Paradise (Second Opportunities 1)

By the end of October, Meredith's four-month pregnancy was thickening her waist, and her father's regular comments about Matt wanting out of the marriage were beginning to ring with truth. "It's a damned good thing you didn't tell anyone but Lisa you married him," he remarked a few days before Halloween. "You still have options, Meredith, don't forget that," he added with rare gentleness. "When this pregnancy starts to show, we'll tell everyone you've gone away to college for the winter semester."

"Stop talking like that, dammit!" Meredith exploded, and marched up to her room. She'd decided to make a point to Matt about his lack of writing by cutting way back on her own letters to him. Besides, she was beginning to feel like a lovelorn idiot, writing to him all the time when he couldn't be bothered to send a postcard.

Lisa called late that afternoon. In two minutes she sensed Meredith's strained nerves and assessed the cause. "No letter from Matt today?" she guessed. "And your father is playing his favorite tune, right?"

"Right," Meredith said. "It's been two weeks since letter number five arrived."

"Let's go out," Lisa announced. "We'll get all dressed up—that always makes you feel better, and we'll go somewhere nice."

"How about going to Glenmoor for dinner?" Meredith said, executing a plan she'd been toying with for weeks. "And maybe," she confessed a little grimly, "Jon Sommers will be there. He usually is. You could ask him all about oil drilling, and maybe he'll bring up Matt."

"Okay, fine," Lisa said, but Meredith knew that Lisa's opinion of Matt was sinking with each day that no letter arrived.

Jonathan was in the lounge with several other men, talking and drinking. When Meredith and Lisa walked in, they caused quite a stir, and it was absurdly easy to wangle an invitation to join the men at their table. For nearly an hour, Meredith sat only a few feet from where she had stood with Matt near the bar four months before, watching as Lisa gave an Academy Award-winning performance that fooled Jonathan into believing she was thinking about switching her major to geology and specializing in oil exploration. Meredith learned more about drilling than she wanted to know, and virtually nothing about Matt.

Two weeks later Meredith's doctor wasn't smiling and confident when he talked to her. She was spotting again, seriously. When she left, she was under instructions to restrict all activities. Meredith wished more than ever before that Matt were there. When she got home, she called Julie just to talk to someone close to him. She'd called Matt's sister twice before for the same reason, and each time, Julie and her father had heard from Matt that week.

In bed that night, Meredith lay awake, willing the baby to be all right, and willing Matt to write to her. It had been a month since his last letter. In it, he'd said he was extremely busy and very tired at night. She could understand that, but she couldn't understand why Matt had time to write to his family and not to her. Meredith laid her hand protectively over her abdomen. "Your daddy," she whispered to the baby, "is going to get a very stern letter from me about this."

She assumed that worked, because Matt drove eight hours to get to a telephone and called her. She was so glad to hear from him, she almost left handprints on the receiver, but he sounded a little abrupt and a little cool. "The cottage on the site isn't available yet," he told her. "I've found another place here, in a small village. I'll be able to get there only on weekends though."

Meredith couldn't go, not now, when the doctor wanted to see her every week, and she wasn't supposed to walk around more than a little. She couldn't go and she didn't want to scare Matt by telling him the doctor thought she might be on the verge of losing the baby. On the other hand, she was so angry with him for not writing, and so frightened for the baby, she decided to scare him anyway. "I can't come down," she said. "The doctor wants me to stay home and not move around very much."

"How odd," he shot back. "Sommers was down here last week and he told me you and your friend, Lisa, were at Glenmoor dazzling all the men in the lounge."

"That was before the doctor told me to stay home."

"I see."

"What do you expect me to do," Meredith shot back with rare sarcasm, "hang around here day after day and wait for your occasional letters."

"You might give that a try," he snapped. "By the way, you're not much of a correspondent."

Meredith took that to be a criticism of her letter-writing style, and she was so furious that she almost hung up.

"I gather you don't have anything else to say?"

"Not much."

When they hung up, Matt leaned his hand against the wall beside the phone and closed his eyes, trying to block out the phone call and the agony of what was happening. He'd been gone three months, and Meredith no longer wanted to come to South America. She hadn't written him in weeks; she was already resuming her old social life and then lying to him about being home in bed. She was only eighteen, he reminded himself bitterly. Why wouldn't she want a social life? "Shit!" he whispered in helpless futility, but after a few minutes he straightened with resolve. In a few months things at the drilling site would be under better control, and he'd insist that they give him four days off so that he could fly home and see her. Meredith wanted him and she wanted to be married to him; no matter how few letters she wrote or what she did, he knew in his heart that was still true. He'd fly home, and when they were together, he'd be able to talk her into coming back with him.

Meredith hung up the phone, flung herself across the bed, and cried her eyes out. When he'd told her about the house he'd found, he certainly hadn't tried to make it sound nice, and he hadn't acted like he particularly cared whether she came or not. When she finished, she dried her eyes and wrote him a long letter apologizing for being a "bad correspondent." She apologized for losing her temper and, surrendering all her pride, she told him how much his letters meant to her. She explained in great detail what the doctor had told her.

When she finished, she carried the letter downstairs and left it for Albert to mail. She'd already given up hovering by the mailbox out at the road, waiting for letters from Matt that never came. Albert, who served as butler-chauffeur and maintenance man, walked in right then with a dustcloth in his hand. Mrs. Ellis had taken three months off for her first vacation in years, and he'd reluctantly assumed some of her tasks too. "Would you please mail this for me, Albert?" she asked.