by Melissa West
“All right. I know. But how can I not go? She has no one.”
“But she does. She has her father. Again, I ask you if that is your real motive here. And further, Kara, we need to address the abortion and the impact it is having on this situation. Have you always felt regret or is that a new thing?”
My eyes dropped to my hands in my lap. I didn’t want to talk openly about the abortion right now, not when the conversation had begun with Maggie. It made me question whether Rose was right and everything with Maggie led back to that instead of my truly caring about her.
“Kara?”
“Always,” I finally answered. “I understand that abortion is the right decision for some women. I’m not anti-abortion. But I am anti-hurting a baby that was a part of me. I can’t seem to get past it, and now, I see Maggie and touch her belly and feel Addie kick and I can’t help thinking . . .”
“Thinking what? Kara, you were sixteen. You were in no way prepared to raise a child. Trust me, I have two of my own and a mess of grandchildren. There is nothing easy about being a parent, especially when you yourself were still a child. I respect Maggie’s decision to keep her baby, but that does not mean it will be easy for her or that child. I’m a little lost here. Kara . . . do you want a child right now? Honestly?”
I shook my head. “No. No, I don’t want one now. I just . . .”
She puffed on her cigarette again, her intense stare burning into me. “Do you wish you were Maggie? Do you want that burden?”
“No, I just—”
“Then what? I’m not understanding why you are becoming so engrossed in this girl’s life.”
I tossed up my hands. “Because I didn’t have the choice! I didn’t get to see my baby on the ultrasound monitor or even listen to a freaking heartbeat. It was taken from me, and I will always want for that decision.”
“So you wouldn’t have aborted your baby?”
“No.” Tears pooled in my eyes, rolling slowly down my cheeks. “I wouldn’t have.”
Rose released a long breath and sat beside me, patting my knee as she passed me a tissue. “Okay. I think I understand now. You feel regret because you think you allowed it to happen. But you have to let this go. You can’t bring that moment back. And I understand now why it’s so important to you that Maggie has her decision. But that doesn’t change the fact that yours has already been made and you must move on now.”
I closed my eyes as the words swam around my mind. Rose was right, so why couldn’t I let go? How had I let this overrun my entire life? So far, I’d spent my summer becoming obsessed with my ex-boyfriend’s roommate and obsessed with a pregnant teen, and now that I thought of the two together, I couldn’t help realizing how linked they were. Colt saw me for me, never dwelling on my past decision. Like it had never happened. I found comfort in him, just like I found comfort in Maggie’s pregnancy—the opposite of my experience. A do-over.
Suddenly, I felt overwhelmed, unsure of every decision I’d made thus far. I needed to think, without Rose’s penetrating stare watching my every move.
I focused on the boxes beside her chair, desperate to change the topic before I became any more depressed. “What are those?” I asked, pointing at the boxes.
“Olivia had asked if she could look through Doris and Gertrude’s old journals. You’re welcome to read them as well. I think you will find Doris’s especially interesting.”
“Doris and Gertrude. You mean . . . ?”
Rose sighed. “Yes, the sisters who originally owned this house.”
“The ghosts,” I asked, unable to keep from smiling.
Rose stood up and went over to lift a box. “We all have them, dear.”
***
I left Rose’s with all three boxes piled up, one on the other, so I could scarcely see where I was walking. I placed them in the trunk of my car and texted Olivia that I had the goods from Rose and to meet me at the apartment for a reading party.
Olivia, Sarah, and Alyssa were waiting out front when I arrived at Charleston Haven to help me bring in the boxes. We sat them on the floor of the common room, and Olivia called for a pizza to be delivered, and then we were in a circle, the boxes in the middle.
Sarah tore into the first, labeled Gertrude, and began passing around black journals to each of us. The pages had yellowed from age and they had a distinct dusty smell to them, but the ink on the pages was as clear as if the words had been written yesterday. I read a few pages in the journal Sarah had given me, all about Gertrude’s love for a man who didn’t know her, didn’t even know her name. I felt her pain as I read each page. I finished that journal and grabbed another, this one full of the things that annoyed her about Doris. Olivia stood and began reading one out loud, and soon we were all rolling on the floor laughing. I started to grab another Gertrude journal, but I couldn’t kick the nagging in my head that Rose thought I would relate to Doris’s story. What had she meant?
I grabbed the scissors from the table and tore into one of Doris’s boxes, eager to learn more about her and why Rose felt we were similar. It took another hour of reading, three slices of pizza, and a ton of laughs at the antics the sisters had cooked up through their lives, before I found the journal that Rose must have been referring to. I reread the line three times, allowing it to digest.
I’m pregnant.
I quickly read all about her fears, so similar to mine, and then five pages from those two simple words came the devastating: I’ve lost the baby. How ever will I go on?
Chills moved down my back as I read her words, each more painful than the last. Pages upon pages of tears in in the form of words, all of them showing Doris’s stages of dealing with her loss—anger, depression, frustration, fear. I saw myself in her, felt for her situation, just as Rose had predicted. And just as Rose predicted, I knew there was nothing at all healthy about my going to Maggie’s ultrasound.
