Hold on My Heart Read Free Page A

waiting for Libby’s youngest sister.
    Libby shifted on her wooden chair and tried to sneak the corner from the dinner roll in front of her.
    Her father glanced down at his watch, his forehead creased in annoyance. “Beverly, let’s just start without her, or this will all be too cold to eat.”
    “Thank goodness. I’m starving.” Libby’s older sister, Ginny, reached for the mashed potatoes and plopped a huge mound onto her plate. “Doesn’t she realize when she makes us wait, she’s making the baby wait, too?”
    Ginny was older than Libby by thirteen months and four days, and wore the crown of that achievement regally on her strawberry blond hair. Libby was forever trying to catch up. It wasn’t a race, of course, but thanks to the recent setbacks in Libby’s personal and professional life,Ginny was a career, a husband, and a pregnancy ahead of her. Libby needed to get her life in order soon, or she’d be lapped by a sweet-smelling newborn baby.
    Ginny smoothed a hand over her expanded belly, the fabric of her pink-striped shirt taut and nearly giving up at the seams, before she reached for the gravy. She was round and plump and serene, one half of a picture-perfect couple. Her husband, Ben, sat next to her, his arm draped around her chair and his sandy-blond head tipped close, just in case Ginny should need to whisper some sweet little something into his ear.
    Looking at them, Libby felt the twinge of missing… all of that.
    She hadn’t confided in anyone about the status of her relationship with Seth. How could she, when she wasn’t entirely certain of it herself? They’d lived together for a year and a half and dated for two before that. And not once in all that time had they talked about any future beyond the next weekend. They’d never discussed getting married or having children, except in the most abstract way. And she hadn’t minded. Much.
    Libby wasn’t pining away for a diamond ring or a white picket fence in the suburbs. She didn’t need a proposal from Seth. But she did need the promise of a future, something to be certain of and to cling to when everything else seemed unstable and out of reach. But once she’d lost her job, her fair-weather boyfriend became decidedly vague about their relationship. And then he asked for her half of the rent.
    It was Seth’s idea for her to leave Chicago and stay with her parents until she found a new job. He was traveling all the time for work anyway, and so it made sense. Sort of. But she’d been home a month now, and he didn’t seem to be missing her all that much.
    “Mother, can I get you some roast?” Libby’s father asked Nana, nudging Libby back to the moment.
    Nana Hamilton spread her dark green napkin across her tiny lap. “If you could find a bit that’s not too overcooked, that would be nice. Beverly’s roasts are a little tough.”
    Libby’s grandmother was hard of hearing, or at least pretended to be so she could say whatever she wanted to in a dramatic stage whisper and then feign embarrassment when she was overheard. Not that she was any gentler when speaking directly to someone. “Ginny, that extra weight you’ve put on won’t come off the same day the baby is born, you know. Maybe you should put back some of those potatoes.”
    “Thank you for your concern, Nana.” Ginny put another scoop of potatoes on her plate, clanking the spoon against the side.
    “Ginny has been taking great care of herself, Nana,” Ben said dutifully. “And I hope our baby girl looks just like her.”
    Libby’s father passed the platter laden with beef. “So, the baby is a she? I thought it was a boy.”
    “We thought so last week.” Ben nodded. “But this morning, Ginny decided he was a girl.”
    “I had a dream she was a girl,” Ginny explained.
    “Can’t you get a picture taken so you know what it is?” Nana asked.
    “I want to be surprised,” Ginny answered.
    “She’ll be surprised, all right,” Nana fake-whispered to Libby.