Forever And A Baby

“I don’t want to be lovesick. And he’s a family member.”

“It’s nothing. Choose who you want.”

Her fingers grew stiff, icy, around the receiver. “I guess this is how you create a fortune. Taking this kind of risk.”

His voice roughened, a sign of life to her. “I’m sixty-six years old, and you want to make love with my handsome young nephew. This, Dru, is the gamble of my life.”

She could tell him she loved him, promise to always love him and say good night. She should. She was cold. But if she let him go…would it ever be the same? “Is that why you’re doing it? For the risk?”

“I want a baby. With you. And you have been a midwife and aren’t now because of my circumstances, and I won’t be responsible for your never bearing a child of your own.”

Her sigh echoed under the railways. “You aren’t responsible. We could adopt.”

“I want to raise a child who is part of you, Dru.”

“Are you sure you didn’t ask him to do it? As a last resort, if no one else would have me?”

A moment. “The possibility that no one would want you has never crossed my mind. I’m going to Curaçao for a few days. I’ll be hard to reach. If you need anything, please ask Sergio.”

“I love you.” She said it almost desperately.

“And I you. Good night, Dru.”

Not my love, not dearest. He was telling her, Go. Go do it.

“Omar?”

“Yes.”

“Our marriage is a pearl. I feel as though I’ll mar it if I do this thing.”

“A marriage shouldn’t be so frail.”

Really. He was guiltless as a conqueror. “Omar, is our marriage monogamous?”

“Finance is my mistress, Dru. Give me this gift. A child. And, Dru, it’s good to enjoy it.”

She hung up. Heard the water beyond the mist.

“What did he say?”

She jumped.

He leaned against a steel piling, needing a shave, his long lean face ending at that cleft chin.

Her cheeks hardened to thin sheets of ice. “Were you listening?”

“With limited success.”

She strode past him, toward the docks. He followed, his footfalls silent. Without looking, she knew he was there and said, “You think nothing of sleeping with married women?”

“You would be my first. You’re very traditional.”

Was she? “I’m an Islander. I suppose you’re not,” she said. “Traditional.”

No reply.

She walked. Heard her own breath. Never his. The moon appeared through clouds, a paler, more genuine sister of the security light. The dock creaked beneath her feet.

Such a frightening sound, behind and around her—her own breath.

At the trawler, he caught her forearm.

Warmth. Hard grip. Sliding to her hand.

Their fingers touched in darkness. He pulled her to him, close enough to smell, then her breasts against his chest. Omar was broad, with a different kind of power. She touched these new shoulders. Each hand fumbled, jerking slightly, removed from her will. She shouldn’t touch him.

“Is it because you live in the desert?” She tilted back her head. “Have you not had a woman in so long?”

He watched her, reading her.

“Just tell me,” she said. “Have you been traveling with some Oxford scholar or married the daughter of a chief?”

“No chief has offered me a daughter.” He dropped his eyes, raised them. “As to the former—no.”

“You’re a virgin?”

The certainty of his hands denied it. He kissed her forehead.

Omar wants this. Wants me to do this. And Ben wants to help—for Omar.

His lips pressed between her eyebrows and touched the bridge of her nose. They nuzzled like animals, and she felt that stirring beneath his jeans. Strong and warm. His mouth touched hers, gently biting her lower lip.

For Omar?

Ben Hall didn’t need to give his sperm to her and Omar. His wanting money was unlikely. Omar trusted him, and she’d never known a man so cautious with his trust.

Her body settled against that form under his jeans. Wanting. She should ovulate in a day, maybe two.

The deck was damp, the cabin door dewy. She unlocked it, opened it. She should say just the right thing, in just the right tone. But she wished she could tell him she was scared to death.

The sole bowed and bent beneath her weight. The utilitarian table, flipped up and out of the way. Nothing like a stateroom, just slim berths throughout and a wider berth forward of the galley. “That’s it,” she said, under a bare bulb.

The light made them naked, even in their clothes, everything so unreal, especially the stranger touching her lip.

“It doesn’t have to be good,” she said. “For me.”

“Doesn’t your orgasm increase the chance of conception?” Throwing aside his shell. Unbuttoning his plaid wool shirt. T-shirt underneath.

Her legs turned watery. She switched off the light. The boat was dark, except for the geometric patches of blue-gray from the dock lights and the portholes.

“It’s unnecessary.” Squeaking words. “I’m fertile; I’ll ovulate soon. And I’m really not interested in your patented techniques learned on the women of Africa.”

Ghostly blue and black dyed his face. The tilting of his lips was less than a smile. He nudged her toward the narrow berth. A bulkhead beside it had separated, a cheap panel peeling down like banana skin. All smelled damp and old. Only the mattress was new.

“You don’t have any diseases, do you?”

A faint shake of his head. He watched her. “You like me?”