“Kara? Are you all right?”
My head snapped up. “Yeah, yeah, totally. Just reading.”
“You’re crying.”
“Me?” I reached up to touch my cheeks, shocked. When had I begun to cry? “This one is just a little . . . heartbreaking.” I glanced down at the book. “She lost her baby and it tore her apart.”
Sarah sighed. “This one, too. Geez. The sisters definitely had their ups and downs through life. I’m not reading anything that said they married. Do you know if they did?” she asked Olivia.
“I don’t know.”
Alyssa nodded and held out her journal. “Doris did. But her husband died in war. They were only married a year.”
Oh my God. Did that mean Doris lost her baby and her husband in the same year? I couldn’t imagine anything worse. My heart ached for her.
A knock sounded at the door, breaking the silence. “That’s Preston,” Olivia said.
“I’ve got to get to work anyway,” Alyssa said, standing.
I shook myself from the sad trance, though I still felt the weight of Doris’s pain on my chest. She had been through so much. “Okay, then. We can have another reading party later.” My voice sounded light and happy, like always, but inside I still felt every aching word that Doris had written. They covered me like a thick grime that needed to be washed from my skin. I wasn’t ready to put the letters and the feelings they conjured away just yet. I wanted to talk with someone about them, someone who understood why Doris’s words struck me so deep. And only one person could help me. I surfed to Colt’s name on my phone and quickly typed out: Can you come over?
Colt: On my way.
Chapter Twenty-one
I heard a soft knock from the front door and swung it open, only for me to jerk back at the sight of the person before me. It wasn’t Colt.
It was Ethan.
I blinked fast to make sure I wasn’t seeing things as my mouth worked to find words that wouldn’t come.
“I’
m sorry to just drop by, but I had to see you,” he said. “May I come in?”
I stared at him, at the way his hair was cut short, his face smooth, his clothes all preppy and frat-like. The guy before me wasn’t at all the Ethan I had once known. The guy I had thought I loved. “Um, I . . .”
“Kara, please. I came all the way home just to see you. Please, can we talk?”
Just then a shadow fell onto the landing, and I glanced past Ethan to see Colt walking toward us. Ethan turned around to see what had caught my attention, his eyes darting between Colt and me, as if confused, and then his expression quickly flickered from understanding to anger.
“What the fuck is this?” he asked, motioning to Colt. “I leave and you move in on my girl?”
Colt straightened, his demeanor remarkably composed. Like he was a man talking to a boy. “It isn’t like that, mate. You know I would never—”
“Then what the hell are you doing here?” Ethan turned back to me, waiting for me to reply, but suddenly I was the angry one.
I stood back. “You can come in so we can talk, but I’m sorry, I don’t owe you an explanation. We aren’t together anymore.”
He gestured to Colt. “But you two are?”
I eyed Colt, and the moment of hesitation was enough to send Ethan over the edge. He started for Colt, his fists clenched. “Kara is mine, you hear me? Mine. You knew that!”
I slipped between them, my arms out, and for once, I wished that Olivia and Preston were home so they could help me out. “Please, stop,” I said, my eyes pleading with Ethan. I was beyond angry that after an entire summer and no contact, he suddenly felt he had some claim on me, but at the same time, I didn’t want to hurt him. We had a history together, and he had been there for me when I needed someone the most. He deserved more than anger from me now.
Ethan’s gaze dropped to mine. “Kar . . .” He shook his head. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”
I closed my eyes. “Just . . . come in.”
“Not with him. I’ll talk to you alone, but not with him around.”
I sighed heavily and spun around to Colt. He tucked his hands into his pockets, like he’d anticipated what I was going to say. “I need to talk to Ethan,” I said, praying that he understood.
He stared at me for a moment, then nodded slowly. “All right.”
I wanted to go to him, to put my arms around his neck and kiss him once before he went, but I knew I couldn’t. Not then. I needed to have this talk with Ethan alone, otherwise I knew I wouldn’t be as honest as I should. And I wanted to be honest with him. He deserved the truth.
Colt gave me one last fleeting look before disappearing down the steps, and I went back to my apartment and nodded for Ethan to come inside.
“It smells different,” he said as he glanced around.
I shrugged. “Yeah, I’ve gotten a little obsessed with a candle I bought at the Market.” I thought of my Clarity candle and wondered if lighting it would at all help me with this conversation. Likely not. I wasn’t that lucky.
“What’s up with the boxes?” he asked, motioning to the open boxes in the common room.
“Oh, it’s nothing. Olivia’s therapist sent them home with me today. They’re just old journals.”
His eyebrow cocked. “She sent them home with you?”
I realized then how little Ethan knew of my life now, how little we knew of each other. How had that happened? There was a time when we told each other everything. The thought made me sad. “She’s teaching me some things this summer.”
“Like an internship?” He was all over the room now, picking up things that weren’t there before. New coasters. New photos. He stopped at the end table beside the sofa and picked up a frame, studying the photo inside. It was a picture from our beach trip a few weeks ago, taken by a passerby just before Alyssa had gotten stung by the jellyfish. Everyone was there. Including Colt. I thought of the photo, of Colt’s arms wrapped tightly around my waist, of the smile on my face—on all of our faces. Guilt swarmed through me.
