Out with the In Crowd (6 page)

I leaned against the cool countertop, my heart heavy. I’d never been one of those girls who fussed over babies or jumped at the chance to be with kids. My disappointment caught me off guard. I’d wanted Abbie to keep the baby. I’d wanted to know my niece.

The words came out of nowhere: “God gave her to
you
.” I didn’t plan them or think them through, they just popped out. For once.

“That doesn’t mean she’s meant to be mine.” Abbie stroked her rounded belly. “Maybe this is the best parenting I could do—keep her from being raised in this house.”

“I . . .” I glanced at the clock. I should’ve been at Starbucks fifteen minutes ago. Mom would kill me. “I’m so sorry, but I
have
to go.”

“It’s fine.” Abbie waved me away with a slightly swollen hand. “I’ll be here when you get back.”

I almost told her I was on my way out to meet Mom, but then I saw that look in her eyes. Abbie looked burdened, defeated. I’d keep her out of this business with Mom for as long as I could.

Mom, as expected, already occupied a table when I arrived.

She looked beautiful, wearing her ebony hair loose and her makeup light. Lots of my friends had pretty mothers, but not quite like mine. Her Hawaiian roots made her exotic, especially here in the Midwest.

The corners of her mouth lifted as I approached, but her eyes remained untouched. “I ordered you coffee, but it’s probably cool by now.”

My mother—an artist of passive-aggressive.

“Abbie needed me.” I fixed her with my most withering glare and took my seat. “It’s a girl, by the way. If you care.”

Mom sipped her caramel-colored coffee. “Maybe you should listen to the whole story before taking sides, hmm?”

“All I know is I’m getting a little tired of coming home and you being gone.” So yeah, I sounded like a total snot. I didn’t care.

Her left eye twitched ever so slightly. If I didn’t know to look for it, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. Mine did the same thing, acting up whenever I felt stressed or tried restraining emotion. I used to think it meant I was destined to become like my mother as well as look like her. I’d been assured by Dad, Heather, and Connor that I could decide for myself.

“Do you remember when you were a little girl and I had that friend, Irene?”

It took me a moment to adjust to the subject change. “Irene. Sure. I remember Irene. You guys went shopping a lot.”

“Well, window shopping. We didn’t have much expendable income back then.”

I took a miniscule sip of my coffee. I wanted to like it, but regular coffee kinda grossed me out. Even loaded with cream and sugar. “Do you ever think we were maybe better off back then?”

Mom clasped her hands together. Her nails sparkled in the dim light of the coffee house. Was that how she’d spent her time since Friday afternoon, getting manicured and massaged?

“Actually, I’ve wondered that pretty recently. When your father and I were apart last fall, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about those days in the little house. It’s for sale, you know. I happened to drive by on the day they had it opened up.” Mom released a wistful sigh. “It looked so much like I remembered. Even Abbie’s and your little handprints on the back patio.” She looked into her coffee cup. “It’s why I showed up at counseling that day. I stood in that house thinking about all the good times our family had. I thought maybe we could get back to the way it’d been.”

Mom raised her face to me, and I saw tear tracks. It shocked me. When had my mother last cried?

“I tried, sweetie. I promise, I did.”

My hand reached for hers. “What are you saying?”

She bit her lower lip, and I noticed her trembling chin. “I always wondered why Irene stopped returning my calls. She just faded away, and years later I heard she got married and moved to Pittsburgh.” Tears rolled down her face. “She was my best friend, Skylar. She was my first friend on the mainland.”

Her hands squeezed mine so tightly I thought her perfect nails might break my skin.

“I don’t understand.” But my voice wobbled. In a conversation about your parents’ failing marriage, the former best friend could play only one role. Thankfully, the Starbucks crowd seemed too enthralled with their own lives to notice mine falling apart over here in the corner.

Mom took a deep breath. “I didn’t tell you this before because I was embarrassed and wanted better for you and your sister, but you . . . you happened a little earlier than we planned.”

I’d always been told I was a honeymoon baby born a couple weeks early. Even though I’d suspected for a few months now that this might be a lie, hearing it acknowledged still took my breath away. What else had they lied about?

