Stretch Marks Read online

  STRETCH MARKS

  Published by David C Cook

  4050 Lee Vance View

  Colorado Springs, CO 80918 U.S.A.

  David C Cook Distribution Canada

  55 Woodslee Avenue, Paris, Ontario, Canada N3L 3E5

  David C Cook U.K., Kingsway Communications

  Eastbourne, East Sussex BN23 6NT, England

  The graphic circle C logo is a registered trademark of David C Cook.

  All rights reserved. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, scanned, resold,

  or distributed by or through any print or electronic medium without written

  permission from the publisher. This ebook is licensed solely for the personal

  and noncommercial use of the original authorized purchaser, subject to the

  terms of use under which it was purchased. Please do not participate in or

  encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  The Web site addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a

  resource to you. These Web sites are not intended in any way to be or imply an

  endorsement on the part of David C Cook, nor do we vouch for their content.

  This story is a work of fiction. All characters and events are the product of the author’s

  imagination. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All Scripture quotations taken from the King James Version of the Bible. (Public Domain.)

  LCCN 2009929974

  ISBN 978-0-7814-4892-5

  eISBN 978-0-7814-0348-1

  © 2009 Kimberly Stuart

  The author is represented by MacGregor Literary

  The Team: Andrea Christian, Jamie Chavez, Sarah

  Schultz, Jaci Schneider, and Karen Athen

  Cover Design: Amy Kiechlin

  Cover Photos: iStockphoto, royalty-free

  First Edition 2009

  For my little ones

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  1. Under the Weather

  2. The System

  3. Breaking News

  4. Full Disclosure

  5. Cravings

  6. Flowers in Bloom

  7. Sweet Spot

  8. Customer Appreciation

  9. Guest Appearance

  10. All in the Family

  11. Side Effects

  12. Estimated Time of Departure

  13. Hail Mary

  14. House of Worship

  15. Sounds of Silence

  16. A Little Help from My Friends

  17. Home Improvement

  18. Solidarity

  19. Reunion

  20. Baby Steps

  21. Namasté

  22. Belly Flops 101

  23. Modern Convenience

  24. Labor Pains

  25. Pressed but Not Crushed

  26. Socialite

  27. Breach of Etiquette

  28. Gloves Off

  29. Plan B

  30. Phoenix

  Epilogue

  AfterWords

  Excerpts from the Private Journals of Barbara “Babs” Rathbun

  Announcing with Great Joy

  Adam’s Begrudgingly Vegetarian Portabello Burgers

  Acknowledgments

  The team at David C. Cook makes me love my job. I send wild applause to Don Pape, Terry Behimer, Andrea Christian, Amy Quicksall, Ingrid Beck, and Jaci Schneider for their persistent and creative hard work on my behalf.

  Jamie Chavez is the answer to most of my problems, at least those of the literary nature. This book would be pathetic without her intervention.

  Jennifer Ruisch is a brilliant editor and writer. It is nothing short of a coup for me that she happens to be a friend and sister as well.

  I am indebted to Adam and Rachel Andrews for their friendship and for their thoughtful help on the Chicago end. Come in, Peoria?

  My writing group has endured many versions of these chapters. Thanks go to Dawn, Kali, Mia, Wendy, Chantal, and Murl for their kindness and consistent hard work.

  Rachel Maassen, MD, provided me with sound medical counsel, some of which I probably messed up anyway. After thirty-two years of friendship, she remains the truest of true.

  Ginger Garrett knows how to write, laugh, parent, and do speaking gigs, and all before nine a.m. I’ve witnessed it! Ginger, you are one of my favorite perks of getting into this bih-nuss.

  Many laughter-and-tears-drenched thanks to Amy from Minnesota, Amy from Iowa, and Kristen from 52nd Street, for always hoping, always praying, always assuming I could do it with God’s help.

  The Beach brood deserves its own catalog of thanks. You are dear to me, every one.

