Even though she’d seen him standing there with his arm around Van—Vanessa—part of her still couldn’t believe it.
How many times had he told her he loved her? Insisted she was beautiful? Assured her that he wanted her in his life?
How could it have all been lies?
“Rotten, fucking lies,” she sobbed, hearing Kyrstin’s voice in her head: Because those people ain’t our people. They don’t live their lives the same way we do, Laire. They got different values, different priorities. You know that. You can’t expect nothin’.
She was right. Kyrstin was one hundred percent right. And Laire was a fool of epic proportions. A pregnant fool. A fool who refused to go home and trick a local boy into marriage. And couldn’t go home, because the ring that should have been hers was on another girl’s finger.
After twenty minutes of walking, she found herself standing in front of the Pamlico House, blinking in surprise as more tears welled in her eyes. There was only one person in the world she wanted to see, who could—possibly—help her.
She went to the back door of the kitchen and knocked, asking the dishwasher if he could find Ms. Sebastian and send her outside.
She caressed her belly through her black skirt, whispering softly, “We deserve better than him, li’l bean. You deserve better.”
“Laire?” said Ms. Sebastian, stepping out of the kitchen, smelling of warmth and turkey and cranberries, such a contrast to the bleak cold of the night. “Laire, honey? What a surprise!”
“Ms. Sebastian!” she sobbed, hurtling herself into the older woman’s arms and crying torrents on her shoulder.
“Laire! Oh, dear! What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
She had no words. The depth of her sorry and fear, worry and exhaustion, were so profound, she couldn’t answer.
But thank the Lord for small mercies because Ms. Sebastian, on what was likely the busiest night of the year, held a desperate, distraught Laire close, rubbed her back, and—without knowing anything—promised her that everything was going to be all right.
INTERLUDE
Laire’s Christmas Journal
The First Christmas
Dear Erik,
You bought me this journal for sketching on the best day of my life: our perfect day at the Elizabethan Gardens. That was the day you told me you were falling in love with me, and though I didn’t say the words, I knew they were true for me too. I said them three days later at my father’s fish shop. You came to tell me that you were going up to Raleigh for a few days the only way you knew how.
My God, what an actor you were! What an actor you are. I can’t stop my tears from falling when I think of those precious days with you, because, whoever you are, you aren’t the Erik I fell in love with. You are a stranger to me. Wholly. Completely. When I think of you now, I call you the Governor’s Son in my mind. I will hate you until the day I die. I promise you that.
But I am not writing to the Governor’s Son; I am writing this to my Erik—to the man I knew. Even though he doesn’t actually exist, I loved him. I still do. It’s likely that I always will.
I write these words to him because, no matter how faithless you were to me, Governor’s Son, I was my truest self with my Erik.
That day in the hospital when I called us a fantasy, I was lying. I was a frightened girl lying to the boy she loved desperately, hoping that by giving up what she loved most in the world, the trade would assuage God’s fury and let her father live.
It worked, to some extent.
My father lived, though in a cruel twist, I still lost him. He never trusted me again and could barely look me in the eyes without shame.
And the Erik I loved turned out to be a fantasy, so I have lost him too.
But I cannot live in a world as brutal and unkind, as faithless and fickle as that of the Governor’s Son. I won’t allow myself to be hardened. I won’t let his poison touch my life. After all, I barely knew him. I can choose to separate him from the Erik I lost.
That Erik, that good, kind, loving, tender man, is preserved in my heart, just as he would be if I had lost him to a tragic accident that terrible Thanksgiving night. That’s the Erik I write to here. To the man I knew . . . because, to me, he was real. And I will write to you, my Erik, until I stop grieving your loss. Hopefully, one day, I will have the courage and strength to love again.
I need you to know that I am pregnant with your child.