Marriage By Necessity Read online

  Since she was normally as regular as clockwork, a missed period meant a lot. But she’d just put that idea right out of her mind. And later, when she could no longer deny the truth to herself, she simply didn’t allow herself to think about it.

  Surprisingly, Nate had helped her. He had never once asked about those periods she didn’t have. More than likely, he’d trusted her honesty, believed that she’d tell him if all of their lovemaking had produced its intended result. And nature had colluded with her as well; the rare times, like just now, when morning sickness had overwhelmed her, Nate hadn’t been nearby.

  Shame sent a flush up her neck, pushing back the cold a little. Nate had a living to make, after all. She had kept him from it needlessly—and even told herself it was his own fault if he lost money, since he’d turned down the sizable amount she’d offered him to make up for whatever business he lost.

  Groaning a little, she dragged herself to her feet and turned on the bathroom light. Her face, in the mirror over the sink, looked pale and sunken eyed. She splashed freezing water on her cheeks and brushed her teeth.

  Then she wandered back into the bedroom. It was after four. She might as well get dressed, get the fire going downstairs and get a head start on the day.

  But instead of pulling on her clothes, she dropped to the edge of the bed again. She picked up the key Nate had left her and looked down at it in her open palm. She had to tell him. He should have been told weeks ago.

  And he would be told. Immediately. She would give him time to make his way home, and then she would call him and say that their goal had been reached; she’d be sending him his divorce papers as soon as the baby was born.

  Her fingers closed around the key.

  Then again, to call him would be cowardly. The least she could do would be to tell him about the baby face-to-face....

  Two days later, on Monday, Meggie got off a plane at LAX. A cabdriver in a black pin-striped suit with a pink turban wrapped around his head took her to Nate’s apartment in West Hollywood. Meggie spent the long drive staring out the window of the cab at palm trees, a cloudless sky and streets clogged with cars. She felt a little dazed. When she hand boarded the small commuter plane in Sheridan, it had been fifteen degrees outside, with snow in the forecast. She’d been bundled into her heaviest coat, grateful for its warmth. In Denver, where she’d caught a commercial flight, it had been cold and gray and well below freezing. Here, the sun shone down, the temperature had to be in the seventies—and her heavy coat was just something unnecessary to lug around.

  Finally, the driver pulled up in front of a two-story Spanish-style building with rough white walls and a red tile roof. “Here we go, yes,” he said in a pleasant, rather singsongy voice. White teeth flashed in his brown face. “Your place to which you are visiting.” He pointed cheerfully at the meter and sang out the exorbitant cost of the ride.

  Without so much as a gasp of dismay, Meggie paid him, adding on a generous tip. She smiled to herself, thinking that she was really getting cosmopolitan. This was her third cab ride—the other two having occurred during her brief visit last July. Already she could pay a cabbie without flinching.

  Apparently pleased with her and the tip she’d given him, the cabbie jumped out, took her small suitcase from the trunk and opened the car door for her. He held out his hand. “Allow me, yes?”

  She gave him her hand and he helped her to the sidewalk.

  “You have a real good time, now, okay?” His turban bobbed up and down as he nodded.

  She promised that she would, and then found herself standing there on the sidewalk, with her coat over her arm, waving as he got back in his cab and drove away. Once he disappeared around the corner, she shook herself, picked up her suitcase and squared her shoulders. Her head high and her step determined, she marched up the walk to Nate’s building.

  She walked up one side of the building, discovered she’d gone the wrong way and retraced her steps, trying the other side next. By the time she found Nate’s apartment, in the back, upstairs, she’d seen the dimensions of the place. It was small, with six apartments, three up and three down, each with an outside entrance.

  By the time she stood before Nate’s door, Meggie’s heart was beating way too fast and sweat had broken out on her upper lip. Determined to face him and get it over with, she set down her suitcase and lifted the iron knocker. She gave three good raps. And then she waited.

  Nothing happened.

  She knocked again. Still no answer.

