by Amy Knupp
“I’m not holding out, man.” Evan leaned his head back and dumped the remaining crumbs—half the bar—from the wrapper into his mouth, wishing like hell Clay would lose this nosy interest in his sex life. He took a few steps toward the living room and back. “I tried more than once. Believe me, I’d very much like to see her again.” He crumpled the wrapper into a tight ball and met Clay’s stare head-on. “She refused to give me her number.”
He threw the wrapper on the counter and strode out of the apartment.
IT WAS AFTER TWO in the afternoon when Selena dragged her tired, sore body out of bed. Sore but sated, she thought with a wicked grin.
She’d gone out of her ever-loving mind last night. Had become a different person. One that had a heck of a lot more fun than her.
Her smile faded as thoughts of her family flooded her. Unfortunately, her reckless night hadn’t done anything to dull the pain, the fear.
She took a quick shower then headed to the kitchen for food. Or drink, rather, since she hadn’t bought groceries yet. Settling for a can of root beer, she went to the unlit fireplace in the living area and sat on the hearth.
When her dad had had this place built, he’d been told he wouldn’t need a fireplace. This was the beach. Southern Texas. But her father had loved a crackling fire and stubbornly insisted on it. He’d had to convince her mother, too. She’d argued for a gas log, because wood-burning fireplaces were more work. Her dad had prevailed, though, since this house was his domain. Her mother had gotten her way on the Nantucket property.
Selena traced her finger along the rectangular perimeter of the fireplace, then pulled back the wire mesh curtain. The inner concrete walls were charred from use. She leaned against the wall next to it and closed her eyes, feeling so close to her dad right now it made her chest tight.
When she was about ten, her family had flown down after Christmas, before school started up again. Every evening, the four of them—her dad, brother, mother and herself—would stay up much later than she was usually allowed, sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace, playing dominoes. Their version was no sedate, polite game—it was high stakes for bragging rights, always a boisterous affair. Those were some of the happiest memories of her childhood, back before her dad died and the family bonds had died with him.
Selena stood and wandered to the tall pine entertainment center. She pulled out the wide drawer, wiggling it just so to get it unstuck. Tears unexpectedly filled her eyes when she saw it—the hand-stitched cloth bag of dominoes.
She carried it back to the hearth, sat on the ceramic tile floor in front of it and dumped the dominoes out with a clatter. One by one, she stood the ivory pieces on end in a wavy line almost without thought, and again, she was carried back to years when her dad was still living.
It was a different trip, that time in the summer, a rainy afternoon. Her mom had been sitting quietly on the sofa watching the three of them with the dominoes, content to be there with her family even though she wasn’t part of the action. Selena often wondered if that content woman still existed somewhere inside her mom. She hadn’t seen signs of it since her dad was killed on an FBI assignment.
They hadn’t been back to this house since. It had been his favorite place and his presence, his personality, was discernible in every single room. This was the only place where her memories hadn’t been soiled by the Cambridge-Jarboe discord since they’d become three instead of four—unlike the main house and the Nantucket house they visited each summer.
When the domino train had crashed, she picked up the pieces, stacking several at a time, and dropped them into the bag.
Enough moping. She needed food, and a little shopping pick-me-up. Anything to get her mind off the family she’d walked away from.
ACCESS DENIED.
The automated teller machine seemed to scream at Selena. She glanced behind her to see if anyone was close enough to notice she was having difficulties.
Again she punched in the personal identification number she’d been using for the past, oh, twelve years or so to access her allotted part of the bottomless Cambridge-Jarboe bank account.
Trying the number a third time didn’t make a difference. Rejection was rejection.
Her mother had cut her off.
“Dammit.” She punctuated the curse by hitting the machine.
“Thanks, Mom,” she muttered, smacking the button to cancel the transaction when what she really wanted to do was pound a hole through the ATM with her fist.
She had exactly $423.07 left of the cash she’d taken with her when she’d fled Boston. Had she known this would happen, she would’ve been a lot more careful with her money. Now, unfamiliar panic pumped through her. What did she know about stretching her dollars?
She rubbed her upper arms and shivered, then gritted her teeth.
Okay, then.
She’d been the one to walk away from her family. Had promised herself she’d be all right on her own. And she would. Somehow.
Her mother might be laughing at her now from the Cambridge-Jarboe estate, but Selena wasn’t about to go crawling back.
She should’ve guessed her mother would cut her off. Clara Cambridge-Jarboe—don’t you dare forget the Cambridge—had become the type to use money to her advantage. Selena supposed she herself had been a perpetual victim without really thinking about it, since she lived off her mother’s money. The monthly paycheck had never been a bone of contention between them. Rather, Selena suspected it made her mother feel important and needed and, yes, superior, to have her daughter dependent on her. In her mother’s mind, it was monthly confirmation that she was right—art was an impractical, useless pursuit for a career.
The ridiculous thing was that Clara had never earned a penny of the family money herself. Her family’s wealth dated back several generations, and the only thing she had done to increase their fortune was to hire one of the best money guys to take care of her precious portfolio.
Selena needed money. She’d have to get a paying job for the first time in her life.
