Pregnant at 17

by Christine Conradt

  In her bedroom, Chelsea stuffed a few items into a bag and then moved into the bathroom to collect her toothbrush and toiletries. When she came out, she saw Sonia sitting on the sofa looking at Chelsea’s travel book on Germany. She watched for a moment as Sonia flipped through the tattered pages, careful not to break the already weakened spine. Chelsea appreciated how gingerly Sonia held the book.

  Sonia looked up and carefully put the book down. “Ready?”

  “Are you sure you want to do this? I mean, you’re being really nice and you don’t even know me.” Her father always said Never look a gift horse in the mouth, but Chelsea needed to understand why someone so “together” would care at all about any of her problems. Sonia must be busy with her own life. How could she have time to drop everything and help me? Who is this woman?

  Sonia stood up and heaved a heavy sigh. She suddenly seemed as uncomfortable as she did the first time Chelsea met her at the gelato shop.

  “I know more about you than you realize,” Sonia said, nervously tucking a piece of blond hair behind her ear. Chelsea furrowed her brow, unsure what she was talking about. “I guess I should tell you this now,” she continued. “Um, hmm. It wasn’t an accident that I came into the gelato shop. I wanted to meet you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because . . .” Sonia paced back and forth a little. “How do I say this? Jeff Clefton is my . . . husband. Soon to be ex-husband.”

  The confession practically knocked the wind out of Chelsea. Had she heard that right? This was Jeff’s wife? Everything she thought she could trust about Sonia, the appreciation she felt for her help, was suddenly swept away. What an idiot I am! I should’ve known not to trust anyone! Why? Why was this woman pretending so hard to be a friend to her when all she probably wanted to do was to push Chelsea further out of Jeff’s life?

  “He put you up to this?!” Chelsea was so furious, she could barely get the words out.

  “No! Not at all. He doesn’t even know I talked to you,” Sonia said earnestly. She lifted her hands, trying to calm Chelsea down.

  “Why does everyone lie to me?” Chelsea squeaked out, on the verge of tears. She’d wanted so badly to talk to someone that she hadn’t questioned why this woman was being so nice to her. “Manipulative” was a better word. Bringing the baby books, seeing her at the store, coming in for gelato . . . this woman had been stalking her! Even the questions about where she got the necklace and if the father liked the name she’d picked for the baby! Chelsea could feel her face flush with anger. All she wanted now was for this woman to get out of her house. She had enough pressure dealing with Greg. She couldn’t handle this on top of it.

  “Chelsea, I’m sorry. I am! But please . . . just let me explain.”

  “I want you out! I told you all this stuff about me and—”

  “Stop!” Sonia interrupted, more forcefully now. “You need to hear what I have to say!” Chelsea shook her head, still in shock. She didn’t want to hear any of it. She didn’t care. Sonia could have her worthless husband. He was nothing worth fighting for. Sonia kept talking anyway.

  “Jeff doesn’t know I’m here. I suspected he was having an affair and I went to the hotel where you and he met up. I . . . I wanted to see what you looked like. I was shocked by how young you are and I wanted to know more about you. That’s all it was.”

  Chelsea took a step back, remembering her now. She had been the woman in the ball cap reading a magazine in the lobby when she checked in. That first time they chatted at Stella Luna, Chelsea had thought the woman looked vaguely familiar but just assumed she’d been into the shop before.

  “Now you know everything there is to know!” Chelsea blurted out. There was so much anger inside her. At Sonia, at Jeff, at herself. She couldn’t help but feel embarrassed to be the “other woman.” Chelsea felt tears well up in her eyes.

  “Please don’t cry,” Sonia said.

  “I said I want you out,” Chelsea repeated, and broke into sobs. Big, heavy, exhausting sobs. The kind that take over completely. Chelsea slid down the wall onto the floor and drew her knees into her chest. She buried her face in her hands, blocking as much light as she could. All she wanted right now was to be in total darkness. Instead, she felt Sonia’s hand on her arm.

  “Go away. Please! Please just go away.” Her words were barely intelligible.

