The Consequences of Forever (Lainey)

by Kaitlyn Oruska

  It had been years, but time didn’t matter. I would know those eyes anywhere.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “Alaina,” she said, tilting her head ever-so-slightly to the side, those deep blue eyes taking me in. “My, how you have grown.”

  This wasn’t happening. I reached over and pinched myself on the arm, and felt nothing. It really wasn’t happening. I must have fallen asleep on the floor, when I was getting the pictures ready to be framed. I must have.

  “Don’t do that,” she said, swatting my hand away. Her hands were warm, dry. Unfamiliar. I slunk back at her touch. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “You look so much like your father. Do you have any idea how much people pay salons for that red hair of yours?” She sighed and ran her hand through her own hair, white-blonde and perfectly straight, perfectly shiny. Her nails were long and painted a deep red. Something about them seemed achingly familiar, and I knew they were natural, just like her hair color was. Just like her violet blue eyes were.

  “Are you going to invite me in?” She asked, as if this was a social call and I was being rude. I blinked.

  “Alaina?” She asked, her tone going from conversational to confused. “Are you alright?”

  I opened my mouth to answer her, but ended up shaking my head instead. I wasn’t okay. I was stuck in some sort of weird dream or delusion. Maybe I should have washed the broccoli better before I ate it at dinner. I wondered if Adam was at the golf course now, envisioning himself talking to people he had hadn’t seen in years, people that had forgotten he’d existed.

  Maybe he thinks he’s talking to Natalie, the unwanted thought appeared. I shook my head again, as if that would dislodge the thought from my mind, make it disappear. The woman continued to stand there in front of me, staring at me with something close to concern in her eyes. I stared back, waiting for her to dissipate into thin air.

  She must have grown tired of waiting for an answer, because a minute later she pushed past me, into my house. I turned around and watched her as she surveyed the surroundings, nodding her head slowly, as if she approved.

  “It’s small,” she remarked. “But I’ve had smaller. Tastefully done, though. How many bedrooms?”

  “Two.” The first word I’d spoken to her in years; the number of bedrooms in my house. That seemed incredibly unfair. There were so many other things that needed to be said.

  “Not bad,” she remarked. “At least the baby will get their own room.”

  “You know?” I asked, allowing some of the shock of her appearance fade away in order to experience shock of her knowledge of my pregnancy. She turned around and laughed.

  “Sweetie, it isn’t hard to tell. But of course I knew. Why do you think I’m here?”

  “Are you here?” I asked, feeling like an idiot but needing the confirmation. There was no way this was real. I must have fallen over in the nursery, hit my head. Or the stress of picking a name had gotten to be so much, I’d opted out of reality for a bit; anything but this actually being real.

  “What kind of question is that? Of course I’m here.” She sat down on the couch, a contemplative look on her face. “This is decent,” she determined. “A little old, but again, not bad. Sit.” She patted the seat next to her for emphasis.

  I moved over to her slowly, taking a seat on the chair opposite the couch. She looked disappointed, but the expression faded quickly. “I guess you’re surprised to see me,” she remarked.

  Surprised? That didn’t even begin to cover it.

  “I know you’re angry with me, and understandably so, but we’ll talk about that more later. A new baby means a new chapter in life, and I think it’s about time for me to take a bigger role in this story. Wouldn’t you say?” Her voice was matter-of-fact, as if she weren’t suggesting anything more than what movie to watch or what to have for dinner. As if it were this easy, to just walk into my house and be expected to be invited back in my life. As if she deserved to even be acknowledged.

  Again, I said nothing. There were too many emotions coursing through me, all at once. Anger. Hurt. Shock. Even a little bit of humiliation. The first time we see each other in years, and she finds me like this; huge, pregnant, in some sort of shocked state.

  The door opened again, this time without the doorbell ringing first. I glanced up, surprised to see Adam strolling in. He stopped in his tracks when he realized I wasn’t alone.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, looking at him but not really sure the question was directed at him.

  “I never left,” he replied, shooting a glance from me to the stranger sitting on the couch across from me. “Dad had a call from a potential client and had to cancel last minute.”

  “I am assuming this is the baby’s father?” The woman across from me asked. She studied him the way she had studied me and the house, and then nodded her approval. “I’m impressed, Alaina. You did well for yourself. That baby is going to be rolling in good genes, if I may say so myself.” She winked at me, as if we’d shared an inside joke.

  “Lainey?” Adam asked, glancing at her again before walking over to me. “Are you alright? You look pale.”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not.”

  Adam stood by my side and cleared his throat. “I think you should leave,” he told her.

  “Do you even know who I am?” She asked, unaffected.

  “No, and that’s part of the problem.” He placed a hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently.

  “You don’t see the resemblance?” She continued. “She has her father’s coloring, but I can see it in her face. I’m sure you’d be able to see it in her smile, if nothing else.” She flashed a smile, as if proving this. As much as I didn’t want to, I saw the resemblance.

  “That’s the first thing I noticed in the pictures her father sent, that smile. It can do a lot of damage, if you let it.” She winked at me, and I didn’t react. I didn’t have any idea how to react to her.

