A Little Bit Engaged

by Teresa Hill

  Shannon nodded slowly.

  “If you’re looking for money, you can take your chances with my husband and his lawyers, but I doubt you’ll get far. If you really are pregnant—” she glanced pointedly at Shannon’s mid-section, now protected by Shannon’s own arms “—the first thing we’ll insist on is a DNA test, so you might want to rethink your plan or whether you actually know who the father of this baby is.”

  “Is it true?” Her father jumped in. “You were stupid enough to let yourself get pregnant?”

  Shannon started shaking. She didn’t want anything from Paul or his family, not like this, but her father was standing right in front of her, too. She had no idea what he might do, once she admitted she was pregnant.

  Her chin came up, and she tried as best she could to look like someone who didn’t care about anything. “I guess I’ll just have to rethink my plan.”

  Mrs. Bradshaw smiled, thinking she’d scared Shannon into admitting a lie. “I thought you’d see it my way. I trust we won’t hear anything else from you?”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “Good.” She nodded dismissively at Shannon’s father and then left.

  Shannon’s father’s face had turned a blotchy red. He’d probably been drinking again. She wondered how much?

  “So?” he growled. “What’s the story? You pregnant?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  He swore long and loud. “Is that snotty old witch’s boy the father?”

  “Does it matter?” Shannon asked.

  “Do you even know who the father is?”

  Shannon glared at him, refusing to allow anything he said to hurt her.

  “Just like your mother,” he said. “I’d be surprised if she knew for sure you were my daughter.”

  “You’d probably have denied it, if I hadn’t come with a social security check every month, right?” It wasn’t much, but it was all they had sometimes.

  Her father swore once again and for a minute, she thought he was going to hit her. A part of her wanted to goad him into it.

  “Never mind,” he said. “Just get out.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Get out. I’m done with you. I’m not having you and your brat in this house. I’d never get any peace, and I’m not paying for a baby.”

  “But…where am I supposed to go?”

  He laughed. “Shoulda thought of that before you got yourself knocked up.”

  He practically shoved her out the door, with nothing but her school backpack, shoved her back into the dark and the cold and the rain.

  Of all the situations Shannon had imagined when he found out, this wasn’t one of them. She thought he’d yell, maybe knock her around a little bit, but mostly she’d thought he really wouldn’t care, that he’d ignore her the way he’d always done, and she’d be in this all by herself.

  She never thought she’d be out on the streets.

  She was so shocked at first, she just stood there, not knowing what to do. The rain fell down upon her, mixing with her tears.

  She looked up the street and down. She didn’t have anyplace to go. There had been friends, pretty good kids, before her grandmother died, but their parents hadn’t appreciated Shannon’s turn to the dark side—her stupid hair, the piercings and the tough-girl mouth she’d adopted to go along with the look. She was no longer welcome in a lot of places, where at one time she’d have gone for help.

  She started to walk, then saw the church where she’d actually believed for a moment that someone—maybe even God—was going to help her. Shannon laughed until she cried some more, and then she stormed up to the front of the church, yanked on the door and got nowhere. It was locked up tight.

  “Ahhh!” she screamed, frustration building even higher.

  As she turned to go, she nearly tripped and fell over a crumpled piece of sidewalk. Fury swelled up inside of her until she picked up the concrete and hurled it in the direction of the church. It made a thoroughly satisfying thump when it hit the door. She liked it so much, she picked it up and threw it again and again and again, until it crumbled up to almost nothing.

  “You’re really helping me now, aren’t you?” she screamed at the door.

  She found something else to throw. It shattered against the door, just as it opened, narrowly missing the head that popped out.

  “Hey?” a man’s voice called out. “Watch it!”

  She recognized that voice. Shannon thought about running, but she was too mad. Some of the blame for this was his, and she intended to tell him about it.

  “Shannon?” He stepped outside and stared at her through the darkness. “What are you doing?”

  “What am I doing? What are you doing? Telling people you’ll help them? That God will? What a crock!”

  “What happened?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Everything’s wrong.” Her voice broke, and she started sobbing. “I thought you were going to help! You and your church and your God. I really believed that for all of a day. I thought things were going to get better!”

  “Okay, you need to calm down and come inside and tell me what’s wrong. I’ll help. I promise.”

  “No one’s going to help me,” she said.

  “I will. Just give me a chance—”

  “I’m all out of chances. There’s no point in even trying. Everyone leaves. Everyone dies. Everyone disappoints you. Everything hurts—”

  “Sometimes,” he said softly. “Sometimes it does. But it won’t always be that way. I promise.”

  She laughed bitterly. “You don’t know that. You can’t possibly know.”

  “Just come inside,” he said. “Get out of the rain. Get warm. I’ll get you something to eat. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go. Please—”

  “There’s nowhere to go,” she cried.

  And then she turned and ran.

  “So, how did it go?” Charlotte Sims asked when Kate picked up her cell phone and answered the call as she drove home.

  “It was interesting,” Kate said.

