“I just want to keep my mind off of things and save up tips,” Mandy said. “Maybe next year, me and the baby can head off the island and head to college. Maybe I can join a sorority that has its own daycare.”
Amelia nearly snorted at the joke. She turned off the engine just outside of Daniel’s house, then watched as Mandy eased out from the passenger side. She slipped the photo of the baby into her journal, where, she had told Amelia, she’d started to record some of the strange thoughts and fears she had surrounding pregnancy and motherhood. Although Amelia hadn’t told Mandy about her own pregnancy, she’d begun her own journal.
In fact, just that morning, she’d written: Will I be too old of a mom? What if I can’t keep up? What if everyone thinks I’m my baby’s grandmother instead of the mother? What if?
Somehow, writing out these thoughts kept the panic at bay. She acknowledged them and then let them pass. This was something her therapist had instructed her on. Even though Amelia had given her therapist a number of details about her life, she hadn’t yet broken the “real” news. That brought with it its own level of therapizing, she supposed.
When they entered Daniel’s house, they entered a warm ecosystem of pizza smells and vibrant laughter and Jake’s speaker system, blaring a song he wanted to show his dad. Amelia and Mandy walked into the kitchen to find Jake in the throes of air guitar while Daniel nodded along with the beat. Daniel waved and called, “Sorry! Didn’t hear you come in!”
“I wonder why!” Amelia laughed.
They paraded into the dining room as Jake switched up the music to something more suited to the background. Amelia sat next to Mandy, whose face was the color of porcelain.
“Eat up, girls,” Daniel said. “We have a big night planned. Jake wants to watch two sci-fi movies.”
“Try to stop us, Mandy,” Jake joked. “Just try to force one of your romcoms on us and see what we do.”
Mandy made no motion for a slice of pizza. Amelia’s heart thudded as the moment approached. She’d thought maybe Mandy would wait until after dinner. Maybe she was too nervous to eat.
“Dad. I have something to tell you,” Mandy said finally.
Daniel held his pizza aloft, near his lips. “What’s up, honey?”
Mandy heaved a sigh. Beneath the table, Amelia gripped her hand, which resulted in Mandy clinging to her fingers so hard, she thought her bones might break. Daniel seemed to notice the hand-holding because he dropped his pizza to the plate beneath it and asked again.
“What’s up?”
Mandy cleared her throat. After another pause, her dad interjected.
“Did you decide where you’re going to college?”
Mandy let out a strange laugh. “Not quite.”
“What do you mean, not quite?” Daniel demanded. His eyebrows lowered.
Gosh, this was difficult to witness. Jake had decided to read the top of the pizza box over and over again as a way to escape the situation.
“I’m pregnant,” Mandy finally said.
The words were like a bomb going off. Jake actually started to cough, like he wanted to hide the words from reality. All the color drained from Daniel’s face. He stared down at his uneaten slice of pizza as though it might come to life and walk across the table.
“You’re pregnant,” Daniel said finally.
In her entire life, Amelia had never heard her brother sound more disappointed. It was a horrible sound. It was the sound of metal on metal or nails on a chalkboard.
Daniel placed his hands over his eyes. “I just don’t understand how you could do this to yourself, Mandy. How could you be so — so — irresponsible?”
These words were more of an attack. Mandy’s face grew blotchy with embarrassment. Jake stopped coughing and lifted a slice of pizza to his lips.
“Come on, Daniel,” Amelia said suddenly. “Don’t be so harsh.”
Daniel dropped his hands to the table and balked at her. “Excuse me?”
Amelia shrugged. “Your daughter is here trying to tell you about a huge milestone in her life, and you want to ridicule her. Just think about how much courage she needed to be able to do this in the first place.”
Daniel’s face turned animalistic and angry. He looked at her like she was a stranger.
“I guess you’ve known about this all along, huh, Aunt Amelia?” he demanded.
Amelia crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. “What does it matter how long I’ve known? You know now. We all know.”
