Chances Are (41 page)

“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 would 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.”

Kelly wrote down the name and address of the clinic and handed it to Maddy. “I have to be there at five.”

“I’ll drive you.”

Kelly opened her mouth to protest, but Maddy was in charge, and she quickly shot down all arguments.

They arranged to meet at the high school parking lot near the football field at two o’clock. The clinic was two towns over, in the small office building a half-mile before the turnoff for the lighthouse.

She walked Kelly around front to her car.

“Please think about the things I said,” she begged Kelly as the two women hugged. “You’re allowed to change your mind.”

“I won’t,” Kelly said. “I know what I have to do.”

So did Maddy, and she had less than twenty-four hours to make it happen.

IT WAS AFTER six when the fishing boat docked back at Paradise Point. The captain, a clean-cut young man who looked more like an accountant, eased the vessel up to its berth, and minutes later, Corin and the PBS crew were back on dry land.

“This was
so
not a good idea,” Peter Lassiter’s pierced and tattooed assistant Cyrstal declared as they walked toward the parking area behind O’Malley’s Bar and Grill. “I feel sick.”

“A bit of advice, kid,” Harry the sound man said with a grin. “Don’t drink a pitcherful of margaritas the night before you head out to sea. Not unless you know what you’re doing.”

Crystal hadn’t exactly been a happy camper out there on the bounding main. She had spent the first two hours of their trip with her head over the railing, begging God to end it all before she ended it herself. Her colleagues had been merciless, ragging her about her low tolerance for drink, urging Corin to snap candid photos of her in the throes of major digestive disturbances. Yeah, that and colonoscopies. Great idea.

The day had been a waste. He made a living finding beauty in the ordinary, and today he had come up empty. The pictures he had taken were run-of-the-mill, picture-postcard compositions that didn’t intrigue or illuminate. The brilliant glitter of sunlight on the ocean was flat and muddy. The incongruity of the young fishing boat captain barking orders to his grizzled crew looked staged and false through his viewfinder.

He found himself longing for the weathered beauty of Claire’s face, the fine lines that fanned out from the corners of her eyes, the narrow nose with the smattering of freckles, the elegant Katharine Hepburnesque cheekbones. Her mouth. He could spend a lifetime photographing her mouth. Big wide smile. The tiny gap between her front teeth. The surprising fullness of her lower lip when he caught it between his teeth and—