Loving You Always (2 page)

“Six months.” Kerris turned to face him, her back against the sink. “I’m only six weeks pregnant. Déjà Vu is just getting off the ground. I want to have our baby here in the States with a doctor I trust, surrounded by our friends. Our life is here.”

Cam’s smile dissolved into a straight line.

“Working that dead end job isn’t much of a life. This money from Kristeene is a godsend. It’ll give me the freedom to pursue my dream.”

“I’ve always been your biggest cheerleader, you know that.” Kerris evened her tone and placed a calming palm against his chest. “I’m just saying the timing may be a little off. Maybe in another eighteen months or so?”

“Eighteen months.” Cam stepped back and stalked over to lean against the granite countertop, facing her with arms folded across the muscles of his chest. “You expect me to stay in Rivermont for eighteen months when I’ll have money in the bank to pursue my dreams?”

“And my dreams?” She deliberately quieted her voice, not wanting this to explode between them. “What about the things I want to do? The business I
just
started? The family we’re
just
starting? Are you considering any of that?”

“You know, maybe I’m missing something.” Cam leveled his creased brows, his face giving nothing away. “Maybe there’s something else you want to stay in the States for. Or should I say
someone
.”

Kerris reached behind her to clutch the rim of the sink. She turned her back to him, rinsing out the dishes she had left there. The muscles of her back tightened under the unrelenting burn of Cam’s stare. They hadn’t spoken of that moment again since that first night, but she knew it was still between them. He was a wounded animal secretly nursing his hurt.

“Cam, do we need to talk about Walsh again? I always thought we should have. We can’t sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Oh, I know it happened.” His voice frosted over with fresh bitterness like new snow. “Do you think I will ever forget seeing you in my best friend’s arms?”

“I told you it was only a kiss,” she whispered, knowing that he would hear it in the eerie silence surrounding them. “We got emotional talking about Haiti—”

“Don’t give me that shit again!” His voice erupting into the quiet made her jump. “Do you think I don’t see how Walsh looks at you?”

Kerris, the way my son looks at you is like a starved man. It’s like he can’t bring himself to look at anything else in the room.

Kristeene’s words in the hospital room that last day before she went home for good drifted back to Kerris. It had been months, but it felt like yesterday. Kerris tunneled her hands into the dark hair on either side of her head before turning to look directly at her husband. She clasped her hands together over the tightly coiled dread in her belly.

“And how do I look at him?” She braved the question, refusing to even blink until he had answered; determined to be as honest as he would allow.

“Most of the time you don’t, which I think says just as much as the way he eats you up every time he looks at you. The two of you—”

“There is no two of us!” The volume of her own voice surprised her, reverberating in the solitude of their cottage.

“I’m out.” He didn’t acknowledge her statement, unfolding from his deceptively indolent stance against the counter and leaving the kitchen. “I’m gonna be late for this job you want me to stay stuck in for the next eighteen months.”

Kerris charged out after him into the living room, ignoring the gibe about his job.

“There is no two of us.” She stopped to stand in front of him at the door. Cam turned to her, his face tight, eyes hard.

“You think I’m stupid, Kerris? Is that it? You think I don’t know how you feel about him?”

“What do you want me to say?” The words heated up in her mouth and boiled over. “I’ve told you that I love you. That it was a mistake. I’m not going anywhere. We’re having a baby together.”

“But is that enough?” Emotion chipped away at the hardness in Cam’s eyes until they were a little softer, a little sadder. “What if it isn’t enough? Then what do we do?”

And there it was. The fear that had skulked around in her heart since Cam first approached her about marriage that night so long ago. That what she felt for him wouldn’t satisfy. Would they have ended up here anyway, or had those few moments with Walsh cost her everything she’d thought would make her happy?

“I gotta go or I’ll be late.” Cam’s eyes scanned her face, and Kerris wondered what he was searching for. She wondered if he found it. “Think about Paris, Ker. Maybe all we need is a fresh start somewhere new.”

He leaned down to whisper something against her stomach; something she couldn’t hear. Something between him and the child they had made. He looked up and hesitated before standing and dropping a kiss on her cheek. And then he walked away.

T
ell me again why we’re registering at Walmart?” Kerris’s best friend and business partner, Meredith, pulled into a spot in the crowded parking lot and rolled her eyes.

Kerris laughed, climbing out carefully, still unused to the additional pregnancy weight she’d gained over the last five months. Nearly seven months’ pregnant in the dead heat of summer. She wouldn’t recommend it.

“A lot of ladies coming in the shop want to buy things for the baby. I registered at all those froufrou places you chose.” Kerris shared a grin with her friend and wiped at the sweat on her neck. “I want to register somewhere those ladies can afford, too.”

