Keeping Claudia (Toby & Claudia Book 2)

by Suzanne McKenna Link

  “You didn’t answer the question.” I rubbed a hand over my stomach, soothing Bella, and raised my chin. “Toby, do you want to be a parent to our baby?”

  Chapter 21 • Toby

  Claudia’s question felt like a trap.

  I didn’t want a baby. Or to be a parent.

  Now or ever.

  Fighting with her killed my buzz, and the anxiousness I’d chased away earlier was returning, its strangling hold on me tighter than before. “What’d ya want me to say? You never asked me what I wanted, but it doesn’t matter. It’s not like I have a choice.”

  “You always have a choice, Toby.” A cool look stole over her face. “My father and I talked. He’s offered to help out. The baby and I can live at home with him.”

  I nearly choked. “You’d stay in that house, without me, to make your father happy?”

  “It’d be a financial decision, a smart one.” She took a pair gloves from her pocket, more focused on getting her fingers warm than the insult she’d hurled at me. “I would be able to stay on my dad’s health insurance, and he could help out with babysitting. It’ll take some of the burden off of us until I finish school and get a job.”

  Unable to stand still, I circled her. “So, your plan is to give me even less of a choice?”

  “Do you have a better plan?” She was setting me on a narrow ledge knowing my balance sucked.

  “No,” I snapped, refusing to give in. “But I’m sure as hell not gonna let you and our kid live in another house to save money. You might as well cut off my fucking dick and hand it to me.”

  “I really hate when you talk like that.” Irritation rekindled in her eyes. “You don’t seem all that interested in the financial responsibilities of having this baby, but my father is. He wants to help.”

  “He’s not trying to help us. He’s trying to control you.” I leaned low, pressing her to look at me. “You’re forcing this whole thing on me, but there’s no way I’ll take a handout from your father. I’ll figure out how to support you even if it fucking kills me.”

  She flinched like I’d struck her.

  “I—” she started, the hostility leaving her tone. “Maybe you should start seeing Dr. McCauley again.”

  I swore. “Are you going to throw that in my face every time we have an argument?”

  “This is much more than an argument,” she said. “This is our lives.”

  “What’s going on here?” Eddie sauntered to her side, snugging an arm around her waist. “We can hear you shouting from all the way in the backyard.”

  “Now is not the time, Eddie,” I warned. “Get out of here.”

  “I’m okay, Eddie. We’re talking. Please go,” Claudia said.

  She tried to move away from him, but he shook his head and tightened his hold on her. “Not until he calms down.”

  “Who are you to tell me what to do, Eddie?” I leered at the little punk ass. “You’re nothing, just another—”

  “Toby—” Claudia shot me a warning glare.

  “No, I want him to finish it.” Eddie dropped his arm and edged closer. “I’m another what?”

  I widened my stance and crossed my arms. “No-good, sorry piece of shit.”

  “Fuck you, Faye.” Eddie spat.

  And then he charged me.

  I totally hadn’t anticipated his reaction, just felt the sharp zap between my eyes and the tickling gush of blood as it poured from my nose. The punk ass had hit me. He didn’t have time to get away, though. I grabbed the front of his shirt and raised my fist. Eddie turned his face just as I delivered a blow.

  It sent him to his knees.

  “Toby, no! Oh, my God!” Claudia sprung over Eddie like a mama bear protecting her cub.

  I lowered my fist and watched her help him to his feet. Eddie shook her off only stopping to pelt me with a hard glare before he took off down the block. I ran my tongue over my lips, tasting blood, and waited for Claudia’s wrath of fire.

  It didn’t come. Instead, with a distant look in her eyes, she offered me tissues from her coat pocket.

  “Can you help me clean this up?” I wasn’t ready to let her leave.

  She started towards the house, seemingly resigned. I would take that for now. Pinching my nostrils closed, I followed her inside, gut tight with guilt.

  “What happened?” Ray sat at the kitchen table.

  Leah was perched on the counter, a plume of smoke from her cigarette billowing into the room. Remnants of the night needed to disappear.

