She padded into the room in bare feet, while Ned was still stirring one last pot on the stovetop. She was staring down at the horizontally folded paper card in her hand. Ned caught the image of an off-white upside down crane in stark angles against a blue background, and then Nancy folded herself into one of the dining room chairs, one strand of her hair having escaped her pontail and falling forward into her eyes. She pushed it away absently.
"So who's the card from?" He nodded in its direction. "I didn't recognize the name."
The ghost of a smile crossed her lips at that. "Midori Nakamura," she replied. "I went to her wedding, over in Japan."
"That was..." He made a vague gesture, and she nodded.
"Yeah, before." Neither of them needed any further description. "I've sent her a few cards since then, and she was just catching me up on a few things. She wants me to do her a favor."
"Pretty card." He nodded at it.
"Yeah, she designed it," Nancy said absently. "Her little sister is spending a year at a college in Chicago and she wondered if I could just be a friendly face for her. Mari is a little sweetheart."
Ned raised an eyebrow. "So... she's only just started."
"Yeah. Midori can't find the address she had for her, but it shouldn't be too hard to find out."
"Not for a PI."
"And an FBI agent." Nancy smiled.
--
I ought to buy these by the gross
Nancy smiled at the drugstore clerk as she placed her purchases on the counter. A bag of plain M&Ms, an oversized pack of chewing gum, a top of the line pregnancy test.
She felt sick and trembly inside at the sight of it. Heisenberg uncertainty. If she knew, it would no longer be; if she didn't know...
But she had to know.
They had been back from Paris for three weeks. No spotting, no cramps, but this had happened before. She had never waited the entire week, though; and for that she felt a glimmer of hope. She had always jumped the gun, the first missed hour, missed day, but now she was being thorough, not wanting to waste her energy, even though she knew what restaurant she'd want to take him to, what dress she would want to wear, what lingerie she would want to wear after she'd told him. She had known that since the first disappointed time after. The first time she had felt her own true letdown, not the bitter taste of his filtering through her.
Nancy wasn't that much older than the majority of the kids in the bread shop. Its location on the edge of campus guaranteed a bustling trade in hurried college students, all in bright fleece pullovers and expanse of stonewashed denim. Nancy spotted Mari already seated at a window table, and she maneuvered through the chattering line, the brown bag of candy in her hand.
"Hey," Nancy said, and flashed Mari a smile. She looked like she needed it. "You all right? If this is a bad time...?"
"No, no," Mari said, her English flawless. She waved a hand and gestured Nancy into a seat, her eyes glimmering briefly at the sight of the bag of M&Ms Nancy tossed onto the table. "Dessert first?"
Mari's hair was swept back into a no-nonsense ponytail, the fringe of her bangs just brushing the tops of her tortoiseshell glasses. She looked at home in the shop, just as she had in her parents' home back in Japan the last time Nancy had seen her. She was wearing a black ribbed turtleneck with pale khaki corduroys and a pair of weatherbeaten cowboy boots that Bess would have killed for. Her brightly colored knit scarf still hung around her neck, and she toyed with the end of it.
"I've never been here before, should we just skip straight to dessert?" Nancy smiled warmly at Mari, dropping her purse to the floor on the other side of her chair. She studied Mari's constantly shifting gaze, but the focus of her attention was always meaningless and brief.
"They have good food, if you're hungry," Mari said, and her shoulders slumped a little.
"You're not?" Nancy said. "I can just grab something and we could go sit in the park or whatever. I think there's one near here." A small pile of shredded napkin stood in front of Mari's entwined fingers. "But you should eat."
"Yeah."
Despite her agreement, Mari picked at her food, rearranging the salad on her plate into carefully piled stacks. "So Midori asked you to check on me?"
"She just knew you might need a friend," Nancy replied. "I know it's lonely to go somewhere for this long and not have anyone familiar."
"I have some friends here I met online," Mari replied, pushing her glasses up on her nose. "Not that I don't appreciate it. Your husband escaped college alive, didn't he?"
Nancy chuckled. "Barely. I think he was playing every major sport they offered, running his frat house..." But Nancy had only seen his graduation through pictures displayed at her in-laws', had seen his diploma already in its frame. She hadn't been there in person, to see it happen. A lump rose in her throat.
"And that's not the same guy you were with when you came for Dori's wedding."
Nancy shook her head quickly. "Well, I was with him, but that guy was Mick. He and I are... were old friends."
Mari smiled and looked away, her eyes hidden by the reflection in her glasses. "Old friends."
"So, do you have a boyfriend back in Japan you're pining over while you're here?"
