Buch lesen: «Practicing Parenthood»

CHAPTER ONE

MADISON REDDY CLUNG to the edge of the small ferry that was shuttling her from the Pine Island Transportation Center to North Captiva, a small island on the west coast of Florida, just north of Sanibel Island. Known for the big shells swept into the Gulf from the currents in the Atlantic and for its lack of cars, North Captiva housed three hundred residents. They navigated the four-mile long island via golf cart and bike. Madison’s uncle Rashad had been more than generous in giving her time off from her job and a place to stay for a few months while she figured out what she was going to do. Her uncle had married but never had children, and in some ways, he had adopted her as his own.

“Go there. Take a little time off,” her uncle had told her in his office when she’d revealed in tears that she was pregnant. “If you don’t want to have the baby, there’s an excellent clinic in Fort Myers. If you do, then that’s fine. You can spend your pregnancy there, have the baby and come back to the firm. Your job will be waiting for you.”

It sounded like a plan from a hundred years ago—hide an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, have the baby in secret and then pop back up in society. But frankly, Madison was just grateful that Uncle Rashad had saved the lectures and was simply letting her, as a thirty-year-old woman, make her own decisions.

Rashad had been like a father to her, ever since her father died when she was fourteen. Rashad was even more generous, she thought, than her father would’ve been, but that was how seriously he took his responsibility to look after her—and her mother.

Still, she did need some time off to work this out. Her brain felt like muddled mush, and she needed some distance and a few weeks to decide what she’d do next. Her gut already told her there was nothing to decide. She was going to keep the baby, but she had to figure out how.

“You can live with me, and we’ll raise her together,” her mother had offered over tea the previous afternoon. “Or him.” Her mom had retired from the firm last year, so she had ample time on her hands.

“Mom, I can’t...ask you to do that. You’ve earned your retirement.” More than earned it, being a single mom. Her mother, whose cool blue stare never left her face, tucked a strand of dark auburn hair behind her ear as she studied Madison.

“There’s no asking,” her mother had said as she leaned over the small table at the coffee shop and gave her only daughter a big hug. “You don’t have to ask me to do anything. It’s my pleasure. Whatever you decide, I’m with you.”

It had felt good to have her mom in her corner, but her mother had always been on her side, the two of them an inseparable team since her father died. Even with the support, though, Madison wasn’t sure how she’d make it work. Could she really ask her nearly seventy-year-old mother to watch a baby for fifty or sixty hours a week? It didn’t seem right. She could get a less demanding job at another firm, but then what? Less money? Now she had a baby to think about.

You could tell Collin, a small voice in her head whispered. Doesn’t he have a right to know?

She instantly swatted the annoying thought away like it was a mosquito. Tell him, so he has an opportunity to weigh in and insist she get an abortion? Forget it!

She assumed he’d be anti-baby. There wasn’t anything soft and fuzzy about the man, and he’d made it more than clear these last few months that he considered their one-night stand exactly that—one and done.

But right now, all she cared about was holding down her meager lunch of saltines and water. She clung to the ferry’s railing at the back of the boat, willing herself not to hurl as the crystal blue ocean sped by. Madison always prided herself on having a stomach made of steel; she never got food poisoning, and only once in her life ever had the stomach flu. She never even got a hangover. But...this...this was different.

Her stomach roiled and she leaned over the side of the railing but managed not to throw up. Not yet.

“Seasick?” asked a sympathetic elderly tourist sitting near her in the oversized pontoon boat, wearing a bright pink flamingo visor, raising her voice over the wind.

Madison’s face flamed as she hurried to wipe her mouth. This was so embarrassing. Seasickness? Never once in her life. “Uh, yeah,” she lied.

“Try to look at the horizon, that will help,” the lady offered. Madison nodded and then stared off into the distance, but she knew it would do no good.