  I hiked a thumb over my shoulder. “Party’s over.”

  Leah skulked outside, leaving a trail of muttered protests in her wake and loudly slammed the door behind her. Claudia husked a bunch of paper towels from the roll. She wet them and stood before me, silently awaiting my go-ahead. I released my nose and lifted my chin.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. She held my jaw, eyes narrow with determination, and wiped the blood from my face.

  I knew she was disappointed in me, but for some reason, she was holding back. It was messing with my head. I desperately wanted to tell her how sorry I was for handling everything so badly. I wanted to tell her I’d do better—that I needed some time—but I knew it’d only sound like an empty replay of my earlier promise.

  She took a bag of frozen corn from the freezer and slapped it into my hand. “Ice it,” she ordered and turned to Ray. “Eddie’s upset. He ran off.”

  “He do that to you?” Ray asked me.

  “Bastard has a decent right cross.” I squeezed the bag of frozen kernels. “Caught me off guard.”

  “Y-You wanna go find him, teach him some res-respect?” Ray pushed back his chair and stood.

  Claudia’s eyes narrowed. “Cut it out, you two. Eddie is at an impressionable age. You guys grew up ignored and mistreated, so you’re going to pass that terrible legacy to him? Is that how this works? Just tell me, where hell does it end?”

  My gaze found my boots, but her gasp drew it back. Her face went white.

  “Claude, are you alright?” I stepped toward her, but she backed away.

  “I’m fine,” she snapped and darted down the hall to the bathroom.

  Sighing, I leaned against the counter. Claudia wasn’t wrong. Al had always kicked me down whenever I tried to stand up. I’d done the same to Eddie. It’s what I knew.

  Ray motioned down the hallway. “She okay?”

  “She’s pregnant.” I pressed the corn icepack to my face. “We’re getting married.”

  That seemed to explain everything.

  “Con-congrat-ulations,” the cheer stammered from his lips.

  “Thanks, I guess.” The situation was pathetic, a total farce. With a sigh, I tossed the vegetable bag on the table. “Ray, you gotta hit the road. Got a major shit storm to deal with here. Don’t be hard on Eddie … tell him I’m sorry or something.”

  How would Ray and my friends fit into my life with Claudia and a baby? There’d be some hard choices down the line. I didn’t want to think about it. I waited until I heard the door close behind Ray and went to find Claudia.

  “Baby, you sick?” The bathroom doorknob turned in my hand, and I pushed it open. She sat on the toilet, her pants lowered to her knees. She bowed forward in a feeble attempt to cover herself, but I’d already seen the thick slashes of red-brown blood on her underwear.

  She looked up at me, her face wet with tears. “I think I might be miscarrying,” she hiccupped.

  All my defenses left me.

  “Shhh, it’s okay. Stand up for me, baby,” I said, gently pulling her to her feet.

  She stood silent while I crouched before her. I didn’t know what a miscarriage looked like, but I would’ve expected more blood. She limply held onto my shoulders, and without a trace of modesty, she let me clean the smears of blood from her thighs. I folded a small towel over her underwear and, with her help, shimmied her pants back over her hips.

  I opened the door with shaking hands, turning to lift and cradle her in my arms. “I’m taking you
to the emergency room.”

  * * * *

  I jetted east on the highway toward the hospital. Claudia pulled out her cell and called her dad.

  “More cramping, but now there’s some blood. No, you can’t drive. Toby’s taking me to the hospital,” she told her father, levelheaded and unemotional. “It’s okay. I’ll call you when I know more.” She dropped the phone into her bag. “You need to keep my father updated in case I can’t.”

  “I will.” I squeezed her hand.

  At the hospital, Claudia received immediate attention, ushered into a wheelchair, and parked in the waiting area while I dealt with signing her in. I stood at a long writing ledge along a wall to fill out the stack of treatment forms, ones that seemed to require every detail of Claudia’s life since conception. Evening news flashed across a muted television in a back corner. Even the nearly dozen people waiting were quiet. Claudia was only a few feet from me but seemed time zones away. I didn’t understand how she and everyone else could remain so calm when I was nearly losing my shit. The least I could do was try my damnedest to get control of the panic that corkscrewed in my veins.

