“Are you going to marry him?” He didn’t seem to be reacting to the idea one way or the other.

  “No, Jesse. I did that once before, got married because I felt I had to. I’m not going to do it again.”

  “I thought you loved Dad.” A little more accusation, but it wasn’t full of heat and anger.

  “I did. As much as I’ve ever loved anyone, except maybe you. But I didn’t marry him because I loved him. I married him because I felt I didn’t have a choice. And I lived the next eighteen years that way, too. I can’t do that anymore.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Jesse? How important was it to you to have the choice to go to Harvard?”

  “Very.” He sighed. “And you don’t need to say any more, Ma. I’m a jerk, huh?”

  “No.” She smiled as tears sprang to her eyes. “Just a kid.”

  “It’s weird, you know, having a ma who’s been knocked up?”

  Caroline cringed, glanced at the store, wondering what the hell she was doing. “I know.”

  “It just takes some getting used to.”

  “I understand.”

  “A sister’s cool, though.”

  She walked toward the building. “I love you, Jess.”

  “Yeah, me, too, Ma. Take care of yourself.”

  “I will.”

  And that was that. He was gone. Off to play basketball and to try to forget that he had a mother who was “knocked up.”

  AS SHE CONTEMPLATED the night ahead, Caroline wandered around the racks of maternity clothes, alternating between deciding whether to actually buy the clothes in her size and feeling sick to her stomach.

  She was finally going to be a part of the club—the closed circle of strong and admirable women who were her sister’s closest friends.

  Who was she kidding? She wouldn’t be in that circle. She’d be sitting outside it, in the role of John’s pregnant girlfriend, watching them all. John could marry her and she’d still be on the outside. Caroline wasn’t an educated woman who understood the ways of the world. She was a self-taught Kentucky farm girl who probably wouldn’t recognize a thing that was served tonight and wouldn’t know how to eat it if she did.

  Pulling out a pair of jeans that were cut off above the ankle, she wondered how much a pair of sandals would cost. She sure as heck couldn’t wear her boots with these.

  Nor would she know when to laugh at the party, when to speak up or be silent. What were the proper topics to discuss? In Grainville you said whatever you thought, unless you were Caroline and then you mostly said nothing.

  Would they think she was stupid if she just sat there? Or would they all get quiet if she talked about the weather like they did in Grainville?

  Phyllis knew she wasn’t stupid. Caroline was one of the few students she’d ever had with perfect marks.

  But how perfect was she going to appear tonight? Pregnant and unmarried.

  How perfect would she appear to any of them if they knew her secret? Would Phyllis be so kind to her if she knew that Caroline was not only her blood relation but her twin? She’d kept the news to herself out of respect for Phyllis, but had that been the right thing to do?

  “Can I help you?”

  Startled, Caroline glanced up at the girl with a nose piercing and bright red lipstick smiling at her. The clerk had a belly button ring, too, visible between the tight black pants she was wearing and the T-shirt that ended shortly below her ribs.

  “No, thanks, I’m just looking.”

  “’Kay, well, we’ve got some great maternity swimsuits right over there,” she said. “They’re on sale. Some really cute tankinis, too.”

  Tankini? Caroline had no idea what that was. And wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She’d thought all pregnant women wore big billowing clothes to hide their expanding waists. Apparently fashionably pregnant woman showed them off.

  In any case, she hadn’t owned a swimsuit since she was about fifteen.

  A white stretch top matched the jeans—had the same floral stitching along the collar that the jeans had along the hem—but if she wore that, her belly would show like a big balloon.

  Many of the maternity shirts were that way.

  Still, Caroline added it to her growing pile.

  A lot of birth families didn’t want decisions from the past to disrupt their current lives—to haunt them—hurt them. What right did she have to force Phyllis to see her parents in a different light? To tell her that the person she saw herself as, the adored only daughter of a loving older couple, wasn’t really who she was? What right did she have to hurt her?

  What right did she have to link Phyllis to a country bumpkin in front of her peers and friends? She could be devastated. She could be embarrassed.

  Caroline didn’t want to be responsible for any of that.

  She pulled out a pair of bright yellow pants with a colorful print of purses and shoes. It had a matching shirt. She put them back. Moved to the next rack—summer dresses.

  She’d never owned more than one or two dresses at a time in her life. Other than Sunday church and funerals, there just hadn’t been a need for them in Grainville.

  The first dress she pulled out, lightweight navy-and-white silk, calf-length with a subtle pleat just under the bustline to accommodate a growing stomach, took her breath away.

  Not only did she not want to embarrass Phyllis, she also wasn’t sure she had the emotional resources she’d require if Phyllis out and out rejected her. She wasn’t at her strongest.

  Insecurity should be her middle name.

  A hard thing to handle for someone who was used to being calm and capable, contained, a pillar of strength during crises.

  Her cell phone beeped a voice message. The phone hadn’t even rung, which wasn’t all that unusual inside stores.