  “I’m not finished. There’s more.” Sonia’s voice was soft. Chelsea silenced her sobs but refused to look up. “The first day I met you, you were very sweet and I genuinely liked you,” Sonia explained calmly. “I went into Stella Luna to confront you, to tell you off for stealing my husband. But as soon as we started to talk, I realized you weren’t some evil little home-wrecker like I thought you were. We’d both been played by the same person. I thought I would hate you, but . . . it was just the opposite.”

  This surprised her. If Chelsea had found out her husband was cheating, she would have hated the woman he was seeing. Then again, Jeff had told Chelsea that Sonia was the one who initially wanted the divorce. Chelsea didn’t understand why Sonia would have sought her out when she didn’t love Jeff anymore.

  “How can you say you were played when you’re doing the same thing?” Chelsea demanded to know, hoping to make sense of the situation. Sonia gave her a confused look. “The boyfriend you have in New York,” Chelsea continued. “The one you’ve been hiding from him for months! He knows about him!” This woman had basically tossed Jeff and their marriage to the curb long before Jeff and Chelsea had even met.

  “What?” Sonia’s eyes darted back and forth, searching Chelsea’s.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about! He only cheated on you after you cheated on him!”

  “Is that what he said?” Sonia seemed genuinely disgusted. “I don’t have a boyfriend in New York or anywhere else. I’ve been completely faithful our entire marriage.” Chelsea could sense from the tone of Sonia’s voice that she was telling the truth. “Let me guess, he told you that after you found out he was married.” Chelsea nodded. “What a jerk. Jeff lied to you about that. He lied to both of us.”

  Chelsea finally looked up, a pain shooting through her heart. She could see the anguish in Sonia’s features. She knew Jeff was selfish for abandoning her and their baby, but it hadn’t occurred to her until now that their entire relationship had been a lie. The vulnerable Jeff she’d met at the bar, wounded by his evil wife and desperately in need of someone to love him, did that person even exist?

  “I’m telling you the truth. And I know he’s trying to get out of supporting your baby. That’s wrong.” Sonia pulled her hand away and leaned back. “You shouldn’t let him do that.”

  “He doesn’t want us,” Chelsea said, wiping the tears from her face.

  “Oh, honey,” Sonia whispered, and pulled her into a hug. Chelsea didn’t wrap her arms around Sonia, but she didn’t push her away, either. She needed someone to lean on right now and anyone would do. She could feel Sonia hold her even tighter.

  “So he told you about the baby?” Chelsea asked, still unsure how Sonia could know Jeff didn’t want her to keep it.

  “No. I learned that from you. But the day after you two met at that hotel, I confronted him. He had said he was going away on a business trip for the weekend but came home early because he wasn’t feeling well. When I told him I’d been at the hotel and saw you, he admitted what I’d known all along—that he was having an affair.”

  Chelsea studied Sonia, ready to hear more. She had so many questions. The anger in her seemed to subside a little.

  “And how did you know I’d be at the hotel?”

  “I heard him talking on the phone to you, telling you to check in early if you wanted.”

  “I see,” Chelsea said, feeling horrible. All along, she’d assumed Sonia couldn’t care less about Jeff. But here was a woman who had been in love with her husband. How gut-wrenching that must have been for Sonia to hear her husband talking to his mistress, planning a clandestine meeting, knowing the man
she was supposed to trust above anyone else, was lying to her. Chelsea was starting to understand why Sonia had gone to the lengths she had to find out what she was all about. She had questions too.

  “You said your name at the hotel and you were wearing your work shirt, so it wasn’t hard for me to find you. I spent hours looking at your social media pages, trying to figure out how the two of you met, what he saw in someone so young . . .”

  “Did he tell you how it happened?” Chelsea asked. Sonia shook her head. “Do you want to know?”

  Sonia nodded. The least Chelsea could do was give this woman the answers she craved. “We met at a bar about three months ago. He was with his friend Orin. We talked for a little bit and he gave me his number. I guess he assumed I was older than I am.” She could see the pain in Sonia’s eyes as she spoke. “Do you really want to hear this?” Sonia nodded again, more adamantly.

  “He told me that you’d had this boyfriend in New York for a long time and you both wanted a divorce, that it was just a matter of paperwork.”