  An orderly came for her and rolled her behind a set of swinging doors. Losing sight of her made me feel riotous. I collided with the off-white, utilitarian waiting room chair and impatiently thumbed through the registration forms aware our future was once again rewriting itself.

  It took nearly thirty minutes before I was finally allowed to see her. The on-call emergency room obstetrician showed up and ordered an ultrasound. There was no heartbeat.

  I’d gotten my reset.

  “There are a few ways we can deal with a miscarriage. Let it happen naturally. In that case, your body will expel the tissue within the next few weeks. We can prescribe medication to make it happen sooner, or lastly, we can schedule you for a D&C, a surgical removal,” the doctor said with compassion. “We might even be able to get you in tonight.”

  “I don’t want to prolong the inevitable. Schedule it,” Claudia answered without acknowledging me.

  The doctor assured us they would get her in as soon as possible. Before leaving the room, he asked if she wanted a staff psychologist to visit her. She refused.

  I brushed her brow with my lips before falling into the seat at her side. “Claude,” I started.

  “Don’t,” she whispered. “Just… please don’t.”

  It was just as well; I didn’t know what to say anyway.

  After they hooked her up to an I.V., she called her father, and an hour later, they carted her off. I sat in the waiting room until the anesthesiologist came out to tell me everything had gone well, and as soon as she was up to it, I could take her home.

  A while later, a nurse rolled a pale, sluggish Claudia out to me in a wheelchair. I eased her into my car like a fragile flower. I couldn’t help but think of Julia’s weakened state in the aftermath of her cancer treatments. Then, like now, I felt an overwhelming need to do something. I drove to her house, parked, and sprinted to the passenger side to retrieve her from the car. She was quiet as I lifted her into my arms and carried her into the house and up to her bedroom.

  Her father hobbled awkwardly forward to pull back the blankets and help me cover her. “Can I get you anything, sweetheart?” he asked.

  She shook her head and buried her face into her pillow.

  “Bella faccia, it wasn’t meant to be. Next time, when everything is right, there will be another.” He leaned down and kissed the side of Claudia’s head. “I’m going downstairs to heat up some soup in case you get hungry. You call me if you need anything.”

  The situation had brought with it a strange twist in roles. Yesterday, Claudia had been waiting hand and foot on him. Now he was playing nursemaid.

  I waited until he left the room to climb into bed next to her and carefully pull her close.

  “I’m so sorry, baby, but I promise it’s going to be okay,” I whispered, tucking her head under my chin and rubbing her back. She remained quiet. “Are you in any pain? The doctor wrote a prescription for pain medication. I’ll fill it for you.”

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “You’ve already done enough.”

  The words felt like a slap across the face. She was pissed at me.

  “Listen, I’ll work something out with my bosses and talk to Eddie. I’ll apologize.”

  “I don’t want to hear about your job or Eddie.” She turned her head away. “Just go away.”

  I wanted to make her talk to me, or, at least, to listen to me. I wanted to tell her we were still okay. We’d work things out. I stopped and started three times, the words too heavy and too complicated to spit out before deciding to let her rest.

  I found her father in the kitchen. From his chair, he motioned to the coffee pot on the counter.

  “You want a cup?” he asked.

  It was the most civil he’d been to me in weeks, but I was still ticked at him for the way he treated Claudia and me. “No,” I refused the coffee and waited for an apology that didn’t come.

  “Her mother miscarried several times after Claudia was born. She got over it.” He glanced away, like he couldn’t bear to look at me, giving me a view of his profile. His skin looked sallow and withered, wrinkles I’d never seen before hung at the corners of his eyes and mouth. He looked older and less powerful, and far less intimidating than I’d always thought, like the last few months had clobbered him soft. “Claudia’s a strong young woman like her mother. She’ll take it in stride.”

