The Wedding

by Danielle Steel

  She sat on his deck afterward for a long time, and it was a beautiful night. She lay against him, as they drank a little wine, and relaxed, and it was after midnight when the phone rang.

  “Don't answer it,” Jeff begged, but she just couldn't. “Someone's either got hemorrhoids or they're in jail. And either way, they're going to expect you to solve it.”

  “I can't help it. It's my job, and maybe they really need me.” But it wasn't a client, it was Sam, and she asked if the next day she and Allegra could spend some time together.

  Allegra was surprised by the call, but not completely. Every now and then, Sam reached out to her, usually when she needed Allegra to convince their parents of something. “Did you have a fight with Mom?” Allegra couldn't help asking with a smile.

  “No, she's too busy screaming at everybody about the garden and the kitchen. It's a wonder she doesn't have a heart attack,” Sam said, unamused. Her mother had been very difficult lately.

  “Not to mention the wedding,” Allegra added.

  “Yeah, I know,” Sam said, sounding more serious again. “Where shall I meet you?”

  “What's this about?” Allegra wanted to know ahead of time. “A modeling contract or something?”

  “Yeah …” Sam said cryptically, “sort of.”

  “I'll pick you up at twelve o'clock. Jeff is having lunch with Tony Jacobson, his coproducer. We'll go someplace fun like The Ivy, or Nate ‘N Al's.”

  “Let's go somewhere and talk,” Sam said quietly, and Allegra smiled at her younger sister.

  “Okay. This sounds serious. It must be love.”

  “It is,” Sam agreed glumly.

  “Well, I'm getting better at that, but actually I think I just got lucky. I'll do what I can.”

  “Thanks, Al,” her sister said, and Allegra reiterated her promise to pick her up at noon on Sunday. She was touched that Sam had called her.

  “Doesn't anyone call us at normal hours?” Jeff complained, as Allegra told him about Sam's call.

  “She sounded upset. She must have a new boyfriend.”

  “At least she's family,” he conceded. That made sense to him at least, a lot more than Malachi O'Donovan calling from some drunk tank.

  “Do you mind my having lunch with her tomorrow?” Allegra asked as they went to bed a few minutes later. He had wanted her to join him with Tony. And she liked Tony a lot. He was very Eastern and very smart. He was from New York, and his father was one of the biggest investment bankers on Wall Street. He'd helped them get backers for the film, and given them some great advice. Tony was very different from Jeff, but Allegra genuinely liked him.

  “Not at all. I'll meet you afterward. Maybe we can all play some tennis. I understand, and so will Tony. He'll love Sam,” he teased, and his fiancée gave him the disapproving look of a much older sister.

  “My dad will love that.” She glared at him, and then chuckled. Everything was working out fine. And he was right. She didn't need to invite Charles Stan-ton to their wedding. All she had to do now was tell her mother. And she could do that the next day, after she had lunch with Samantha. She smiled to herself, thinking of Sam's call, and wondered what advice she needed about the new boyfriend. Allegra was certainly no expert, but she was nattered anyway that Sam had called her. Their relationship meant a lot to both of them, although Sam was a brat at times, but even when she was, Allegra loved her.

  CHAPTER 14

  As promised, Allegra picked her sister up on Sunday on schedule. She thought it might be fun if she took her to lunch at the Ivy. They could cruise through the secondhand shops on North Robertson after that, relax with each other, and have some fun. Lately Sam had been acting fairly bratty, and Allegra was anxious to spend some quality time with her.

  But there was nothing bratty about the way she acted today. In fact, she had barely spoken by the time Allegra pulled out of the driveway. Allegra couldn't help wondering what was bothering her. But Sam made it all the way through lunch almost without speaking.

  “So what's the deal?” Allegra finally asked, wondering what had prompted her to ask Allegra to come and see her. “A new guy giving you a problem?” She had always had dates in the last two years, but she had never had a steady boyfriend. Unlike Allegra, who, at her age, had always been madly in love with someone.

