The Apple Orchard

Thirteen



Berkeley, California 1984

In the middle of a lengthy lecture on Russian literature—taught in Russian—Shannon Delaney bolted for the ladies’ room. Unfortunately for her, Wheeler Hall was a gigantic building with hallways a mile long, and she didn’t quite make it.

She puked all over the floor of the historic, marble-halled building.

Long ago, she’d ceased being grossed out by her own puking. Every day, something had made her throw up. Although the pregnancy books she’d read (and she had read them all) said that morning sickness generally lasted through the first three or four months of gestation, Shannon’s “morning” lasted all day. The nausea had been with her like a plague throughout her pregnancy.

As if being alone, pregnant and broke wasn’t hard enough, this baby, this tiny hiding stranger, seemed determined to make her life as difficult as possible. Shivering and damp with sweat, she hurried to the restroom to tidy up. Afterward, she went to the janitor’s closet between the restrooms and used her key to open the door. Yes, she had a key. Because not only was she alone, pregnant and puking, she earned extra money doing janitorial work on campus. It was the only way she could figure out to stay in school. She was just half a year away from getting her master’s degree and she refused to give up, even if it meant scrubbing the toilets of California’s most famous university.

The wheels of the mop bucket creaked as she pushed it toward the mess. Letting out a shuddering sigh, she got to work. Simple bending was an ordeal now that she was as big as a house. Everything these days was an ordeal—making ends meet, studying at night without falling asleep in her chair, explaining her predicament to her professors and fellow students. Nothing, however, compared to the task looming ahead.

She had to tell her mother. She’d been putting it off, but one of these days, Mom would visit from Dublin, and then, the jig would be up. Shannon was confident her mother wouldn’t judge her. God knew, having a baby out of wedlock was something of a tradition among Delaney women. But she’d be disappointed, for sure. And worried. Shannon hated worrying her mom.

She thought back to when she’d first met Erik Johansen last year, introduced by a TA named Zia Camarada, with whom she’d become friends. He’d swept into her life like a whirlwind, driving a red convertible Carmen Ghia and filling her days with adventure and her nights with more love and tenderness than she’d ever felt from a man before. With his striking Nordic looks and passion for life, he’d been like a force of nature. She fell for him fast and hard, so hard that when he said his wife had recently left him, she’d simply believed him.

Dizzy with love, she assumed the feeling would last forever. Erik was a California boy with nothing to his name except a liberal arts degree, the heir apparent to a huge apple farm in Sonoma, ably managed by his doting parents. He and Shannon had spent endless lazy mornings in bed together, in her little garret on the north side, fantasizing about their future. Under the cheap canopy of India print cloths she’d draped from the ceiling to hide the bare lightbulbs, they’d talked for hours about the life that awaited them. They would travel the world; she would pursue her dream of bringing precious works of art to museums and private collectors. Everything was golden.

Then one day he’d arrived, his usually brash air subdued. “I love you,” he’d said, and words had never hurt Shannon so much. They hurt, because some deeply intuitive part of her sensed what was coming next: “I have to break it off.”

It was a story as old as time. The wife who had left him was back—and she was pregnant. Erik owed it to Francesca to repair the marriage and take care of her and their child. A few weeks afterward, Shannon herself was a ball of misery, nauseous and alone, shocked to find herself pregnant, too—but determined not to tell him that she was as foolish as his wife.

Then Shannon did something stupid, something all the rule books cautioned against. She became obsessed with Francesca. Though it could only make the hurt worse, she simply had to see this woman, whose very existence had killed Shannon’s dreams. She went crazy one day and borrowed her friend’s VW and drove all the way to the tiny town of Archangel.

She didn’t have a plan. At the edge of the Bella Vista apple orchard was an old-fashioned building—a fruit stand. It was whitewashed and featured a front porch edged with carpenter Gothic trim, and it looked as inviting as lunch with a friend. But looks, she knew with painful certainty, often lied. There, she encountered a petite older woman with an accent, and the beautiful Francesca. It had to be Francesca. And she was beautifully pregnant.

“Can we help you?” Francesca’s voice sounded like liquid silk.

“Just...looking.”

“When is your baby due?” asked the dark-haired woman.

“March.”

“Mine, too.” Francesca smiled, smoothing her hand down over the graceful curve of her stomach.