  At that point, Meggie’s heart had stopped trying to beat its way out of her chest. It looked as if Nate had gone out—which meant a possible reprieve. Coward that she was, she suddenly felt much better about everything. If she could just go inside and sit down for a few moments, collect herself and relax a little, she felt certain she’d be much more ready to tell Nate about his upcoming fatherhood the minute he walked in the door.

  Meggie dug the key out of her purse and unlocked the door. Just in case he might be there after all, she stuck her head in first and called, “Nate? Are you here?”

  As expected, she got no answer. There was a mail slot in the door. And the floor beyond the threshold was strewn with envelopes.

  Feeling like an intruder, Meggie stepped inside and set her suitcase and purse on the floor, draping her coat over them. Then she closed the door. Nate had three locks: one on the door handle, the dead bolt she’d unlocked to get in and a heavy chain. Remembering that this was L.A., Meggie engaged them all.

  By then, she was tired of trying to step around Nate’s mail. So she bent and scooped it up, after which she rose again and leaned against the door, getting her bearings.

  She stood in a long hallway that extended to the left and right from the door. To the right, she could see that the hallway opened up to a living area.

  She went left, where she found what she needed: a bathroom—and a very attractive one, too. It had built-in cabinets, a big, deep tub, plush wine-colored towels and black and white tile. She set the mail on the sink counter and made use of the toilet. Once she was through, she washed her hands and gathered up the mail again. She peeked into the other two rooms at that end of the hall. One contained a huge bed on a wroughtiron frame with a fabulous silk comforter of a deepmaroon color. There were black-lacquer bureaus and beautiful lamps with black wire-mesh bases and rawsilk shades in maroon and midnight blue. The other room contained a beat up old desk, a file cabinet, a computer, a phone, an answering machine and a fax machine.

  Down the hall the other way, not far beyond the front door, Meggie discovered a small kitchen. The kitchen was tiled like the bathroom, in black and white. A sturdy oak table stood beneath a big window at the far end. On the table, sat a blue ceramic pitcher. Out of the pitcher bloomed a bouquet of yellow lilies.

  An envelope waited, propped against the pitcher, bearing her name in Nate’s bold hand. Meggie set Nate’s mail on the table and reached for the envelope. She opened it slowly, not sure she wanted to know what was inside.

  She found a note, two keys and three one hundred—dollar bills. The note read:

  I’ve taken a job and should return by Wednesday or Thursday, the thirteenth or fourteenth. I figure you’ll need transportation. The keys are to the blue Volvo in the carport in back. It should get you wherever you need to go. The money’s in case you’re short of cash. For anything else you need to know, ask Dolores Garnica, who owns and manages the place. She’s downstairs in the front apartment.

  Still carrying the note, Meggie wandered into the living room and dropped into a big, jewel-green easy chair. She stared down at the note: Wednesday or Thursday.

  That would be two or three days. She’d wanted a reprieve—but not that much of one.

  Feeling slightly stunned, Meggie slumped back in the chair and looked around the high-ceilinged room. A few feet away, two sapphire-blue couches faced each other, a low glass table between them. The bare hardwood floor gleamed in the spill of light from the tall, six-oversix windows o
n two walls. There was even a leafy, healthy-looking palm in one corner. The teak bookcases held lots of books—as well as an extensive collection of crystals, geodes and shells. Meggie found the room spare and dramatic. And quite beautiful.

  It surprised her. So did the rest of the apartment—except for Nate’s office. That room, so Spartan and utilitarian, with its scarred desk and green roll-up blinds, seemed more like Nate’s kind of place.

  Meggie smiled to herself. It came to her that she’d always thought of Nate as living in a kind of exile. The way she saw it, Nate had been born to be hers. Born to work the Double-K beside her, just as they’d been doing for the past few perfect months. Meggie had learned to live with the fact that Nate refused to surrender to his fate with her. But she’d always been certain he must be living a mean and barren life. Instead, she found lots of windows and intense colors, hardwood floors and seashells. And yellow lilies in a pitcher on the kitchen table.

  Tired from the long trip, reprieved for a while whether she liked it or not, Meggie leaned back in the big, soft chair and closed her eyes.

