Promise Me: Chapter 3

“You look tired,” Mark said at work the next day.  Hannah slumped over her coffee cup, nearly falling into it, and jerked herself awake when she heard her warehouse manager knock on her office door.  

“I didn’t sleep well,” she said to him and drained the rest of her coffee.  It was only ten in the morning.  She’d gotten about three hours of rest last night because of her powerful dreams waking her up with an aching need growing in her lower belly.

“I see you brought the rat in today,” Mark commented as he crouched down beside Teddy’s playpen in the corner of the room.

Hannah glanced the furry love of her life.  “He was acting weird this morning.  I didn’t want to leave him, just in case he was getting sick.”

“Did you take him to the vet?”

“I’ve got an appointment tomorrow if nothing changes,” Hannah said, and sighed as she looked at the computer screen in front of her.  Already, she noticed she screwed up three entries into her inventory list.  Mark heard her breath of despair and came over to her, putting his hand softly on her shoulder.  He was as old as her dad, and the two of them had been the best of friends.  Loosing James Baker had been just as painful for Mark as it had been for Hannah.

“Why don’t you go home?  We’re always slow on Wednesdays.  You’re obviously too tired to be here today.”

Hannah grimaced.  Being only one of the two female employees of Baker’s Farm and Garden Supply, it had always been a sort of pride for Kim and herself to work just as hard as the men here.  Skipping out at only mid-morning would look weak.  She couldn’t do that.  She really couldn’t do that to Kim, who would be left to corral the rest of the mongrels that worked here.

“I’ll be fine,” Hannah said to Mark, “but I’ve got to get out of this office for a while, stretch my legs.  I think I’ll walk over to the greenhouses and see Kim.”  Get a dose of female companionship, she added silently to herself, not seeing the wary look Mark gave her.  She grabbed her radio from a shelf by the door and waited for Mark to leave the office before closing the door.  Teddy had an uncanny knack for escaping that playpen.  If he did managed to get out of it while she was gone, then he’d only get to run around her office, instead of the whole store.  That happened once, two weeks ago.  It took eight people to track him down and confine him to a cardboard box.

“Check on Teddy for me in a bit,” she said to Mark.  “And call me if he’s still acting weird.”

“Weird, how?” he asked with a smirk.  “He’s always weird.”

Hannah shook her head at his small joke and walked out into the sunshine to her Gator parked in the employee parking lot.  She had to skirt the warehouses to get to the gardening center in the back, but the drive was refreshing.  Her father had built this place up from the bottom, selling organic cattle feed from the back of a flatbed trailer.  Thirty years later, Hannah inherited the largest farming supply store in the region.  The gardening center was her idea, something she added when she started working in her dad’s place as the cancer ravished his body those last few months.  She discovered that even though many of these farmers had big spreads and worked hundreds of acres of land, their wives liked to plant their own personal vegetable gardens, and since they received a discount because of their farmer husbands, Hannah had been able to expand the gardening center a little more each of the five years she worked here.  Kim, her gardening manager and expert horticulturist, rarely came over to the main store, so Hannah didn’t get to see much of her, usually only when there was a problem.

Today, Hannah drove over to see her, for one reason only.  Only a woman could understand another woman’s sexual frustrations.  It was time to vent.

Kim smiled as she spied Hannah rounding the tomato plants.  “I know that look,” Kim said, never ashamed of speaking her mind.  And a dirty one, it was, though thankfully, she kept it under wraps most of the time.  “So, who is he?”

“No one,” Hannah replied, climbing out of the Gator.  “At least, not anymore.”

“A man who makes a woman look like she’s on the verge of pulling out her vibrator isn’t ‘No one’,” Kim explained as she pruned away at a rose bush.

Hannah snorted at the mention of her trusty mechanical toy and plunked down on a stack of bagged fertilizer, crossing her legs under her.  “I saw someone the other day, who I hadn’t seen in a long time,” she began.  “And it was ironic because I had just been thinking about his brother, who I dated in high school, and he’d gone off to marry this beautiful woman and have two kids, and now they live in Barcelona in a gorgeous house right on the Mediterranean Sea, and I’m a washed-up wannabe actress who is too country for Hollywood and takes comfort from a guinea pig.”

Kim nodded along with Hannah’s story, a small smile playing on the corner of her lips.  “So...you saw this guy, he turned out to be something other than you remembered, and now you can’t stop thinking about him...how am I doing so far?”

