by Shana Norris
I tapped my fingers on the steering wheel as my car kept pace with the traffic around me on I-40 East. Every mile I moved away from Asheville only increased the heavy ball still sitting deep in my stomach. I hadn’t eaten lunch before I left. I didn’t think I could handle food at the moment. My entire body felt numb and disconnected. I barely even noticed the raindrops now spattering on my windshield as the gray clouds thickened in the sky.
What was it about Rory that Billy didn’t like? The Rory I knew, the one he didn’t share with many people, was far from a loser or an idiot. He was intelligent and passionate. He connected to the world on a deeper level than most of the people I knew. He had a lot of potential inside him, and he’d let me see glimpses of it. All he needed was someone to help him find the confidence to show it.
And Paisley—yeah, she has made mistakes. But maybe she didn’t have anyone to talk to, or to lean on. Uncle Blake and Aunt Jillian weren’t exactly giving her what she needed, focusing instead on Billy and his success. When I thought back to our visits together as kids, I could remember my aunt and uncle giving Billy so much attention and praising everything he did—good grades in school, polite manners, naming all the presidents of the United States in order from memory.
Meanwhile, Paisley sat nearby, playing with her toys. She’d either ignore everything her parents and brother did, or else she’d do crazy cartwheels or flips off the couch. Which always got her into trouble and sent to her room.
I gripped the wheel. Why hadn’t I seen that before now? Maybe Paisley had come to Asheville this summer to find the love she wanted before she went back home and dealt with the trouble she’d gotten herself in. Maybe all she’d needed all along was a friend. A better cousin than I’d ever been to her.
Boys Like Girls’s “Thunder” played from my radio. Like the song said, I was on that tightrope, stuck somewhere in the middle, balanced on a tiny cord that could break at any moment. I could fall with it.
Or I could jump.
I bit my lip until it hurt and tears stung my eyes. Before I could talk myself out of it, I glanced over my shoulder, checking for traffic. When I saw the lane was clear, I moved into the right lane and then took the next exit. A moment later, I was back on the interstate—except this time I was headed west, the miles to Greensboro disappearing behind me.
Bring on the rain, I thought as lightning cracked across the sky.
I knocked on the door of the little yellow house again, louder this time. Rain pelted down around me, dripping off the small shelter over my head and puddling next to the azalea bushes all along the front of the house.
I hadn’t been to Rory’s house yet this summer, so my nervousness was at a fever pitch. I’d only known where to find it because Carter had said that Rory’s brother lived next door to him. The family on the other side of Carter’s house was Chinese-American and had three young kids, so I knew that couldn’t be it. So I’d taken a chance on the yellow house, hoping I’d find Rory there, even though his car wasn’t in the driveway.
My phone buzzed in my hand. It was Andrea calling me again. She’d already tried to call twice. She’d ignored my calls earlier, so I felt I had the right to ignore hers now.
The door opened and a man who looked like an older version of Rory stared back at me. He was the guy I’d seen at the birthday party at the Shriner’s Club, way back on the night I’d first met Rory. It seemed like a lifetime ago now, though it had only been a few weeks.
He smiled politely as he looked at me. “Yes? Can I help you?” His hair was cut in a neat, short hairstyle and was combed just right. He wore a pressed pale-blue button-up shirt with clean khakis and shining brown loafers.
“I’m looking for Rory,” I said. “I’m a friend of his.”
“I’m sorry, Rory isn’t here right now,” he told me, extending his hand. “I’m his brother, Reid.”
Fear flashed through me. “He’s not with his dad, is he?”
Reid’s smile disappeared and his eyes took on a worried look. “His dad? No, I told him to stay away from his dad. He’s not … he’s not good for Rory to be around.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I know. His dad …”
“I know,” Reid said sadly. He leaned against the door frame, his shoulders slumping and his frown deepening. “I don’t know what to do with that boy.”
