Just Around the Corner

There was no reason for him to feel slighted by that, either.

“The trash can wait until tomorrow,” she said, sounding weary.

Matt was just about to release the door, go while the going was good. And then she sniffled.

Leaning in, he got a closer look at her, the swollen eyes that suggested she hadn’t slept all night. Or that she’d been crying. Or both.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, forgetting it wasn’t any of his business.

“Nothing. I just…” She might have been striving for an appearance of normalcy, but she failed miserably when she started to cry outright.

Matt pushed gently against the door, joining her in the foyer. “The baby?” He forced the words through a tight throat.

If anything had happened to that child…

“No,” Phyllis said, looking up with the first sign of real life in her eyes. “The baby’s fine.”

The baby might be, but she wasn’t. She looked terrible. Her hair was skewed as usual, but not fashionably. Today the waves were haphazardly pressed more to one side of her head than the other, she was wearing the same clothes she’d had on the day before, and her face was bare of makeup.

His gut constricted.

“So what’s up?” he asked her softly, a little alarmed by how easily she allowed him to lead her into the living room, seat her on the sofa and offer her the box of tissues from the end table.

“Nothing, really. I’m…I’m just tired and being stupid.”

“And wearing yesterday’s clothes.”

“Oh!” She glanced down at herself. “I’d forgotten. Sorry.” And then, as if becoming aware of her appearance for the first time, she lifted a hand to her hair and then ran it along her wet cheek.

“I’m a mess,” she said, obviously embarrassed as she stared down at the carpet.

“You’re not a mess,” Matt assured her. “I’ve never met a woman who looked more beautiful without all the unnatural help of cosmetics.” He could’ve been saying the words to make her feel better, to be gentlemanly. But he wasn’t. He meant them.

She gave him a thoroughly exhausted grin, looking at him from beneath lowered lids. “You don’t have to lie, Matt. It’s not like we have anything going here.”

Seeing her like this, so vulnerable—more vulnerable, somehow, than she’d been that day in the hospital—was doing strange things to Matt’s equilibrium.

“It wasn’t a lie,” he said, sitting down on the edge of the couch, close to her, half facing her. “You wanna tell me what’s wrong, or do I start guessing?”

She shook her head. A tear landed on the hands folded in her lap. “You’d never guess.”

“I’d guess you haven’t been to bed yet.”

She wiped her face, then dropped her hand back into her lap. “Actually I have been. Tory called around three this morning. She’d gone into labor and Ben was out of town.”

When he heard the explanation, Matt would have relaxed if she hadn’t seemed so sad, as well as exhausted. Had something gone wrong?

“Tory was in hard labor for hours and we couldn’t reach Ben. The baby was breech and there were some other complications, and they ended up having to do a C-section.”

“Is everything okay?”

Phyllis nodded, but the breath she drew in wasn’t steady. “She had a little girl—named her after me.” She looked up long enough to give him a smile, then looked away again.

Something was wrong. Something had changed her.

“And Tory’s okay?”

“Yep. Sore, of course, but Ben’s back in town, and mother and baby are both doing fine.”