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“Maya! You’re having twins!”
Maya tried not to laugh, she really did. But it escaped her anyway, in a big gust, when she couldn’t hold it in any longer. She held her belly, and snorted and roared so hard her sides hurt. So hard her eyes watered. It felt good to laugh. Thank God she had an insane kid sister to keep her amused.
“This isn’t funny!” Selene said. “I’m telling you, it’s twins, Maya. Look at the cards!”
Maya glanced at them again, still trembling with laughter, but neither card had any babies on it, much less two of them. She got her laughter under control, gave her sister a gentle hug and said, “I love you, you flaky little weirdo.Twins.” And, laughing some more, she went back to her own room; then, grabbing her shoes, she headed downstairs.
It was good to have a family, even an oddball crew like this—or especially an oddball crew like this. She’d needed a good laugh to snap her out of her well of misery. It was time to take charge of her life again.
She needed things. Baby furniture and clothes, a bigger vehicle, just for starters. She needed to get a nursery ready in this old house. There was so much to be done. So many plans to make.
For the first time she began to allow herself to get a little bit excited about the notion of being a mother. And the image her mother had painted for her, of another little girl in the family, warmed her inside. She missed having little girls running around this old house. She’d been a second mom to her sisters, being the oldest of them.
And now maybe she would have a little girl of her own.
One thing was for sure, this baby would be the most spoiled child in seven counties if Maya’s sisters and mother had anything to say about things. The most protected, too. And the most loved.
She smiled, shaking her head yet again at Selene and her silly notions. But between the two of them, Vidalia and Selene had managed to snap her out of her state of melancholia. There was so much to be done! She’d wasted far too much time already.
CHAPTERFIVE
EIGHT AND A HALF MONTHS LATER…
Sighing, Maya walked, belly first, to the kitchen window, parted the red-checked curtains and stared out at the snowdrifts and blinding white sky. It was crispy cold outside. In here it was warm and fragrant. She had molasses cookies baking in the oven, a nice stew in the slow cooker. No husband to cook for—not that she needed one. No children. Yet. She really was going to be a fantastic mother, she thought, pressing her palms to her expanded belly. And as long as she lived, she would never, ever do anything to embarrass her children. Not ever. And eventually she would prove to this town that a woman could be a single motherandan upstanding citizen. They would accept her into that exclusive club of the respectable and socially acceptable. They would. The back door opened, admitting a rush of frigid wind and bundled bodies. Vidalia stomped the snow off her boots, and whipped off her red-and-white striped scarf and matching hat, an act that set the mass of jet black curls free. She was far too old, Maya thought, to keep her hair so long. Much less dress the way she did. Then again, her mother wasn’t old. Not even fifty yet. Vidalia’s coat came off, revealing skintight designer jeans and a black spandex top. She kept herself in great shape for a woman her age. She had every right to be proud of her looks. If only she wasn’t so determined to be loyal to the memory of her long-dead husband, she might even find love again. God knew the lying, cheating, jerk didn’t deserve her loyalty.
And if she said that out loud, her mother would probably smack her.
“Mmm, molasses cookies, Maya?” Vidalia asked, sniffing the air. “They smell better than a strong man on a hot day.”
“Mother.”
Vidalia shrugged and sent her a wink, her black eyes sparkling. “Still miserable, I see. Just checking.”
“I’m not miserable. I’m tired, and my back is killing me, and I keep getting horrible leg cramps that make me want to claw the flowers off the wallpaper, but I am not the least bit miserable.” Maya went to the oven, opened it and bent to check the cookies, but couldn’t bend very far. Sighing, she gave up and reached for a pot holder.
“Let me get them,” Kara said, hurrying off with her coat and coming forward. Towering over them all, except for Edie, of course, she snatched the pot holders from Maya in spite of Maya’s protests. Kara was too tall for her own good, and her feet were too big, and she was always tripping over them. Kara the Klutz was the nickname bandied around town, but never in front of her sisters—at least, not since the time Mel had overheard it and left the unfortunate speaker with a bloody nose and a split lip.
“Really, Kara, I can manage,” Maya said.
“You should be sitting down with your feet up,” her sister argued.
“Kara’s right, hon.” Vidalia took Maya’s arm and urged her toward a chair. And Maya could only look grimly back at the damp coats hanging on the peg near the door, snowy boots dripping all over the mat underneath them, and then at Kara and whatever mess would come next. With a sigh of resignation, she sat down as her mother instructed, even as Kara got the tray of cookies out, burned her finger, tripped over her foot and sent cookies flying everywhere.
Vidalia pressed her lips together to keep from saying a word, as poor Kara stared helplessly at the cookies falling to the floor. Then she tossed the cookie sheet toward the sink, turned and ran out of the room. Maya heard her feet pounding up the stairs.
She looked at the mess, then at her mother. “What’s wrong with her? She usually laughs it off when she does stuff like that.”
“Kara had a bad day, hon. Or…her latest beau did anyway.” She clicked her tongue. “Poor Billy.”
“Oh, no.” Maya closed her eyes. “What happened to this one?”
“Bus hit him when he was crossing the street.” Vidalia bent to begin picking up the fallen cookies. Her jeans were so tight Maya was amazed the woman could bend at all, but that was her mother. She was nothing if not flexible. “Billy was blaming it on the snowy roads until one of those damned nurses over at General started telling him about Peter and Mike. By the time Kara got to the hospital to see him, he was showing distinct signs of cooling toward her.”
Maya started to get up, but her mother held up a hand to stop her, so she settled back in the chair. “So you think he’s going to dump her?”
“He dumped her before they even finished his CT scan.”
Maya’s lips thinned. “Coward.”
