Consequences. Margot Dalton

Lucia watched, June leaned over casually and drew the baby onto her lap, cuddled him for a moment and reached inside his plaid overalls to check the diaper. Then she kissed him and placed him back on the blanket where he resumed his contemplation of his brother and the big dog. The much-chewed duck was still gripped in his chubby hand, but for the moment he seemed to have forgotten it.

      Lucia touched the waistband of her khaki shorts and felt a warm, melting trickle of love.

      “Hello,” she whispered. “Are you really in there? And are you a boy or girl?”

      Outside, the setting sun glimmered through the branches of the oak tree as if it had caught and tangled among the leaves. Golden fingers of light caressed June’s hair and the bright curls of the two children.

      In a stone birdbath near the lilac hedge, a robin perched at the edge of the bowl. He preened and ruffled his feathers daintily, then bent to dip a wing in the brimming water. The older boy stopped running to gaze at the bird, his thumb jammed thoughtfully in his mouth.

      This was all like some kind of waking dream, Lucia thought, watching the two children.

      She couldn’t possibly be having a baby. Not now, when the school board was planning to launch its scrutiny of the school, and so many people depended on her for their jobs. And all because of a fleeting encounter with a virtual stranger who meant nothing at all to her.…

      Maybe the test had been wrong, and none of it would happen after all.

      But in spite of the wishful thinking, Lucia knew that her pregnancy was real. This baby existed. In fact, though infinitely tiny, it was every bit as much a reality as that fat little fellow down on the blanket in his plaid overalls, gnawing on a plastic duck.

      And Lucia already loved her baby more passionately than she’d ever loved another person in all her life.

      “We’ll get through this,” she whispered to the unseen presence within her. “I still don’t know how it’s all going to work, darling, but somehow we’ll manage.”

      Lucia glanced out the window again, stroking her abdomen gently.

      “Maybe if everything else is going just perfectly, and they can’t find a single thing wrong at our school except that the principal happens to be pregnant and there’s no father in sight—”

      She stopped abruptly, tensing as Jim Whitley came through the back gate with his dog, strolled up the path and paused to say something to June, who set her knitting aside to greet the new tenant.

      He wore a short-sleeved cotton shirt and faded denim shorts. Even from this distance, Lucia could see how the thick dusting of hair on his powerful legs glistened warmly in the dying light. His bare arms looked brawny and muscular under the fabric of the shirt.

      He’d just moved into the house, but already his presence seemed to dominate everything. Though Lucia hadn’t spoken more than a few words to the man since he’d arrived, she was painfully conscious of Jim Whitley in the rooms just below hers. Even worse, she was dismayed by a warm tingle of excitement when she pictured him listening to her footsteps, the sound of her shower, the creaking of the wooden floorboards as she got into bed.

      Nothing separated them, actually, but some old timbers and a few feet of space. The man’s personality was so powerful that Lucia felt his nearness in every cell of her body.

      In the yard below, he gave June a questioning glance and said something. At her reply he crossed the grass and bent to lift the baby in his arms, holding him close.

      June laughed as the tall man kissed the little boy’s cheek, then held him aloft and nuzzled his fat stomach while the baby kicked and squealed with delight.

      Jim walked back to the bench, still carrying the baby, and settled next to June with the child in his arms and his long tanned legs extended on the path. The two adults talked casually as Jim cuddled the little boy and watched the older child run and play with the two spaniels.

      Something about the scene below brought a painful lump to Lucia’s throat.

      The four of them looked so peaceful and surreal in the fading light, like a misty image from some sweet, half-forgotten dream. And Jim’s arms were strong and brown against the baby’s fragile bare shoulders. He looked powerful and protective, as if nothing bad could happen to a child as long as this man was nearby. For no reason at all, Lucia found herself crying. She wasn’t even aware of the tears until she felt them running down her cheeks.

      To her alarm, she saw Jim glance up briefly at the window where she sat. There was no way he could see her behind the heavy chintz drapes, but still she drew back hastily and huddled against the wall, dashing a hand across her streaming eyes.

      When she peered out again, she saw Jim as he stood up to kiss the baby again, hand him to June and come toward the back door. He paused by the rose trellis and called something to the landlady, then vanished inside the house, leaving his dog out in the yard.

      Lucia turned from the window and looked around at her snug little apartment, thinking she should get up and tackle some of the paperwork in her briefcase. But she couldn’t seem to stop crying. Maybe pregnancy had this effect on a woman, unsettled her emotions for no reason.

      Soon she would need to visit a doctor and make sure she was eating properly, taking vitamins and doing all the right things. But she would have to go to Austin and she’d have to find a doctor who wouldn’t ask too many questions.

      Lucia rubbed at her eyes again and got up from the window seat, then stiffened in panic when she heard footsteps clattering up the last flight of steps to the third floor. Before she could do anything to prevent it, the door opened and Jim Whitley’s curly auburn head appeared.