. I’d never tell her or John that Arthur had had an affair with my now-deceased half sister-in-law, John’s son’s wife.

  “Are you going to find out if it’s a boy or a girl?” John asked. His smile just wouldn’t go away. He had three grandchildren, and I could tell he’d been hoping my mother would have one of her very own blood to spoil—though she’d been doing a fine job on her step-grandkids.

  We looked at each other. “Are we?” Robin asked me.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. What do you think?”

  “We might need more time to talk about that,” Robin said, which sounded good to me.