Текст книги "The Secrets of Midwives"

Автор книги: Sally Hepworth

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

Patrick commandeered the stroller and snaked it one-handedly out the door. I followed him down the hallway and through the automatic doors into the cold, sunny day. Once we got there, though, I had no idea what to say.

“I have a joke—” I started, but Patrick cut in.

“Sorry,” he said, “I just want to say this first. I’m sorry about how I reacted. When you told me about Sean.”

I opened my mouth.

“I was jealous,” he said louder, making it clear he was going to finish. “But I shouldn’t have left you on the stairs like that. I shouldn’t have let you believe that it would change things between us.” He blinked, frowned; then his face morphed into a soft smile. “Why are you crying?”

I reached up and touched my wet cheek. I was crying. “Because I love you. And I couldn’t have blamed you if you’d changed your mind—”

“I didn’t change my mind. Just so we’re clear on that. And”—he blushed—“I love you, too.”

A tear dripped off my chin. I laughed. I was crying. I was professing my love for a man on the street. All the things I’d known to be true about myself were fast proving to be lies.

Patrick grinned. “Oh, I nearly forgot. Here. I’ve been meaning to give you this.” He fished a package, wrapped in white paper covered in yellow rattles, from his bag. “For Mietta. I bought it a while back. Before … well, you know. But I thought you still might like it.”

I wiped my cheek and took the gift. “Should I … open it now?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

As I slipped my hands out of my gloves, I saw they were shaking. I started to pick at the tape on one end and then decided to take a leaf out of my mother’s book and tear it off in one go. Patrick laughed. The sound of it unraveled something in me, something that had been wrapped too tight for too long.

A book with a pale green cover stared back at me. BABY’S FIRST YEAR.

I opened the cover. The brightly colored pastel pages reminded me of the paint swatches Patrick and I had picked out for the nursery a lifetime ago. “Thank you,” I said. “We don’t have one of these.”

“Well, now you do.”

I turned the page. At first it looked blank, but then I noticed the scrawly, doctorly pencil marks along the right-hand side. MOMMY’S NAME IS Neva. DADDY’S NAME IS Patrick.

I glanced up. Patrick blushed. “I filled it in before she was born, obviously, but you can change it to Mark’s name if you want.”

His face was carefully neutral, his hands dug into pockets, shoulders sloped down. A strange stillness came over him. I couldn’t even see the rise and fall of his breath.

“Well … there’s a bit of space here,” I said slowly, looking back at the book. Maybe we can leave it and … just add Mark’s name?”

Patrick’s chest began to move again. “Sure. We could do that … if you want.”

Now we both smiled shyly. My insides tickled—that feeling when you’ve won a race and you’re just waiting for it to be announced to the crowd. We rocked back and forth a few times, grinning stupidly.

“So…,” I started. “Gran and Lil are coming over later. They’d love to watch Mietta for a few hours. We could … I don’t know … go for coffee or something—”

“Actually, I was hoping the three of us could go for coffee,” he said. “You, Mietta, and me?” His lips curled into a sexy half smile. How did he always know the exact thing to say?

“Nellie’s?” I said.

He nodded. “Nellie’s.” He started to push the stroller he had failed to assemble. “So what was the joke?”

“Ah yes,” I said. “Two babies were sitting in their cribs when one called over to the other: ‘Are you a little girl or a little boy?’ ‘I don’t know,’ replied the other baby. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’ asked the first. ‘I mean I don’t know how to tell the difference.’ ‘Well, I do,’ said the first baby, chuckling. ‘I’ll climb into your crib and find out.’ So he carefully maneuvered himself into the other baby’s crib, then disappeared beneath the blanket. After a couple of minutes, he resurfaced with a big grin on his face. ‘You’re a little girl and I’m a little boy,’ he said proudly. ‘You’re so clever,’ cooed the baby girl. ‘But how can you tell?’ ‘It’s easy,’ replied the baby boy. ‘You’ve got pink booties and I’ve got blue ones.”

I grinned at Patrick expectantly. “Good, right?”

“No.” But he chuckled. “Terrible.”

He kept walking, and I fell into step beside him. “Come on. Like you can talk.”

With one hand on the stroller and the other slung low around my waist, Patrick maneuvered us through the snow toward Nellie’s. The sun was at our backs, and the light slid over our shoulders and onto Mietta’s face. Before I could reach for the hood, Patrick quickened his step, putting himself between her and the sun. It was an instinct, a reflex. Something a father would do.

Gran was right. When it came to family, biology was only part of it. Patrick and I, Mark and Imogen, Mom and Dad, Gran and Lil—we’d give Mietta a wonderful family.

Together, the three of us turned the corner, toward Nellie’s. Toward home.

About the Author

Sally Hepworth is a former event planner and human resources professional. A graduate of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, Sally started writing novels after the birth of her first child. She is the author of Love Like the French, published by Random House Germany in February 2014. Sally has lived around the world, spending extended periods in Singapore, the U.K., and Canada, and she now writes full-time from her home in Melbourne, where she lives with her husband and two young children. Visit Sally’s Web site at www.sallyhepworthauthor.com. Or sign up for email updates here.

    

Also by Sally Hepworth

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

About the Author

Also by Sally Hepworth

Copyright

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE SECRETS OF MIDWIVES. Copyright © 2015 by Sally Hepworth. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Cover designed by Michael Storrings

Cover photographs: woman © Thomas Szadziuk/Trevillion Images; girl with ballon © Stefan Cioata/Getty Images; boys © Imgorthand/Getty Images; background image © Louise Fahy/Arcangel Images

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Hepworth, Sally.

    The secrets of midwives / Sally Hepworth. – 1st. ed.

          p. cm.

    ISBN 978-1-250-05189-9 (hardcover)

    ISBN 978-1-4668-5263-1 (e-book)

  1.   Midwives—Fiction.  2.   Family secrets—Fiction. I. Title.

    PR9619.4.H48S48 2015

    823'.92—dc23

2014033628

e-ISBN 9781466852631

First Edition: February 2015