Suzanne tried again to make her point. “Mom, that’s a noble thought, but you already have one. Are you forgetting Derrick’s daughter?” Nor had her mother been married to Kenya’s father, but it would be just plain mean to bring that to the forefront. “Besides, your ‘baby girl’ is an adult. No one can force Gregory to marry her.”
“Besides, he wants to be with Paige,” Kenya said morosely.
“Forget about her,” Arlene said. “You’re the one having the baby. He should do the right thing by you.” She got off of her bar stool and stood behind her youngest child, hugging her from behind and then affectionately patting her flat belly.
“Hard to believe there’s a baby in there, is there?”
“Just wait a few months,” Suzanne murmured.
Kenya turned to her big sister. “Suzanne, what do you think I should do?”
“I think the first thing you need to do is have it confirmed by a doctor. Sometimes home pregnancy tests aren’t accurate. Then you need to talk to Gregory. See what he says.”
“I guess that will kill the budding romance between him and Paige,” Arlene said nastily.
Suzanne couldn’t deny that she found that idea appealing. She bit down on her bottom lip to keep from grinning.
“Of course, Kenya, I would have preferred that you’d been married first, like your sister,” Arlene continued. “There’s probably plenty of young men out there who will one day be well off after they finish college. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t snag one of them. But I think Gregory will do just fine.”
“He’s the only man I ever wanted,” Kenya said dreamily.
Suzanne abruptly turned her back under the guise of getting a package of fresh mushrooms from the vegetable bin of the refrigerator. She couldn’t understand why Kenya was so stuck on Gregory Hickman.
“And you’ve seen his parents’ house, Mom,” Kenya continued. “It’s not as nice as this house, of course, but it’s really nice. Maybe we’d get to live there if we got married, until Gregory’s been working long enough to afford his own place. There’s plenty of room for us and the baby, now that the kid boarding with his parents has moved out.”
Suzanne, her back still to her mother and sister, rolled her eyes. It was true that Ernie and Flo did have a nice home, but she’d never been impressed with the way they’d decorated it. It was too crowded, for one. All that furniture and wall units crammed with bric-a-brac. The area rugs that lay atop of the wall-to-wall carpeting only served to make the spacious rooms look tiny. And all those horrible painted ceramic dogs. If they loved dogs so much, why didn’t they just get a real one?
Still, Kenya was her sister, and she hated the idea of her possibly being disappointed. “Kenya, Mom’s just making a suggestion. I really don’t think you should start making plans to marry Gregory. You’ll feel very bad if things don’t work out.”
Arlene took another sip of her drink. “Listen, it’s as good as done. From what I know about Ernie and Flo, they’d be mortified to have an illegitimate grandbaby.”
“I agree, Mom. But it isn’t what they think, it’s what Gregory wants.”
“Gregory will do whatever they want him to do. He’s a nice young man. He’s also an only child, which means they probably have a good hold over him.”
Suzanne dumped the mushrooms into a colander and let the faucet water rinse them. “Like I said, first things first. Kenya, go down to the women’s clinic on Monday.” She broke off when Lauren wandered into the kitchen, her careless ambulation and slouched-over posture suggesting boredom.
“Auntie Kenya, you said you’d watch TV with me. I found a different movie that starts in five minutes.”
“She’ll be with you in a minute, Lauren,” Suzanne said.
“Go on to your room. We’re talking about something private.”
“But my water needs ice.”
“Go ahead, get it.”
Lauren sprinted to the refrigerator, where she removed a pink plastic water bottle. Suzanne and Brad had installed a water purification system, and while Suzanne discouraged the children from eating in their bedrooms, she did allow them to hydrate, as long as they used containers with lids to prevent spillage. Suzanne knew her children were being raised amid privilege, and she wanted to impress upon them a certain degree of thriftiness as well as neatness. She insisted that Bradley and Lauren keep their own rooms clean rather than have Teresita clean them twice a week. She also encouraged them to drink lots of water between meals rather than pop, something they had grown up with. Since the water was purified, she taught them to refresh it with ice rather than dumping the contents into the sink. Suzanne felt it wasteful to continually dump a liter of water into the sink when they had a huge water bill each month due to pool and lawn maintenance.
After Lauren left the kitchen with her refreshed water container, Suzanne said, “Before you go, Kenya, I wanted to tell you not to say anything to anybody. I’m not even going to tell Brad until it’s confirmed. If it turns out to be a false alarm, there’s no need for anyone other than the three of us to know. So not a word to your brothers or to any of your friends. Got it?”
“I won’t say anything, Suzanne.” Kenya went to join Lauren, this time moving with a definite pep in her step.
The moment she was gone, Suzanne turned to her mother. “Mom,” she said with disappointment, “I wish you hadn’t promised Kenya that she’s going to be Gregory’s wife. If he doesn’t want to marry her, he’s not going to, and I don’t think he does. Now Kenya expects to get married, and when it doesn’t happen she’ll be heartbroken. Have you forgotten already how mopey she was just a few minutes ago?”
“Oh, it’ll be fine,” Arlene said dismissively. “It’ll be just as I told you. Ernie and Flo will want him to marry Kenya, just to legitimize the baby. They’ll tell him he can divorce her after the baby’s born. They’ll tell Kenya that, too.”
“You’re forgetting one important detail, Mom. Gregory doesn’t love her. I personally believe”—Suzanne lowered her voice to just above a whisper—“that he comes to her between his other relationships, just because she’s there. If you ask me, she’s a fool to keep taking him back. So what can possibly come from Kenya and Gregory getting married other than a broken heart for Kenya?”
“A wonderful life. All Kenya has to do is make Gregory not want to divorce her.”
“Mom, I hate to be a spoilsport, but I just don’t see that happening. If Kenya could hold him with sex alone, he wouldn’t have gone after Paige.” Suzanne didn’t even want to think about the loving way Gregory had treated Paige last night, holding her hand, looking at her with love in his eyes. Was her mother blind? “And you know as well as I do that Kenya’s housekeeping skills are”—she groped for the right word—“atrocious.”
“Well, she’ll have to brush up on her housekeeping skills and learn how to cook,” Arlene said. “She needs to hold off on a divorce as long as she can. It’ll probably be five or six years at least before Gregory starts making any big money. If they have to divorce, I want to make sure Kenya gets a piece of whatever he’s got. Then she can get to work on finding a second husband who has even more money than Gregory.”
Suzanne had to admire her mother’s maneuvering. “You’ve got it all planned out, don’t you?”
“They say you should marry for love the first time, and for financial security with subsequent marriages, no matter how many there may be.”
“Tell me, Mom. Did you feel that way about me when I married Brad?”
“Of course not. I could tell you two were madly in