The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,115
. . what would I be going back to? My career is at a standstill. I don’t have a job. And apart from you and Simon, I don’t have any real connections there. I guess I could freelance. Or maybe I should go back to school?”
“Know what I think you should do?” Calvin asked.
“What?”
“Make an appointment with an audiologist. Because clearly, you are losing your hearing.” He let out a growl. “Celia, for the fiftieth time: You. Don’t. Know. What is going to happen! So quit pretending you do!”
I stretched out my arm, holding the phone as far from my body as possible, but could still hear every word of Calvin’s tirade. It went on for quite a while. “Are you done now?” I asked when he finally took a breath.
“Are you?”
“Calvin, look. I know you’re just trying to help and I appreciate that. I do. But there’s no point in my—” The familiar beep interrupted my explanation. I pulled the phone from my ear, glanced at the screen, and felt my stomach knot and my pulse gallop. “Calvin, I’ve got to hang up. Anne Dowling is calling.”
“She is? Oh, honey! Be sure to—”
The phone beeped again. I hung up on Calvin, took a deep breath, said a fervent and to-the-point prayer, “Please, God,” and tapped the red button.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Celia. It’s Anne Dowling. Is this a good time to talk?”
Chapter Forty
Who was I kidding?
I honestly thought I’d prepared myself for Anne’s call, but as soon as we hung up, I completely fell apart. You can think through the outcomes and mentally rehearse your responses, but some things in life you simply cannot prepare for, no matter how hard you try.
There’d been enough tears for one day and I needed time to process, so I let Calvin’s call go to voicemail three times. I didn’t want to talk to him until I felt sure I’d be able to hold it together. The fourth time he rang, I took a big breath, promised myself out loud that I was not going to cry, and shattered that promise the second I said hello.
“Oh, cupcake. Oh, honey. I am so, so, so sorry.” I gulped in a couple of big, ragged breaths and tried to pull myself together, but the catch I heard in Calvin’s voice launched me into another round of sobbing. “Listen to me,” he said when my weeping subsided enough so I actually could listen. “I know this is hard. But it’s going to be okay. You’ve got to believe me. I’m going to catch the next plane to Charleston.”
“No, Calvin,” I rasped, fighting to catch my breath. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Don’t try to be brave,” he said. “I’m coming down there. No arguments.”
I wiped my eyes with my sleeve. “No, no. You don’t understand.”
“Celia, I know you don’t want to be a—”
“Calvin, shut up! It’s not what you think. Anne called to say that Becca picked me to take her baby.” There was a moment of silence. I think he was just as shocked as I’d been. “Calvin, Peaches is mine! I’m going to be a mother!”
After that, both of us were completely wrecked. We cried and laughed and cheered and talked over each other and cried and laughed some more.
“See?” he said. “The Cavanaughs liked you after all. You always think you can read everybody’s mind but you can’t.”
“Oh, no,” I countered. “I was absolutely right about Mister and Missus. They couldn’t stand me, especially Mrs. Cavanaugh. And they absolutely loathed Teddy.”
“What? Who could loathe Teddy? Was it the thing with the dog?”
“Nope,” I said. “Guess again.”
A couple of beats passed before the answer dawned on him.
“It’s because he’s developmentally disabled? You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’m not. Peaches doesn’t know how lucky she is not to be getting those two for grandparents.”
“But then how come they picked you to get the baby?”
“They didn’t,” I explained. “It was all Becca. She turned out to be tougher than I thought. There was quite a battle; that’s why it took so long for Anne to get back to me. Anne probably shared a little more than she should have,” I said, “but Becca used to read Dear Calpurnia and had been leaning toward me from the beginning. She really liked the house and the garden, and Teddy, and even the dogs. Apparently, she’d always wanted a dog but her parents said no. In fact, sounds like Becca didn’t get much that she truly wanted.”