Baby, You're Mine

Him? Plain old Murphy Jones? He rubbed his palm flat against the glass. Yeah, that was something, the way that bitty girl had smiled at him. Could he really turn his back on her for no other reason than the fact that he and Phoebe were about as compatible as oil paint slopped over latex?

In the window, Phoebe’s ghostly reflection watched him, blurred with her movement as she vanished.

He let his hand drop to his side and turned to face his empty kitchen. At the front of the house, the screen door slapped shut, a soft, summer sound. He followed her out to the porch.

“Cooler out here,” she said, sinking onto the swing.

“Your daughter all right upstairs?” He turned off the porch light, plunging them into darkness for a moment until their eyes adjusted to the night. “If she’s miserable with the heat, let me know, okay?”

“Bird’s fine. She fell asleep the minute her head hit the pillow. She’s had a full day. She won’t move until morning.” She paused. Like pale birds, her hands beat against the darkness, disappeared behind her. “We’re not hothouse flowers, Murphy. We can stand the heat In or out of the kitchen,” she added wryly. “I’m sorry. I made a mess of your kitchen, didn’t I? You should have let me clean it up.”

“You were busy.”

In the dim light, he thought she seemed like a spirit that would vanish if he blinked. Or breathed.

Like pumping bellows, his lungs shuddered, whooshed.

Her bare foot rested on the swing seat, her chin on one bent knee. Barely moving the swing, she glided it to and fro with her other foot. In a cloud of curls her hair swooped forward, concealing her face, and with each slow movement of the swing, that apple scent carried to him. Her shampoo. She’d changed into clean shorts and a top the color of a house he’d painted last fall.

Ecru. Yeah, that was the color. No wonder she’d seemed ghostly, insubstantial in the windowpane. All that creamy white, like those pale night-blooming flowers with the scent that pervaded the summer nights and dreams of his youth. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smelled those flowers, but thinking about them now, he thought he caught a hint of their languorous scent in the air.

He folded himself into the wicker chair opposite her and waited, letting the night sounds and scents fill the space between them. For the first time since he’d driven up his driveway and seen her, laughing and drenched, joking—the butterfly girl he remembered—she was quiet. Diminished.

He didn’t mind the silence. Silence was restful, easy. For long moments Phoebe nudged the swing in a hypnotic rhythm that came damned closed to lulling him asleep.

Would have, too, except that the flash of her leg in the night shadows would have kept a dying man awake.

And he was very much alive.

The firm curve of her calf flickering in the dim light with her movement entranced him. As did the push of her pale toes against the dark wood. Hypnotized, he couldn’t look away from the shiny gleam of the colorless polish on her toenails as she flexed her foot.

“We used to sit out on the porch on summer nights. Remember?” She slowed the swing, shifted.

Her shape shimmered in the moonlight, and he wanted to reach out, grasp it. Hold it still. He tucked his hands flat under his armpits. “Yeah. I remember.”

“Why did we stop?” Her voice was wistful and the hairs along his arms lifted, shivered.

“Like you said earlier, we grew up. We changed.”

“You wanted to park on the fingers in the bay and neck like crazy with all those girls who tied up the phone line every night.” The swing moved faster, stirring a swoosh of air around his ankles.

“Not all of them.” Remembering some of those nights, Murphy felt a smile edging his lips.

“Oh?” The swing banged against the wall with her hard push against the floor. “I didn’t realize you’d missed any.”

“Keeping tabs on me?” Irrationally, the idea intrigued him.

“Not me. But I heard talk,” she said virtuously. She curled both legs up onto the swing, let its motion carry her.

“No good comes of listening to gossip, you know.”

She blew a raspberry. “You’re the last person to try and play the saint, Murphy. That self-righteous air doesn’t work for you.”

“Ah, well.”

Bent, her legs created mysterious shadows that dried his mouth. He shifted uncomfortably. “And you left for college. Didn’t seem like anybody had time to drink lemonade and swing on the porch after that.”

“You left first.” She leaned forward, her hair catching the moonlight and trapping it. “You joined the army.”

“College would have been wasted on me.”

