The Familiar Dark(37)

I nodded, and a loud cheer went up on the other side of the wall, the music swelling against our backs. “It’s getting crazy in there,” I said. “You’re missing your own party.”

“I’m not going to disappear,” Zach said. “You’re not in this alone.”

“Yes, I am.” I held up a hand when he started to speak. “And that’s okay. You have a life and there’s no point in screwing it up. It’s not like you and I were ever going to be a long-term thing.”

“If I’d known . . .”

Now it was my turn to smile. “What? You wouldn’t have married Jenny? You’d have married me instead? Come on. We don’t even know each other.”

He didn’t argue with me, but he didn’t go back inside, either. “You want me to walk away?” He reached out again and this time put his hand on my belly before I could deflect him. The baby kicked out hard, probably because my whole body tightened up at the contact. Wonder exploded on Zach’s face, and when he looked at me, I could see the sadness in his eyes. “Do you know what it is?”

I shook my head. “No. But I think it’s a girl.”

“I want to know this baby,” he said as he pulled his hand away.

I pictured it for a split second. Having someone to help with the bills, someone to hold the baby when I was tired, someone to share the burden. But just as quickly I pictured the look on Jenny’s face when she found out. The look on her mother’s. The talk that would follow my child, the anger, the shame. Being a single, out-of-wedlock mother was nothing new around here. But fucking Jenny Sable’s new husband, forcing him to become a father before Jenny managed to squeeze out a baby herself? That would haunt us forever.

I pushed away from the wall. “You’ll have your own babies soon enough. And then you’ll be glad not to have to deal with this one. Like I said, we’ll be fine.”

“Hey, wait,” Zach said, snagged my hand as I moved past him. “If you ever change your mind, and I mean ever, I’m right here. An hour from now, next week, next month, next year. Anytime.” He squeezed my fingers. “You know where to find me.”

I didn’t believe him, not really. No one would willingly let someone implode their life. I had a pretty strong inkling that if I showed up on Zach Logan’s doorstep a year from now, our baby clutched in my arms, he’d march my ass right back down his front walk and deny ever having met me. But the fact that he’d made the offer warmed me. He was a good man, or at least was trying to be one. If I was going to get knocked up by a stranger, I could have done a lot worse.

I had thought that was the end of it. And for a long time, it was. Until first grade when Junie came home talking about her new friend Izzy, how they both had double-jointed fingers and a birthmark on their elbows. Asking with pleading eyes if she could spend the night at Izzy’s house. Please, Mama, please, please, please. And I realized some things will always find their way back to you, no matter how much you wish they’d stay lost.





FIFTEEN


My mama was the last person I expected at my front door the next morning. When the pounding first started, I thought, Reporters. And then, right on the heels of that thought, Jenny. She’d spied those scratches on Zach’s back and was coming over to re-mark her territory. I was braced for a fight I had no interest in winning when I swung open the door, then stood shocked into momentary stillness when my mama marched into my apartment and kicked the door shut behind her. She looked me up and down, shook her head. “At least you aren’t still wearing that potato sack from yesterday. Good God, girl, did you try and find the ugliest dress in the store?”

Given her torn jean shorts and too-small T-shirt emblazoned with a faded skull and crossbones, I didn’t think she had much room to give fashion advice. But I kept my mouth shut, made my weary way toward the kitchen to start the coffee maker.

“What are you doing here?” I asked. She hadn’t been inside my apartment since before Junie’s birth. Had come sniffing around when I was eight months pregnant and barely moved in; Cal paying the first month’s rent for me so I could escape the trailer before the baby was born. I’d told her then she wasn’t welcome in my life anymore, but she’d still shown up at the hospital, drunk and smelling like sex, when Junie was only a day old. Raking me over the coals for not giving birth in the trailer, called me a stuck-up bitch, a weak, spoiled brat thinking I was too good for the midwife who had brought both me and Cal into the world. Ranting loud enough that security had come to escort her away. That had been the first and last time she’d been in the same room with my daughter.

She slid into one of my kitchen chairs, pulled out a cigarette, and lit up without asking permission. “Is that any way to talk to me?” she said.

I sighed, pulled two mugs down from the cabinet above the sink. I wasn’t in the mood for her games, her back-and-forth. I’d had to endure it as a child, but I was a grown-up now. “What do you want, Mama?”

“Surprised you’re up this early.” She took a long drag on her cigarette, and smoke billowed from her nostrils. “Seeing as how you had a late-night visitor.”

I froze in the act of pulling milk out of the fridge, kept my head turned away where she couldn’t see my face. “What are you talking about?”