A Good Name: A Modern Pride and Prejudice Variation

by Sarah Courtney

  For a moment, he wondered if that might make a difference. Maybe having a friend at his side . . . but no. Nothing good could come of going back there, of letting the misery of his old life leak back into his new one.

  Will kept his head down, staring at the kitchen island. He couldn’t find the words. Finally, Mrs. Darcy sighed, ruffled his hair with her hand again, and left the kitchen.

  His list was still on the counter near where Mrs. Darcy had been standing. Will stood up in a quick motion, grabbed the list, and crumpled it. He tossed it into the recycling bin and went outside. It was freezing cold, but he didn’t bother with his coat. He’d been out in the cold without a coat before. He’d survive.

  April 2003

  “Will!”

  Will grunted with surprise and dropped down from the tree. Was it really four o’clock already?

  He brushed his hands off on his jeans and ran inside. The entire house smelled of cookies, a smell that had quickly come to be his favorite. They weren’t particularly filling, unless he ate enough to make himself sick, but there was always enough food at the Darcys. He still kept a stash in his room, but he hadn’t had to go into it for months now.

  “Hi, Mrs. Darcy.” The cookies were still on the cooling rack. He went to grab one, but Mrs. Darcy thwacked him with the back of the spatula.

  “Will! Hands!” she scolded.

  He laughed and went to the sink to wash his hands. “Clean enough?” he asked, displaying his wet hands after he’d scrubbed.

  Mrs. Darcy took a glance and nodded, and Will shook his dripping hands at her, spraying her with water.

  “Will!” she shrieked.

  He winked at her as he dried his hands.

  “You’d be in big trouble, mister, if you’d gotten your school books wet,” she said, but there was a smile in her voice.

  Will took his usual seat next to her and pulled his math book out with a sigh.

  The adoption process was proceeding as expected, and their lawyer thought they could probably get a court date near the end of the spring if all continued well. The Darcys had begun talking about transferring Will to Westminster, the exclusive private school Richard and his brother attended, in the fall.

  When they’d first suggested Westminster, Will hadn’t been sure what he thought of the idea. But now that he’d been living with them for most of the school year, he thought that it might be a good idea. It was hard to continue at the same school he’d gone to as George Wickham. The Cinderella jokes were getting old.

  Westminster was a good school, Dad had assured him. Good kids, good academics, all the yadda-yadda test scores and small teacher-to-student ratio things that parents were always talking about. Will was more interested to see that it had a good soccer team.

  Of course, once they started thinking about Westminster, Mrs. Darcy took a closer look at Will’s grades, and she was concerned.

  “Your grades are fine, Will, especially considering everything that you’ve gone through. But Westminster is going to be a lot more challenging, and if you’re getting Bs and Cs at your current school, it might be a bit too much.”

  He’d nodded, but he couldn’t hide his disappointment. The new school and new beginning had been tantalizing. He’d seen the website for the school, and it looked amazing. Expensive, but amazing. Maybe if he went there, he’d be able to go to college, too, something he’d never thought of before.

  “Well,” Mrs. Darcy had said, putting an arm around Will, “there’s just one solution. We’ll have to see if we can get you ready. We have eight months, after all.”

  The extra work was hard, but it wasn’t too bad. Mrs. Darcy tried her best to make it fun, and even when that was impossible even for her, at least there were cookies and the warm feeling of having a mom. Foster mom. More and more, he found himself forgetting the “foster” part and imagining that she was his real mom, that he had grown up at Pemberley and never lived anywhere else at all.

  He couldn’t really wish that, though, because then he would never have met Lizzy. He had known Lizzy for only two short years, but he would still be willing to go through his entire childhood again just for her.

  He’d eaten three cookies, finished his math, and taken notes for writing an essay when he heard the garage door open.

  Will’s head shot up, and he looked at Mrs. Darcy hopefully. His soccer ball and goal were sitting on the lawn just waiting for him to come play.

  He’d worried about whether he’d get the soccer ball after all for Christmas when he knew he’d displeased the Darcys by not being willing to help out at the shelter.