“Yeah, that pretty much covers it,” Hannah said.  “The problem is that he was a total ass when I saw him, saying these horrible things about me, like he knew me, but he doesn’t know me at all, and I’m not like that at all, but then I had a dream about him last night -- at least, I think it was about him -- and now I can’t help thinking that it has been five years since I’ve slept with anyone.  I don’t know how much longer my vibrator can stand the extra attention lately.”

Kim raised an eyebrow.  “Five years?”

“Sad, huh?”

“Not really,” Kim said with a shrug.  “I think I went six years after my divorce.”

“That’s different,” Hannah said with a twinge of sympathy for Kim and a little guilt for making her bring up that painful subject.  But then again, she was also angry enough at Kim’s ex to add the following statement, “He beat you if you didn’t want to.”

Kim’s eyes darkened from their gray-blue to an almost midnight color as she remembered her “marriage.”  

“But even then, the urges don’t completely go away,” Kim said after a moment.  “After a few years, a woman’s body still has needs.  It isn’t natural to ignore them, no matter how painful it is to remember what it was like before.”

Hannah plucked a mint leaf from a nearby stand of the herbs.  She stuck it in her mouth as she chewed on Kim’s words.  “How did your date go this weekend?” she asked her friend out of the blue.  Kim’s face turned a delicate shade of pink, a lot like the flowers she was tending to, and Hanna grinned at her.  “So, were your needs met?”

“Not exactly,” Kim said elusively.  “He was very sweet, and he did kiss me good-night, but that was it.”

“Are you going to tell me who it was?” Hannah asked.  They argued over this point last week when Kim said she didn’t want to say the guy’s name if it didn’t work out.   Apparently, it’s someone I know or someone who works here, Hannah thought.  A list of men from the store ran through her mind.  Most were married, and a few gave Hannah a shudder at the thought of dating them, but Kim’s taste in men varied from Hannah’s.

“I don’t know,” Kim answered slowly.  “It’s still so early...I haven’t really spoken to him since then, so I don’t know how he feels about the date.”

“Okay,” Hannah said.  “I won’t push you.  I just came over because I was falling asleep at my desk and needed to get some air.”

Kim smiled, relieved.  “Well, since you’re here, you can help me out, boss lady.  A disease hit these roses, and if I don’t get them pruned, then I’ll lose the whole lot.”

Hannah picked up a pair of shears and some gloves and got to work.  She knew a lot about roses, since her grandmother kept an extensive garden of the blooms in the front yard of her house...the same house Hannah now lived in by herself.  Most of the roses here came from those her grandmother grew and nurtured.  It was nice to smell the fragrant petals and lose herself in a memory of her childhood.

Kim suddenly said, “Mark.”

Hannah looked around for her warehouse manager.  “Where?”

“No...Mark,” she said.  “That’s who asked me out.”

Hannah’s shears slipped from her fingers.  “Mark?  Mark?!  As in, Mark from the warehouse?  Daddy’s Mark?”

Kim blanched.  “Yeah...”

Hannah blinked and thought about that.  Mark.  Kim.  Mark and Kim.  Kim and Mark.  Tall, skinny, blond and Mark, average, a little soggy around the middle, but so kind.  “Really?”

“Yeah...”

“He’s my daddy’s age,” Hannah said, still wrapping her head around that.

“Yeah...”

“And you’re not.”

“No...Mark is a few years older than me.”

“A few?  Try twenty or more!”

Kim grinned.  “Oh, Hannah, that’s so sweet, but no...not twenty.  More like thirteen.”

Hannah blinked again.  “Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“How old are you?”

“Forty-six,” Kim admitted with a frown, and Hannah kept shuttering her eyes to focus on that, too, as she repeated, “Really?”

“Yes!  Why?  Mark’s only fifty-nine.”

“You don’t look forty-six,” Hannah said, not sure if she was speaking or not.  The whole situation seemed to have numbed her.  Kim and Mark.  Who’d a thunk?

“And you don’t look happy,” Kim said, snipping a leaf off with a little more force than necessary.  “Just so you know, Mark and I have already agreed to keep ourselves professional here at work.  You won’t find us in the warehouse behind the hay bales, going at it like rabbits.”

Hannah chuckled.  “What?  Oh, my lands, Kim!  I’m not mad.  Just surprised.  I would have never put the two of you together.”

Kim frowned with offense.  “Why not?  He’s good looking and sweet, and single.  Why wouldn’t I be attracted to him?  Unless your problem is with me being with him...”

