“If not now, then when are we going to tell them?” he’d asked with some visible anguish.
“You don’t know my parents like I do,” I’d told him. “I’ll know when it’s time.”
“It must get lonely out here… all by your lonesome,” Mom says after several hours of small talk and tours of the house and property, all of us now sitting in the large living room drinking coffee before they head back to Seattle.
“I’m close enough to town,” Luke says with a smile. “And I head back and forth to Seattle a good bit.”
“Oh, I bet you do,” Mom says with a bat of her long eyelashes.
Inwardly I cringe because I think my mother is actually flirting with Luke, something she’s well versed in. She’s tall and beautiful, her salon-colored hair the same tone as mine, classically cut at her shoulders. As her daughter, I can admit she’s taken very good care of her body, though I can’t vouch for how well her liver is with all the alcohol she consumes. She uses her looks to get the upper hand as much as she can, though I think what she’s doing with Luke is more grounded in pleasure—how can I blame her considering how handsome he is?
“You’ll have to phone us the next time you do,” Dad tells him. “Perhaps we could meet for dinner or drinks if our schedules allow.” He looks imposing with his height, hard eyes and hair he slicks back even when he’s not at work.
“I’d like that,” Luke says, throwing a smile my way.
“And this quaint little shop you’ve been working at… The Nut Monger.” Mom laughs, then goes on laughing at some inner joke that the rest of us just smile at.
“We stopped in before we came here,” Dad says.
“Oh?” I’d kept putting off talking to Rhonda after she fired me, and I’m seized with a fear she might have thrown me under the bus if my parents mentioned me.
“We bought some things,” Mom says, her laughter under control. “Gourmet and artisan… some of them will make nice gifts for the family come Christmas.”
“The nut cheeses were especially good,” Dad says before his expression falls flat. “And damn if we didn’t leave them out in the car when it’s nearly ninety degrees out!”
“Well, there goes those,” Mom says with a lift of her shoulder. “Maybe we’ll pop back in and get replacements on our way out. Nice enough woman who owns the place. She had nice things to say about you.”
I ease at that revelation.
“Said you’d been a model employee,” Dad adds in with a wink. “But I certainly hope you won’t get any ideas and decide to become a service worker full time.” There is a real look of concern etched on Dad’s face, a horror that I might continue to disappoint my parents, might decide to give up college and work in customer service.
“No, Dad, it was just a summer job, but I really enjoyed it.”
“And we’ve enjoyed having her here,” Luke chimes in, looking as though he wants to say so much more.
“Seriously,” Danielle adds. “It’s been amazing having her—she’s like my sister now.”
I smile in gratitude and feel myself blushing. I’m so thankful things have worked out with Danielle, that she didn’t stay mad at me forever and that we have indeed become like sisters.
“Well, I suppose we should be getting back,” Mom says, setting her coffee cup on the table and standing.
“I do have some work to catch up on at the office,” Dad agrees, getting on his feet.
“I’ll come home in three weeks for a visit,” I tell them, actually having enjoyed seeing them but anxious for them to leave and knowing that I’ll have three more weeks to decide when and how to tell them about Luke and me and the baby.
“And I can drive her,” Danielle volunteers.
“You know, she would have gotten a Benz if she’d gone to Harvard or Yale or any of the other schools we wanted her in,” Mom says, lightly shaking her head. “Can you imagine turning down a Mercedes so she could go to WSU?”
“Well, I’m glad she did,” Danielle says, threading her arm through mine. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have ever met her!”
“True enough,” Dad says, never having been quite as strict as Mom. “But perhaps there’s a Ford or a Honda in your near future, sweetheart.”
Mom puckers her lips and shakes her head, then picks her purse up from the couch and checks inside it like she’s looking for a lost piece of gum.
“It’s been really nice meeting the both of you,” Luke tells them as they prepare to leave. “We’ll make sure Claudia gets settled in at Central okay.”
I’m still not sure how I’ll explain settling into a house and not a dorm room at CWU, a house Luke and I will be sharing.
“Phil, did you pick my phone up?” Mom asks my dad, fishing around in her purse again while offering me a kiss on the cheek and a light hug.
“No, dear. Did you leave it in the car?”
She shakes her head. “No, because I was showing Claudia some pictures from Florida and—oh, I know. It’s upstairs in your bedroom,” she says, looking at me. “I’ll be just a moment.”
Yes, that’s likely where it is. I’d shown Mom Danielle’s suite and the guest room I’d actually only stayed in for a few weeks before I started sleeping with Luke. I’d moved a few more of my things back in there just to make it look lived in, and we’d sat on my bed, a rare moment of closeness in which she showed me some pictures from Florida. There were pictures of Mom, Dad and the boys on a yacht, some of them sail boating, snorkeling and then pictures of the soulless beach house that was just as ugly as our house in Seattle, one big, cold rectangular block that even the Florida sunshine likely couldn’t warm.
We’d gotten sidetracked when Danielle had called for us to come and look at some deer grazing just below her window. Mom had been impressed for about half a second before she’d said, “God, they look filthy.”
And then we’d all gone downstairs.
