I’ll send you all my income tax material and you can sort it out. That would be to show my gratitude for your—company—yesterday…and today. We are to leave tomorrow morning. They suggested that. They said it would be better to fly tomorrow. We’ll be home by noon.”
“I hope your life goes well.”
He watched her. “And yours.”
“Thank you.”
How odd that Jess drove to the airport early the next morning. She just sat in her car at the parking lot. The hospital airport was a shuttle port. He’d go to Corpus or San Antone or even Houston to connect with another plane to go…home.
She would never see him again. She hadn’t even asked for his address. It had been difficult for her to refrain from doing so. A part of her wanted a link.
From where she sat in her car, she watched the airplane lift and fly away. He was gone. She would never see him again.
Jess was then aware her hands were moving gently on her stomach to comfort the half orphan. The poor little beginning embryo.
What nonsense!
But she drove slowly from the airfield’s parking lot and then drove along the highway to an isolated spot along the coast. She sat and watched the water and the sky.
There was no other place that matched the places in TEXAS. She was soothed by the panorama of subtle colors and the permanence of the Gulf.
Could she actually be pregnant? Or was her body just being difficult? Wanting a man. Wanting a child?
How could such a brief meeting make her body take up this weird conduct? It was hormones and the yearning of some strange part of her psyche. That way her orderly mind could excuse this idiocy.
But why on earth would her body want to fool her that way? Or was it she who was fooling her body?
Too many experts think humans are one entity. Their brains/bodies/subconsciouses have never debated an issue? We are more complicated than we will ever understand.
In such a time, think how Zach had turned to her with only using her body. He hadn’t even thought about her as a person. Only a part of his mind remembered he’d taken her. He hadn’t lusted for her. It had been a chance act. A really stupid one.
Why hadn’t she resisted?
At the end of that day, she went home and slept in a drooling exhaustion. How could she be exhausted? She’d not done anything to be so zapped. She was grieving for a man with whom she’d had such a chance encounter?
Fiddlesticks.
Yes. Fiddlesticks. Her grandmother had used that word. It was better than the current shocking ones used in exasperation.
What had she done to ‘exhaust’ herself?
Nothing.
Jessica did the prerequisite chores and fed the offended cat. She walked the four blocks to the hotel to throw off the doldrums of her puzzling inertia.
In the middle of the morning, instead of tea, she had a glass of milk. Her stomach refused tea and she couldn’t stand to smell the coffee. She picked at lunch. She had tomato soup for supper, with crackers and a glass of milk.
Just under two weeks later, Jess skipped her period. She decided it was spring fever, and she wasn’t exercising nearly enough. She went out to jog and her breasts and stomach declined doing that.
She walked quite a distance. Not as far as she generally walked, but she had to sit down and rest before starting back.
It was the having-to-rest part that just about convinced Jess something was different. She’d ignored all the other signals.
She was quiet and thoughtful. Her work did not suffer. In that element of her life, she was brilliant as usual. But she canceled attending evening gatherings. She went to bed early. She slept like a log. Out cold. No awareness.
Zach called her in a month. He asked in a husky voice, “Are you okay?”
Toplofty, she replied, “Of course. Are you?”
He replied, “It’s strange to go into a silent house.”
Another week went by and nothing changed. Well, some things stayed changed. Jessica could tell something was going on. Her breasts were fuller. She continued to be picky with food. She finally went to a doctor…in Corpus. She was, indeed, pregnant.
She drove back to Sea View slowly and in some acknowledged shock. How could she do this to a child? Life was rough enough as it was. How could she face her parents? They’d be embarrassed and loyal.
Her sister Alice would be avidly curious. A stranger? How could Jess give in to a stranger! Miss Goody-Two-Shoes dallying with a stranger? Who was it!
Even the doctor had asked her that one. He was young, pleasant looking and interested. If she would for someone else, why not for him?
Being pregnant in Sea View’s intimate, gossipy limitation was not going to be easy. How strange that she didn’t even consider canceling the baby. Why not?
She wasn’t sure why not. Being pregnant really wasn’t real to her. She had to assimilate the fact first. Then she considered her situation.
She was self-supporting. No one had to donate to her health and welfare. She was on her own and could manage.
It would be rough on her family. They would be supportive and loyal, but it would be rough for them. And for her.
Would she find out Zach’s address and let him know?
No.
Why burden him with such a problem?
He was the father. It might help him over this terrible time of being alone.
Actually, the fatal trip had been to bond him with his son. He hadn’t been much of a part of his other family. Why would he be interested in sharing a surprise child?
He ought to be told.
She’d figure that out another time. He could get a DNA test and see how careless he’d been. He was—careless? What had she been doing in his room?
Don could have gone up with Zach. Actually, no one needed to go up with him. He was an adult. He could have handled himself. He was handling himself. She’d just gone along with him and been available.
A woman accompanying a man to a hotel room isn’t all that smart. Some conduct is necessary for a woman under all circumstances. As her mother had always told her: If you don’t walk on the tracks, you won’t get hit by the train!
It was good advice.
So. She was just as responsible. She hadn’t made one protest. Instead, she’d gone with him and sorted out his problems and even given him the pill so that he could sleep.
She had given more than a pill. She had given herself.
Had being twenty-nine triggered her foolish behavior? What would this do to the town? To her place in the town? To her family? To her? To the child? Yes, the child.
It was a little late for such thoughts. She ought to have figured it out sooner.
It was three months later, on a Friday morning, and Jessica had gone to the hotel. She was girding up to face the family’s doctor, when who should walk into The Horizon but Zachary Thomas!
Him!
For some strange reason, she’d taken her eyes from the computer monitor. She looked through the open door past the desk as he approached the door and came through it.
He was more alert.
That was an interesting observation for her to have. She’d not thought, there he was, or what