The Wedding

by Danielle Steel

  “I told her that if she has a total blowout with Mom and Dad, she can come and live with me. I could move back to my house for four months,” she said, looking depressed over that too, but it was the least she could do for her sister.

  “She can stay here with us,” Jeff said quickly. “I'll be working on the set all the time pretty soon anyway. I could give her my office as a bedroom.”

  “You're a nice man,” she said, and meant it, as she kissed him.

  They went for a long walk on the beach after that, and talked late into the night. And the next day, after work, she drove to her parents' house, as she had promised. It was just after five and she and Sam waited for them to come home from work. They were both usually home by six-thirty. The two girls were sitting nervously in the living room when Blaire and Simon walked in within five minutes of each other. They both seemed to be in a good mood, and they were pleased and surprised to see Allegra. But as soon as Blaire saw the way her daughters looked at them, she knew that something had happened, and her heart started pounding. It was Scott. Something had happened to him. She was sure of it—they had called Allegra instead—and her eyes went straight to her older daughter.

  “What's wrong?” Allegra knew immediately what she was thinking, and she was quick to reassure her.

  “Nothing, Mom. No one's hurt, everyone's fine, we just want to talk to you.”

  “Oh, God.” Blaire sank into a chair, as Simon looked worriedly at all of them. Even he sensed that something serious was in the air, and he was much less of a worrier than Blaire was. “I thought Scott had gotten hurt,” Blaire confessed, thinking of Paddy. “It's something about the wedding, isn't it?” she said. Allegra had on that purposeful look she got when something was important to her. She was probably going to demand they cut the numbers back again, but Blaire didn't have the strength to argue with her. “What is it?”

  “I need to talk to you, Mom.” Sam spoke up with a quavering voice. And her father looked at her with narrowed eyes. She had never looked, or sounded, quite like that.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, as they all sat down.

  “Kind of,” Sam admitted, and there was a long silence, and then, as her eyes filled with tears, she looked at Allegra. She just couldn't do it.

  “Do you want me to tell them, Sam?” Allegra asked in an undervoice, and her younger sister nodded. And Allegra looked at her parents then, and told them the hardest thing she knew she'd ever have to say. But it was better to get it over with, and get it out in the open. “Sam is five months' pregnant,” she said very calmly, and Blaire went so pale that Allegra thought her mother might faint. But Simon looked no better.

  “What?” was all he said, and the silence in the room was deafening. But they had heard her. “How is that possible? Was this date rape, or something of the kind? Why didn't you tell us?” It was inconceivable to him that she had cooperated in this mess, but she had, and Blaire understood that much as she stared at both of her daughters. It was beyond her to offer any sympathy or comfort just yet, she was in too much shock herself, and she hadn't absorbed it.

  “It wasn't date rape, Dad. It was just very stupid,” Sam admitted to them, wiping the tears off her face with her hand. She looked awful.

  “Is it someone you care about?” her father asked, still trying to fathom what had happened.

  “No,” Sam said, honest again. “I thought I did, but I was more nattered than anything. He kind of swept me off my feet, and then he was gone.”

  “Who is he?” her father asked, beginning to glower.

  “A photographer I met. And you can't put him in jail. He's gone, Dad. And I can't even find him.” Allegra explained the circumstances to them, and Blaire started to cry as she looked at her youngest daughter.

  “I can't believe you were so foolish, Sam. And why didn't you tell me?”

  “I didn't even know, Mom. I didn't even suspect it till last week, and then I went to the doctor. And after that, I was just too scared to tell anyone. I was going to run away and just disappear, or die, or something. But then I decided to call Allegra.”

  “Thank God.” Her mother shot a grateful look at Allegra, and then went to sit next to Sam and put an arm around her shoulders. And from across the room, Simon was fighting back tears, and Allegra went to put her arms around him and hugged him.

  “I love you, Dad,” she whispered, and he held her and cried. It was really a disaster, but at least they had each other.