Dru swallowed. “Enough.” She discarded her sweater. “I don’t want you to make love to me. Just sex. I wish I had a turkey baster with me. Why not artificial insemination?”

The hard mattress brought her too close to him.

“I wish I knew,” she said, “what’s in it for you.”

His lips tracked her jaw. His hand held her side, fingers spreading, guiding her down. “I can wait till you figure that out.” His nose near hers.

“It’s so appealing to be wanted as a one-night stand.”

“This is not a one-night stand. You’re coming back to the Sahara with me. My first three wives will be jealous and cruel to you, but you won’t be spending much time with them, anyhow. You and I will make love all day.”

His kiss warmed her lips, parting them. Their legs twined, the teeth of two combs fitting together. His skin swallowed her voice. “We weren’t going to do it…like that.” The words collided, falling on each other, never quite standing up, defeated by coursing blood, mating rites.

He said, “It’s the only way I know.”

Making love.

He was full of lies.

Dru searched her memory. Did Omar ever press his mouth to her as he spoke? Had they ever spoken this way? She was wild at his smell. At hard limbs. At a man her age. Her ears filled with shrieking winds, the sound of desire. It was evil, so cruel, to want anyone but her husband, the only man she’d ever known.

Evil to think, even for a second, It’s never been like this.

Hot shivering.

Permission. Omar had given it.

She sat up, shaking rapidly, jerking in blurred time. Her body had not been hers. Almost. It was now. Mine. Dru despised Omar, then imagined, then believed, she knew what he wanted—for her to know this about herself, to come to the point of refusing his Trojan horse. “Sorry. I can’t.” She scrambled her vibrating, quivering body over Ben’s and put her feet on the floor. Yes. The sole. Standing. Swaying. The hollow tinkling of water on the hull amplified. Unable to speak for trembling. “I w-won’t m-m-make l-l-l-love to anyone b-b-but m-m-my husband.”

He was half up. His powerful body eased out of the berth. She followed his face, but he never rose. He dropped to the warped and peeled linoleum, kneeling, stretching himself toward her on the sole like an unwashed man praying in the desert, not for the end of a sandstorm or for nightfall or shade or a drink of water or five times a day for God, but for goodness.

She had learned posture at the age of four and then how to keep her weight low and her head high, how to put grace in every gesture of her hands, every turn of her head. She had learned the dances of the Berbers and their nomadic relations, the Tuareg, of the Bedouins, of the Indians and Egyptians. There were dances for women and dances for men, dances for weddings, pregnancy and birth, sickness and death.

His dark head was bowed, and she recalled the advice of the Chinese, their remedy for lovesickness. For Omar, she must go home and dance the guedra, not the trance dance but the love dance. And then make love with him.

She did not thank Ben Hall. She said, “You should go.”

Slowly, he rose.

“I’m sorry this happened,” she said.

He nodded, lips tight. Briefly, he spoke in Arabic. He called her sister. He told her he loved her.

He told her goodbye as the Arabs do.

Which was to wish her peace.

THE KNOCKING INTERRUPTED her drowsing. She opened her eyes to light from a day she knew, without looking at the portholes beside her, was gray.

“Dru?”

The pants she’d worn the night before were heaped against the locker. She dragged them on and let her long T-shirt do as a top. Climbed from her berth and crossed the decrepit linoleum in her bare feet. To open the cabin door further and let him in.

She squinted at the object he held up.

And swallowed. “Where did you get that?”

“The hospital. The supermarket doesn’t get their turkey basters for a few weeks.” His cheeks darkened. “I told a nurse that it’s…a home project.”

If he’d blushed like that, no wonder the nurse had parted with the Tomcat catheter.

He murmured, “So…Sabah il-kheyr.” Good morning. “Let’s make a baby.”

CHAPTER THREE

Skye said she wasn’t going anywhere at gunpoint. One of the men, who were mercenaries, yanked my father from our vehicle; my father clutched his arm and chest, crying out, moaning, eyes rolling back. “He’s sick!” I said. They shrugged as he fell, threatening to shoot me when I tried to go to him. I opened my door anyhow, because of the things my father had taught me about the nature of men. The gunman yanked me back into the vehicle by the throat. While I choked and coughed and he started the car, another held a Makarov to Dru’s head. But before we left, the third man turned the green Land Rover and drove over my father’s body.

—Ben, recollections of a fall

Nantucket

One week later

October 23

The office of Daniel Mayhew, Attorney At Law

THE WORDS WERE THERE on the pertinent pages, and Daniel had given each of them a copy to read. After she’d entered the office and Ben had stood, she’d told Daniel that of course they knew each other. Good to see you, to Ben. She couldn’t say his name again.

