He pretended to peer under the kitchen table. “Unless Lassiter and his crew bugged the joint.”
She shuddered. “Don’t even say that! They’ve learned enough about the lot of us as it is.”
He tilted her chin up for his kiss. “So you’re going to tell Rosie tonight?”
“Yep,” she said, her lips moving against his. “No point delaying the inevitable.”
“July twenty-first.” A full eight weeks earlier than originally planned.
“You’ll hear her scream of horror all the way at O’Malley’s.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
He whispered something in her ear that made her melt into him and want to never let go. She was going to suggest something illicit and highly erotic when Priscilla came charging back into the house, trailing what looked like a small bramble bush behind her.
“Coward,” she said as Aidan made for the door.
She could hear him laughing as he drove away. So much for her graceful reentry back into everyday life.
Priscilla looked up at her with those big brown eyes of hers, and Maddy sighed. “I know, I know,” she said. “My hair’s curly, too. It’s a pain in the neck, isn’t it?”
She hunted down the grooming comb and a small pair of blunt-tip scissors, then sat down on the back porch to untangle the poor puppy from the forest of brambles and thorns she had somehow stumbled into. A steady breeze was blowing in off the water, turning the late afternoon noticeably chilly. Priscilla didn’t think too much of standing still while Maddy tried to work through the mats and burrs, so Maddy had to gather the puppy up in a bear hug with her left arm while she carefully wielded the scissors with her right.
“You look like you need some help.”
Maddy jumped, almost pitching Priscilla to the ground, at the sound of Kelly’s voice. “Where did you come from?”
“Sorry if I scared you,” Kelly said. “I rang the front doorbell. When nobody answered, I figured I’d come around and let myself in with the back door key.” She laughed as Priscilla wriggled free and bounded down the steps toward her, tail at full mast. “When did you guys get home?”
The words were innocent enough, but Maddy felt herself go instantly into red alert.
“About fifteen minutes ago. Your dad went on to the hospital to see Mike Meehan.”
“I suppose he’ll be working tonight.”
Maddy nodded as she gathered Priscilla back up onto her lap and prepared to try again.
“So what brings you here?” Maddy asked as she gently eased the wire comb through some nasty knots on the dog’s coat.
“I left an envelope of photos on the dining room table this morning.”
“Sounds like Rosie had you and Hannah scrapbooking last night.”
“It was fun,” Kelly said in her usual easygoing manner. “Between your Grandma Fay and my Grandma Irene, they must have known everything there was to know about everyone.”
“Did she show you the box labeled O’Malley?”
“Yeah, and it was pretty amazing. I didn’t realize our families were that close way back then.”
Way back then was probably around the time of Maddy’s birth.
“Door’s open,” she said, “if you want to get them.”
Kelly hesitated a second, then hurried up the three steps and let herself in through the kitchen door.
A moment later she let herself back out again. She had a thick brown envelope tucked under her arm.
“You found everything you were looking for?”
“No problem. Mrs. D left them on the sideboard for me.”
There was a natural rhythm to conversations between friends and family, and Maddy waited for the good-bye and see you later, but Kelly didn’t say a word. She didn’t leave. She didn’t talk. She just stood there, looking down at her running shoes.
“Kelly?” Maddy slid Priscilla from her lap and stood up. “I was just about to splurge on some of Lucy’s Black Forest cake and a pot of tea. Why don’t you join me?”
“I shouldn’t. I have a lot to do. I’d better go.”
“One piece,” Maddy urged, like one of those food pushers whose main goal in life was to make sure you couldn’t squeeze your thighs into your jeans.
“Next time, okay? I have to give my cousin Kathleen a lift to the train station and—”
She couldn’t hold back the question. It had been there between them all week, and it wasn’t going away.
“Did you run the test, Kelly?” Oh God, what was she doing? It sounded so harsh, so stark. So not her business.