  “Of course he did,” Sonia exhaled, wringing her thin hands together.

  “I’m sorry,” Chelsea said. “I didn’t know that you would be hurt by me and him . . . doing what we did. I thought you were done with the marriage. I really did.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not trying to take him away from you. I really am done. Even if he is the father.”

  “I am too. The day I confronted him, I had a divorce lawyer draw up the paperwork.” For the first time since Sonia revealed the truth about who she was, Chelsea felt like she and Sonia were on the same side. Sonia was right. Jeff had lied to them both. They had that in common.

  “Did he move out?” Chelsea asked, curious as to where Jeff was. She hadn’t heard from him since she’d thrown his money all over the yard.

  “Actually, no. He moved into our guest room. He said he needed time to figure out what he wanted to do in terms of getting an apartment, or what.”

  “But you told the detective you were separated. How can I stay with you when he’s living there?”

  “He’s not. At least not now. Jeff’s in the hospital.”

  “Hospital?” Chelsea asked, suddenly worried. She was angry, but there was a part of her that still cared whether Jeff was sick or hurt. The thought that she could continue to have feelings for him surprised her. “For what?”

  “Yesterday he went for a run in the park and was hit by a car. I got the call from a nurse at Bryan Memorial right after I left you at the thrift store.”

  “Oh my god.” Chelsea pictured Jeff lying motionless on the pavement, covered in blood. She hastily pushed the image from her mind.

  “He’ll be okay,” Sonia added reassuringly. “He’s in stable condition, a few broken bones, nothing life-threatening. I went to see him this morning before I came in to Stella Luna.”

  “You did?” Chelsea felt confused again. Were they together or weren’t they?

  “We talked about you, and us. He wanted me to reconsider the divorce but I said no. I’ll hold off until he recovers and gets out of the hospital, but after that, we’ll proceed with splitting up our assets and finishing all the legal stuff.”

  Chelsea couldn’t help but admire the finality of Sonia’s words. Here was a woman who was not going to put up with a man cheating on her. She’s stronger than I am, Chelsea thought. She has her shit together way more than I do.

  “I also told him that he needed to support your child.”

  “What did he say?” Chelsea sat up a little. She was taken aback that Sonia would make a stand for her baby. There was no benefit to her in doing that.

  “He said . . . he needed to follow the advice of his lawyer, and that you had agreed not to name him on the birth certificate.”

  Chelsea sank back, disappointed. “That’s true. I did tell him I wouldn’t,” Chelsea admitted. “He said he’d lose his job and maybe even go to jail and they wouldn’t let him see the baby anyway. I thought if I can keep all that from happening, by not naming him as the dad, maybe he’d see our kid and fall in love with it, and change his mind.” Saying it aloud, Chelsea knew it sounded naive.

  “Oh, honey, don’t do that. He’s the father and he needs to take responsibility. If you don’t name him, it’ll be that much harder for you to hold him financially accountable.”

  “Are you just saying that because you’re mad at him? You want to see him go to jail?” Chelsea wanted to take Sonia’s advice but she wasn’t sure of Sonia’s motives. She must be as hurt and pissed off at Jeff as I am.

  “No, no. Of course not. I’m saying that because he was as much a part of creating this child as you were. It’s not right for him to skip out on taking care of it and stick you with everything. Especially when he can afford to pay for all the things the baby’s going to need.”

  Chelsea searched Sonia’s face, still not convinced she should believe her. She was torn between the voice in her head that was asking what if Sonia was just using her to punish Jeff and none of this was for the good of the baby, and her heart, which told her that Sonia was telling her the truth. Chelsea decided to trust her heart.

  “Can I still come to stay with you?” Chelsea asked.

  A relieved smile broke on Sonia’s face and she grabbed Chelsea’s hand, squeezing tightly. “Of course you can,” she gushed, and hugged Chelsea again. “Everything is going to be okay. We’ll figure it out.” Those were the words Chelsea needed to hear. Letting the tears fall, she clung to the woman with everything she had. As the anger and skepticism melted away, Chelsea felt the peace that comes with forgiveness and hope.

