Free Mother Load by K.G. MacGregor Page B

a confident squeeze. “No way Lily’s going to make a big baby. I bet this one’s mine.”
    “I always said it could be, but the size at this point isn’t usually predictive of birth weight. We’ll see some rapid growth over the next few weeks, but the real weight gain and lengthening happens in the third trimester. If you want this for your Christmas cards, I can have Marisol print it out for you.”
    “That would be the perfect way to tell people,” Lily said, her stomach still roiling from Beth’s hesitation.
    “So what are you girls doing for Thanksgiving? Big turkey plans?”
    “We were planning to go skiing in Tahoe with the family,” Anna replied, “but there’s no snow in the forecast this year.”
    “So we’re going to Tahoe to not ski,” Lily added. “Which means we’ll eat too much, watch UCLA smear Cal in football—I hope—and chase three kids through the house.”
    Beth turned off the display and wiped Lily’s belly with a towel. “If it makes you feel any better, I probably would’ve advised you not to ski anyway. Not that hurtling down the mountain is bad for you. It’s the sudden stops.” She pulled a digital voice recorder from her pocket and spewed what seemed like hundreds of words in a matter of only seconds. “Schedule with Marisol to come back in three weeks. I’d like to have another look.”
    “That’s only fourteen weeks,” Lily said anxiously, sitting up and pulling the shift across her waist. “I thought the second one was supposed to be at sixteen.”
    “It usually is, but when these bashful babies turn away from us, I like to go in for another look so I can see from the top down.”
    Her reasoning did little to assuage Lily’s concern, since Beth had said a sonogram wasn’t absolutely necessary in the first place. Now all of a sudden it was imperative she have another in only three weeks.
    A knock sounded and Seon-Lee leaned into the room with a sheet of paper. Beth looked it over and grinned wryly. “From the looks of your blood results, I’d say Thanksgiving looks like a good time to share your little secret with the family.” With her characteristic broad smile, she congratulated them one last time and left the examination room.
    Lily stared numbly at the closed door. Even with Beth’s promise they were safe to tell their family and friends, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss.
    Piece by piece, Anna held out her clothes so she could get dressed. There was nothing about her look that suggested concern.
    “Did you get the feeling there was something Beth wasn’t telling us?” Lily asked as she wriggled into her skirt.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Like she kept…I don’t know, not finishing her sentences or something. I don’t get the big deal about the baby turning and having to see the top of its head. I think there’s something wrong.”
    “If she was worried about something, would she have said it was okay to tell people?” Anna gripped her shoulders firmly. “Would she be printing off pictures of our baby to send to our friends on a Christmas card? I don’t think so.”
    Lily let out a deep sigh as Anna drew her into a hug. She resisted at first, almost refusing to be mollified. But as she let herself relax, the moment took on the familiar feel of countless others they had shared when sadness and doubt had consumed her—the day her mother died, the night she came to the house to make amends for her problems with alcohol, and all the weeks she ached to bring Andy into their home. Each time Anna had reached out to give her strength.
    And she always made everything okay.

    Anna loved the way her sporty Z8 turned heads, even on the lot at Premier Volkswagen, where her staff had seen it hundreds of times. If it was possible to fall in love with a car—and as far as she was concerned, it was—the Z8 was a machine that could steal your heart. Only a few thousand of the concept cars existed, produced almost a decade ago over a