  To his delight, on Christmas morning, he’d been handed a package that contained the coolest-looking soccer cleats ever, along with a brand-new ball. At his whoop, the Darcys had laughed. So he hadn’t lost his presents after all! They’d also bought the LEGO set he’d wanted and even the complete Lord of the Rings series! It was pretty awesome to be rich.

  Mrs. Darcy shook his head. “I’m not going to get any more work out of you, am I?”

  He shook his head vehemently.

  “Fine.” She closed the teacher’s manual in front of her. “Go play. I’ll call you both in for dinner.”

  Will jumped up and ran for the door to the garage. He leaped over the stairs into the garage just as Mr. Darcy was closing the car door behind him.

  “Will!” Mr. Darcy gave him a hard hug. “Just give me a minute to change.”

  “One minute, no more,” Will joked. He snagged his ball, jogged out the garage door before Mr. Darcy closed it, and waited on the front lawn, practicing outside-inside touches.

  Mr. Darcy appeared in no more than five minutes wearing jeans and a T-shirt. “All right, pass it here,” he said.

  Will passed him the ball. “Mrs. Darcy thinks I’ll be ready for Westminster fine by the fall.”

  Mr. Darcy nodded, kicking the ball back. “So I’ve heard.”

  “So.” Will kicked the ball back a little harder this time. His accuracy was a bit off, and Mr. Darcy had to jog to the left to stop the ball. He grinned at Mr. Darcy’s look of disgruntlement. “I thought I’d try out for the soccer team.”

  “Sounds like a good idea. Great way to make friends at a new school, playing sports.”

  Will nodded. It had occurred to him already. Starting at a new school was always a bit nerve-wracking. Starting at age thirteen as the newly adopted son of George and Anne Darcy would, he feared, be beyond nerve-wracking and more into the category of completely terrifying.

  He hadn’t been that good at making friends in the past. Would the kids all make fun of him for growing up poor? Even if the adoption was final by then, plenty of the kids would probably know about it. Kids had a way of finding out things like that.

  Will groaned when the ball shot between his legs.

  “Got something on your mind?” Mr. Darcy asked.

  Will opened his mouth but then shut it again. The Darcys were so excited about him going to Westminster with his cousins. Mr. Darcy was a pretty quiet guy, solemn, a bit like Will in some ways. He was so confident and self-assured, though. What would he think of Will if he knew how scared Will was? What if they thought he was ungrateful?

  “Nope,” he said, popping the “p.” Then he reconsidered.

  “Mrs. Darcy says I’m not allowed to read James Patterson books. She looked it up on some website, and it said it’s too violent.”

  Mr. Darcy held up a hand to Will and started to set up the pop-up goal. Will practiced toe touches while he waited. Once the goal was in position, Mr. Darcy continued their conversation. “If she says it’s too violent, I’m sure she’s right.”

  Will dribbled towards the goal, feinting left to avoid Mr. Darcy’s block, but Mr. Darcy kicked the ball away. Will sighed as he went to retrieve it.

  “It’s stupid. I saw all sorts of stuff when I lived with my mom. I really doubt some book is gonna shock me, you know?”

  “Maybe that’s the problem,” Mr. Darcy said.

  “You
want me to be shocked?” That made no sense.

  Mr. Darcy shrugged. “Yeah. You should be shocked when you see evil. You should be disturbed by it. Reading and watching about it too young conditions your brain to think that it’s normal when it’s not.”

  Will rolled his eyes.

  Mr. Darcy went on. “I can’t do anything about your early experiences. I can’t go back in time and protect you from things you shouldn’t have seen or experienced. But I can make sure that from here on out, you aren’t exposed to things that you aren’t ready for. Trust me, you aren’t ready to read Kiss the Girls.”

  Will sighed. “Fine,” he huffed. He wondered how Mr. Darcy even knew which book it was he had wanted to read. Probably Mrs. Darcy had told him already. He’d just read Lord of the Rings again, maybe. He’d read it twice already since Christmas.