  Maybe Jesse had canceled his basketball game and wanted to talk. To tell her he understood. That he loved her. That they were who they’d always been—on the same side, the two of them against a world that didn’t understand them.

  John had called. The party that evening had been canceled. Caroline wanted to drop the clothes she was holding and run home to her room, her computer, the only thing she felt sure about.

  He said he needed to see her. He had to talk to her. He wanted her to call.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CAROLINE BOUGHT THE DRESS. And several pairs of slacks with matching tops. And a pair of white sandals she found in her size at seventy-five percent off. On her way into Shelter Valley from the freeway, she called John.

  If they weren’t going to meet his friends, she didn’t have to see him. Whatever he had to say could be said over the phone.

  “James Montford died.”

  Oh. God. She hadn’t known. Had no idea.

  “I can’t believe it.” She missed her turn.

  “Neither can I.”

  Caroline slowed, pulled to the curb until she could think straight. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  Death was inevitable. A part of life. So why did some lives seem immune? Exempt?

  “How did it happen?”

  “They aren’t sure. He collapsed this morning and within an hour he was gone. They’re thinking either heart attack or stroke.”

  “His poor family.”

  “I was with Sam when the call came.”

  “He’s an only child, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah. He’s got a cousin in town, though.”

  John’s voice was almost deadpan. Not just weary-sounding. It was beyond that.

  “Did you know James?”

  “Yes, but not well.”

  “I didn’t know him at all, but you can’t live in this town without feeling his presence, can you?”

  He was quiet for a few seconds. “That’s a good way of putting it.”

  A car passed her to pull into a driveway a couple of houses down.

  “Well, if there’s anything I can do…”

  “Can you come by?”

  She hesitated, hating to deny him anything when he was obviously so down. “Okay…” She drew out the word. “Why?”

  “I think we need to talk.”

  That sounded ominous.

  “And I want to stay here in case any of them try to find me. If they’re out and about, they’re just as apt to stop by as call.”

  Caroline wondered if maybe he needed to be surrounded by the security of being in his own space. It was a feeling she could understand—more now than ever.

  It was something she’d unknowingly robbed herself of when she’d left Grainville.

  “I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

  JOHN WAS READY when Caroline arrived. He was just going to tell her, outright, that she could count on him for money and that was all. The baby wasn’t even born yet and he was having panic attacks about losing her. He couldn’t live like that.

  He’d only heard it once or twice, but he recognized her tentative knock. Threw open the door.

  And stared.

  “You look…”

  She didn’t push past him when he stood rudely in her path, gawking at her, although the confidence her clothes implied suggested she might do exactly that.

  “Wow.”

  Glancing down, Caroline otherwise stood completely still.

  “You’re wearing sandals.”

  She nodded. “Even I knew the pants would never work with my boots.”

  “I like them.”

  She raised her eyes, sweetly hesitant. “The pants or the sandals?”

  “Both. And your hair. I’ve never seen it down—well, almost never.”

  Caroline blushed and he wished he could take back the words. Take back his entire reaction. They were only clothes, after all.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, stepping back. “Come on in.”

  “I feel a little stupid,” she told him, walking through to his kitchen to sit on a stool at the breakfast bar. “But after trying on all these clothes, I couldn’t make myself put the jeans and boots back on.”

  She looked fabulous.

  “I hope you bought enough to do away with the jeans completely.”

  “I got four outfits. I’ll be fine until after the baby’s born. And,” she added, “everything was on sale.”

  “Good.”

  He poured her a juice. Grabbed himself a beer. He stood on the opposite side of the counter, facing her. Opened his mouth to tell her what he had to say, searching for a way to do so that would emphasize his sincere intent to follow through on his responsibilities.

  “I didn’t even know James, but I feel like Randy just died all over again,” Caroline said, staring blankly ahead.

  John looked at her. Took a sip of beer. He’d thought something was wrong with him, this obsession he had with Meredith’s death. His inability to get over it. Get beyond it and start anew.

  “I had an older woman at church tell me, shortly after the funeral, that there’s a part of me that will always feel this way, but that, in time, it becomes less like a stab in the heart and more like another level of living. She told me I’d find a strength and an ability to endure that I didn’t know I had, making life deeper, fuller.”

  Fullness of life was not at all what he was feeling. She pulled her glass of juice closer, held it on the counter with both hands.

  “I’m not there yet,” she said.

  “Me, neither.” He was afraid he never would be.

  She took a sip of juice. He gulped some beer.

  “Would you like some dinner? We could put a couple of steaks on the grill.”

  “Okay.”

  SITTING OUTSIDE on his patio at the round table with its matching padded metal chairs, John slowly cut his steak. It tasted good. As did the baked potato and salad. The breeze was slightly cool but not cold. Track lighting broke through the darkness of the night that had fallen, illuminating the table, the dinner, Caroline.

  These were good things. All things he could handle, making life worth living.

  “Were you alone when you found out Randy was dead?”

  They’d touched on other topics, but somehow kept coming back to the day’s events. And the memories evoked by them.