“You do deserve a vehicle for staying in school,” Dad tells me while we await Mom’s return. “It can’t be a Mercedes for the aforementioned reason, but an equivalent to the school you’ve chosen.”
“Thank you, Dad,” I say, knowing any car at all is a hell of a lot more than a lot of daughters would get. But once they find out about Luke, I’m pretty sure that offer will disappear.
When I catch Mom coming back down the stairs, I’m first relieved because it’s actually kind of hard lying, even to them, and I’m anxious to get this charade over with. But when I take another look, see the strained expression on Mom’s face and the fire in her eyes, I know something has gone horribly wrong. I look over to Luke, and he sees it too.
And then I know exactly what it is.
“What… the hell… is this?” At the bottom of the stairs, Mom holds up my ultrasound, the one I’d tucked between my books, the one she must have spied when she was looking for her phone.
All at once, I’m trying to come up with a million different lies, to say it isn’t mine or that I’d had an abortion or that it was just some stupid thing online you could do and print one out. But I wouldn’t be able to convince them of any of that even if I tried.
“What is that?” Dad’s brows furrow, and he walks toward his wife.
“It’s an ultrasound, Phil. And it has our daughter’s name on it!” She’s visibly shaking.
Dad turns to me, aghast. “You’re pregnant, Claudia?”
I turn to Luke, and he steps forward, but I put a hand out to stop him.
“I’m sorry. I’ll take care of it,” I tell my parents. In this moment, I know saying that will be the only thing that will appease them, even if it’s a lie, even if I have no intention at all of getting an abortion.
“You’re damn right you will,” Mom hisses. “What kind of low-rent townie did you hook up with, Claudia? Don’t you know anything about birth control?”
“Dear.” Dad holds her back as she starts toward me, like she wants to do me physical harm.
“Please don’t speak to her like that,” Luke says, steppi
ng forward and putting his arm around me.
“Luke… don’t.”
But it’s too late. There’s no turning back.
Realization floods the eyes of my parents all at once, followed by disgust and a seething anger just ready to explode.
“You’re having sex with my daughter?” Dad comes toward Luke, furious.
“I love your daughter.” Luke stands firm, holding even tighter to me.
Dad’s face crumples. “Love?” Then he looks at me like this has to be some horrible joke. “You are nineteen… a child. You have no clue what love is!”
“I think she does,” Danielle chimes in.
“How long!” Mom demands, joining my father. “How long have you been fucking her?”
“I’ve asked her to marry me,” Luke says, ignoring the crudeness of my mother’s question. “She’s agreed, and I have every intention of providing for her and this child and making sure she finishes school.”
Mom is appalled. “This is why you want to go to that filthy hick college, to be closer to him?”
“I love him,” I tell her, standing just as firm and tall as Luke is, not willing to back down, his proximity to me giving me strength. “I’m still going to get my degree.”
“Oh, like hell you’re going to do this.” I’m not sure if Dad is saying this to Luke or myself or just to both of us.
“We should have known. We should have known, Phil,” Mom looks at my dad with desperation.
“It was a mistake allowing you to stay here,” Dad agrees. “We trusted you and were willing to look past certain things.”
Luke steps forward, as if wanting to put himself between my parents and I. “Being a father, I understand your anger one-hundred percent, but please don’t take this out on Claudia and please give this some time to settle in.” He turns to look at me briefly, a look of determination and love. “But I genuinely love her, and I’ll do anything in my power—”
“Do you love her as much as you love your ex-wife?” Mom snarls, cutting right through his words.
He’s taken aback. “You know about… Isabelle?”
She lets out an annoyed breath. “Do we know about her?” She looks up to my father. “Phil, he’s asking if we know about his ex-wife?”
“Of course we know,” Dad growls. “You think we’d allow our daughter to be here without doing some research on who she was staying with?”
I move to Luke’s side, wanting to present a united front, not wanting them to tear him down all because of me.
“Claudia and I have already talked about Isabelle,” Luke says, his jaw ticking, his voice pressured, but he’s trying to remain calm. “She knows everything.”
Mom opens her mouth and lets out a quick, strangled kind of giggle. “So, she knows that your ex-wife, Isabelle Prescott, has been in and out of psychiatric and alcohol treatment facilities for most of her adult life? Does she know you still see her, that you had a son and that this son was killed in an apparent—”
“Don’t you dare talk about him!” Luke moves forward, and for a moment I think he might strike my mother.
And she cowers. Beyond her venomous words, she fears him. But she doesn’t know him like I do. He’s angry, but he’d never hit her.
“As if we’d let our daughter have a child with you, a man who keeps such close company with a woman who is responsible for the death of your son?” Dad barrels on, unmoved by Luke’s request to keep Brandon out of this.
“Dad… it’s not like that at all.” I’m angry and emotional. I want to cry. I want to tell them to shut up. I just want for them to leave us alone.
“And he’s apparently got violent tendencies,” Mom hisses, not about to remain quiet. “We aren’t allowing you to stay with him, Claudia. You’re coming home with us.”
“You aren’t taking her.” There is so much authority in Luke’s voice that I think my parents would be foolish not to listen to him. “She’s staying with me and Danielle, and if you pull her funds for college, then I’ll just replace them.”
