First Comes Baby Read online

  Her hazel eyes widened. “You never told me.”

  “I didn’t want to upset you.”

  In a near whisper, she asked, “What happened?”

  “They shouted about American imperialists. The mood was ugly.” His bowels tightened at the memory of feeling the barrel of a submachine gun pressed against his head, while his driver fell to his knees and pleaded for his life. They’re going to kill us both, he’d thought with youthful incredulity. This isn’t supposed to happen. Don’t they know I’m trying to help?

  Looking as shocked as if it had just happened, Laurel said, “But they let you go.”

  “I managed to persuade them that I was a renegade American. Antigovernment, a man of the people like they were. My outrage at the conditions in the village I’d just departed helped. They seemed to be having a leadership dispute, and someone won. They finally let us go.”

  He didn’t tell her they’d suggested he stay away. He had always figured the odds of running into the same, ragtag group weren’t high.

  Suddenly, because of Laurel and the baby she carried, none of his odds looked so good anymore.

  “Point is,” he said, “I know what it feels like to have the crap scared out of me. Damn near literally.”

  He’d stunk afterward, as if his body had secreted terror in the form of sweat. That night, he’d stood in a tepid shower and scrubbed until his skin was on fire.

  Laurel shook her head. She’d heard his claim and was denying it. “But not to be helpless. You’ve always had the ability to get yourself out of trouble and you did.”

  What was she saying? That she hadn’t had a chance? Or that she hadn’t taken the one she had?

  “Did you fight?” he asked quietly.

  “I said I don’t want to talk about it.” Her eyes were wide and spooked.

  He felt sick, and was almost sorry he’d raised the subject. “Why haven’t the police ever been able to find that piece of shit? They must have DNA.”

  She’d shrunk, as if the very memory of the attack had made her want to become invisible. “No. He wore a condom, they think. And gloves. So no fingerprints, either.”

  “Are you afraid he’ll come after you?” some instinct made him ask.

  Laurel was quiet for a minute. “For a long time, I was. But…I doubt he knows who I am. He didn’t steal my bag. It got wedged under the car. And…it wasn’t even my car. The papers never printed my name. So I don’t see how he’d know.”

  She was trying to convince herself. Maybe she mostly did believe that. But the victim inside her didn’t. Not entirely.

  “It’s been five years.”

  Laurel nodded.

  “Do the police stay in touch?”

  “I hear from that detective every once in a while. The same guy has raped a couple of other women they know of. Maybe more. If they weren’t hurt quite as bad, they might not have called the police.”

  “Or if they were too scared of him to call.”

  She nodded again, as if that were a given.

  “But the cops still don’t have any fingerprints.”

  Laurel shook her head. “They do have DNA from another rape they think he committed, but apparently he’s never been arrested. They didn’t come up with a match.”

  Caleb didn’t ask if any of the women were able to identify the man. If she would recognize his face. She didn’t want to remember. He’d asked enough for one day.

  After taking a swallow of now-cooling coffee, he said, “I wasn’t thinking. We can do whatever you want today. Visiting Nadia is fine.”

  Head bent, Laurel had been gently rubbing her belly. She looked up, face pale but determined. “No. You’re right. It’s silly not to go anywhere near…” She couldn’t say ‘the garage.’ “It’s like I’ve drawn some kind of artificial line. This block is okay. That one not. Let’s go to the bookstore. And maybe…” she stumbled but caught herself, “maybe even for a walk on the campus. For her sake—” she touched her rounded stomach again “—I’ve got to quit being afraid.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Caleb smiled at her. “You’re a gutsy broad, Woodall.”

  She summoned a weak smile from somewhere. “I know, Manes.”

  THIS WAS WHAT SHE GOT for agreeing so impulsively. Esophagus burning, she sat beside Caleb as he turned west on Forty-fifth and began the climb from University Village to the campus. Her body ached because she was holding herself together so tightly. The baby, echoing her distress, fluttered nonstop.

