They’re from Omaha. Her husband’s a cement contractor, and the boys are all planning to go into the family business as soon as they graduate from high school. I think that’s real nice, don’t you?”
What he thought was that it was highly irrelevant, and wondered where she’d been all her life that a simple pay phone was beyond her experience, but he refrained from saying so.
“I guess you think I’m ignorant—about the phones and all, but I told you I haven’t traveled much.”
Sunny started to fuss. Hetty reached over and captured one of her tiny feet, cupping it in her hand. “Did you wash the bottle after last time?”
“I did the best I could without soap. Damn, I hate this! What if she gets sick? What if her rash gets worse?”
“You simply climb on a chair and ask if there’s a doctor in the house. At least that’s the way it’s done in the movies.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Jax, don’t worry so much. Most babies have a diaper rash at one time or another. We’ll just have to keep her dry, that’s all.”
“What if she catches something? There are people from all over the world here—one of them might be carrying a germ or a virus.”
Hetty couldn’t help but be amused, even though she knew better than most how scary caring for a baby could be for an inexperienced parent. “She’ll let you know if she’s not feeling well.”
“By crying. Right. Only, how’m I supposed to know if she’s sick or just wet again? Or worse?”
“Worse, you’ll know. Wet’s pretty much a given. A lot of her fussiness is teething, though. She’s got two tiny nubbins almost through, didn’t her mama tell you?”
It wasn’t the first time she’d referred obliquely to Carolyn. Jax had a feeling she was curious about why he was traveling alone with a baby he obviously didn’t know a damned thing about. Luckily she seemed as disinclined as he was to discuss personal matters.
Which was just one more way in which she differed from the women he knew.
One bottle and two stale pimento sandwiches later, the weather picture hadn’t improved. At last report, nothing was moving on land or in the air. Every airport east of the Mississippi between Nashville and New England was either iced in or fogged in. On one of the runways, a scraper had run into the wing of a 747, damaging both. Even after the weather cleared up, things were going to be in a hell of a mess until they sorted out the logistic tangles.
Hetty’s head had once more settled on his shoulder, her soft breath purring warmly against his throat. Sunny was draped across her lap sleeping, fed, dried and burped. The burping was news to him. Carolyn had forgotten to mention it, but it seemed to make a difference. Whoever and whatever else Hetty Reynolds was, she was a godsend, given the circumstances.
He wondered if she had kids of her own. Where were they? Had she given them away? Dropped them off in a diner the way his mother had done him when he was six years old and then forgotten to come back for him for the next thirty-three years?
Jax blinked sleepily and considered easing them into a more comfortable position. Maybe later, he thought, his gaze on the hand that was resting protectively on Sunny’s back.
No rings. Funny things, hands. They said a lot about a person. Hers weren’t at all the kind of hands he would have expected on a woman whose traveling outfit consisted of slinky sweaters, long, flowered skirts and a subtle perfume that reminded him of summer nights in Virginia, a long, long time ago.
His stomach growled. His eyelids drooped. They’d all be a lot more comfortable lying down, with Sunny in her carrier between them, but if he woke her now, she’d go all self-conscious again.
Funny woman.
Nothing had changed when Hetty opened her eyes. Every bone and muscle in her body protested, and she blinked several times to clear her vision. The light hadn’t changed. It could be noon or midnight. The crowd, if anything, was thicker, but at least it was quieter now. Exhausted travelers were sleeping wherever they could find a few clear feet of floor. Those who were lucky enough to have snared a seat were snoring, their heads either tipped back at an awkward angle or resting on their chests. One man had draped a newspaper over his face. Hetty stared, fascinated, as it lifted and fell, lifted and fell with each breath.
Only gradually did she become aware that she was lying on the floor on her side, with Jax’s arm around her and Sunny sleeping peacefully in the carrier between him and the wall.
He stirred and mumbled something without waking up. The baby whimpered. Hetty thought, never in a million years would anyone believe this. Meeting a handsome stranger, sleeping with him on the floor of an airport? Surrounded by thousands of people, all going nowhere?
Uh-uh. This was like a play by that Kafka fellow. Surreal. Done in shades of gray, with no discernible plot, or at least, none she could follow.
Her eyes fuzzy with sleep, she tried and failed to focus on her watch. At this rate she was going to be cutting it awfully close. What if she didn’t make it in time? What then?
It never occurred to her to feel sorry for herself. Instead she thought, All that insurance money, wasted. I’m sorry, Gus.
She’d spent most of Gus’s insurance, after his burial expenses, on his mother and daughter. Jeannie had a habit of running up bills that Hetty had paid, rather than see her rebellious stepdaughter get into any more trouble.
Jeannie’s boyfriend, Nicky, had been a dreadful influence all through junior high, but nothing Hetty said had made a difference, and by then Sadie, Gus’s mother, had suffered the first in a series of strokes. She’d been no help at all.
In the end, the young lovers had dropped out of school and run away. Eight months later Jeannie had come home long enough to leave her infant son. That had been five months ago.
“Here, now that I’m gone, you might as well have somebody else to boss around,” she’d said. “Daddy and I were getting along just fine before you tricked him into marrying you.”
Hetty let it pass. That hadn’t been the way it was at all, but by then, she knew better than to argue. People heard what they wanted to hear, believed what they wanted to believe. For the next several months she’d had her hands too full to worry.
Robert had thrived. Sadie hadn’t been able to help, but she’d been a wealth of information. They hadn’t heard from Jeannie except indirectly. Someone had seen them in a bus station in Oklahoma City. Someone else said they were both working at a truck stop grill outside Tulsa.
Then Sadie died in her sleep. An embolism, according to her doctor. She had willed her car, which had sat up on blocks for years, to Hetty. She’d left her house to Jeannie. Hetty had finally located the girl, too late for her grandmother’s funeral, but not too late for Jeannie and Nicky to claim the house, their son, and to inform Hetty that her services were no longer needed.
Which was when she’d impulsively decided to take what was left of the insurance money and blow it all on this trip and a wardrobe suitable for a romantic, once-in-a-lifetime cruise. Foolish?
Try stupid. Try silly, impractical, selfish and all the other things she’d tried so hard all her life not to be, because when he was drinking, which was most of the time, her father used to accuse her of being a dumb, selfish slut just like her mama.
Lying awake, she gradually became aware of her surroundings. Of the mingled smell of popcorn, stale chili, baby powder. The leathery, masculine smell of Jax’s coat.
She tried not to think about all the what-ifs, but it was no good. They crowded in, anyway.
What if she missed the cruise? What if she wound up in Miami with no job, no friends, no place to stay and not enough money to get home again? Wherever home was.
What if Minco, Oklahoma, was only a figment of her imagination? What if the world began and ended right here