Mari shook her head just as quickly as Nancy had at the mention of Mick. "No, no boyfriend," she replied, then took a long breath. "No boyfriend. How long have you been married?"
"Eleven months," Nancy replied. Give or take five and a half years.
"You two must not have gotten hitched for a baby," Mari said. "I think Midori would have made a visit if you'd had one. Seems like her friends are having baby showers every other week."
A smile curved her lips, at the thought of the bag waiting for her in the car, but it trembled at the end. "We didn't get married because we were pregnant," Nancy replied. "We really want to have a baby, though. And we've thought about adopting, really hard, so if Midori has any friends who aren't enthused..."
"You'd take a non-Caucasian?"
"I've already had Ned looking around. The adoption laws are so strict here, and it's not like we've even been trying that long... maybe one of these times he'll come back from a business trip with a little baby for us."
"He goes on business trips a lot?"
"Not so much, anymore," Nancy replied. "For a while I would barely have a week with him before he'd be gone again..."
--
"She'd answer my questions," Nancy said. "It wasn't that. But she didn't want to volunteer anything."
"It's not like you're her best friend," George replied. "I mean, that would be like... I don't know, if Ned had a cousin and you were trying to get her to open up to you..."
"I've already done that," Nancy laughed. "Midori was just worried about her. Mari and her best friend back home haven't gotten to talk that much, and I guess with Ken away on a business trip, she just has too much spare time to worry about things."
George laughed. "She doesn't have a baby yet either, does she."
"No, she's doing a lot of painting though," Nancy said. Just then the timer went off, startling her. "Time's up," she said. "Wish me luck."
"Good luck, Nan."
Thirty minutes later Ned unlocked the door and stepped inside, tie hanging, briefcase dangling, hair mussed, five o'clock shadow. Nancy swallowed, smoothed her hand down the front of the glittering crimson gown, and stood. She watched his eyes light as his gaze slid up her silhouette.
"Let's go out tonight."
He opened his mouth to protest, but the look in her eyes changed his mind.
--
"How long?"
The waiter brought the champagne, chilled in a silver bucket of ice, and Ned cast a distracted glance in its direction. "No, no, I'm sorry, we'll take it with us when we leave. You can't have it any more, right?" he asked, his eyes glowing in wonder.
"Right," she murmured back, reaching out to thread her fingers through his. "While we were in Paris, so it'll be..."
"June," Ned ticked off with her. "And you're sure? Blue dots or pluses or whatever?"
She nodded. "Blue dots or pluses or whatever, I even took it twice."
"Does your dad know?"
"You're the first one," Nancy replied. He laughed, and Nancy found it infectious, his hand warm in hers.
"Congratulations," the waiter said.
"Oh man, oh man..."
--
The delicate lace and silk would have to wait. Edith and James were out, but Carson and Iris were home; on the way to their place, Nancy called Hannah, and left a message on her answering machine to call back.
"Are you--are you still going to be all right with poker night?"
"If the girls can come along," Nancy replied. "Even moreso now. If you'll let me redo the study." She smoothed his tie with her palm, her eyes glowing, the light gleaming from the curves under the dress, and Ned forced himself to pay attention to the road.
"Anything you want," he replied. Smoke grey eyelids, lacquered fingernails, and he suddenly wished he had wanted to wait to tell her parents.
"We're going to have a baby," he breathed.
The child would be spoiled beyond belief, only or perhaps just first grandchild of both their parents, because Paul's child strictly speaking didn't count. Nancy hefted the bottle of champagne as Ned pulled into the Drews' driveway.
"We're going to need a new car," Nancy said, turning to Ned. "One with more than two seats."
"Are we going out?" Carson called from the doorway. "I would have pulled my tux out of cold storage if you'd told me."
--
"Promise me you won't trade in my Jag."
"Promise," Ned murmured into her skin as she tugged his shirt out of his pants and set her fingers to unbuttoning it. He reached behind her, fingers tangling in her hair, his mouth warm and tasting of champagne, and she closed her eyes. "You're not sore or anything, right?"
"Not except for the usual reasons," she returned, her smile broadening into a grin. "I have this perfect little..."
"In a minute," Ned replied, cutting her off, his kiss insistent. "Give me five minutes. Then you can wear whatever the hell you want, what the hell is this thing fastened with..."
He kissed her neck as he wrestled with the closure of her dress, and after a few breathless seconds she shoved him back. "No, you had your chance..."