I shifted from one black flat to the other, shoes I only wore when I had to dress up to impress other people. “Can I give you some advice?” I asked.
Reid’s eyebrows lifted in surprise, but he gave me a half-smile. “If it will help me with Rory, I’d be happy to have it.”
I took a deep breath, thinking about Paisley. “Just love him, that’s what he needs most,” I said honestly. “For who he is.”
Reid titled his head, clearly curious about the random girl on his doorstep giving him family advice.
“Are you … Kate?” he asked. I almost laughed. Joy and surprise that his brother knew who I was swished in my chest along with everything else I was feeling. I nodded.
“Well, text him. I’m sure he’ll answer. Eventually.”
We said good-bye. I dashed through the rain back to my car. Once inside, I shook off the rain from my face and tapped out a text to Rory in time to the music of the rain on my windshield.
I’m at your house. Where are you?
When he didn’t answer after a moment, I texted again. Trying to find Paisley. Know where she is?
My phone buzzed with another call from Andrea. I hit the ignore button and went back to my texts.
Please, Rory. I need to find her. I’m sorry about everything I said.
A text popped up on my screen and my heart nearly exploded in my chest. But it wasn’t from Rory. It was Andrea.
As I looked at the words, my body suddenly turned icy cold.
I’m with Paisley. She’s in the hospital.
Chapter 25
Activity flowed through the halls of the hospital as I rushed through the sliding front doors. Nurses and doctors walking swiftly back and forth, visitors walking casually out of the gift shop, a receptionist smiling way too cheerily at me as I stumbled toward her.
“I’m looking for Paisley Watts,” I panted. My body felt like I had run all the way from Rory’s house even though I drove, and my hair hung in soaked tendrils over my shoulders from the still pouring rain outside.
The receptionist typed something on her computer, smiling her wide, peppy smile as she did. Her eyes flickered to the spot on her desk where my hair was dripping water, but she didn’t say anything about it. “Let’s see … Oh, yes. She’s still in the emergency room. Follow the hall and turn to the right, then take the first left and you’ll get to the emergency waiting room.”
I was already dashing down the hall before she’d finished. My heart pounded in my ears as I walked, trying to remember the directions she’d given me. Right, then left? Or left, then right?
Somehow, I managed to find the room marked Emergency Waiting Area. I burst through the doors, startling several of the occupants who looked my way with wide eyes.
But my focus was on the three people in the corner. I hurried over to them, my lungs about to burst at any second.
“How is she?” I gasped.
Deep lines creased Mimi’s face, making her appear much older than she was. She shook her head. “We don’t know yet. They’re still checking her over.”
I sat down in the empty chair across from them. Mimi sat in the middle, with Pop holding her left hand and Andrea holding her right. “What happened?” I asked.
“She came over to my apartment,” Andrea explained. “She told me what happened with Billy. She was crying and she had run all the way over there. I already knew about the pregnancy. I was trying to let her be the one to tell everyone else.” She shook her head. “Everything was fine, we were just sitting there, talking. And then she started bleeding. A lot. So I brought her here.”
I shivered as the coldness of the air-conditioning suddenl
y hit me in my still drenched state. I wiped at my nose with the back of my hand. “Where’s Billy?”
“He went to get a snack and to call your uncle,” Pop told me. His voice was tight and gravelly, like he was holding back tears. I’d never seen Pop cry before. He’d always been so strong, so determined and confident. He was always the one who had assured me that everything would be okay in the end. It was too weird to see him like this, to imagine that he might be just as afraid as I was.
All heads in the room turned as a doctor stepped through the door. “Watts family?” he asked, his eyes scanning the people seated in the mint green chairs.
All four of us leapt to our feet. “Yes?” Mimi asked. “We’re Paisley Watts’s grandparents.”
