“I can’t tell you,” she said. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”
“It matters quite a bit, Kalina,” Dr. Grind replied. He rifled through an imaginary Rolodex in his brain. Kenny? David? Perhaps Link? Any possible name seemed entirely impossible and, at the same time, perfectly reasonable.
“I mean, it’s over now. It was a one-time thing. We were both in the gym one night and things just got out of hand. Immediately afterward, we knew we’d made a mistake, and we never did it again. When I told him that I was pregnant, he said that he couldn’t leave his wife, the project, but I was never going to ask him to do those things. He was very adamant that I not go through with it. And I’m not even really mad at him. I had no illusions about some kind of fantasy life with him.”
“But you want to keep the baby?” he asked.
She nodded. “I’ve spent so much time taking care of other people’s children, helping them become better parents. I feel like I deserve this opportunity to take care of my own child. I have so much to offer a child. The situation with . . . with the father was doomed to fail, I understand that. But maybe something good came out of it. An opportunity for just me.”
“Well,” Dr. Grind said, considering the situation. “Then you need to have this baby.”
“But I don’t want to leave the project,” Kalina said, again nearly wailing.
“You don’t have to leave the project,” he said quickly, reaching out to calm her. Then he realized that maybe she would have to leave. What would it mean to have one of the research fellows pregnant? How would it affect the dynamic, especially when the unknown father also lived in the complex? Would they even live here in the complex? Would the baby become part of the study? One of the main requirements of the project, discussed at length before the parents signed on, was that they would not have another child for the duration of the project. It was a way, perhaps unfair, to keep the focus on the ten initial children, to prevent any issues that, he now realized, Kalina’s pregnancy might bring up.
“I can stay?” she said, brightening up. “How?”
“Well,” Dr. Grind said, trying to backtrack, to figure out how to proceed. And then he realized that Brenda Acklen had given him ultimate power over the study, had tasked him with making something incredible. If he wanted Kalina to stay, and he most certainly did, as she was a vital part of the project, one of the best researchers he had ever encountered and the best at working with the parents, though he now allowed perhaps too attached to one of the parents, then he could simply let her stay. “Well, we can talk to the rest of the family and figure this out. Then, um, I suppose you’d have the baby and he or she would be a part of the family as well. Not officially, you understand, not part of the study, but your child would be cared for and loved by everyone.”
“That’s incredible,” Kalina said, her face slightly puffy, though she was at least smiling now. “It’s perfect.”
“Okay,” Dr. Grind said, “whenever you’re ready, we can announce the news and I think you’ll find that everyone will be very supportive. Well, almost everyone. I can’t imagine how the father will react.” He wondered if even his initial statement was true, how the parents might feel about another child in the complex, one who would have a specific parent from the get-go. And was he really going to jeopardize the entire project by allowing Kalina and her child to perhaps complicate the lives of the family? What if the child looked exactly like one of the fathers? Why let this time bomb live inside the complex? Deep down, he knew that he simply couldn’t let anyone leave, could not lose one person from the project, or else he’d feel like he’d failed. The only way this would work, he told himself over and over, was to keep everyone as close to him as possible.
All he could hope for was that he had built up enough goodwill with everyone, having never denied them anything he had promised, that they would accept Kalina’s new status and things would be fine. He was certain this would not be the case, but he let himself believe it in order to move on to the next step.
Jeffrey and Jill appeared in the doorway; Jill immediately knelt beside Kalina and embraced her, while Jeffrey remained at the door, a solemn expression on his face.
“It’s okay,” Kalina assured Jill. “Dr. Grind said I could stay.”
Jill smiled at Preston. “We would have left if you had said no,” she told him, and Jeffrey quickly said, “Well, we discussed that possibility. It wasn’t set in stone or anything.”