“I forgot what this was like.” Simply because she could, Hayley lounged back in her chair. “Eating a whole meal without interruptions. I’m glad you finally asked me out.”
“Finally?”
“You’ve had plenty of time,” she pointed out. “Then I wouldn’t have had to make the first move.”
“I liked your first move.” He reached over, took her hand.
“It was one of my better ones. Harper.” Relaxed, she eased forward, her eyes on his. “Were you really thinking about me that way all this time?”
“I put a lot of effort into not thinking about you that way. It worked some of the time.”
“Why did you? Put a lot of effort into it, I mean.”
“It seemed . . . rude,” was the best he could think of, “to imagine seducing a houseguest, especially a pregnant one. I helped you out of the car once—the day of your baby shower.”
“Oh God, I remember.” It made her laugh even as she covered her face with her free hand. “I was so awful to you. I felt so hot and fat and miserable.”
“You looked amazing. Vital. That was my first impression of you. Light and energy, and well, sex, but I tried to tramp that one out. But that day, when I helped you out, the baby moved. I felt it move. It was . . .”
“Scary?”
“Powerful, and yeah, a little scary. I watched you give birth.”
She went still, and flushed to the tips of her ears. “Oh, oh God, I forgot about that.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh no.”
He grabbed her hands, pulled them toward him to kiss. “It was impossible to describe. After I got over the get-me-the-hell-out-of-here stage, it was just staggering. I saw her born. I’ve been in love with her ever since.”
“I know.” Embarrassment faded as her heart swam up into her eyes. “That I know. You never ask about her father.”
“It’s not my business.”
“If we take this any further, it should be. You should at least know. Could we maybe take a walk?”
“Sure.”
THEY TURNED AWAY from the lights and action of Beale Street and wandered toward the river. Tourists flocked there as well, to stroll through the park or stand and watch the water, but the relative quiet made it easier for her to go back in her mind, and take him with her.
“I didn’t love him. I want to say that right off because some people still like to think poor girl, some guy got her in trouble then didn’t stand by her. And they think your heart’s been broken by some asshole. It wasn’t like that.”
“Good. It’d be a shame if Lily’s father was an asshole.”
The laugh bubbled up, made her shake her head. “You’re going to make this easier. You’ve got a way of doing that. He was a nice guy, a grad student I met when I was working at the bookstore back home. We’d flirt with each other, and we hit it off, went out a couple of times. Then my father died.”
They crossed the little bridge over the replica of the river, wandered past the couples sitting at stone tables. “I was so lost, so sad.”
He slid his arm around her shoulder. “I think if anything happened to my mother, it would be like being blinded. I’ve got my brothers to hold on to, but I can’t imagine the world without her.”
“It’s like that, like you just can’t see. What to do next, what to say next. No matter how kind people are—and they were, Harper, a lot of kind people—you’re in the dark. People loved my father, you just had to. So there were neighbors and family and friends, the people I worked with, that he worked with. But still, he was so much the center of my life, I felt alone, just isolated in this void of grief.”
“I was a lot younger when my father died, and I guess in some ways it’s easier. But I know there’s a stage you have to go through, the one where you can’t believe anything’s ever going to be right again, or solid again.”
“Yes, exactly. And when you get through it, start to feel again, it hurts. This guy, he was there for me. He was very sweet, very comforting, and that’s how one thing led to another.”
She tilted her head to meet his eyes. “Still, we were never more than friends. But it wasn’t a fling, it was—”
“Healing.”
Her heart warmed. “Yes. He went back to school, and I got on. I didn’t realize I was pregnant at first. The signs didn’t filter through my head. And when I did . . .”
“You were scared.”
She shook her head. “I was pissed. I was so mad. Why the hell had this happened to me? Didn’t I have enough to deal with? It wasn’t like I’d slept around, it wasn’t like I hadn’t been responsible, so what the hell was this? A joke? God, Harper, I wasn’t all soft and shivery. I was enraged. I got around to panic at some point, but I bounced back pretty quick to mad.”
“It was a tough spot, Hayley. You were alone.”
“Don’t pretty it up. I didn’t want to be pregnant. I didn’t want a baby. I had to work, I had to grieve, and it was about damn time somebody up there gave me a freaking break.”
They moved toward the river, and she kept her voice down as she looked out toward the water. “Now I was going to have to get an abortion, and that meant I’d have to figure out how to get some time off work, and pay for it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I got the literature, and I found a clinic, and then I started thinking maybe it’d be better if I had it then gave it up for adoption. Signed up with one of those agencies. You read so much about these infertile couples pining for a baby. I thought maybe that would be something positive I could do.”
He brushed a hand down her hair, spoke softly. “But you didn’t do that either.”
“I got literature on that kind of thing, started researching. And all the time I was going back and forth, cursing God and so on, I was wondering why this guy wasn’t coming back in the store, or calling me. Part of my thinking when I was a little calmer was that I had to tell him, he had to know. I didn’t get pregnant by myself, and he’d better take some responsibility, too. Somewhere in all that thinking, it got real. I was going to have a baby. If I had a baby, I wouldn’t be alone. That was selfish thinking, and the first time I realized I was leaning toward keeping it. For me.”
She breathed deep and faced him. “I decided to keep the baby because I was lonely. That, then, was the heaviest weight on the scale.”
He didn’t say anything for a moment. “And the grad student?”
“I went to see him, to tell him. Tracked him down at college, all ready to say, oops, look what happened, and here’s what I’ve decided to do so step on up.”
A breeze fluttered her hair, and she let it go. Let the damp warm air breathe over her face. “He was glad to see me, a little embarrassed, I think, that he hadn’t kept in touch. The thing was, he’d fallen in love with somebody. Big sunbursts of love,” she said, throwing her arms out to illustrate. “He was so happy and excited, and when he talked about her he just sent off waves of love.”
“So you didn’t tell him.”
“I didn’t tell him. What was I supposed to do? Say, gee, that’s nice, glad you found someone who makes your world complete. How do you think she’ll feel about the fact that you knocked me up? Too bad you screwed up the rest of your life because you were being a friend to me when I needed one. On top of that, I didn’t want him. I didn’t want to marry him or anything, so what was the point?”
“He doesn’t know about Lily?”
“Another selfish decision, maybe with a little unselfish best-for-him worked in. I wrestled with it later, when the pregnancy got more real, when I started to show and feel the baby kick around inside me. But I stuck with what I’d done.”
She paused a moment. It was harder than she’d known it could be to finish it out, to go on when he was quiet, when the quality of his listening was so complete.
“I know he has a right to know. But that’s what I did, and what I’d do again. I heard he married that girl in April, and they moved up to Virginia where his people are from. I think, whatever the reasons were, I did the right thing for all of us. Maybe he’d love Lily, or maybe she’d just be a mistake to him. I don’t want to know. Because she was a mistake for me for those first few months, and I hate knowing that. I didn’t start to love her, really love her, until I was about five months gone, and then it was like . . . oh, it was like everything in me opened up, and she was filling it. That’s when I knew I had to leave home. Give us both a new start, clean slate.”