“I don’t have a problem with either of you dating each other,” Hannah assured her with a smile.  “But I’ve known Mark my whole life.  I grew up with his kids.  I still remember when his wife died, and it’s just difficult for me to think of him as dating.  And then again...dating you, of all people.”

Kim said, “If you’re trying to make me feel better, you’re doing an awful job.  What’s wrong with him dating me?”

The great thing about Hannah and Kim was that, no matter their differences in opinions about a lot of subjects, the two women were still really good friends, two females shoved together in a small world of tractors, fertilizer and men.  They could tell each other almost anything, and usually did.  “There’s nothing wrong with either of you,” Hannah told her as the sprinkle of spotted rose leaves got bigger around her shoes.  “But his wife had been this short, plump, dark-haired woman, who would remind you of a favorite aunt, always baking pies and cakes and bringing them to the store, and she would set aside these tiny tarts just for me.  Mark loved her to distraction.  I just didn’t think he’d ever go for someone so completely different than that.  Because frankly speaking, Kim, you are neither short nor plump nor dark, and your cooking sucks.”

Kim laughed, her grin stretching across her face.  “Actually, I think we get along so well because I don’t  look anything like his wife.  He said he tried dating a woman once who reminded him of her so much, it became painful.”

“I remember that,” Hannah said, “Boy, was he a grouch the whole time he was dating that woman...Mary or Maria, or something like that.”

Kim moved to a new bush, the last on her side of the aisle, and pruned silently for a few minutes.  Then she quietly asked, “Has he been grouchy lately?”

Hannah’s laughter rang out of the greenhouse.  “Oh, Kim...he’s been in a really good mood.  Maybe you should ask him to lunch today.  And take an extra long one.”

Kim smiled, perking up.  “You won’t mind?  But then everyone will know about us, if we’re gone so long, and...”

“I’ll tell anybody who asks you two had to go check on a customer who got a wrong order of something or another.”

Kim’s face lit up.  It was obvious to everyone that she really liked Mark and enjoyed his company.  Kim pushed back her glove to look at her watch...and she almost pouted.  “It’s only ten-thirty.”

Hannah stripped off her gloves as she finished the last of her rose bushes.  “Then I guess you have an hour and a half to get all your work done for the day, since you’ll be gone for most of the afternoon, and then you’ll probably be too wired to do much when you get back, and...”

As Hannah trailed off, Kim picked up on the hint of teasing at the end.  “And what?”

Hannah’s mouth curved up lopsided.  “And meet a few needs for the rest of us lonely gals.”

“We’ve only had one date,” Kim reminded Hannah.

Hannah shrugged.  “Eh...you’re both mature, responsible adults.  And I’ll bet Mark has gone longer without sex than you have, so he might jump you in the cab of his truck, as gross as it is to think about him that way.”

“You’re something else, Hannah Banana,” Kim said with a laugh, and Hannah lost her smile.  Justin Kirkland called her that the other night.  She’d not heard her father’s pet name in so long, it made her heart ache.  “Hannah?” Kim called to her.  “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Hannah said and set down her gloves and pruning shears.  “I’ve got to get back and check on Teddy.  He’s been acting weird all morning.”

Kim nodded, though her look of concern followed Hannah all the way out of the greenhouse and back to the store.  “There you are,” Mark said, coming out of the front doors.  “I was just about to send someone after you.  You weren’t answering your radio.”

Hannah glanced down at the portable radio on the passenger seat of the Gator.  She forgot to take it with her into the greenhouses.  “What’s going on?”

“It’s your rat,” Mark said.  “He’s acting funny.  I think you should take him to the vet.”

Hannah rushed into her office.  Teddy was panting heavily and laying on his side, his rear end twitching.  Hannah dropped to her knees next to the playpen.  “Teddy, baby, what’s wrong?”  Teddy allowed her to scratch at the bridge of his nose, but he didn’t move toward her touch.  “Okay, sweetie.  Let’s get you to the doctor.”

Hannah carefully picked him up and put him in his carrier, and then she was in her Honda, driving across town to a clinic that sat near the one of the old highways in town.

*****

An hour later, Hannah stood in a small exam room while Dr. Turney looked at Teddy.  Hannah chewed on her bottom lip, a horrible habit she thought she managed to break once upon a time, but there she was, nearly drawing blood while Dr. Turney frowned over her guinea pig.

“Well, there’s good news, and there’s...news,” the vet said, stripping off his gloves.  Hannah was allowed to pet Teddy now, so she stroked his head and rubbed her nose against his.

