Brad knew even as the words spilled from his mouth that he was lying. What he really meant was that he couldn’t stop himself. Not for God or for Emma or for fear of getting her pregnant. They’d stumbled onto a passion bigger than both of them, a heady, whirling seductive range of physical feelings and emotions that had almost overnight become an addiction for each other that would not be denied.
No surprise then that November came with the news neither of them had wanted to believe possible. Emma was pregnant. She had him drive her to Holden Beach so she could tell him the news; mostly, he guessed, so they would have privacy — to discuss what to do next.
By then, Brad had already moved his things to the dorm at Chapel Hill, but in light of her announcement, he told his parents he needed more time. That he didn’t want to be so far away from Emma, and that they’d go to college together when she graduated. In the meantime he’d earn money and create a savings for the next four years.
But all of that was only a ploy to buy time.
The wood against Brad’s back pressed into his spine, pulling him from the tangled web of memories that made up his past. Right here on this beach, that’s where she had told him the news. At first, of course, he could hardly believe it. She didn’t look pregnant, didn’t seem any different. He must’ve asked her a dozen times those first few days whether she was sure or not.
Brad started walking back toward the parking lot. Halfway there he spotted a white wooden cross in the midst of a section of wild grass. He hesitated but didn’t move closer to it. Whoever had put it there, they hadn’t intended it to be noticed by the public. It was too hidden for that.
He stuck his hands in his pockets and trudged back through the sand to his dad’s truck. His time in the past hadn’t helped resolve his feelings or give him a ticket to let it go. If anything, he knew better what he needed to say to Emma, why he had to find her before he could walk down the aisle with Laura. The way he’d treated Emma once they’d given in to their physical desires was appalling. Worse than that. His heart ached again, not for himself or the unfinished chapter from his past, but for Emma, his childhood friend and high school love. His precious Emma. He had to find her.
Otherwise the weight of the past would suffocate him.
Eleven
EMMA HAD BEEN HOME FROM THE hospital for an hour when she wandered down to the beach with Riley. The sandy stretch was empty except for an older couple walking hand-in-hand near the surf. Now that she’d talked to God, she had more to say. She’d wrestled with her own guilt and shame for so long, she figured she’d live this way forever. But now maybe that wasn’t true.
She reached a stone wall separating Ocean Boulevard from the sandy beach, and with a graceful motion she eased herself up and onto it, hanging her tanned legs along the other side so she could face the water. Riley sat at attention beside her, ready to protect her if anyone dared get too close.
“It’s okay, boy.” She ran her fingers over his ear. “Lay down, Riley. It’s okay.”
Riley hesitated, then he yawned and moved in a series of tight circles before flopping down at her feet. She stared down the beach at the craggy place where small inlets of sand were hidden from view, the place where she and Brad had come that summer. The place where they lost control.
The thing was, she really believed him about getting pregnant, how it couldn’t happen to her. Not right away. Or at least she wanted to believe him; after all, back then she had trusted him with her life. If she got pregnant, that wouldn’t be the worst thing, right? Brad would stay by her and they’d have a quick wedding. They would live together while they finished school, and they’d raise their child the best way they knew how. That’s what she pictured.
The day she took the pregnancy test would stay with her forever. Her mother was sick by then, very sick. She slept on the couch while Emma rushed quietly into the house with the bag from Eckerd’s. She hurried upstairs and took the test kit from the bag. She wasn’t sure how to use the contents of the box, so she was grateful that the directions were fairly straightforward. Two minutes later she had her results. She was pregnant, and there wasn’t a soul on earth she could tell except Brad. Her best friend … the father of her child. She caught her breath, hating how she was drawn back to that time. They’d gone to the beach, of course. To the place right here where they’d lost control, where they’d compromised everything they believed.
“I’m late,” she told him. They were holding hands, walking in the shallow tide. “I took a test.”
At first her words didn’t seem to register. But then slowly he stopped and turned to face her. “You’re late … on your period?”
“Yes.” She felt faint as she looked into his eyes. Like this had to be happening to someone else. Not her and Brad, because they were good kids, kids who didn’t drink and party. Kids who had promised God they’d save themselves for marriage. She couldn’t possibly be telling Brad she was pregnant. But she had no choice. She pulled the test stick from her sweater pocket. “I’m pregnant. The test was positive.”
After that, the shock was more Brad’s than hers. For a minute, he didn’t seem to breathe, and then his skin grew pale and damp. “Really? I mean … you’re sure?”
“Yes.” She wanted him to hug her, to tell her everything was going to be okay.
Instead he turned from her and took a few steps toward the car. Then he stopped and doubled over his knees, heaving until everything he’d consumed for the past however many hours was lying on the afternoon sand. Gasping for air, still too sick to stand straight, he used his feet to kick sand over the mess. Then he turned to her, his mouth open. “What … what are you going to do?”
She remembered how awful the question felt. What was she going to do? This was a problem they both faced, right? So why would Brad word it like that? Either way, it was a question with no answers. When he felt well enough, they drove home in her red ragtop with almost no conversation between them. Halfway there she took his hand and looked deep into his eyes. “Don’t stop loving me, Brad. Please don’t stop.”
