First Comes Love

Because, hey, after all…it was Tess.

He opened his mouth to announce Finn’s presence, but Abigail, evidently much too excited to be put off any longer, blurted out her big news before he had the chance. And boy, oh, boy, what news it was.

“Tess Monahan has been knocked up!” she cried almost gleefully.

“What?!”

Will was surprised to discover that the outraged exclamation erupted not from the man beneath the ’Vette, but from his own mouth. And as if that weren’t bad enough, to punctuate his utter and complete shock, he dropped the casserole—tuna, noodle and surprise—onto the cement floor with a resounding crash.

Abigail, too, was taken aback by his response—literally. She took one giant step backward, as if she feared Will was going to bolt right over her on his way to—

To do what? he wondered. Right this egregious wrong? Beat the hell out of whoever was responsible for Tess’s condition? Break the jaw of whoever had started this stupid rumor in the first place? Even if it were true, what the hell business was it of his if Tess Monahan had gotten herself—

Knocked up?

Tess?

No way.

He spared a quick glance at Finn’s legs, which were still sticking out from under the car and, surprisingly, weren’t quivering with rage. Either he hadn’t heard Abigail’s announcement—which Will found highly unlikely—or else he was waiting to hear the rest…before he went out and thrashed the son of a bitch responsible for Tess’s predicament.

“No way,” Will said, turning back to the messenger, voicing his thoughts out loud. Though whether that was for Finn’s benefit, for Tess’s benefit or for his own benefit, he honestly wasn’t sure. “You must have gotten your wires crossed somewhere, Abigail. Tess Monahan isn’t that kind of girl.”

In response Abigail chuckled, and Will couldn’t help but think that there was something almost triumphant in the sound. “She is now,” Abigail said. “I saw her myself this morning at the teachers’ brunch. She was sick as a dog.”

Will shook his head in denial. “Tess has never been sick a day in her life.”

“I know. That’s what I said. The only thing that could make her this sick is morning sickness. Sister Angelina saw her barfing in the girls’ rest room, too.”

Will shrugged it off. “Oh, big deal. So Tess has the flu.” But even he had trouble believing it. “That doesn’t mean she’s pregnant.”

“There’s more,” Abigail said.

Yeah, Will would just bet there was. “Like what?”

Abigail took a few steps closer—carefully avoiding the spilled casserole—as if wanting to pull him physically into her conspiracy. “Well, for instance, about two months ago, Dolores Snarker was up in Bloomington, and she saw Tess at a Motel Six.”

Will somehow refrained from rolling his eyes. “So? A lot of people stay at motels, Abigail. And believe it or not, most of them don’t get pregnant.”

“Yeah, but Dolores saw Tess go into her room one night with a man.”

This Will found hard to believe. He also found it hard to digest, because his stomach pitched at hearing the revelation. But even if it was true that Tess had been with a man—Oh, God—it didn’t mean she was pregnant. It made him feel a little sick—all right, it made him feel a lot sick—but it didn’t mean Tess was pregnant. Probably. Then again, she was pretty naive, he reminded himself. She might not take the proper precautions if she found herself in that kind of situation. She was so trusting.

“That’s not proof of anything, Abigail,” he said, in spite of his misgivings.

But Abigail ignored his objection. “And,” she continued, “my aunt who works for Dr. Schwartz, the OB-GYN? She said Tess had an appointment last month.”

Will felt himself blushing at the mention of a…of a…of one of those…doctors…but, again, it wasn’t conclusive proof of anything. “It’s my understanding,” he said, “that women go see the…the…” He growled under his breath. “That women have appointments like that every year.”

“Ah, but it was Tess’s second visit in two months,” Abigail told him.

“Yeah, but still…” Will objected. Though not quite as strenuously as before.

“And,” Abigail continued happily, “Tess was in Bonnie’s Baby Boutique a couple of weeks ago, and Bonnie herself said Tess bought almost a hundred dollars worth of baby clothes and stuff.”

“It was probably a gift,” Will pointed out, though it was unlikely. Nobody in Marigold who was close to Tess was pregnant.

“That’s some gift,” Abigail replied dubiously.

“Tess is a generous person,” Will countered.

But his objections now were halfhearted, at best. There sure did seem to be an awful lot of evidence against Tess. And although gossiping was a pretty stable pastime in Marigold, hardly anyone could dispute that what went around almost always turned out to be true. Marigoldians might be rumormongers, but they were generally pretty good about keeping their facts straight. Even Will, who avoided the rumor mill, knew that.

