One Week In December

by Holly Chamberlin

  “Well, whatever’s behind this, we can’t let her tell Rain the truth. Not now, not yet. Anyway, it’s not her decision to make. This is a family affair.”

  Naomi sighed. “I wonder if anyone can actually prevent Becca from doing what she wants to do. She’s not planning on committing a crime, after all. We can’t punish her for wanting to tell the truth.”

  “We can threaten to cut her off from us all if she says a word to Rain without everyone’s approval.”

  “Oh, David, what good would that do once she’s told Rain that she’s her birth mother? Becca won’t care if she’s lost the rest of us because she’ll have her daughter back. . . .”

  “If,” David said, sounding downright glum, “if Rain will speak to her—or to any of us ever again. You know, there have been cases where kids divorce their parents.”

  Naomi slipped her nightgown over her head and sighed. “David,” she said. “Don’t be so dramatic.”

  “It’s hard not to be dramatic. It’s hard not to scream and yell and—and DO something.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I know. I feel terribly frustrated, too. But we might just have to accept this, David. Not everything in life is within our control.”

  “Now you’re being fatalistic. You can’t be so negative about this, Naomi. There’s a solution to every problem,” he said forcefully. “A good solution.”

  Naomi shook her head. “No, David, not always. Sometimes there’s only another problem in place of the first one. A bigger, nastier problem.”

  “I don’t believe that. I’m a scientist, Naomi. The things that we don’t have answers to or explanations for aren’t unanswerable or inexplicable. We just haven’t found the solutions to the problems yet. But they can and will be found.”

  “Science has nothing to do with human emotion, David,” Naomi said. “You know that. You can’t will everything in this world to go your way. I know that might be hard for you to understand, to accept. You’re a powerful person. You’re persuasive. It’s one of the qualities about you I most admire. But the problem is that you don’t know when will is not the right tool. Not the right weapon. Now is one of those times. Now we need—finesse. We need to act with calm and sympathy.”

  “Women’s tools. I’m not sure I can, Naomi.”

  Naomi frowned. “Women’s tools? Please, David. Don’t be archaic. Anyway, you have no choice. Don’t antagonize your sister. It won’t help our cause.”

  “The whole thing is so damn complicated!” David balled his socks together and threw them into a corner. He wished he had something heavier to throw; he wanted to hear a satisfying thud or smash, but flinging one of his mother’s bedside lamps into the corner was probably not a good idea.

  “We knew that going in,” Naomi agreed. “But now . . . that knowledge doesn’t make things any easier, does it? David, I’m scared.”

  David was, too, but it wasn’t in him to admit it. Not yet. “I just wish I knew what brought this on. What possible motive can she have? And why now?”

  “I have no idea. I wonder what’s going on in her personal life.”

  David laughed. “Like I would know? She doesn’t talk to me any more than she talks to you, to any one of us. Not about anything personal anyway.”

  “I suspect she doesn’t have much of a personal life. Maybe that’s why she’s suddenly so keen on—reclaiming—her daughter. Maybe she’s lonely. I just don’t know.”

  Naomi finished her bedtime routine by rubbing a thick lotion into her hands. It was awful how dry her skin could get in the cold weather. She was glad she’d never been vain about her hands. To her, they were tools rather than ornaments. But from somewhere, Rain had gotten the taste for wearing her nails long and carefully polished. Naomi cringed. That’s how Aunt Becca wore her nails.

  “Well, in that case,” David was saying, “someone had better find her a boyfriend and fast. That or a dog.”

  The couple got into bed, David on the left, Naomi on the right, as always. Daily routine was good. It was something you could count on in an unpredictable world where financial markets could crash seemingly without warning—and where out of the blue a family member could threaten to disturb the long-established peace.

  “Speaking of dogs,” Naomi said, “the boys have been asking me about when we’re getting one.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes, oh. We did promise them we’d visit the pound come spring.”

  “Okay, okay. In the spring. Let’s get through this crisis before we take on puppy training.”

  David turned off the lamp on the bedside table. The room was very dark. The bed was comfortable. The night was quiet. But neither Rowan slept for some time.

  13

  The light in the Peony Room was low. Julie had chosen the small, old-fashioned bedside lamps with care. Their rose-colored shades gave a sense of calm and security to the room.