  When she was driving, she never came this way, though she had with Caleb on occasion. She’d never wanted to give herself away by protesting, even though Forty-fifth went right by the main entrance to the University of Washington and crossed University Avenue—or, in local parlance, the Ave.

  “I wonder if we can get street parking,” she said, in a voice that hit a shrill, panicked note.

  Caleb gave her a sideways glance, but didn’t comment. He obviously knew that she’d been attacked in the parking garage on Fifteenth, the street right before University—and the street where the lot for the bookstore was. From that parking lot, she’d be able to see the entrance to the garage. And—oh, God—she didn’t think she was ready for that.

  He passed Fifteenth and turned left instead on University, joining the slow traffic that had to stop frequently to let people cross. In one way, the Ave hadn’t changed at all—panhandlers plied street corners and on rainy days huddled under covered storefronts and the pedestrians were a mix of students, professors and shoppers. What had changed were the stores. Hole-in-the-wall places that sold cheap imports from India were now cheek by jowl with upscale boutiques.

  “Nicer stores,” she said in surprise.

  “Yup. I led the way,” Caleb said modestly.

  Lord. In her turmoil, she hadn’t even remembered his flagship store was here on the Ave.

  “Wait.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You must be down here all the time! How come you didn’t go to the UW bookstore then?”

  “That’s work. Today’s play.”

  Uh-huh.

  “I do, however, have my very own, guaranteed parking spot behind the store.”

  Buen Viaje—literally, good journey—was on the west side of the street, not, thank goodness, backing on Fifteenth. He circled into the alley behind the store and parked in one of three slots there. Entering through the heavy metal door on the back of the building, they cut through the store so he could say hi. But when Caleb started for the front door Laurel stopped him.

  “It’s amazing in here!”

  “You’ve been…” he shook himself, “no, of course you haven’t.”

  “I did go see your Bellevue store. But it’s different.”

  Caleb shrugged. “Bellevue itself is different.”

  The Eastside was money. Microsoft, Bellevue Square, Lake Washington waterfront. Laurel had been surprised at how ritzy his store there had looked, with high-priced sculptures spotlighted, exquisite tapestries artfully arranged, the store feeling more like an art gallery than the slice of Latin American culture she’d expected.

  This one was a complete contrast. It was like stepping into a bazaar in Santo Domingo or La Paz or any of the other cities Caleb had described so lovingly over the years. The haunting notes of a flute came from unseen speakers. The clerk had the dark, broad face of a Mayan. Shelves were crammed, cases spilled with a wonderful mishmash of everything from Honduran pottery to whistles in the shapes of birds and animals, from gaudy tin ornaments to racks of colorful embroidered purses and tote bags.

  Dazed, she turned to take it all in. Walls were hung with weavings and masks, while one step up from the main room a nook held racks of clothing. Carvings of jaguars, Haitian metal hammered art, a glorious profusion of pottery, extraordinary wood carvings, jewelry…

  “You chose all of this.”

  “Pretty much. Some of it is typical import stuff, some one of a kind. The back room,” he nodded, “has the high
-end stuff.”

  They spent a half hour in the store, with Caleb picking items up and telling her stories about the old woman who wove in a dark hut with only two small windows, the young Haitian man with a resistant strain of TB who made striking sculptures at a feverish pace, determined to have something to leave to support his wife and children if he died, about the cooperative in Momostenango, Guatemala, known for their distinctive wool products.

  He didn’t tell her how the profits had changed the lives of the artisans, but she could imagine wells dug, flocks of goats or chickens, school for the children, medicine when a family member needed it.

  “I’m ashamed that I’ve never come to see your store. I hoped you wouldn’t ask what I thought.”

  “You were sick when I had the grand opening…” He stopped. “Of course you weren’t.”

  “It was silly.”

  “Not silly. You were attacked a few blocks from here. It’s natural that you didn’t want to come.” He nodded toward the door. “Ready?”