  Her confidence bothered me. How could she hold her head up so high, her nose even higher, after having done what she did? It was unbelievable. But just as soon as the anger appeared within me, it disappeared. I was tired of being angry. Inside of me, Little Hannah kicked her tiny legs, as if expressing her own opinion. Harper.

  “Lainey, is this…?” He let his voice trail off, not completing his question. I wondered if he wanted me to finish it for him, say those words. Claim her, the way she had never claimed me. I wouldn’t, but I did anyway.

  “This is Lila Dalton,” I replied, finding my voice. “My mother.”

  Across from me, Lila beamed. Was she proud? Proud of the fact that she’d disappeared for nearly my entire life, only to find me so many years later, pregnant and engaged and living in a guest house, but not even halfway through high school? Or was she here to warn me against my decisions, tell me how much I’ll regret them, how I’ll tire of Adam and our baby within a few years and get on with my life without them, the way she had with me?

  I wanted to ask, but I didn’t dare. Never ask questions to which you don’t want the answers.

  “What are you doing here?” Adam asked the question for me. It was safer that way. His grip on my shoulder tightened, making me feel just a little more secure. Adam wasn’t going to let her hurt me. He wasn’t going to let anyone hurt me.

  “I think I’ve been away long enough,” Lila answered. “Our reunion is long overdue; I didn’t want to risk any more time passing before it happened.”

  “How long?” I heard myself ask. It was a crucial question, how long she would be around. I had to know the answer to that before I could let myself know anything else.

  “There’s no time limit,” Lila replied. “I’m here for as long as you want me.” I didn’t believe her, so I said nothing.

  Lila stood up, an apologetic smile on her face. “I can see I’ve made quite an impression, once again. I think I’m going to go back to my hotel for the night.” She reached into her purse and pulled a small notepad and pen out.
She scribbled something down and handed it to Adam. This confused me at first, but then I realized my hands were shaking. I couldn’t have been trusted to hold that small slip of paper.

  “That’s the direct number to my room, as well as my cell phone. Call me tomorrow when you get up, and we’ll make plans to meet, maybe do lunch. If you don’t call, I’ll come back.” She stepped closer to me, bent down, and took both of my hands in hers.

  “I know this is a bit of a shock to you, and I apologize. But I didn’t think calling ahead would do any good.” She released my hands and touched my face instead.

  “You’ve turned into such a beautiful young woman,” she said, almost wistfully. She leaned forward and brushed her lips against my cheek. I could still feel the outline of them after she pulled away. Her breath was cool, as if she’d been eating mints all day long.

  “Call me in the morning, okay? I’ll be waiting for you.” She shot me a meaningful look and then smiled at Adam. “It was wonderful finally getting to meet you. Adam, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, um, likewise, Ms. Dalton.”

  “Lila,” she corrected him. “Always Lila. Except when it’s Mom.” She flashed me an unreadable look, and then turned to head for the door. She didn’t look over her shoulders, not once, as she left, but I hadn’t been expecting her to.

  Some people never look behind them, at the wreckage they might be leaving in their wake.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I spent the entire night tossing and turning, unable to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. This wasn’t necessarily unusual for the past few weeks, but it was typically due to my being unable to get comfortable, not because I couldn’t turn my brain off.

  Finally, at eight on Saturday morning, Adam gave up trying to sleep. He looked exhausted, and I immediately felt guilty.

  “Look, Lainey, you can’t drive yourself crazy over this,” he said, his voice weary. “Either call her or don’t, but you need to make a decision.”

  I couldn’t make that decision. Of all the ones I’d been faced with lately, somehow this felt like one of the biggest. Maybe I’d been a little torn about what to do right after finding out I was pregnant, but Adam hadn’t been, and that made the decision easier to live with. I’d been torn between telling Nora and Hannah about my dad’s affair, but Julia had been there to guide me towards an answer, and it was one I’d ended up being able to live with. But there was no one who could answer this for me. I was on my own.

  Letting my mother back into my life was risky. And the wording of “letting her back” into my life drove me crazy, because she was never really there to begin with. My father and I had moved away from her when I was two, and she did nothing to try and stop him. She knew where I was, always. She could have tried harder to find me before this, back when I actually needed her.

  “Every time I start to think everything is going to be okay, something new happens and turns it all upside down,” I lamented to Adam. He sat up in bed, closing his eyes and leaning back against the bed frame.

  “Call her,” he said. “If she answers and you regret it right away, you can hang out and not answer if she calls back. But if you call and it feels right, make plans with her.”

  “It’s not that simple,” I insisted. I tried to sit up, but the weight of Little Hannah felt like too much this early in the morning, on so little sleep. “What if I give her a chance, and she leaves again?”

  “Maybe that’s still better than playing what-if for the rest of your life,” he replied. “I get it, Lainey, I do. And I know there’s nothing in my life that I can compare to what you’re going through. All I can do is tell you what I’d do in this situation, and I’d call her. Because there’s no guarantee you’ll ever get this chance again, and that seems harder to live with than just trying to play it safe.”