But love was the last thing on their minds after that. Emma didn’t want to tell her sick mother, and Brad couldn’t imagine telling his parents. They had been against Brad and Emma going to Holden Beach in the first place. This would be the worst admission of all, and Emma agreed they had to find an answer on their own.
At that time, her cycle hadn’t been regular. She could miss a period and think nothing of it. For that reason she wasn’t sure how far along she was, but since it was November she was terrified she might’ve been pregnant for a few months at least. That Monday in biology class, she was trying to figure out what to do when she remembered the school nurse and her promise to help any girl suffering with an unwanted pregnancy. Emma clenched her teeth, hating the words the nurse used back then. Suffering from an unwanted pregnancy. As if there was no baby involved whatsoever.
The nurse never for a moment considered any option but the one that made most sense to her. “You’re at the start of your senior year. If you’re a few months along now, a baby would mean you can’t finish school or walk with your class at graduation. You can avoid all that heartache.” It was as if the nurse were talking about a headache Emma was experiencing, not a baby growing inside her. “Having a baby is your choice, Emma.”
She wished Brad had been there, but he couldn’t bring himself to show up on campus. His friends from the basketball team thought he was fully involved in his freshman year at college by then. He could hardly walk into an appointment with the school nurse, Emma at his side. The whole school would know the truth before lunch. Emma didn’t blame him, but without his support, she felt very little resolve, little ability to do anything but be led through the process.
The nurse talked to her a few minutes longer before making the appointment. “They’ll want to verify that you’re pregnant. And they’ll counsel you, of course. I don’t want to assume anything. I mean, are you ready to be a mother?” The tone in her voice tol
d Emma the question was rhetorical.
“No, ma’am.” She sounded fifteen, timid and unsure of herself. “I don’t think so.”
“And are you and the baby’s father getting married anytime soon?”
“No, ma’am.” Emma had sort of hoped so. That’s what she had pictured, right? That Brad would seize his role in her pregnancy, and that the two of them would find their way through the mess together … they and their baby. But Brad hadn’t mentioned marriage once since she’d taken the test. Before that summer, he’d talked about it all the time, how they were going to finish college and get married and live happily ever after.
But all that stopped with her positive pregnancy test.
The memories tore at Emma’s heart, the way they always would. As much as she hated thinking back on that time, she couldn’t pull herself from the past. Almost as if by staying with the series of memories she might finally understand what had happened, why she never made peace with the actions she’d taken that fall.
There were a few more questions from the nurse, and then Emma sat by while she picked up the phone and called a clinic in downtown Wilmington. “I have a student who may be pregnant,” Emma heard her say. “From what I can tell, she’s at the end of her first trimester.” She scribbled something down on a piece of paper and finished the phone call. Then she turned to Emma. “Here you go. They’re expecting you tomorrow at four o’clock. It’ll be a preliminary appointment. You can work things out with them after that.” She gave Emma a sad smile. “Any questions?”
Emma had a million. Was it really legal to walk into a clinic pregnant and walk out with an empty womb? Would anyone tell her whether the baby was a boy or a girl? And did an aborted baby have a funeral or just … or just what? Emma bit her lip and stared at her trembling hands. “No, ma’am. No questions.”
Brad waited in the car while she went in for that first visit. Emma had called ahead and a woman had told her that this initial time wouldn’t take long. She was right. A nurse performed another pregnancy test, and the results were the same. Positive. Then in a blur of discussion that felt entirely one-sided, Emma and a doctor at the clinic agreed she should come in on Saturday morning for an abortion.
She left the clinic shaking, terrified over what was about to happen. She couldn’t talk about it at first, but that night she shared all her fears with Brad. They drove to the cape and held hands as they walked along a lighted pathway near the water, neither of them aware of anything but the conversation. Her “procedure” was set, and Emma was terrified.
“What if I die?” Emma shivered as a cool wind blew along the river. It was the third week of November, and the warmth of summer was long gone.
“You won’t die.” Brad sounded as terrified as she was, but he wouldn’t say so. He tried to smile at her. “Come on, Emma. People do this all the time. It’s not dangerous.”
It’s dangerous for the baby, Emma wanted to say. But she worried Brad might think she was forcing him to be a father. So she kept those feelings to herself. “I heard a girl talking about abortions in English last year. She said girls still die from them. They can bleed to death.”
“That’s at those back-alley places.” Brad tried to sound informed, like he wasn’t scared out of his mind.
“So you’re saying I should do this?” An incredulous understanding came over her. “I thought you were a Christian?”
“I am.” He stopped walking, his tone raised just enough to put tension between them. “I’m not telling you what to do.”
“But you are. You’re saying abortion’s safe, but I thought …” her heart was racing so fast she thought she might drop dead there on the river-walk. “I thought Christians didn’t believe in abortion.”
Brad’s silence in that single moment changed forever the way she viewed people of faith. It was one thing to take a stand against some societal wrong. It was another thing altogether to make tough decisions in line with that stand when the matter became personal. In other words, Brad’s faith only allowed that abortion was wrong when it involved someone else. Emma had heard Brad’s mother talk about their beliefs when the anniversary of Roe v. Wade rolled around. Back then Brad was very vocal about the subject, agreeing with his parents completely.