She chewed on her lip until the trembling stopped. “Your father was dating Irene when we met. That’s how I met him, actually. I’d always planned to graduate and get my career going before I got married, but then Paul and I started dating, and . . .” Mom shook her head. “Well, someday when you’re in love, you’ll understand how mucky your head can get.”

Like I didn’t understand already? My boyfriend considered jeans formal wear. If anybody knew about getting mucky in the head, I did.

“We’d only been together a few months when I found out about you.” She offered me a wan smile. “Both of us were from good Christian homes. We couldn’t stand the thought of aborting you,
or
of people finding out we’d been sleeping together. So we decided to elope and play it off as romance getting the best of us.”

I forced another drink of my cold, nasty coffee just so I’d have something to do. Whenever anyone had commented on how short a time Mom and Dad had been married before I came along, Dad always ruffled my hair and said, “The perfect wedding present.” It made me sick to think about it now.

Mom steamrolled ahead in her story, appearing unaware that I could use a couple minutes to process all this.

“Marriage was tough. Much tougher than I thought it’d be. We came from such different families. My parents never fought in front of me, and your grandma and grandpa say just about every thought that pops into their heads.” She sighed. “I wasn’t the easiest person to live with, I’ll admit that. Life wasn’t turning out how I dreamed it would, and even though I loved you . . .”

“It’s okay,” I said when she seemed too uncomfortable to complete her thought. “Babies look hard.”

Mom’s smile showed her relief. “Thank you for understanding that. Part of why I never told you was I didn’t want you to blame yourself or feel unloved. But seemingly overnight I went from being a carefree college student—looking for jobs someplace exciting like Chicago or New York—to being a wife and mother trying to scrape up money to buy macaroni and cheese.”

She slipped her hands out of mine and kneaded them together. I spotted her naked fingers. No anniversary or engagement rings. No wedding band.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Did Dad have an affair?”

She nodded, no longer looking collected and beautiful, but deflated.

“Irene?”

She nodded again. “It was years ago, but I can’t imagine the pain being any worse if it’d been last week.”

I tried to divide out my own emotions, to figure out what exactly I felt and thought about this, but I couldn’t. How could I feel both furious with my father and hopeful that Mom would forgive him, would work past this?

“I knew I could be difficult,” Mom whispered. I strained to hear. “But I thought he understood that I was just overwhelmed. I thought that despite the arguing, we were happy with the decisions we’d made to stay together, to create a home for you and ultimately Abbie.” She bit her lip. “But he wasn’t happy. He had regrets.”

“But I don’t think he does now. Not about you, anyway.”

“Maybe not.” She appeared to be regaining her composure.

“And it was a long time ago.”

Lame. Sometimes I still ached inside when I thought of walking in on Eli and Jodi, of discovering he’d cheated. He hadn’t even been my husband. And for most of our couple time, I didn’t know if I even liked him.

I opened my mouth to correct myself, to say something that might sound more empathetic, but Mom apparently didn’t need my words. She dabbed at her damp cheeks with a napkin. “You’re right, it was.” Her normal tone returned, the one that said she was perfectly fine. “And the important thing is that, looking back, I have very few regrets. Maybe if I’d been a little more involved in your and Abbie’s lives, your sister wouldn’t be in the condition she is. But all that will change now. I’m moving on.”

The way she stated it with such pride, I clearly should’ve felt joyous over this announcement. Instead, a pit formed in my stomach. “As in divorce?”

A curt nod. “I can’t stay in this marriage, and for that matter, I can’t stay in this state a second longer. I’m ready for a change, for a new chapter in my life.” She squared her shoulders and declared, “I’m moving back to Kauai.”

“Moving back?” My brain seemed incapable of processing this. “What do you mean?”

She clasped her hands and rested them on the table, as if this was nothing more than a business discussion. “Moving back. I’m loading up my stuff, and I’m heading home to Kapaa. I’ve already talked to Grammy and Papa. They don’t think I’ll have any problems finding a small place to rent.” My head spun with all this information. While Dad sat around and waited for her, she’d been making plans? Placing phone calls?

“But what about Abbie?” I asked. “She’s about to have the baby. She needs you.”