  I considered this, and minutes passed without either of us saying anything. Adam leaned over and kissed my forehead. “What’s the worst that can happen?” He asked. “You’ve spent the last fourteen years of your life getting used to not having her around. If things don’t work out, at least you can know for sure that you gave it your all.”

  I smiled gratefully at him, and made my decision. I would give my mother another chance, and if by the end of the day I wasn’t convinced, I would be the one walking away for a change.

  I called her hotel room, and she answered on the first ring. “I didn’t think you were going to call,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact.

  “I didn’t think I was, either.”

  Silence fell, and for a brief moment I started to panic, thinking she had hung up. But then she spoke again, her voice clear. “Why don’t you come to my hotel around noon?” She asked. “We could eat and talk, see where things should go from here.”

  She gave me the name of her hotel, her room number, and told me to meet her in the lobby. I took everything down mentally, and stayed on the phone for a full minute after she hung up.

  The hotel she’d named was the ritziest one in Haven, where people that were as wealthy as the Reeves’ stayed. I knew that Lila had given up on our family because she wanted to pursue her acting and modeling career, and now I wondered if she’d found success. I’d thought about this before, but avoiding putting her name in a search engine to find out if she’d ever stared in anything, afraid of the answer. Afraid of knowing that she’d found success, at the cost of my childhood.

  The rest of the morning went incredibly slow. Adam cooked me breakfast, something he was surprisingly good at, but I barely touched it. We went through some more pictures, trying to match our favorites with frames, but my heart wasn’t in it. We flipped through the baby names book one last time, but nothing new stuck out to me.

  Finally, twenty minutes before noon, Adam and I got into his car and he drove me to the hotel. I considered asking him to stay, but decided that might not be the best move. I knew he would; it seemed to be in his nature to protect me, but I shouldn’t have to ask him to protect me from my own mother. I needed to do this alone.

  “If anything happens, or if you start to feel uncomfortable, or anything at all, call me. I’ll answer right away,” he promised when I prepared to get out of the car. There was concern in his eyes.

  I smiled softly at him and nodded. “I know. Thank you.” I kissed him and then pushed myself out of the car the best I could. I entered the lobby, surprised to find my mother, Lila, already waiting.

  “I was afraid you weren’t going to show up,” she commented when she saw me. “But I’m glad to have been wrong.”

  We stood there awkwardly for a moment, studying each other. She didn’t look as professional as she had the day before; quite the opposite, in fact. She was actually dressed pretty trendy, with a black tank top that crisscrossed on her back, showing off most of it, and carefully torn jeans. She looked like a celebrity, but then, maybe she was.

  “I ate here last night,” she said, leading me over the restaurant. “It was actually pretty good. I was amazed, with Haven being such a small town and all.” The host spotted her immediately and led us to a table near the giant picture glass windows, overlooking the town. I was surprised to see Adam still sitting outside in his car, staring at the entrance, as if waiting for me to come running back out.

  “I can tell he really cares for you,” Lila observed. I looked over at her and she smiled. It was an easy smile, as though nine years hadn’t passed since the last time we saw each other. I was only seven the last time she saw me, I thought to myself. I couldn’t even remember myself at seven. Could she?

  “He does,” I agreed, because I didn’t know what else to say. Lila was the last person on earth I wanted to spill my heart out too.

  She picked the menu up and studied it carefully. “I think I’ll have a Panini,” she decided. “With grilled chicken and maybe a little bacon.” She winked at me. “I have an active enough lifestyle; I can afford to eat a few extra calories when I want. I don’t gain weight easily, anyway. I can see that particular gene wa
s passed on to you; you’re all baby.”

  “How did you know?” I asked her, ignoring her attempt at small talk.

  “About you not putting on weight? Well, not much except that I looked the same when I was pregnant with you. I’ve had some friends over the years, though, that gained more weight than they knew what to deal with, and had a hell of a time losing it after the baby was born.” She shook her head, as if this were the most devastating news she’d ever had to reveal. Maybe to her, it was.

  “No. I mean how did you know I was pregnant? How did you find out?”

  Lila sighed and poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher the host had left at the table when he seated us. She poured me a glass too, but I had a feeling that had more to do with stall tactics than concern over my hydration. “Your father told me.”

  “When?” I demanded.

  “A few months ago, after you moved out. We speak, your father and I, from time to time. He keeps me updated on your life.”

  “That’s not true,” I argued. My dad would never do that.

  “It is true, and just because you weren’t aware of it doesn’t mean it isn’t. Michael was concerned that you’d get upset with him telling me about your life, so he kept it from you. I know you don’t think I deserve to know any of it, and maybe you’re right, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know. I care what happens to you, Alaina.”

  “My name isn’t Alaina.” I knew I was just being petty now, but I didn’t care. “It’s Lainey.”

  “Is that not the same thing?” Lila sighed again. “But if it makes you feel better, I’ll call you Lainey.”

  The waiter arrived, and Lila placed her order. I was feeling far from hungry, so I ordered a tossed salad. Lila looked disapproving.

  “The baby needs more than just salad all the time,” she advised. “I’ll share my Panini with you, if you don’t want to order anything else.”