My Babies and Me

It was another half hour before Michael could concentrate on his reports.

SHE HAD THE WALLPAPER and paint for the nursery on order, and that Saturday Seth dropped by to take her shopping for furniture. She’d spoken to Michael again, twice that week, but was no closer to resolving anything with him. Was beginning to suspect she never would be.

“How you feeling?” Seth asked as she climbed into the Bronco beside him.

“Great.” It wasn’t a total lie. She hadn’t had any morning sickness for almost two weeks. And the weather outside was beautiful. It was the week before Memorial Day, and the skies were shining on Cincinnati. They’d had sunshine and sixty-degree temperatures all week.

Seth was glancing over at her, grinning, but looking kind of stupid and embarrassed, too.

“What?” she finally asked him. If he thought she was in the mood for teasing, she’d set him straight immediately.

“Nothing.” He held up both hands in a gesture of surrender, then started the car. “It’s just the first time I’ve seen you in maternity duds. You look kinda cute.”

“Shut up and drive,” Susan said, but she was smiling. She’d been clothes shopping the day before and liked the denim jumper she was wearing. Even more, though, she was excited at the changes that proclaimed the lives growing inside her. Every day, the babies she carried seemed more real.

Seth tried to be patient as Susan dragged him all over town in search of the perfect nursery, but by noon, Susan could tell he’d reached his limit. He’d looked at his watch no fewer than ten times. She almost settled for an off-white ensemble with soft roses on the headboards and changing table, just to pacify him, but she couldn’t. They weren’t quite what she wanted.

She’d go by herself when she could take as much time as she wanted. And send Seth back later to pick up whatever she ended up buying. Or, better yet, have the whole lot delivered.

“How about some lunch?” she asked as they left the last store.

Seth glanced at his watch. “You mind if we take a little drive first?”

“Fine with me.” She buckled up. “Where we going?”

“Just driving.”

Taciturn all of a sudden, Seth headed out of town, but this was no leisurely drive they were on. The turns Seth took were deliberate, made as surely as if he’d taken the trip a million times before.

“Can I ask you something?” He broke the silence that had fallen between them.

“Sure.” She was game for just about anything if it would help improve his mood.

“Why did you decide to divorce Michael rather than give up your job and follow him to Chicago?”

Not the question she’d been expecting. “You want the short version?” she asked, wondering how much to tell him.

“I don’t think so, no.” He was frowning.

“I’d been with Halliday for several years by then, Seth,” she reminded him. “I was well on my way to the top. A move would have meant starting over.”

He continued to drive, silent as he watched the road in front of him.

“Halliday Headgear is one of the few successful privately held companies left. My chances of attaining the same level of advancement somewhere else were slim,” she went on, choosing her words carefully. “And I loved working for Ed.”

“More than you loved Michael?”

That hurt. “No.”

“But you loved your career more than you loved Michael.”

“No, I didn’t,” she said slowly. Anyone but Seth would’ve been told to mind his own business. “My career is part of who I am.” She tried to explain what she didn’t fully understand herself, anymore. “And I had goals to meet.”

“So you could be ready to have your baby when the time arrived,” he said. “By the age of forty or the year 2000.” He wasn’t being judgmental; rather, he sounded as though he were trying to understand.

“That,” she said, “and other things.”

Silent again, Seth drove on. Staring out the window, Susan wondered just where they were going. The houses weren’t very attractive here. They’d driven to a part of town Susan had never visited before.