But now that the terrifying pregnancy was hers, Brad didn’t have much to say.
They kept walking in silence, and a nausea came over Emma. She stopped and pulled her coat protectively around her middle. “You want me to have an abortion.” It wasn’t a question.
“It wasn’t my idea, Em. It was the nurse’s. She’s the one who made the appointment.” He released a frustrated sound and took a half step backward, away from her. He was acting detached, almost disinterested. “Look, we’re too young to have a baby. You have to finish school. I have college. We’d be giving up all that.” There was no denying the fear in his eyes. “This is about our future.”
She wanted to scream at him, ask him what about our baby’s future. But she only hung her head.
He touched his hand to her elbow. “Look, I wanna do the right thing for you. Whatever that means I’ll do it.”
“Like what?” she tossed her hands in the air. “Drive me to the clinic? Pay for it?”
“I guess so.” He hesitated. “Whatever you need, Emma.”
She stared at Brad for a long moment and then spun around so he wouldn’t see her cry. This wasn’t what she wanted … it wasn’t how she pictured this scene playing out. She wanted him to take her tenderly in his arms and stroke her back, promise her everything would be okay and ask her to marry him. Anything so they could get out of this nightmare together and whole. The three of them. But now … now he sounded like the school nurse, reminding her that they’d be compromising their futures if they had a baby now.
“Emma.” He came to her, but not with an unconditional love and concern. Rather, his tone was marked by something new and uncomfortable. As if they hadn’t grown up together. As if they weren’t best friends who had gotten into serious trouble together. He put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m not ready to be a dad. If that’s what you’re looking for, I can’t … I’m not ready.”
So there was the real problem. She turned slowly, facing him, her heart breaking in half. When their eyes met, she realized something that only added to the sick feeling inside her. He looked like a stranger, like someone she didn’t know at all. “So that’s it.” She sniffed, trying to keep from collapsing to a heap at his feet. Her voice was a tortured whisper. “You drive me to the clinic. I get an abortion, and we act like nothing ever happened. I go back to my senior year and you leave for Carolina and no one ever has to know. Right, Brad?”
“What other choice is there?” His voice broke, and for the first time since she’d taken the pregnancy test, his eyes filled with tears. “This is our only option.”
Emma remembered putting her hand over her stomach, picturing the baby who would be half her, half Brad. Was it a boy with Brad’s blond hair or a girl with her hazel eyes? She had one more question, and she struggled to find the right words as she stared at the boy she still loved. “What about us?”
“Us?” He swiped at the tears on his cheeks, and at the same time he turned toward the river. When he looked back, a hopelessness screamed from his expression. “Nothing’s been the same. Not since … not since August.”
The world stopped spinning, and Emma couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. Was he breaking up with her? Were they finished because they’d made a mistake and gotten caught? No matter what happened next, she couldn’t lose Brad. He was everything to her, every yesterday and a lifetime of tomorrows. There had never been anyone else for her but Brad, so he couldn’t be saying what he was saying. She grabbed a series of quick breaths and shoved her fingers through the roots of her hair. “Are you … breaking up?”
His answer was quick and defensive. “Of course not.” Anger colored his tone. “I never said that.”
“You said nothing’s been the same since August.” Sh
e was panting, struggling to exhale. In the distance a group of teenage guys walked by. They stared and snickered at them, as if the discussion were nothing more than a teenage lovers’ quarrel.
“I didn’t say I wanted to break up.” He still sounded angry. “You’re putting words in my mouth.”
Emma hated that he was defending himself. She wanted him to fight for her, tell her he’d go to the ends of the earth for her. Promises of love and devotion and protection, that’s what she wanted. Not this … this frustrated guy making excuses and nervous accusations. But what was she going to do, order him to be kind, beg him to understand a little of the terror she was feeling? She forced herself to calm down, to breathe normally, and when she had regained some of her composure she reached for his hand. “I still love you.”
His transition took a few seconds. But then for the first time since they’d reached the river, the look in his eyes was the kind one she was familiar with. He pulled her to him and breathed into her hair. “I love you too. Nothing’s changed.” He put his hand alongside her cheek and kissed her — not the passionate kiss that had caused them to lose control, but a kiss of tenderness and concern that said everything his words did not.
“We can get through this, right?” Her tears were back, blurring her eyes. She clung to him like she might otherwise fall off the edge of a cavernous cliff.
“Of course.” His voice was heavy with relief. “We’ll get through it together. Everything will be okay.”
And like that, the decision was made.
Twelve
EMMA STOPPED THE MEMORIES COLD AND didn’t think about them again until early the next morning. Even then she held them at a distance. What happened that terrible Saturday in November wasn’t something she thought about — not ever. Instead she tried to focus all her thoughts on Kristin. A quick call to the hospital and Kristin’s mother got on the line. Nothing had changed during the night. They were still praying for Kristin to come out of the coma. Emma promised to keep praying, but she kept the conversation short. She felt like a liar, talking about prayer to a woman with such strong beliefs.
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