so people will accept it. I know I can depend on Dr.
Cook to go along with this. When your time comes
he'll deliver the baby here. We'll just say there was no
time to get to the hospital. Women usually give birth
easi
er the second time than they do the first, so people
will believe it all.
"That's it, Grace. That will be our solution. Do
you understand? When you start to really show, I
don't want you to be visible. You'll confine yourself to
indoors until I give you an all-clear, and then you can
take short walks behind the beach house but never
toward the main house. All we have to do is permit those silly Eaton people to realize what's what, and
they'll make it the evening's headlines.
"Everyone will accept your behavior because
you're practically a hermit as it is."
She paused and twisted her lips as she looked at
me. "I suppose in an ironic way I should be happy
about that." she said. It makes all this subterfuge
possible. Besides. I'm sure you're not the first young
woman to give birth secretly in this town."
She stood up again. "Clear off the table, clean
up the broken dish, and load the dishwasher," she
ordered. "I'm going to look over my wardrobe and
decide what I have that will work over the next two
months." She smiled coldly. "What I'll do is go out
and buy maternity outfits as well. That will lock up
the gossip Thelma Carriage will undertake." "I'm sorry that I've made all this trouble for
you. Mommy," I said.
"I am. too, Grace. It seems that fate will not let