He dropped to his knees and gathered the hem of her gown in his hands, and she leaned over, pushed his hands away. "Stay on your knees though," she requested, her eyes gleaming. Then she grabbed a plastic bag and vanished into the bathroom.
He wasn't on his knees when she returned. He was sitting up in bed, a bubbling flute of champagne at his elbow, and his eyes traced her every curve with reverence. She had pulled the sheer robe closed over the silk and slid into bed, on her knees, her eyes soft. He reached out and cupped her face in his hands.
"I love you," he whispered. "Not because," and he ran his fingertips light with wonder around her belly button, his gaze awed.
"You want this."
It wasn't a question, but his eyes met hers, and she nodded. "I do," she replied, "and I love you so much and I want to make you happy..."
"You make me happy every morning you wake up next to me," he insisted, stretching out at her side, his hand still running a light caress over her skin. "I told you, even if we had never..."
"But we have," she said, reaching up to take his face in her hands, and he leaned over to meet the kiss she gave him. She ran her hands over his hair, sighing.
"I guess now I'll have to stop seeing all those other girlfriends," he mumbled into her skin, through his smile.
"Or you'll never have another child, not even this one," she returned, running her fingertips over his ears, his cheeks, his lips. "In eight months we'll be lucky to get two hours' sleep in a row," she murmured. "And here you are trying to waste time we could be asleep."
"Darling, this is never a waste," Ned replied, trailing kisses down the side of her face. "But if you need me to convince you..."
--
Ned had the time at work to forward her his more interesting junk mail, complete with reader commentary. He said it was out of boredom, but she knew it was because he liked to hear her repeat what he'd written and dissolve into paroxysms of laughter at the dinner table.
She'd almost dismissed one as spam, then thought maybe it was one of his pointed replies; an unfamiliar email address, subject line of hi. She clicked it.
Five minutes later she called Ned's private line. "Mind if we have a guest for dinner tonight?"
--
Mari was dressed more conservatively this time, in a pale green angora sweater and heathered tweed pants, thick-soled black shoes on her feet, her hair in a rhinestone clip. She was even wearing contacts instead of her usual glasses, but Nancy thought maybe they were bothering her. Her gaze still wouldn't center on any one thing, and she appeared more agitated than she had at their lunch date.
Nancy had no doubt that Ned had told everyone in his entire office, anyone he'd had incidental contact with over the past twenty-four hours, security guards and coffee servers and meter readers, business contacts overseas, anyone who could listen. He was still bubbling over with it, still inwardly lit by the knowledge. Even though the two of them could maintain a hushed, sporadic conversation over a meal with no hurt feelings, he filled the space Mari left empty with stories about his job, his workmates, guys who came to their poker nights. Somewhere in there Mari asked if she could come, showing the first glimmer of interest Nancy had caught the entire night; Ned agreed readily, and Nancy couldn't remember the last time someone had fallen into the water garden or instigated a call to the police, so she didn't think Midori or Mari's overprotective parents would mind. Especially if they never knew.
Once he volunteered to do the dishes Nancy led Mari on a tour of their house, pausing at the door of the nursery. She hadn't look in since she'd known. She showed Mari the pale walls, the waiting crib, no longer tangible reminders placed in their house to rub in her failure.
"I just found out last night," she said, not sure why she was telling Mari when she hadn't even told Midori yet. "We're going to have a baby."
"Oh," Mari said, drawing her gaze with an effort from a stuffed animal, back to Nancy's face. "No wonder Ned seemed..."
"High, right?" Nancy completed with a giggle.
"Yeah, actually," Mari said. "Congratulations. I'm happy for you."
"We even..." Nancy looked down at her feet. "Let me find some shoes and I'll show you."
Ned's silhouette was in the kitchen window as Nancy and Mari walked out in the backyard, past the bare etchings of trees, to the enclosed garden. The glow of the lamps was soft, and Mari looked younger and frightened in their light. Nancy pointed out a few of the more beautiful specimens Ned had procured for her, and Mari nodded appreciately, then sat down on the bench at the back. The soles of her shoes dragged in the sand.
"Do you know Japanese?" Mari asked suddenly.
"Hai," Nancy replied.
"Enough to hold a conversation with me in it?"
"I probably could," Nancy said. "I might be a little rusty. Is something wrong?"
Mari muttered her sister's name, then unwrapped the scarf from around her neck, curled it in an unsteady coil and placed it next to her. "What about Ned, does he know any?"
"He has some friends who do," Nancy said, replying to Mari's barely audible question, but sensing it was the wrong answer, she continued. "He doesn't know quite as much as I do, but he's getting better. He knows a lot of different ones. German, French, Mandarin..."