  Everything felt different for Chelsea as she stared out the car window at the city on her way to Sonia’s house. The ramshackle buildings had vanished several miles back, replaced by big, lavish homes nestled behind landscaped lawns. As she watched them pass one by one, Chelsea felt for the first time that the burdens she’d been carrying weren’t quite so heavy. And she didn’t have to carry them alone. She wondered if it would be weird, though, being in Jeff’s house, seeing the table where he ate with his wife, the bed that they slept in. She wondered if Sonia still had wedding photos of them up on the walls and his shoes lying near the door. It doesn’t really matter, she thought. The feelings for Jeff were fading faster than she anticipated they would, and every time she saw a couple romantically cozied up, walking hand in hand past the gelato shop, her mind drifted to Adam, not Jeff.

  Suddenly, the soft music that was playing in Sonia’s SUV stopped and an automated voice piped in: “You have a text from Cassandra. Would you like me to read it?” Chelsea grinned. She’d never been in a car that asked if it should read a text.

  “Yes,” Sonia said in a crisp, clear voice.

  “Emergency here. Bulldog hit by a car. Westerly is requesting your assistance.” The voice was off-putting and robotic.

  “I’ll be right there,” Sonia said.

  “Got it,” the voice said, artificially enthusiastic. “I’ll be right there.” Sonia touched a button, turning off the Bluetooth.

  “I’m going to have to go to the clinic first, okay?”

  Chelsea, worried for the dog, nodded adamantly. “Yeah, of course,” she responded, suddenly remembering that Jeff had told her his wife was a veterinarian. At least he had been honest about that.

  Within minutes, they were parking in front of the small but upscale brick building with a glass front. Sonia swung the Lexus into a space marked by a sign that read Reserved for Dr. Clefton. Chelsea was impressed that she had her own space that no one else could park in, but not nearly as much as she was by calling Sonia “Dr. Clefton.” She hadn’t known Sonia long, but in the time she had, she’d gone from being the “nice lady who likes basil gelato” to “Sonia” to “Jeff’s soon-to-be ex-wife.” Now she saw her in an entirely different light—a trained doctor who gets called in to save animals’ lives. How cool.

  Five minutes later Chelsea found herself standing back in the corner of the sterile e
xam room, watching as Sonia and a fresh-faced young woman in a lab coat named Cassandra worked to ease the pain of a chubby caramel-colored bulldog. Cassandra pulled supplies from a cabinet, quickly arranging them on a cart as Sonia drew a clear liquid into a syringe from a bottle.

  “You’re going to be just fine, sweet little Cody. . . . I just need you to relax so I can check for signs of internal bleeding. . . .” Sonia cooed as she squirted the liquid into the IV that was already connected to the dog’s paw, wrapped with tape. Chelsea watched, intrigued, as Sonia began to expertly feel around on the dog’s belly. As the dog closed his eyes and relaxed into a slumber, Sonia lifted his lip and examined his gums. For a few moments, Chelsea forgot about her own problems, pouring all her attention into Sonia and the dog, hoping Sonia could save its life.

  Less than a half hour later, Sonia was situating Cody in his recovery kennel and asked Chelsea to check on the feral kitten that was sleeping in her office.

  “How’s he doing?” Chelsea asked, looking up from the tiny, wobbly black kitten she held in her lap as Sonia entered her office with a file in her hand.

  “He should wake up in the next fifteen minutes or so. I’ll show you the X-ray,” she said, and slid the dog’s film onto a light box mounted on the clean gray wall. Chelsea stood up, still cradling the kitten to her chest as she looked at the white blotchy area Sonia pointed at. “That rib right there is broken. See? Doesn’t seem like there’s any internal issues, but Dr. Westerly’s going to keep an eye on him.” Chelsea nodded, glad that Cody’s prognosis was good. She really couldn’t tell what was different about the area of the X-ray Sonia showed her, but then again, she couldn’t find the baby’s feet on the sonogram, either. She guessed that’s one of the things doctors are trained to do, see stuff that regular people can’t. Sonia turned her attention to the kitten nestled in Chelsea’s arms.

  “This little furball’s name is Hope. A lady found her under her porch and brought her in to us.” Sonia rubbed the top of Hope’s tiny head with her thumb and the kitten closed its eyes.