  “What are we going to do about this?” he asked, as he blew his nose and wiped away tears, and sat down next to Allegra on the couch opposite Sam and Blaire.

  “We don't have much choice,” Blaire said practically. She looked at Sam and it broke her heart to think about it. She was so beautiful and so young, and so undaunted by life. But now it was beginning. The first scar. The first major life experience. The first tragedy, or great grief. And there was nothing she could do to protect her from it. “You'll have to have the baby, Sam,” she said gently. “It's too late not to.”

  “I know, Mom,” she said, but had no idea what that entailed, for her heart, or her body. So far, it had all been pretty easy. She hadn't been sick, she hadn't been anything. She had just been hungry. And now she was scared. But the rest was still a mystery, and she'd have to discover it herself in the next four months. No one could take this from her.

  “And then you'll have to give it up. There's no other way, unless you ruin your life. You don't need a baby to mess up your life at seventeen. You'll be going to UCLA in the fall. When is this baby due?” she asked, her spirit of organization moving into play rapidly. She was sorting it out in her head now.

  “August.”

  “You can have it, and give it up, and be in school on time in September. The only thing you'll have to forfeit, I'm afraid, is possibly the end of the school year, and definitely graduation.” But Sam didn't say a word about that. She was thinking about something else now.

  “I'll be eighteen when it's born, Mom.” She was turning eighteen in July. “Lots of people have babies at that age.”

  “Most of them are married. And in this case, it would be disastrous. You don't even know who the baby's father is. What will that baby be like? Who will it be?”

  “It will be half me, Mom,” Sam said, her eyes filling with tears, “and part you … and part Dad … and part Scott and Allegra…. We can't just give it away like an old pair of boots to the thrift shop.” It was suddenly clutching at her heart, and Allegra felt desperately sorry for her.

  “No, but you can give it to people who desperately want a baby, who are married and have tried to have one unsuccessfully. There are people out there, waiting for babies like this, whose lives it won't destroy. For them, it will be a blessing.”

  “What about for us? Maybe it would be a blessing for us too.” She was fighting for her life, and her baby's. It was an instinct older than time, which even she didn't understand. But Blaire did. She had given birth to four children.

  “Are you telling me you want to keep it?” Blaire looked terrified. “You don't even know who the father is, and now you want to keep this baby, Sam? It's not even a love child, it's a nothing.”

  “It's not a ‘nothing,’ it's a baby,” she said hotly, and then burst into tears again. The emotions were running too high for all of them, but Blaire was not going to let Sam sway her.

  “You have to give this baby up, Sam. We know what's best for you. Trust us. You'll regret it all your life if you saddle yourself with a baby now. It's not the right time,” Blaire said calmly, trying to regain their equanimity again. This was just too great an upheaval if Sam had a baby at her age.

  “That's not a good enough reason to give up a baby,” Sam said, and Allegra finally spoke up. She had to be true to herself, and her sister.

  “That's true, Sam,” she said quietly. “You have to want to give the baby up. You have to make up your own mind, because you have to live with your decision for the rest of your life. We don't, not t
he way you do.”

  “Your sister's right,” their father said fairly. “But having said that, I agree with your mother, Sam. You're too young to take on a baby. And we're too old. It wouldn't be fair to the child if we took it on. The whole thing just isn't fair, not to you, or the child. You can give the baby a better chance if you give it up to the right people for adoption.” Blaire looked at him gratefully. As always, he said what she had wanted to say, but gently, and better.

  “How do we know they'll be nice to it? What if they aren't?” Sam was crying pitifully as she said it.

  Allegra stepped in again. “There are attorneys who handle nothing but adoptions like these, Sam. You don't have to go to some state agency. People with lots of money, with good homes, go to attorneys and pay a fortune to find people like you. And you get to choose among them. You can pick the couple you like best. You call all the shots. I think you'd feel pretty comfortable about it. It's not a happy thing to do, but as Dad says, there are people out there who would really love it. I have a friend who handles nothing but these adoptions. I can call her tomorrow if you like.” In fact, she had already left her a message that morning.