  Charlotte laughed. “Don’t let the look put you off. Until about eight months ago, Shannon was a fairly normal teenager, if there is such a thing. It’s all in her file. I’ll have someone drop it by for you tomorrow. Kate, you should know, I have about a hundred kids on the waiting list for big brothers or sisters right now. I moved Shannon to the top because two people made an urgent request on her behalf. They’re very worried about her.”

  So, where were they? Kate pulled into her driveway and shut off the car, not knowing what to say.

  “Look, it was just a first meeting,” Charlotte said.

  “I know.” Kate got out of the car and walked in through the garage door.

  “You probably did more good than you realize this afternoon.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Kate said, walking into her kitchen and finding her fiancé sipping a cup of coffee with her sister.

  She stopped abruptly, had actually forgotten that she’d told him they had to talk about something important and that he was supposed to be back in town today. Just what she needed. A conversation with someone else who she suspected really didn’t want to talk to her.

  “Charlotte, I have to go,” Kate said.

  They said goodbye. Kate snapped her phone closed and put it down on the counter, along with her keys and her satchel. She was about to say something when her mother’s dog, Romeo, a gorgeous Australian shepherd, and the new love of Romeo’s life, a white poodle-like thing named Petunia, rushed to greet her.

  She bent down to fuss over Romeo, because he expected it, and then to pick up Petunia and hug her for a minute. They both gave her big smiles, and Petunia wanted to kiss her, but Kate fended her off. Her brother took care of Romeo, now that their mother was gone, and Petunia belonged to his fiancée. If anyone tried to separate them for too long, Romeo cried like a baby.

  “Hi.” Kate gave her sister a panicked look. “We’re dog-sitting?”

  Kathie nodded. “
Jax is pulling a double shift, and Gwen’s visiting her mother. And…I’m going to my room.”

  Petunia started to trot after her, but stopped when Romeo didn’t follow. She looked unhappy not to have his full attention, which she was used to. Romeo stayed in the kitchen, as if he knew something was up. Joe looked as though he did, too.

  Kate couldn’t put off facing him any longer. She offered him her cheek. He kissed her briefly and impersonally, as if she’d seen him a few hours ago and not nearly a week ago. His coat was thrown over a nearby chair and his bag was on the floor beside it. “You came straight from the airport?”

  “Yes.” He stood awkwardly, looking as if he was a stranger instead of a man she’d known for more than five years and been engaged to for a year and a half.

  Kate made a cup of hot tea to give herself something to do, thinking, as the silence descended between them, that she and Joe really didn’t have much to say to each other. Surely at one time she’d loved him. He’d seemed perfect for her. As serious and sensible and hardworking as she was—a calm, steady, dependable man who seemed to want exactly the same things she did in life.

  Where had that gone?

  And it should hurt, to think that it was all gone, shouldn’t it? Kate tried to look inside of herself and find the hurt, because she’d been accused of not really letting herself feel anything, of shielding herself as best she could from most everything, and the idea that she was like that had certainly hurt.

  But losing Joe, here and now? Did that hurt?

  It certainly wasn’t pleasant. But she wasn’t devastated, either, and suddenly the thing she needed to do seemed perfectly clear.

  She put a hand on Romeo’s furry head, to steady herself, and said, “Joe, you don’t want to marry me anymore, do you?”

  He looked startled.

  And, she would swear, incredibly relieved.

  He tried to cover it quickly, but she’d already seen it.

  So, she’d been right.

  That hurt, too. She felt as if she’d failed in some way—that there’d been love between them and they’d lost it. Maybe Kate had lost it. Kate, who had trouble allowing herself to feel anything.

  “Do you still want to marry me?” Joe asked quietly.

  Fine. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to spare her feelings or was just too honorable to go back on the promise he’d made. So she’d say it for him.

  “I don’t think I do,” she said, twisting the ring he’d given her off her finger and holding it out to him. Romeo pressed closer to her side and made a crying sound, the one Kate wouldn’t allow herself to make.

  “No,” Joe said, gallant to the end. “Keep it.”

  “Really, no. Besides, I have one of my mother’s rings that won’t fit any other finger but this one, and I haven’t been able to wear it. Now I can,” she said stupidly. As if she’d break an engagement so she could wear the ring her father had once given her mother. “Please, just take it.”

  Joe did, pocketing it and then looking up at her once more. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too,” she said, willing herself to leave it like that, but she just couldn’t. “Did I do something?”

  “No. It’s not you. It’s me. I mean…”

  Obviously, he’d just remembered that he hadn’t broken it off, she had, and looked horrified at what he’d just given away.

  “You just don’t love me anymore?” she asked, fighting the urge to sink down to the floor and put her arms around the dog, whom she knew still loved her. Did love between a man and woman just fade away? It seemed as though people would be able to point to an event or a time and say, There. That’s when we lost it. We had it here, and then we got there, and it was just gone.

  “I care about you,” he said. “I always will.”

  “But you don’t love me?” Voices came to her, her own inside her head, filling in with the words he would not say. That she was cold, unfeeling. That she expected too much from people. That she tried too hard to be perfect herself, and who wanted to live with someone like that?

  Of course, Joe wasn’t exactly the life of the party, and he would never wear his emotions on his sleeve. They were alike in so many things.

