Livvy laughed. “Me, too, Mama. I forgot my wallet. You’ll have to dust off the old credit card. I could use some maternity clothes, too.”
Mama thwopped the back of Livvy’s head. “Smart aleck. Come on. It’s going to rain.”
The three of them took off down the street, arm in arm, their voices sounding like a swarm of bees.
Mira hung back. “So,” she said softly. “Are you going to be okay with this?”
Angie loved her sister for daring to ask the obvious. “I haven’t been in a maternity shop for a long time.”
“I know.”
Angie looked down the street. The ironwork sign for Mother-and-Child hung at an angle above the sidewalk. The last time she’d been inside the store had been with her sisters. Angie had been pregnant then, and smiling had come easily. She turned to Mira. “I’ll be okay,” she said, realizing as she said the words that they contained the truth. It might hurt a bit, might remind her of a few of her harder times, but those feelings were part of who she was, and in the end, it was more hurtful to run away than to face them. “I want to be there for Lauren. She needs me.”
Mira’s smile was soft and held only the merest worry. “Good for you.”
“Yeah,” Angie said, smiling, “good for me.”
Still, she took her sister’s arm and held on to it for support.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Spring came early to West End. A cold, rainy winter set the stage for riotous color. When the sun finally dared to peek through the gray layer of clouds, the landscape changed before your very eyes. Bright purple crocuses came first, popping up through the bleak, hard earth. Then the hillsides turned green, and trees unfurled the splendor of baby leaves. Daffodils bloomed along every roadside, created spots of color amid the runaway salal.
Lauren bloomed as well. She’d gained almost fifteen pounds already. Any day now she expected her obstetrician to start frowning at the weighing-in debacle. She moved more slowly, too. Sometimes at the restaurant she had to pause outside the kitchen door and catch her breath. Walking from table to table had become an Olympic caliber event.
And that wasn’t the worst of it. Her feet hurt. She went to the bathroom more often than a beer-drinking alcoholic, and gas seemed to be burning a permanent hole through the middle of her chest. She burped constantly.
By April she’d begun to face the question: What next?
She’d been bumping along for the last few months, looking only as far ahead as her next shift at the restaurant or her next date with David. But now—again—he’d asked her the Big Question, and she knew it was time to stop avoiding the obvious.
“Well?” David said, nudging her.
They were cuddled close on the sofa, their arms entwined. A fire crackled in the hearth.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. The three words were beginning to wear out their welcome.
“My mom said she talked to the lawyer again last week. He has several couples who are dying to raise it.”
“Not it, David. Our baby.”
He made a heavy sound. “I know, Lo. Believe me, I know.”
She lifted her face toward his. “Could you really do it? Just walk away from our baby, I mean?”
He untangled himself from her and got to his feet. “I don’t know what you want from me, Lauren.” His voice cracked. She realized suddenly that he was near tears.
She went to him, stood behind him, and put her arms around his waist. She couldn’t get close enough; her belly was so big. The baby kicked her, a featherlight flutter.
“What kind of parents would we be?” David asked, not turning to look at her. “If we give up college, what will we do? How will we afford—”
She slipped around to face him. This was one answer she had. “You’re going to Stanford. No matter what.”
“I’m supposed to just leave,” he said dully.
Lauren looked up into his watery eyes. She wanted to tell him it would all work out, that their love would always see them through, but she felt too small right now to reach for the words, and the tiny tap-tap-tap in her stomach reminded her of how different this moment was for each of them.
She would lose him if she kept their child.
Hard choices, Angie had said to her once. How was it that Lauren hadn’t truly understood that until this moment?
She was going to say something—she wasn’t sure what—when the doorbell rang.
She sighed heavily, extricating herself from his embrace. “Coming.”
She opened the door and saw Ernie, the mailman. He held several small packages and a bunch of letters.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks.” She put the packages on the table by the door and flipped through the letters. One was addressed to her.
“It’s from USC,” she said, feeling her heart lurch. She’d forgotten about her applications in all the craziness of the past few weeks.
David moved toward her. He looked as scared and nervous as she felt. “You know you got in,” he said, and she loved him for that confidence.