Mari's fingers curved around the end of the bench, knuckles white with tension. Nancy's voice faded, to be replaced by the burbling of the aerator, the imperceptible sound of the goldfish, Mari's misting eyes following their fiery trails.
"I'm pregnant too," Mari said, and gasped back a sob.
--
He had blond hair and green eyes, startling green, cat-eye green. Mari had come over early for orientation and he had been one of the guides, an upperclassman, doing community service for his frat or something, she wasn't sure if she knew that or if she just wanted to believe it. Mari was young for her year, inexperienced, and she'd never even had a boyfriend; it was so unbelievable, that her friendship with this boy had deepened into something like safety. Mari was lonely and she had found something that felt like home. She spoke of sparks and lightning and fireflies and stars, and Nancy remembered.
But it was in the past now; Mari had missed her second period and visited the student health center and was given the impossible results, antiseptic but surely impossible, surely the golden boy had not done this. Surely he had not.
Mari wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. "I called Midori last night and told her," Mari confessed. "We can't tell my parents. There's no way."
"Did Midori tell you to tell me?"
Mari nodded, her face red and wet. "There are clinics here," Mari said. "Midori said if I told you that you could help me find one."
And Nancy realized. Mari was asking her to help her kill the baby.
She looked away, and her stomach lurched. "Which frat was it?"
Mari shrugged. "It was always dark, and besides, he isn't going to know about this. I'm not going to tell him." Her glance at Nancy was a warning against pursuing it.
"Do you have-health insurance or anything? Because what you're talking about, it costs money--"
"Midori will send money," Mari said calmly. "I'll pay her back."
"When?"
"She'll have it to me Thursday." Mari pulled a tissue out of her pocket and wiped her wet cheeks, then kept the tissue clenched in her palm. Nancy looked her over again. She was petite, at least a head shorter than Nancy, her hips were in proportion with the rest of her frame. Every now and then she saw flashes of the girl Mari had been when she had fallen in love, but for the rest of it, it was desolate and heartbroken and far too close to how Nancy had been during the years she and Ned had spent apart.
Nancy hooked an arm over her shoulder. "Oh, Mari, I'm so sorry," she managed, and Mari burst into a fresh bout of tears.
The two of them sat like that for a long while, and once Mari had dissolved into sporadic sniffling she knelt on her knees and watched the goldfish propel themselves around the pool. "What made you build this place?"
"Ned gave it to me," Nancy said. "As a reminder of when we found each other again. It was last January, in Hong Kong. This garden is a bit like that one."
"You found him in a garden?"
"No, but it would have been a bit difficult to build a restaurant in the backyard." Nancy smiled.
"How do you mean, found him?" Mari leaned back to see Nancy, hugged her knees to her chest. "Didn't you two know each other when you came over for Midori's wedding?"
"It's a long story," Nancy began, looking down at her hands.
--
Ned was watching some dimly lit crime drama when Nancy and Mari came back into the house. "Nice garden," Mari said to Ned, reaching up to adjust her glasses before she remembered she wasn't wearing them.
"Thanks," Ned said easily, standing in his stockinged feet. "Come over for dinner again sometime. And we'll still see you for poker night?"
Mari dipped her head. "Okay," she said. "Nice to meet you."
The television was dim, her nightgown crumpled and discarded on the floor, a few hours later, as she idly trailed her fingertips over Ned's bare, glistening chest. He had an arm curled around her back to rest protectively on her stomach.
"She's so afraid," Nancy murmured, her head cradled against his shoulder.
"I hope he wasn't an Omega Chi," Ned said. Nancy craned his head back to look at him. "I know that's not the most important part of the story, but still..."
"Yeah," Nancy agreed, nestling back against him.
"I can't believe she wants to," Ned began, his fingers stroking her skin, and he found himself unable to finish. "After how long it's taken us."
"But she can't take a baby back home," Nancy said. "What a souvenier. A little cloth flag, some interesting clothes, and a half-American child."
"Full American, if she gave birth here."
"But she won't, and it's moot," Nancy said, turning her head to plant a kiss on his chest. "She made me promise to go with her to one of those... places."
"I wish you wouldn't," Ned said softly.
"She doesn't believe the way we do," Nancy murmured, but he put his palm on her face and tilted her to meet his eyes.
"So you'd let her do this?"
"What other choice do I have?" Nancy murmured.
Ned reached for the phone. "I have one," he said.
--
"We have an appointment for Friday," Nancy said into the receiver. "I called a friend. We can have lunch before we go."