“Test?” The girl tried to look puzzled, but the expression in her lovely eyes gave her away.
“The home pregnancy test you bought at the mall yesterday.”
Kelly’s face turned dead white, and Maddy pulled in a breath. Her muscles tensed, and she felt an almost irresistible urge to race down the steps, dash across the yard, then jump into her car and drive as far away from this whole thing as her battered old Mustang could carry her.
Aidan was right. They were all right. She did want to run.
Her mother and her aunts and her cousins, even Claire. All of them. She didn’t need this. God knew she didn’t want any part of it. It would be easy to turn away from Kelly’s troubles, let them flow through her fingers like grains of sand. But she knew too much about what Kelly was going through, felt too much and too deeply for the young woman to take the easy way out. Not this time.
She put her arm gently around Kelly’s shoulder and led her back inside the kitchen. All of Kelly’s natural ebullience and self-confidence had drained away. The girl sank into a chair, shoulders slumped, her lovely face a mask of sadness.
“How far along are you?” Maddy asked as she knelt down beside the girl.
Kelly’s whole body recoiled at the question. “Maybe five or six weeks.” Her words were little more than a whisper, and Maddy had to lean close in order to hear them.
“You’re sure?” Maddy pressed. “You ran the test and it was positive.”
“Positively positive,” she said with a small, hollow laugh. “I ran it twice.”
“So did I when I first found out Hannah was on the way.”
“I thought I was being anal about it.”
“So did I.”
One of the things Maddy had always found disconcerting about her future stepdaughter was the very adult way she carried herself. Aidan called her an old soul, and the more Maddy saw of her, the more she had come to believe that was true. Her self-possession and maturity were so far beyond where Maddy had been at that age—or now, for that matter—that Maddy had always been mildly in awe of the girl, more than a little uncomfortable.
But suddenly she was just a seventeen-year-old girl, a girl in terrible trouble, and Maddy’s maternal instinct kicked into high gear. She saw herself in Kelly, and she saw Hannah not that many years from now, and the thought of her little girl facing such a life-changing situation made her wish she could stop time. She opened her arms to the girl, and Kelly clung to her like a terrified child. She whispered that it would be okay, that everything would be okay, that she wasn’t alone, that she didn’t have to face her future by herself, that she was loved and cared for . . . powerful incantations against a terrifying and uncertain future.
Kelly was trembling in her arms. She felt painfully fragile, as if a harsh word, the wrong look, might snap her in two. No matter how hard Maddy tried, she couldn’t warm the girl’s hands.
“You’re freezing. I’ll make you some tea.”
Kelly shook her head. “No, thanks. I can’t keep anything down today.”
How well she remembered. “I promise once you get past the first trimester it vanishes like a bad dream.” She started to say more about the miraculous changes that happen almost the day after you finish the twelfth week when Kelly started to cry.
Not just gentle tears streaming down her cheeks, but ugly sobs that rose up from the depths of a despair Maddy prayed Hannah
would never know.
“I know it all seems terribly overwhelming right now, Kel, but you’re not alone. You have your entire family behind you. We’ll all help you. And there’s Seth.” Oh God, how would Seth handle this? Kelly and Seth were very close—Rose joked that at times they seemed like an old married couple—but Maddy knew all too well what an unplanned pregnancy could do to a relationship. If two reasonably mature adults couldn’t make it work, what hope was there for a pair of teenagers? “Have you told Seth?” she asked gently.
“He knew I was late,” Kelly choked out between sobs, “but—” She shook her head, then buried her face in her hands. “I told him it was a false alarm.”
She stroked Kelly’s hair and tried desperately to make light of the remark. “Well, honey, the truth is going to have to come out pretty soon. In another two or three months, he’ll be able to see it for himself.”
“No, he won’t.” Kelly looked up at her, face streaked with tears, anguish plainly visible in her eyes. “After tomorrow there won’t be a baby.”
