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“Yes. I did,” he answered, and when he saw the obvious impression his news made on her, he flushed a deep rose. “I’ve always been curious about other cultures. I’ve always wanted to know what would have happened to our way of life if we had let modern things and progress into it the way others have. You understand?” he asked.
Andie was floored. As he spoke, the shy, timid boy melted under the heat of a topic he was obviously passionate about. What stood before her now was a man, confident and proud as he spoke from his heart.
“I visited the reservations of Native Americans first, as that is the sad tale told to us most often by our elders as a story of caution. A warning of what letting our guard down will bring. Then, I went to countries like China and Japan, who are famous for their strong traditions, to see how well those traditions have stood the test of technology and progress.” He shook his head, and a look of sadness stole over his expression. “In my eyes, I saw not traditions as a valued way to live and raise your children, but rather as a tourist trade to sell to foreigners.”
He shook his head again briefly. “There are wondrous things in your world, Miss Andie. Wondrous and miraculous things that are so beautiful as to weep over them. And conveniences so abundant as to make my head spin. But… the cost those things come at?” He looked her straight in the eye, and again, Andie saw not a boy but the man he was becoming. “No. Our way of life may be harder than yours in some ways. But I would not see my mother teach my daughter how to make a quilt as fine as hers so that it can be sold to hang on a wall, while the people who bought it sleep under blankets mass produced by machines. No. Mother will teach her, so she will learn how to keep her own family warm someday. That is the way I believe it should be.”
“That’s a beautiful way of looking at it,” Andie told him, moved beyond reason by his words and the images he painted in her mind. “I’ve never thought about it like that before.”
“I saw people of beautiful cultures perform the traditions of their ancestors for onlookers, and I wondered how many of them practiced these stunning rituals at home in their everyday life? I watched, sad in my heart, as after the performances, these beautifully attired natives would don the clothes of the modern man and put the clothes of their heritage away like they were nothing more than costumes. I knew then that would never be me. Not if I could help it.” Abram stooped to lift the branches he pruned while talking and tossed them into the wheelbarrow. “Now, I know you must be thinking of all the lovely quilts we have at our marketplace down the road a’ways. We do sell our wares and goods as well. The difference that must be pointed out is that they are not the trappings of our past nor the discarded ideals of those who came before us. We are as we always have been. My mother sells the same wares her grandmother and great-grandmother did before her, and when she goes home for the day, it’s to the same house and in the same fashion—by horse-drawn buggy.”
Andie felt warm all over at the picture he painted and, with a happy sigh, stooped to scoop up more pruned limbs and got back to work. Her back ached like a rotten tooth, and they’d only just started. The two of them were working in the smaller personal orchard that only had a handful of trees, so she hadn’t thought about including it in with the larger one for the hired crew to tend. As she hefted her own overflowing wheelbarrow to follow Abram to the brush pile, she wondered what in the hell she’d been thinking. It was going to be another long day.
As the dayswore on and morphed into one long, painful blur, instead of getting faster, Andie seemed to be getting slower. “You’d think after a month of exercising for twelve-to-sixteen hours a day I’d be getting used to this. I should be stronger not weaker,” Andie told Kiki, speaking into her phone through the headphones as she scrubbed out one of the bathtubs.
“Maybe you’re just tired. You can’t expect to be Ma Ingles straight out the gates, Andie. This is gonna take a while for you to adjust.” Andie laughed at theLittle House on the Prairiereference and, satisfied with the tub, moved on to the toilet.
“I know. But tired like this is crazy. I can barely stay awake past seven o’clock these days, and I’m sleeping through my alarm. Kiki, you know me; I’ve always been a morning person, but I just can’t wake up lately. And I’m so tired it makes me sick. I can hardly stomach the sight of food most of the time. Even Jax’s cooking, as good as he is, makes me wanna barf sometimes.”
“You poor baby.” Kiki had a syrupy tone to her voice that made Andie smile. “Having a hot, sexy, tattooed guy come cook homemade meals for you. How dreadful. My heart bleeds. Really.”
