“We’re private,” Burnham says.
“Do you ever get used to that?” I ask.
“No.”
21
THEA
BEST DOG EVER
THE MORNING AFTER I talked to Linus, I searched the Internet again for any news of Rosie. There was none. She puzzled me. I was relieved that she’d escaped from Berg, but I couldn’t guess where she was, and that bugged me because I felt that I should be able to reason out where she would go. She and I were growing apart now that we were both out of the vault, and as impatient as I was to find her, she obviously didn’t feel the same. It was so tempting to try to reach her through our Forge email.
“Althea!” Madeline called from downstairs.
I closed my computer and rolled off my bed to stand in the doorway. “Yes?” I called down.
“You have some friends here to see you.”
I made my way down to meet three girls I’d never seen before. They acted warm and concerned about me, but it was totally awkward. I mixed up their names. They wanted to take an ussie of the four of us. I said no. One of them got all teary-eyed, and I didn’t know how to handle it. Madeline mercifully stepped in, and the girls left shortly after.
“No more of that,” I said to Madeline, waving them off.
“They mean well,” she said.
“Do they? I get the feeling they came to see the show.”
Madeline didn’t deny it. We headed back to the kitchen, where Solana dozed in a parallelogram of sunlight from the window.
“A couple of reporters have called asking for interviews,” she said. “The press doesn’t seem to know you’re pregnant yet, but that won’t last. I’ll just keep telling them no, if that’s what you want.”
“Thanks.”
My phone buzzed with another message from Tom. I glanced at it briefly and set it back on the table. Madeline filled me in about the appointments she’d lined up for me with a local neurologist and a nurse midwife. My physical therapist was coming to the house later in the afternoon. Madeline had made me haircut and manicure appointments, too, which was more than I’d bargained for. I gazed out to the pool where the morning light was reflecting on the blue water.
“What would you think about looking into summer classes at the community college?” Madeline asked. She stepped over to a tablet on the kitchen desk and began typing. A varicose vein showed below her knee. “Your baby will be a little older by then, and we can watch him or her for a few hours while you’re at school. You could start with a basic psych class. See if it’s what you’re still interested in.”
I hadn’t even finished high school. “It’s hard to think that far ahead,” I said.
“It might help to have a focus,” she said.
“Like I’m your focus?”
She stopped typing. “Excuse me?” she said.
I took a deep breath. “I don’t need you managing my life for me.”
“I’m only pointing out your options,” she said.
This was bigger than that. I had a new name now. Being me wasn’t about choosing between Althea and Rosie. It wasn’t a war in my head. It was more of a melding truce, and I was going to have to stand up for who I was as Thea. “If we’re going to consider my options, what would you think about me putting up the baby for adoption?” I asked.
Madeline’s eyes narrowed, and her voice thinned to black ice. “Don’t you dare.”
“It might be the kindest thing to do,” I said. “I’m not sure I’m cut out to be a mother just yet.”
“We did not save you and your baby just so you could turn around and give up that baby for adoption. Out of the question.”
“It doesn’t hurt to talk about it,” I said.
“Yes, it does,” she said.
“Why?” I asked. “I thought Catholics supported adoption. Didn’t you save me because you’re Catholic?”
“Althea!”
“I just want to know,” I said. It felt good to speak up. “You saved your daughter, but you never intended to save me, and now I want to know where I stand. What rights do I have? I’m not going to be friends with those girls who just left. We have nothing in common. What if I don’t feel like going to community college? What if I don’t want to be a mother? You can’t just shoehorn me into Althea’s life.”
“What’s all this about?” she asked. “We’re not ‘shoehorning’ you anywhere. You’ve only been home two days.”
“But I’ve been awake for weeks, and I’m telling you, I’m not Althea.”
“You could still get your memory back.”
“But I don’t have it back now,” I said. “Can’t you see me as I am?”
Grampa came in, carrying a coffee mug. “Hello, ladies.”
Madeline threw out her hand in my direction. “She wants to give up her baby for adoption.”
“I didn’t say that,” I said. “I wanted to talk about it.”
“No adoption. It’s not going to happen,” Grampa said.
“See? What did I tell you,” Madeline said.
He set his mug in the sink and glanced over at her. “I thought you were going in to work today.”
“Stuff came up,” Madeline said. “I’m going tomorrow.” She braced a hand on her hip and turned more fully toward me. Her white hair glowed in a gleam of sunlight. “We didn’t keep you alive because I’m Catholic,” she said. “I am religious, deeply, but I’m also a scientist. I don’t blindly follow a set of rules. Our ability to reason is one of God’s gifts, and it’s our obligation to use our intellects.”
“So then, why did you save me?” I asked. “I was all but dead anyway. Tom said I was suffering. He said I whimpered.”
“And what does that tell you?” she said. “Does a dead thing cry?”
I stopped short. “I guess not.”
“You had a fetus in you,” Madeline said. “The sanctity of life is not a rigid ending point to an argument. It’s a beginning. If you were already dead, mind and soul, then it didn’t matter to you that we were keeping your body alive a few more months for the sake of your baby. And if, despite everything the doctors told us, some tiny, lost spark of you was still living inside you, then keeping your body alive might give that spark a chance to reignite, too.”
I followed her logic, but at the same time, I couldn’t get past the idea of Althea suffering and helpless. “Didn’t it matter to you that I was in pain?” I asked.
She winced. “Of course it did. Watching you lie there, each day. It was torment. I’d have done anything to switch places with you.” She set her lips tightly and shook her head. “If you want to kill someone slowly, give them a daughter in a coma.”
Grampa moved over and put his hand on her shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said softly. “It’s over.”
Madeline looked at me like she didn’t completely agree with him.
I felt bad, like I’d been disrespectful. I was still an outsider to what they’d suffered, even though I was intricately connected to it, too. “What if I hadn’t woken up?” I asked. “What if, after the baby was born, I was still in a coma. Would you have kept me alive still?”
Madeline gazed past me, and her eyes lost focus for a moment. “I don’t know.”