  Will had called to tell him that funeral services were planned for the following Tuesday. Public schools and the university would be closed.

  “Jesse was there,” Caroline said, breaking off a piece of roll and dabbing it in the butter on the table. He’d never seen anyone eat a roll that way.

  She didn’t eat it, either, just dabbed and held on to it.

  “When Randy didn’t come in for dinner, we both went out looking for him. We’d split up but happened to run into each other just before we found him. The tractor had thrown him several yards.”

  “Was he still alive?”

  She shook her head. “Neither of us knew that, though. As soon as I saw him, I knew it was bad. I sent Jesse back to call for help. I ran over to him….”

  She dropped the bread, wiped her hands on her napkin and then clutched it, wadded between her fingers.

  “I was crying so hard I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not. And I was petrified to touch him. I didn’t want to make him any worse than he was.”

  John’s chest constricted around the piece of steak he’d swallowed.

  “As it turned out, he’d been dead for over an hour. Doc said he’d been unconscious the whole time, but I’ve wondered if he said that for my benefit so I wouldn’t think of him out there all alone, suffering.”

  “You think of it anyway.”

  She glanced up, looking surprised. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  “I do the same with Meredith,” he admitted. It was something he’d never told anyone. “Not so much lately, but I used to wake up at night and grieve over how she spent her last minutes. She wasn’t alone. I was with her. But did she know I wasn’t doing anything to save her? That I couldn’t?”

  He shook his head. Picked up the second bottle of beer he’d been nursing for more than an hour. Drained it.

  “What we do to ourselves—it’s silly, isn’t it?” Caroline said, a sad smile curving her lips. “Things feel entirely different than you expected when you actually go through them. Like driving for the first time. It’s nothing like you expected. Or…sex.”

  “Yeah.” He wasn’t sure where she was going with this, but wasn’t comfortable with the sex discussion. He had a rule against thinking about sex and Caroline together.

  “So, none of us can have any idea what it feels like when you’re on the verge of death. For months before I had Jesse, I imagined what the birth was going to feel like. I’d wake up in a panic, certain I couldn’t do it. But when I actually went into labor, it wasn’t anything like I’d expected.”

  “You aren’t going to try to convince me it didn’t hurt, are you?”

  “No.” She gave him a wry grin, then turned back to the fork she’d been toying with. “The pain was there, it was me that was different. I was so filled with—I don’t know, adrenaline or something—so eager to finally hold my baby, that I wasn’t afraid of the pain. I just accepted it.”

  “Do you worry about it now?” His stomach muscles gave a twinge as he thought about the impending birth, thought about being there, watching his own daughter come into the world.

  He wanted that.

  He just didn’t want to live the rest of his life after that moment, knowing his daughter could be taken from him at any time.

  “Not really,” she said. “To be honest, I have so many other things pressing on me that a few hours of physical pain doesn’t concern me too much.”

  “So we sit here and worry about what it must’ve been like for Randy and Meredith, but we’re probably off the mark because we have no experience to work from.”

  “Exactly.” She picked up her fork. “Looking at their suffering from the perspective of someone who’s not in pain, not in shock, someone who’s lucid and rational, isn’t all that logical. Which is why it’s silly that we do it anyway.”

  She made sense.

  “And that doesn’t even take into account what else they might know at that point that we have no concept of.”

  Intrigued now, as well as interested, John sat back. “Like what?”

  “Like some kind of spiritual knowingness. You hear about near-death experiences where people see white lights. How do we know there isn’t some kind of force that comes and fills you with euphoria as you leave this life? How do we know that isn’t exactly what Randy and Meredith were feeling? That, given the choice between euphoria and this imperfect life, they chose euphoria?”

  Meredith might have made the choice to leave him? That was something he’d never even considered.

  CAROLINE RINSED the plates and silverware. And while John was in the middle of loading the dishwasher, Ben Sanders called to ask if he’d be one of the pallbearers. David Marks was going to be officiating and there’d be loudspeakers outside the church for all those who couldn’t fit inside.

  “I told him I’d do it,” he told Caroline as he hung up the phone. “Sam and Ben want to be able to sit with Carol.”

  “It’s an honor,” Caroline said, glancing at him over her shoulder. “They must think very highly of you.”

  He didn’t look at it like that. He was just glad to have a job to do.

  “YOU’VE GOT THE BEST of both worlds here, don’t you?” They were in the family room where Caroline had dropped her purse on the way in.

  “How do you mean?” he asked, hands in the pockets of his chinos. The night stretched ahead.

  “You’re completely free and yet surrounded by friends at the same time. Friends who are practically family.”

  He nodded. “I guess. I’m lucky, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  John’s head fell back. He stared at her, frowning. “Why?”

  She grabbed her purse, turned away.

  “Caroline?”

  “You don’t really want me to answer that,” she said, walking to the door.

  He grabbed her by the shoulder, gently pulling her around. “Yes, I do. You have good insights, Caroline. I’d like to hear what you think.”