“She’s eighteen years old. We’re lucky she listens to us about anything.” He tightened his hold. “There’s no way you can prepare her for this.”
“There’s a chance …” Angie marshaled her strength to finish. “She won’t be able to do it.”
“Are you ready for that? Last time—”
“This isn’t last time. With Sarah, I thought about the baby all the time. I used to go sit in the nursery and imagine how it would be. I’d call her Boo; she’d call me Mommy. I dreamed every night about rocking her to sleep, holding her in my arms.”
“And now?”
She looked at him. “Now I dream about Lauren. I see us at her college graduation … her wedding … then I see us waving good-bye and she’s always crying.”
“But you’re the one who wakes up with wet cheeks.”
“I don’t know if I can take her baby from her,” Angie said, finally daring to voice her deepest fear. “And I don’t know how I could possibly refuse. All I know is either way, our hearts get sliced open.”
“You’re stronger now. We are.” He leaned over to kiss her.
“Am I?” she said as soon as he drew back. “Then why am I afraid to get Papa’s cradle from the boxes?”
Conlan sighed, and for a moment she saw the fear in his blue eyes. She wasn’t sure if it belonged to him or if it were a reflection of hers. “The Field of Dreams bed,” he said quietly, as if he’d just remembered it.
Her father had built it by hand, polishing each bit of wood to a satin finish. He’d said he got the idea from the Kevin Costner movie.
There had been tears in Papa’s eyes when he presented the cradle to his Angelina. I build it, he said. Now she will come.
“Just hold on to me,” Conlan said at last. “I’ll keep us steady no matter what.”
“Yeah,” she answered. “But who will hold on to Lauren?”
It rained on the second Saturday in June. All the prayers for sunshine had been ignored.
Lauren couldn’t have cared less about the weather. It was the mirror image that depressed her.
She stared at herself. The good news was her hair. Pregnancy had given her coppery hair, always her best feature anyway, a new shine.
The bad news was everything else. Her face had begun in the last week to gain weight, and her always apple-round cheeks were edging toward plate size. And forget about her stomach.
Behind her, a pile of clothes covered her carefully made bed. In the past hour she’d tried on every conceivable maternity-wear combination. No matter what she wore, she looked like a soccer mom blow-up doll.
There was a knock at the door. Angie’s voice said, “Come on, Lauren. It’s time to go.”
“I’ll be right down.”
Lauren sighed. This was it. She went to the mirror and checked her makeup for the fourth time, fighting the nervous urge to layer more color on her face. Instead, she grabbed her purse, slung it over her shoulder, and left the bedroom.
Downstairs, Angie and Conlan were waiting for her. They looked absurdly gorgeous, both of them. Conlan, dressed in a black suit with a steel blue shirt, looked like the new James Bond, and Angie, in a rose-colored wool dress, was every bit his match.
“Are you sure about this?” Angie asked.
“I’m fine,” Lauren said. “Let’s go.”
The drive to Fircrest Academy seemed to take half its usual time. Before Lauren was quite ready, they were there, parking in the school lot.
In an awkward silence, the three of them walked across campus. All around them people were laughing and talking and snapping photographs.
The auditorium was a hive of activity.
At the door, she paused.
She couldn’t go in there, couldn’t lumber up those bleachers and sit down with all the parents and grandparents.
“You can do it,” Conlan said, taking her arm.
His touch steadied her. She looked up at the crowd, then at the decorations strung across the walls.
Class of 2004.
Boldly into the Future.
In what now felt like her other life, she would have been in charge of those decorations.
The gym was full of kids in scarlet satin gowns, their faces scrubbed and shiny, their eyes bright with promise. Lauren wanted to be down there with her friends, a laughing, teasing girl again. The longing was so sharp she almost stumbled. Tonight would be the grad night party; she’d waited years to attend.
Angie took her arm, led her up the bleachers to a seat in the middle. The three of them sat close together, tucked in amid all the other friends and family of the graduating class.
Lauren found David. He stood out from the crowd and melted into it at the same time. He wasn’t even looking up here. He was living the moment, loving it.
It pissed Lauren off that he should be down there, a boy with his whole life ahead of him, while she was here, stuck in the audience, a pregnant girl-woman who’d lost so much.
As quickly as the anger blossomed, it faded, leaving her with the sad longing she’d felt all day.