Her Best Friend's Baby. Vicki Lewis Thompson

she talked to him. Hey, Morgan, you know all those lectures about getting enough sleep? Then stop leaving me weird messages with no follow-up call. I didn’t sleep a wink that night!

      That should get him. He hated any hint that she wasn’t in peak pregnancy mode. Stripping off all her clothes, she posed sideways in front of the mirror. Yep. Definitely preggers now.

      She spread her hands over her stomach. “How’re you doing in there, sweetie? Which did you prefer, the Jolly Ranchers or the carrot sticks? Like I don’t know, you bad girl. Just like your moth—” She caught herself. Not a good thing to say. Arielle would be her mother, and Arielle didn’t eat candy.

      Mary Jane cupped her smallish breasts and decided they were bigger these days, too. Of course, how her breasts reacted was of no consequence, since she’d never breast-feed this kid. That was another thing that had started bothering her. Well, she’d have to get over it.

      With a sigh she pulled on the oversize pink T-shirt that had the arrow pointing down to the words Baby Girl. Until a couple of weeks ago, the arrow hadn’t had much to point out. But she was finally bulging, and because she was small-framed and on the skinny side to begin with, she’d soon look like a watermelon smuggler.

      As she brushed her teeth, she decided to ask Lana to take a few more Polaroids of what they’d begun calling The Belly to send to Arielle. Come to think of it, maybe she should organize a girls’ night out instead of meeting Lana for lunch. They could all catch a movie, like old times.

      That was assuming she and Lana could pry Beth and Ellie away from their love nests with their new hubbies. Mary Jane had always known that she and her three friends wouldn’t be bachelor girls hanging out together forever, but she hadn’t expected to lose two out of four to the holy bonds of matrimony so quickly—Ellie over the New Year and Beth just last month. But then, Beth and Ellie were twins, so having them get married so close together made a kind of crazy sense.

      Mary Jane wasn’t sure if she counted as a bachelor girl anymore, either, now that she was PG. For one thing, she’d taken herself out of the dating scene for the duration. No point in trying to explain the situation to some guy. As luck would have it, she’d never felt more interested in sex than she did now, right when she’d decided to forgo the pleasure. From her reading she’d discovered that was common for pregnant ladies, and apparently she was a textbook case.

      So. Ready for bed and still no phone call. She padded downstairs barefoot and toured the house, making sure that she’d turned off lights and appliances. In her distracted state, she might have forgotten something.

      She stared at the answering machine and picked the phone up to check the dial tone. “I tell you, baby, we’re giving those people a piece of our minds when they finally—”

      The doorbell rang.

      Her heartbeat quickened as she glanced at the digital clock on the TV. Nearly midnight. Hardly anyone she knew would show up unannounced at midnight. Maybe Lana. Lana might be silly enough to ring her doorbell at midnight, but that was the only person she could imagine standing on her small front porch. Damn, were her friends out to scare her to death today?

      She snapped on a light before walking to the door. Then she stood on tiptoe to peer through the peephole.

      Morgan.

      The breath went out of her as she twisted the dead bolt latch. She was nearly crying by the time she pulled the door open. Gasping, she stared at him.

      Unshaven. Eyes red. Clothes wrinkled. Trench coat hanging open as if he didn’t have the energy to button it.

      She wanted to slam the door. Whatever he’d come to her door to tell her, she didn’t want to hear it. She never wanted to hear it. Mary Jane. I have something— She began to shake.

      His mouth opened, but no words came out.

      Don’t say it, she wanted to scream, but she couldn’t speak. No. No. This was a nightmare. She’d gone to bed, and now she was having a bad, bad dream. The worst kind of dream. Wake up, Mary Jane.

      His mouth opened. His words slurred. “She’s de—”

      “No!” Mary Jane hurled herself at him, beating her fists against his chest. “Don’t you say that!” she screamed. “Don’t you ever say that!”

      Tears pouring down his face, Morgan took the blows as if he couldn’t feel them. Then he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her tight against him as she screamed, and screamed, and screamed some more.

      She struggled, trying to get away from him, away from what he was trying to tell her. He wrestled her inside the house and still he wouldn’t let her go.

      “Listen to me,” he shouted, his voice raw as he kicked the door shut. “Arielle—”

      “No!” She fought him. If she could get away and go upstairs to her bedroom, this nightmare would be over. She would wake up, and tomorrow Lana would take Polaroids of The Belly, and they’d send them to—

      “…a wreck,” he said, gasping as he crushed her against him. “Oh, God, Mary Jane. Don’t do this.” He began to sob. “Don’t do this, Mary Jane. Please.” He sank to his knees, pulling her down with him. “Help me.”

      She stopped struggling. With a wild, keening cry she wrapped her arms around him, pressing his head to her chest as if his tears could somehow stop the pain that burned there. She rocked back and forth, clutching his head with one hand and his heaving shoulders with the other.

      “It’s a mistake,” she whispered. “Somebody made a mistake.”

      He shook his head and continued to sob.

      “A mistake,” she insisted again. “A m-mistake. A—” Then her throat closed and she bowed her head over his, pressing her open mouth against his hair to stifle her cries.

      “The baby…is all…I have.” He gulped for breath and held her tighter. “All I have left.”

      This couldn’t be happening. She tried to escape to some faraway place, but his words kept coming, dragging her back to the pain.

      His voice was toneless, muffled against her breast. “She was on her way…to the airport. To get…that artist. Raining…slick…she…skidded. It was instant.”

      The blood roaring in her ears was loud but not loud enough. She heard what he said. She ached all over. “I don’t believe you.”

      “I don’t believe me, either. But it’s true.” He clutched her tighter. “It’s true.”

      “No.”

      “It happened yesterday. No. The day before. I…don’t know anymore.”

      Arielle. She started to get up. “We need to go.”

      “Why?” He held her in place. “She’s gone.” He broke down again. “Oh, God. G-gone.”

      “No!” She tried to pry herself out of his grip. “We have to do something. She needs…” She searched for the words, couldn’t make herself say them. “A…tribute.”

      He lifted his head, his face twisted with anguish. “She didn’t want that,” he whispered hoarsely. “She told me…after we got married. If she died, she wanted no funeral. Nothing.”

      And then Mary Jane knew this horrible moment was real. A steel band of grief tightened around her chest. Arielle had always said that she didn’t believe in any of that. A person should be allowed to slip quietly out of this life, she’d said, without making such an embarrassingly big deal out of it. Mary Jane had thought that very sophisticated, very evolved. Now it made her furious.

      “How could she?” she cried. “How could she leave and not let us…not give us a chance to…”

      “She didn’t think how it would be.” Morgan reached up and brushed his knuckles over her wet cheeks. His voice rasped in the stillness. “How it would be for us.”

      Mary