“Where’ve you been all day?” Grandma asked, while Maddie was hanging up her cape.
She told her Rex was back. “I tried to see him, but can’t until tomorrow.”
Grandma scurried closer as if they were in a castle and Maddie wouldn’t hear her.
“Will you tell him about the baby when you see him?”
“Not unless it’s the right time. First, I want to see how he is.” She wove around Grandma and went to the stove, where she started scooping chowder into a bowl.
Grandma scurried again. “Well, you’d better hurry up, or he won’t know until he meets you in the department of labor.” The “department of labor” was Grandma’s favorite term for the maternity section of the hospital.
Because she’d barely eaten that day, Maddie devoured her supper, for which the baby seemed pleased. Grandma suggested that she had a fisherman growing inside her.
Stephen would have laughed if he had been there. Maddie sighed, already missing her dad.
After they were done with supper, she wanted to be alone. “Time for me to go into my room and read another book my father ordered. I’m taking notes so I might be halfway helpful to our customers.”
Grandma looked at her. “Don’t forget to read kids’ books, too.”
“I won’t. Thanks.”
Thirty minutes later, she was curled up in bed, reading a little-known but gripping mystery. She became so entrenched in the story that when her phone rang, she nearly shot up off the bed, as if the villain from the novel had snuck into the cottage.
Then realizing the call might be from Rex, she grabbed the phone.
“Hi, Mom,” said the happiest voice that Maddie knew. “Whatcha doing?”
And Maddie knew the time had come to tell her son about the “baby-and-Rex” news.
“Holy crap!” Rafe yowled.
Maddie laughed. “That’s one way of putting it. Though you might want to change your college lexicon when he or she is here. At least until the teenage years.”
“Sure, Mom. But wow. This is amazing.”
Maddie agreed. “I hope Rex feels the same when I finally get to tell him.” Then she filled Rafe in on Rex having been granted his “walking papers” and being back on the island though apparently he wasn’t walking much, if at all.
“So he doesn’t know yet?”
“Not yet. I hope to tell him tomorrow.”
“Wow,” her son said again.
Maddie laughed. “But enough about me. What about you? Has spring training started yet?”
“Tomorrow. It’ll be fun. But the truth is, I’d rather be there helping Joe. And you, too, especially now.”
“I’m fine, honey. I saw the doctor today, and she agreed. So please don’t worry. What’s important is that you enjoy these last weeks at Amherst. Not to mention that your team depends on you.”
“We depend on every one of us. Speaking of which, I only had a chance to make four baskets for the bookshop. Sorry. I’ll do better once I’m there.”
“Don’t worry about that, either. Grandma’s working up a storm.”
“Will she be able to come with you to graduation? Will Rex come, too?”
At least he hadn’t asked if she wanted to marry Rex. Some things about his generation were far more sensible than those that came before.
“I don’t know, honey. We’ll have to see how things pan out.” She made sure she was smiling when she said it because she’d always believed facial expressions could be interpreted over the phone. Then she had a grim thought.
