We’re eating dinner, one of a dozen casseroles that’s been dropped off since we moved in. Our freezer is at capacity, yet the women keep showing up with their hot dishes, like Lilydale is a regular old Mayfield and I’m June Cleaver. I’ve named this one Soothing Stomach Stew: rice, hamburger, onion, and cream of mushroom soup, all stirred together beneath a crushed potato chip topping. A few nights ago, we ate a nearly identical hot dish topped with cheese.

Deck cradles my hand. “Sure, but you didn’t have a baby then. Keeping a home is its own job. I’ve never seen you work so hard. Now let’s stop talking about the newspaper for tonight. I’m tired.”

He said the same thing last night and the night before. But I swallow the spike of resentment right along with the salty hot dish, both of them thudding in my belly. I smile to mask my discomfort and try a different tack. I must relax him so I can convince him to let me work. I didn’t need his approval in Minneapolis, but here . . . he’s made clear the paper won’t hire me without his and Ronald’s endorsement. Said that’s just how small towns work.

“I had a lovely conversation with Dorothy next door,” I lie, smiling even wider, so wide that my lips creak. “Such a gracious lady.”

Deck’s shoulders relax. Good. I can come at this sideways. “I so much love living here,” I continue. “It’s everything you promised, so calm.”

Here it comes, the question that will allow me to lead him back to talking about the newspaper. “Why, I bet there hasn’t been a single crime ever committed here, not a dangerous one, just like you promised, not one that would put a reporter in danger. Has there been?”

His face puckers for a moment and then relaxes. “I suppose the Paulie Aandeg kidnapping is the closest thing to news we’ve had.”

The room shrinks and my breath expands. I didn’t expect such a powerful answer. A real story. “Paulie Aandeg?”

“He disappeared on his first day of kindergarten.”

“When was that?”

He glances at his wristwatch as if it might tell the story. “Decades ago.”

Disappointment settles like a gray scarf over my shoulders. Any story there has already been told. “They never found him?”

“Never,” Deck says, patting my hand. “But don’t you worry. There’s always news to cover, and Dad and I’ll get you a spot at the Gazette real soon.”

“Thanks, honey,” I say, pinning a smile on my face. But Deck is staring at his hot dish, his expression tight again, and I find myself wondering what made him move away from Lilydale in the first place.

CHAPTER 7

The next day, I hop right back on the house-overhaul wagon, tackling something I’ve been putting off since we moved in: the garden. I don’t know a weed from a wisteria, but I decide to begin by trimming the gawky shrubs lining the front walkway. They scratch me every time I come and go through the front door. While I’m at first intimidated by the project, once I track down a dull pruning clipper in the garage and begin snipping, I find I genuinely enjoy the work. The May sun is warm on my bare shoulders, and the sweet purple-honey smell of lilacs floats through the neighborhood.

I even find myself humming.

Ursula would flip her wig if she saw me now. As domestic as Aunt Bee.

My college roommate and best friend in the world was miserable when I told her I was moving, said it’d be the end of me, that I’d become a baby machine. Today, working in the earth and shined on by the sun, I can think of worse things.

I trot out the aqua-colored mower Ronald dropped off and trim our tiny yard. Without deciding to, I realize I’m making up stories for the infant, surely no larger than a peach pit in my belly. Beautiful Baby helping his momma to work, growing strong in her tummy. We’re going to be best friends, aren’t we?

I’m delighted by the positive feelings.

I didn’t plan to get pregnant, didn’t expect to keep it once I found out I was, almost didn’t tell Deck. But in the end, I spilled. It was something my mom had hammered into me one night: a good woman is a responsible woman.

When she told me that, we were in my favorite apartment in all our travels, a one-bedroom over Ralph’s Diner. Mom waited tables just below. I could pop down for an icy-cold Coke and french fries whenever I wanted, on the house.

“A perk of being the prettiest girl in town and the daughter of my best waitress,” Ralph would say with a wink.

We lived there four months, but then Ralph showed up at our door, just up the stairs, his face tight with worry, voice low and urgent, but I still heard it. “I got a call from the IRS, Frances. They said there’s something off with your information, that I might be audited because of it. I’m sure it’s just a mistake, I told ’em. I’m telling you the same thing. What say we get this straightened out?”

Mom smiled, patted his arm. Frances Harken was a beautiful woman. A chocolate-eyed redhead, she styled her hair just like Rita Hayworth. Got whistled at all the time. “Don’t worry, Ralph. I’ll dig out the paperwork and get it to you tomorrow. That okay?”

His relief was comical. “Sure it is, Frances. We’ll get it all straightened out tomorrow.”

She’d started packing before his footsteps reached the bottom floor.

“Mom?” I’d been on the couch, doing homework. I didn’t want to move, didn’t want to leave the icy Cokes and the french fries and being the prettiest girl in town.

“We don’t have a choice this time, Joan,” she said, her voice wavering. “Ralph’s a stand-up man, and I’m not going to get him in trouble. A good woman is a responsible woman.”

Well, I’d been neither good nor responsible the night I’d gotten pregnant, so I decided to start by coming clean to Deck.

“I’m late.”

By that time, he and I already lived together. I don’t think I would have taken that leap so soon—I’d never lived with a man—if Mom hadn’t died a few short months earlier, a bottle redhead by that time but still so beautiful, even as the cancer gobbled her up from the lungs out.

Deck’s building was past its prime, his apartment a faded one-bedroom. Still, I’d moved in, and despite its shabbiness, I grew to love it because it was ours. My favorite place in the world was the breakfast nook off the kitchen, just big enough for a chipped table and two garage-sale chairs. Every Saturday morning, we shared our coffee there, smiling at each other over steaming cups, planning our day just like an honest-to-god couple.

That’s where we were when I decided to spill the beans about the late period. I appreciated that he didn’t crack a low-hanging joke, didn’t waste time with, “What do you mean, late? Breakfast just started.”

He didn’t propose, either, not right there on the spot. I didn’t think I would have wanted that. Well, I was okay that he didn’t. I was a modern woman, after all.

Instead, his eyes tightened at the corners. It reminded me of his expression when he was talking about his boss, who regularly cheated him out of commissions, except this time his eyes were squeezed because he was happy.

“You’re sure?” he asked.

I nodded. “I think so. You don’t need to worry, though. Ursula knows someone who can take care of it. It doesn’t need to be a big deal at all. Just a bump in the road, easily corrected.”