Ten Mountain Men's Baby (Love by Numbers 9)

I looked down at her hand, resting next to mine. “I’m pregnant, Mom.” I paused, expecting that announcement to get a reaction.

It didn’t.

“The trouble is, I can’t be sure who the father is. Of course, it might be Ryker, but it could be his brother.”

Again, I looked at her face, but again, I failed to register even the slightest twitch.

“Actually, it could be any one of his brothers. He has nine. Nine brothers! Isn’t that incredible? They’re a tight family.” I shook my index finger nervously, causing her hand to move with mine.

“They share everything, girls included. Can you believe that, Mom? Did you ever get yourself mixed up in anything like that when you were my age? I’m sure you had your adventures. Well, I had mine.”

I stopped talking. I stopped shaking my hand, and I brought it to my chest with the other one. I had slipped into the past tense when talking about Ryker and his brothers. I was conscious of it only when I heard the words leave my lips.

“They’re great guys, every one of them.” I gripped my fingers to keep them from fidgeting. “One works at a gem mine. Another works at a lumber mill. Can you picture them: the kind of guys who work with their hands, the kind of guys who live off the land, you know?”

I felt a movement on the bed and jerked my head to see my mother. Her lips parted, and I saw a slight twitch in her jaw.

“Mom!”

Her lips moved again, more this time, and she fluttered her eyelids.

I stayed perfectly still, fearing any sudden movement would stop her from waking up, or worse, would startle her back to sleep.

“Mom,” I whispered, “can you hear me?”

She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. She opened her eyes and shut them again.

“Mom, I’m going to get up and call Dad, okay?”

I eased myself out of her bed as gently as I could. When I was again standing on my own two feet, she turned her head to me and reached out her hand.

I took her hand in mine. “Mom! You’re awake.”

“You followed,” she said, her voice coming out in breaths.

“Yes.”

“You followed your heart.”

I could feel her strength as she gripped my hand tighter. “Yes! Yes, I did.”

She breathed in loudly through her nose. I felt the grip of her hand loosen and feared I was losing her again.

“Mom.”

“You’ve got such a great mind, dear.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t let it get in your way.”

“Yes.” I smiled. Tears poured down my cheeks, but I wasn’t sad. “I won’t, Mom. I won’t.”

“What…” Her voice was soft and broken, and I leaned over and put my ear near her mouth. “What will you call the baby?”

I laughed, loudly, and without understanding why. “You could hear me?”

She didn’t answer, but she looked at me, awaiting a response.

I hadn’t thought about a name. I’d only known for sure that I was pregnant for a little over an hour or so. “Umm, I don’t know. If it’s a boy… I’ll call him Dennis. And if it’s a girl, Denise.”

She smiled. It was a faint smile, her lips barely moving, but the smile shone in her eyes, too. Immediately after that, I felt her hand slacken.

“Mom?”

Her mouth relaxed, the crease in her cheeks straightened, but a slight trace of the smile remained.

“Mom?”

Her hand was inert, stiff.

I, too, couldn’t move. I stood there, holding my mom’s hand a long moment, then slowly set it back to rest at her side.

“Mom, I’m going to follow my heart. You hear me? I’m going to follow my heart.”The next day, I drove to my dental practice. I had to check in and say hello. More importantly, I needed Mrs. Freedman’s phone number, and I thought it would be insensitive or cold to simply ask for it over the phone. As I was driving to the practice, the thought occurred to me that I didn’t know which magazines we carried in the waiting room. Maybe the magazine Wendy wrote for was one of them. Maybe the receptionist had seen it as she was setting the magazines out, fanning them on the table so they could catch the patients’ eyes. Maybe the headline had caught her attention, and she’d opened the magazine and skimmed the article. Maybe I would walk in and see it lying there on the waiting room table with the patients sitting in a semi-circle around the table, looking down at the assortment of magazines, the one in the middle with its big, bold headline, “Appalachian Orgy,” on full display.

When the thought first flashed in my mind, my heart skipped a beat, and a wave of dread washed over me. I have seen that magazine in our waiting room before, haven’t I? That’s why I recognized the name when Wendy told me.