  There was an endless pause, and then finally Sam nodded. She had no recourse, no other way to turn, and she trusted them. They were telling her that she owed it to the baby to give it up, and she believed them. The hard thing for her was that she had no one else to talk to, no one else to lean on, or cry with. She didn't want to tell her friends at school; she didn't even have a boyfriend at the moment. All she had were her parents and Allegra, and they were all telling her to give the baby up, and she knew they wanted the best thing for her, and the baby.

  Allegra promised to call the attorney the next day, and Sam went to her room to lie down. She felt sick and exhausted. After she left, Blaire started to cry, and Allegra sat and consoled her. Simon looked like someone had died, and the entire house seemed to be under a pall. Even the wedding was forgotten.

  “Poor kid,” Simon said, and then shook his head miserably. “How could she be so stupid?”

  “I'd like to kill the little sonofabitch who did it,” Blaire said. “Good for him—he's in Japan, screwing someone else, and her whole life is ruined.”

  “It doesn't have to be,” Allegra reminded her, but her mother knew better.

  “She'll never forget this. She'll never forget carrying that baby and giving birth to it, and holding it, and then giving it up forever.” It wasn't the same thing, but she was thinking of Paddy. Twenty-five years after his death, she still missed him. She knew she would till her dying day. And Sam would never forget the firstborn she gave up to strangers. “There's just no other way to do it.”

  “You don't think she should keep it, Mom?” Allegra asked cautiously. In her own mind, she wasn't convinced that giving it up was the perfect answer. As Sam said, other people had babies at eighteen and survived it. Some of them even turned out to be decent parents.

  “No, I don't think she should keep it,” Blaire said sadly. “I think it would just be compounding the stupidity. And in today's world, where there are so many decent people dying to adopt, with all the infertility there is, I think it's wrong for her to ruin her life, and deprive someone else in the process. How is she supposed to take care of it? Take it to the dorm with her? Not go to school at all? Leave it home with me? What am I supposed to do with a baby at this point in our lives? We're too old to take care of it, and she's too young.”

  Allegra smiled ruefully. “You haven't been reading the tabloids. Plenty of women your age are getting donor eggs and donor sperm, and in vitro and Lord only knows what else, and having babies. You're not too old, you know.”

  Blaire almost shuddered. “Some women may be doing all that, but I'm not. I had four kids. I was fortunate. But I'm not going to bring up another baby at my age. I'd be in my seventies when it was in its teens—that would definitely be enough to kill me.” They all smiled ruefully, and they all agreed the best solution for all concerned was to give it up, especially for Sam's sake. She needed a clean slate, and then she could go to college in the fall and start over. It was just a shame that she couldn't go to graduation. Blaire said she'd have to go to Sam's school and discuss the situation discreetly with the headmaster. It was certainly not the first time something like it had happened. Sam was a good student, and the school year was almost over. In that way at least, she was lucky.

  “I'll call Suzanne Pearlman tomorrow. She's the lawyer I was talking about. We went to law school together, and I see her every once in a while. She's good at this stuff, and she is very picky about her clients. I always give her a bad time about the baby mill she runs. I never thought I'd be calling her as a client. I left her a message today, and I'll call her again tomorrow morning.”

  “Thanks, Allie,” Simon said gratefully. “The sooner we can get this behind us the better. Maybe it's a blessing that she's so far along. In four months it'll be over, and she can forget it.” If she ever does, Allegra thought to herself sadly.

  It was after nine o'clock when she finally left them and drove back to Malibu where Jeff was waiting to hear how it had gone. He felt desperately sorry for Sam, and he looked sadly at Allegra when she told him everything that had happened.

