“I feel like she’s so close to being okay, you know? She’s smart. She’s kindhearted. She’s just bored and has nobody. Nobody in the world she feels truly loves her or would be there for her, no matter what. Everyone deserves that. Everyone. I don’t want to feel like there’s any chance in the world I could lose her before I get a chance to try to help her.”
* * *
THEY SAT AWAKE for hours, the TV on, but not getting any further than the screen. Colleen and Bitty were silent, not wanting to overthink things too much. They just sat there in tense silence, Colleen’s worry colliding hard with aggravation that this might all be the inconsideration of a teenager, ruining her night on a trip she’d planned to take alone for her own reasons.
She was lost in that thought when there was a clumsy scratching and bumping at the door, and in stumbled Tamara, white faced, red under the eyes, with tear streaks. Bitty was sitting at the small table, and looked at Tamara with alarm.
“Where have you been?”
Colleen had set out to ask it harshly and angrily, but it came out desperate and relieved. She didn’t feel like she knew Tamara well enough to run up and embrace her, and she also didn’t know how angry she should be yet.
“I’m sorry.”
Colleen stood, suddenly with all the energy in the world, and stared Tamara down.
“I just went for a walk, and … and I got lost.”
“Why are you such a mess?” Bitty asked. “You look like you’ve been through a war.”
Tamara looked past Colleen to the mirror, seemingly startled by the horror-movie survivor she saw staring back at her.
Tamara took a deep breath and said, “I met some guys and asked them for a cigarette. They invited me to a party, it was right there, walking distance, so I went. They offered me weed, and I haven’t smoked since I left, and I just kind of accepted out of habit. But it was different. It fucked me up. Sorry for the language.” She hung her head. “It was called a dab. I don’t know anything about it. I thought I was going to die. And then my phone—well, my phone did die. And then I came here as soon as I could.”
Colleen was in shock. At the fact that Tamara had been honest. At the fact that she was here, and okay. At all of it.
“Should we go to the hospital?” asked Bitty.
“No, I feel normal now,” said Tamara. “I’m just so sorry I did that. I’m so so sorry—”
Colleen was inclined to reach for her and tell her it was okay, she was just glad she was alive. But again, she couldn’t do that.
“Let’s look it up,” said Bitty. “Tamara, charge your phone. Colleen, can you look it up? See what it is?”
“Good thinking.”
Twenty minutes later, after Colleen had texted a friend who was a nurse, Bitty had accessed her premium membership to a medical Web site, and Tamara had Googled it, they knew what dab was. She should be okay. It wasn’t inherently dangerous. But it could make you feel like hell on earth.
And it had.
“I don’t know what to say to you, Tamara. I was really worried about you. I don’t know what I would have done if something had happened.”
Tamara looked surprised.
And Colleen, in turn, felt surprised that Tam should feel surprised. Had no one ever worried about her before? Had no one ever told her they were glad she got home safely?
“I thought you guys would just go out to eat and…” Tamara’s voice drifted off.
“And what? See if you showed up again? Get in the car and go on without you? There was nothing we could do but sit here until you returned. Unless, of course, you were gone twenty-four to forty-eight grueling, nerve-racking hours—at which point, I could call the police. The lack of consideration for our feelings, for my feelings, is incomprehensible, Tamara. I was scared out of my mind.”
“I’m sorry,” Tamara said. “Really.”
Colleen wasn’t through. “I really thought you weren’t doing this kind of thing on the trip. As a mother, my rule is that you can’t get in trouble if you tell the truth. I’m very glad you were honest. But I’m still so sad that you felt the need to go do this.”
Tamara nodded sadly. “Me too.”
“Did something happen, Tamara?” asked Bitty. She rarely spoke, but when she did, she seemed to ask the right questions.
“Yeah, it’s nothing. Just dumb teenager stuff. I overreacted and freaked out.”
They both waited for her to choose to go on.
She didn’t. Unsurprisingly.
Colleen shot Bitty a quick look, then said, “Tam, come outside with me for a minute. I need some fresh air.”
“I just came in.”
“Come out.” She put a hand on Tam’s narrow shoulder and guided her outside.
It was beautiful outside. Now that she was able to relax, Colleen could see it. There was nothing quite like looking at a clear night sky behind palm fronds on a really warm night. It never seemed to get this warm at night in Maryland.
“What happened?” Colleen asked without preamble.
“Nothing.” Tam wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I just went for a walk. It’s cool here, and I doubt I’ll ever be back, so…”
Colleen struggled with an impluse to reassure her that, yes, of course she’d be back and that her life would have many happy events—big and small—in the future. But it wasn’t up to her, and for all she knew, and all she suspected, Tam might not ever go anyplace nice again. Maybe she’d just rot under Chris’s court-ordered care until she was eighteen and could be booted out (or married some stringy loser to get away) to face a life of struggle without the foundation that a nurturing family unit gives. People succeeded against the odds, certainly. All the time. But did Tamara have that drive? Colleen just didn’t know yet.
And it was beginning to feel like she wasn’t going to have time to find out.
“Is that code for you don’t want to talk about it?”
