Lullaby and Goodnight

Author:Wendy Corsi Staub [Staub, Wendy Corsi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780786016426
Publisher: Zebra
Published: 2005-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Rita? Are you asleep?”

“Me? Sleep?” Rita says into the phone with a laugh. “I’m just sitting here watching TV. J.D. snores louder than a jackhammer. Who can get any sleep around here?”

“I figured you might be up.” Peyton sounds troubled. “I wasn’t going to call, but . . .”

“What’s up, sugar pie? Please don’t tell me you’re having labor pains, because I’ll have to tell you it’s just gas again.”

Peyton laughs. “No early labor pains this time. I swear I won’t do that to you again.”

“Oh, you will. And don’t worry, I’m used to it. So what’s going on?”

“It’s just . . . I ran into Tom a little while ago, on the street. I had to tell him.”

“About the baby.”

“Yes.”

“What did he—” Rita interrupts herself to say, “Wait a minute. You just ‘ran into’ him?”

“Sort of. He was actually waiting on the steps of my building when I got there.”

Rita mulls that over. “That seems a little presumptuous, don’t you think?”

“No, it was okay. Gil was with me. He’s been asking me to go over and see his new place, so I finally went tonight.”

“He’s another one.”

“Gil? Another what?”

“He’s way too attached to you for a married man.”

“He’s separated.”

“But not divorced.”

“Tom is,” Peyton says.

“Good for him.” Realizing that sounds harsh, Rita checks herself, adding, “Trust me, you don’t need men with baggage at a time like this. I’m saying that as your friend, not as a health practitioner.”

“Well, I’m calling you as a friend, and not as a health practitioner, so I’m glad we’ve got that straight. But, Rita, I can’t help being there for Gil. He just needs somebody to talk to right now. He’s going through hell.”

“A lot of people go through hell.”

Peyton doesn’t say anything to that. Rita knows she’s thinking of Allison, clinging to the hope she’s carried so valiantly since Mother’s Day.

Rita should probably state the obvious here: that chances for Allison coming back to them are slim at this point. Wanda said as much earlier, when they met for lunch. She was full of information on missing-persons’ cases, a wealth of discouraging statistics and percentages.

According to Wanda, with her flair for bleak irony, Allison is as likely to turn up alive and well as Wanda’s married suburban boyfriend is to get a divorce, move to Manhattan, and marry her.

“Meaning,” Wanda told Rita decisively, “it ain’t gonna happen in this lifetime.”

But then, Peyton probably knows that in her heart as well as anyone does. What harm is there in letting her cling outwardly, at least, to her optimism?

“Don’t worry, Rita,” she says finally. “I’m not letting any guy get too close.”

Rita adapts her efficient, no-nonsense, doctor-patient demeanor. “Listen, if you could find a nice, sincere guy who would be daddy material, I’d be the first one to say go for it.”

“I’m not looking for daddy material,” Peyton tells her. “And if I thought Tom might be it . . . well, I didn’t think that so it doesn’t matter.”

“What did he say when you told him?”

“I didn’t tell him, exactly.

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