  “Poor thing. She must feel like her life is about to end. What a rotten way to start out. I got a girl pregnant in college once,” he said, looking miserable remembering it fifteen years later. “It was awful. She got an abortion, but the whole thing was incredibly traumatic. She was Catholic, from Boston, and her parents didn't know, of course, and she practically had a nervous breakdown over it. We both ended up in counseling, and needless to say, the relationship didn't survive, but we almost didn't either. Maybe what you're doing with Sam is a better way to go. I don't think that girl I knew ever forgave herself for the abortion.”

  “I'm not sure this is any better,” Allegra said. There was a gnawing feeling deep inside her that told her it was almost worse, or that they were both too high a price to pay for a mistake. Any way she went, she would pay for it forever. “I feel so sorry for her,” Allegra said, and he agreed. She called her later that night and Sam sounded just awful. She said she had felt sick all night, and for once she couldn't even eat dinner. Allegra urged her to take care of herself and try to calm down. Blaire had already said she was taking her to her doctor the next day, to make sure everything was in order. There was no ignoring it anymore. Now that it was out in the open, Sam had to face the fact that she was having a baby. She was having it and giving it away, and she had to do what everyone else thought was right for her. She felt as though she had given up her life to all of them, but she didn't want to be mean to them and say so. She knew they had her best interests at heart, and all things considered, her family had been incredibly supportive, but she still felt awful.

  Allegra called her attorney friend at eight o'clock the next day, and Suzanne agreed to see her at nine before her first appointment.

  “Don't tell me you want to adopt,” Suzanne said, looking surprised when Allegra arrived at her office. She wasn't wearing a wedding ring, and Suzanne knew she wasn't married, but stranger things had happened.

  “No, I'm kind of at the other end of things, I'm afraid.” Allegra seemed pained as she looked at her old friend. Suzanne was small and delicate, with short dark hair and a warm smile—all her clients loved her. She also got great results for them, and somehow, through doctors and individuals and other attorneys she knew, babies just seemed to find her. Allegra got right to the point. “My seventeen-year-old sister is pregnant.”

  “Oh, God. I'm sorry. That's awful. What a miserable decision to have to make. Is it too late for an abortion?”

  “Much. She found out last week, and she's five months' pregnant.”

  “That's not unusual, you know,” Suzanne explained, as they sat on the couch in her office. “I guess their periods are often irregular at that age, so they never even seem to suspect until it's too late. And their bodies are in such go
od shape that nothing shows. I've had kids come in here at seven months, and never suspected they were pregnant. Then, of course, there's always denial. ‘This can't be happening to me.’ ‘It can't happen on the first date,’ first time, last date, whatever.” She sighed. It was a business built on grief and joy; the secret of her success was knowing how to mix it. “Does she want to give it up?” she asked Allegra very directly.

  “I don't think she knows what she wants, to be honest, but she knows it's the best thing to do at her age.”

  “Not necessarily. I've seen fifteen year olds turn into terrific mothers. And I've seen women our age give them up because they know they just can't take care of anyone else, and don't want to. What does she want? That's really the key here.”

  “I think a part of her would probably like to keep it. That's probably sheer instinct. But I think she also knows she can't take care of it. She's willing to give it up.”

  “But does she want to?”

  “Does anyone?” Allegra asked honestly, and Suzanne nodded. She was good at what she did, and Allegra respected her for it. She had always liked her.

  “Some. Some women, or even girls, just have no maternal instinct at all. Others do, but make decisions based on practical motives. That's the hard part. I'd want to talk to your sister myself, to make sure that she's committed to giving the baby up. I don't like breaking hearts here. I don't want to offer the baby to some couple who've been trying to get pregnant for ten years, and have finally figured out it won't work for them, and then have your sister, or anyone for that matter, change their mind at the last minute. It happens sometimes, and you can never completely predict how someone will feel when they see their baby, but most of the time you can tell if someone's serious about relinquishing a baby.”

  “I honestly think she will,” Allegra said sincerely. It seemed to be the only answer for her.