  When she woke, the room was dark and someone was knocking on the door. Yawning, Meggie pulled herself from the chair, flicked on a lamp and went to answer. She looked through the peephole before opening the door. On the other side she saw a pleasant-faced older woman with gray wings in her black hair. She wore a flowered housedress over her plump, full-bosomed figure.

  Meggie disengaged all the locks and pulled open the door.

  “You are Megan Bravo.” The woman smiled, a smile that made her pleasant face beautiful. “I hope.”

  “Yes. I’m Megan.”

  “And I am Dolores.” She stuck out a hand, which Meggie shook. Her grip was warm and firm. “This building is mine,” she said with great pride. “And so is the one next door. Mr. Bravo said to watch for you. It is something very special when Mr. Bravo asks a favor.”

  “Yes. I guess you’re right.”

  “So I want to show him, since he is a good tenant, that I do not take this honor lightly. I have been gone all day, but Benny, my husband, who owns these buildings with me, said he saw you go by our door in the afternoon with your little suitcase.” She cast a quick glance down at the suitcase in question, which still waited near the door with Meggie’s coat and purse. “Hmm. That is a very small suitcase for a bride to bring to her new home.”

  “I’m, um, having everything else shipped.” Meggie remembered her manners—and changed the subject at the same time. “Come on in.” She stepped back and gestured toward the living room.

  Dolores took her lower lip between her even teeth. “Oh, Mr. Bravo never lets anyone in.” Her black eyes gleamed with bright interest. “But now, it is your apartment, too, sí?”

  “Sí Now, come on.” She took Dolores’s arm and pulled her into the hall, then closed the door behind her. She led the way to the living room. “Have a seat.”

  Dolores perched on the end of one of the sapphire sofas. Her dark gaze scanned the room. “Very nice,” she said, sighing and smiling, as if the room gave her physical pleasure.

  “Yes,” said Meggie. “I think so, too.”

  “So.” Dolores folded her plump hands in her ample lap. “You will come to dinner a mi casa?”

  “Well, I...”

  “We would be so pleased to have you.”

  Meggie grinned. “All right. I’d love it.”

  That night, Meggie met Dolores’s sweet, quiet husband, Benny, as well as two of the Garnicas’ grandchildren.

  “This is Yolanda. We call her ‘Yolie,’” Dolores said of a slim, serious girl with a trigonometry book under one arm and a pencil behind her ear. “She lives here, with Benito and me. She is fourteen and a genius.”

  “Oh, Grandma,” Yolie protested, her face coloring prettily. “Don’t.”

  “But it’s only the truth. You are muy lista, one very smart girl.” Dolores turned to a tall, leanly muscled young man with black curly hair, a devilish smile and eyes of a startling blue. “And this is my Mateo. He comes just for dinner. He is becoming a great movie star. Too bad that he thinks he must call himself ‘Matt Shane.”’

  “I’m an actor, Grandma, not a movie star,” the young man corrected with somewhat strained affection. “‘Matt’ is short for Mateo. And Shane is my real name.”

  Dolores made a disgusted sound. “The name of that terrible man who broke your poor mama’s heart. He does not deserve to have his name in the movies when you become a famous star.”

  “Grandma, give it up. It’s my name. I don’t even think of it as his.” Dolores made more disapproving sounds as Mateo turned that gorgeous smile on Meggie. “Call me ‘Matt.’ And welcome to L.A.”

  Dolores slapped him on the arm. “She is a married woman. You watch yourself.”

  The next morning, Dolores showed Meggie the coin laundry in the building next door and explained that the tenants in both buildings used it. She also gave Meggie directions to the supermarket several blocks away, and walked her down to Pahlavi’s, the corner store, where a loaf of bread or a quart of milk could be bought if she didn’t feel like driving all the way to the supermarket.

  In the afternoon, Meggie went shopping. As she pushed her cart up and down the aisles, she saw a lot of ordinary-looking people like herself, wearing ordinary clothes with hair of ordinary colors: blond, brown, auburn and black. She also saw a woman with silver rings in her lips and her nose and a man all in leather with tattoos covering his arms to his elbows. She saw a lot of young people wearing black, with spiky hair of green or purple.

