It seemed impossible fate could find one more thing to stack on her already teetering pile of troubles. Hah. Never challenge fate. She found out she was pregnant.
It was an accident, of course. She’d been seeing Andrew for a couple of years. She lived in Denver and he in Aurora, since they both had demanding careers, and they saw each other when they could—a night here, a night there. When they could manage a long weekend, it was heaven. She wanted more but Andrew was an ER doctor and also the divorced father of an eight-year-old daughter. But they had constant phone contact. Multiple texts and emails every day. She counted on him; he was her main support.
Maggie wasn’t sure she’d ever marry and have a family but she was happy with her surprise. It was the one good thing in a bad year. Andrew, however, was not happy. He was still in divorce recovery, though it had been three years. He and his ex still fought about support and custody and visits. Maggie didn’t understand why. Andrew didn’t seem to know what to do with his daughter when he had her. He immediately suggested terminating the pregnancy. He said they could revisit the issue in a couple of years if it turned out to be that important to her and if their relationship was thriving.
She couldn’t imagine terminating. Just because Andrew was hesitant? She was thirty-six! How much time did she have to revisit the issue?
Although she hadn’t told Andrew, she decided she was going to keep the baby no matter what that meant for their relationship. Then she had a miscarriage.
Grief-stricken and brokenhearted, she sank lower. Exactly two people knew about the pregnancy and miscarriage—Andrew and Jaycee. Maggie cried gut-wrenching tears every night. Sometimes she couldn’t even wait to get home from work and started crying the second she pulled the car door closed. And there were those stairwell visits. She cried on the phone to Andrew; cried in his arms as he tried to comfort her, all the while knowing he was relieved.
And then he’d said, “You know what, Maggie? I just can’t do it anymore. We need a time-out. I can’t prop you up, can’t bolster you. You have to get some help, get your emotional life back on track or something. You’re sucking the life out of me and I’m not equipped to help you.”
“Are you kidding me?” she had demanded. “You’re dropping me when I’m down? When I’m only three weeks beyond a miscarriage?”
And in typical Andrew fashion he had said, “That’s all I got, baby.”
It was really and truly the first moment she had realized it was all about him. And that was pretty much the last straw.
She packed a bunch of suitcases. Once she got packing, she couldn’t seem to stop. She drove southwest from Denver to her father’s house, south of Leadville and Fairplay, and she hadn’t called ahead. She did call her mother, Phoebe, just to say she was going to Sully’s and she wasn’t sure how long she’d stay. At the moment she had no plan except to escape from that life of persistent strain, anxiety and heartache.
It was early afternoon when she drove up to the country store that had been her great-grandfather’s, then her grandfather’s, now her father’s. Her father, Harry Sullivan, known by one and all as Sully, was a fit and hardy seventy and showed no sign of slowing down and no interest in retiring. She just sat in her car for a while, trying to figure out what she was going to say to him. How could she phrase it so it didn’t sound like she’d just lost a baby and had her heart broken?
Beau, her father’s four-year-old yellow Lab, came trotting around the store, saw her car, started running in circles barking, then put his front paws up on her door, looking at her imploringly. Frank Masterson, a local who’d been a fixture at the store for as long as Maggie could remember, was sitting on the porch, nursing a cup of coffee with a newspaper on his lap. One glance told her the campground was barely occupied—only a couple of pop-up trailers and tents on campsites down the road toward the lake. She saw a man sitting outside his tent in a canvas camp chair, reading. She had expected the sparse population—it was the middle of the week, middle of the day and the beginning of March, the least busy month of the year.
Frank glanced at her twice but didn’t even wave. Beau trotted off, disappointed, when Maggie didn’t get out of the car. She still hadn’t come up with a good entry line. Five minutes passed before her father walked out of the store, across the porch and down the steps, Beau following. She lowered the window.
“Hi, Maggie,” he said, leaning on the car’s roof. “Wasn’t expecting you.”
“It was spur-of-the-moment.”
He glanced into her backseat at all the luggage. “How long you planning to stay?”
She shrugged. “Didn’t you say I was always welcome? Anytime?”
He smiled at her. “Sometimes I run off at the mouth.”
“I need a break from work. From all that crap. From everything.”
“Understandable. What can I get you?”
“Is it too much trouble to get two beers and a bed?” she asked, maybe a little sarcastically.
“Coors okay by you?”
“Sure.”
“Go on and park by the house. There’s beer in the fridge and I haven’t sold your bed yet.”
“That’s gracious of you,” she said.
“You want some help to unload your entire wardrobe?” he asked.
“Nope. I don’t need much for now. I’ll take care of it.”
“Then I’ll get back to work and we’ll meet up later.”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said.
*
Maggie dragged only one bag into the house, the one with her toothbrush, pajamas and clean jeans. When she was a little girl and both her parents and her grandfather lived on this property, she had been happy most of the time. The general store, the locals and campers, the mountains, lake and valley, wildlife and sunshine kept her constantly cheerful. But the part of her that had a miserable mother, a father who tended to drink a little too much and bickering parents had been forlorn. Then, when she was six, her mother had had enough of hardship, rural living, driving Maggie a long distance to a school that Phoebe found inadequate. Throw in an unsatisfactory husband and that was all she could take. Phoebe took Maggie away to Chicago. Maggie didn’t see Sully for several years and her mother married Walter Lancaster, a prominent neurosurgeon with lots of money.
Maggie had hated it all. Chicago, Walter, the big house, the private school, the blistering cold and concrete landscape. She hated the sound of traffic and emergency vehicles. One thing she could recall in retrospect, it brought her mother to life. Phoebe was almost entirely happy, the only smudge on her brightness being her ornery daughter. They had switched roles.