Waking Up in Charleston by Sherryl Woods Page B

heading after her father.
    Mary Louise turned to her mother. “Please don’t hate me, Mom.”
    “Oh, sweetie, we could never hate you. It just makes me sad to think of all the difficulties you’re bound to face. There will be talk, you know. That’ll be hard on you and on the baby. And being a single mom might be common these days, but it’s not easy.”
    Mary Louise crossed her arms protectively over her still-flat stomach. “I don’t care about ‘easy.’ I already love this baby. I can’t wait for him or her to get here. It’s seven more months, but I already wish it were tomorrow.”
    Her mother gave her a watery smile. “My first grandbaby,” she said. “You know once your father gets over the shock, he and I will do anything we can to help you.”
    “Do you think Daddy will calm down and leave Danny alone?” Mary Louise asked, worriedly glancing toward the door. She could still hear her father’s raised voice and Reverend Webb’s quieter responses outside.
    “You’re his little girl. He only wants what’s best for you,” her mother said. “He’ll settle down once he accepts that this is the way you want it.” She studied Mary Louise’s face intently. “It is the way you want it, right? Because your daddy will change Danny’s mind if you still want a wedding.”
    Mary Louise regarded her mother sadly. “I do, but not if it means being divorced a year from now. I thinkthis is the only way Danny and I might eventually have a real chance.”
    Her mother crossed the room and sat next to her, then drew her into a fierce hug. “Reverend Webb’s right. You’re wise beyond your years, Mary Louise, and I am very proud of you.”
    Tears, never far from the surface these days, spilled down Mary Louise’s cheeks and mingled with her mother’s. Being wise pretty much sucked.
     
    “What put you in such a sour mood?” Big Max asked Caleb when he showed up on Sunday evening. “If you’re going to sit there looking as if you just lost your best friend, you might’s well go on home. Things get gloomy enough around here without you adding to the misery.”
    “And who’s fault is that?” Caleb retorted heatedly, his patience worn thin by too many people poking into his business the past couple of days. “You could change the way things are around here with one phone call.”
    “We were talking about you, not me,” Big Max responded. “Don’t try to twist it into another one of your pitches for me to crawl back to my daughter.”
    “It wouldn’t hurt you to grovel, Max. You could use a healthy dose of humility in your life.”
    “I’ve got plenty to keep me humble,” the old man said. “And I’m sure you’ll see to it that I’m brought down a peg or two when I need it. Now, what got your knickers in a knot? There’s no point playing poker if your mind’s not going to be on the cards. What happened in church today? Did somebody tell you your sermon stank like day-old fish?”
    Caleb bit back a laugh. “My sermon was just fine. Several people said so.”
    “Did somebody dump a problem in your lap that you can’t solve?” Big Max pressed. “You’re not the Lord Almighty. You can’t fix everything. To tell you the truth, it seems to me He’s at a loss from time to time, too.”
    Caleb thought of how ineffective he’d been yesterday when he’d been trying to help Mary Louise’s parents cope with the news of her pregnancy and guide them toward a workable solution they could all live with. Chet Carter had been all for taking his shotgun over to the Marshalls’ and using it to nudge Danny down the aisle. Eventually, Caleb had been able to make him see that a forced marriage wasn’t a good solution to anything, but Caleb wasn’t convinced Chet wouldn’t go back to his plan before all was said and done. He was still mad as hell that his daughter was facing this pregnancy alone.
    “I do have a parishioner in need of some help,” he told Big Max, hoping to throw him off the