Now she studied black text on white paper, blurred in the photocopy machine, but not enough to misread “my natural son, the son of my loins, Ben Omar Hall.” And the mention of “other issue…or my wife, Dru-Nudar Haverford Hall, if pregnant at the time of my death…”

She felt Ben’s presence as she felt the sun through the clustered window panes, paneling the maple floor and walnut furniture with light. His knees, in jeans, jutted into the slanting edge of one section, brightly lit. The rest of him was in shadow, beyond the edge of her vision unless she twisted her chair. It couldn’t matter. Daniel would repeat nothing he saw.

Ben waited, eyes on the attorney.

She could pretend, too, pretend it was no surprise. Even though she wanted to demand, Did you know? Did you know you were his son?

Omar had known. Wasn’t that bad enough?

“Tell me if I’m right, Daniel.” Her courtesy was lost, smashed by surprise. “I understand the provisions for Sergio and others. This is what I want clarified. I will receive, in any case, one hundred thousand dollars a year and the Orange Street House. But whatever is in the attic vault, which I never knew existed, and everything else that Omar didn’t give away—we’re talking about a lot—will go to…” It took a long time, seconds, to decide what to call him. She broke her indecision with a sigh. “…Ben, unless I’m pregnant right now. Since he—Omar—and I have had no child up to this point.”

“Yes.”

Her face must look like a strawberry. Daniel knew as well as everyone else, everyone who had seen the tabloids, about her and Ben. Ben would also receive the contents of a safe deposit box and some other things she’d never known her husband owned. Did we need the cloak and dagger, Omar? She held down some high terror that couldn’t come from grief. “How soon must pregnancy be determined?” Her breath sounded coarse, unladylike, heaving like a horse. A tear hung in one eye. Not about money. Oh, maybe that, too. Who cares what they think?

She hated for Ben to see.

She took a handkerchief from her purse. It bore her monogram. Sometimes she’d used Omar’s. Still did, at home. She wiped off her invalidated grief. I want some answers.

“Because of the size of the estate—” Daniel’s eyes rested on her, apologizing “—as soon as an accurate result can be obtained.”

“And if I’m pregnant, he and I split the estate?”

“Correct. And the unknown contents of the vault become yours.”

The provisions were more complex than that. If she relinquished her rights. If he did. A web engineered to manipulate. Or so it seemed.

Beside her, Ben hadn’t moved. Hands on the chair arms. Eyes on Daniel. His face frozen.

Had he known he was adopted—Omar’s natural son? If he did…

Dru choked away her fears. Nothing real but this room. The will. “I suppose I’ll need a test in a medical facility?”

“Promptly.”

She could count. A test might be accurate seven days after conception. Nine to eleven, much better. But they couldn’t have succeeded, even with Ben’s tenacious effort and repeated donations. Her face heated again as she remembered things said, the emotions of an intimacy without touch, without invasion of each other’s sexual privacy, yet throbbing and slippery and quiet with the hunger for friendship. She’d never been closer to a man—brother or lover.

And, all the time, he was Omar’s son.

Who on earth was his mother?

Trouble silenced her curiosity. This new development would reach the papers. The world would watch to see…

If she was pregnant.

She said, “I relinquish my share in that portion of the trust.”

Keziah’s father chuckled sympathetically. “I would advise you strongly against that. But in any case, it’s not that simple. If you’re pregnant, then Ben—” his nephew, too, son of his wife’s brother, one of her brothers “—will receive a smaller portion of the estate in any case.”

Why had Omar done this to her? Confusion pressed in her skull. “Well, I might get a test.” She shrugged. Pretending. Muddled. “It seems unlikely, though.”

Nobody said aloud that she hadn’t been in the same room with Omar for seven weeks before his death. The papers would say it for them.

Had Ben known?

Her molars ground against each other.

She smiled at Daniel and rose. “Well, I have other things going on today.” Folding her copy of the document. Mitch would tag along while she shopped for things for Oceania. At home, they would write more notes. Do you want to tell me about the baby’s father? I want to help however I can. Early that morning, Dru had begun looking into what a deaf mother would need. A father for her child, she’d thought with a half-sob, like any other mom.

A shadow behind her took away the window’s light. “Uncle Dan, is there a room where Dru and I could visit?”

The attorney’s mouth, Keziah’s mouth, opened to get a word out. The word became a drawn-out sound. “Aaaaaahhh. Yes. Yes.” Looking around. “Yes, that’s possible. Ahhhh. Of course. You may use my office. I’ll be in a meeting till one. But, ah, I must caution both of you, absolutely, to surrender no rights regarding this estate. You are both, ah, grieving. This is not the time for rash legal decision-making or, between the two of you, discussion of the estate.”

Dru felt it was the perfect time. “Of course.” She leaned forward and kissed Daniel’s cheek. “Thank you for all your help and compassion. And your good advice.”

Walking past her, Ben saw the attorney out and shut the door.

His scent spilled into her. His woolly sweater, a Harvard cardigan that might be from the fifties and must have been Robert Hall’s, smelled of dry leaves. Dru wondered who had sewn the moth holes with such skill.

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