“Oh, Murphy, you could have gotten a football scholarship if you’d wanted. If you’d studied. Mama and Pops would have helped you in a second. You know they would have.”

“I wasn’t a student Don’t have the temperament for it. Sitting in class all day made me crazy. Anyway, it was time I left. Your folks were wonderful to me, but I needed to make my own way.”

“Nobody wanted you to go, Murphy. You had other choices.” Soft as a feather, her voice floated in the darkness to him. Across from him, her face was a shimmer of pale.

“Maybe.”

He’d had to leave. He’d seen one too many moonyeyed boys hunkered down on the porch floor next to Phoebe while she laughed and giggled with them. Next to those lighthearted boys, he’d felt like an old man, their easy assumption of privilege foreign to him.

They had the right to come courting at Phoebe Chapman’s door, and if the sight of them triggered a slow, treacherous burn, well, hey, tough for him. The Chapmans had given him everything good he had in life. He had no right to want more, to lie awake waiting for some hormonally overloaded Manatee Creek boy to bring Phoebe home from a date in his daddy’s expensive automobile.

There would be the roar of a car up the driveway, the idle rumble of the engine, and then the motor would be turned off.

Silence.

And long, quiet moments while he waited for the slam of the car door, the bang of the screen door, her quick steps running past his bedroom door.

Of course he’d had to leave.

Years later in the army he finally understood that the scorn existed only in his mind. Those golden boys of Phoebe’s youth had been only kids, some of them struggling like him. He was the one who’d kept his distance. Erecting a wall of toughness, he’d made sure no one got a chance to look down on him. That sense of being an outsider? It had all been inside him, not them.

He hadn’t liked learning that truth about himself. Not at all.

“Why haven’t you gotten married, Murphy? To one of those shiny-haired girls with the sexy voices? I kept waiting for Mama to send me a note that you’d finally done the deed.” Her restless motion sent the swing careening to the side. “But you haven’t.” Soft, soft like her silky scarf, her voice brushed the air, trailed along his skin.

“I’m not a marrying kind of man, Phoebe,” he said heavily, not liking the direction of the conversation.

“Not a college guy, not a marrying man. What are you then, Murphy?”

“A man who’s comfortable with his life. Who likes what he does.”

“You don’t want someone in your life waiting for you to come home? The aroma of a good dinner cooking? Someone to share your thoughts with? You don’t want any of that? You have everything you need?” There was distance in her voice, distance in the way she pulled back into the arms of the swing, and the poignancy in her tone. “But isn’t there anything else you want?”

“Besides my pickup and my house? Reckon I could use a good huntin’ dawg, sweetpea,” he drawled, “but I don’t hunt.” He wanted her clever brain turning in a different direction, away from him and his choices. “Been thinking I might get a dog, though. Dogs are easy.”

“Dogs need walking. They’re pack animals. They like company. They’re not easy.” Again that annoyance rippled in her words. “And they sniff you.”

He laughed. “A cat then. Shoot, sweetpea, I’ve known a cat or two that almost talked.” He meant it as a joke, but the thought had been nudging him ever since he’d bought the house. He’d been thinking for a while it would be nice to have some warm, living creature waiting to greet him at the door, but a creature that didn’t disrupt his life, didn’t expect anything of him. “Maybe I’ll get a cat, one of those big, old Maine coon cats. A guy kind of cat. Uncomplicated.”

“That’s the kind of life that appeals to you now? Easy? Uncomplicated?”

“Yes, Phoebe, it is.” Leaning forward, he tapped her knee. “I like my life the way it is. I don’t have to explain anything, don’t have to apologize if I leave the toilet lid up, don’t have to feel guilty if I stop off for a beer with the guys after work.” He tamped down the slight melancholy that rose as he thought of all the nights he’d driven down the driveway to his dark house. “I can pick up and leave whenever I want to. I’m footloose and fancy free.”

“Are you, Murphy?” Her solemn face was inches away from his, and her breath smelled of peppermint toothpaste, clean and tempting. “Really free?”

He leaned back. “Absolutely.”

“And that’s what you want? Absolute freedom?”

“That’s it, sweetpea.”