  God has created an amazing cocktail of friendship for me in Julie David. Sass, spunk, hearty laughter, and a heart bursting with love for Jesus. Plus she sells lots of books for me. My gratitude goes to her and to Kevin, who sends us along with Godspeed and great support.

  Chip MacGregor deserves more money than he’s paid. There, Chip Chip. It’s in print.

  Thanks and much love go to Jocie, Barry, Scott, and Laura, readers all and an in-law girl’s great blessing.

  Randy, Patti, Ry, Jen, Linds, and Jimmy love me, love my husband, love my kids, and never seem to complain about it. Thanks to them for knowing about the indicting family videos, proof of my snotty stage(s), and loving me anyway.

  Welcome and auntie blessings go to Skyler Jayden. Love me best, love me best, love me best.

  Ani, Mitch, and Thea are entirely unimpressed by their mother’s profession but still manage to inspire so much of it. You three are gifts to the most undeserving, but good gravy, am I grateful.

  And to Marc, I send effusive, embarrassingly weepy thanks for making the cheesecake and never turning back. Life is ever sweeter with you.

  1

  Under the Weather

  Mia’s nose was stuck in her own armpit. Not a lot of glamour there, but she was working toward a higher purpose.

  “Think of how your organs are thanking you for acknowledging them, for being considerate enough to stretch them.” Delia’s voice floated from the front of the room where, Mia knew without looking, she joined the class in a binding pose that could make most grown men cry like little girls.

  Mia breathed an audible breath, collecting a healthy whiff of deodorant-infused sweat. In the nose, out the nose, throat relaxed. She closed her eyes, feeling the ends of her fingers beginning to slip out of the bind. Liver, pancreas, you’re welcome, she thought and felt her stomach make an uncharacteristic lurch. The radiator kicked in beside where she stood, infusing heat and a bass hum to the room. Mia focused on an unmoving spot on the floor and not on the spandexed and heaving tush of the woman on the mat in front of her.

  “And now using the muscles in your core, slooowly release and come back to mountain pose.” Delia manipulated her voice and cadence to stretch like honey. On any other day, her instructor’s voice sounded like a lullaby to Mia, a quiet but persistent reminder to breathe deeply and recycle paper and plastic. Today, though, Mia felt an urge to ask Delia to speak up. She wanted concrete sounds, solid sounds; the feathery intonations landing lightly around the room made her insides itch. She pulled out of the bind and stood at the top of her mat, feet planted, palms outturned.

  “Feel better yet?” Frankie whispered to Mia from the mat next to he
r.

  Mia sighed. “Not yet.”

  “Let’s move into our warrior sequence.” Delia modeled the correct form on her lime-green mat and the class obediently followed suit.

  Four poses later Mia hadn’t shaken the bug she’d hoped was just an out-of-sorts feeling to be shed with a good workout. She felt elderly, cranky. Not even downward-facing dog had brought any relief. She lay on her back during the last minutes of class, trying to melt into the floor, be the floor. The spandexed woman was snoring. This final pose, savasana, was intended to provide participants final moments to recover, to be still and let their minds quiet before reentering the chaos of the outside world. Most yoga aficionados soaked up the pose. In Mia’s class she’d spotted a plump, permed woman wearing a sweatshirt that declared in stark black print I’m just here for the savasana.

  Today, though, Mia couldn’t keep her eyes shut. She curled and flexed her toes, wishing Delia would crank up some Stones or Black Crowes instead of the Tibetan chimes lilting out of the stereo. Her impatience with a woman who freely quoted Mr. Rogers was beginning to worry her. Even in the hush of the room, her thoughts continued in an unruly spin, and when Delia brought everyone back to lotus, Mia glimpsed a scowl on her reflection in the mirror.

  “Let’s just enjoy the long, strong feeling of our bodies,” Delia said. Her eggplant yoga gear revealed taut muscles. “Our organs are thanking us for a good massage.”

