by Linda Seed
“You’re not finished, either,” Benny said, and Sofia didn’t correct her.
Patrick didn’t want to leave his family on Christmas Day. His mother would be devastated. Besides, he thought Sofia needed a day or so to cool down from whatever it was that had upset her.
But he did leave on December twenty-sixth, a day earlier than he’d planned. Giving Sofia space was one thing, but if she really was pregnant, he needed to talk to her about it. He needed to let her know that he was in—one hundred percent. He needed her to know that he wanted it all: her, the baby, a life they could build together.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he told Aileen as he gathered his things after breakfast.
“Oh, honey, that’s all right. I’m just sorry things didn’t go better.” She was in the kitchen making a sandwich from leftover turkey for Patrick to take with him.
“I have to talk to her,” he said. “I waited a day to give her some space, but … I don’t think it can wait any longer.”
“Well.” She wrapped the sandwich in a plastic bag and handed it to him. “I just hope things go the way you want them to.”
She had conspicuously avoided saying she hoped he and Sofia would work things out. He didn’t blame her, given everything that had happened, but still, it concerned him.
“Mom? I know Sofia didn’t make the best impression. But she has a lot on her mind. She has … issues with this time of year.”
“I just hope she’s all right. And if she really is pregnant, Patrick …” She left the thought unfinished.
If she really was pregnant, then what? He couldn’t make her marry him. He couldn’t make her stop being scared and start giving herself to their relationship wholeheartedly. He couldn’t even make her have the baby.
That thought, popping into his mind unbidden, scared him. One thing at a time, he reminded himself. First, he just had to talk to her.
Aileen pulled him into a hug, and he clung to her harder than he meant to. “I trust you to make the right decision for yourself, whatever that is,” she told him.
Whatever that is.
It seemed that neither one of them knew.
29
Sofia had started to convince herself that she was pregnant. So when her period came and she discovered that she wasn’t, emotions hit her from all directions.
Relief, certainly. But also disappointment and a certain amount of despair. Because part of her wanted the life that Patrick and a hypothetical baby represented, but another part of her couldn’t accept it. None of this was happening the way it should. It wasn’t supposed to happen without her parents.
“I’m not pregnant,” she said in Bianca’s car while the two of them were on their way to the office a couple of days after Christmas.
“You already said you weren’t pregnant,” Bianca reminded her.
“I know, but … that was kind of a lie. I thought I might be. But I’m not.”
Bianca drove quietly for a few minutes, until she could no longer keep silent. “How do you feel about that?”
“You sound like a psychiatrist, and that’s not your specialty,” Sofia pointed out.
“Shut up. Just tell me how you are.”
If this were another day, and if Sofia were in a different kind of mood, she’d have teased her sister—told her that it was impossible to both shut up and explain her feelings. But today, she couldn’t manage lightheartedness.
“I feel … like I’ve ruined everything.” She slumped in the passenger seat. “Like I’ve thrown away any chance I had at happiness.” A thought occurred to her, and she smacked her face with her hand. “And, oh, God. Mom’s book. I left it under the tree at Patrick’s mother’s house. I left before he had a chance to open it.”
“So you were going to give it to him,” Bianca said.
“I … Yes.”
Bianca grinned, just a little, and Sofia was outraged that her sister was smirking at her pain. “What the hell are you smiling about?”
“You.”
“Why? Because you enjoy seeing me miserable?”
“No, you jerk. I’m smiling because Patrick’s the one, and you know it. You wouldn’t have given him the book—or planned to give him the book—if he wasn’t. You know you wouldn’t have.”
“Oh.” Sofia couldn’t deny it. “But now I’ve lost the book.…”
“You didn’t lose the book. It’s safe at his mother’s house.”
“But …”
“And you didn’t ruin everything, Sofia. If he really was about to propose, he’s not going to be put off by your one little attack of cold feet. He’s better than that.”
“Oh,” Sofia said again.
“The question is whether you can get past whatever it is that’s holding you back so you can enjoy what’s going to happen between the two of you.”
Yes, that was the question, Sofia mused. “It’s just … too soon.”
“Well, four months is soon,” Bianca agreed. “Then tell him that. He’ll wait.”
“That’s not what I meant. I mean, yes, four months is too soon, but …”
“But what? What did you really mean?” Bianca had just parked the car. She turned off the engine and gave Sofia her full attention.
“I meant it’s too soon after”—she could barely say it—“after Mom and Dad.”
Bianca’s eyes shimmered with tears. “Oh, Sof. It’s not too soon. They would want this for you. They would want you to be happy.”
Sofia didn’t answer. She just sat there, looking out at the parking lot.
“What’s going on in there?” Bianca asked, poking Sofia’s forehead gently with her finger. “Don’t shut down on me. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking … we’d better get to work.” Sofia didn’t look at her sister.
“Sof …”
“You’ve got patients.” She got out of the car and headed toward the office.