“I guess that makes sense.” Meredith gestured to Kerris’s baby bump. “And we still don’t know blue or pink, huh?”

“No. Cam and I want to be surprised.”

“You’ve had a great pregnancy.” Meredith smiled, the delicate bones of her face and exotic eyes giving away her Asian ancestry. “I know ladies who were sick the whole time, and who gained so much weight they were barely recognizable. Though I barely recognize
you
anymore with the short hair. Have you gotten used to it yet?”

Kerris reached up to touch the soft hair curling around her neck, falling just shy of her shoulders. She had cut it a few months ago to honor Iyani. The little girl from the Walsh Foundation’s Kenyan orphanage had come to America battling a brain tumor. In life and after her death, Iyani had left an indelible impression on Kerris. Cutting and donating twenty inches of hair to Locks of Love was such a small thing, but Kerris had wanted to do it. Cam had gone with her, grinning and taking pictures for Facebook with his phone.

Kerris wondered which Cam would come home tonight. He vacillated from the delighted daddy-to-be to the wronged husband who couldn’t quite manage to forgive or forget her transgression.

“I’m gonna grab a cart,” Meredith said. “There’s always something you need at Walmart.”

Kerris was studying a display while she waited for Meredith when she noticed a woman just a few feet away, checking and highlighting receipts for customers exiting the store. Kerris’s feet stuck to the floor. Goose bumps sprung up on her arms. The woman, though older, looked just like…

“Mama Jess?” Kerris asked, hesitant, hopeful, taking the few steps that brought her directly in front of the older woman.

Highlighter in hand and dark brown eyes sharpening in her still-smooth brown face, the woman studied Kerris. New lines framed those eyes, but the kindness Kerris had seen as a child was still there. She wore an
I
♥
NY
T-shirt over a denim skirt.

Kerris blinked a few times, uncertain. She hadn’t seen Mama Jess since she was ten years old. Maybe her memory hadn’t served her right. Maybe her heart had leaped ahead and imagined this stranger as the woman she had always considered the mother she’d never had.

“I’m s-sorry.” Kerris stuttered, embarrassed. “I thought you were—”

“Kerris!” The woman cut off Kerris’s stilted apology.

Kerris hurled herself at Mama Jess like a cannonball, wrapping her arms completely around the woman’s neck. Strong arms encircled her, pressing between her shoulder blades and pulling her as close as her swollen middle would allow.

“I’m sorry,” Kerris mumbled through her tears, pulling away. “I’ve gotten your shirt all wet.”

“Think I did the same.” Mama Jess laughed and wiped away her own tears. “As I live and breathe, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, Lil’ Bit.”

“I wanted to find you after…” Kerris trailed off.

The past rose up between them, tragic and awkward. Kerris’s reluctant, jumbled testimony on the witness stand had sent this woman’s brother to prison, where he had died. Because of her, Mama Jess had lost all of the foster children she’d loved so much, and was probably never allowed to foster again.

“I wanted to see you, too.” Mama Jess didn’t look away, her voice soft and sure. “But I couldn’t. I always prayed we’d find each other again, though. And after all this time…well, God knows.”

“Mary!” an impatient voice called from behind them.

A balding man, not much taller than Kerris, crossed to where they stood. His mud-brown button-down shirt strained across his paunch. Censure was all over his face and in the eyes behind his wire-frame glasses.

“It’s peak time, not time for socializing, Mary.”

Kerris narrowed her eyes at the unpleasant man. She exchanged a quick look with Mama Jess, ready to snap at him on her behalf.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Crawford.” Mama Jess offered a pleasant smile. “Just some old friends.”

“Reunions on your own time.” He harrumphed his displeasure and walked back into the store.

“Heard of a Napoleon complex?” Mama Jess asked from the side of her mouth. “That’s him. Tries to make up for in mouth what he ain’t got in inches.”

“Probably not just inches in height.” Meredith parked her cart to the side and frowned at Crawford’s departing back.

“Mer!” Kerris pressed the back of her hand to her mouth to hold back a laugh.

“Oh, she’s probably right.” Mama Jess offered a hearty laugh of her own. “Who’s this?”

“My friend Meredith. Mer, this is…”

How should she describe this woman? There was so much she’d only ever told Walsh, and then later, Cam. She grappled with the proper way to address the woman after all this time.

“It’s Mary Jessup, but you can call me Mama Jess.”

“Nice to meet you,” Meredith said, shaking hands.

“Well, you heard the man,” Mama Jess said. “I need to get back to work.”

