55
With that, Butch handed Lucky over to Joanna and went prowling in the refrigerator.
He returned with a half gallon of milk and some bread, which he crumbled into a cereal bowl. Then he poured milk over it and set the concoction down on the floor in front of the famished puppy, who stepped into it with both front feet.
“That’s one thing I love about you,” Joanna said softly as they both stood watching the puppy eagerly lap up his milk and bread. “You’re totally unflappable.”
“I like to think I try,” Butch said modestly.
“What say we go for broke, then?” she asked, gathering her courage.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “What are you saying? Is there another puppy out in the car that you haven’t brought in yet?”
“Not exactly.”
“What then, exactly?” Butch prodded.
Joanna took a deep breath. “What if I told you I might be pregnant?”
“Pregnant? You’re kidding!”
“No. I’m not kidding. I’m late. Over a week now.”
“Are you sure?”
“No, I’m not sure. I mean, I’m sure I’m late, but I’m not remotely sure if I’m pregnant.
It’s possible, though.”
Suddenly, Lucky was forgotten. Grinning from ear to ear, Butch grabbed Joanna by the waist and swung her around the kitchen in a series of circles. “Joey, this is wonderful news. It’s great! I can hardly wait to find out for sure. What time is it?”
“It’s nine o’clock. Why?”
“What time does Safeway close?”
“I don’t know—nine or maybe ten. Why?”
“Let’s go right now and get a pregnancy test. You can buy 54
EXIT WOUNDS
them over the counter, can’t you? I mean, you don’t need a prescription or anything, do you?”
“I don’t think so,” Joanna told him. “But can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
Butch shook his head. “No, ma’am. If I’m going to be a father, I want to know it now, not later. Besides,” he added with a grin, “we need Puppy Chow anyway. Now, are you and Lucky coming along, or are the two of you staying here?”
In the end, Lucky and Joanna rode along while Butch drove like a maniac. Two hours later, they were lying in bed side by side, giddy and sleepless. “A father,” Butch murmured over and over. “I’m going to be a father. I never thought it would happen to me.”
Joanna lay beside him as he rambled on and thought how different this was from when she’d told Andy she was pregnant with Jenny. They’d been at the drive-in theater on Alvernon in Tucson and to this day she had no idea what movie they had gone to see because she had blurted out the news without even waiting for the show to begin.
Where Butch was almost delirious with happiness at the news, Andy had been resolved-maybe even resigned. Of course he would marry her. Of course he would do the right thing.
But for years, there had always been that nagging little question in Joanna’s mind.
And, although they had never discussed it, maybe the same question had plagued Andy as well. Would Joann Lee Lathrop and Andrew Roy Brady have married if she hadn’t been pregnant? Or would they have broken up eventually and lived entirely different lives?
But they hadn’t, and thirteen-year-old Jennifer Ann Brady was very much a part of this new equation.
“We should tell Jenny in the morning,” Joanna said. “First thing. We don’t want her thinking we’ve been sneaking around, keeping secrets.”
56
“Right,” Butch agreed. “We’ll tell her at breakfast.”
“I thought you said she had tennis early.”
“We’ll get up even earlier. And, in that case, we’d better try to get some sleep.”
And they might have slept. It’s possible they could have slept, except right then, as soon as they stopped talking, Lucky, confined to his bedside carton, set up a mournful wail—the same keening cry that had summoned Manny Ruiz earlier that evening.
Within seconds Tigger, at the far end of the hall, began barking his head off and throwing himself against the door to Jenny’s bedroom.
Butch sighed. “Well,” he said, hopping out of bed, “I suppose we’d better get used to it.”
Joanna turned on the bedside lamp. Butch had just grabbed Lucky up and was trying to quiet him when Jenny began pounding on their bedroom door. “What’s going on in there?” she demanded. “What’s that awful noise? Tigger’s having a fit. He woke me up.”
Holding the puppy, Butch jumped back into bed and snuggled Lucky under the covers.
“All right,” Butch said. “You can come in, Jen, but you’d better leave Tigger in the hall.”
“How come?”
“Because. Trust me.”
Moments later, a pajama-clad Jenny was in their bedroom, looking more than a little cross. “What’s going on?” she asked indignantly.
Standing with her hands on her hips and with a disapproving frown on her face, Jenny looked like a miniature Eleanor Lathrop Winfield. And sounds like her, too, Joanna realized in dismay.
In answer to Jenny’s question, Butch pulled the wiggling Lucky out from under the covers and held him up in the air.
57
Jenny’s blue eyes widened in delight, then she vaulted onto the bed between Butch and Joanna.
“He’s so cute!” Jenny exclaimed breathlessly. “Where did you get him? Is he ours?
Can we keep him? What’s his name? Can I hold him?”
In answer to the barrage of questions, Butch simply handed Lucky over to Jenny. The puppy scrambled up her bare shoulder and buried his nose in her long blond hair.
“His name is Lucky,” Butch replied. “And we will keep him—if you can keep Tigger from eating him, that is.”
“Tigger won’t eat him,” Jenny declared. “He’ll be fine, I know he will be. Should I let him in now, so we can introduce them?”
“I don’t think so,” Butch said. “Not right now.”
“Why not?”
Taking a deep breath, Butch looked from Jenny back to Joanna. “Because,” he said finally, “I think your mother has something important to tell you.”
Joanna was already in her office and at her computer when Chief Deputy Frank Montoya came in for the morning briefing.
“What’s up?” he asked, placing a sheaf of papers on Joanna’s polished wood desk and taking a seat in one of the captain’s chairs.
“What do you mean, ‘What’s up’?”
“Don’t play innocent with me, Sheriff Brady. You look like the cat that swallowed the canary.”
Joanna got up, walked over to the door that led to the interior lobby and Kristin’s desk, and pulled it shut.
“I guess I did, in a manner of speaking,” she said. “Swallow the canary, that is.”
58
Frank seemed mystified. Joanna sat back down and looked at him across her desk. “I’m pregnant, Frank.”
“Whoa! Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I took a pregnancy test last night, and I’m definitely pregnant.”
Frank’s face broke into a grin. “Well, congratulations, then. That’s big news!”
“I’ll say.” Joanna grinned back at him.
“So who knows?”
“Well, Butch, Jenny, and now you.”
“What are you going to do?” Frank asked.
“What do you think? I’m going to have the baby.”
“What about the election? Are you going to drop out?”
Joanna was adamant. “And give Ken Junior a free ride? No way.”
“So are you going to keep it … well, under wraps until after election day?”
“We probably should delay making an announcement, just in case of a miscarriage, but Butch and I already talked it over. I’m going to go public with it. ASAP. I may even give our old friend, Marliss Shackleford, an exclusive on this.”
Marliss, a columnist for the local paper, The Bisbee Bee, had long been a thorn in Joanna’s side.
“Do you think that’s wise?” Frank asked. “She’s done everything but post ‘Galloway for Sheriff’ signs at the top and bottom of her column.”