  Too bad Steve couldn’t feel either calm or secure. Though he had spent over forty years as a high-powered, sharklike attorney, he was a sentimental man at heart. In spite of the fact that he’d suspected that something was troubling his daughter, he hadn’t been properly prepared for her announcement and felt terribly stricken. He felt physically ill.

  As was her habit, Julie tried to reassure and to comfort him, but this time it was to no real avail.

  “Things will appear brighter in the morning, honey,” she said, stroking his cheek with her work-worn hand. “I promise you. They always do.”

  Steve squeezed his wife’s other hand and said good night. Within minutes he heard the slow and deep breathing that told him she was asleep.

  He envied Julie’s ability to compartmentalize, to put aside a problem until morning, to be generally imperturbable. He envied her because he was so different. Steve was a brooder, and though he knew the futility of worry, he was a worrier. It wasn’t the first night he’d lain awake for hours, futilely reviewing the past.

  First, there had been the stunning news of Becca’s pregnancy, and her refusal to have an abortion. She’d known she couldn’t raise the child on her own—the idea was incomprehensible, terrifying—but she simply couldn’t bear the idea of aborting the pregnancy. Of course, the family had respected her decision. Then, there had been the family meetings to discuss David and Naomi’s offer to raise the child as their own. Nora had been the strongest supporter of the plan. Then, there had been the phone calls. The delicate way Steve had tried to put the family’s requests. The promises he’d made of future support and the assurances of the most sincere thanks. The lectures he’d listened to patiently from those reluctant to get involved in a scheme not entirely legal. Finally, there had been the financial arrangements. And it had all gone off without a hitch. It was a miracle, really. It was an incredible stroke of luck. It was an example of almost unbelievable good fortune.

  But now the universe was seeking its payment. The universe in the form of the person he had most wanted to protect. Becca had become her own avenging angel.

  Steve had truly thought he was acting on his daughter’s behalf, arranging the adoption that was not a legal adoption but, in reality, a subterfuge. He’d thought he was acting unselfishly. But not for the first time he wondered if all along, there had been an element of self-preservation in his actions. Had he wanted to avoid the embarrassment of having a pregnant teenaged daughter in his home? Had he worried about his professional reputation, what his colleagues might think of him, what the other fathers he knew might say behind his back? Had he been ashamed of Becca? And had what he’d convinced himself to be a kind and humane act really only been the whitewashing of an unpleasant truth?

  Steve sighed. Sometimes, he thought, even a well-meaning father just didn’t know what was best for his family.

  It wasn’t until Henry Le Mew leapt up on the bed and curled at his feet that Steve finally slept.

  14

  The hardest part was over. At least, Becca hoped it was. Her intentions had been announced. If they hadn’t been met with enthusiasm,
well, it was only what she had expected. Maybe not quite as much anger, but shock, yes, surprise, and initial resistance. That was normal. No one really enjoyed sudden, dramatic change, no matter what they might claim.

  While she undressed for bed, Becca reviewed details of the meeting. She saw her father’s look of disbelief. She recalled Olivia’s hostility, a hostility that seemed general, not entirely directed at her sister. At one point David had looked apoplectic. James, her one hope, however dim, had been useless. And Naomi . . . Naomi’s evident sorrow had shaken Becca’s confidence, though it had not weakened her resolve.

  Becca lay down on the couch and pulled the blankets up to her neck. Maybe, she thought, someday Rain and I can move to a warm climate, or maybe take a second home in someplace exotic like Anguilla or Belize. True, Rain liked the snow—she had been skiing with the family since she was seven; she was like the childhood Becca that way—but Becca was sure her daughter would also get to love waterskiing, or maybe windsurfing.

  Olivia had said that Becca was out of her mind. David had threatened a thrashing. Her grandmother had told her she was being unfair. Becca squirmed under the blankets. It wouldn’t be easy getting to sleep that night, so she decided to indulge in a few of her favorite fantasies about life with her daughter by her side. The fantasies always soothed her.

