A Weekend Getaway

by Karen Lenfestey

  After a hug, Sarah excused herself. Stalling, Beth watched her go until she disappeared up the massive staircase.

  Beth stared at the room number mounted on Parker’s door. 267. She swallowed and squeezed her forehead. Finally, she could procrastinate no longer. She raised her hand and knocked.

  Silence.

  Where would he be if not here? She knocked again, louder. “Parker? It’s me, Bethany.” Wiping her damp palms on her slacks, she heard approaching footsteps, then the door opened.

  Parker held a glass of red wine in his trembling hand. “I didn’t mean to ruin the banquet for everyone. I imagined my words would inspire people to live like each day might be their last, but instead. . . .”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Shadows rested beneath his brown eyes. “It is what it is. I just need to be alone.”

  “I have something I need to tell you.”

  He stood there as if she should blurt it out in the doorway, then leave.

  She shuffled her feet, looking at her black flats. “You’ll want to sit down for this. Trust me. I wouldn’t be here now except that we’re all going home tomorrow and this has to be said.”

  He opened the door wider and ushered her inside. She sat down in the only chair and he sat on the edge of the antique bed.

  She nervously tucked her hair behind her ears. “Is it true that children of someone with Huntington’s have a fifty percent chance of having it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there any treatment if you catch it early?” The internet hadn’t been too promising, but maybe Parker was up on the latest research.

  He shook his head and gulped some wine.

  “Would you have lived your life any differently if you had known?”

  He finished off his glass. “I always knew there was a chance I had it, but I’m still regretful about things. I should’ve volunteered more. I should’ve gone to Haiti after the earthquake. I should’ve spent more time doing things that mattered.”

  “Would you be happier if you didn’t know?”

  “Ignorance is bliss.” He chuckled and poured more wine. “Want some?”

  She shook her head and took a deep breath. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about your grandfather?”

  “No one wants to hear about an incurable disease.”

  “I did,” she whispered.

  “Besides, you knew he died young and I inherited money from him. That’s how I paid for college.”

  But she’d never bothered to ask how he’d died. Now her daughter would pay the price. “If you had a child, would you tell him or her?”

  “It would be hard to keep it a secret.”

  She pressed on her temples. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She didn’t want to say it. She wasn’t sure how he’d react. At twenty, he probably would’ve appreciated her willingness to handle the pregnancy on her own. At thirty-something, facing his own mortality, he might suddenly envision himself as Super Dad—denied.

  Just then the door handle jiggled and Ivy sashayed in. “I brought some more wine.” When she spotted Beth, an unpleasant expression flashed across her brown eyes. She lowered the bottle in her hand. “What’s going on here?”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “Coming here was a mistake.” Beth lowered her head and made a quick exit from Parker and Ivy’s room.

  After she keyed into her room across the hall, she kicked off her shoes and plopped onto the bed. But she couldn’t remain still. Adrenaline coursed through her veins. She rose and paced.

  She glanced at the door, waiting to see if Parker would knock on it. Was he really going to turn out the lights and go to sleep without asking her what was on her mind? Part of her hoped so and part of her didn’t.

  Leaning down, she rubbed her sore calf. Her nerves spurred her to pace some more. After twenty minutes, she realized that he wasn’t coming. She pulled off her pantsuit, tossed it in her suitcase and climbed under the covers.

  Although hours later she eventually fell asleep, she didn’t get much rest.

  Church bells woke her the next morning. She packed quickly and headed to checkout. As she handed her key to the clerk, she kept looking over her shoulder, afraid she’d see someone she knew: Parker or Ivy or Sarah. She’d decided years ago not to bother Parker with her situation and there was no need to stir up trouble now. It was too late.

  Outside, the leaves applauded softly in the breeze as Beth wheeled her suitcase toward her parking spot. Regret from long ago decisions weighed on her. Last night’s near-confession reignited panic in her chest. She picked up her pace, anxious to get out of town.