She was so far out of her realm of experience she wasn’t sure where to start. She turned and walked blindly across the street, toward Lambert’s Ice Cream Shoppe. As she approached the door, she spotted a metal newspaper box.
She dug in the bottom of her Gucci for some quarters. Now if only she had some employment experience beyond volunteering and some marketable job skills besides artistic talent she might have some hope.
CHAPTER THREE
Two and a half weeks later
WAS IT the fifteenth? Selena’s eyes popped open at this, her first coherent thought of the day.
She sat up straight, cold fear in the pit of her stomach.
October fifteenth.
Two days after her period was due. She was never late, could set a military clock by it. It should’ve been here when she woke up the morning of the thirteenth—she remembered calculating that last month and rolling her eyes at the unlucky date. Two days ago.
She’d been sidetracked by her job. She’d started it on Monday, thought she was going to puke for most of the day from nerves, but maybe it wasn’t nerves after all.
Nauseous now, and light-headed, Selena lay back down, curling on her side, and pulled the blankets over her face. She closed her eyes.
Sleep didn’t come. Neither did oblivion, denial or a happier reality. She had to get out of bed and find out for sure.
Her mind strayed to images of babies. Her holding a baby. Her baby. Abruptly, she shook her head, unable to handle the mere idea of parenthood. It was too much to think about.
She moved on autopilot through a shower, dressed in skinny jeans and a flowy green and blue shirt. Definitely not clothes that were appropriate for her job painting murals for the city of San Amaro’s upcoming twenty-fifth birthday celebration. Lucky for her, she set her own hours. As long as she finished each mural on schedule, she’d continue to get paid.
No way she could work today, unless her suspicions happened to be
wrong. She headed off to the corner drugstore to find out.
TWENTY-FOUR MINUTES was all it took for a girl’s entire life to change. Four minutes each way to the store in her Saturn SUV, six minutes trying to figure out which brand of pregnancy test to buy, five minutes waiting in line. Reading the directions, unwrapping the package, doing the test. Waiting.
Turned out that two minutes was an e-freaking-ternity when you weren’t breathing, waiting to see if a second line appeared. It did.
Selena stared at it. Checked the picture on the directions again and, yep, direct match for “congratulations.”
She picked up the stick and tried to break it in half. When that didn’t work, she hit it on the edge of the counter. Stupid thing was hardy, and for $13.99 she supposed it should be.
She glanced around the master bathroom for a weapon, but there wasn’t much, only her cosmetics and toiletries. The wooden-heeled shoes she wore, though…
Determined, she flung the stick to the ceramic floor and stomped on it with her heel, as if it were a venomous spider (never mind that she would run from a spider, not hang around and kill it). The plastic casing finally cracked in several places, but the satisfaction was minimal.
She was still pregnant.
Options flipped through her mind like an old-fashioned Rolodex. Ways out. Like a preachy after-school teen special. All the possibilities sucked.
Leaving the test crushed on the floor, she made a beeline for the stairway. She ascended both flights until she was in the turret room where she’d set up her art supplies. All four walls were windowed, showing the Gulf, the shore, the weather like a nonstop movie reel. There was a door on the water side that opened to a widow’s walk. Selena went there now.
Wind whipped her hair, tangling it in seconds. It was colder up here than at ground level. There was a wildness most days as the wind gusted in off the water. She raised her chin and faced it, eyes closed. Out here, constant buffeting by the weather made coherent thought nearly impossible.
Right now, that was exactly what Selena needed.
She held on to the rickety railing, one knee on the weather-beaten wooden bench that wound all the way around, gazing out at where the Gulf gave birth to the waves. They seemingly formed from nothing, gathered momentum and size until they were awe inspiring, intimidating…and then they rolled into nothing once again when they hit the sand.
Selena didn’t know how long she stood there watching each wave like a minidrama. Suddenly, exhaustion hit her at the same time reality did. Every muscle in her body felt as if she’d been swimming against a strong current. She backed away from the edge, felt for the door handle behind her and let herself inside. She crossed the floor the few steps to the her dad’s chair and collapsed into it sideways.
She would have the baby.
The certainty hit her the second she opened her mind to the possibility. There was only one option that would ever work for her.
When she was a little girl, all of her favorite pastimes had had a domestic, happy-family flavor to them—taking care of baby dolls, playing “house,” having tea parties, serving family “dinners” on miniature plastic dishes. Back then, she’d wanted to be like her mother—a society lady, a socialite, a woman head over heels for her husband.
Everything had changed when her dad died. Her mother, especially. As a teenager, Selena had vowed that she would never be the woman her mom had become—detached and distant from her family.
As an adult, she harbored hopes of one day fostering the kind of warmth the Cambridge-Jarboes had known so long ago with her father. She hadn’t planned on having the opportunity so soon—now—but she wouldn’t squander it.
The biggest question, then, was whether it would be a traditional family of three or a single mother and child. Selena didn’t know the first thing about Evan—including his last name—to have an inkling which way it would go.
She methodically, absently, ran her fingers through the tangles in her hair as she wondered about the man she’d made this baby with. What would he do? How would he react?