Patrick’s sister drove him to the airport. It was a moderately long drive, and he should have known she couldn’t make it the whole way without offering advice. That wouldn’t have bothered him if only she hadn’t been telling him exactly what he didn’t want to hear.
“I’m just saying, she’s got issues,” Fiona told him as they headed southeast toward Grand Rapids.
“So do I,” he countered. “I have issues.”
She shot him a doubtful look. “Name one.”
Now that he was on the spot, he couldn’t seem to think of one. But he didn’t want to hand her the point, so he searched for something that made him look as troubled as Sofia had seemed to be.
“I … well … I don’t fit in with our family. At all.” Now that he thought of it, that wasn’t a random thing he’d come up with to appease her. It was true.
“Oh, that’s crap, Patrick. Don’t be stupid.”
“And when I try to express how I feel about it, I’m dismissed.” He looked at her significantly.
She opened her mouth to say something, seemed to realize that she was about to prove his point, then closed it again.
“Everyone in the family loves you,” she said.
“I know that.”
“Then what …”
“Everyone loves me, yes. But I’m different.” Patrick’s life had always been like a game of “one of these things doesn’t belong,” but instead of the game pieces being four circles and a square, it was four salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar middle-Americans and one intellectual with an Ivy League degree.
His life was like an episode of Frasier, but without the nearly identical brother to make him feel less like a freak.
“So you’re different,” Fiona said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Tell that to Dad,” Patrick said.
“Wait. Dad? What has Dad ever done wrong?” Fiona sounded offended.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.” Hugh had never criticized Patrick, never berated him, had never expressed any disapproval of his son’s choices. But he’d stopped trying to talk to Patrick a
t about the same time Patrick had been accepted to Princeton. Oh, they still talked, but never about things that mattered. It was small talk now. How’s the weather? How was traffic? Did you remember to get your car serviced?
“Look.” Fiona was using her big-sister voice, the one that told him she’d taken quite enough of his crap, thank you very much, and the sooner he fell in line, the better. “Has it ever occurred to you that Dad feels like you passed him by? Like you just sort of moved on without him?”
“What else was I supposed to do besides move on, Fiona? I couldn’t just stand still.”
“Because that’s what Dad is doing? Is that what you mean?” The edge in Fiona’s voice was sharp and dangerous.
“No. That’s not what I meant.” Of course, it was exactly what he’d meant, but he said the words to placate her. He didn’t want to fight with Fiona.
She drove for a while, and he could feel the tension radiating from her.
“I guess you do have issues,” she said.
30
By the time he got home, he told himself it was too late to talk to Sofia. She was probably tired, maybe even in bed already. The thought of her in bed without him made him ache with longing. He didn’t want her to be in bed without him ever again.
He wanted to rush to her house, bang on the door, and insist that she see him. But he was exhausted from a long day of traveling and from being unable to sleep the night before. He wasn’t sure he could be rational and coherent if he saw her right now, and he knew that he needed to be at his best when he spoke to her.
His phone pinged with a text message.
Did you get home all right, honey? His mother.
Home safe and sound, he answered.
Good luck when you talk to Sofia. XOXO
He smiled, heartened that his mother wanted things to work out between them, even if Fiona didn’t.
One more message came:
I found your gift from Sofia under the tree. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I put it in your suitcase.
That was interesting. He’d forgotten all about the gifts when things had imploded on Christmas morning. He went to his suitcase, unzipped it, and rooted around amid the folded shirts and socks.
He found the package, wrapped in red paper with Santas cavorting on it, underneath a sweater. He held the gift in his hands and considered it. Should he open it? It had been intended for him, after all. She’d never opened his gift, though, so maybe he should hold off.
Maybe they could both open their packages after they resolved this thing between them.
If they resolved this thing between them.
The thought that it was an if rather than a when made him feel vaguely sick. Of course he had to fix things with Sofia. There was no other option. At least, none that he would let himself consider.
When Patrick finally called Sofia, she didn’t pick up the phone. She saw the notification that she’d received a voice mail, but she didn’t listen to it.
She wasn’t angry with him, because he hadn’t done anything wrong. She simply didn’t know what to say to him. She knew she should apologize for leaving the way she had, but what then? What would happen if he tried again to give her the ring? If she accepted it, she’d be betraying her parents by moving on as though they’d never existed. If she refused to accept it, she’d run the risk of him ending things with her.
She knew she had to talk to him about this—about everything—but she didn’t know how. For him to understand why she’d done what she had, he would have to understand her feelings about her parents. Sofia didn’t understand those fully herself.
“Are you going to answer that?” Martina asked over dinner when Sofia’s phone rang for the third time that hour.
“No.” Sofia continued eating as though her phone wasn’t ringing—as though she hadn’t heard anything at all.
“You’re being stupid,” Benny said, as diplomatically as ever.