“We can’t just—couldn’t we…I mean, when do you get off?” Kerris was desperate not to lose Mama Jess again now that they’d run into each other. “Maybe we could have dinner or something?”

“My shift ends in about”—Mama Jess glanced down at her watch—“’bout an hour.”

“We’re registering for the baby,” Kerris said. “Let’s meet back here in an hour. Come home with me for dinner.”

Mama Jess’s smile was as warm and wide as Kerris remembered. She grabbed Kerris’s hand and squeezed.

“I’d love that, Lil’ Bit.” She stepped back to reach for a customer’s receipt, highlighter poised. “In an hour.”

Kerris had trouble focusing on the registry items. Meredith, of course, buzzed with questions about Mama Jess, which Kerris answered as honestly as she could, without revealing too much.

“So why’d you have to leave her house?” Meredith scanned an item, searching Kerris’s face.

Kerris struggled to find words, glancing up and down the aisle to see if they were alone. Was she really about to do this? Share a secret she had guarded so closely, on aisle seven with the formula, wipes, and diapers?

“Her brother molested me.” Kerris pushed the words past her cold lips.

The
thud thud
of her heart drowned out the bustling sounds of the store around them, and the world narrowed down to the shelf in front of her. She fixed her eyes on the bib she was scanning while she waited for Meredith’s response. The silence was thick and deafening. It went on so long Kerris finally made herself look over her shoulder. Meredith’s eyes were filled with tears, her tiny fist clenching and unclenching at her side, her lips pressed together.

“Oh, Ker.” Meredith pulled her into an embrace that communicated all the things she couldn’t seem to find words for.

Kerris closed her eyes, relishing the contact. There were no tears, though. TJ wouldn’t get another tear from her. He wasn’t worth it. Didn’t deserve it.

“It’s okay.” She rubbed her own soft cap of curls against the hair Meredith had recently chopped off and dyed platinum blond. “I’m okay.”

“You wait to tell me something like that in the middle of Walmart?” Meredith finally offered a small smile that did its best to lighten the moment.

“The worst part was losing Mama Jess. And now I’ve found her again. I can’t tell you what it means to me.”

Kerris glanced at her watch, eager to finish registering and get back to the mother she had lost. To the only mother she had ever known.

That night, Kerris and Mama Jess caught up, preparing dinner together and speaking frankly about what the last decade and a half had held for them. Mama Jess made the lasagna Kerris remembered so well, even after all these years. Kerris scribbled the recipe, slipping it under a magnet on her refrigerator. She tossed the salad and squeezed lemons for lemonade. She was taking garlic bread from the oven when Cam walked through the door.

“Hey, baby.” He dropped a kiss on Kerris’s baby bump and cast a speculative glance at Mama Jess. “Something smells good.”

“Hey, sweetie.” Kerris searched Cam’s handsome face to see if it would tell her which husband had come home. “You remember me telling you about my foster mother Mama Jess?”

Cam’s face screwed up a little, obviously searching his memory.

“Which one?”

Kerris wondered how she should qualify Mama Jess.

“My favorite one,” she settled for, returning the smile Mama Jess sent her way.

“Oh, yes. I remember.” Cam aimed a smile loaded with his deadly charm at Mama Jess.

Mama Jess contemplated him with a small curve of her lips, her eyes slightly narrowed at the corners.

“Nice to meet you,” Mama Jess said. “You taking care of my Lil’ Bit?”

“Um, yeah,” Cam answered after a heartbeat. “Of course.”

“Baby, dinner’s almost ready.” Kerris reached up with a smile to smooth his hair back. “Why don’t you go put your things down in the office and come on back in to eat?”

Cam walked back toward the office, and Mama Jess pulled the lasagna out of the oven.

“That’s a pretty man you got there.” She set the dish on the stovetop.

“Yeah, he is. He’s so excited about the baby.”

“Now you’re how far along?” Mama Jess leaned a full hip against the counter.

“I’m twenty-eight weeks,” Kerris said, rubbing her belly.

“Waddling, huh?”

“A little.”

“Using the bathroom all night.”

“Yes.”

“Ankles swelling.”

“Some.” Kerris grinned and glanced down at her semipuffy ankles. “Sounds like you know of what you speak. Did you ever have any kids?”

Mama Jess’s face clouded and her mouth turned down at both corners.

“Only fostering.” She looked at Kerris and some of the sadness passed. “Kids like you.”

Before Kerris had time to respond, Cam stepped back into the kitchen.

“I can’t wait another minute.” Cam rubbed his hands together. “Starving and ready to dig in.”

Mama Jess looked at him, and her face softened the way all girls’ did for Cam.

“Then let’s eat.”