“No,” Tamara said, but so defensively, it sounded like no-wahhh.
Colleen looked her in the eye. “You don’t have to talk to me. But don’t ever lie to me. No one wins when someone’s lying.”
Tamara looked right back at her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Which left Colleen with the very ultimatum she’d just implied. “Okay, then. But you listen to me, Tamara Bradley: I’m not giving up on you. You can’t just push me away with some attitude and a brick wall of protection. I’m your family forever, and even if I weren’t, I’d care just as much just from having gotten to know you as I have. So my offer stands right now, and it will stand in a month, and it will stand in ten years. If you ever want to talk, you are safe coming to me. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, thanks, that’s cool,” Tam said, looking away and sounding for all the world like a dull-witted, burned-out teenager.
But Colleen had caught the glint of tears in the girl’s eyes as she turned her face toward the light. “It’s late,” she said. “If you’re hungry, there’s fried shrimp in the fridge. We both need rest. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Colleen
This was a stupid plan. Childish. Like something from a universally panned chick flick.
So why Colleen kept driving south of St. Augustine instead of just admitting the trip was going badly in every possible way, she didn’t know.
She just had to do this.
She had to confront her.
Julia. The woman who would be Kevin’s wife if Colleen hadn’t stepped in and ruined it for them.
Maybe it was just because she’d been haunted by Julia for so long that Colleen reached a wall where she either had to have resolution or … what? Give up? No, she wasn’t going to give up or stop living or leave her marriage or anything, but she was going to continue on the path of self-doubt she’d been on for fifteen years, and where would that lead? Obviously not to any sort of mecca. Just a quiet extinguishing someday.
It was midafternoon on Sunday. In a few hours, she and Bit
ty and Tamara would be heading back north, and all this would be behind her. She just had to get it over with.
The house was a typical expensive Florida Mediterranean model, on a generous lot. Colleen could hear the ocean beyond it—nice backyard. As she parked the car and walked up to the front door, she felt vulnerable; there was no turning back, no way to dodge out and go to the place next door and pretend to be looking for someone else or something. Of course, no matter what she could come up with, it would be a dumb lie, so why was she even considering it?
The truth was dumb enough. But she’d committed to it, and now she had to follow through.
She took a deep breath and knocked on the door.
Turn back turn back turn back RUN! ran through her mind like a drumbeat. But she was frozen, rooted to the spot. The sun, nudging toward the west at her back, burned hot, and she felt sweaty and rumpled. She probably smelled hot. She hated the smell of hot human coming into cool air-conditioning.
The door opened, and there she was: Julia Markham. Kevin’s first real girlfriend.
The real love of his life.
And she looked gorgeous, of course. Slim, tall, perfect in a pale blue shift dress that, unlike any shift dresses Colleen had ever tried on, emphasized every curve without looking self-consciously sexy at all. Which made it even sexier, of course. This was not an easy person to compare herself to.
There was no comparison.
“Julia?” Colleen said, even though she knew.
“Yes?” The woman frowned her arched eyebrows, not a hair on her head astray, and tilted her head slightly, clearly trying to place the mess before her.
Colleen felt her face grow hot. “I know this is really weird—and, believe me, I am wishing I were anywhere but here at this moment, but here I am and … I’m Colleen Bradley. Kevin’s wife?”
Understanding came into Julia’s chocolate eyes. “Oh, yes! Colleen! I’ve seen your picture.” Understanding left and reality overtook it. “I don’t understand, though—” She searched the landscape behind Colleen. “—is Kevin here?”
“No. I’m by myself. I was hoping to talk to you.” This was crazy. How had this ever seemed like a reasonable idea?
“Of course.” Julia’s composure slipped for just one barely detectable moment. “Where are my manners? Come on in.” She took a graceful step backwards, opening the door to Colleen, and the clean, sun-filled house bloomed behind her. It was almost as if angel music played.
Colleen’s house would never look like this.
Never.
“This way.” Julia led her past an all-white kitchen to an all-white sunroom. There was a pitcher of ice water with lemons in it already on the coffee table and a copy of Architectural Digest lying open, facedown, on the sofa. In Colleen’s house, it would have been a Diet Coke and a dog-eared People magazine.
“What’s on your mind, Colleen?” Julia asked. There was a slight crispness to her tone, which Colleen took to be caution. Who wouldn’t be feeling cautious under these circumstances? Your college ex-boyfriend’s wife shows up at your door, a thousand miles from where you know they live? She must have been wondering if Colleen was wearing a diaper and packing heat.
Colleen added brave to the list of Julia’s attributes.
“Look,” she said quickly, “like I said, I know this is really odd, and it was probably a harebrained scheme, but I wanted to apologize to you. I’ve wanted to, or at least needed to, for a really long time.”
That appeared to take Julia aback. “Apologize to me? What on earth for?”
Sudden, unstoppable tears filled Colleen’s eyes. “For”—words failed her for a moment; she had to choke them out—“for ruining your life. Yours and Kevin’s. I—I think.”
Julia’s shock could not have been more clear. “What are you talking about?” She smoothly handed a box of tissues to Colleen from the end table next to her.