Collin Baptista. She’d fallen victim to his green eyes, and the fit, muscular body that looked so good in those suits. Never mind that he was the most arrogant know-it-all prosecutor she’d ever met. Collin was all the things she hated about prosecutors—his full-of-himself, holier-than-thou attitude that somehow failed to rub juries the wrong way. He’d never met a defendant he thought might be innocent or, at the very least, deserve his sympathy. He’d once asked a jury to put James Miller, a nineteen-year-old kid with a partial scholarship to the University of Indiana, away for three years for shoplifting a pair of earbuds. Forget that the kid was stealing them as a Christmas present for his single mom who worked two jobs. True, he’d hit the security guard, who’d tried to stop him, although the guard had gotten away with just a black eye.

Collin had told the jury the kid was violent, but Madison thought the punch he’d thrown was a mistake he regretted. In some ways, they might have both been right; the kid could’ve gone on to be more violent the next time. Or he could’ve learned his lesson. Now, locked away in jail, he’d almost certainly become more violent in order to survive.

Madison saw the world in a hundred shades of gray, but Collin Baptista saw it in stark black and white. Guilty or innocent, right or wrong, no in-between. She couldn’t believe she’d fallen into bed with the man. But then again, she knew why: Jimmy Reese, the horrible white supremacist. They’d faced off as opposing counsel on that case, but in that one instance, they’d both agreed. The violent, hateful man needed to be in jail. The fact that they had common ground at all was a turn-on, one she hadn’t expected.

Besides, she knew herself. She was attracted to overconfident men, and Collin was their poster boy. He possessed unwavering confidence, an ability to command the room and a certain fearlessness. Once, when a convicted murderer got loose in the courtroom, he’d simply clotheslined the man as he made a run for the exit, laying him flat on the floor before the bailiff could even react. Nobody would ever accuse Collin Baptista of being a pencil-neck lawyer. He oozed alpha-male sex appeal, and she was the first to admit she liked it.

And she wasn’t the only one. He had a reputation for loving and leaving the ladies, had slept with half the female clerks in the courthouse. He was known for never being serious, never having a steady girlfriend, always playing the field. After their night together, when Collin pretended it had never happened, she ought to have seen that coming. She’d only been yet another challenge, the charismatic young prosecutor who had women falling at his feet. Still, the rejection had hurt her pride.

Just add it to the list of jerks I’ve slept with. Not that it was a big list, but still. If there was a jerk in the room, she’d find him every time.

She was not going let him know their one-night stand had resulted in a pregnancy. Sure, she could go after him for child support, but she wasn’t a charity case. She could take care of herself...and this baby. She just needed to work out a plan. He’d left her messages lately, but she’d doggedly refused to respond to them. He’d only said, We need to talk, which could mean anything, and besides, the last thing she wanted to do was be on the phone with the county’s most dangerous cross-examiner, known for his ability to eviscerate an unwilling witness. She knew if she talked to Collin, her resolve to keep the pregnancy secret would dissolve. Another wave of nausea hit her as she leaned over the side of the railing and lost the saltines she’d tried so hard to keep in her stomach. Baby, you’re making this really hard on us both, she mentally scolded. How am I supposed to feed you if you eject everything I eat?

She wiped her mouth with a tissue and sighed. Nobody ever mentioned that morning sickness could actually be morning, noon and night sickness. One more thing about pregnancy she never knew. Just like the bone-tired fatigue that would creep up on her at all hours of the day and the pregnancy hormones rushing around her body, inducing her to cry at the drop of a dime. She’d even gotten teary at a car rental commercial last night. Madison shook her head. The pregnancy was already making her soft.

If only her friends from high school knew. They’d voted her least likely to have a family and most likely to own a business by twenty-five. Madison had always focused on her career and made her personal life secondary. But Madison wasn’t about to apologize for her ambition. She wasn’t going to be like her mother: a stay-at-home mom who’d been completely unprepared for the workforce when her husband had suddenly died. They’d had several hard years, with her mother cleaning homes and working odd jobs, before her uncle helped her mom get paralegal training and then hired her in his own firm. Madison had watched her mother struggle and vowed never to be so unprepared. Family and kids weren’t her priority—financial security was.