  Right. Organs. Mission accomplished, Mia thought, trying to concentrate on the gratitude her body owed her. But her mind crowded with images of bloody, squishy masses, pulsating or writhing in the way organs must do, and she found herself springing from her mat and bolting to the back of the studio. She threw open the door to the ladies’ room and gripped the toilet bowl in a new pose, aptly christened Riotous and Unexplained Retching.

  “Mia?” Frankie’s voice was subdued, even though a postclass din was making its way through the restroom door.

  Mia emerged from the stall. “I guess sun salutations weren’t such a good idea.” She washed her face and hands at the sink, trying not to inhale too deeply the scent of eucalyptus rising from the soap. She watched her face in the mirror, noting the pale purple circles under her eyes that persisted even with the extra sleep she’d indulged in that week. Mia smoothed her eyebrows with clammy fingers, taking care not to tug the small silver piercing, and glimpsed Frankie’s concerned expression in the mirror. “Don’t worry,” Mia said. “I feel much better now. Must just be a virus.”

  Frankie handed over Mia’s coat and a hemp bag proclaiming Save the Seals. “I’ll walk you home. Let’s stop at Gerry’s store for soup and crackers.”

  Mia made a face. “Crackers, yes. Soup, definitely not.”

  Outside the studio, weak February sunshine played hide-and-seek with wispy cloud cover. Frankie planted her arm around Mia’s waist.

  Mia glanced at her friend. “I like the blue.”

  Frankie turned her head to showcase the full effect. “Do you? I meant for it to be more baby blue, less sapphire, but I got distracted with this crazy woman on the Home Shopping Network and left the dye on too long.”

  In the two years Mia had known her, Frankie had demonstrated a keen affection for adventurous hair coloring. Magenta (advent of spring), emerald green (popular in March), black and white stripes (reflecting doldrums after a breakup), now blue. The rainbow tendency endeared Frankie to Mia, who’d braved an extended though unsuccessful flirtation with dreadlocks during college, but otherwise had settled for a comparatively conformist ’do of patchouli-scented chestnut curls.

  “How did this change go over with Frau Leiderhosen?”

  Frankie whistled. “She loved it. In fact she wondered if we could have a girls’ night out this weekend and take turns trading beauty secrets.”

  Mia snorted, which was an unfortunate and unavoidable byproduct of her laughter. The snorts only encouraged Frankie.

  “‘But, Esteemed Employer,’ I said, ‘I can’t possibly instruct the master! A mere mortal such as I? It’d be like a Chihuahua taking over the dressing room of J-Lo! Or Sophia Loren! Or Gisele Bundchen, a woman who shares with you, dear boss, an impressive German name and an uncanny sense of style!’”

  “Stop it.” Mia clutched her stomach and groaned. “Yoga and laughter are off limits until further notification from my digestive tract.”

  Frankie sighed. “I do feel sorry for her. I never should have shown up with a mousy blonde bob cut for the initial interview. I was so average librarian.” She shook her head as they slowed near Gerry’s Grocery. “Only to turn on her the first week on the job.”

  It had occurred to Mia more than once how much she could have benefited from a green-haired librarian in the small Nebraska town where she’d grown up. Not until she was well into adulthood did she realize that not all librarians were employed to scare children, like the dreaded circulation director at Cedar Ridge Municipal Branch with the spidery braid and hairy mole. Mia had cowered behind the legs of her father when he would stop in to check out an eight-track or the latest release by Louis L’Amour. The moled woman had snapped at Mia once when she’d fingered a book on a stand, announcing down her nose that the book of Mia’s interest was for display only and could not be checked out. Never mind that Bird Calls of the Northeast had not exactly beckoned to eight-year-old Mia anyway, but the chastisement was enough to keep books at an arm’s length for years. How different Mia’s interest in reading could have been had a spitfire like Frankie been the one behind the desk! Frankie’s supervisor, Ms. Nachtmusik, with her impossible surname that changed with each conversation, didn’t know the gift Frankie was to her patrons.

  “Hello, ladies.” Gerry looked over his glasses. He stopped pecking madly at a calculator on the front counter. “How are things with you?”

  “Mia’s sick, Gerry.” Frankie patted Mia on the head. “We need sick stuff.”

