Iced Tea (10 page)

“Barter?
 
Your beautiful ballroom and wedding coordination, for my web design and a few flyers?
 
Hardly seems fair.”

“Sugar, things only have the value that is assigned them in this life.
 
When I was younger, some guy decided that a rock was worth some money, gave it a name, put it in a box, even made accessories for it, and the Pet Rock was born.
 
I have the facilities and the knowledge to help you with a beautiful wedding.
 
You have the knowledge and the tools to help me with my website and flyers.
 
You let me know if this is something you want to do.”

“I should talk to Liam.”

“Just give me a call when you make a decision Sugar.”

Morgan’s phone rang.
 
“Speak of the devil.”
 
She smiled.
 

As Morgan excused herself and walked to the other end of the building, I thanked Jovana, gave her a hug, and told her she is forever a part of the family.

Morgan came back, a smile lighting up her face.
 
“He said yes.
 
Anything I want.”

“So we’re going to do it?”

“I can’t believe it, but yes, I would love to get married here.”

“Well then Sugar, I got a bunch of stuff down in the office, from the people to call for your insurance, to check lists to make sure we got everything covered.
 
The only thing better than a wedding is the birth of a child.
 
Thank you for letting me be a part of it.”

It started out very quietly, then the music got a bit louder, then louder still.
 
A beautiful waltz.
 
Jovana’s husband walked into the ballroom, a smile on his face.
 
With great aplomb he took Morgan’s hand, bowed, and said, “May I have this dance?”
 

She smiled.

He escorted to her to dance floor, where they began a beautiful waltz, spinning and posing.
 

“Wow, she’s introducing the grace gene into our gene pool.
 
None of us are going to look that good, probably not ever, but definitely not dancing.”

The music grew with intensity as they glided around, Morgan looking more beautiful than I could have imagined.
 

When the song was over, we wandered downstairs, got the paperwork, thanked Jovana profusely, and headed across the street to the diner.

“You sure you won’t get in trouble at work, Teagan?
 
We’ve been here a while, I’m not sure how long you get for lunch, but between the drive over and the dancing, you’ve probably already overshot it.”

“The nice thing about my job, I’m the Grand Poobah of the office.
 
It might not pay better, but I do pretty much anything I want, any time I want.”

“How about you Cara, have you got some time?”

“I do.”

“Good.
 
I have a couple of things I think you should know about me.
 
Maybe you won’t be as excited to help your brother and me get married once you hear them.”

Teagan and I exchanged a look.

Teagan ordered a huge plate of hash browns, scattered, a side of ham, and a cup of tea.
 
I ordered the ma-tuni special, which has nothing to do with tuna, I just want to make that clear.
 
I ordered Pepsi, as you can never be sure that the tea they serve in a diner is made the proper way, with a Lipton tea bag, and a preheated cup.
 
Morgan ordered a fried hot dog and french fries, with a diet Pepsi.
 
If you’re going to eat a fried hot dog, a diet Pepsi seems a little weird, but I kept my mouth shut, for once.

“First, I just want to say that I love your brother.
 
He knows everything I am about to tell you, and he says it doesn’t matter, and that he loves me anyway.”

“Morgan, you don’t have to do this.
 
Your past, whatever it is, doesn’t matter.
 
You make Liam happy.
 
Jordan is a happy kid.
 
Whatever is in your past might want to stay there.”

“Teagan, I appreciate it, I really do, but you can’t hide from the past these days.
 
Between the Internet and no one having any sense of discretion, everything is up for grabs, and I’d rather that I tell you this stuff myself.”

“I’m just saying that you don’t owe us an explanation of anything.”

“But I do, and some things are going to seem pretty strange without some background information.
 
Like the fact that none of my family will be at the wedding.”

“What?
 
Why not?”

“They don’t approve.”

“But they don’t even know us yet.
 
We aren’t that bad!
 
Maybe we should plan a dinner or something.
 
Let them get to know us before they decide.”

“It isn’t you they don’t approve of, it’s me.”

Teagan leaned in, “I don’t understand.”

“Not very many people know all the facts, most people just have assumptions and guesses, but if you have any questions, I’ll answer them when I’m done.
 
Please, just let me tell it from the start.”

Teagan and I exchanged a look.
 
This couldn’t be good.
 
Visions of Turkish prisons danced in my head.
 
Not that I know what a Turkish prison looks like, but the thought crossed my mind.

Morgan took a deep breath and started in,
 
“I wanted to be a doctor.
 
I wanted to be a doctor more than anything else in the world.
 
It was all I thought about from the time I was a little girl.
 
I worked hard in school.
 
I took accelerated classes in high school.
 
I got to school every morning before 7 and I was still there studying after dinner.
 
I took classes on the weekend, got my first aid courses done, my CPR classes, everything.
 
By the time I was old enough, I was working weekends on an ambulance crew, just to find out what it was really like.
 
I volunteered at the hospital.
 
I was one hundred percent involved with everything to do with medical training, and I worked hard at it 18 hours a day, every day.”

