Tightening the Knot Read Free

keep telling me to enjoy sleep while I can.   What sleep?   How can you sleep with a foot, or something, constantly wedged between your ribs?”
                “But it’s still neat to feel him moving, right?”
                “Yeah, I guess.   But he’s like my own personal space heater.   I’m hot all the time.   I mean, it’s December and I’m always hot.”
                Jenna was growing bored, these complaints were not new, and tried to steer things in a different direction.   “So Mercy, you were supposed to meet your sub yesterday.   How did that go?”
                “Oh, yes.   Speaking of hot…”   She grinned suggestively.   “I am almost sorry to be leaving, Meredith.   You are going to enjoy the eye candy replacing me, not to mention the fun of watching the single teachers battling for his attention.”
                “Hot, huh?   What else do we know about this guy?”   Jenna clearly approved of the conversation’s new heading.
                “He’s very young, like twenty-four or twenty-five I think.   He just finished his Master’s.   His name is Gavin.   Dark hair, dark eyes, he has sort of a Mediterranean thing going on.”
                “Hey, Mer , maybe you could forget your lunch or something so I’ll have to come visit you at school.”
                “Sure.   We’ll hang out.   I’ll show you the sites.”
                “Okay, but if this guy doesn’t live up to the hype, I’m eating the lunch myself.”
                They all laughed, then Mercy sighed.   “As much as I want this baby to hurry up and get here, I’ll be sad that you two will have to go back to hanging out without me for a while.   I don’t know how long it will be before I’ll be able to have another girls’ night.”
                “Yeah, I’m just glad Meredith hasn’t abandoned me for a baby yet.   I guess she’s waiting until I land a man so we can do it together.”   She winked at Meredith.   “I hope you don’t mind waiting till you’re forty.”
                Meredith forced her outward appearance to return the smile while her insides split painfully in two.   She hadn’t told anyone, not even her best friend, that she and Greg had been trying to have a baby for nearly two years… that it had become the source of almost everything that was wrong between them.   She was sure it would bring nothing but pitying looks that she would not be able to bear.   How those looks could be worse than keeping it a secret eluded her at that particular moment.

 
     
     
     
    ╣ Chapter 3 ╠
     
     
     
     
                There was one week left of school before the holiday break.   Normally, this was a time that Meredith truly enjoyed.   She loved helping her students make presents for their parents, and she loved the time off with her own family.   This year she was having a little trouble getting into a festive mood.   Greg’s mother would be descending from Virginia on Wednesday.   Since Greg’s only sibling was a nun, all hopes of grandchildren rested on his shoulders and his mother was not shy about reminding him, and Merdith , of this responsibility.   Meredith didn’t feel they should be trying to bring a child into a house where the adults rarely spoke more than two sentences a day to each other.   Alerting her mother-in-law to this fact would be very unlikely to make her feel any better.
                Meredith’s brother, Tom, was also starting a visit on Friday, along with his girlfriend.   Tom was twenty-four.   He met Ellie during college in Bowling Green , Ohio and they both stayed in that area after graduation.   She was nice enough.   Meredith felt extraordinarily bad about using the phrase “nice enough” whenever she mentioned this possible sister-in-law, but the phrase always seemed to slip out anyway.