“Let me think about this,” he said. “I’ll help, of course,” he reassured me quickly, then lowered his voice. “I regret that foolish night more than you could possibly know,” he said. “I’m … ashamed of it. We’d both had far too much to drink. I should never have let it happen.”
I was surprised—touched, actually—that he took responsibility for that night, and relief washed over me. He wasn’t going to fight me about my plan for the baby. My need for help.
“But I have to think of the best way to arrange the money,” he continued. “To figure out the amount you’ll need. Are you staying in town?”
The tension in my body was slipping away. “I need to find a hotel,” I said. “Just for tonight. I have to get back to Baltimore.”
“Go to the Hotel Hickory,” he said, reaching for the phone. “I’ll call you a cab. The hotel’s back in town.” He pointed to my left. “You should be able to get a room now that the holidays are over. If they give you a hard time, say Hank Kraft sent you.” He looked out the window for a moment and I saw those downturned eyes that had struck me when we first met, the eyes that gave him a sad look despite his handsome features. “Actually,” he said, “better not use my name, all right?” He gave me a quick, anxious smile, and for the first time I saw his nerves betray him.
He spoke into the phone, arranging the cab, then got to his feet. “I’ll call you at the hotel,” he said. “Tonight, or more likely in the morning. Stay by the phone if you can.”
I nodded. “Thank you, Mr. Kraft,” I said, getting wearily to my feet. He seemed like a stranger to me. It was nearly impossible for me to believe I’d been intimate with him.
I waited only a minute or two outside the building for the cab to arrive. Thank God. It was so cold and I needed to lie down. I was glad when the driver turned out to be the quiet type. I didn’t have the strength for conversation.
We pulled up outside the tall, handsome redbrick hotel. The driver carried my suitcase inside for me, and I was given a room without any questions being asked. It was two in the afternoon and the exhaustion caught up with me as I lifted my suitcase onto the dresser in my room. I undressed down to my slip, then crawled into the bed, my eyes on the phone on the night table. What if I didn’t hear from him? What if he’d told me he would help with no intention of doing so? But I knew where he was. I wouldn’t leave without some money in hand. I shut my eyes and was asleep within seconds.
10
At nine the following morning, the hotel manager called to tell me “Hank Kraft” was waiting for me in the lobby. “He says to bring your coat,” he said.
Henry wore no smile when I came into the lobby in my coat and gloves, my handbag over my arm. No greeting at all. Instead he took my elbow and pointed me toward the door.
“We can’t talk here,” he whispered. He led me out the front door and onto the bustling street, where he pointed to a butter-yellow Cadillac parked at the curb. It was without a doubt the prettiest car I’d ever seen. He opened the passenger side door for me and I slid in. The car smelled of his delicious pipe tobacco and I breathed in the comforting scent. Henry said nothing as he got into the driver’s seat, and he remained silent as he drove a couple of blocks from the hotel. Then he turned onto a side street and pulled to the curb.
“Are you cold?” he asked, his hand on the key. “I can leave the heater going.”
“Thank you,” I said. I folded my gloved hands in my lap, apprehensively waiting for his decision.
He studied my face for a moment, long enough to make me squirm under his scrutiny. “I believe we should get married,” he said finally.
I stared at him in shock. “Get married!” I said. “We don’t even know each other.”
“Well, we knew each other well enough to…” He motioned toward my stomach.
“But that was—”
“I thought about it all night long,” he interrupted. “I don’t want you going off to who-knows-where with my son or daughter. Someday you’d meet and marry another man, and I don’t want that man raising my child. This child”—he motioned to my belly again—“is my rightful heir. I can afford to take care of you both. Very well.” He looked hard at me as if to be sure I understood exactly how well my baby and I would be able to live. “You’ll have no worries. You’ll never have to work. I recently bought land near the house I grew up in, and my architect has finished drawing up plans for a house of my own. Until that house is completed, we’d have to live in my family home with my mother and sister, but—”
“Henry,” I said, shaking my head in astonishment. “That’s so kind of you, but it’s … it’s unrealistic.”
“Your plan is unrealistic,” he argued. “Moving somewhere where you don’t know a soul? Inventing a husband in the military, a husband who will never come home? You’ll be living a lie for the rest of your life. How realistic would that be?”
“Don’t you already have someone special?” I asked. He was good-looking. Clearly wealthy. He obviously had power and prominence in this town. I was—and we both had to know this—far beneath him when it came to social status.
“No one special,” he said, so sharply that I knew there was a story there. A story he did not want to tell.
He reached into the pocket of his tweed coat and withdrew a small black box. Holding it in front of me, he opened it. The sunlight caught the glitter of the largest diamond I’d ever seen. I sucked in my breath.
“You already bought a ring?” I was shocked.
“Please marry me, Tess,” he said. “Let’s raise our son or daughter together.”
I was too stunned to respond. This was crazy! Yet, as I sat riveted by the ring, I thought of Mimi and Pop. Their marriage had been arranged. They hadn’t even met one another until a month before the wedding when Mimi was introduced to Pop at a family gathering, knowing he was to be her husband whether she liked him or not. And look at them now. One of the most loving couples I’d ever known. They’d started out as strangers but the love grew between them.
Vincent’s smile slipped into my mind and I pushed it out. I couldn’t afford to let him into my thoughts right now. There was no hope there, and thinking of him would only derail the future I needed to make for myself and my baby.
I looked into Henry’s blue eyes. There was hope in them. How many men would respond this way, wanting to take responsibility for their mistake and make things right? Henry wanted our child in his life. He wanted me in his life. This was more than a way out, I thought. It felt like an extraordinary sign from God.
“Yes.” I let a smile come to my lips. “Yes. I’ll marry you.”
11