Spring Fever

“Thank you,” A

“Prick,” Mason muttered. He turned without a word and went to the intake desk to start filling out the paperwork.

A

Choosing Modern Maturity only because all the brain-teaser puzzles in Highlights had already been worked, she was idly sca

A

He didn’t respond.

“She’s a perfectly healthy little girl,” A

“I know that,” Mason said, his voice muffled. “It’s just … this place.” He raised his head. His voice was strained and full of despair. “This place. You know?”

“I do know,” A

A little over five years ago, she’d rushed into this same emergency room and found Mason sitting in almost the same place, slumped over, despondent, waiting for news from this same doctor, Max Kaufman. Only that time, the patient had been Mason’s father, Gle

Fu

*   *   *

There had been other fights. A

They’d been married less than two years, when the little fissures in their happiness began to appear.

Mason and A

The cottage had been abandoned for years. As children, she and Pokey had appropriated it for a playhouse, furnishing it with cast-off furniture from the big house, a wobbly kitchen table, a pair of rickety wooden chairs, and an army cot for campouts. They played at cooking with a battered saucepan, once nearly burning the place down after attempting to heat up a can of SpaghettiOs on Davis’s Boy Scout camp stove.

And yes, she and Mason had snuck away to the caretaker’s house for stolen hours in the first few months after they’d started dating.

At first, A

But living there was a different matter. The kitchen’s warped wooden cabinets didn’t close, the refrigerator barely cooled, and that adorable roof had a spot that leaked—directly over their bed. It was drafty in the winter and hot in the summertime, and damp and mildew from the lake seemed to creep in year-round. Also, there were mice. There was no washer or dryer, which meant they had to either troop into town to the coin Laundromat or drag their basket of dirty clothes up to the big house, like a couple of college students.

All that A

Her mother-in-law never came right out and criticized the new bride in front of Mason. That wasn’t Sallie’s style, but the slow drip-drip-drip of her constant nitpicking had the effect of sand in A

A

And it was all Pokey’s fault.

She’d shown up, una

“Guess what?” she’d demanded, as soon as she’d stepped into the room. “I’m pregnant!” And next came, “You’re go

Pokey had been in no hurry to finish college. She’d declared herself on the six-year plan, until she met Pete Riggs at a fraternity party in Chapel Hill. He was from a wealthy Charleston family who owned a chain of fine furniture stores. He was tall and redheaded and had earned a full four-year golf scholarship to Wake Forest. Fun-loving Pokey called A

Before A

Mason was a no-show for all of the prenuptial hoopla. He was working as a regional manager for Dr Pepper, in Memphis, with his father’s blessing, to gain experience outside his own family’s business. He was, Pokey confided, being a major pill about the whole thing. “Mason doesn’t approve of Pete, and he doesn’t approve of me getting married and dropping out just a semester short of graduation, and he most definitely doesn’t approve of me having a baby. He threatened to put a beat-down on Pete for knocking me up, until I admitted I actually got myself knocked up on purpose. But if you ever tell that to Sallie, I’ll never speak to you again,” Pokey said.

“Too bad,” A

Still, she tried to avoid him at the reception, dancing with every man in the room who was under the age of seventy and hiding out on the veranda of the country club, behind a huge potted palm, between dances.

That’s where he found her, leaning against the veranda railing, sipping a glass of lukewarm champagne toward the end of the evening.

“Shoes hurt that bad?” he’d asked, gesturing toward the high-heeled silver slingback sandals she’d slipped out of.

“They’re killing me,” A

He picked up the sandals and flung them high into the air and out over the women’s practice green.

“Great,” she said glumly. “Two hundred dollar shoes. Gone.”

“I’ll buy you another pair,” Mason offered. “Maybe a pair you can actually walk in?”

She didn’t smile. “What do you want, Mason?”

He sighed. “I really screwed up, didn’t I?”