The Sweetest September (Home in Magnolia Bend) (2 page)

CHAPTER TWO

Ten and a half weeks later

T
HE
DUST
BOILED
up around her rental car making Shelby squint to see the tractor rolling along the rows of tall plants. Sugarcane. That’s the crop John Beauchamp grew on the thirteen-hundred acres owned by the Stanton trust. Or at least that’s what Annie Dufrene had told her when she’d called with the report...and unstated questions.

But Shelby hadn’t given any answers.

For one thing, the private investigator was her ex-boyfriend’s sister-in-law. For another, Shelby hadn’t told a soul the reason she had to find John Beauchamp.

Yeah.

The gravel road wound through the green fields leading her to a white-columned farmhouse with a wide front porch. The hedges out front needed a good trim and the flower bed had long gone the way of despair. A patch of gravel indicated a parking area, so Shelby rolled to a halt there, sucking in deep breaths of air-conditioning and tried to still her pounding heart.

You can do this, Shelby. You have to do this. It’s only right and fair.

With shaking hands, she pulled down the visor and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked good. The Louisiana humidity had been chased away by a cold front and so her bouncy blond hair looked like something out of a shampoo ad. She’d applied her makeup with a careful, light hand, and the taupe-and-orange-striped wrap dress emitted a polished vibe. She looked just right to tell a man she’d met only once that she was having his baby.

Yeah.

She still couldn’t believe she was pregnant, but the visit to the obstetrician a month ago had confirmed what she’d tried to pretend away when the monthly bill hadn’t arrived. She had no clue how it had happened. Even in the drunken haze, she remembered the condom being tossed into the trash can, the torn package she’d scooped up. Proof she’d been responsible.

The fact the stick had awarded her with two blue lines had caused her to literally drop to her knees.

Pregnant.

She’d immediately lost the lobster she’d choked down at dinner with her parents and afterward had lain half dressed in the bathroom of her parents’ guesthouse wondering how in the hell something like this could have happened. Then she convinced herself it was a false positive. Had to be. But to be certain, she’d schedule an appointment with her doctor, where three weeks later the
wub-wub
of the fetal heartbeat had crushed her with reality and some other feeling she couldn’t identify...something that had led her back to Louisiana to find the man she’d wrapped her legs around in a moment of desperation.

Before she’d heard the heartbeat, she’d planned to make the mistake go away.
Abortion
wasn’t a pretty word no matter how one dressed it, but Shelby thought it best for everyone concerned. She’d made the appointment with her doctor in Seattle, researched the procedure on the internet and told herself it was the right thing to do. She’d even cleared her substitute teaching schedule in order to have the procedure on a Thursday and be able to return to school on Monday.

Not easy, but best.

Until she heard the heartbeat.

She hadn’t known what the doctor was doing when she squirted cold lube on her stomach and moved that thing around. And then...there it was.

Whoosh, lub, whoosh, lub.

And that’s all it took—Shelby fell in love with her baby.

Simple as that. Never would she imagine the pull to be so visceral. But at that moment, she knew there would be no abortion. She couldn’t erase this mistake the way she erased assignments from the dry-erase board at school.

Armed with a prescription for prenatal vitamins and various pamphlets, Shelby had strolled out of the doctor’s office a different woman than when she’d strolled in, for now she was an expectant mother.

She felt different than being an accidentally knocked-up loser who didn’t even know who the father of her baby was. Correction. She knew the father was a guy named Josh or John Beau-something who’d been in Boots Grocery, the unfortunate grocery/bar/bait stand, the second Friday in September.

Of course, it had crossed her mind to forget all about him...and the uncaring way her child had been conceived. Yes,
her
child. Not his. But that didn’t sit well with her. In the past, she’d tried to slide around corners and hide from truth, and if she was going to have a baby and raise him or her to be a good, productive, honest citizen, she had to start out on the right foot.

And that meant finding the man who’d cried after having raunchy, impetuous sex with her...and telling him she was pregnant.

So when Thanksgiving break had rolled around, she’d bought a plane ticket back to the state she’d hoped never to see again. Then she’d called Annie Dufrene. Two days before Shelby was set to fly back into Baton Rouge, Annie sent her a fax on one John Beauchamp. Thirty-four years old. A widower. Sugarcane farmer. Resides at 308 Burnside Hwy 4, Breezy Hill Plantation. No children. Parents living. Two brothers and one older sister. Registered driver, organ donor and no arrest record.