Maddy felt like she had been leveled by a bulldozer. So this was how it felt when your convictions slammed headfirst into the real world. It was one thing to say a woman had the right to choose, but looking at Aidan’s daughter, she found herself unable to speak over the deep, aching sense of loss that suddenly filled her heart at the thought of the choice she had made.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Kelly begged her. “I’ve thought it all through, and there’s no other way.”
“I’m not looking at you any way, honey. I’m just . . . surprised by your decision. You should talk to Seth before—”
“No! It’s better this way. You know Seth. You know what he’s like. He’ll toss away his scholarship and say he wants us to get married, and then where will we be? His whole future—” She shook her head. “Do you see why I can’t tell him? My way is better. By tomorrow night it will be all over, and everything will be back to normal.”
“Not for you.”
“Sure it will,” Kelly tried to smile. “It’s not like I’ve had time to get attached to the idea or anything. It’s not even real to me yet. I can handle this myself, but I couldn’t handle seeing everyone—” She broke down again, those terrible racking sobs that tore Maddy’s heart out. “Things are just starting to go right, you know? Seth has the scholarship . . . Daddy has you . . . Aunt Claire has the new job, and Mr. Fenelli seems interested in her, and—” She stopped and sucked in a loud, shaky gulp of air. “If I decided to have the baby, everything would change. I know it would. Everybody’s dreams would be put on hold and—I mean, this isn’t what they expect from me, you know? I’m the one they depend on. I don’t get into trouble. I do what I’m supposed to do. I’m the one who’s supposed to make them all proud.” Her hands cupped her flat belly, then quickly slid away. “Not get knocked up two months before graduation.”
“You need to talk to Seth, honey. This is his responsibility, too.” She wiped away some of the tears with one of Rose’s pale yellow linen napkins. “And you need to talk to your dad. He’s a good man. He’ll stand by you.” Aidan would support his daughter in every way he could—she didn’t doubt that for a second—but she also knew the news would break his heart. This wasn’t the future he had wanted for his daughter. All I ever had to do was point Kelly in the right direction, and she did the rest. How many times had she heard him use that sentence to deflect praise for his parenting skills as his daughter claimed one award after another, added one more achievement to her lengthy list of triumphs.
“It’s too late. I have an appointment for tomorrow at five. They had a cancellation, and I was l-lucky enough to get it.”
“You don’t have to do this, honey. There are other alternatives.”
She met Maddy’s eyes. “Once you held Hannah, would you have been able to give her up for adoption?”
“No,” she said, wishing just once for the easy, forgivable lie. “I wouldn’t have.”
“You can’t tell anyone,” Kelly begged. “I don’t even know why I told you.”
“You didn’t tell me anything, honey,” she reminded the girl. “It wasn’t hard to figure out.”
“Oh God.” The color drained from Kelly’s face. “You don’t think anyone else has figured anything out, do you?”
“I don’t know,” she said carefully. “Sometimes we see what we want to see and manage to block out everything else.” God knew she had done that many times in her life and would probably do so again. “Your father has been worried about you. I can tell you that.”
“See!” Kelly sounded triumphant. “That’s what I don’t want. If he knew anything about this, it would kill him.”
“Kelly, your father is a very strong man. Yes, he’ll be upset, very upset, to find out you’re pregnant, but it won’t kill him. He’ll be there to support you, same as he always has.”
“I’ve thought it all out,” Kelly said, “and my mind is made up. This is the right thing for me to do. I know it is.”
“You’re a minor. You can’t undergo a surgical procedure without parental permission.”
“Yes, I can. I searched the Internet for the information. New Jersey doesn’t require parental permission or notification.”
“Are you sure? Laws can change without you realizing it.”
“I’m sure.”
“You sound like you’ve researched this pretty well.”
“I have.” Her smile was grim. “You should see the lists I made.”
“Some decisions defy logic.”
