“So, really, what can he do?”

  “Find some way to ruin my reputation.”

  “Not gonna happen.”

  Phyllis hoped not. Just when life was everything she’d always wanted it to be, she couldn’t bear the thought of seeing it come crashing down.

  “Who’s that woman?”

  Alerted more by Tory’s protective tone than her words, Phyllis glanced over to a tree in the distance, where a lone woman was standing, facing them.

  “Oh, nobody to worry about,” Phyllis said, relieved when she recognized the thirty-something female dressed as usual in plain pants and a nondescript top. She was leaning against an old paloverde. “Just one of my students.”

  “She seems awfully interested in us.”

  Phyllis glanced again, in case she was missing something, then shook her head. It was definitely the same woman. If the clothes didn’t give her away, that ponytail sure did. Not many women her age had hair that long. Or if they did, they tended to style it. “No, she’s in my Psych 101 class—the one I just finished. She’s so quiet and unassuming I never even noticed her until the first exams came in. Other than the fact that she doesn’t participate in class discussion, she’s holding a perfect score.”

  “In your class?”

  “Yeah.” Phyllis smiled. “It’s a first.”

  “Have you ever seen her before?”

  “Nope. Her name’s Caroline Prater. I don’t know of any Praters around here.”

  “Me, neither,” Tory said, still watching the woman. “And I still don’t like how she’s looking at us. What makes you so sure she’s not someone posing as a student to…to…”

  “To do what, Tor?” Phyllis asked, nudging her friend. “Rob the lecture hall? Not everyone comes to town under false pretenses,” she reminded the younger woman. On the run from an abusive husband, Tory had posed as her older sister, an English professor, for her first six months in Shelter Valley—teaching classes at Montford when, in reality, she didn’t even have a college degree.

  She almost had one now, though. Even with giving birth to Phyllis Christine and raising Alex, Tory only had two more semesters to go before she graduated.

  “Well, what makes you so sure she isn’t someone Brad hired?” Tory asked. Phyllis wondered if, even in fifty years’ time, Tory would still have difficulty trusting. And hoped not.

  “She’s a registered student,” Phyllis answered slowly, watching as Caroline turned and moved slowly down the walk all alone. She’d never seen Caroline Prater with anyone else, not even talking to fellow students before and after class. “I have no idea why she’s watching us, and I don’t particularly like it, either, but I just don’t get the feeling that she’s harmful.” She frowned. Caroline aced every test and yet never once had the woman spoken up in class when Phyllis asked questions. “It’s kind of like when you first came to town. I’d never met you before in your life, you were impersonating my best friend, lying to an entire community, teaching under false pretenses, but I knew you weren’t a threat.”

  Tory glanced down for a moment and then raised eyes filled with tears. “Okay, you’re the best judge of character I’ve ever met—Brad being the exception that proves the rule. Whoever that woman is, she must be okay. But you have to admit, she looks kind of weird.”

  “Maybe she lived on some secluded mountaintop somewhere,” Phyllis offered, giving Tory’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “You worry too much, you know? And you and I have a birthday party to plan….”

  THERE OUGHT TO BE A RULE against men who were strangers being fathers.

  Caroline turned her head to the side, staring at the white cement blocks that made up the wall a couple of feet away as Dr. Mason lifted her blouse, exposing Caroline’s bloated stomach to the cool air of the examining room—and to John Strickland’s intense regard.

  He hadn’t been in the waiting room when she’d arrived for her appointment, but he’d run in just as her name was called. She’d been hoping he was going to make a habit of standing her up.

  No such luck.

  “You say the baby has a recognizable shape?” he asked, his body just inches from hers.

  If she moved her eyes at all, she’d see the brown leather belt hooked through tan dress pants at his waist. As it was, her peripheral vision was focused on the different shades of brown and tan in the tip of his tie.

  “Not only does your baby have shape,” Dr. Mason was saying, pressing her fingers lightly into Caroline’s abdomen, “but some of his or her internal organs are already in place.”

  Her baby also had a facial profile as of this week, not that Caroline felt like contributing that piece of information to the conversation. And intestines. And by next week, there’d probably be ribs and maybe even a thumb in the mouth.

  “Next time you come, the baby should be about four inches long and weigh a couple of pounds. We’ll do an ultrasound then and take a look.”

  “Can I be there for that?” John asked.

  “Of course.”

  “And we’ll actually be able to see the baby?”

  “It’ll be murky to you at first,” Dr. Mason said patiently. “A mass of black-and-white shadows that move, but you’ll soon recognize what you’re looking at.”

  Caroline remembered the one and only ultrasound she’d had with Jesse. She’d been almost eight months along and, right then, had fallen so deeply in love with her baby that she’d somehow believed she’d never know another unhappy moment as long as she lived.

  “How’s the morning sickness been?” Dr. Mason asked, forcing Caroline to focus exactly where she didn’t want to—the present. She glanced up at the doctor, feeling like a specimen under a microscope with faces peering down at her.

