“He saw that I was pregnant, of course, so I had to tell him.”

“Oh, my God. You really are serious, aren’t you?” Michelle was breathing heavily between words as they made their way up an incline in the trail, between a grove of pine trees and a poison oak-filled meadow.

“He completely freaked out.”

Michelle stopped, forcing Soleil to stop, too.

“You did it! You finally told him. Oh, thank goodness.”

Michelle had been oozing disapproval for weeks that Soleil was keeping the truth about the baby’s father to herself. Michelle was, in fact, the only person who knew until three days ago when West had arrived.

“You don’t have to make me sound so evil.”

“You know that’s not what I mean. It’s just you don’t need the stress of that confession hanging over your head. At least now things can move toward a resolution.”

“Things don’t need to move anywhere.”

Michelle stopped staring at her and started walking again. “So what did he say?”

“Oh, the usual. ‘How could you not have told me?’ and ‘Of course I’m going to be involved in this child’s life.’ Stuff like that.”

“How can you be so flip about this? It’s your child’s father-and its future. Your future.”

Her friend picked up her pace, possibly afraid of Soleil’s foot making contact with her back end.

“God, could you chill out and trust that maybe I can handle my future without anyone else’s help?”

“Okay, sorry.” Michelle was silent for a moment, then she said, “He’s going to want to marry you.”

“Shut up.”

“He is!”

“That’s my worst nightmare.”

“I know you say that, but…”

“But what?”

“You could do worse, you know.”

“That’s exactly what I hope to think about someone I pledge my life to-‘I could do worse.’”

“West is gorgeous and smart and sexy and-”

“And you already know the hundred and one reasons I’m not interested in him.”

“Let’s see…Reason number one, he doesn’t fit your fantasy of the perfect pseudo-hippie tree-hugging weenie?”

“I don’t date weenies,” Soleil said, but it somehow rang false.

“Every guy you’ve ever dated has lived in a yurt or a commune or both and wouldn’t hesitate to use the word karma in casual conversation.”

“Except West.”

“But you didn’t really date, now, did you?” Michelle chided.

“I guess that depends on your definition of the word date.”

“Alternately rolling around together naked and arguing doesn’t really count in my book.”

Soleil sighed. She’d never had such a volatile relationship with anyone before. Sure, she’d had her share of fireworks in the past, but with West it was an extended Fourth of July celebration-exhausting and explosive.

“That’s the problem when you’re with a guy with whom you agree about nothing.”

“West seems a lot more reasonable to me than you make him out to be.”

“He thinks women belong at home, barefoot and pregnant.”

“You’re halfway there, babe,” Michelle said, clearly thrilled with her own joke.

“That’s not funny.”

“What exactly did he say? I mean, did he use the words barefoot and pregnant?”

“I don’t remember, but that’s what he meant.” Even if he hadn’t, Soleil refused to concede this point to Michelle. West’s words conjured images of domestic prisons that easily fit the barefoot-and-pregnant mold.

Michelle shot her a pointed stare.

“I didn’t memorize what he said word for word, okay?”

“Weren’t you the one who told me once that you appreciated differences of opinion? That you would be bored to death by a guy who agreed with you about everything?”

“I don’t think I said that.”

“You did. You said it after your last breakup, actually.”

Oh.

Right.

“That was a long time ago. Besides, Brian was so dull he would have made anyone long for a little excitement.”

“And West excites you, right?”

“Not in a good way.”

“Since when is there a bad kind of excitement?”

“Well, let’s say you want to feel stable and secure and harmonious with your partner. Then excitement might not go hand in hand with that.”

“Maybe you haven’t given him enough of a chance yet. He seems like a great catch to me.”

“Then you date him.”

“I’m not the one about to have a baby with him.”

“Yeah. There is that.” Soleil looked out over the lake as they reached a scenic lookout spot.

To the southeast, she could see the farm, barely identifiable by its red rooftops at this distance. She’d come to love the place more intensely than anywhere else, and she wondered if she’d ever be able to love a man the way she loved her home. Certainly, she couldn’t love West Morgan enough to give up this place for him.

“Don’t you think if your baby has the chance to have both parents around watching him or her grow up, he or she deserves to have that?”

Ouch.

“You know, you’re really laying it on thick today.”