Mom laughs. “Who the hell do you think you are? She’s our child. And here you are, some older man forcing her to have your baby like she’s a breeding heffer!”
“That is not it at all!”
“Mom… please, stop.”
“Your mother is right. You’re coming with us.” Dad moves as if to grab me.
“I’m not,” I insist, holding on to Luke’s arm like a life preserver.
There is silence in the room for a few moments, the kind of silence that comes when there is an impasse, when nobody is willing to budge. This is not the way I’d have ever wanted my parents to find out, but they know now, and I feel safe enough with Luke to remain here and hope that time will heal the wounds that have been inflicted today.
“You really do love him?” Mom asks me, and I think maybe he and I are winning, that like Mom caving on Florida, she’s about to cave on this too.
“I do. I’ve never felt about anyone the way I feel about him, and he’s good to me and protects me. I know it’s difficult to accept, but isn’t knowing how much we love one another enough?”
Dad sighs, and maybe he’s getting on board too.
“This is what you believe now,” Mom tells me, any kindness I thought I heard now slipping out of her voice. “But in a year or two, you’ll realize how silly this was, and then you’ll be saddled with a child, without a college degree and a heart torn in two—I’ve seen it happen to people too many times to count.”
“That’s bullshit,” Luke says, that anger brewing in him again.
Mom steps around him and takes my hand, the one I’m not clutching onto Luke with. “It is a mother’s job to give her child all the best things and opportunities in life. I have not shirked this duty, even if you’ve made choices to accept less than what you are capable of and quite frankly entitled to.
“This man wants you because you’re beautiful and young and full of life and spirit, but in ten years, do you think he’ll feel the same way? No, he’ll be off fucking some firm eighteen-year-old that—”
“You can shut up now,” Luke tells her, literally pulling me away from her. “You have no idea what I feel or what I want or what I’m capable of. The fact is that I love your daughter and will go on loving her for as long as she’ll let me.”
Mom throws an annoyed glance his way before turning back to me. “We’ll find a way to destroy him, Claudia,” she tells me like she’s the villain of some procedural TV show. “If you won’t listen to reason, I’ll use the full power of our law firm to ruin this man.”
“With slander? Go ahead and try,” Luke dares her.
“Luke…” I stroke his arm, not wanting to let go but beginning to feel like I’ll have to. This is what I’d been afraid of deep down, that my parents would find a way to peel us apart.
“I know better than to get tangled up in slander,” Mom tells him. “And lawsuits can be pesky, take a lot of digging and resources, but believe me, we’ll dig. We’ll find something.”
As if knowing this could cause me to waver, Luke turns to me, puts his hands on my shoulders and looks me dead in the eyes. “Don’t listen to them. I’ll weather whatever storm they put into motion. You, Dani and this baby are what are most important to me, Claudia… not my business or my money.”
“Of course he’d say that,” Mom puts in. “But without money, how can he take care of you?”
“It’s always money with you,” I snap, emotion and anger tangling together. I wonder if my parents even actually love one another or if they even love me. Control is not love.
“It’s about pride and living to your full potential,” Dad says like it’s the easiest thing in the world to see. “And what kind of role model would you be for Cory or Kyle, getting pregnant at nineteen and shacking up with a man nearly twice your age?”
And there it is. Him just mentioning my brothers’ names makes my blood run cold. I look into Luke’s eyes, a little desperately, and he sees it because he’s afrai
d now, afraid he’s going to lose me.
“We can keep them away from you,” Mom tells me, smirking like she and Dad had just set the perfect trap. “They won’t be eighteen for another three years, and that’s a long time not to see their older sister. It’s a long time to dig deeper into a person’s background, to find things that could ruin a career. How many women have you slept with Luke? Were all of them consensual or—”
I pull away from Luke. “I’ll go with you,” I tell my parents, closing my eyes because I can’t let myself see the look on Luke’s face.
“The hell you will,” he says, grabbing back onto me. “I’ll protect you. I’ll—”
“No,” I tell him, forcing myself to look at him, at his gorgeous face and into those eyes… those eyes that are filled with dread and anguish. “If you love me, you’ll let me go, just for now. It will only be for a little while.”
My parents surely have other ideas, but they remain silent, knowing how close they are to winning, and like the lawyers that they are, not wanting to do anything to ruin it.
“Don’t do this,” Luke begs me, holding tight to me. “This is exactly what they want… and it’s my baby too. I have a right to be here for you.”
“Daddy… you have to let her go.” It’s Danielle who had been so quiet during all of this that comes to his side. “We’ll get her back,” she whispers. “But just for now.”
“She’s right,” I tell him, trying to be strong but not able to keep the tears from forming. Taking his hands, I say, “They just need some time to calm down, and they will. This is just like when I wouldn’t go to Yale.” I sniff and try to laugh. “I have to go.”
Luke’s eyes go dark, and he hardens, only nodding that he understands what I’m telling him even if I know he doesn’t believe it.
“We’ll wait for you to get your things,” Mom says, her chin held high. “Outside of course. We’ll be by the car, so don’t be long.”
The Years Between Us Page 24