The doctor motioned for us to follow him outside of the waiting room, and so we gathered in a small half-circle before him. He was a younger doctor with green eyes that made me think of Rory. He still hadn’t responded to my texts. But I couldn’t think about that right now. For now, I needed to make sure Paisley was okay.
“How is she?” Andrea asked, her face stony and pale as she looked back at the doctor.
“Paisley is stable now,” the doctor said. He ran a hand over his short brown hair. “The baby seems to be fine, too. She may have just exerted herself too much. There doesn’t seem to be any distress, and most of the bleeding has stopped, but we’d still like to keep her overnight for monitoring. We’re checking her into a room now on our women’s floor.”
“Oh, thank you,” Mimi said, her shoulders relaxing as she spoke. “Can we go in to see her?”
“Yes,” the doctor said. “But only two of you at a time, until we get her moved up to the other floor.”
Mimi and Pop went in to see Paisley while Andrea and I stayed behind. We stood awkwardly in the hallway, neither of us in much of a mood to go back into the waiting room with all the other families.
Andrea raised her eyebrows. “I could use some coffee,” she said. “You?”
I nodded, crossing my arms tight over my chest as I tried to stop shivering. We headed back down the hall I’d come from, walking in silence toward the small cafe in the main lobby of the hospital. The line wasn’t long, so it was only a few minutes before we’d gotten our coffees and were seated at a wobbly plastic table in the corner.
I picked at the plastic lid to my coffee, a question burning on my tongue that I couldn’t hold back anymore. “How could this have happened?”
Andrea stirred creamer into her cup. “What?”
I gestured into the air. “Paisley. How could she have gotten into this situation?”
“You mean, pregnant?” Andrea asked.
My neck flamed hot, but I nodded. I felt like a kid, trying to say a hard word out loud. “I would think she’d at least be smart enough to protect herself.”
Andrea took a sip of her coffee before answering. “Sometimes, Kate, these things happen even when you try to prevent it.”
I stared down at my cup, running my fingers over the warm sides.
“Kate,” Andrea said quietly, “I want you to know that I’ve never regretted having you. The reason I gave you up wasn’t because I didn’t want you. It was because I couldn’t be the mother you needed.”
Her voice cracked at the end, and I saw tears forming in her big blue eyes. Eyes that looked just like my own.
“I was only eighteen,” she went on. “You have to have some idea now how I felt back then, finding out one day that I was going to have a baby, all alone. My college plans, my dance career, everything was up in the air. Everything changed the day I took that pregnancy test. I wasn’t ready for it, and I couldn’t trust myself to give you the life you needed. Your grandparents could do so much more for you, more than I ever could.”
“What happened with my dad?” I asked. “When you told him that you were pregnant, I mean.”
Andrea closed her eyes for a moment, a look of pain flashing across her features. “He didn’t want to hear it,” she said. “What happened between us was just a one-time thing. He wanted me to have an abortion, and I admit, I considered it.” She reached across the table and put her hand over mine. “But there was a big part of me that couldn’t do it. When your grandparents offered to adopt you, it made everything so much easier, lifted a huge weight off of me.”
A stab of hurt shot through me at her words. I’d always known that my dad had never wanted me. Arranging that meeting for Rory was the most my dad had ever done for me.
“Kate?” Andrea asked. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, my throat tight and dry as I spoke. “I was just thinking about my dad. I think it’s time to move on and not hope for anything from him. I’ve always wanted to know why he never tried to be a part of my life, but I don’t think he really has an answer for that.”
She gave me a sad smile. “I’m so sorry, Kate. If I could change his mind, I would. He doesn’t know what he’s missing out on, how amazing you are.”
A tear slipped down my cheek before I could blink it back.
“I’m sorry for everything,” Andrea told me. “I’m sorry I haven’t been the mom you’ve wanted me to be. I’ve been afraid to get too involved in your life, worried about what it would do to you. And to me. But I do love you. I’ve always loved you.”