Kelly shook her head. “I can’t afford to think that way. This is the best decision for everyone concerned.”
“Please tell your father,” Maddy begged her one more time. “I know they call it a minor procedure, but I’d feel better if he knew where you were.” Surgery was minor only when it was happening to somebody you hadn’t grown to love dearly.
“You know where I’ll be. Isn’t that good enough?”
“I know why you’re going, but I don’t know where you’ll actually be.”
“Please don’t do this,” Kelly whispered. “You’re not going to get me to change my mind, so why don’t you just let me do what I have to do?”
“Would it hurt to take a week or so to really think about it? You still have time.”
Kelly leaped to her feet, startling Priscilla, who had been sleeping beneath the table. “I’ve done nothing but think about it for weeks now. If I think about it anymore, I’ll go crazy.”
She looked exhausted, terrified, frightened, and painfully young.
“You’re asking a lot of yourself, honey. You think it will be easy to keep a secret like this, but it won’t be. It’s going to change the way you see the world and yourself.”
“I can handle it.”
“You think you can, but—”
“Now I get it. You’re going to tell him, aren’t you?” Kelly’s voice rose in accusation. “That’s what all this is about. The second I walk out, you’re going to call my father and tell him.”
She didn’t deny the accusation. Of course she had to tell Aidan. She loved him. He was the girl’s father. He had to know. “I’m in a terrible position, Kelly. Your father and I are going to be married. He deserves my loyalty.” And that meant telling him everything.
“And I’m going to be your daughter. Don’t I deserve your loyalty?”
“You’re the reason I’m doing this,” Maddy said. “It’s your welfare I’m concerned about. I can’t let you go off to God knows where without telling your father about what’s going on. You both deserve better than that from me.”
“He’ll try to talk me out of it.”
“You don’t know what he’ll do, honey. Neither do I. In the end it will still be your choice. That much I’m sure of.”
Kelly grew very quiet, and Maddy matched her silence with silence of her own. If she walked out that door, there was nothing Maddy could do to stop her. They both knew Kelly held all the cards. Which one she woul
d play was anybody’s guess.
Kelly was the first to speak. “What if I tell you exactly where I’m going? I’ll give you the name of the clinic, the address, what time I’m supposed to check in. If I do that, will you promise to keep my secret?”
Maddy felt like she was free-falling from a burning plane straight into a forest fire. No matter what she did she was bound to crash and burn.
“And if I say no?”
“Then I’ll drive up to New York tonight. I know of two clinics where I could find help.”
Kelly was shaking so violently she had to hold on to the back of the kitchen chair for support. Please, God, if this ever happens to Hannah, help me to find the right words to say. Clearly she hadn’t been able to find the right ones to reach Kelly. Her mind was clearly made up, and Maddy knew that nothing she said or did would make a bit of difference. She wasn’t her mother. They didn’t share a history, a richness of mutual experience a mother could draw upon to sway her daughter over to her side. The truth was, they barely knew each other, and no matter how well Kelly’s experience mirrored Maddy’s, the bond between them was tenuous, at best.
The girl was on the edge of making a life-changing decision, one she would live with every day for the rest of her life. There were no easy answers in a situation like this. Maddy knew that firsthand. No matter what Kelly decided to do, she would pay a price. But she shouldn’t have to pay that price alone.
“I’ll keep your secret,” Maddy said at last. “I still feel Seth and your father should know what you’ve decided, but I’m willing to keep your secret if you’ll let me come with you tomorrow.”
“You want to go with me to the clinic?”
“Yes.”
She stared at Maddy as if she had never seen her before. “Why?”
“Because you need me there.”
“I already told you I—”
“You need me there with you,” she continued, “but not half as much as I need to be there with you.”
Relief and suspicion played themselves out across Kelly’s face. “You’ll come with me, and you won’t tell anyone?”
“If that’s the only way I can make sure you’re not alone, then yes, I will.”
Chances Are Page 32