Abigail stepped back again. “Well, nuns don’t lie,” she said, “and I heard about Tess’s condition from both Sister Mary Joseph and Sister Margarite. She’s pregnant, Will. And all of us are just dying to know who the father is. Susan Gibbs said she heard Tess say herself that it was a one-night stand.”

“What?”

Again, much to Will’s dismay, the outcry came not from under the ’Vette, but from the depths of his own dismay. Tess Monahan pregnant. And by some jerk who’d loved her and left her in one night. He could scarcely believe it.

But rumor, at least in Marigold, Indiana, didn’t lie. Tess Monahan was going to have a baby. And Will Darrow had no idea what to do.

Three

By week’s end, after three days of suffering from the flu, Tess was feeling a bit better. Although she was still weak and her appetite hadn’t returned to full capacity, her stomach was no longer rolling, and her fever had eased. Even so, she had readied herself for an early bedtime tonight, just as she had for the three evenings prior, and had already changed into her nightclothes—a powder-blue T-shirt and a fresh pair of pajama bottoms, these patterned with puffy white clouds. And she had just retired to the couch with a new book that a number of first-grade teachers on the Internet were touting as a wonderful educational aide—Raising a Creative Child in Modern Times—when the doorbell rang.

Tess sighed with heartfelt exasperation at the intrusion, then settled the book, spine up, on the sofa cushion beside her. Honestly. After the three days she’d just survived, the last thing she wanted or needed now was a visitor.

Having done her best this week to fend off—with not particularly effective success—all the speculation and congratulations about the birth of her upcoming, though nonexistent, baby, she was ready to scream at the next person who brought it up.

Marigold being the kind of place that it was, there probably wasn’t a soul around who hadn’t heard about—and been convinced of—her “condition” by now. Her visitor this evening, she was certain, was yet another Marigoldian who had come to either speculate or congratulate.

Or, worse, to offer help.

Carol McCoy, up the block, who had four teenagers, had met Tess at the front door when she’d arrived home from school that first day of the rumors, and the other woman had been pulling a wagon loaded with three big boxes of hand-me-downs. They were her children’s cast-offs that Carol had been storing in the basement, knowing that someday they’d come in handy for some expectant mother.

Tess had tried to talk Carol out of her donation, had assured her that there must be someone out there who was more deserving—someone who was oh, say… pregnant, for instance, unlike Tess—but Carol would have none of it. She’d assured Tess that she wouldn’t tell a soul about her condition, that she’d take the secret to her grave—which, of course, wouldn’t be necessary, because it wouldn’t be long before everyone in Marigold knew, would it?—and had hustled back down the street to meet her own brood.

Tess had actually followed her neighbor halfway down the block, assuring Carol all the way that there would be no baby, because there was no condition, because she wasn’t pregnant, but Carol had only nodded indulgently, murmured “Of course, of course” a few times, and told Tess to keep the clothes, anyway, just in case. So now the boxes were stacked haphazardly in Tess’s living room, and she had no idea what to do with them.

Nor did she know what to do with the boxes of maternity clothes stacked beside them that Rhonda Pearson and Denise Lowenstein had donated to the cause. Nor did she know what to do with the big bag of infant toys Cory Madison had brought over. Nor the crib that Dave and Sandy Kleinert had given her—the one that was still sitting in pieces, propped against the wall, where the couple had left it until Dave knew which room would be the nursery, after which, he’d promised Tess, he would come back over and reassemble it. And just that afternoon, Mr. Johanssen, whose backyard abutted Tess’s, had brought over a beautiful handcrafted cradle.

No matter how often—or how hard— Tess had objected to the gifts, her neighbors had only smiled and told her to keep them, just in case.

Whoever was at the front door now would be no different, Tess was sure. Because in spite of her adamant denial of the rumors of her pregnancy, nobody—but nobody—had believed her. The Marigold grapevine was an omnipotent power, infinitely more persuasive than little ol’ Tess Monahan could ever hope to be. If rumor had it that she was pregnant, then according to Marigold canon, she was.

Instinctively she dropped a hand to her belly as she went to answer the front door, as if she herself almost believed she was nurturing a new life there. Boy, smalltown gossip sure could be convincing, she thought as she tugged open the door.

And, boy, it sure could be humiliating, too, she thought further when she saw who stood on the other side.