“Then why did you buy this house? Why have you put all that sweat and labor into making it beautiful? Because it is. It’s a dream house.” She rose to her feet and he did the same. “And that kitchen? Oh, your kitchen, Murphy.” She clasped her hands in front of her, and her wrists brushed against his forearms. “That’s not the kitchen of a man who’s footloose and fancy free.”

“That’s the way it is, Phoebe.” He couldn’t bear the way her face softened, turned dreamy. Couldn’t bear the drift of peppermint against his mouth. “But you’ve been asking all the questions.” He grasped her hands with his. “So, enough about me. Like I asked you earlier, what are you up to?”

“Bird was right. We need a place to stay.” Her hands jerked against his, but he held on. “For a week. Maybe two. Until I find a job.”

“Why me?” The air closed in on him. “Why back in Manatee Creek, Phoebe? Because there’s nothing here for you.”

“Because I don’t have anywhere else to go.” Like a guitar string, she vibrated from head to toe, all that energy and emotion flooding him. And then she jerked her hands away from his. Her eyes fierce and mouth tight, her gaze scalded him. “Because I’m pregnant, that’s why.”

Chapter Three

Hands jammed into her pockets, Phoebe waited.

For judgment. For the thinning of Murphy’s mouth that would reveal his distaste, waited for the words that would send her into the night with Bird and no hope.

She made her hands stay perfectly still. No matter what he said, she’d make a joke, she’d laugh off her announcement as teasing, she wouldn’t let him see the terror swamping her. She’d lie, deny. “Gotcha,” she’d tell him.

And then she’d run from Murphy’s house as if the hounds of hell were growling at her heels.

She’d sleep in the bus station. She’d camp out in a church overnight. Surely churches in Manatee Creek hadn’t started locking their doors at night? As much as it would kill her, she’d throw herself on the mercy of whoever found her in that church, a welcoming sanctuary she could almost see in her mind’s eye.

No one would throw a pregnant woman and her four-year-old child out of a church, for heaven’s sake.

Would they?

Well, there was that famous old story of the virgin and her child who couldn’t find room anywhere except in a stable.

Jitters scurried like mice up and down her spine.

“Pregnant, Phoebe?” Murphy sat down in the chair, angled one leg over the other, and leaned back into the shadows. “Well, there’s a surprise.” His voice was as smooth and hard as polished silver. “I thought you and Tony were divorced. Who’s the father? Not that it’s any of my business, sweetpea.”

“No. It isn’t.” Oh, she wanted the smart-aleck words back, yearned for the discipline to curb her unruly tongue. She didn’t need to antagonize Murphy, not tonight, not with everything at stake. “Tony and I separated when Bird was two. I filed for divorce after two more years.”

“A long separation.”

“Yes.” Her fingers curled tighter. She hadn’t wanted the divorce. Divorce meant she’d failed, failure on such a sweeping scale that staying married and living apart was easier. “I...wasn’t in any hurry.”

“No?” That silvery voice and the rustle in the shadows were the only signs that Murphy was on the porch. “You must have wanted to get on with your life. Isn’t that what all the magazines advise? Move on? Find closure? Where was your closure, sweetpea? Damn, I think you’d have wanted closure.” His eyes glittered with anger. An anger that puzzled her.

“I don’t know. I was busy. Time passed.”

“Did it now?” Another rustle of denim and cotton. “Well, Phoebe, time has a way of doing that.”

“As I said, I had things to do.”

“Kept a tight schedule, did you?”

“I went back to college. Finished up the last three courses I needed for my degree and teacher certification.”

“You were a busy little bee. Heck, finalizing a divorce must have been nothing more than some item on your to-do list. I can see how it happened.” His voice was so understanding and compassionate that most folks would have missed the sarcasm icing it. The chair squeaked as he settled more deeply into it.

“The divorce wasn’t high on my...to-do list, Murphy. It wasn’t important.”

But it had been. Everybody had told her she shouldn’t marry Tony, but she had. Afterwards, when everything went wrong, she hadn’t wanted to admit her mistake even to herself. And she sure didn’t want to admit to anyone else that she should never have married him, that their relationship had been doomed from the beginning.

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