by Lisa Dale
“Please?” he asked.
He saw her eyes flicker toward the line of customers and then toward her sister. Karin shrugged her shoulders as if to say, “It’s up to you.”
“One minute,” Lana said.
He took her hand and held tight as they walked around the table and through the crowd. Her fingers didn’t tighten around his, but still he held on. He could feel the calluses on her fingertips and it made him ache to feel the rasp of them on his skin. He led her down the path through the park and only when they stopped in a shady spot away from the crowd did he let her hand go. The leaves overhead made the dry, whispering sound that meant autumn was near. He felt as if his senses had been adjusted, set to exquisite sensitivity. He felt the breeze that stirred with the sway of her hair. He heard the cotton of her jacket whisper against her skin. He was painfully aware of the natural parallel lines their bodies made when they stood face-to-face. How easy it would be to take one step forward, to close the distance between them and make two lines one.
“I’m mad at you,” she said, slipping her hand out of his.
He nodded, oddly relieved that she’d admitted it so easily, that they could simply get it out in the open.
“You didn’t tell me you got in a fight,” she said.
“No,” he said. “I figured I got what I deserved.”
Her face flooded with concern. “Are you… are you okay?”
“Better every day,” he said.
“Why would you do that? You never fight.”
“I don’t know. Some sort of caveman gene.”
He thought he saw a slight smile pull at her lips.
“You missed me,” he said.
“Maybe.”
“You did.”
She pushed lightly against his arm. “You missed me.”
“Yes,” he said, “I did.” He held his breath, not wanting to break the moment of easy flirtation. A leaf, red as poppy petals, swung down from the top of a tree, fluttering before it veered sharply toward the ground. It was such a relief to see her smile. But there were serious issues at hand. “So tell me what Ron said.”
Her grin faded. “He’s out of the picture. It’s my problem as far as he’s concerned.”
Eli nodded. He’d expected this. “Are you relieved?”
“Why would I be relieved?”
“Because you don’t have to answer to anyone else now. Just yourself.”
She sighed. “I guess you’re right.” She reached up to scratch her throat, and the movement made her jacket fall open just a little, and her belly was suddenly there, between them, arcing gently, no longer hidden by big dresses or overalls. She nervously put her jacket back into place. And when his gaze returned to her face, he could see that she was feeling self-conscious that he’d looked so blatantly at the evidence of her mistake.
“Do you… do you think it’s terrible?” she asked, her voice full of vulnerability and hope.
He felt his fist tighten, thinking of the way her body was changing, and of how it had nothing to do with him. The child wasn’t his; the primal, territorial male tucked away inside his DNA would not let him forget that fact. There was something instinctive in his blood that wanted the swelling of her body to be because of him, because of something he (and she) had done. And yet, through the pangs of jealousy came a complicated feeling of tenderness, love, and even devotion. He felt as if he’d been charged with taking care of Lana and her baby—that she needed him. And it felt good, to think he could do some good for her.
“I think it’s amazing what your body is capable of. And what you’re capable of,” he said. “You’re beautiful. And your baby will be beautiful too.”
She smiled. “Thank you.”
He spoke as gently as he could. “You’re still thinking of adoption?”
“It’s the only way.”
He tried to keep his feelings from showing on his face. He’d heard her talk about adoption before, but not with so much sadness and resignation in her voice. “I don’t believe that. Listen to me, Lana. I think you’d make a wonderful mom, the best, if you decided to raise the child as your own.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just that I can’t stop thinking about Calvert. About how he didn’t want us, but got stuck with us anyway. And seeing Ron reject this child… It just brings everything back all over again. I don’t want growing up to be as hard for this baby as it was for me.”
“But you can give it a good life.”
She shook her head. “You have to be dependable to be a parent. And me? I’m a flight risk. Other than Karin, you’re the only steady relationship I’ve ever had.”
“But you are steady with me. So that proves it. You can raise the baby, if you want.”
She hesitated. The wind sent a wave of brown leaves tumbling at their feet. “Are we?” she asked.
“Are we what?”
“Are we steady? I mean… you don’t want anything to change?”
His heart beat painfully hard behind his ribs as silence stretched long between them. How to answer her? He was challenging the boundaries of their friendship, deliberately, more each day. And while he didn’t plan on retreating, he did want her to know she was loved, safe, and that he wanted to be there for her and comfort her even while his demands increased.
He moved closer to her, leaned down. Her hand was close to his. He let his fingers brush hers. He thought if he could look down, he would see tiny blue sparks leaping between their hands. “Do you know why I broke up with Kelly?”
“No?”
“I think you do.” His heart beat hard. He’d all but told her the truth—that he loved her. But would she hear it? And accept?
“I’m sorry it didn’t work out,” she said, but even though her voice was strong, he knew her well enough to read the discomposure in her eyes, the slight clip of her breath. Good, he thought. He wanted her senses on their most sensitive setting.
“Eli?”
“Mmm?”
“I’m glad we’re friends.”
