Read Online The Color of Family by Patricia Jones - Free Book Online Page A

out, and I won’t go back to see the herbalist until after I’ve delivered.”
    â€œAnd even then, you’ve got to be careful because of your breast milk, okay? But by then, that will be the baby’s pediatrician’s problem to deal with and you’ll have to discuss it with him.”
    Ellen placed the Doptone on Mrs. Simms’s belly, then turned it on. Immediately the room was filled with the sturdy beating of the baby’s tiny heart. This was the part of pregnancy that always made Ellen feel as if she played a small part in a miracle. As she stood there listening, smiling into Mrs. Simms’s face, which was doing the same, she thought of how she’d listened to this astounding sound of life in so many wombs over the years, and each and every one could still put awe in her own heart. That from nothing but a seed and an egg, both unseen by the eye, could grow this beat of life convinced her that the world was full of miracles. Yet why was it, she wondered, that she could never believe strongly enough in her mother’s believed miracle, Clayton? And as she stood there reading the baby’s heartbeats as they were spat out on a strip of paper from the Doptone, she knew why she couldn’t believe. Because two miracles in her mother’s life that she’d come to name Ellen and Aaron should have been quite enough. More than enough.
    Â 
    Aaron didn’t so much hear the whispers as feel them, along with the stares, when he went into the waiting room of Ellen’s officeand sat down. One, two, three women, he counted. What he needed, more than anything, was a moment to prepare himself for the eye contact he would not be able to avoid. When he did finally look up, his gaze met the smiling face of a woman not quite as pregnant as his sister, but full enough with child to be obvious that it was more than a beer gut. It was moments just like this one, when he found himself cornered with his fame in a room full of women, that made him aware of the reality that once he stepped from his home, his life was not his own. Most days it was fine. Most days it was something he clearly understood as a part of his job. But then there were days like today when he simply didn’t feel like smiling, didn’t feel like speaking, didn’t feel like being charming or elegant or gracious. So now he was eye to eye with this woman whose grinning glare was as imposing as her red hair that hung right on the edge of nearly being orange. He could see that she was not going to stop until she got something from him—at the least a return smile.
    And that’s when she said, “Hi, you’re Aaron Jackson from Channel Eleven, aren’t you?”
    â€œYes, I am. How are you?” Aaron said with a smile that had miles to go before it would become true.
    â€œI’m fine. And I just love you. I watch you every evening. Of all the places you could be, I can’t believe that I’m seeing you here in my obstetrician’s office.”
    â€œAh, well, Dr. Barrett is my sister. I’m here to take her to lunch.”
    â€œOh my!” all three of the waiting women said at once.
    â€œI had no idea,” the red-haired woman said. “She’s just terrific, your sister.”
    â€œOh, absolutely,” said the woman sitting next to him, who may have been at the beginning of a pregnancy, or may have just finished with one.
    Aaron turned to her, and for no particular reason he could think of, said, “Oh thanks.” But then he turned away, because he didn’t want to be caught staring at her stomach, particularly if she wasn’t pregnant but merely plump.
    â€œSay,” the woman sitting next to the smiling redhead said, as if she’d had a sudden thought. “You and your co-anchor Maggie Poole are an item, aren’t you?”
    â€œYes, I guess you can say that we’re ‘an item.’”
    â€œSo are you headed toward