Colleen sniffed and dabbed at her eyes. “I didn’t know Kevin had a girlfriend when I met him—”
“Technically, he didn’t,” Julia said carefully.
But he had. They both knew it. He and Julia had just had a fight. After two and a half years of dating, college sweethearts, Julia and Kevin had a fight and Kevin went out and got drunk with his buddies, which was where and when he met Colleen.
All she knew at the time was that he was gorgeous and older and funny and smart—and drunk—and that he was going after her pretty enthusiastically. Egged on by his friends, who were undoubtedly trying to get him to get over Julia by just “getting right back on the horse”—even if it was a different horse. That’s how guys were.
And girls tended to be too blind to see it until it was too late.
“Okay,” Colleen agreed, “that’s true, technically you were ‘on a break.’” Wasn’t everyone sick to death of that old Friends reference now? Yet it was completely true. “And I didn’t know about you at first—honestly, I didn’t.”
“Of course not,” Julia said with an ease and distance as if she were talking about a general situation, one not her own. “What guy’s going to tell a new girl that he just had it out with his old one? There was no reason for him to explain me to you, nor for him to explain you to me. We were over. I truly hope you haven’t been carrying that all these years, Colleen. Truly. It was just a silly teenage romance.”
Colleen took a breath. “That’s gracious of you. But I know the truth. Kevin was in love with you. He was planning to get back with you, you were both planning a wedding, and before he could tell me—and I realized later he’d been planning to break it to me, maybe even that day—I had to tell him I was pregnant.”
Colleen, the past
It wasn’t possible. They’d used protection. It was 99 percent effective, and the other 1 percent was if you used it as a party hat. Or if it broke or had a pinhole in it, but that almost never happened in real life.
So how could the four sticks on her sink (she’d done two, then decided the package must be faulty and gone out to get another two) all say the same thing?
Positive.
Pregnant.
It was impossible to fathom. A month ago, she had been Not Pregnant, and her whole life was ahead of her—every choice open to her, or at least it seemed that way (there was no telling whether she’d ever really want to run for president) and now a huge percentage of those choices were gone. Boom. Like pipe dreams.
Naturally her “options” had occurred to her. She was strongly pro-choice, but she couldn’t imagine choosing to end this in practice and wonder forever what could have been.
Likewise, she admired the hell out of people who were strong enough to give babies up for adoption, but she didn’t think she could live a lifetime constantly calculating the age of any child or person she saw who might look vaguely like her or Kevin or a combination of them both. It was selfish, she knew, but giving her baby away would torture her.
So she decided she was going to keep the baby. She was going to raise him or her, no matter what. She was prepared to do it alone, if need be. And need might be, because she had no idea how her parents were going to react to this tidbit the minute after she completed her costly education.
And a year before the baby’s father completed his degree in architecture.
How was she going to tell everyone?
How was she going to tell anyone?
Even Bitty had just left for her home in North Carolina, heartbroken over Blake leaving. Colleen couldn’t burden her with this too. She’d feel like she had to do something, and when nothing could be done—because, really, nothing could be done—she’d think she failed Colleen. That’s how Bitty was, always dutiful, always trying to be whatever she thought people needed her to be.
Colleen, frankly, couldn’t face telling any of them.
But she had to.
And it had to begin with Kevin.
And first it had to begin with sleep.
When she woke up in the morning, she had that moment of disorientation when she remembere
d something was wrong, but she was too sleep-fogged to recall exactly what it was.
Then it came to her. Crashing down in all its reality, as unreal as it was. She even went into the bathroom and glanced into the trash can, in case it had all been a vivid dream—but no, the four pregnancy tests were still there, and the tampon wrappers she would have expected to be—her period came like clockwork every month—were not.
Later she would not remember the drive over to Kevin’s, apart from the way her hands shook on the steering wheel. This was unreal. It felt like being in an improv class; she had to find a way to say the unsayable. She had to find a way to live with knowing she was about to change someone else’s life—in addition to her own—forever. She had to tell him she was pregnant and that she’d made the decision to keep the baby, so forevermore, no matter what happened between the two of them, he was going to be a father. He would know, whether he acted on it or not, that he was a father. And she would know she’d done that to him.
She parked the car out in front of his apartment, took a deep breath, and went to the door. It took a long moment for her to knock, but when she did, he seemed to open it almost immediately.
“Hey,” he said, clearly surprised.
“Hi. I’m sorry to come unannounced. But we”—she took a shuddering breath—“we need to talk.”
Was that relief that crossed his expression? “I’ve been thinking the same thing,” he said. “Come on in, have a seat. I know it’s only noon, but do you want a beer?”
She gave a dry laugh. “No, thanks.”
“Mind if I have one?”
“Please do.” Please have six.
He popped open a can of Bud and sat down at the hexagonal table he and his roommate had gotten from Goodwill. “Have a seat,” he said again.
“That’s okay, I’m a little nervous.”
He nodded. “I think maybe we’re feeling the same way.” Later those words would register for her, but her first reaction upon hearing them was that maybe her nerves were so blaring, he couldn’t help but pick up on them.
“The thing is…” Words failed her. Just stopped.
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