"Thanks for doing this," Mari replied. "But I don't think I'm going to want to eat."
"I'll eat, then," Nancy said. "We're both eating for two now. But I wanted to ask you something, anyway."
--
"You were thinking about it, weren't you," Nancy said, then crunched down on another bite of her sandwich. "That's why you asked if Ned and I knew any Japanese."
Mari shrugged halfheartedly. "But you have your baby," she said. "It just didn't work out."
"If you carried the baby to term, when would you have it? Before the end of the school year?"
"Yeah," Mari said, tracing the rim of her teacup with her finger.
"And a child born here is an American citizen. And if you would just think about this..."
Mari looked up. "But you made an appointment for us to go somewhere--"
Nancy shook her head. "Not yet," she replied. "And if you think about this, and you don't want to do it, in a week, then as much as I hate the idea I will make you a real appointment and we will go somewhere and do this. I think Ned might bodily restrain me, because my skin crawls at the thought of going into a clinic like that."
Mari was silent for a minute. "You'd do this," she said. "You barely know me."
"You loved him, didn't you."
Mari blinked, and a tear trailed hot down her face. "Yes," she said, her voice trembling.
"Would you keep the baby?"
Mari shook her head stubbornly. "I can't," she said. "My parents--"
"If you weren't about to go home to your parents."
"I'm too young for this," Mari said. "I can't--I can't stay in school and take care of a baby and deal with all this, and, it's not like it's some actual little person I can hold in my arms."
"But it will be," Nancy said.
"But I can do this now, this one thing, and I wouldn't have to go see a doctor or grow out of my clothes or be here with absolutely no one I can go to about this. I think Midori would fly over here and see me, but I don't want to do this to her. I don't want to do this to anyone." Mari's fists slid wetly over her cheeks. "You just don't understand."
"My friend Bess still has maternity clothes," Nancy said. "She's about your size. And if you don't like them, well, you and I can go on a shopping spree one weekend and buy the most glamorous outfits you've ever seen. And we can go to doctor's appointments together."
"I couldn't pay for all that," Mari said in a tiny voice.
"Ned and I would pay for it," Nancy said. "I've already talked to him about it."
"He knows I'm pregnant?" The look on Mari's face was stricken.
"He's my husband," Nancy said. "And I think he'd notice if I brought home a child who looked nothing like him, and demand a good explanation."
"Does he think I'm a whore?"
The fear and horror in Mari's voice was palpable. Nancy shook her head. "He doesn't think that. He didn't think that. He's just concerned about you, and he just, he and I just want you to know there's another way out besides doing this."
Mari took a deep, gulping breath. "Would you--would you promise to teach it Japanese?"
Nancy's lunch was stretching into an early afternoon off as she ushered Mari into April Callahan's office. Nancy and Mari were barely dressed in thin paper gowns as April greeted them, still looking over Nancy's last chart.
"I told April--Dr Callahan--that you're a friend of the family," Nancy explained, as April smiled and extended a hand. "And we just want to make sure you're okay."
"You're here on a student visa?" April asked. Mari darted a glance at Nancy, then nodded. "That's all right, since Nancy's volunteered to put herself down as your financial reference," April said.
"But you won't--you won't tell my parents, right?"
"Not unless you wanted us to," April replied.
--
Mari's arms were wrapped tight around her torso. "I have to think about this," she muttered.
"It's all right," Nancy said.
"But you promise that you'll go with me if that's what I still want to do," Mari said, darting a glance over at her.
Nancy looked down at her shoes. "If that's what you want," she agreed dully, kicking at a stone.
"This is my body we're talking about."
"I know. And I know it's hard, and that you're afraid people will see you and laugh, that he will see you and laugh, that they will think you just gave it up--"
Mari laughed harshly. "Yeah, okay, you can stop now."
"You could come hang out with Ned and me," Nancy said. "Whenever you wanted. Every weekend. I don't know how many close friends you have here, if you're comfortable with them. I know sometimes Midori was so homesick she could barely stand it sometimes when she was here."
Mari nodded. "I like the garden," she said, running her fingers through her ponytail. "Would I be welcome even if I did decide that I don't want to carry to term, that I don't want to have the baby?"
Nancy swallowed. "Yeah," she said weakly.
"Would you look at me and think I was a murderer?"
Nancy shook her head. "I'm not you. I'm not going to make this decision for you. I'm just giving you an option."
They stopped at the entrance to Mari's dorm. "Okay," Mari said. "I'll e-mail you."