  Gerry pushed back on his stool and stood. He clucked like an unusually tall occupant of a henhouse. “Sick, Miss Mia? Headache? Stomach? Fever?”

  Mia shook her head. “Stomach, I guess. I think crackers will be enough.”

  Gerry looked disgusted. “This is not your duty to decide. Miss Frankie and I will take care of the illness. Sit.” He pointed to his stool and waved at her impatiently when she didn’t jump at his command. Gerry shuffled off, muttering about the tragedy of young people living in cities without their parents.

  Mia slipped Frankie a rolled-up reusable shopping bag and whispered, “Make sure to steer him away from pesticides.”

  Frankie winked at Mia and skipped behind the man on his mission.

  Mia greeted the next few patrons entering the store. She tried watching the game show on Gerry’s small black-and-white, but she couldn’t seem to follow the rules. I’ll just lay my head here for a moment, she thought, pushing Gerry’s calculator aside.

  “Oh, good heavenly gracious, we need to call an ambulance!” Gerry’s words seeped like molasses through Mia’s subconscious. She wondered who was injured and if it had anything to do with the impossible rules on that game show.

  “Mia, honey, are you okay?” Frankie was tugging on her shoulder.

  “Hmm?” Mia pulled her eyelids open into the glare of fluorescent lights. Her head was, indeed, on the front counter, but so was the rest of her body. She turned her head slowly to face Frankie, who had crouched down beside her and was inches from her face. “I’m lying on the conveyer belt.”

  “Yes, yes, you are,” Frankie said while guiding Mia to a sitting position. She gauged her tone of voice to fit a three-year-old on Sudafed. “Gerry and I left to get some groceries and when we returned,” she enunciated, “you were lying on the counter.” She nodded up and down, up and down.

  Mia shook her head. “I was really tired. I needed to sleep.” Her voice trailed off. She kept her hands on her face for a moment, f
ingers brushing past a stud in her right nostril and the ring in her eyebrow. Eyes open, she peeked through the cracks in her fingers. Behind Gerry, who was patting his pockets frantically for cigarettes that hadn’t been there since he’d quit a decade before, stood his son, Adam. Mia tried running her fingers through her yoga-tangle of hair.

  Adam cleared his throat and smiled.

  Mia realized she’d dropped her hands and had commenced a creepy stare session. “Hi, Adam,” she said too loudly. “How are you?”

  Adam bit his cheek in an attempt to take seriously a question coming from a woman sprawled next to a cash register. “I’m great, Mia. You?”

  “Fantastic,” she said and swung her legs to the side of her perch. Gerry rushed forward to offer her his arm, Adam close behind. Mia held up her hands in protest. “I’m fine, really,” she said. “Just a little tired, apparently.” She walked slowly to the front door and turned to wave. “Thanks, Gerry. You’re a great host. Adam, good to see you. Frankie, are you ready?” She opened the door without waiting for a response and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  Gerry pushed away Frankie’s twenty-dollar bill and handed her the sack of sick stuff as she fell in behind her friend.

  They walked five minutes in silence. Dusk was long gone, the sun having set early in the February evening. Mia was from the Midwest and didn’t much mind Chicago winters; Frankie, however, hailed from Southern California and moaned every few steps as wind from the lake found its way through coats and mittens and headed straight for skin.

  “I will never know why we have chosen this misery.” Frankie held Mia at the crook of her arm like a geriatric patient. Mia felt too exhausted to protest. At the foot of the stairs leading to her apartment building, she stopped. She watched a dapper older gentleman with mocha skin descend the steps and allow his eyes to fall on her.

  “Hey, Silas,” she said.

  “Evening, girls,” Silas said. He dropped his keys in the side pocket of his suit and tipped his hat, a soft brown fedora trimmed in striped black ribbon. He cocked his head slightly and narrowed his gaze at Mia. “Girl, you don’t look so hot.” Silas furrowed his brow and looked at Frankie. “What’s the story, Francesca?”