Michelle sighed. “Look, I know you have this vision of yourself as a strong woman who doesn’t need anyone, but did it ever occur to you that you might feel differently once your baby is born?”

“I might, but I’ve got friends who can help me.”

“You don’t have any family here.”

A weight settled on Soleil’s chest. No, she didn’t, and she didn’t want to be reminded of that right now.

“Thank God,” she said, trying to convince herself as much as Michelle. “If my mom was here, she wouldn’t be any help anyway.”

Which was true, but it would have been nice to have some kind of family around to help out.

Her face flushed, and she shrugged off her backpack and sat.

“Time for snacks,” she said to distract from the fact that she was getting dizzy. “Can you imagine my mother playing the doting-grandma role?”

Michelle laughed. “She’d probably try to slip a little whiskey into the baby’s bottle.”

“Or write an angry poem about how demeaning it is to be called grandma.”

Soleil took out two sandwiches and two bottles of water and began unwrapping her own turkey sandwich. Her hands were shaking from hunger, even though she’d had lunch a couple of hours earlier with the kids before they left. She took a big bite, and her shakiness began to subside.

“It’s harder than it looks, raising a kid,” Michelle said, still on her negativity kick. “Just remember that. Way harder.”

Michelle’s own daughter was eight years old, and while Soleil had been around for much of Kaitlin’s childhood, she hadn’t known their family for the first few years, before she’d moved to Promise and taken over the farm.

“I know I won’t really understand what it’s like until I’m in the middle of it. But I won’t be the first person who’s been a single parent. Look at my mom.”

“Your father was there for the early years, though, right?”

“Yeah.” It was only later, when her mother’s depression and craziness went from bad to worse and she had an affair with a temporary resident scholar in the English Department at U.C. Berkeley that they split up.

Soleil had been six at the time. She remembered it all only in a dreamlike way. And she remembered missing her father terribly, wanting him to come back home.

She took a big bite of sandwich. Her own child wouldn’t miss what he or she had never known, right? It would be different. For one thing, since Soleil worked for herself, she could be around all the time. Even if she had to hire a nanny part-time, she’d never be farther than a quick jog away from the baby.

Michelle took off her jacket and spread it on the ground, then sat and twisted her long dark hair up into a bun.

“I’ll be around to help, but honestly, Soleil, I don’t know how I would have survived the baby years with Kaitlin without Daniel to help me.”

“So divorce Daniel and marry me. We can make the lesbian thing work, can’t we?”

Michelle gave her a look. “Maybe you can, but men have certain…qualities…that I can’t do without.”

“Oh, sure, rub it in that you’ve got certain qualities to keep you entertained in bed at night while I’m all alone.”

“By choice,” Michelle reminded her.

“The weird thing is, I thought I’d be hearing from West again right away. And I haven’t.”

“You freaked him out, of course. Can you imagine having someone tell you out of the blue that you’re about to have a baby? Talk about the shock of a lifetime.”

Something else was nagging at her. West wouldn’t be back in town at this time of year unless something was wrong. She hadn’t even bothered to ask what that might be.

She should call him, she decided. Invite him to go to her next ultrasound appointment on Monday.

That would kind of, sort of, make up for a few things, wouldn’t it?

Maybe not, but it was a start.

WEST STOOD in the doorway and looked across the floor of his father’s kitchen, where a river of milk meandered across the tile, curving its way past islands of oat-bran cereal.

“Dad, what happened?”

“Huh? Oh, that.” His father edged past him into the kitchen. “Somebody’s damn cat tripped me.”

“Where is the cat?”

“I locked the ornery thing outside where it belongs. Don’t know what it was doing in here in the first place. Is it yours?”

“Yes, he’s mine,” West lied, hoping it would keep the cat safe for the time being. They’d been going around and around about Moe the cat for the past few days. It was crazy-making how conversations they’d had minutes earlier would resurface, again and again and again and again, ad infinitum.

“I’d appreciate it if you’d let him stay inside when it’s cold out.”

“I never did like cats,” the General grumbled as he peered in the refrigerator.

Entirely untrue. His dad had adored Moe.

Had? The word sent a chill up West’s spine. He’d begun to think of his father as if he was already gone, as if this belligerent man a few feet away wasn’t actually the General.