--
White scrolled in silver, rich paper, square box trimmed in pink ribbon. She didn't know why she was irritated by it. Didn't know why she had even peeked into the nursery, to see the box there on the changing table. Had to have been him.
After a dinner featuring carrots as its redeeming value, Nancy was in bed with him. He murmured something into the skin of her stomach and Nancy's anger boiled over, and she reached down and took his chin in her hands, forced his head back so she could look into his eyes.
"Hey," she said. "I'm not just the wrapping paper now."
He smiled, soft and slow. "What did you think I was saying? Because I know it sure as hell wasn't appropriate to anyone but you."
She turned away, and he raised himself back to the pillows, stretched out by her side. "Hey," he murmured, reaching over to run his fingertips over her face.
She kept her gaze away from his. "I saw the present," she said.
He drew a breath, then a smile crept over his face. "You didn't open it, did you."
"No." She wiped tears off her cheeks. "For the baby."
"For our anniversary," he corrected her, leaning down to kiss the tears off her skin. "For you. For you, Nan, not the month-old in your belly."
Her brows raised, she turned back toward him, and his mouth closed over hers, soft deep kisses. He tangled his fingers in her hair and she groaned something inaudible, circling her arms around him.
"Promise?" she murmured, breathless, and he laughed into her neck.
"I love you," she whispered, and drew a shuddering breath. When she felt his eyes on her she gave him a small smile.
"That's better," he murmured.
--
Mari sensed the hush in the crowd and looked up to see Ned at the door, holding it open for Nancy. They looked like they might have just come from a fashion shoot, Ned in a navy sweater and khaki corduroys, Nancy in a soft red tunic-length sweater that emphasized the still slender lines of her body and a pair of tailored black slacks. Mari made another notation in her notebook after she had signaled to them, and they took a seat across from her.
"Did you want to talk?" Nancy asked first. "Because if you did, and it's going to take a while, well..."
The air was crowded with the shouts of the kitchen crew, the shrieks of children from the ball pit. They were too close to campus to have a fast food joint all to themselves.
Mari smiled. "I'm a poor college student," she said. "Dollar menu is my friend."
Ned darted a glance around. "We're taking you out," he announced. "There's a place I know not far from here where we could actually hear each other."
Once they were settled in a curtained booth and the waitress had delivered the requested pot of tea, Mari appeared to visibly relax. She had left her bookbag in the car and looked calmer.
"If I... if we do this," she began, and neither of them had to ask what she was talking about. "Will you teach my child Japanese?"
Nancy nodded. "Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, Mandarin, Russian, German, a bit of Portuguese, whatever you want. Between us we could probably teach just about anything."
Mari looked down at her knitted fingers. "What about school? College?"
"There are good schools around here," Ned began. "We're probably going to send our own child to a private school, and then anywhere for college."
"Domestic?"
Ned shrugged. "Domestic, international, wherever. I have enough money set aside for us to do that. And If you let us adopt your child, I won't treat it any differently than one we had ourselves."
"Can I come visit?"
"Of course you can," Nancy said, leaning forward. "Of course. You, Midori, whoever wants. I'd never say you couldn't do that."
Mari smiled nervously. "So where do we start?" she asked.
--
Carson looked up from the papers spread on his study desk. "He has to sign a standard release," Nancy's father said.
Nancy slipped into her favorite chair, across from him, and propped her chin on her hand. "I don't even know who the father is," she replied. "He's probably still at school with her, and I have a vague idea of what he looks like, but that's it. And this, well... she might just change her mind."
"Not legally," he replied. "She's gone too far now, the baby has to be carried to term. But if she wants you to have it, if she's as terrified of her parents' opinion as you make her sound..."
Nancy smiled, softly. "I know I would have been afraid to tell you," she said. "But the way Mari feels about her parents, she may as well have killed somebody. They'd never let her live with it."
"It?" Carson asked.
"The shame of keeping a child born out of wedlock."
Carson nodded slowly. "You think I would have been that bad?"
Nancy steepled her fingers. "No," she said, cautiously. "Disappointed in me, maybe. Disappointed in Ned. Not that I think you would have felt any differently seven years ago, if a child had been involved."
Carson looked down at his desk, the ghost of a smile on his face. "You weren't ready," he replied. "And I wasn't ready. Not to give my baby girl away. I would have had it invalidated, annulled, something, but if you had been pregnant..."
Nancy waved her hand, dismissing the thought. They sat, looking across at each other, quiet for a moment.
"I'll draw up the papers," Carson said, finally. "Do this by the letter, Nancy. Don't leave any loopholes for him later."
"I won't."
