RECLAIM MY HEART(51)

Christy arrived at the table with their open bottle of pinot grigio.
“Ah, I’m terribly sorry,” Lucas told the woman, “but there’s been an emergency.” He pointed to the money. “That should take care of things, though.”
The young woman’s gag ws told tze darted to the bills on the white tablecloth, and then she offered him a wide smile. “Yes, sir. Don’t worry about a thing.”
He took Tyne by the elbow and guided her toward the front door.
Once they were in the car, the engine idling, the air conditioner blasting, Tyne took a deep breath. “Thank you.”
He just smiled. “I thought we’d better get out of there before you threw up all over dear Vera’s pretty, pink dress. In fact, you still look a little green.” He waved his hand in front of his face. “And you smell like an old-ladies’ perfume factory.”
She groaned. “Of all the people to meet. My mom is going to know I’m here before the night’s out. I just know it. Vera’s probably in there dialing her number now.”
“You asked her not to say anything. Maybe she won’t.”
Tyne only sighed.
Traffic was heavy for a Wednesday evening. Lucas maneuvered the car onto the highway.
“Maybe you should go see them,” he suggested. “Get it over with, and then you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
She stared hard at his profile. “You’re kidding, right?”
His silence told her he wasn’t.
The ugly details of how she’d left town reared up in her mind like the hissing snakes on Medusa’s head. He wouldn’t understand until she described them for him, fangs and scales and venom and all.
The leather seat felt cool against the backs of her arms and thighs when she settled herself. Softly, she confessed, “I’m angry with them, Lucas. I’ve been angry with them for a long time.”
Tyne was only vaguely aware of the bright lights of the businesses they passed along the way.
“My mother betrayed me,” she said, her voice flat. “I went to her for help, and she ran right to my father with the news of my pregnancy. I was so young. And they shut me off from everyone. Lectured me. Hounded me. They hashed out the options, planned my life and my future like I wasn’t even sitting there. Abortion, they finally decided.” Her stomach clenched sickeningly. “That was the best answer. We would slip away in the night, so no one would see. We would make this problem go away. And I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion.
“That exam room was cold.” The memory made her shiver. “And stark. And scary as hell with all those instruments lined up on that stainless steel tray.” She swallowed. “They left me there on that table, practically naked, and all alone.” She could still feel the rough paper gown grazing her skin. “I can’t adequately describe the rage and resentment that filled me while I waited for the doctor who was going to come and abort my baby.”
Too angry to cry, that’s when she decided she could no longer be the good little girl, the obedient daughter. “I slid off that table and got myself dressed and walked out of that room. Mom went completely crazy. She was yelling like a banshee.” Tyne swiped weary fingers across her forehead. “I’ll never forget the last thing I heard her say before I pushed my way out of that clinic. ‘What am I supposed to tell your father?’”
The question rang in her head and it roused her fury even after all this time.
“There was a second round of lectures—god, I thought they would never shut up—and when I didn’t budge on the abortion idea, they started harping on adoption. They were like some tag team. Dad would go a few rounds, shouting about how he refused to let me ruin my life, and Mom would start spewing out propaganda about making the dreams of some childless couple come true.”
She covered her face with her hands. “I was so damn confused. I knew I had disappointed them. Knew I had messed up. I only wanted to make things right. I am so sorry, Lucas—” she glanced at him befcedndsore burying her face in her hands again “—and I never wanted you to know this, but I came to the conclusion that adoption was something I could at least live with.”
His stony silence tensed her gut into anxious knots.
“They put me on a plane to Palm Beach,” she said. “Aunt Wanda was very gentle and compassionate.” Her voice went all fuzzy as she added, “I’ll always be grateful to her for that.”
She shrugged. “But I disappointed everyone once again. I just couldn’t, Lucas. I thought I could. I even met the people. The prospective parents. The couple who wanted my baby. They were very nice. They fawned all over me, but I guess that’s natural. I was the teenaged genie who came to grant their wish.”
The bright cluster of city lights had faded into wider-spaced suburban street lamps and strip malls.
Tyne sighed. “I took one look at those beautiful, dark eyes and that head full of black hair and knew I was keeping my son. He was perfect, Lucas. His skin was so transparent, I could see the little blue veins in his cheeks. His nose, his fingers, his toes. Everything about him was—”
You, she’d nearly said. She watched the passing scenery for a few minutes, wondered what all those people were doing inside all those houses. Were any of them desperately explaining their decisions of the past? Were any of them nervous as hell because their justification was receiving no reaction whatsoever?
“I never talked to my parents directly again. Aunt Wanda became my go between.” The muscles in her shoulders and neck began to ache from the tension. “Dad was adamant that the only way I could come home was alone. Mom phoned her sister with promises to work it out. That she’d talk to Dad. That she’d make him come around. That she wanted me home even if it meant ‘that child’ had to come too.”