A Stranger In Texas

Then Zach told her,’ ‘We came on this trip together because I’m not at home much. This was to get me better acquainted with Mike.” Again Zach was silent before he asked, “Isn’t that ironic? Now I’ll never know him. But Hannah did. She was with him. She’s still with him.”

It was clear to Jessica that Zach was not especially good father material. If she really was pregnant with his baby, she’d go it all alone. She had no need to disrupt his life.

Well, from what he said, he hadn’t disrupted his life for a wife or child. He’d lived his life his way—and on his own.

She was somewhat surprised he was sitting next to his neglected wife so uselessly. She was dead. What good was he now? She’d needed attention from him when she was alive.

Jessica started to rise, and Zach rose with her. “Would you walk with me on the beach? Yesterday’s walk saved my sanity. I’m having a hard time assimilating the fact that I’m—alone.”

She looked at him quickly, but he was looking at the waxen face of his wife.

So he did grieve. Perhaps if he’d realized nothing in life is for sure, he might have made a better husband.

If she was pregnant with his child, she absolutely would raise it alone. He was useless.

But he was a human being. One who was in grief. Belatedly, he was aware of his loss.

She asked, “Are there any arrangements you need to make?”

“The hospital and the minister both advised and guided me on those needs. They are professionals. And they were very kind. It’s helped me.”

She thought he might be a little self-centered. Well, maybe not. Nobody could do anything to help his late wife and son. They were gone.

But the son’s contribution to the parts harvest had been allowed by the grieving father.

As if clued in by her thoughts, Zach just started in on speaking about his own thoughts. “Hannah would have loved helping others.”

Jess figured Hannah worked in charities.

Zach admitted, “I’m new to the word ‘harvest.‘ We were too late for her to help anybody. That would irritate her…not being able to help somebody else. I don’t remember ever discussing what we should do-in case.”

“Most of us feel we will live forever.”

By then, they were out of the chapel and walking along the sidewalk toward the beach.

Zach mentioned, “We’ll take the early plane home.”

“Yes.” She glanced over at him. He’d included his wife and son.

He was watching her, but as she looked at him, he looked away. He asked her, “Do you like your job?”

She grinned. “I’m brilliant with numbers.” Then she added logically, “Keeping books is very satisfying tome.”

He shook his head in rejection. “If bookkeeping is exciting for you, I’ll send you all my income tax material and you can sort it out. That would be to show my gratitude for your—company—yesterday…and today. We are to leave tomorrow morning. They suggested that. They said it would be better to fly tomorrow. We’ll be home by noon.”

“I hope your life goes well.”

He watched her. “And yours.”

“Thank you.”

How odd that Jess drove to the airport early the next morning. She just sat in her car at the parking lot. The hospital airport was a shuttle port. He’d go to Corpus or San Antone or even Houston to connect with another plane to go…home.

She would never see him again. She hadn’t even asked for his address. It had been difficult for her to refrain from doing so. A part of her wanted a link.

From where she sat in her car, she watched the airplane lift and fly away. He was gone. She would never see him again.

Jess was then aware her hands were moving gently on her stomach to comfort the half orphan. The poor little beginning embryo.

What nonsense!

But she drove slowly from the airfield’s parking lot and then drove along the highway to an isolated spot along the coast. She sat and watched the water and the sky.

There was no other place that matched the places in TEXAS. She was soothed by the panorama of subtle colors and the permanence of the Gulf.

Could she actually be pregnant? Or was her body just being difficult? Wanting a man. Wanting a child?

How could such a brief meeting make her body take up this weird conduct? It was hormones and the yearning of some strange part of her psyche. That way her orderly mind could excuse this idiocy.

But why on earth would her body want to fool her that way? Or was it she who was fooling her body?

Too many experts think humans are one entity. Their brains/bodies/subconsciouses have never debated an issue? We are more complicated than we will ever understand.

In such a time, think how Zach had turned to her with only using her body. He hadn’t even thought about her as a person. Only a part of his mind remembered he’d taken her. He hadn’t lusted for her. It had been a chance act. A really stupid one.

Why hadn’t she resisted?

At the end of that day, she went home and slept in a drooling exhaustion. How could she be exhausted? She’d not done anything to be so zapped. She was grieving for a man with whom she’d had such a chance encounter?

Fiddlesticks.

Yes. Fiddlesticks. Her grandmother had used that word. It was better than the current shocking ones used in exasperation.

What had she done to ‘exhaust’ herself?

Nothing.

Jessica did the prerequisite chores and fed the offended cat. She walked the four blocks to the hotel to throw off the doldrums of her puzzling inertia.

In the middle of the morning, instead of tea, she had a glass of milk. Her stomach refused tea and she couldn’t stand to smell the coffee. She picked at lunch. She had tomato soup for supper, with crackers and a glass of milk.

Just under two weeks later, Jess skipped her period. She decided it was spring fever, and she wasn’t exercising nearly enough. She went out to jog and her breasts and stomach declined doing that.

She walked quite a distance. Not as far as she generally walked, but she had to sit down and rest before starting back.

It was the having-to-rest part that just about convinced Jess something was different. She’d ignored all the other signals.

She was quiet and thoughtful. Her work did not suffer. In that element of her life, she was brilliant as usual. But she canceled attending evening gatherings. She went to bed early. She slept like a log. Out cold. No awareness.