--
Tracy leaned down and retied her shoe, her brown hair up and away from her face in a high smooth ponytail. Her outfit was an exercise in elaborate casual, flared jeans and smooth sorority t-shirt layered over a tank top, temporary tattoo carefully inked onto the small of her back, small-lensed tortoiseshell glasses resting on her nose. She flipped through a few of her papers. So far she had twenty signed releases, five hastily-scribbled phone numbers, and a sprinkling of freckles on her bare arms from trudging down fraternity row. His was the third house she would hit, and likely the last; she couldn't wait to go home and scrub off the imagined stares of the boys.
A charming smile and a wink had won her Shelton's room number. He lived in a single on the third floor. She ran into a crowd of guys just outside the lounge door, and took the time to sell them. Wet t-shirt contest in two weeks at the Sigma house, due to some interesting twists on the game the judges would need to sign releases, and as many judges could sign up for the contest and a free six-pack as wanted. They always signed without reading. When she asked about Shelton, one of them volunteered to take her down the hall to his room, and Tracy ended up with a sixth phone number before she finally was able to knock on his door.
"You're not talking, like, drugs or anything, right?" he asked after she'd pitched him on it.
Tracy laughed. "Nothing like that," she said. "This is a standard release form."
She took the copy out of the manila envelope. His copy. With his name in bold type, red X's already inked in place. "You just need to sign here, and you'll be free. To judge for us," she said, smiling encouragingly.
"And you'll be there, right?" He smiled up at her, her curves already scrutinized.
"Sure," she replied easily. "You really should read it."
"I trust you," he said, scrawling his signature on the marked lines.
"Two weeks?"
"Barring bad weather," she replied. "I'm going to leave a copy with you."
He shrugged. "That's fine," he said. "Are you guys even pretending it's helping out a charity?"
"Charity in that some of the sisters need it," Tracy replied immediately, her smile fixed in place. "You have a good day, all right?"
"I definitely will now."
--
"How many people are going to be here?"
Nancy started counting on her fingers. "My father, Iris, Ned's mother and father, my aunt Eloise, you, me, and Ned. So eight. And no need for a kids' table, yet." She smiled.
"I'm a little nervous," Mari said.
Nancy took some pie shells out of the freezer to start defrosting. "We don't have to tell them today," she said.
Mari was spending her Thanksgiving break with Nancy and Ned. Nancy's parents, of course, knew about the adoption, but Eloise and Ned's parents did not. Thanksgiving would be ideal, almost ironically so, for such an announcement. This wouldn't be Nancy and Ned's first Thanksgiving together, but it would be the first during which she cooked for this many.
Ned's sole responsibility was the turkey. Nancy was wary of frying it whole, she didn't have the time to spend babysitting it, and she was pretty sure he couldn't mess it up, and had teased him about that. Ned had taken the ribbing good-naturedly but had promised to Mari that he would make dinner for her sometime over the break, something not involving a leftover-turkey sandwich, so that she could judge his culinary talents for herself.
While they were grocery shopping Mari had asked Nancy about it, and Nancy had explained how Ned's cooking skills had been dismal before he had attended a French cooking school with her. Under cover, of course, while they had been tracking down a spy selling secrets.
"It must have been recently, if you're still teasing him about it," Mari commented.
Eight years ago, she realized. Couldn't have been that long.
The food was enough to feed an army, and Ned helped them bring in groceries between watching the pregame show. Mari was shocked at it all, all the dishes Nancy was planning to make.
"I thought you said eight, not eighty," she said.
"This is Thanksgiving," Nancy said. "We eat until we feel like we're going to explode, and do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day, until we're sick of leftovers."
Carson arrived first, with Iris and his sister Eloise. Eloise had a few more streaks of gray than Nancy remembered, but she was still teaching up in New York state. She hugged Nancy and congratulated her on the news that she would finally have a grandchild to spoil as she had her niece.
"It's been too long since you were small, Nancy," Eloise said fondly. "Back when a box of Barbies could entertain you for hours."
Nancy introduced Mari as the sister of her friend Midori, spending a year studying at the University of Chicago. The look in Eloise's eye made Nancy believe that Carson had made some preemptive explanation of her announcement, but Eloise greeted her warmly, without making any hint that she already knew. Mari was dressed in a loose white button-down shirt and soft black leggings, her hair in a low ponytail, her pregnancy well disguised.
James and Edith arrived with two bottles, one of wine, one of sparkling grape juice so that Nancy could at least pretend to have a glass. Edith hugged Nancy, gave her a smile, and again it felt like no time had passed at all, even though it had been eight years since Edith had told Nancy that she and James looked forward to having her as a daughter in law.