Having finished with the outside of the commode, Andie lifted the lid to wash the bowl. It wasn’t particularly filthy, but there was a few yellow splatters and a hair stuck to the bottom of the seat. Andie had no warning it was coming, no time to prepare or even hang up so her friend was spared the sound effects. The sight of the seat combined with their current topic of discussion worked to trigger her, and Andie’s stomach just emptied. Epically. Over the pitiful sounds of her own retching, Andie heard the yelp followed by gagging noises from the other end of the line, but she could do nothing to help it. The mass exodus of her stomach took all her energy; she couldn’t even spare Kiki by hanging up on her. It took all her effort to just keep upright, as her body felt like it was trying to turn her inside out starting with her intestines.
“Oh, God.” Andie’s voice sounded like her vocal cords were made out of scrap metal, and that’s kinda how it felt too. “I’m sick.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” her friend answered. Andie could tell by the sound of her voice that Kiki was concerned as well as horrified. “I’ve never heard anything so repulsive in my entire life. I almost joined you.”
“Oh, Kiki.” Andie coughed a little and almost cried when another wave of dry heaves hit. “I can’t get sick right now. There is too much to do. How did this happen?” She knew she sounded like a whiny brat, but this was her BFF, the only person in the world she could trust not to judge her, no matter what mood she was in.
“Ofcourseyou got sick,” Kiki said with compassionate exasperation. “You push yourself from sunup to sundown and just told me you’re not eating. What did you think your immune system was going to do under those conditions, get stronger?”
“No, I guess you’re right.” Andie finally felt strong enough to stand and pushed cautiously to her feet. “I need to brush my teeth and take a nap. Maybe it’s just exhaustion and I’ll feel better tonight.”
“Maybe.” But Kiki didn’t sound convinced. Andie looked at her hollowed-out cheeks and ghostly complexion as she shakily put paste on her toothbrush and brought it to her mouth. Then her bestie uttered the one sentence that made Andie’s misery complete.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were pregnant.”
Chapter 6
Luke was bent over the engine of his truck, finishing his tune-up, when he heard a car coming down the drive. He didn’t bother looking. He’d find out who had come calling soon enough, and he needed to get this done so he could move on to the next item on his list. Ever since he started helping out at Andie’s, his schedule had become tight as a drum with not a minute to spare in his day. So, he hoped to hell this wasn’t a social call, because the last thing he had time for was a chat.
“Hey.” If the Queen of England would have come to visit, he’d have been less surprised than he was to see Andie leaning against the fender of his truck.
“Hey,” he answered her, straightening up and wiping some of the grime from his hands with an old rag. “You okay?” he asked when he saw the pale and stricken look on her face. “You need help with something?” As she continued to stand there and stare at him without speaking, Luke started to get nervous. “Look, Andie, you gotta talk to me. Tell me something, because you’re kinda freaking me out with the zombie impression here. Where’s Logan? Did something happen to my kid?” he asked as the thought of Logan in jeopardy made his stomach knot with dread.
“No. Logan’s fine.” At last, she spoke. But when she failed to elaborate, Luke didn’t know what to do.
She looks scared, he thought,scared and alone and a little bit rundown. For the hundredth time, he wanted to kick his own ass for blowing things with this woman. He wanted nothing more in that moment than to wrap his arms around her and hold her until whatever had caused that look on her face went away. But he couldn’t. He was sure that bridge was burned, and there was no one to blame for that but himself.
“Um.” Andie opened her mouth to say something then thought better of it, apparently, because she closed it again with a decisive shake of her head. Instead, she fished some tissue out of her purse and handed it to him without an explanation.
Luke eyed her with one eyebrow raised but took what she offered. The Kleenex unfolded in the palm of his hand to reveal a white stick with a tiny window on it that hadPregnanton one side of that window andNot Pregnanton the other.
“Holy shit.” The window that readPregnanthad a bright blue and a bright pink stripe in it.
“That’s what I said.”
Luke lifted his gaze from the life-changing stick in his hand to the woman who was carrying his child.