  “Good,” she said. “Pretty much nonexistent.” She wouldn’t look at him at all. That might help.

  Dr. Mason pulled a special obstetric stethoscope out of her pocket, handing one set of the attached earpieces to Caroline. “What do you say we have our first communication from this little one?” Dr. Mason slid the other set of earpieces onto her head.

  With shaking hands Caroline put the earpieces in place. Tried to relax as she felt the cool head of the doctor’s instrument slide along her belly. And waited.

  Please, God, let him be there. Let him be strong and healthy.

  The doctor moved the stethoscope again, her brows pulled together—in concentration or in worry? Caroline couldn’t tell. And then moved again.

  So far, Caroline had heard exactly nothing.

  She felt one more move on her stomach and she was looking for John. She’d expected him to be staring at her belly—or at the doctor. But his gaze was locked on her face, his eyes warm and reassuring. Did he have some sense that everything was all right? Or was he just completely ignorant of the fact that it shouldn’t take this long to hear signs of life?

  She wanted to ask him. To hear him tell her anything at all in that deep, confident voice of his. But she didn’t want to make a single sound and perhaps have the doctor miss the critical thump they were seeking.

  Placing the cold instrument up beneath Caroline’s ribs, Dr. Mason seemed to stop breathing. And then smiled.

  “Here it is,” she said, just as Caroline picked up the signal the doctor had already noticed. It was just as she’d remembered with Jesse. A beat so rapid she’d been scared to death, at sixteen, that her baby was about to have a heart attack. Now she welcomed the sound with unexpected and very happy tears.

  Embarrassed, she blinked, pulled off the earpieces and handed them to John.

  Still watching her, a curiously intimate glint in his eyes, he put the stethoscope to his ears and listened.

  And paled.

  He didn’t say anything for several seconds and Caroline could only guess what might be running through his mind. Based on his stark expression, she figured it couldn’t be good.

  John didn’t want this child. Since little Billy’s disappearance, he didn’t want any child—any person—in his life that he might love and lose again.

  He’d told her he was struggling. Perhaps she’d underestimated how much.

  Maybe he’d be standing her up again, soon.

  The idea shouldn’t be frightening. Shouldn’t really matter to her at all.

  But it did.

  “It’s so fast.” His voice cracked as he spoke.

  “It’s perfect,” Dr. Mason said, smiling at both of them, seemingly unaware of John’s reaction. “You two have a living, growing baby on the way….”

  “WE HAVE TO TALK about where you’re going to live.”

  John had followed Caroline out to the parking lot after the doctor’s appointment. She just wanted to be alone.

  “I have a room.” Stepping off the curb, she continued across the blacktop toward her truck, parked in the back corner of the lot.

  “I mean after the baby’s born.”

  “I have lots of time to figure that out.”

  His Cadillac was in the second row. He passed it.

  “We need furniture.”

  “I have Jesse’s stuff back home.”

  With a hand on her elbow he brought her to a stop. “You’re leaving?”

  He didn’t look any happier than he had in the examining room.

  “No,” she told him, although she wasn’t as sure about staying as she’d been even a couple of weeks ago. “Jesse will drive it out to me this summer.”

  Her son had agreed to do that during their last conversation, almost two weeks before, adamant about not wanting his mother to travel so far in her condition.

  “You told him about the baby?” They started walking again.

  “A month ago.” Breathing in the soft, fresh air, needing its cool, sixty-degree bite, Caroline slowed her steps. How could she be feeling so inadequate, so trapped, when the skies overhead were so perfectly blue?

  John slipped his hands into the pockets of his slacks, adjusting his stride to hers. “How’d he take it?”

  So far, other than saying he’d bring out the furniture, he hadn’t given her any indication of his feelings. It was the only other time she’d talked to him. She’d called several times, but her son was avoiding her. “Okay.”

  “He’s not angry?”

  “No.” Just distant—refusing to acknowledge that her life was changing so drastically. Refusing to share in the changes. In their one conversation, Jesse had spoken as if she was the same old mom she’d always been.

  Maybe John was right about Jesse being angry.

  They’d reached her truck. John opened the unlocked door for her and after she sat, lifted a foot to the running board, with an arm resting on top of the door, effectively blocking any escape she might have made.

  “What did you tell him about me?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” He bent, staring in at her.

  She shook her head. “He didn’t really ask.”

  She could tell she’d surprised him. He stood there, apparently at a loss for words. Or deciding not to say whatever words had occurred to him.

  “You tell your son you’re pregnant and he doesn’t want to know who the father is?” he finally said.

  “He asked if I was getting married.”

  “And?”

  “I told him I wasn’t.”

  He nodded, his dark hair shadowing his brow.

  Caroline swallowed, shoved her bag off her lap to the console beside her. “I told him it was just a one-night thing. Because I was lonely.”

  “How’d he take that?”

  “It made him uncomfortable,” she said. “You know, seventeen-year-old boys don’t like to think of their mothers as sexual beings.” She slid her key into the ignition.

  He nodded, his expression relaxed for a moment. “I remember.”