  Laurel took a deep breath and nodded.

  The minute they stepped out into the sunshine, a grizzled, graying man eased toward them. “Got a buck for a Vietnam vet?”

  Caleb dug in his pocket and handed over a five. Leaving him saying “Thanks, man,” they turned north toward the bookstore, making their way along the crowded sidewalk.

  Laurel’s senses felt heightened. Smells played like musical notes: the sour, unwashed odor of the homeless man, the spicy fragrance from a Mongolian restaurant, baking bread from a deli, automobile exhaust from the street.

  Voices, snippets of conversation.

  A blonde in a halter top and ragged, low-slung camouflage pants to a coterie of friends: “Oh, my God, and then he said…”

  Impatient: “Mom, I told you!”

  A cluster of young men, arguing as they waited in line at Starbucks: “I tell you, partitioning Iraq…”

  The brush of arms against hers as people hurried past, smiles when people saw her belly, the fire on the faces of a group picketing a store, all sensations and sounds and sights swelled into a symphony in her head.

  There was Bulldog News, where she’d often browsed the magazines and bought coffee, a favorite pizza joint. Businesses she’d heedlessly passed, ones she’d frequented. She hadn’t gone to school at the UW for quite a year, but this was all so familiar.

  She was the one who was different. She didn’t feel anything like the young woman who had joined in passionate debate with other law students while they grabbed Thai takeout or bought espresso or chai tea to get them through study sessions. Now she felt like one of the middle-aged shoppers, a visitor to a strange land, and she didn’t like the sense of not belonging.

  Caleb took her hand when they crossed the street to go into the bookstore, a vast mecca for student and reader that occupied three floors.

  They started together in the middle, where tables held sale books in front and then carefully arranged displays of new titles. Able to lose herself in the books, Laurel hardly noticed when they separated; she knew Caleb’s tastes and where to find him and he knew hers.

  She chose a couple of fantasy novels, then browsed aisles on politics and law and sociology, becoming engrossed in a book that explored the biological roots of moral behavior. She had a bigger stack than she should by the time he reappeared with his arms full.

  “I haven’t even made it upstairs,” she protested.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “You’re always hungry.”

  “I feel like dolmades.”

  “Costa’s has great salads.”

  “And souvlaki.”

  “Oh, fine,” she pretended to grumble before admitting, “This is probably all I can afford anyway.”

  Caleb took their bags to his car while she window-shopped for a block, and then they strolled to Costa’s just north of Forty-fifth.

  As they were going in, a mixed group was leaving. Laurel had barely registered that one of the faces was familiar when the dark-haired woman turned.

  “Laurel? Is that you?” She laughed in delight. “My God! It is! And look at you!”

  Sela Sweeney had been Laurel’s study partner and best friend at the law school. She was also one of the people Laurel had cut off the quickest, when she’d known she couldn’t go back.

  “Sela!”

  The two women hugged and then stepped back to study each other, the others having continued down the street after a few backward glances.

  Skinny in their grad school days, with a mass of unruly dark hair, Sela had become merely slim and chic, with her hair short and stylishly tousled.

  But her wide smile and deep-set, intelligent brown eyes were the same.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “Really good,” Laurel said, and was surprised to realize she was telling the truth. “What about you? Where are you practicing?”

  “I’m a D.A. And damned good.” She indicated Laurel’s stomach. “When are you due?”

  “November. Oh, this is Caleb Manes. Caleb, Sela Sweeney.”

  “I remember Laurel talking about you. Don’t you own Buen Viaje?”

  They talked animatedly for a couple of minutes. After having to step aside so another group could enter the restaurant, Sela pressed her card on Laurel and said, “Call me. Please. We can have lunch and catch up.”

  Caleb waited until they’d been seated inside before he asked, “Will you call her?”

  She nodded slowly. “It was really nice to see her. It was funny, because I haven’t thought about her in years. Not since the Times quoted her about the Wattenberg case. Remember that?”