He smiled, no longer fooled. Then he leaned down and kissed her cheek, so close to her mouth that the corner of his lips brushed hers. It nearly killed him to draw back. “You’re a flight risk I’d take on any day.”
Her eyes widened. “I… I have to get back.”
He nodded. As she walked away, the light caught her hair, gleaming white gold. He watched her until she disappeared into the crowd, and then he hummed a little under his breath as he headed home.
September 16
On Wednesday of the next week, Lana was giving a seasonal talk at the local library about preparing home gardens for the winter. She usually enjoyed the friendly, intimate conversations about soil and weather. But today she felt a little distracted from what she was saying. Days later she could still feel the imprint of Eli’s kiss—so light it was barely a kiss at all—but it stayed with her, a warm press on her skin.
To make matters worse, the secret that she was pregnant was now as prominent as her belly. Over the last few days, she’d “popped.” Mrs. Montaigne had wanted to know which of her boyfriends had done it and which Lana planned to say did it. Fred Daly, who worked the front desk at the post office, gave her the business card for his church—he said they had a program for helping unwed moms. Jenn O’Toole said she could loan her a homemade cradle, and she asked to be invited to the shower.
The shocking fact was that of everyone who knew about the baby, only Karin had implied that she wasn’t fit to be a mom. The whole town had assumed she was going to keep the child. And amazingly she found herself thinking, What if I did?
For her entire life she’d believed that she never wanted kids. And, like Karin, she didn’t believe that people could totally and fundamentally change who they were. But she was beginning to see that it was easy to confuse a change in one’s personality with discovering the truth of it. She wasn’t changing into a person who suddenly wanted to have a child. She was merely discovering the possibility that maybe she’d
been interested in children all along.
She wondered: What if she didn’t rule out motherhood completely? She wasn’t at all certain that she wanted to keep the baby, but she was starting to feel that perhaps she’d been too quick to rule it out. Worse women than her became mothers. Since the moment Karin had leaned down and said hello to the baby inside her, she’d become more and more attached to the infant each day. When she let her mind wander, she found herself wondering whether it was a boy or a girl, whether it would like flowers or meteorites or bike rides. She wondered if her baby would have the same wanderlust she had, and she prayed silently that it would.
She’d yet to settle on adoption one way or another, but she now knew that she wasn’t leaning as far toward giving the baby up as she once was. She still felt pressured by the future, that maybe she couldn’t truly be a parent. That she didn’t know how to reconcile motherhood with her dreams. But even if she wasn’t the world’s best mother, maybe she wouldn’t be the worst either. She needed more time to think it through—to decide what was right for her and the child within her.
Finally, her lecture concluded. Most of her students were repeats from last year and the year before; she knew them by name. She packed up her cardboard posters, organized her handouts, and headed out the door.
Her father was standing in front of the library, waiting.
Her stomach went sour. “How did you know I was here?”
“Seen it in the paper. You look good. Better than last time.”
She didn’t say thank you. Apparently, Karin’s plan to get Calvert out of town wasn’t working.
“How’s your sister?” he asked.
“Fine.”
“And what about that boyfriend?”
Lana guessed he meant Ron. “I can’t stay and talk…”
“Oh, I know. And I don’t mean to bother you. It’s just, see, I’m in kind of a tough spot right now.”
Lana said nothing.
“You see that car over there?” He tilted his head in the direction of a sleek black sedan, but he didn’t point or look directly. “For some reason or other, I got the cops following me. I didn’t do nothing wrong—I don’t know why they’re hounding me. But the landlord wouldn’t let me renew my rent, and now I got nowhere to go.”
“Why are you asking me? Why not Karin?”
“Always seemed like you were a little easier on me than her.”
She took a deep breath, shaking. Maybe she’d been better at hiding her feelings than Karin, but that didn’t mean she liked Calvert any more than her sister did. “Do you remember that time Karin came to pick me up at the police station, and they wouldn’t let me out because she wasn’t my legal guardian?”
He nodded. “You and your friends put those photocopies of the mayor’s face all over those trees they were gonna ax. Hell of a thing to get arrested for.”
Lana fumed at his good-natured nostalgia. He remembered the incident as a charming anecdote of a wayward daughter. But he hadn’t spent the night in jail. “The cops called you to come get me, but you were nowhere to be found,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t that terrible. There was food, a nice cop, and a space heater. But do you know what Karin did that night? Do you even know?”
Cal shoved his hands into his front pockets.
“Karin never came home that night either. She sat in the car, in the parking lot of the police station all night in the freezing cold with a broken heater. She would have stayed in the cell with me if they’d let her.”
“I didn’t come here to talk about Karin.”
“Tough!” Lana said, seething now. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this angry. “You have to hear this. You were terrible to her. Do you even know? It took her years before she ever even thought about giving her heart to someone because of what you made her think love was. If she wasn’t such a strong person, you could have ruined her life.”
“Her life, Lana? Just hers?”
“You should never have had kids if you couldn’t commit to them,” she said. Tears came to her eyes now, real tears that she wouldn’t be able to control. She had to turn away.
