Work was due to begin on the new classroom building the second week of September, in time for students to participate in the official ground-breaking ceremony.
The building would be a weathered old man by the time Parsons, Jr. attended Montford.
So would Will.
Too buoyed up to get lost in life’s tangled realities, Will drove through downtown Shelter Valley on his way home, waving to friends and acquaintances who recognized his car as he passed by.
On a whim, he pulled into an angled parking spot along the curb outside Weber’s department store. The old edifice still sported a green-and-white-striped awning, just as it had in days gone by. The floors were wooden and they creaked, something Will remembered from his childhood. That and the clean, chalky smell he’d found so exciting as a little boy. A bell over the door rang as he went inside.
“Will! How the heck are ya?” Jim Weber called out to him from behind the counter. The gr
eat-grandson of the store’s founder, Jim had graduated with Randi.
“Doing well, Jim,” he said cheerfully. “How about yourself?”
“Fine.” Jim nodded. “Business is good. I saw Becca the other day,” he continued, coming around the counter to follow Will down one aisle of the old store toward the clothing department in back. “She’s looking great.”
Yeah, she was, if Will said so himself. Which he didn’t. “Thanks.”
Jim said something else, and Will nodded although he hadn’t heard the remark. He was too preoccupied with his own situation, his own emotional state. It still wasn’t clear where he and Becca were headed, not clear which of his feelings about Becca were real and which merely creations his mind had formed in her image.
With a small wave, he kept on walking when Jim stopped to help another customer.
It didn’t take him long to find what he’d come in for. Weber’s wasn’t that big. Martha and Sari were giving Becca a shower the following month, so Parsons, Jr. would have plenty of things to wear. But Will didn’t want to wait that long for his baby to have some clothes hanging in the closet. Its emptiness was too eerie when he walked in to the nursery late at night on his way to bed.
Settling on two of the tiniest outfits he’d ever seen—triple-checking to make sure they really were for normal, newborn babies—he chose one in green and one in purple. They’d be fine no matter which sex Parsons, Jr. turned out to be.
There might as well be some things in the drawers, too, he thought, and picked up several little packages of T-shirts. Paying for his purchases, accepting Jim’s smiling congratulations once again, Will left the store a relatively happy man. If the past few days were any indication, Becca would have dinner waiting for him, and he was anxious to get home to it. To her.
Even if he did have to retreat to his office alone as soon as the dishes were finished…
HE’D BEEN IN HIS OFFICE for more than an hour, engrossed in the financial plan on his computer in front of him, when Becca slipped into the room. With a brief distracted smile in her direction, he continued with his work. She’d obviously left something she needed on her desk.
Becca didn’t go to her desk. She sat on the sofa across from him—on the edge of the sofa, which had to be hard, considering how much extra weight she was carrying in front these days.
He looked up from the screen.
“I have to talk to you,” she said.
“Sure.” He turned the computer screen away. “You need my help with something?”
“You might say that.” Becca wet her lips, her hands clasped in her lap.
Will waited, happy to be patient with her. At this point, whatever Becca required, he was there to provide. He owed her that.
It also made him feel good to help her. Was even, though he wouldn’t admit it to anyone but himself, a little gratifying to know that she needed him.
She took a deep breath, gazing at him steadily, her brow creased, her eyes almost—was that apology he read there? Pity?
What the—
“Will, I want you to move out.”
She wanted him to—
“What?” He must have heard her wrong.
“I want you to move out.”