Sofia didn’t respond.
Later, Patrick abandoned his efforts to call and tried texting instead.
Can we talk?
Sofia didn’t answer. She turned off her phone, because every time he tried to contact her, it was hard to breathe. She really needed to just breathe.
Calling wasn’t working. Texting hadn’t worked, either. Patrick considered his options and decided to go over there. He figured he would be much harder to ignore in person.
It was around eight p.m., so there was a high likelihood of someone being home. He needed to clear some things up, and he needed to do it today.
A light shone through the front window as he parked his car, and he could see someone moving around in there. He didn’t see Sofia’s motorcycle at first, but then he noticed it parked a few houses down on the curb.
So, she was there. Good.
His stomach felt unsteady, and he was sweating. He doubted he would be this nervous even if he had been trying to propose to her.
He turned off the car, walked up the porch steps, and knocked firmly before he could talk himself out of it.
The door opened, and Martina was standing there wearing some long, flowing top over leggings. Her hair was in two high knots on either side of her head.
“Oh,” she said.
“Is Sofia here?” His voice sounded steady, he thought, so that was good.
She didn’t answer, but she stepped back and held the door open wider so he could come in.
He’d caught the women in the middle of cleaning up after dinner. Bianca was at the sink rinsing dishes, Benny was putting plastic wrap over a ceramic dish, and Sofia was holding two plates smeared with red sauce in her hands.
“Ah … Sofia. Hi. I was wondering … Could we talk?”
The look on her face was everything at once: surprised, hurt, vulnerable, dismayed. And it was possible that, underneath it all, he might have seen a little bit of love.
“Patrick.” It was all she said—just his name. It sounded like a plea.
“I’m sorry to disturb everyone, but …”
Bianca was the one who took charge. “Hey, Benny, Martina? Could you help me in the other room with the … you know. The thing I need help with?” The three of them scrambled off into Bianca’s room, sneaking looks over their shoulders at Sofia.
When they were alone, Patrick approached her carefully, as though she were a small woodland creature who might easily be startled into fleeing. “I tried to call you.”
“I know.” She was still holding the plates in her hands.
“And I tried to text.”
“I saw that.” She didn’t offer any explanation for why she hadn’t answered him.
He had several options for how he could start the conversation: Why did you leave? Are you okay? What can I do to fix this? Instead of any of those things, he said, “It wasn’t a ring.”
She blinked a few times, then seemed to realize for the first time that she was still holding the plates. She put them down and wiped her hands on a dish towel.
“It wasn’t?”
“No.”
“But, the box …”
“They didn’t have the right size box, so they gave me a different one. I never thought about that, about what you would think.”
“Oh.” She was still standing in the kitchen, with Patrick more than ten feet away. He didn’t make an attempt to close the distance, and neither did she.
“Are you … Are you pregnant?” There. He’d finally gotten out the question that he most wanted the answer to. He was shaking a little just asking it.
“No. I thought I might be, but no. I’m not.”
A rush of conflicting feelings flowed through him, and he could barely identify all of them. Relief? Disappointment? Elation? Sorrow?
“Ah. That’s … Look, Sofia, can we just get past this? Can we just … pretend it didn’t happen and start over?”
“I want to, but …” She was struggling with what to say—he could see it in her eyes, in the way she held her body. He thought for a moment that
she was going to shut down on him again. Instead, she said, “I want to be someone who can think they’re getting a ring and be happy about it. I want that, Patrick. And part of me was happy, but another part …” She shook her head in frustration. “I have all these feelings, and I don’t even understand them. They’re all tangled up, and it hurts.” She pressed a fist to her breastbone. “Being happy hurts.”
It was more than she’d ever said to him about her emotions. She was trying—he could see that. And yet, none of what she’d said sounded promising for him. And none of it made sense.
“So where does that leave us?”
“I don’t know.” She picked up the dish towel again and wrung it between her fists.
“Sofia—”
“You’re not the one who caused this, Patrick, and you’re not the one who should have to fix it.” She took a few steps toward him, but didn’t completely close the distance. “I just … I need you to give me time.”
“All right. I can back off. I can let you figure it out without pressuring you about it. Let’s just go back to my place and get a good night’s sleep, and—”
“No.” She shook her head. “I need you to give me time alone, Patrick.”
“Oh.” He felt as though he’d been slapped. He left her standing there and turned to walk out the door.
He walked out to the car feeling sick and miserable. What did she mean that being happy hurt? What was he supposed to do with that? He was confident that she loved him, and he knew he loved her. So why couldn’t they just be together? Why couldn’t they just enjoy what they had?
The front door opened, and Bianca came out and hurried over to him. “Can we talk a minute?”
“Ah … of course. Yes.”
The night was cold, so they both got into his car, and he started the engine and turned on the heater.
“Patrick, this isn’t about you.” Bianca clearly meant it to be comforting, but it wasn’t.