  “Sort of.” Sam shrugged noncommittally, and then as her eyes filled with tears, she said, “Not really.”

  “So what is it then?” Allegra pressed her a little bit as the waiter brought their cappuccinos. Lunch had been delicious, as usual. But Sam had hardly eaten. “Come on, Sam … cough it up…. Whatever it is, it won't be so bad once you share it.” But apparently it was, because she dropped her head in her hands and started crying softly. “Oh, Sam …” Allegra rubbed a hand across her shoulders. “Come on, baby, tell me,” she whispered. But when her sister raised her face to hers again, Allegra could see the bottomless despair that had overwhelmed her. “Sam, please …”

  “I'm pregnant.” Sam almost choked on the words as she said them. “I'm having a baby….” She just sat there and cried quietly, as Allegra stared at her for an instant and then hugged her.

  “Oh, sweetheart … oh, God … How did that happen …? Who did it?” As though it had been something that had been done to her, and not something she had shared in. But Allegra had never heard her mention anyone's name, and certainly not a steady boyfriend.

  “I did it,” Sam said, taking the full blame upon herself. She looked desolate, as she tossed the shining platinum hair over her shoulders.

  “Not all by yourself,” Allegra said, “unless things have changed a whole lot lately. Who's the father?” What words for a seventeen-year-old child: father … mother … not just “Who is the boy?” It really brought home the idea that she was having a baby, a child, a living, breathing person.

  “It doesn't matter,” Sam answered glumly.

  “Oh, yes, it does,” Allegra insisted. “Are you involved with someone at school?” Without even knowing him, Allegra wanted to kill him, but she was pretending to stay calm, for Sam's sake. Just listening to her, her heart was pounding and her mind was racing. But Sam only shook her head in answer. “Come on, Sam, who is it?”

  “I don't want you to do anything about it if I tell you.”

  “Were you raped?” Allegra asked in a rasping whisper, but Sam shook her head again.

  “No, I wasn't. It's my own fault. I did it willingly. I was so impressed with him … I thought … I don't know,” she said, tears flooding her eyes again. “I guess I was nattered. He was so worldly and so grown-up. He was thirty.” A thirty-year-old with a seventeen-year-old girl? He should have known better, at least, and he obviously hadn't even had the decency to use protection.

  “Were you a virgin?” Allegra asked, overwhelmed with concern for her, and Sam shook her head, and didn't offer further details. Allegra knew she wasn't promiscuous, but she was also almost eighteen years old, and there had obviously been someone before who mattered to her. She didn't want to press her on anything but the present. “How did you meet him?”

  “He was the photographer on a shoot I did,” she said miserably. “He's French. I thought he was so cool because he was from Paris. He treated me like I was a woman of the world, and he was really handsome.”

  “Have you told him yet?” Allegra could hardly wait to get her hands on the guy. He'd be lucky if they didn't have him deported. They could have him put in jail for statutory rape. She could just imagine their father. But Sam was looking bereft as she shook her head yet again.

  “I don't really want to anyway. But I called the agency and they said he went to Japan or someplace. He was just passing through, and they didn't really know him. He wanted the pictures for his own portfolio before he went to Tokyo. Nobody knows how to find him. It doesn't matter anyway, I never want to see him again. He was okay, but he was kind of a jerk in the end. He offered me some drugs afterward, and when I said I didn't want them, he called me a baby.” An
d now she was having one. “His name was Jean-Luc. But no one even knows his last name.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Allegra was sputtering, she was so mad. “Is that how they run their agency? They ought to be put in jail too if that's how they deal with minors.”

  “I'm almost eighteen, Al. I should at least be able to handle a modeling gig without having my hand held.”

  “Apparently not,” Allegra said sternly, and then reminded herself that she didn't want to be unduly harsh on her. Sam was in enough misery, and Allegra wanted to help her. That had to remain her focus. And at least her sister had had the guts to come to her with her problem. “I assume you haven't said anything to Mom yet.”

