“Think Nikki will mind?” David asked.
“I already asked her,” Angela said. “She said she didn’t care and that she’s looking forward to meeting Karen Sherwood. She’s one of the cheerleaders.”
“Then let’s go,” David said.
Just before seven Karen Sherwood arrived. David let her in. He wouldn’t have guessed she was a cheerleader. She was a thin, quiet young woman who unfortunately looked a lot like her father. Yet she was pleasant and intuitive. When she was introduced to Nikki she was smart enough to say she loved dogs, especially puppies.
While David drove Angela finished putting on her makeup. David could tell she was tense, and he tried to reassure her that everything would be fine and that she looked terrific. When they pulled up to the Wadley home, both were impressed. The house wasn’t as grand as theirs, but it was in far better condition and the grounds were immaculate.
“Welcome,” Wadley said as he threw open his front door to greet the Wilsons.
The inside of the house was even more impressive than the outside. Every detail had been attended to. Antique furniture stood on thick oriental carpets. Pastoral nineteenth-century paintings adorned the walls.
Gertrude Wadley and her courtly husband were significantly different people, lending credence to the saying “opposites attract.” She was a retiring, mousy woman who had little to say. It was as if she’d been submerged by her husband’s personality.
Their teenage daughter, Cassandra, seemed more like her mother initially, but as the evening progressed, she became more like her outgoing father.
But it was Wadley who dominated the evening. He pontificated on a number of subjects. And he clearly doted on Angela. At one point he looked skyward and thanked the fates that he had been rewarded with such a competent team now that Angela had arrived.
“One thing is for sure,” David said as they drove home, “Dr. Wadley is thrilled with you. Of course, I can’t blame him.”
Angela snuggled up to her husband.
Arriving home, David accompanied Karen across the fields to her home, even though she insisted she’d be fine. When David got back, Angela met him at the door in lingerie she hadn’t worn since their honeymoon.
“It looks better now when I’m not pregnant,” Angela said. “Don’t you agree?”
“It looked great then and it looks great now.”
Stealing into the semi-dark living room, they lowered themselves onto the couch. Slowly and tenderly they made love again. Without the frenzy of the previous evening, it was even more satisfying and fulfilling.
Once they were through, they held each other and listened to the symphony of chirping crickets and croaking frogs.
“We’ve made love more here in the last two days than in the previous two months in Boston,” Angela said with a sigh.
“We’ve been under a lot of stress.”
“It makes me wonder about another child,” Angela said.
David moved so that he could make out Angela’s profile in the darkness. “Really?” he asked.
“With a house this size, we could have a litter,” Angela said with a little laugh.
“We’d want to know if the child had cystic fibrosis. I suppose we could always rely on amniocentesis.”
“I suppose,” Angela said without enthusiasm. “But what would we do if it were positive?”
“I don’t know,” David said. “It’s scary. It’s hard to know what the right thing to do is.”
“Well, like Scarlett O’Hara said, let’s think about it tomorrow.”