“Mom and Dad don’t know,” Daniel returned. “What the hell are they going to say?”
“I can guess what Mom will say,” Amelia returned. “Something a whole lot meaner than what you did. And it’s up to us, Daniel, to help Mandy during this stage of her life. It’s up to us to make sure she gets through.”
“But Amelia, I’m her father. You shouldn’t have kept this from me all this time.”
“But I love Mandy like she’s my daughter,” Amelia interjected. “And more than that, I couldn’t very well give over her secrets. She’s eighteen years old, and she’s about to be a mother. We owe her some respect.”
Daniel again turned his eyes toward Mandy, who continued to glower at her journal. After another moment, Mandy brought out the image of her child and swept it across the table toward her father.
“It’s real, Dad. Whether you like it or not, this is really happening.”
Daniel lifted the photo toward the light. He shook his head slowly and ticked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. When he dropped the photo to the table, he again turned his eyes toward Mandy.
“What about all the things we planned for, Mandy? What about everything we talked about?”
Mandy’s cheeks reddened with shame. She looked more miserable than Amelia had ever seen her.
“Daniel, please. We can’t have the regret talk right now,” Amelia returned. “And you know that everything happens for a reason. You said it yourself, almost every day after Suzy left.”
Now, it was time for Daniel to glower at Amelia instead. She narrowed her eyes as she said, “You can belittle me or talk down to me or stare at me like that all you want. Just don’t do it to your daughter.”
“How dare you bring up Suzy in all this?” Daniel demanded.
“Because she’s not here, Danny,” Amelia returned. “And we are. All of us. Here at this table. Do you know who else is here? Mandy’s baby.”
“This all shouldn’t be up to you, Amelia,” Danny offered. “It’s like Mom always says. You’ll only ever kind of, sort of get the whole parenthood thing. You never tried to do it yourself, so you’re just like, peeking through the window and making up your own rules. You’re—”
“Actually, I’m pregnant, too, Danny,” Amelia blurted out. “What do you say to that?”
Silence fell over the table yet again. Mandy’s eyes bugged out of her skull as she took in full view of Amelia. Jake’s jaw had dropped toward the ground. In the distance, Jake’s speaker system had begun to play Smash Mouth, as though the entire night wasn’t just a bad dream.
“You’re pregnant?” Daniel exhausted. “What the hell?”
“Language, Dad,” Mandy returned, with all of that teenage sass.
Daniel placed both hands over his eyes. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or both.” Slowly, he stood from the table, left his pizza behind, and traced steps back toward his bedroom, the same one he’d once shared with Suzy all those years ago.
Jake took this opportunity to place five slices of pizza on a plate and hustle out of there, too.
This left only Amelia and Mandy — the pregnant women of the Taylor family.
“You have to be kidding me,” Mandy finally whispered. She turned her face fully toward Amelia and shook her head. “You really went all-in on your support of me, didn’t you?”
Amelia laughed and dropped her chin to her chest. She exhaled deeply, then whispered, “The worst is over, now. He’ll get over it. And very soon, he’ll know just what t
o do to support you. You just have to give him time.”
“Time. I guess I have that,” Mandy said softly. “About seven months, now.”
“I guess I have about eight,” Amelia returned, smiling.
“Here we go,” Mandy said.
“You can say that again.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I just don’t know exactly how I feel about it.” Anita Taylor’s words buzzed through the loudspeaker as Amelia smeared lotion across her cheeks and her forehead. “Imagine. A grandmother, at my age!”
“You’ve been a grandmother for years, Mom,” Amelia returned. “I think you can manage it.”
“I just don’t know what to do with myself,” Anita said. “I just. Well.” She paused for a long time. For a moment, Amelia thought maybe they’d lost connection. “I’m just honestly so thrilled for you, Amelia. So thrilled.”