  A friendly female voice called out behind her. “Bethany!” She turned and saw Sarah. Her long hair splayed across her black coat, and a turquoise scarf she’d probably knitted herself hung loose around her neck.

  Sarah jogged closer to Beth. “How’d it go last night?”

  Beth gripped the handle of her luggage tighter. “I tried to tell him, but then we got interrupted.”

  “So that was it?” She gave Beth a disappointed look. “I suppose it’s your decision. Are you at least going to let the agency know the new medical information?”

  She nodded. “Of course.” Not that she wanted to re-open that wound, but ethically she had to.

  “Too bad it’s Sunday or we could go over there together.”

  Beth fidgeted, feeling both guilt and relief that Ivy had stopped her from confessing. “Right. Well, it was great to see you. I’ve got to get back home.”

  “Oh, me, too.” Sarah pulled her in and gave her a tight hug. A long lost aunt at a funeral kind of hug. “Let me know if you need anything. Anything at all.”

  “Give my best to your kids. They’re lucky to have a mom like you.” She suspected that Sarah would’ve handled motherhood at eighteen with grace, making the best of things. The thought caused Beth to pull away first.

  On her way out of town, Beth passed the adoption agency, a small office building with an empty parking lot, at the crest of a hill.

  Through the glass door, she could see that it was dark inside. She remembered Sarah holding her hand, walking through that door with the words “Loving Solutions” stenciled on it. Her friend had stayed with her when the counselor with a bad perm confirmed the pregnancy and encouraged her to tell her parents. When Beth said that was not an option, adoption was offered as the next best thing. Beth had already done the math in her head to figure out that she’d be due in the summer, between semesters, meaning adoption was do-able. Adoption made sense.

  Sarah got a job and sublet an apartment so they could stay in town together. She even helped her look at adoptive parents’ profiles and attended the interviews. The couples all wore pained smiles and many discussed how they couldn’t have children of their own. Some thanked Beth for potentially giving them the most precious gift of all. Others showed her pictures of nurseries already painted pink, furnished with cribs and rocking chairs.

  Eventually she’d found the couple that felt right. The Taylors. He was an optometrist and she an elementary school teacher. She would be the kind of mom to draw smiley faces on her kid’s sandwiches in mustard. She would be the kind of mom who’d push her daughter on the swing and sing her lullabies at night. She would be the kind of mom that Beth hoped to be someday.

  And they’d planned on telling the child from the start that Beth had loved her so much she carefully selected the Taylors to raise her.

  They offered pictures and letters and updates, but Beth didn’t want any of that. It would only rip out her heart over and over again. She preferred not to have contact. Until years later.

  The call she assumed would come from her teenage daughter, didn’t, and the letters she’d expected to eventually show up in the mail never came. And that’s when Beth realized she’d been holding her breath. For sixteen years, she’d anticipated some sort of contact. And yet…nothing.

  Maybe the Taylors had div
orced, lost interest in their adopted child, wished they could undo what they’d done. Beth had seen a woman on Dr. Phil once who wanted to give back her adopted child, and she’d thrown a pillow at the screen, acid pooling in her gut. This type of regret was possible. It happened. Maybe it had happened to the Taylors.

  Or maybe it was nothing. Perhaps they were happy. Or perhaps they’d misplaced Beth’s information. After all, she’d moved several times since her freshman year of college. She hadn’t left the state or changed her maiden name, but she supposed that finding her might have been too much of a hassle. Which meant they’d given up. Or never tried.

  Beth exhaled. It all came back to rejection and she knew she deserved it. If the Taylors had been wonderful parents, and of course she hoped that they had been, then her offspring would be totally well-adjusted. Happy with being adopted by such adoring people. That was the ideal scenario.

  The worst was that the Taylors had pulled the wool over Beth’s eyes. They weren’t doting wanna-be parents. They made her baby feel less-than because she didn’t share their DNA.

  A horn blared from behind her Chevy. She jerked the wheel realizing she’d drifted out of her lane and was about to sideswipe a mailbox.

