“Is that when you became friends?”
He shot me a curious glance. “You mean us? We were never friends in the normal way, but after that, you weren’t quite as mean to me. We started hanging out.”
“Why was I still mean to you at all?”
“It was so obvious,” he said. “We could never be even.”
“Even, how?” I asked.
“We knew it was only a matter of time before you’d break my heart,” he said.
He spoke simply, as if this was a given. I hardly knew what to think.
He smiled at my expression. “You asked for the truth.”
“And when did all this begin?” I asked, and stroked a hand down my belly.
He glanced once more at me sideways and then aimed his gaze toward the valley. “You said you wanted to do it with someone you could trust before you went to college.”
“We only did it once?”
“Ah, no,” he said, and started walking again. His cheeks were definitely ruddy now.
“A couple times, then?” I asked, strolling beside him with my cane.
“Not exactly.”
“How’d I get pregnant?” I asked.
“Classic faulty condom. As in, it never made it out of my pocket.” He cleared his throat. “There you have it. The whole story.”
Not quite. There was still the question of how I ended up on his motorcycle in the rain, but I got the feeling that would be best left for another day.
“What did you do after my accident?” I asked. “Did you start college?”
“No. I’ve been working for my dad, helping out at the ranch. I’ve been teaching a little karate, too. Dad’s had some heart trouble. Lots of trips to the doctors. He’s okay for now.”
“Do you live nearby?” I asked.
“On the other side of Holdum. Not far.” He watched me thoughtfully. “You really don’t remember, do you?”
I shook my head. I felt a little guilty getting his whole story when I really wasn’t Althea. “I need to tell you something,” I said, pausing on the lane again. “It’s going to be difficult to take in. I’m not really Althea anymore. During my surgery at Chimera, they implanted a dream seed into me from someone else. My mind really belongs to another girl, Rosie Sinclair. You can look her up. She was on The Forge Show.”
“Your grandfather told me you might say something like this.”
“He told you?”
“Yeah. When he warned me to stay away.”
I was surprised, but also kind of relieved. “But you still told me all that about you and Althea.”
“Well,” Tom said slowly, “even if it’s possible that you have a new mind, this is who you are now, right?”
“I guess,” I said. I hadn’t really expected that he would accept me as I am. I looked at him again, impressed. “I’m going to try to find my original body as soon as I can. She might need me.”
“And then what?”
I hadn’t thought that far. “I don’t know.”
I idly slid my hand down my belly, and just then, I felt another kick inside. It was like a gurgly stomach, but deliberate, and the nudge registered against the palm of my hand.
“Want to feel something?” I asked.
“Is the baby moving?”
I nodded. Tom stepped nearer. I guided his hand to the right place and held it there. I watched as he focused gravely, waiting, and the warmth of his palm penetrated the fabric of my shirt to my belly. A moment later, the rolling feeling came again, and Tom jumped.
“Hey!” he said, laughing. “That is totally wild.”
I smiled. “I know.”
“Little monster. Wow.”
He returned his hand to my belly, more confident this time. I’d been examined and prodded by a million people in the last few weeks, but this was different. This was a personal touch shared by my baby’s dad and our child and me, together for the first time. When the baby poked again, Tom’s eyes filled with wonder.
“This little fighter has beat every odd,” he said softly. “You know that, right?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I can help you raise him or her.”
Raise the baby. At one level, I had known that this infant would be born into the world and need diapers and food and parenting. I’d heard the heartbeat and held the sonogram photo. I’d started a list of names. Yet now it suddenly felt a lot more real. This was a person who would command relationships. He or she would bind me to other family. Permanently.
I reached blindly for my sweatshirt and put it on.
“Thea?” he said.
This was a baby I was having, not a temporary glitch in my life. A baby would completely derail my connection to Rosie and my old life.
“What am I doing?” I muttered.
My mind was racing. I shifted away and zipped up my sweatshirt. What options did I have? It was far too late for an abortion even if I wanted one, and I didn’t. That meant childbirth. For real. After that, who would raise the kid? Me? Unthinkable.
I was sixteen! I’d had a life of my own and dreams and a future! Althea had lost her life, but I didn’t have to lose mine, too, did I? I wanted to have the baby. Of course I did. But I didn’t want to have it, too.
They would all hate me if I put my baby up for adoption.
“I’m not ready to be a mother,” I whispered and instantly clapped my hand over my mouth. I glanced up at Tom, ashamed, and then I felt a surge of defiance. “I’m not!”
He looked startled. “Take it easy, Thea. I just said you don’t have to do this alone. That’s what I came to tell you.”
“What do you mean?”
He put a gentle hand on my arm. “My proposal still stands,” he said. “I get that things are complicated, but that doesn’t change anything for me. Nothing could.”
I stared while the meaning of his bizarre words sank in. I had to steady my grip on my cane. “You want to marry me,” I said.
“That’s the idea.”
It would have been funny if it wasn’t so horribly sad.
“I just told you I’m somebody else,” I said quietly. “I don’t even remember you. How can you possibly want to marry me? What do you think marriage is?”
His eyes flashed oddly as he released me.
“No. Don’t answer that,” I said, backing up a step. “I’m sorry, but this is all wrong. Wait. Did you propose to me before?”
He did. He must have. It was clear in his face.
“What did I say before?” I asked.
He slid his hands in his pockets and gave his crooked smile again. “Like I said. We always knew you’d break my heart.”
19
THEA
THE RULE OF MIRRORS
I WALKED BACK ALONE to the house, taking my time. The person he loves isn’t me, I told myself. I didn’t break his heart. But that only complicated my sympathy for him. Plus we obviously had some chemistry. Big time. I’d been planning to focus on finding Rosie, but clearly I had the tangle of life as Althea to deal with, too.
What was I going to do about this baby?
Voices quickly hushed as I pushed open the kitchen door. Diego was wrapping plastic over a noodle casserole, and Madeline was scrubbing at a pot on the edge of the sink. Everyone else was gone. Though the rifle was out of sight, the air still bristled with tension.
“Where is everybody?” I asked.