Amelia stopped smearing her lotion and gave herself a good, hard look in the mirror. Of course, she’d told her mother the news in-person, but the words had shocked Anita so profoundly that she’d asked Amelia to leave so that she could think about it. This was her, now, calling her back. And it seemed she’d come around. Amelia supposed people in the Taylor family always came around in some way. Everyone needed to take their own time. In Amelia’s case, for example, she had needed a full forty years to figure out her life enough to actually make big things happen.
“You’ll be a great mother,” Anita went on. “I’ve watched you all these years with Jake and Mandy and thought to myself, what a shame that she never did that. Now, I suppose you will. But you’ll do it alone. That’s a tragedy.”
“It isn’t really a tragedy, Mom,” Amelia said. “I’ve done everything else on my own. Why not this, too?”
Anita broached the subject of Mandy’s pregnancy after that. She didn’t sound particularly pleased, but she did say, “Well, another baby is never a bad thing, is it? And I suppose your two babies will have a funny story to tell twenty years from now. Oh, and you and Mandy can help each other. Goodness, I ask myself, where did the Taylor family go wrong, with two single mothers out there now? But, well. We’ll all be there for one another. Won’t we?”
A bit annoyed but still overwhelmed that she had even acknowledged any amount of happiness, Amelia eventually got off the phone to prepare the house for the evening ahead. Jennifer, Anita, Jason, Daniel, Jake, and Mandy were still the only people in her world who knew about the pregnancy, which meant one thing: it was time to tell the other Sisters of Edgartown.
Camilla, Jennifer, Amelia, Olivia, and Mila gathered in a circle in Amelia’s kitchen. Everyone poured wine and gossiped and complimented one another’s outfits; everyone seemed bright and lively and eager for summer. All the while, Amelia sipped diet coke and tried her best to fall into the banter.
It didn’t take long for Camilla to blurt, “You seem off tonight, Amelia. Want to tell us what’s up?”
Amelia felt her blush creep up from her neck, over her cheeks, and toward her ears. She locked eyes with Jennifer, who gave her a firm nod of encouragement.
“Do you remember that one-night stand I had last month?” she finally said.
“Right! That walk of shame you did,” Camilla said. “Can’t believe it, still. I wish I had a photograph.”
“Yeah. The walk of shame. Well, it turns out, I got a whole lot more out of that one-night stand,” Amelia winked as she dropped her hand over her stomach and nodded.
The girls absolutely freaked out after that. There was yelling; there was crying; even Jennifer seemed wild, as though, now that the other sisters knew, she was allowed to fully celebrate. They made multiple cheers; they hugged and whispered and made
promises, like, “Any time you need a babysitter, you have to call me,” or, “Oh my gosh, if you need anyone for your lamaze classes, just call me,” or, “Oh, I have the perfect ointment for the skin around your belly. It’s going to stretch and stretch. Let me bring it for you next time. Although, now that I think about it, it’s about twenty years old, isn’t it? I’ll buy you a new bottle.”
Amelia felt wrapped up in love and comfort. She fell upon the couch between Camilla and Olivia, who wrapped her up in a blanket and continued to gab and gossip with the others into the night. Amelia felt sometimes lost in thought, other times hopeful. Regardless of everything, she was grateful to be surrounded by these marvelous hearts — women who would see her through to the end, no matter what.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Amelia locked her office door and then sat at her desk to dial a faraway number. The phone blared out four times, then five, until a deep, confident voice answered. It was clear when he spoke that he had no idea whose number this was, which meant he’d deleted it.
“Hello?”
“Hi. Nathan Gregory?”
“Speaking.”
“Hello. My name is Amelia Taylor. We a little over a month ago. When you, um, ran into my car.”
“Oh! Right. I heard that my insurance took care of all of that. Any problems?”
“No. No problems,” Amelia offered. She then swallowed the lump in her throat. “Any problems on your end?”
“No...” He sounded annoyed. He was probably between meetings, or on vacation with a luscious blond, or something equally important.
“Anyway. You probably want to know the reason I’m calling,” Amelia said.
“Would be beneficial for me, yeah.”
Amelia’s stomach dropped. She splayed her hand across the base of it and thought of the baby growing inside of her.
