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“You’re seeing the therapist in two days,” she finally said to me.
“I know. I’ll be there.”
“You’re damn right, I’m driving you,” she snapped back.
“Kelley, you don’t have to do that. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
“Well, it’s not only yourself to take care of now. You have a whole baby growing in your body. Why won’t you just go back home to J.R.? You’re miserable, Rach. And the baby. He deserves to know about the baby.”
“I can’t. We were going nowhere.” I said stubbornly, “It’s pointless.”
“You don’t know that. And if he knew what you did—what you tried to do—he would be devastated.”
“He’ll never find out,” I said. “Are you going to stop being angry with me?”
“I’m not angry, Rach. I’m afraid. I don’t ever… I never want to see you like that again.” She was crying again.
“I’m sorry, Kelley,” I said softly.
Kelley nodded her head, and we didn’t say much else.
***
The next day, we were sitting at Kelley’s kitchen table. I guess it was mine, too. We had been roommates since I had left J.R. She wasn’t home much, anyway, with her entrepreneur adventures. Kelley graduated from the university with a major in interior design and a minor in business. She’d started at least three interior decorating businesses since graduation. Two had failed. The other was going relatively well. Kelley hadn’t dabbled much in a romantic relationship. She wanted her career to be set in stone and thriving before she entertained any possible suitors.
“So, do I tell him?” I asked her. I need her to tell me what to do because any decisions I had made up to this point were obviously the wrong ones. I felt incapable.
Kelley’s face was blank. Her eyes drifted to mine, and she said, “I mean, it’s the right thing to do, Rach.”
“J.R. wasn’t even going to marry me, and we never even talked about having kids one day. How do I know he’ll want this?”
“Rach, he has a right to know that he’s going to be a father. You haven’t been gone that long. Maybe you should go home. Maybe it’s not too late.” She almost looked as though she were pleading with me to go home. Like perhaps my welcome had run out. I couldn’t fathom why. I was helping her pay rent. I suppose the attempted suicide had a little to do with it too.
“I can’t go back. Especially not now.” I collapsed back in my chair and folded my arms across my chest like a child.
“So, you’re just not going to tell him?” She looked at me like I was insane. Thoughtless. Heartless. Maybe I was.
“I…I don’t even want to be a mother, Kelley. Maybe…well, there are lots of women out there who can’t have children who want them. Maybe I will place the baby for adoption.”
Kelley shook her head at me. She knew how I felt about being a mom. We had talked about my own mother (in minor detail) and all of the damage she had inflicted upon me. I had never wanted this. It was a decision that I had made a long time ago.
“Rach, it’s your decision,” she said finally. “But think on it, okay? Once it’s done, it can’t be undone. If you go off and have J.R.’s baby, place it for adoption, and never tell him about his child… Rach, that’s something you don’t ever come back from.”
I decided that I wouldn’t tell him. I was not going back. I was not keeping the baby either. The best thing I could do for this child was to give her to a family that would love her. To a mother who wasn’t still being emotionally tortured by her own mother, even after her death. It was the right decision. It had to be.
25
Present
“Daddy, Mama asked me to ask you if Aunt Kelley can come visit,” Knox says from across the dinner table.
I nearly choke on my salad. I did tell Knox to hint to J.R. about Kelley coming to visit, but I didn’t mean for her to hint at it right in front of me.
J.R. cuts his eyes at me, and then he looks back at Knox. “Did she now?”
I glare at Knox. “That’s not exactly what I said.”
J.R. hides a smirk, but then he nods. “Kelley can come. Anytime.”