  She needed to understand what went wrong. Understanding meant you’d learned something, and learning meant that maybe next time, you’d do things differently. You’d be smarter and better prepared and maybe successful, if wise decisions and preparation and careful thinking worked in love. The problem was, she didn’t think they did.

  “I don’t think what we feel for each other is strong enough to get us through the things couples face in a marriage,” Joe said. “Do you?”

  “No.” But she still didn’t understand why. A silly thought flitted through her head. A ridiculous thought. Not Joe. “You didn’t meet someone else, did you?”

  And he looked even more guilty than before.

  Kate gaped at him.

  Romeo growled.

  Joe hung his head. “Nothing happened, Kate. I swear.”

  Romeo growled once again, outraged it seemed.

  “What does that mean?” Kate asked, trying to shush the dog with a hand on his head. “That you met someone—”

  “Yes,” he whispered. “I didn’t go looking for this, Kate. Please believe me when I say that. I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  “Okay.” Oddly enough, she believed that. Joe looked as shocked about the whole thing as she felt. “So, this woman…”

  “She was just there. I…In front of me. And…nothing’s happened between us, I swear, but—”

  “You wish it had,” she finished for him.

  “Yes.”

  “More than you want to be married to me?”

  “I can’t be married to you and feel this way about another woman. I can’t be engaged to you and feel this way about anyone else. It’s not fair, and I’m sorry I let this go on as long as I did. I kept thinking it would just go away. That maybe I had cold feet or something, and I’d come to my senses. I swear, Kate, sometimes I think I’ve lost my mind.”

  Wow. Joe, crazy in love? It was hard to imagine. He’d certainly never felt that way about her. In fact, she’d been relieved, mostly, that theirs had never been a crazy-in-love kind of thing.

  That would have scared her, no doubt. The fact that it had never been crazy was probably the only reason she’d been able to let herself love him. Or think she was in love with him.

  Nothing too messy or emotional for Kate.

  She wondered if her mother had known, if this was why she’d insisted they not rush their wedding so she could see them married before she died.

  Kate would have liked her mother to have seen her married. She’d have liked her mother to be here right now, so Kate could pour out her troubles, and her mother could hold her and say all the right things, and make Kate feel better.

  But there was no mother.

  And now, there was no fiancé.

  “I’m sorry, Kate.” Joe leaned down and kissed her one more time. “I wish there was something I could do to make this easier for you.”

  She shrugged. “If you figure out how this works? The crazy-in-love part? Let me know.”

  That was Kate.

  More worried about analyzing than feeling.

  No wondered Joe didn’t love her.

  Chapter Six

  Ben found Betty’s number in the church directory. She hadn’t seen Shannon, but promised to call if she showed up. Betty offered to call a few friends Shannon might turn to for help. Ben checked out a few teenage hangouts, a local coffeehouse, a secluded parking lot near the falls, an old-fashioned drive-in restaurant, finding nothing. From the restaurant parking lot, he called Betty back. She had no ideas left, except Charlotte Sims’s home phone number.

  Ben called from the car. “Look, I know it’s a long shot,” he said, “but have you by any chance matched Shannon up with a big sister yet?”

  “Yes,” Charlotte said.

  “Have they met?”

&nbs
p; “This afternoon,” Charlotte said. “What’s wrong?”

  “I need to find Shannon. She was throwing rocks at the front door of my church tonight, screaming at me and God, saying there was no one who could help her and that she had nowhere to go, right before she ran off into the rain. I have to find her. I want to check with her big sister, just in case Shannon turned to her.”

  “Oh, my. I paired her up with Kate Cassidy.”

  Kate?

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because you said she really needed help, and someone I trust who knows Kate told me she could handle anything. I did what was best for the girl.”

  Okay.

  Ben hadn’t even tried to explain himself to Kate. She’d looked so shocked and so angry, and he’d thought he deserved having her think the worst of him and that they’d probably never see each other again, anyway.

  “She’s a reasonable woman, Pastor. She’ll listen to you,” Charlotte said. “Besides, you have a mutual goal. You both want to help Shannon.”

  “I don’t suppose you could tell me how to get in touch with Kate?” he asked, and just like that, he had her address and her phone number, the thing he’d wanted so badly when he’d first met her.

  Now he was afraid to call.

  Shannon wandered around for what felt like forever, especially in the cold rain, but was probably only about an hour.

  Ms. Williams would take her in, but everybody knew about the trouble the assistant principal had made for her last year when she’d gotten caught taking in another one of her students who’d run away from home. Over the years, she’d probably fed and housed more teenagers than a runaway shelter, but the parents of the last kid hadn’t know where he was for a few days, and they’d made a stink about it. When the school found out, they’d threatened to fire her if she did it again, and there was no way Shannon was going to risk getting her fired. She was the only adult who was even halfway nice to Shannon anymore.

  Shannon went through her pockets, one by one, coming up with nothing but a black lipstick, eighteen cents and a business card with Kate Cassidy’s phone number.

  She frowned at the number, rain dripping stubbornly upon it. She could try to find Paul, just to make his mother even madder, but they lived on the other side of town. It was late. She was cold and tired and maybe even hungry.