“I just wanted you to know that I’m pregnant.”
There was silence on the other line, so much silence that Amelia thought perhaps she’d gone deaf.
“Are you keeping it?”
Amelia felt the words like a smack across the face. After all her years being single, alone on the planet, why would she ever even consider such a thing?
“Of course.”
“Okay.” Nathan cleared his throat. “Interesting. Well. I should tell you, Amelia, that I already have kids. A number of kids and I don’t want anymore.”
Amelia’s stomach felt sour. “I understand.”
“But if this is what you want, you should do what you want.”
“I didn’t call for your permission,” Amelia said coldly. “I just thought you should know, since, you know, this is your baby who’s going to walk around in the world.”
Nathan chuckled. “I forgot how snarky you could be, Amelia. I liked that about you.”
“Glad to hear I made some kind of lasting impression,” Amelia returned.
“Sure.” Nathan cleared his throat again. He seemed almost chipper, now. “Let me ask you this. Is this really what you want to do? Be a single mother?”
Amelia didn’t sense any darkness behind these questions. Rather, Nathan Gregory seemed like a man who studied her for research purposes and nothing else.
“I’ve never had the chance.” Amelia tipped backward in her chair just the slightest bit and stared at the spring sunlight as it danced across the far wall. “If this is my only opportunity, then I guess this is it.”
“Well. Guess that morning car accident wasn’t our only accident of the day,” Nathan said.
She could feel the smile behind his words. Perhaps her baby would be a tiny bit witty, like this man she would never truly know.
“Guess not,” she agreed. “Thank God for that.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Oliver Krispin gripped the edge of the shovel and stabbed the sharp end into the soft soil. He was draped in light clothing, his dark hair glowing beneath the sun, and when he tossed the shovelful of soil to the side, he lifted his eyes toward Amelia and beamed. This was the ceremonial first shoveling of the grounds. They’d officially broken the seal. Now, the resort would be built from the ground up and Oliver’s dreams would be realized.
When he returned to Amelia’s side, Amelia’s heart jumped into her throat. She hadn’t spent much one-on-one time with Oliver i
n the previous few days, which meant the sight of him now made her even woozier. As the mayor of Edgartown stood to make a speech to the fellow onlookers, Oliver dropped his lips to Amelia’s ear and said, “Go to the movies with me tomorrow.”
Amelia felt her smile tweak up toward her ears. How could she resist this man?
But as she waited for him the following evening, she couldn’t help but draw comparisons from this situation to that of Oliver and his ex-wife, who’d been pregnant with another man’s baby. It had broken their marriage. This was the kind of thing that would rip their budding relationship to shreds. Probably, Oliver would never want to see her again.
When Amelia stepped out onto the sidewalk, her eyes found Oliver’s, and her heart jumped into her throat. Throughout the drive, she struggled to speak about anything at all, as everything felt beside the point. She’d never wanted to get to the point more in her life.
Oliver bought them popcorn and drinks while Amelia sat in the center of the dark theater, with her hands clasped over her lap. She told herself that she’d give him the news when he got back to his seat; then, when he arrived, he made a joke, and she laughed, and she didn’t have the strength again. Perhaps there would never be a right time. Perhaps he could just think she was a bit fat for a few months? Perhaps.
But about forty minutes into the movie, Oliver reached over and clasped her hand. Amelia’s heart stopped beating as she turned toward him. She was reminded of long-ago afternoons with teenage boys, who longed to kiss you while the movie went on. As she gazed into his eyes, her mind heavy with this memory, the news just came to her lips. She had to tell him. There was no other way.
“I’m pregnant.”
She said the words a bit too loudly so that two people in front of them turned around and hissed, “SHHH.”
Oliver’s eyes grew wide. He turned his face back toward the film in what looked like complete and total shock. He then placed the barely-eaten bag of popcorn to the side, stood up, adjusted his sweater, and marched out of the theater.
In those horrible moments, Amelia knew it was over.
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