“I want you girls to come with me.” Mom leaned across the table and reclaimed my hands. “Don’t you see what a wonderful chance this is? A chance to start over. We can all use that.”

And I cringed because of how appealing it sounded.

7

I couldn’t just pack up and leave for Hawaii with Mom. I had four months of school left, and Abbie had about eight weeks until the baby came. And Connor. He should get factored into the decision. Right? Or was it too early for that?

A red light stopped me. I leaned back in my seat and tried to breathe normally. A million thoughts burdened my mind—he’d cheated on her, she’d leave us, my family had never been happy. And the kicker—Abbie would give up the baby for sure once she found out.

I couldn’t handle all this by myself. I needed to talk to Connor.

The car behind me honked. Apparently, I’d been sitting at a green light. Flustered, I released my clutch too fast and killed the car. The impatient driver behind me blasted his horn as he squealed his tires and swerved out of the lane. He flipped me the bird as he blew by. Thank you. Because
that’s
what I needed on a day like today.

Once I got my car up and running, I realized I’d wanted to turn several streets back. Great. I looked for a place to turn around and called Connor’s cell as I searched.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up,” I said through gritted teeth.

Voice mail. Ugh.

I held down Connor’s speed dial number over and over, greeted each time by his obnoxiously chipper, “You’ve reached Connor, and I’m clearly too busy to talk to you. Unless this is Skylar. If it’s you, I’m just away from my phone.”

After about ten times, I chucked my cell into the passenger’s seat.

Traffic finally slowed enough that I felt comfortable turning. I pulled into what I thought was a street but instead turned out to be the baseball fields.

I lost my desire to go home. Instead I parked in the wide-open lot and got out of my car.

Tugging my hat over my ears, I wandered down the hard, dirt path to the barren and lifeless fields. How odd to be in the middle of the city yet so alone.

I pushed away thoughts of Mom and Dad, the baby, and Hawaii. Instead, I focused all my attention on Connor and last summer. When I reached the concrete slab in the middle of the park, I stopped to look around me. In the summer, this spot was a zoo, full of families headed to and from games and kids whining for concessions. Connor and I had met at this very spot. Eli had left me to guard his bat bag while he went to the bathroom, and Connor approached me. He wanted to introduce himself because Eli had offered him a ride home.

“Connor Ross. Nice to meet you,” he said, just like his parents had taught him.

At the time, it hadn’t seemed like a significant, life-altering moment. To think how different my life would’ve been if Connor’s brothers hadn’t been sick and left Connor without a car. And for it to happen on
that
day, that very strange day when I first felt God pull at my heart.

As I sank to a bleacher, Aaron’s face swam before my eyes. How awful that for the rest of my life, he’d be a part of my testimony. The story couldn’t be told without him. He was the catapult.

Aaron and I had some mutual friends, and I’d seen him at other parties over the summer. We didn’t talk to each other until Jodi’s in mid-July. Sure, I thought he was cute, but I had strict rules about not approaching guys—anyone worthy would come to me. And that night Aaron did.

Months later, the details still felt fuzzy. Not only did I drink more than normal that night—stupidly trying to impress Aaron, who was a year older than me—but Eli swore he saw Aaron slip something in my drink. If anyone had noticed, it would have been Eli. Though we’d been friends since freshman year when he dated Jodi, Eli had always wanted more. At times his attention had been downright suffocating, especially at parties when I tried talking to other guys. But that night, Eli’s jealousy rescued me. Had he not followed Aaron and me upstairs . . . well, I didn’t like dwelling on what might have happened in that bedroom. The next morning, I came to in Eli’s car with a killer headache and an awful taste in my mouth. He took me to breakfast, where I picked at my omelet while he filled me in on everything that had happened. And when he leaned in to kiss me, I didn’t know how to hold my heart back from him anymore. I’d resisted all those years because I didn’t want to hurt Jodi. But after Eli saved me that night, I couldn’t say no to being his girlfriend.

And that was the day I met Connor. The day I had flushed my cigarettes down the toilet, sworn off partying, and started dating my best friend’s ex.

The cold of the bleacher seeped through my jeans, and I stood. Pacing around the baseball diamond, I tried Connor’s cell again. This time he answered on the second ring.