  L.A. was a place of great diversity, Meggie decided. People came in all colors here. They spoke with a variety of accents. It made getting the groceries into something of an event.

  Later, Meggie met the Tyrells, an ebony-skinned couple in their fifties. Their apartment shared a landing with Nate’s. The Tyrells came out of their door just as Meggie was bringing her groceries in. She introduced herself.

  “Lovely to meet you,” said Mrs. Tyrell, who looked absolutely stunning in a white linen dress.

  “Charmed,” said her husband. He wore an immaculately tailored black three-piece suit, complete with a gold watch chain hanging from his vest pocket.

  As they exchanged pleasantries, Meggie caught a glimpse inside their door, which had a tiny foyer that opened right onto the living room. She saw an oppressive abundance of heavy, dark, ornately carved furniture.

  “If you should need anything...anything, please feel free to call us,” Mrs. Tyrell insisted as Mr. Tyrell closed and locked the door.

  Meggie promised that she would and then watched, bemused, as the regal pair turned and descended the stairs.

  The next day, Wednesday, Meggie met Bob and Ted, a screenwriter and a caterer’s assistant, who shared the apartment beneath Nate’s. She also introduced herself to Peg Tolly, an exotic dancer with enormous breasts, who had a one-bedroom upstairs around the opposite side of the building. Below Peg lived Edie Benson, who had once been a nurse and now rolled an oxygen tank around with her wherever she went, due to her steadily worsening case of emphysema. Meggie met Edie on a quick trip down to the corner to buy some butter, which she’d forgotten to pick up at the supermarket the day before. The older woman had just toddled out to the sidewalk with her oxygen tank on its little rollers, when Meggie came dashing out herself.

  After introductions had been accomplished, Edie confessed that she was headed to the corner market, too.

  “I’m just going down to pick up my special little sandwich,” Edie panted. “Mr. Pahlavi always makes it for me.” The store’s owner ran a sandwich counter in back of the store, by the beverage cases.

  Meggie offered to get the sandwich for her.

  “No, no. Can’t have that. I like to do for myself. That’s how I am.”

  So they walked together, picking their way carefully over the cracks and humps in the sidewalk, stopping now and then for Edie to catch her breath, down to the bottom of the street and into the cramped, d
im store run by Mr. Pahlavi.

  That night, Meggie invited the Garnicas over and served them chicken with dumplings, the way her grandma Kane used to make it. Benny remarked that the dish could use a few jalapenos, but was otherwise delicious. Meggie enjoyed their company, though she felt a certain anxiety all evening. Nate was due back any time now. He would very likely return that night.

  All through dinner, and later, as she got ready for bed, she kept thinking of the answering machine in Nate’s office. She had heard the phone ring in there more than once over the past two days. She knew his machine was taking the calls. Nate had a small remote device that he used to pick up his messages from an outside phone. She kept picturing him calling from a phone booth or that cell phone of his, beeping for his messages, listening to them play. She had a burning desire to go in there, to sit in the chair behind his desk and snatch the phone from its cradle the minute it rang. Maybe she would catch him calling in. She could tell him she was here, waiting for him.

  But then, if it wasn’t him, she’d only be interfering with his message system. And he probably wouldn’t think much of that. So somehow, she restrained herself from answering his business phone.

  Nate didn’t return that night. Meggie woke early the next morning to find herself alone in Nate’s big bed.

  After a quick trip to the bathroom, she returned to the bed, pulled the covers up around her and reached for the phone on the black-lacquer nightstand. She punched out Sonny’s number. Farrah answered on the second ring. Meggie asked her how things were going. Farrah reported that the mercury had dipped below zero again last night and as soon as it warmed up a few degrees, Sonny would be heading out to check on the heifers in the South Pasture.

  “We’re watching the ground freeze around here, Meggie,” Farrah said. “We can handle it without you, believe me.”

  “I know. I just...feel a little homesick, I guess. And I miss you all.”

  Farrah made a tender sound. “And we miss you, too. But it’s only for a few months, right? And then you and Nate will be back here at home where you belong.”