  Refusing to think about her past anymore, Beth cranked up the Top 40s station on the radio and pushed hard on the accelerator. Even with the music blaring, thoughts about her secret baby and the potential fall-out with Parker and Drew gnawed at her. Could she possibly contain the damage once she opened the lid?

  As the miles brought her closer to home, she seemed to distance herself from the past and became focused on the present. She longed to feel Drew’s embrace and be reassured that their union was still intact. But what had he been doing for the past forty-eight hours? He’d never once answered the landline or tried calling her.

  When she finally got to their house with a bay window on one side and a tower on the other, she burst through the front door, anxious to hear where Drew had been all weekend. Captain Kirk squawked, “Hello-hello.”

  “Drew?” No answer. Checking the first floor, she noted that the bathroom toilet no longer appeared to be leaking, but still no Drew. The parrot started making high-pitched squealing noises that were especially annoying.

  Beth marched upstairs, her pulled muscle still a little sore. Anger flooded her when she found her boyfriend in Emma’s room, peeling off the floral wallpaper in oblong strips. He hadn’t gotten very far.

  Turning toward her, his face reddened.

  She planted her hand on her hip. “Where have you been? I tried to call, but you never answered.”

  Fiddling with the putty knife in his hand, his face flushed. “Sorry. It’s a long story. Let me get you a drink and you can tell me about your fun weekend first.” They headed downstairs into the kitchen, where he pulled a pitcher of Crystal Light out of the fridge. Opening an upper cabinet, he searched for a glass, but couldn’t find one. He probably hadn’t run the dishwasher all weekend.

  Sighing, Beth sat at the kitchen table and laced her fingers together tightly. “I don’t want to talk about me. Tell me what happened. You promised to get a bunch of projects done.”

  He poured her sugar-free drink in a coffee cup and took a seat next to her. “My sister called.”

  “Missy strikes again.” She picked up the Healthy Habits Vitamins & Herbs mug, not sure if it was originally hers or his, and took a sip. “What’s wrong now?”

  He tapped on the table, seeming reluctant to share. “She and her boyfriend broke up and she’s quite a mess. I went over to try and console her.”

  “All weekend? She switches boyfriends like she’s changing clothes.” Envy and rage boiled inside her core. Missy got to keep her daughter, but she wasn’t even trying to be a good mom. Missy never put Emma’s needs and wants before her own.

  “I know. The problem is she had been living at his place. So I had to help her find a new apartment and move all of her stuff.”

  Beth put down her cup with a thud. “Instead of spending a romantic weekend with me, you helped your irresponsible sister through another break-up.”

  “If I didn’t help her find something, she’d have no choice but to move in with us.”

  “No choice?” Beth had never asked for someone else to bail her out. When she was younger than Missy, she’d learned to take responsibility for her actions. “Doesn’t she have any friends? Doesn’t she ever have to act like a grown-up and solve her own problems? It seems to me that she has plenty of choices.”

  “Hey, I did what I thought would make you happy. I had to loan her money for a security deposit, which I’m sure I’ll never see again, but I figured that was better than her moving in here.”

  “I should’ve known you gave her money. How much?”

  “A few hundred.” He ran his hand over his coppery hair. “Please don’t give me a hard time about this. I would’ve rather been anywhere but with Missy this weekend.”

  “If you would’ve gone with me to I.U., you would’ve missed her call. What do you think she would’ve done then?”

  He shrugged. “Probably would’ve gone crawling back to her no-good boyfriend. I’m glad they’re over. The place was trashed when I got there—broken dishes and lamps on the floor. She wouldn’t say anything bad about the guy, but I know he did it.”

  “Thank God Emma wasn’t there.” She shivered at the thought. “Where is she? You said you’d pick her up.” Beth thought about how Emma’s strawberry-scented hair tickled her cheek when they hugged. Emma gave the best hugs.

  “Missy wanted Emma to spend the night at her new apartment.”