  “Come on,” Mr. Darcy said. “If you can’t make a goal on an old man, I don’t know what you think you’re going to do on that soccer team.”

  June 2003

  Will practically danced down the courthouse steps on the day his adoption was finalized. Mrs. Darcy had bought him a suit with a real tie, and he had to polish his shoes again, and she’d brought him a comb and almost spat on his hair to smooth it until she realized she was not, in fact, on the Andy Griffith show and nobody spat on hair anymore.

  He hated the feeling that he couldn’t rotate his shoulders or stretch his arms the way he wanted to, the tie felt like it was cutting off his air supply, and he was sweating so hard in the black suit that he probably stank. But he did his best to ignore all the physical discomfort while they were in court, and after his adoption paperwork had been signed and pictures taken, he was too giddy with relief and excitement to care about the stupid tie.

  Although he did take it off the moment they got into the car.

  “Can I ditch my suit jacket, too?” he asked.

  Wordlessly, Mrs. Darcy handed him a hanger. That’s when he noticed that Mr. Darcy had also taken off his suit jacket and hung it on the handle above the door. He supposed great minds did think alike after all!

  “What do you think?” Mrs. Darcy asked. “Ice cream?”

  “Yeah!” Will and Mr. Darcy said simultaneously.

  The judge had also agreed to his change-of-name request, so he was now officially Fitzwilliam George Darcy. He would never forget his life as George Wickham, but it was time to put it in the past.

  There was one more thing that Will was finally ready to do. He took a deep breath and felt his cheeks grow warm.

  “Can we go to Dairy Queen . . . Mom and Dad?”

  August 2003

  Will was surprised to come inside from playing in the woods to see his dad’s car parked in front of the house. His dad wasn’t usually home during the day, as being the owner and CEO of a company kept him pretty busy. Why wasn’t the car in the garage? What was going on?

  “Dad?” he called as he walked in, dropping his backpack by the door. He saw his parents sitting at the island in the kitchen and started towards them. At a silent glare from his mother, he went back and hung the backpack up on its hook where it belonged and sat down on the bench to take off his shoes. “Why are you home?” He shoved his shoes into their bin and walked into the kitchen.

  “Well, son, your mother called me with some very good news,” his dad said.

  Will looked from one to the other. Both of them were smiling, and they looked like they were trying very hard not to grin from ear to ear. “Okay, what’s up?”

  His mother pushed something across the island to him. He picked it up. It was a white plastic stick with rounded edges, and it had a depression with two blue lines in the center. He frowned.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s a pregnancy test,” his mom said. “I’m pregnant. You’re going to have a baby brother or sister!”

  Will’s eyes went wide. “For real? How do you know? How does this thing work?” He picked it up and shook it.

  His dad laughed. “Well... you pee on it.”

  Will dropped it like a hot potato. “You what? That’s really gross! You could have warned me before I touched it!”

  She laughed as he went to wash his hands in the sink.

  “So... it’s real? I mean, you’re really going to have a baby?” he asked. “I thought you couldn’t?”

  His mom shrugged. “Well, the doctor thought I couldn’t. But miracles can happen.”

  After they all shared a celebratory bowl of ice cream, Will went to his room to read. But he couldn’t concentrate.

  They thought they couldn’t have children. They’d adopted him. And now, not two months after he’d legally become a Darcy, they were going to have a child of their own after all.

  Would they want the name back? If the baby was a boy, maybe they’d want him to be Fitzwilliam. He’d be the one who actually had Fitzwilliam genes, after all.

  Will was theirs now. They couldn’t send him back into foster care. And they wouldn’t, he knew. They were wonderful people, the best people they knew.

  But would they regret, if in just some small amount, that they had adopted him when they thought they had no choice?

  The knock on his door came just a bit before dinner. He wasn’t surprised when his dad came in. His dad was always good at telling when Will was feeling out of sorts or grumpy, just like Lizzy had once been.

  “Will,” his dad said. “I wanted to talk to you about the new baby.”

  Will nodded and sat on the edge of his bed. His dad sat next to him.