  “I really don't want to,” Sam said, and Allegra nodded. She wouldn't have wanted to at Sam's age either, although their mother was usually incredibly understanding, and some of their friends had always gone to her with problems, rather than their own mothers. But her mother had been so wound up about the wedding and her show lately, that Sam just hadn't been able to bring herself to tell her.

  “So what are we going to do about this mess?” Allegra asked, with a sinking heart. As far as she was concerned, at Sam's age, there was only one solution. She couldn't see her sister ruining her life by saddling herself with a baby. “I'll take you to my own doctor tomorrow. Maybe we don't even have to tell Mom. I want to think about this before we decide,” Allegra said, thinking it over.

  “I can't,” Sam said stubbornly, and Allegra looked at her in confusion.

  “You can't what?”

  “Go to the doctor with you … not to get rid of it anyway.”

  “Why not?” Allegra's face filled with terror. “You're not going to keep it, are you? Sam, you don't even know who the guy is. You can't have this baby all by yourself. It's just plain stupid.” Why was she getting sentimental about this? She suddenly thought of Carmen and her acting like it was already born because she'd seen the fetus on a sonogram, and she wondered if that had happened to Sam already too. Bonding.

  “I can't get rid of it, Al, not with an abortion anyway.”

  “Why?” Her family had strong morals, but they were reasonable generally, and they weren't Catholic. Allegra couldn't understand it.

  “I'm five months' pregnant.”

  “What?” Allegra almost fell out of her chair when she heard the words. “Why the hell didn't you tell me sooner? What have you been doing for the last five months? Dreaming?”

  “I didn't know,” Sam said honestly, tears spilling onto her cheeks and from there to the table. “I swear. My periods are so irregular, I just thought that maybe it was from too much exercise or dieting, or exams, or worrying about getting into college … I don't know. I never thought I could be pregnant.”

  “How could you not even suspect? Isn't it moving or something? Does it show?” She glanced at her, but she was rail thin and wore baggy clothes, so Allegra could see nothing.

  “I sort of thought I was just gaining weight, and I've had this enormous appetite.” And then she looked even more miserable. “It didn't move till last week. And then I felt it. I thought maybe I had cancer and it was exploding inside me or something.” The poor kid had no idea. There they were in the civilized world, in one of the most sophisticated cities in the country, and poor Sam thought she had a tumor. Talk about denial. Allegra felt desperately sorry for her, but the problem was so complicated now, it really required some serious thinking.

  “You'll have to give it up, I guess.” Sam just stared at her, numb. She couldn't even conceive what the “it” was. They had offered to show it to her on a sonogram, and she had refused to see it. She didn't want to know its sex, or know anything about it. She didn't want it to be there.

  “What am I going to do, Al? I'll have to run away if I don't tell Mom and Dad soon.” That was a frightening thought. The whole situation was a disaster.

  “You can't do that.”

  “I don't know what else to do. I thought of running away all last week, but I wanted to talk to you first.” The very thought of it made her shudder.

  “We have to tell Mom. If she really has a fit, or they throw you out or something, you can come and stay with me till you have it.” She looked up at Sam again then. “When is it due?” This was beyond awful. And this wasn't Carmen. It was her seventeen-year-old sister.

  “In August. Al … will you help me tell them?” Allegra nodded and the two sisters held hands across the table. And a few minutes later, Allegra noticed two women with buzz cuts smiling at them approvingly. They thought she and Sam were lovers. It was the only thing that had happened so far that actually made her smile, and she mentioned it to Sam as she paid the check finally. It had been some lunch. She had acute indigestion.

  “When do you want to tell them?”

  “Never,” she said honestly. “But I guess I'd better tell them soon, before it starts to show or anything. Mom has looked at me funny a couple of times when I took too many helpings of breakfast. But she's been so busy with the show, and the backyard, and you and everything, I don't think she's really noticed. And Dad doesn't have a clue. He still thinks I'm five years old and should be wearing pigtails.” But they both loved that about him. In spite of being worldly-wise in so many ways, there was an innocence about him that really touched them. He believed the best of all of them, and of most of the people he knew. He rarely said anything unkind about anyone. And Sam knew this was going to break his heart. She would have done anything not to tell him, but she knew she couldn't.