She shook her head, “Maybe I should have paid more attention to the things other kids were doing at the time, but I had my head down, and I was on my way.
 
I had it all figured out.”

She took a drink, a deep breath, and started in again, “I was on my way home from the student library.
 
I really didn’t have any business being there.
 
It was late.
 
It was on a college campus.
 
I was still in high school.
 
But I had special permission from one of my teachers to do some work there, and I was so impressed with myself, that I didn’t even stop to think that I was out of my element.”

Teagan and I stiffened up.

Morgan could feel the change at our table, but she kept her head down and stared into her diet Pepsi, if she’d squeezed that glass just a little harder, it would explode,
 
“I was walking past this grassy area, on my way to the parking lot.
 
I was going to meet my dad there.
 
He was going to give me a ride home.
 
It was well lit.
 
I didn’t think anything about it.
 
I was thinking about an outline I’d just finished.
 
There was something missing, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
 
I was so lost in thought that when I bumped into this guy, I just said ‘sorry’ and kept walking.
 
I didn’t make it very far.
 
I felt him grab my left arm.
 
He spun me around.
 
It all happened so fast, I didn’t even scream.
 
It didn’t really register in my mind what was happening.”

Another deep breath, “He had a knife.
 
He said he’d cut my throat.
 
He shoved me across the grass to this drop-off I didn’t even know was there.
 
It was dark in that damn gully.
 
He raped me.
 
He beat the crap out of me.
 
He raped me again.
 
He beat me some more.
 
When he was done, he spit on me.”

Teagan passed me a napkin.
 
We both had tears running down our cheeks.

“The worst part of it was the look on my dad’s face.
 
He’d been sitting right there in the parking lot when his teenaged daughter was being raped and beaten.
 
When I crawled out of the gully, some girls were walking past.
 
They were really good to me.
 
They called campus security and they covered me up with a towel, they were coming back from the pool.
 
One of the girls went to the parking lot and got my dad.
 
All she told him was that I needed him on the quad.
 
He came charging up, really pissed that I’d kept him waiting, and when he saw me, the look on his face, it broke my heart.

“Anyway, the ambulance came and took me to the hospital, and it was like an out of body experience.
 
I was looking at it so clinically.
 
Like it was a medical issue.
 
It’s weird.
 
They patched me up and they took all their swabs, they had me talk to their rape crisis people, and campus security made me go through the whole thing again once the cops were done.
 
It was a mess.

“So, anyway, I stayed home for about a week, till the worst of the damage on my face was starting to smooth out.
 
I got my hair cut because he’d pulled out a couple of patches and it just looked stupid.
 
My first day back at school, my favorite teacher found me, told me she’d been through almost the same thing when she was in college and if I needed to talk, she was available any time, day or night.
 
It was hard, but I was a tough kid, and I was working through it.”

She took a deep breath, “Then, about five weeks later, I just fell apart.
 
I was sick and worried and scared all the time.
 
I couldn’t sleep.
 
I couldn’t eat.
 
My parents were worried, and brought me to the doctor.
 
Turns out that the morning after pill, which is more than one pill by the way, is 95% effective.
 
That means it is 5% ineffective.
 
That means Jordan.
 
The worst thing in my life turned out to be the best thing in my life.”

Teagan grabbed Morgan’s hand, “Morgan, I am so sorry about the way he got here, but I’m so glad that he is here.”

Morgan burst into tears, “I wish my family felt that way.
 
They said that I should get an abortion.
 
I refused.
 
They said that Jordan would ruin my life.
 
I refused to believe it.
 
They didn’t want their perfect over-achieving daughter to be seen in public with a huge belly and be one more statistic, a teen mother.
 
I couldn’t have an abortion.
 
I just couldn’t do it.
 
From there, our relationship just fell apart.
 
My mom and dad are civil when we see them, which isn’t often, but they prefer that we don’t spend a lot of time with the rest of the family.
 
I haven’t seen some of my extended family in years.”

I didn’t know what to say.
 
I can understand parents wanting the best for their daughter, but once they’d met Jordan, surely they could understand and he would melt their hearts.
 
I decided it was probably better if I just kept my mouth shut.

“They think I’ve already chosen a difficult path by keeping Jordan.
 
Now I’m getting married to a white guy.
 
An interracial marriage on top of everything else is just more than they can deal with.
 
They’ve pretty much washed their hands of me.”

Teagan hissed quietly, “It’s not an interracial marriage.”

Morgan looked genuinely confused, obviously she’d not yet heard Teagan’s rant about all things racial, innocently, she started the ball rolling, “Then what is it?”

“It’s an intercultural marriage.
 
We are all members of the human race.
 
You’re simply part of another culture, just like Jessie is.
 
Anyone that isn’t 100% Irish is going to be from a different culture than the O’Flynns.
 
What difference does it make?
 
If you look throughout history, depending on the wants and needs of the culture, race has been defined in lots of different ways.
 
It happens to be color in this society, it’s just plain stupid, and it’s way past time everybody got past it.”

“I agree, obviously, but that isn’t the way my parents see it.”