They were both due in March. Erik had gone from one woman’s arms to the other’s. Numb with shock, Shannon fled. There was nothing but heartache for her here.

And that had been the last of it. She was on her own.

As she was mopping up a dull green hallway floor, a buzzer signaled the end of the class sessions, and students came pouring out of the classrooms. Undergrads. They all looked young and slender and carefree, barely affording her a glance as they headed out into the sunshine of the quad. As the last of them departed, she saw a man silhouetted at the entryway—and she froze.

It was Erik. She recognized his broad shoulders and manly stance, even though she couldn’t see his face. Her first instinct was to dive into the janitor’s closet to hide, but she could tell from the sudden stiffening of his posture that he’d spotted her.

“All right, then,” she said, leaning on the mop as he approached her. In spite of herself, she had a wild thought: He’s come for me. He came to his senses and realized he can’t live without me and here he is.

He stared at her. She could feel his astonishment as his gaze traced the ungainly curves of her silhouette. She was not one of those glowing, graceful pregnant women. She was ridiculous, in loose thrift-store clothes, her face splotchy, her hair done up in a careless twist. “How did you find me?” she asked.

“I got your schedule out of the graduate registrar’s office.”

Charmed it out of them, she thought. He had a talent for that. “We agreed not to see each other anymore,” she reminded him.

He ignored that. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. He kept his hands pressed firmly to his sides.

She tried to blot out the memories of those hands, and how tenderly they’d stroked her, cupped her face to tilt her mouth upward for a kiss. “We broke up,” she said. “How did you find out?”

“Your friend Zia. She thought I deserved to know. And she’s right. This...it changes everything.”

“Does it?” She waited for him to say that the pregnancy was proof of their love. It was Fate telling them they should be together after all.

He said none of those things. His face was taut with earnestness and frustration as he said, “I can’t be in your life the way you deserve, but I’ll take care of you. I will. You and the baby. You’ll never want for a thing.”

I’m already wanting, she thought, instantly skeptical. He was completely dependent on his family. Even if he had the means to support her, she didn’t for a moment think his wife would approve. Somewhere inside herself, Shannon found a reservoir of icy steel. “Just go,” she told him. “Zia should have kept her mouth shut. This is totally messed up, and it’ll never be sorted out. We need to cut our losses and move on.”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I won’t abandon you.”

You already have.

“I need some air,” she said, and walked outside together to a place they’d once considered their “spot.” It was a pretty little wooden footbridge on campus near a log cabin known as Senior Hall, and it was their spot because they’d shared their first kiss there, after a Def Leppard concert at the Greek Theatre the night they’d met. They had both been high on pot and Southern Comfort, and the electricity between them had been irresistible.

She’d been too stupid to ask him if he was married. He’d later confessed that he had been, but that his wife had left him. He hadn’t divorced her, though. She should have asked. For someone in one of the most selective grad programs on the planet, she should have been smarter.

Eric touched her shoulder, and she flinched away. He clenched his hands on the bridge railing. “I swear, I’ll make things right for you, as right as I can.”

“Given the fact that you already have a baby on the way with your wife.” The nausea rose up through her again. “How are you going to make things right, Erik? How? You made your choice—to stay with your wife. I don’t need anything from you, not a damn thing.” Except your heart, she thought with a twist of pain. And you won’t give me that.

“I’ll take care of you financially,” he said, his eyes begging her.

Shannon knew it wouldn’t make the pain go away, but it would certainly help with her student loan payments, medical bills, babysitting.... “You don’t have any money of your own.”

“I’ll get it. Trust me, Shannon. You have to trust me.”

“What are you going to do, rob a bank?”

“I’ll come up with a plan.”

“The plan is, we go our separate ways.”

He bridled, turning fierce and commanding. “I have rights.”

She narrowed her eyes, reacting to the threat. “Don’t you dare.”

“I don’t want to make trouble. I just need to give you what I can so I’ll know you’re taken care of.”

“I don’t need you, Erik.”

“You need money,” he said. “Quit thinking about your pride and think about your child. Our child.”

She was one gulp away from puking again. “I won’t take anything that has strings attached.”

“Agreed. If you want, I’ll sign a paper, I’ll do anything....”

He would pay any price, she realized, to be free of her. To put her and her child conveniently aside. Fine, she thought, hardening her breaking heart. Let him pay.