  “She was on that legal team?”

  “Uh-huh.” Laurel skimmed the menu without really seeing it. “What were the chances of running into her today? Although I almost walked right past her, because somehow I still thought of her as the same.”

  “A perpetual student.”

  “When you leave people behind, aren’t they supposed to stay frozen in time?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, it’s always a shock to see that they live outside our reality.”

  “Exactly.” From the corner of her eye, she saw the waiter approaching and hastily focused on the menu so she could give her order a minute later.

  She talked about some of her other friends from law school days as they ate. Relaxed, she wasn’t expecting an ambush.

  “Is this why you didn’t go back to law school?” Caleb nodded his head toward the entrance, but by the gesture indicating the campus, the Ave, this whole world she had rejected. “Because you were afraid to park here and walk to class?”

  She stiffened. “No. I could have transferred to UPS or gone to Willamette.”

  “Then why?”

  “What is it with the twenty questions today?” She sounded hostile and didn’t care.

  “I know you and yet I don’t.” His forehead creased, and for a moment his face looked like a stranger’s. “I’m just realizing how much is on the ‘don’t’ side of the ledger.”

  “I changed. I told you that.”

  “No, actually you didn’t. You tried to pretend you hadn’t changed at all, that everything was fine. I let you.”

  The baby swooped in her belly. Or perhaps it was her heart contracting in fear. “And you’re suddenly not willing to do that?”

  “Oh, I’m not going away.” Suddenly he was her Caleb again, smiling at her. “But I won’t promise not to keep bugging you for answers, either.”

  Relief made her dizzy, her voice high. “Oh, good. Something to look forward to.”

  Their food came, and concentrating on it made a natural break in the conversation. When Caleb talked again, it was to ask questions about the high-profile case that had gotten Sela Sweeney quoted in the Times.

  Laurel remembered more than she should. She knew she’d read the accounts at the time with fascination, envy, frustration and a jumble of other emotions that had ultimately pushed her outside to dig out a new flower bed.


  I could have been in that courtroom. Shovel full of soil tossed aside. I should have been in that courtroom.

  The conversation moved on to politics and then books, but Laurel kept picturing Sela, crackling with energy and intelligence that was harnessed now, mature.

  And me, she thought sadly, I’m a glorified secretary.

  By choice.

  Why?

  Wasn’t that the same question Caleb had just asked, but phrased differently?

  All she knew was, one of the components of a top-notch lawyer was confidence, even brazenness. She was no longer the woman who had been Sela’s match. She was no longer sure of herself, in so many ways.

  “Do you still want to walk on the campus?” Caleb asked, after they left the restaurant.

  She’d intended to, she really had, but Laurel realized suddenly how tired she was.

  “Can we do it another time?” she asked. “I think I’ve walked about as far as I can today.”

  Caleb was immediately concerned and offered to go get the car, but she insisted she could certainly waddle four or five blocks.

  They argued, she won, with a tart “Caleb, I’m pregnant, not sick.”

  Some of the spark had gone out of the afternoon for her, though. She’d anticipated feeling triumph, because she’d made herself overcome one layer of her fears, however thin. Instead, as they walked she seemed to see her old self in vivid color and felt like a pale shadow beside her, the real Laurel Woodall.

  Caleb had lied when he called her gutsy, she realized, conscious of his hand on her back and his anxious glances. Gutsy? It was laughable. Maybe she had been, but no more.

  She shouldn’t have come. In these, her old stomping grounds, the wall between Then and Now had become translucent. Blame it on seeing Sela, Laurel thought, depressed.

  Was Caleb, too, seeing the old Laurel in Technicolor?

  Movement stirred inside her, as if in reminder.

  She looked down to see her belly lurch, and despite her mood, she smiled. No, baby, you’re not one of my regrets.

  With his big hand on the small of her back, Caleb steered her out of the way of a couple of skateboarders, his body angled to protect her from getting jostled.