  He smoothed his mustache, stood, and shuffled to the counter. He refilled his mug before plucking a bottle of Irish whiskey from a nearby cabinet and adding a liberal dose to his brew. He eyed my bloodied shirt. “What happened to you?”

  “Nose bleed.” I absently wiped a hand over the stain and remembered Eddie.

  I left their house and drove to Ray’s. He was up, watching late night television. I fell onto the couch beside him, a comfortable routine we’d done throughout the years we were in school together. Ray lit a joint and tried to pass it to me. I batted it away.

  “Is she okay?” he asked.

  “She miscarried.”

  Ray lowered his eyes. “S-sorry, man.”

  I shrugged off his sympathy. “With my old man as an example, I’d have made a mess of it. It’s better this way.”

  Ray knew about my father. He understood. His own had been out of the picture most of his life, too.

  “It k-kind of means something, though, doesn’t it?” he asked.

  “That I’ll be more careful next time,” I said and silently swore the next time Claudia leaned on me to take care of her, I’d do a much better job.

  A low squeal in the thin wall next to me broadcasted the release of pressure in the house’s water pipes. The drumming rush of the bathroom shower followed the screech.

  I blew out a heavy breath and sat upright. “That Eddie?”

  Ray nodded, and when the pipes stopped screeching, I got to my feet.

  Claudia was right. Ray and I knew how tough it was to be on our own without any reliable support or guidance. Stumbling all these years had toughened us up, made us wiser even, but it’d made us harder, too. Eddie was a good kid. Who would benefit from knocking him down? I’d handled myself badly, let my resentment fuel my anger, and launched a misguided missile. Hitting the wrong target, as usual.

  “Eddie,” I called, edging down the dark, short hallway to his bedroom.

  “Go to hell.” The seething order came from behind the door. I caught it right before it slammed closed.

  “Jesus, will you let me apologize?” The tension on the cheap, hollow core door held tight between us. “I know you were looking out for her—”

  The door gave way, and I nearly lost my balance. Eddie stood before me in a pair of boxers, his arms crossed, and a large, puffy welt across the left side of his face.

  “You better have not hurt her.” His voice bristled with contempt.

  “I didn’t,” I said.

  His s
cowl didn’t wane. “I always thought of you not as just Ray’s friend, but like another brother, a cooler one. Brothers are supposed to look out for each other, but both you and Ray are shit at that.”

  He shoved me backwards and, with his heel, kicked the door shut in my face.

  It’d taken me a long time to forgive Al, too.

  Chapter 22 • Claudia

  A new day dawned as it had all the days before, but my heart and my body felt different. I awoke and put my hand over my stomach. A piece of me was missing.

  Bella had been so little—less than ten weeks. I wondered if there was anything I could’ve done differently—anything that would’ve changed the outcome. A sob broke the silence. It was mine. Tears skated down my face. I rolled out of bed and dropped to my knees, bowing my head. I prayed little Bella would always be cradled with love, the way I would’ve loved her if only I’d been able to. It took a while before I felt able to stand up, but finally I brushed away the tears and forced myself up and into the shower.

  When I came downstairs, Dad had company. Uncle Vinny sat at the kitchen table with him.

  “Holy Christmas! My niece looks like a skeleton, Donato,” my uncle exclaimed. “Dolly, you come by the house. Your Aunt Gia will make you a nice plate of her lasagna. Put some meat back on those bones.”

  I’d learned to overlook my loveable uncle’s gruff remarks. Our family knew not to take his off-colored comments to heart, but an unexpected charge of anger tightened under my ribcage. My father chose not to tell his family about the baby. He’d saved face with the Chiametti clan. From the outside it probably looked like we never did anything wrong—only because we kept the unsightly stuff behind closed doors. It was the way we always did things in my family. There’d be no gossip to spread. No chiding side looks. No sympathy. Nothing. It would be like my baby had never existed.

  I put my shoulders back and squeezed out a smile.

  “I’ll stop by soon, Uncle Vinny. Until then, give Aunt Giana my love.” I kissed my uncle’s cheek. “Dad, I’m headed out.”

  Dad fixed me with his inspective gaze. “Where are you going?”