I swiped at my cheek with my free hand, the other one still under her warm palm. The pink nail polish on her thumbnail was chipped at one corner, but she didn’t seem to notice.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m not really angry with you. I mean, I am a little, or I was. Mostly I’ve been disappointed.”
“I know.” Andrea pulled back, sitting up straight in her chair. She glanced toward the big windows along one wall. “Hey,” she said, smiling. “It looks like the rain has stopped. I have something I want to show you. It’s in my car.”
I gave her a questioning look, but Andrea didn’t say anything else as she stood. We carried our cups of coffee down the hall toward the front doors of the hospital. Neither of us spoke as we walked across the parking lot toward Andreas’s old gray sedan. She pressed the button to unlock the car and then went to the trunk, gesturing for me to come over as she pulled it open.
When I looked into the trunk, I found myself staring at a soundboard. And speakers. And cables and wires. My head spun as I took it all in.
“W-what is this?” I asked. It looked like my soundboard, the one that had disappeared from my car, but this one was newer. Better.
Andrea’s eyes were lit up as she smiled at me. “Paisley didn’t lose your equipment, Kate,” she said. “I had taken it so I could show it to a friend of mine who knows about this kind of stuff. It was supposed to be a surprise. I was going to put this new equipment into your car before you noticed the old stuff was gone, but I guess that didn’t work out so well. Anyway, my friend helped me choose some new equipment for you. You don’t have to rent anything anymore. It’s yours to take wherever you want to go and do anything you want with. Consider it a going away gift from me.”
My mouth hung open as she spoke. I reached down, pushing at the volume sliders on the soundboard, my fingers sliding over the smooth surface. “How can you afford this?” I asked.
Andrea shrugged. “I got a promotion at work last week. And it came with a raise and a bonus.”
I shook my head, still trying to make sense of everything she’d just told me.
I leaned forward suddenly, wrapping my arms around Andrea’s neck. She gasped in surprise, but then she hugged me back.
When she pulled away, tears were falling down her cheeks. She smiled at me, wiping away my own tears. “Don’t ever be afraid to go after what you want in life, Kate. That’s what I’ve always wanted—for you to live your dreams and find happiness. Don’t let anything hold you back.”
Chapter 26
I knocked gently on the door before pushing it open and peeking in. “You awake?” I asked.
Paisley lay in the hospital bed, which was inclined so that she faced the TV ha
nging on the wall across from her. She looked small and scared in that big bed, her body covered by the blue hospital blanket.
“Hey,” she answered. “Come in.”
I pushed the door closed behind me as I stepped farther into the room. Mimi, Pop, and Andrea were in the waiting room. I hadn’t seen Billy come back yet, but Mimi had encouraged me to go in and talk to Paisley. I was nervous and my knees trembled a little, but I knew I needed to say a few things.
Sitting down in the chair next to the bed, I asked, “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” Paisley said. “My stomach was cramping earlier, but I’m okay now. The doctor says I didn’t bleed too badly, so everything should be okay.”
I bit my lip, trying to form the words in my head that I needed to say. “I’m really sorry,” I said at last, “about everything. I’m sorry for accusing you of losing my equipment. Andrea just showed me the equipment she bought for me, so I know it wasn’t you who took it. I’m so sorry for calling you a thief. And also a boyfriend thief.”
Paisley gave me a half-smile. “Thanks. It’s okay. I get it.” She laughed for a moment, but then her expression turned serious again. She placed a hand over her stomach.
I pulled at a loose thread on the bottom of my shirt. I was still dressed in the pink blouse and gray skirt I had put on for my interview. The black flats I wore were beginning to give me blisters from all the walking I’d been doing around the hospital.
“I’m also sorry about calling Billy,” I said. “I shouldn’t have done that. It was your decision when to let everyone know about the baby, and I’m really sorry I took that away from you. I was just … so surprised when Rory told me. I didn’t know what else to do. But I didn’t think that Billy would come blow up at you like he did.”