  “I'll come over tomorrow, and we'll talk to them,” Allegra said, as though they were going to the guillotine together. But then what? What was she going to do with it? That was the real question. “What do you want to do, Sam? Do you want to give it up? Keep it?” She had to ask her those questions. The baby was only four months away and she had to face it, but she couldn't.

  “Every time I think about it, it just scares me too much. I just want it to go away, and be like it never happened.”

  “That's not going to happen,” her older sister informed her, but as for the rest, Sam wasn't up to making any decisions.

  They went for a walk after they left the restaurant, but they didn't go into any of the shops. Neither of them were in the mood. And eventually, Allegra took her home again. She gave her a big hug, and told her to try to stay calm until the following afternoon, and then they'd all deal with it together.

  “And no bullshit about running away, you hear!” she said pointedly. “You can't run away from things like this. We'll face it together.”

  “Thanks, Al,” she said, and really meant it. Her whole body seemed to sag as Allegra watched her walk into the house, but at least nothing showed yet. But Allegra could only begin to imagine her parents' reaction. The next afternoon was not going to be easy. No matter how understanding they were, it was still going to be a terrible blow to them. And it was the kind of problem that could have no happy resolution. If she gave it up, she'd probably regret it to some degree all her life, or at least think of it with pain from time to time, and if she kept it, it could change her life, in a negative way, forever. In fact, Allegra couldn't see any positives to it at all. In Sam's circumstances, it was nothing short of a disaster.

  It was so odd to think that to Carmen it was a great joy, and to her, it might have been too, and Jeff was even talking about wanting a baby fairly soon, and yet in someone else's life the same circumstance was a tragedy instead of a blessing. It was all so confusing.

  She drove back to Malibu feeling acutely depressed, and she was still sitting on the beach with her arms around her knees when Jeff got home two hours later. His lunch with his coproducer had gone much longer than anticipated. They had so many things to discuss about the movie. But he could tell just from looking at her, when he stepped out on the deck and saw her, that something hadn't gone well that afternoon. She looked completely withdrawn and as though she were in her own private world. He wondered if she had called her father.

  “Hi, t
here,” he said, as he sat down on the beach next to her, and she turned her head toward him but didn't answer. “Did you and Sam have a run-in today?” he asked, stroking her long blond hair with gentle fingers.

  “No,” she said, smiling sadly at him. He was so good to her, and in his own way, so like Simon. It was so odd that for so many years she had had to fight the demons in her soul, and now she had finally put them to rest, and she was free to love someone like him.

  “You don't look too happy. Bad news of some kind?”

  She nodded, and looked out at the ocean.

  “Can I help?” She knew that Sam probably wouldn't have wanted her to tell Jeff yet, but it wasn't going to be a secret for long, not if she was due in August.

  “I'm not sure anyone can.” She looked him in the eye. “Sam is five months' pregnant.”

  “Oh, shit,” he said succinctly. “Who's the father?” He didn't think she had a boyfriend.

  “The father is some thirty-year-old Frenchman with no last name, who passed through here five months ago apparently on his way to Tokyo. The agency has no record of him, and neither does Sam. He just came to town, took some pictures of her, and left her with a baby.”

  “Great. Can she still have an abortion at five months, or does she even want one?”

  “No to either one. It's too late, and she doesn't want one anyway. We're going to tell my parents tomorrow.”

  “Will she keep it?”

  “I don't know. I think she's too shell-shocked to work any of it out just now. But I don't think she should keep it. She's too young, and it'll ruin her life. But I don't have a right to tell her what to do. This is a major life decision.”

  “It sure is,” he said, in awe of what was facing all of them. “If there's anything I can do to help …” he said, feeling useless. There was nothing any of them could do now except support her through it.