I cleared my thought. “Um, no. I just talk with Rose. I’m interning at Helping Hands. It’s a nonprofit counseling center.” I knew I was avoiding the real question in the air, but I wasn’t ready to label my relationship with Colt.
Ethan slowly placed the frame back on the table. “How long?”
“The internship? It’s just for the summer.”
He turned to look at me. “No. How long have you been with Colt?”
I swallowed hard. “Most of the summer.”
He nodded and began looking around again. “You know, you’re different. The same. But . . . different. You look happy.” He peered over at me. “Happier than you were with me.”
The guilt from before bubbled up, the urge to cry so intense that I had to tell myself to breathe to keep the tears from falling. “I am.”
“But why weren’t you happy with me?”
“I was happy with you. We just drifted apart. Our reasons for being together no longer made sense.”
He focused back on me, and I could tell by his expression that what he was about to say next would hurt. “So you just moved on to him? Don’t you think that’s a little odd?”
I started to argue, but he cut me off. “Just hear me out. I think things between us became too tough for you, so you left for something easier. That’s what you do, Kara. First with Preston, and now me. Things get rough and you bolt without even trying.”
“You’re wrong. Preston and I were a different situation. You know that. And us, we . . . we just weren’t working.”
“Bullshit. We were good together. You left because things became too hard. You can’t take it. And you’ll leave him, too.” He started for the door, anger taking over. I knew I should go for him, that I should try to talk things out, that I should try to salvage our friendship, but his words had rooted me to the spot.
I heard the door close behind him, my thoughts on my relationship with Preston, and then Ethan, and now Colt. I had moved from one to the other, never allowing my heart to heal in between or my mind to process what I really wanted.
Maybe Ethan was right . . .
***
I warily made my way to Colt’s apartment, my mind still on my argument with Ethan. I had no idea how long he would be in Charleston, whether he was leaving that night or staying with Preston for a few days, but I did know that nothing about the conversation felt resolved.
I tapped softly on Colt’s door, and after a few moments, I heard the sound of feet padding to answer. My heart surged with anticipation, and then the door opened and Colt stood there, his expression hooded. He stepped back and nodded for me to enter, never saying a word. He wore loose cargo shorts and a fitted white T-shirt that showed off every muscle in his arms and chest, and I found my mind drifting off to indecent places, but I knew we needed to talk.
“What did he say to make you change your mind?”
I glanced up, taken off guard by his comment. “What do you mean?”
“About me. I can see it in your face.”
I tried to hold his gaze and failed. “Nothing. He didn’t say anything.”
“Kara, be honest with me.”
I looked up, suddenly too raw in his presence to say anything but the truth. “He said I leave when things get tough. That I’ll leave you, too. Do you think he’s right?”
Colt’s face softened and he took a step toward me, taking my hands in his. “This sad face is about me? You’re worried that you’ll hurt me or something?”
My gaze dropped. “That seems to be my track record, and with you . . . I . . . I just don’t want to do anything to mess this up.”
Colt tilted my chin up and kissed my lips easily. “You let me worry about me. I’m fine. And we’re just getting started.” He kissed me again, this time with more feeling, and for once, I pushed my reservations
aside and leaned into the kiss, allowing myself to get lost in him. I didn’t have to have all the answers in that moment, just like I didn’t have to have the answers with Maggie or my major. It was okay to experience things. It was okay to make mistakes.
Colt pulled me against him, his lips on my neck, then my shoulder. He stepped away for a moment and his gaze fell to my simple cotton dress.
“You know, you look amazing today,” he whispered.
“You look pretty great yourself,” I replied, my voice full of want. He considered me for a moment, as though asking whether we should talk more, but Colt had always been able to read me like no one else. His eyes dropped to my mouth, and then his lips were on mine, first all gentle and sweet. Then, as though he couldn’t rein himself in, he pulled me flush against him and deepened the kiss, his tongue dipping inside my mouth and taking ownership. He lifted me up and placed me on the countertop, then tugged me close, his hands slipping inside my dress.
He moaned into my mouth as his hands found my thong and then bare ass. “Good God . . .” He kissed me again, and then gripped my backside and pulled me off the counter, walking me toward his room as his lips continued to work their magic on my mouth and neck.
Colt set me down just before his bed, and I took a step back, my eyes on his, sure and confident. “I want to make love to you.” He opened his mouth and I placed a finger over it, silencing him. “I know what you’re going to say, but I want this. I want you. All of you.”
He took my hand in his and kissed the finger that was covering his mouth before placing it back at my side. “I don’t want you to have regrets. Not when it comes to me or us. This is . . .” He shook his head. “This is real for me. You are real for me. I don’t want to rush you.”
I closed the distance between us. “I trust you. And I’m ready.” He seemed to contemplate for another moment, but then I threaded my fingers through his, and said, “I’ve never felt for anyone what I feel for you. This is real for me, too.”