But everything had changed between.
Ned brought in the turkey and allowed it to rest on a platter while Nancy finished up the last-second things, the vegetables and pies cooling on the bar. He walked up behind her and circled his arms around her waist.
"This time next year..."
This time next year they would need a children's table. Or not, really, the babies wouldn't be anywhere near ready for solid food. His hand rested on her stomach.
"I love you," she whispered.
"Love you too," he replied.
Ned handled it tactfully, but then that was his job. She'd listened to him reassure people before, and these were ones he'd had much practice at reassuring. Mari would have a baby not long before Nancy, and Nancy and Ned were going to adopt the child.
And, gradually, at seeing their families' unabashed happiness over the announcement, Mari began to relax and answer their questions. Her sister would come visit around the time the child was born, she would be staying with Nancy and Ned for the most part, and then Eloise diverted the conversation to a discussion of how Japanese teaching differed from American just before Ned, his father, and his father-in-law adjourned to the living room to watch the game.
The girls gathered around the table to play games and rest up before attempting another round at the feast. Mari had learned card games but not so much about board games, so Nancy raided the ones Hannah had saved for her and pulled out a few of her favorites.
By the end of the evening they had been invited to Ned's parents for dinner and Nancy's parents for lunch, and after the long goodbyes and the shuffling of the various leftovers into the refrigerator, Mari was confused.
"So you do just eat all holiday," she said.
Nancy laughed. "Ned and I are only children," she said. "We don't have any brothers or sisters. So we get spoiled. These children will be the first grandchildren, and they'll be spoiled too."
"Even...?"
Ned nodded. "Even yours," he said. "My mom has been dying for grandkids since the day I left the house."
--
Mari was installed in the guest bedroom, the one decorated in horses, partially because the suite it shared with another bedroom had its own bathroom and partially because it was the farthest they could put her from their own bedroom. They had a spare room downstairs but it didn't have its own bathroom, and Mari wasn't afraid of walking up the stairs. Doing so didn't wind her, not yet.
Nancy took a strange sort of pleasure in showing people to that bedroom, like it was a way of showing that the presents hadn't embarrassed or annoyed her. Stephanie certainly seemed to like it. Mari called it a nostalgic-childhood room, though her own had been done far, far differently. As had Nancy's, in twin beds and sunny yellow comforters and the latest electronic gadgets she could get.
"You can come in here, too," Nancy said, showing Mari the study just across the hall. Nancy and Ned had separate desks and computers, an enormous bookcase that took up a wall and part of two others, the game console where he spent his spare time. The mystery novels Nancy liked to read were lined on the shelves. Agatha Christies, Erle Stanley Gardners, Nero Wolfes. She kept reference books on nearly every subject, psychology texts and poison references. "If you brought your laptop and you have wireless internet access, we have that in the house too."
"I'd be surprised if you didn't," Mari said, gazing around.
--
Nancy was in deep green, off the shoulder, elbow-length ivory gloves, ankle-length skirt. She wore her hair long and straight, the natural soft flip at the end brushing her shoulder blades. Her eyes were bright.
"It's as good a time as any."
She and Ned were attending the Bureau Christmas party. He was wearing a coal-black suit, open to reveal a red silk shirt, his hair gleaming, palm resting on the small of her back.
"Especially if you're not going to see him for another week or two." Ned leaned over and brushed a kiss against her forehead. "Go for it."
Roberts, perhaps due to the champagne punch in his glass, had nothing but congratulations for the two of them. Nancy, her eyes sparkling, had brought him over to Ned to introduce him, and Ned received the requisite pat on the back and knowing look.
When Ned had excused himself to refill Nancy's punch, Agent Roberts turned to her. "I just had a file come across my desk, and if you're going to be out for a while--?" Roberts raised his eyebrows.
"Yeah, it will be a while."
"Maybe you could show this guy some of the ropes before you go on maternity leave. He's a sharp guy, I've talked to his SAC in New Mexico."
Nancy's eyes gleamed. "Replacing me already?"
Roberts laughed. "As though we could. If this guy works out, maybe he could be your partner for a while."
Nancy played with the tips of her gloved fingers. "I thought I was a consultant," she said evenly.
"You still are," he replied. "Still will be. And if you're not open to the idea of a partner, that's fine."
She smiled, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. "Not really," she replied. "It would be unfair to have someone, get close to someone, and then go out on maternity leave indefinitely."
"Probably would," he agreed.