The shore of North Captiva came closer as the small ferry approached the dock. Madison recognized the North Captiva Island Club, home to swimming pools, boat rentals and the island’s best restaurant. She saw the golf carts lined up in the small dirt parking lot near the office, the bright Florida sunshine bathing everything in a warm glow. She remembered the island from when she was a kid and her parents had taken her there on vacation, using her uncle’s house. Now, as an adult, she welcomed the getaway. Here, she could think. Figure out what she planned to do. Alone.

“Hope you feel better, dear,” the woman in the flamingo pink hat said as she moved past her to climb off the boat. Madison followed, and once her sneakered feet hit the wooden dock, she instantly felt better. Either it had been the boat making her morning sickness worse, or she was just relieved to be back in the place that held so many prized childhood memories. Uncle Rashad had been very generous to her mother and her, hosting them every summer, even after her father died. The clubhouse had received a new coat of paint since she’d last been to the island, a few years back, but otherwise, everything seemed the same.

Madison glanced at the line of golf carts parked near the tennis courts and didn’t see her uncle’s telltale silver four-seater, the one that looked less like a golf cart and more like a dune buggy. Usually the North Captiva club staff had everything waiting for guests, including transportation from the dock. Burly workers flexed their muscles as they took cargo from the ferry to the shore—crates of food, luggage, coolers. The island might be remote, but it was hardly rustic. As the crew unloaded her luggage and her plastic bin of groceries, Madison headed into the main office.

She saw Yvana Davis, the resort’s manager she adored and had known most of her life, standing behind the counter. The woman wore a uniform of a golf shirt and khakis, accessorized with sparkling dangle earrings and a colorful scarf around her head. There was no way Yvana was going to let the club dress code cramp her style. Now, however, a frown replaced her usual smile. She was trying to deal with what seemed to be an unruly tourist.

“But there are spiders,” cried the forty-something brunette, who wore a floor-length wrap dress and sparkly slip-on flats and held a quivering lapdog in her arms.

“Inside your house?” Yvana asked, raising a dark eyebrow and putting one hand on a generous hip. Yvana made eye contact with Madison and gave her a nod of recognition.

“No, outside,” whined the woman with the Boston accent. Madison, meanwhile, felt the nausea return. She didn’t know if it was because of the woman’s nasal voice or the fact that it was a little hot inside the office, but she was definitely feeling sick again.

Yvana pursed her lips. “Honey, this is Florida. We got bugs bigger than your dog. Hell, our bugs will eat that adorable little thing.”

Madison hid a smile. That much was true.

“Well, I’m just asking someone to spray,” the indignant woman said. “And...the garbage just... It just stinks. It’s thoroughly disgusting. The dumpster’s full of rotten fish and goodness knows what else, and it was full before we arrived...”

At the idea of fish rotting in the hot Florida sun, Madison’s stomach lurched. Please stop talking about trash. Or I’m going to hurl. Again.

She glanced around for a bathroom...a trashcan...but found nothing. I can hold it, she thought. I can will myself not to throw up... And the woman will stop talking about trash. Any minute now.

“Trash pickup isn’t till tomorrow,” Yvana said, tapping her pink nails on the counter and clearly starting to lose her patience.

“Well, something needs to be done. There’s rotten eggs in there, something that smells like spoiled meatloaf and probably some awful shrimp salad and...”

Madison lost it. Her reaction came hard and fast with no time to react. Even as she tried to cover her mouth, she threw up what little was left in her stomach—she was surprised there was anything—all over the tourist’s sparkly shoes.

“Oh...my Gawd!” shrieked the woman. “What on earth...” Her face twisted in revulsion.

“I am so very sorry. I...” Madison wanted to say she was pregnant, but she couldn’t get the words out, not with the angry woman glaring at her. “Let me see if I can help...” Madison moved forward but the woman batted her away with one hand.