  Beth shook her head, tired of their lives revolving around Missy’s mistakes. Hating that Emma’s life always would. “Sometimes I can’t believe you and Missy are related. She’s such a...” How could she put it nicely? “...fly-by-the-seat-of-her pants parent. You, on the other hand, would make an excellent dad.”

  “I know what you’re hinting at. We’ll have to wait a while longer—until Missy gets a better job and can find affordable daycare. Until then Emma will still live with us.” He took an apple out of the fruit bowl in front of them. He twisted off the stem but didn’t take a bite.

  “I don’t want to wait. Missy is a mess, but that doesn’t mean we should put our lives on hold.”

  “What kind of mother just gives away her own flesh and blood?” Anger flared in his voice. It wasn’t like him. “I don’t respect her at all.”

  Beth froze. She didn’t know if he was referring to Emma or to the baby Missy placed for adoption without his knowledge, while he was away at college.

  Beth’s mind stuck on her own clandestine adoption—an invisible web that tied her to Parker and Sarah, whether she liked it or not. The secret that she had planned on sharing with Drew, when the time was right. But now, she wondered if the time would ever be right.

  “What kind of mother just gives away her own flesh and blood?” His judgmental words stabbed at her heart. “I don’t respect her at all.” But unlike Missy, Beth had learned from her mistake. She’d finished her degree, worked her way up to middle management, found a faithful man. Yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her one mistake would always haunt her.

  She forced herself to focus on the current dilemma, where Missy road blocked Beth and Drew’s future together. “When I moved in, I assumed we’d eventually take things to the next level. Get married, start a family.”

  “I know. But Emma is our family.”

  “Of course. And I love having her. I’m tortured by the fact that any day her mother will show up and take her away. But by then we may have missed our chance at having our own kids.”

  “Or Missy won’t ever take Emma back and we’ll be the only parents she’ll ever know.”

  “Is that what I’m supposed to hope for?” She’d seen this in him before. Drew, with five years between him and his sister, played the eternal older brother. Protective. Vigilant. Steadfast. Beth pulled on her cuticle, wincing at the pain. “Think
about what you’re doing to us. To me, to Emma. We’re living in limbo.”

  When he didn’t respond, she continued. “We earn enough money to have Emma and a child of our own.”

  Drew put the uneaten apple back in the bowl and sighed. “I can’t make you any promises right now.” He walked around behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Please try to understand.”

  He massaged her tight muscles, and she closed her eyes. She could never resist his back rubs, and today she needed one more than ever.

  After a too-quick massage, he kissed the crown of her head. “I think the Wrath of Khan is on TV. Come watch it with me.”

  Knowing the baby discussion was over, Beth took her cup and sat next to her boyfriend on the couch. But she refused to snuggle.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A few hours later, Beth snuck upstairs, careful to skip the fifth and seventh steps that always creaked. While her boyfriend softly snored in front of the TV, she searched for the phone number of the Loving Solutions Adoption Agency on the office computer. Zero search results. Her heart sped up. Did she mistype it? She tried again. Nothing.

  After closing and locking her bedroom door, Beth dug a box out of her closet that had been shoved in the very back of the top shelf. It was labeled “school” and was heavier than she remembered. Sitting on the floor, she rummaged through her old management textbooks until she found her diaries. They started in sixth grade and stopped her freshman year of college. The last one fell open where she’d tucked the paperwork. Bingo. She scanned the forms for the number.

  Grabbing the phone, she punched in the digits and waited. A recording announced “The number you have reached is no longer in service.”

  Her hands trembled as she hung up the phone. For so long, she’d wished away all memories of that place, and now…now it really had disappeared. Seconds felt like minutes. Had she lost track of the only child she’d ever have?

  What should she do now? After staring into space for a few minutes, she dialed Sarah. “The agency’s gone. I don’t know how to contact...” She couldn’t even say it. Her baby? She wasn’t a baby anymore. If Beth passed her own child on the street, would she even recognize her?