  Caroline meant to start the truck, put it in gear, give him a huge hint that she was planning to move his footstool. Instead, she couldn’t look away from the reminiscent grin on his face.

  “The night of my high-school graduation, I came home unexpectedly to get some albums I’d said I’d bring to a party one of my buddies was throwing and interrupted my parents hard at it on the living-room floor.”

  She’d have died a thousand deaths. But then, her parents would never in a million years have been “hard at it” on the living room floor. That kind of thing, if it happened at all, took place only in the bedroom with the door closed. And no one ever spoke about it.

  “What did you do?” Curiosity got the better of her manners.

  “Went back out and pretended I’d never come home.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t look at my mother for weeks after that.”

  “What about your father?”

  “That was different. He’s a guy.”

  She supposed that made sense in a strange way. “So you went to the party without the music?”

  “Yeah. There was supposed to be a keg of beer there and I planned to drink as much of it as I could manage to swallow.”

  The sun was starting to lower and she had to squint to see him. “Did you do that a lot when you were younger?”

  “What, plan to get drunk?”

  “Get drunk.”

  “A few times in college, but I went through that stage rather quickly. The night before never seemed worth the morning after. How about you?”

  “I’ve never been drunk in my life,” she told him. Not only did her father’s example give her a firm reason to avoid the stuff, she just plain hadn’t had the chance. “I was pregnant at sixteen, and every minute after that, I’ve been a parent with no time for that kind of partying.”

  “What about your high-school graduation?” he asked. “Didn’t you at least get to go out that night?”

  Something about John Strickland made her relax in ways she never relaxed around other people. Maybe because she had nothing to lose, she could reveal more of herself with him.

  The experience was both freeing and far too dangerous.

  Because she could easily tell him far too much.

  “I didn’t graduate from high school.”

  She had to hand it to him—he didn’t let his jaw drop, but she knew she’d surprised him. “When I got pregnant with Jesse, my parents and Randy’s decided there was no reason for me to finish school, since I was going to be a wife and mother. We already had enough against us, starting a family at such a young age, they said. They were afraid the added pressure of me going to school, trying to do it all, would be too much.”

  “And you didn’t think to disagree with them?”

  She shrugged. “What would be the point? Not one of them, Randy included, would’ve understood.”

  “So you got your GED.” It was a statement, not a question.

  She nodded. “I was almost twenty-six, but yes, I got my GED.”

  “How’d Randy react to that?”

  Not well. Glancing out the front windshield, Caroline wondered if she could ever explain to him how it was with her and Randy. And how much Caroline had loved him in spite of their differing goals.

  “He was okay with it at first.”

  “At first?”

  She took a breath. “He started to feel a little threatened when he found out about the book.”

  “What book?”

  “The one I’d decided I was going to write.”

  “Going to? You didn’t do it?”

  She’d said too much. Just as she’d feared she would.

  “I started to. Several times.” And then, always, the burning fire that had propelled her to the keyboard would be doused by Randy’s misgivings, by his emotional distance, followed by her own admonishments to herself about her foolishness. She didn’t even have a high-school diploma. How the hell could she consider herself capable of finishing a book?

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking away. Because she did know. “Life happened, I guess.”

  “Or maybe it just wasn’t time yet,” John told her. “Maybe there’s a book or two in your future.”

  Maybe. Her interest in writing was why she’d chosen to major in English. But Caroline had grown leery of looking any further ahead than the next day. The future was fraught with unanswered questions and more fear than she’d ever faced in her life. She’d pretty much abandoned her journal-writing—uncomfortable with what she might discover about herself.

  If she did write a book sometime, she’d stick to fiction.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “HI, IT’S ME.” John stood at the window of his Chicago hotel room the second Thursday in March, looking out over Lake Michigan, wondering if Caroline had ever seen a view like this.

  Or stayed in a room like this.

  “Hi.” That was his Caroline, effusive as always.

  His Caroline. With a sweating hand John held the cell phone to his ear and slid his other hand in his pocket, pretending a calm he didn’t feel.

  “How was school today?”

  “I didn’t go.”

  His chest tightened. “Why not?” If something had happened to the baby…

  There’d been no message from her on his cell phone.

  “Ellen Hanaran had to testify in court today and she asked me to be there.”

  A boat was leaving the harbor, its lights on to combat the falling dusk. John’s head hurt.

  “I didn’t know you knew Ellen.”

  Things were spinning so far out of control, John wasn’t sure if his axis was vertical anymore. Maybe he should’ve stopped for dinner before rushing up to his room. He hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast.

  And wasn’t hungry now.

  It didn’t matter who she knew or didn’t know. Her personal life didn’t matter. Caroline Prater’s personal life doesn’t matter. And if he kept repeating that to himself over and over, at least once every five minutes for the next week, he might start to believe it.

  “So we’re supposed to report to each other on every acquaintance in our lives?” she said.

  “No.” She was right; he was being ridiculous.

  The boat was a speck of light in the distance—a small dot compared to all the city lights coming on in front of him.