She wasn’t ready to face him yet, but would have to do it soon. She’d left her family and come down here to take charge of her life, forge ahead on her own. Now, ironically, a large chunk of her future depended on one man.
HOURS LATER, after she awoke in her dad’s worn chair, Selena left the beach house to walk along the sand. A light drizzle had started, clouds hanging low over the Gulf, the sky and water a study in grays. The silence and emptiness of the beach house had driven her out in search of living, breathing beings, but the shore, too, was deserted. She carried on, without a destination in mind.
After a while, she stood in front of the little grass-roofed bar where her current trouble had started. The Shell Shack.
Heavy-duty plastic again protected the inside from the wind and drizzle. A warm light glowed from within, beckoning Selena to the inner sanctum. As she stepped into its shelter, she breathed in the familiar odor of beer, food and humidity.
The shack seemed larger than it had before, when so many people had been crammed into it. Mostly empty stools lined the semicircular main bar and another curved counter wound around the outer perimeter, facing the shore.
A cute, petite brunette about her age, late twenties or so, smiled at her from behind the bar. Selena walked to the stool on the far left side at the main bar.
“Hi,” the bartender said. “What can I get for you?” Her brown hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail and her green eyes radiated happiness.
“Just…ice water, please.” A stack of Sandblaster cups towered on the back counter, a vivid reminder of her last visit here. “I’d like to order some food, too, please.”
“You got it.” The bartender handed her a tall, skinny menu then set a plastic cup of water in front of her. “My name’s Macey. Just holler when you’re ready.”
“Thank you.” Selena glanced over the short list and quickly settled on seviche and nachos. She caught Macey’s eye and placed her order, then sat back to watch the people around her. She’d hoped to escape the solitude of the beach house, but watching others in couples and small groups just made her loneliness more pronounced.
“You look kind of down,” Macey said as she cleaned the counter in front of Selena. “Everything okay? Sure you don’t need something stronger?” Surprisingly, her questions didn’t come across as too invasive. Maybe Selena was just that happy to be out of the empty house.
She studied this woman for several seconds and leaned closer, the need to unburden herself suddenly overwhelming. “I just found out I’m…pregnant.” There. She said it out loud for the first time. Her pulse sped up, her face grew warm, and she couldn’t seem to get enough air.
Thankfully Macey didn’t overreact and draw attention to them. “Wow. That’s a whopper,” she said. “Ironic that we can’t deal with such a big scary thing with a nice shot or two of tequila, isn’t it?”
“A cruel joke,” Selena said. Shame threatened to choke her up. Selena wasn’t the type to do the wrong thing, to sleep around. Her circle of friends back home would be stunned if they knew what she’d done—and what she would now have to go through. She’d somehow sensed Macey was more understanding, less judgmental, but still…facts were facts. She wasn’t proud of how she must come across to this new acquaintance.
A young, lanky guy came out of the back room with Selena’s food and set it in front of her.
“Thanks, Ramon,” Macey said. He smiled a goofy grin and retreated.
“You’re the first person I’ve told,” Selena said quietly. “Guess I needed to confess to someone.” She tried to laugh it off.
“What about the father?” Macey asked.
Selena shook her head. “We’re not…together.” Again with the warm cheeks, and she wasn’t one who normally blushed.
“Ooh, you must be overwhelmed.”
“Terrified.”
The sympathy on Macey’s face just about did Selena in. It’d been almost four long w
eeks since she’d left behind the people who had made up her support system—even if they’d given as much grief as support. She hadn’t realized how much being by herself, trying to handle everything on her own for the first time, getting a paying job, had been wearing her down. And then the pregnancy news…
Tears popped into Selena’s eyes and her throat swelled. She was not going to embarrass herself by crying here, in public, just because this woman was so kind. She sucked in a lungful of air and wiped her eyes quickly. “Sorry,” she told Macey. “I didn’t realize I was on the edge.”
“I’ve heard pregnancy hormones can be a real bear.”
“Grizzly, apparently.” Selena shoved a tortilla chip into her mouth, hoping to distract herself.
“Do you plan to tell him?” Macey asked.
“Soon. I’m still trying to absorb the truth myself.”
“Yeah. That might take a few days. Excuse me for a minute.” Macey went to the other side of the bar to wait on two thirtysomething women and returned after serving them Sandblasters and placing their orders for burgers. “Sorry about that,” she said when she returned. “So what’s your next move?”
“Does sticking my head in the sand count?”
Macey grinned. “There’s enough sand around here, but that’s probably not the best choice. You’d get it in your eyes.”
Selena choked out a laugh, then sobered almost instantly. “Next I need to find a long-term job. The one I have will only last for a few months.”
“Are you new to the island?”
“I’ve been here almost a month. Just long enough to really shake up my life.”
“Hey.” Macey made eye contact with her. “You’ll get through this and be okay. Even though it doesn’t seem like it right now.”
“I don’t have much choice, do I?” Selena forced a smile.
“What kind of job are you looking for?”
“Well…” Selena wasn’t sure what to say. “I’m open. Something with a regular paycheck. No matter what the father decides, I need to be able to support the baby.”