“What do you mean?”

Dr. Turney smiled.  “The good news is that Teddy is perfectly healthy.”

“And the other news?”

Now, Dr. Turney smirked.  “‘He’ is a ‘she’, and she is pregnant.”

Hannah stopped petting Teddy’s fur.  “What?”

Dr. Turney nodded.  “Yup, and from the looks of it, she’ll be in full labor within a few hours, and you’ll have a litter of babies before the night is out.”

Hannah stared at him.  “What?”

The vet wrote something on Teddy’s chart, and asked, “How long have you had Teddy?”

“About five weeks,” Hannah answered, her hand withdrawing from her guinea pig.  He is a she?  How’d I miss that?  “I was told he -- I mean, she was a boy guinea pig.”

“Did you buy from one of the pet stores here in town?  Sometimes, they get the sexes mixed up because there’s a stamp in the ear, and it can fade.”

“No, I bought straight from a breeder,” Hannah said, looking down at “Teddy.”  He -- she needed a new name now.  

“Which breeder?”

“I can’t remember her name,” Hannah said, “but she lives out past Pickle’s Gap.”

Dr. Turney nodded and smiled.  “Ah, yes...that’s Johnny Wilson.  Did you deal with Johnny or his mother?”

“His mother,” Hannah said.

“Then I’m not surprised she gave you one of Johnny’s sows.  Mrs. Wilson has been going senile, though neither want to admit it.  Gestation for a guinea pig is nine to ten weeks, so Teddy here was already pregnant when you bought her.  But Johnny’s a fair guy, so if you call and tell him about the mix-up, he’ll probably trade you a male for this one and her babies.”

“Teddy” rested on the counter, a towel under her and she raised her nose up at Hannah, the way she always had when sniffing out Hannah’s smell.  Hannah had grown attached to the little creature, talking to it like it was a real person, loving it with all her heart.  Trading Teddy for another guinea pig was almost unthinkable.  Who knew what kind of personality the next one would have?  And has anything really changed?  Teddy was still Teddy...just a girl Teddy, with a bunch of little Teddy’s on the way.  “Do you think he would mind if I kept her?”

The veterinarian smiled.  “Like I said, Johnny’s a fair man.  Now, he might say he has some claim to the babies, but I don’t think he’d make you give her up if you don’t want to.”

“How many babies do you think she’ll have?”

“The usual amount is three to four,” the vet said, and then stuck his head out the door to call one of the assistants.  A younger girl stopped for a moment, a small puppy in her arms.  “Bailey, can you get a printout of guinea pig pregnancy and baby care for Ms. Baker, please.”

“Sure, Dr. Turney,” the girl said and disappeared again.  Dr. Turney turned back to Hannah.  “The babies will nurse from the mother for about two weeks, but after that, they can be weened and removed from her care.  From my exam, Teddy here is in great condition.  Her pelvis has widened and is separating nicely.  I don’t expect her to have any problems with the delivery, but if she does, just call the emergency number for the clinic, or you can talk to Johnny.  He’s been breeding animals for years.  He’ll know what to do.”

Hannah nodded along with Dr. Turney’s words of encouragement.  But she felt a wave of nausea surround her.  Too much shock in too short a time.  First the discovery that Luke was happy, then meeting his jackass of a brother, then Kim and Mark dating, and now Teddy.

I need a drink.

Outside in the waiting room, Hannah waited for the receptionist to print off her bill when a wet, cold nose nudged her hand.  She looked down at the blue-tick hound with the scar over his left eye from getting caught in a barbed wire fence thirteen years ago, and she thought, Oh, no...

“Hannah!” a familiar voice rang out.  “Hannah Baker?  My gracious girl, look at you all grown up!”

Hannah managed a smile as she turned to face Mary Alice Kirkland.  “Hello, Mrs. Kirkland, how are you?”

“Oh, I’m just fine, dear,” Mrs. Kirkland exclaimed.  Josie, the blond-haired girl from the other night moved away to sit sullenly in a chair.  “Aspen here, needed a check-up.  Her arthritis is hurting her something bad.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Hannah said, remembering how much Mr. Kirkland doted on the hound dog.

Mrs. Kirkland waved a hand at the air between them.  “Oh, don’t you worry your pretty head about it,” she said with a friendly smile.  Hannah smiled back because she just couldn’t help it.  Mrs. Kirkland’s smile had always been infectious.  “Have you ever met my granddaughter, Josie?”

“Not officially,” Hannah said, and