“We’re going to have to talk,” he said. “Let’s head over to your place. Have some nonalcoholic beer.”
She let her canvas bag fall away from her chest, so it hung by her side. “I’ll never sleep under the same roof as you again,” she said. Then she walked away.
She drove only half a block before she pulled over under the thick red plume of a Japanese maple. Her breath came in starts and stops.
She dialed Karin’s phone number, but when the answering machine picked up, she had no idea what to say. She put together some words that she hoped were sentences. She wanted something more from the answering machine, something to make her feel better. But it offered nothing. She and Karin would talk later on.
For a moment, when she’d looked into Calvert’s face, it wasn’t the face of a shabby and useless old man—it was her face that she saw. Her eyes, her nose. She could see herself looking out from behind his pupils.
Karin had inherited Ellen’s strength, her fortitude, drive, and gumption. But Lana had been cursed with her father’s propensity to flee, to run. She didn’t love that about herself, but over the years she’d come to accept it. Part of her understood him—understood his need to not be tied down. As an adult she’d tried to regard his neglect with forgiveness and kindness because she saw part of herself in him.
But now the thought of sharing DNA with her father made her want to scratch off her own skin. What on earth made her think that because she had fond feelings for her child now, she wouldn’t one day resent it for crushing her dreams? What if she turned out to be the same kind of parent he’d been?
Her heart split open. She put her head on the steering wheel and cried. Her decision to give the baby up for adoption had been a knee-jerk reaction—a choice made in self-defense. But deep down, she realized she hadn’t let herself think too much about the decision because she didn’t want to put the baby up for adoption. And as time had gone by, she’d let her guard down, toying with the idea that she could keep the baby for her own.
But now that Calvert had appeared today—and asked to move in with her, no less!—she had no choice but to look truth in the eye. There was a very real possibility that she would not be a good mother. And so she had to do the right thing. No more would she flirt with the idea of keeping the baby. She had to put her child’s future first. And that meant giving the child to someone who would be a better mother… to Karin.
Outside the car, the wind whipped against the low gray clouds, and a shower of leaves and paper cups went sailing across the road. Lana took a deep breath, then another. She could get through this. She had to. The baby did a slow and leisurely roll in her belly, but she didn’t let herself think of it as hers.
September 17
For over a week Karin had been trying to figure out how to tell Gene the news—not that Lana was pregnant; she’d told him about that as soon as she could. She was looking for the perfect way to give him the other news, the more important news. It would take patience and care to catch him when he was in just the right mood, at just the right time. She hoped tonight would be the night.
They were sitting on the back deck of their little house, listening to the red-winged blackbirds crying shrilly in the marshes at the bottom of the hill. Gene was drinking a tall glass of iced tea, a bag of pretzels on the plastic table beside him. He was in a good mood. He’d just learned that a big client he’d previously worked with had requested him, specifically, again. His smile was big and his color was high.
To warm him up to the subject she had in mind, she talked about going shopping for maternity clothes with Lana. Over the last few days, she and Lana had been spending a lot of time together, doing research, shopping, talking about everything Lana would need to know to give birth. The subject of adoption didn’t come up, though Karin was sure it would soon.
“You know,” she said as calmly as she could, “Lana says she might put the baby up for adoption.”
Gene looked surprised. “Why?”
Karin shrugged. “She doesn’t want kids.”
“I can’t imagine anything harder for a woman than giving up her own child.”
“If a woman doesn’t want kids, she doesn’t want kids,” Karin said, irritated. She reached for a pretzel from the bag and snapped it between her teeth. “I think it’s great that Lana’s being real about this. I mean, she can barely take care of herself, let alone a baby. But the idea of giving the child to strangers… it just seems a little, I don’t know, wrong.”
Gene crossed his arms. “Karin…”
“I mean, that baby is going to be her flesh and blood. And our family. It just doesn’t make sense to send it off to a stranger when… when…” She felt her throat constrict. “When there’s so much need and love for a baby right here.”
“We already discussed this,” Gene said gently. “If God wanted us to have a baby, we’d have one. We want a baby that’s our baby. Our own.”
“But that was before we knew Lana got pregnant.” She looked at her husband a moment, then made the decision to crawl into his lap. He opened his arms and she lay against him, settling her cheek on his chest. He smelled like laundry and sweet tea. “What if this is what God wants for us? What if the reason we haven’t been able to have a baby is because we’re supposed to help Lana? Doesn’t it all make perfect sense?”
Gene rubbed her back. “Are you sure Lana doesn’t want to keep the baby?”
“That’s what she told me.”
“Are you really sure? Has she gone to an adoption agency?”
“Well… not that I know of.”
“Has she hired a lawyer?”
“She’s going to—”
“Has she done any research? Any at all?”
“I don’t know. But she told me she’s thinking of adoption. And Gene—who would be better parents to Lana’s baby than you and me?”
Gene breathed in deeply and cuddled her closer. “I need you to listen to me, okay, sweetheart? You have to promise me you won’t ask Lana if we can adopt her baby.”