Biggest relief ever—he hadn’t lied when he said he was no longer married. At least that small thing had gone right.

So here she was in the middle of Louisiana on a nice fall day about to shock the boots off the poor man.

For a good five minutes Shelby fiddled around in the rental, double-checking her phone messages, updating her GPS and wadding up gum wrappers and tucking them in a tissue. Finally, with nothing more to piddle with, she opened the car door and climbed out into the cool Louisiana afternoon. The tractor still ambled along in a half-planted field. Behind it trailed several men, tucking what looked to be sticks into the furrows. In another field, a huge combine thing cut sugarcane, or at least that’s what she assumed.

She knocked on the door twice, but no one seemed to be inside. Or anywhere around the outside of the house.

Maybe she should have called. But how awkward would that have been?

“Yes, hello. John? It’s Shelby...Shelby. You remember me? Mid-September, Boots Grocery, watermelon-colored panties?...Yeah, well, guess what? I’m having your baby.”

Didn’t seem too kosher...not that Shelby was Jewish. Still, seemed like something a woman should tell a man face-to-face. But she’d been here for almost fifteen minutes and no one was around. Surely someone should have seen her driving up. How long should she wait?

Shelby glanced back at the field. Tractor still churning...or doing whatever tractors do.

Sighing, she sank onto the top step of the porch. There were rocking chairs framing a bank of windows, but sitting in one seemed presumptuous...like she was an old friend, familiar enough to sit on his porch. But she wasn’t an old friend...or even a new one. Shelby was nothing to this man...and he likely wouldn’t feel too “friendly” when she delivered her news.

She glanced at her watch. Twenty minutes had passed. Hadn’t someone seen the car come up the drive?

“Hey,” a voice came from her left.

Shelby turned and peered over the overgrown sweet olive bush to find a young sunburned guy in sagging jeans and a flat-billed cap staring at her with suspicion. She stood. “Oh, hey. I wondered if anyone was around.”

“If you’re sellin’ something, we don’t want it,” he said, wiping his brow with a soggy blue bandanna.

“Well, how do you know you don’t want it?” Shelby asked.

“If I ain’t offered nothin’ I don’t have to choose whether I want it or not. Stands to reason it’s easier to say I don’t want to buy nothin’.”

Roundabout logic, but it made sense.

Shelby walked down the five concrete steps. The guy with the bowlegged gait, stained T-shirt and bright blue eyes narrowed his gaze.

“I’m not selling anything, but I
am
looking for John Beauchamp,” she said.

“Out there on the tractor.” He pointed at the big green tractor. It was so far away Shelby could see only the outline of a figure inside the cab.

“Oh,” she said, licking her lips, trying to look calm.

“You here from the church, then?” he asked, shoving the bandanna in his back pocket.

“The church? Uh, no.”

He lifted his brows. “Well, the boss—”

“But I do need to speak to Mr. Beauchamp. It’s important,” she interrupted.

The kid shook his head. “We in the middle of harvest and don’t quit for nothin’. Not even a pretty lady.”

Shelby didn’t know what to say. Seemed evident the worker wasn’t about to fetch John off the tractor. “But this can’t wait.”

“Guess I can take you out if you want. Boss will have to stop then.” He gestured to a golf cart on steroids. “I’m Homer. Been working for the Stantons forever. Reckon I can decide you’re all right and take you out to do whatever business you got with Boss Man.”

Boss Man? Had she entered a time warp? “Thank you. I’m Shelby.” She stuck out her hand, but Homer waved it away, lifting his hands and showing streaks of grease on his palms.

“I’ll just say how you do.” He bobbed his head.

Southerners were weird sometimes. And charming. But mostly weird. “You called Mr. Beauchamp Boss Man but you said this land belongs to the Stantons?”

“The boss married a Stanton and runs the place for the family. Ain’t nobody works this land the way Boss Man do. Even ol’ Mr. Stanton, who died right there in that tractor of a heart attack, didn’t love it like Boss, and there ain’t nobody left to run this place, which is a shame since this land’s been worked by Stantons for long as I can remember and way past that. Boss’s wife died last year in an accident.”