  “It occurred to me that you might be, well, a bit worried about what your place will be with a new baby around. I’m sure every teenager whose parents are suddenly expecting a new baby would feel like that, but there’s a further complication in your case, isn’t there?”

  He nodded. “Since you just adopted me.” He looked down at the bedspread and fingered a loose thread.

  “Right. So, it occurred to me that I’d better make something clear.” He cleared his throat. “Will, if we’d already had a baby when we met you, we would have adopted you all the same.

  Will’s eyes flew open and met his father’s. “What? Why?”

  “Because we cared for you. About ten minutes after I met you, I knew we had something special. When we were certified for foster care, my first thought was thankfulness that we’d be available if anything happened with your mom. We’d heard that she’d done some time for drug possession and that you’d gone into foster care, and we wanted to help if that happened again.”

  His dad grabbed Will’s hand. “Will, we’ve longed to have a baby for years. And I won’t lie, we’re excited that we get to experience pregnancy and childbirth and toddlerhood and all those early kid years. And we’re sad that we missed those years with you. But just because we missed those years with you doesn’t make you any less our son. We love you, and we’ll love you all the same once you’re a big brother.”

  Will nodded. He knew his parents thought that, at least. But once the baby came, would they still? Babies were small and cute, and they had their father’s nose and their mother’s eyes and things like that. He’d never have his father’s nose or look anything like him.

  He accepted the hug from his dad, but inside his stomach was churning.

  September 2003

  “What if we had the sword fight on horseback? It would be totally epic!” Richard pretended to gallop while waving his wooden sword wildly. “Like jousting.”

  Will shook his head. “I’m pretty sure my dad would kill me if we tried sword fighting on horseback.”

  Richard sighed. “It would be like polo, but way better. Hey, maybe your dad will make us those long jousting swords, and we could set up rings. They actually do that stuff in Maryland.”

  “Maryland?” Why in the world would people do that in Maryland?

  “Yeah, jousting is the state sport.”

  Will guffawed. What, was literally every other sport in the entire world already taken by another state? “Y
ou’re joking, right?”

  “Nope.” Richard looked triumphant.

  Will had a momentary fantasy of training one of the horses to ride under outbuildings and scrape riders off against the low eaves, the way the horse had in Caddie Woodlawn, then encouraging Richard to ride it. Or better yet, rope Richard in on the prank and do it to Edward, who definitely deserved it.

  If only he knew more about training horses. As a new rider himself, he’d be the one most likely to get scraped off. Or knocked off by a lance, if Richard succeeded in getting Dad to let them.

  “There’s no way Dad would let us do that. The horses might get hurt.”

  Richard sighed. “Guess we have to fight on foot, then. You be the Red Knight, and I’ll be Sir Gareth.”

  Richard had been Sir Gareth last time, Sir Agravaine the time before that, and Sir Lancelot before that. It didn’t matter, though. It was fun to play, even if Will usually ended up playing the evil knight.

  “How’s school?” Richard asked, swinging his sword wildly at Will with both hands.

  Will jumped back. “Did Mom put you up to asking?”

  Richard swung again and caught Will’s arm this time. “Nah, just wanted to make sure my threats worked.”

  Will started his slash as if he was going for Richard’s arm, but at the last minute he yanked it downward and got a hit in on Richard’s thigh.

  “Sh—crap!” Richard said, dancing away from Will and hopping on one foot a few times. “Dang, that hurt.”

  “Want to stop?” Will asked, dropping his sword to his side.

  “Not a chance,” Richard said, lunging. Will dodged out of the way just in time.

  “What threats?” Will said.

  “This would be a lot better on horseback,” Richard said. He darted away and ran halfway up their favorite rock pile. “I have the high ground!” He swung the sword a few times. “I told the guys they’d better leave you alone, you know?”

  Will tried a lunge and missed. It had been a strategic error to let Richard have the high ground. Despite the chill to the air, sweat was dripping into his eyes and making it hard to see, but he didn’t dare try to wipe his face. Richard would probably behead him if he made the attempt.