Baby On The Way by Sandra Paul Read Free Book Online Page A

but Visatek offered too much to resist. He insisted on putting me through college, you know. I got out as quickly as I could.”
    Libby knew Christine had finished four years of college in three, then jumped right into her job as a buyer. Libby, on the other hand, had spent more than eight years trying to reach her goal of a master’s degree anda teaching credential and still hadn’t succeeded. She had at least another semester to complete. “You’re lucky to be doing what you want to do,” Libby said.
    Chris smiled ruefully. “Del said a degree would help me get the job—and he was right. Mom, too, had always wanted me to get at least a bachelor’s degree. She said a college education was an investment in the future.”
    Libby tried to imagine Liz giving such practical advice. She couldn’t. Her mother lived in such a dreamworld—plunging into each new role with wholehearted fervor, riding on a never-ending emotional roller coaster—that Libby had finally realized she’d have to get away if she ever planned to have a real, “normal” life of her own.
    It hadn’t been easy to leave. Especially since in the past few years Liz had begun to rely on her as something of an unpaid “social secretary,” always available to handle whatever “crisis” should arise-and crises were always occurring around Liz, who thrived on the drama of emotional chaos.
    But Libby didn’t. And eight months ago, when once again a manufactured “emergency” of her mother’s forced Libby to drop another class in order to find time to deal with the problem, she’d packed up and left immediately afterward, ignoring her mother’s tirade about her daughter’s “selfishness.”
    Libby had transferred her credits to Southern Oregon State University, choosing the college for two reasons: First, because it was close enough to get home quickly if Liz should ever really need her; and second, because the campus was close to Lone Oak,the small town Libby had once driven through on a trip with her father and had never forgotten.
    Her knitting dropped into her lap and she rocked a couple of moments, staring unseeingly out the window. Yet, once again, in spite of her efforts, she’d gotten offtrack. “Maybe I can finish up my degree when the baby is born.”
    “Plenty of time to worry about that later,” Christine said, a comforting refrain she’d used often during the past several months whenever Libby fretted about the future. Chris fiddled with one of Teddy’s stubby arms as she gave a considering glance around the small room. “One thing you should do before the baby comes, though, is to move to a room downstairs—or at least to the second floor. Del said he thought you looked worn-out, and the climb all the way up here has to be hard on you. There’s a large bedroom next to his that’s nice.”
    “I’m fine up here,” Libby said firmly. So she looked worn-out to him, did she? How flattering. Well, she had no intention of moving closer to Del—or his bedroom with all its memories of that night. “I’m not tired at all,” she added for good measure.
    Christine gave her a skeptical glance and Libby amended the statement, saying, “Okay, maybe I am a little bit but that’s normal for a woman in my condition. Besides, I love it up here,” she added truthfully.
    The third floor—her “flat” she considered it-had been the maid’s quarters once upon a time. Smaller than the first two floors, it consisted of three cramped rooms tucked under a sloping ceiling, a closet-sized bathroom and a narrow angled passageway. The room they were now in was the smallest of the three, butfeminine and bright. The ceiling pressed down, but a west-facing dormer window boxed in the afternoon sun, while even on the cloudiest of days the morning light flooded in through the two knee-high windows opposite to dance among the tiny pink roses scattered on the cream-colored wallpaper. “I’m going to paint the little room next door blue for the