“Oh,” Shelby said, not really wanting the history lesson, not really wanting to soften over John losing his wife. She wanted to get on with telling John about the baby and go back to a place that made sense to her.

Homer cracked another smile. “You ain’t from here, are you? You talk funny.”

“I’m from Washington State.”

“Well, tell the president ‘hey’ for me when you see him.”

Okay, she wasn’t touching that one. “Will do.”

“I’ll get a towel outta the barn for you to sit on. Don’t want to mess that fancy dress up,” Homer said, loping off toward the barn.

Shelby waited, fiddling with the key chain and double-checking she’d locked the rental car since she’d left her purse on the floorboard. Of course no one was around to make off with it, but living in Seattle most of her life had ingrained certain precautions.

But then, sometimes taking precautions failed. She stood here living proof about to climb into a cart and bump out to a tractor operated by a man who was going to get the shock of his life. Yeah, sometimes in spite of a best effort, shit happened.

Like getting pregnant.

When Homer came back around, he carried a faded striped beach towel, which he placed on the seat of the cart. “Here ya go.” He patted the towel.

Shelby eyed the new boots she’d bought before peeing on the pregnancy test stick and learning her life would go from single, focused substitute teacher to single, unfocused mother. Somehow the sleek knee-length boots she’d bought to make her feel better about the whole Darby fiasco seemed frivolous for her new role, but that didn’t mean she wanted them spattered with Louisiana mud.

Minutes later they took off, rolling over ruts in bone-jarring fashion. Shelby clung to the handrail attached to the roof of the cart and focused on not sliding out since the seat belts looked to have been cut out.

She watched the green tractor in the distance grow larger. It still chugged along, workers scurrying behind. Finally, when the motorized cart Homer called a mule got within a hundred feet, the big tractor stopped. Seconds later the stranger from the bar climbed out, looking tired and puzzled.

Homer hopped out of the cart and jogged over to John Beauchamp whose edges looked sharper than she remembered. Sobriety did that. “Brought you a pretty lady who says she needs a word with you. I’ll come back for her in a few. Gotta get this part over to Henry.”

John glanced over to Shelby, his eyes narrowing, face bewildered. Shelby wondered what he thought. Probably had that same sinking feeling she’d had when her boobs had grown heavy and achy and the telltale crimson flow hadn’t appeared. Pure dread.

“Thanks, Homer, but you better give me the part. I’ll drive it over to the combine. Can you take over here for me?”

Homer saluted before scrabbling up the tractor into the cab. He called down, “Sure thing, Boss Man.”

John frowned, shaking his head. “Stop calling me that.”

Homer cackled. “Hey, it’s what you are.”

Shelby sat still as a puddle, watching John walk toward where she held a death grip on the handle. This wasn’t going the way she’d planned, but then again, things were all over the map in regards to plans lately.

Readjusting an old ball cap on his head, John stopped beside the driver’s seat, glancing back at the men standing behind the tractor, drinking water. They all stared, questions in their eyes, at the woman dressed for brunch sitting in a mucked-up cart in the middle of a cane field. “Go on, fellows. We need to finish this field today. Already late on this planting.”

The men leaped into action as the tractor lurched forward with Homer at the helm.

Shelby took a moment to take stock of the man she hadn’t seen since he’d slipped out of the bathroom that fateful night. John’s boots were streaked with mud and his dusty jeans had a hole on the thigh. A kerchief hung from his back pocket, and the faded chambray shirt he wore stretched across broad shoulders. He looked like a farmer.

She’d never thought a farmer could look, well, sexy. But John Beauchamp had that going for him...not that she was interested.

Been there. Done him. Got pregnant.

He looked down at her with cautious green eyes...like she was a ticking bomb he had to disarm. “What are you doing here?”

Shelby tried to calm the bats flapping in her stomach, but there was nothing to quiet them. “Uh, it’s complicated.”

He slid in beside her, his thigh brushing hers. She scooted away. He noticed, but didn’t say anything.

“Complicated,” he repeated as though tasting the word. “You didn’t go back to...Seattle, was it?”