  On Saturday mornings they would make a big breakfast together. Becca would forgo her usual breakfast of black coffee and a small yogurt and happily indulge in one of Rain’s favorite foods, French toast with lots of syrup. In the afternoons, Becca would take her daughter to a museum or a movie. Once a year they might take a plane down to New York for a shopping spree that would set Becca back in the thousands. But it would be worth it. Rain was too old for mother-daughter outfits, and the notion slightly sickened Becca, but maybe they could wear matching silver bracelets, something elegant and discreet but engraved with each other’s birthday.

  Becca reached to the end of the couch for another blanket and burrowed as deep as she could. One thing was for sure. She’d never make her daughter sleep on so uncomfortable a surface. When she and Rain traveled to Paris, and from there, on to Venice or Rome, you could be sure they would have first-class accommodations all the way. Becca had a lot of time to make up for and she would do it in style.

  And someday, far in the future, Becca would proudly walk down a church aisle arm in arm with her daughter, in the time-honored—if paternalistic—gesture of deliverance. After, of course, Becca had vetted the husband to be, had him thoroughly investigated, and had personally grilled him about his intentions.

  If Becca were any other thirty-two-year-old woman, single, successful, and attractive, she might have been dreaming of travel and cultural expeditions and walking down the aisle of a church as activities she might pursue with a boyfriend or a fiancé or a husband. But Becca had long ago stopped dreaming about—even thinking about—romantic relationships.

  Long ago she had convinced herself that she didn’t need a romantic relationship, that intimacy could only bring trouble. How could she ever know someone well enough to trust him with the secret of Rain’s birth? What if she made another horrible mistake? What if she so badly misjudged a man’s character that she shared her secret with someone who was incapable of keeping it safe?

  Becca shifted under the weight of blankets. The couch was a nightmare of lumps and bumps. But at least it was horizontal. At least her mother hadn’t asked her to sleep in a chair.

  A romantic relationship. Well, even if a man proved to be capable of keeping a secret, even if she trusted him enough to tell him the truth about her daughter, there was always the chance that he might react with shock and disappointment. There was always the chance that he might consider her duplicitous; he might even think her an uncaring mother, and Becca felt that such a wrong judgment would destroy her.

  There was, of course, the option of continued secrecy. But the thought of living with or marrying someone from whom she was keeping such a huge secret—well, the thought made her physically nauseated. She was tired of deception. It had made her isolated and afraid. It had alienated her from friends and, eventually, from her family. And if Becca had chosen the path of alienation rather than having it thrust upon her, well, she’d done so because she had seen no other way.

  Once it was known to the world that Rain was her daughter, that obstacle—that lie—would, of course, be removed. But then Becca would have Rain and there would be no room for a romance. There would be too much time to make up for with her daughter—her rightful dearest friend forever.

  15

  Friday, December 22

  “But why wasn’t I involved?” Lily asked her grandmother. The two women were in the kitchen preparing breakfast for the family. “Why didn’t she ask me to be there, too? After all, I know the truth about Rain. Gosh, doesn’t that sound horrible? ‘The Truth About Rain.’ It sounds like the title of a book or movie where you learn that ‘the truth’ is something bad and dirty.”

  Nora turned on the coffeemaker, noting that it needed a good cleaning. Of course she’d told Lily about the family meeting the night before. She believed that Lily had a right to know.

  “I don’t know why Becca didn’t want you to be there,” she said now. “Maybe she wanted only those people involved in the original decision to be involved.”

  “But that doesn’t explain why James was invited, or allowed to stay.” Lily brought a small pitcher of milk to the kitchen table. The breakfast stampede would start soon.

  “True,” Nora acknowledged. “But I think Becca was hoping for an ally, and the only one she thought she might be able to count on was someone who wasn’t a Rowan. And we know how mild-mannered James is, how reasonable a man.”

  “And did he come to Becca’s aide?”

  Nora handed her granddaughter a newly filled sugar bowl. “No. Not only is he reasonable, he’s wise. He declined to offer an opinion.”

  “I bet Olivia gave him one of her looks and that kept him quiet.”

  Nora couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, I believe there was a look. But on occasion James still does act on his own.”

  The twins burst into the kitchen, their father just behind.

  “It’s snowing! It’s snowing!”

  “Can we go outside, Dad?”

  “Not until you have some breakfast. Sit.”

  “I want a Pop-Tart,” Michael announced.

  “You’re having oatmeal.”

  “Can’t I have a Pop-Tart, too?”

  “Grandma doesn’t keep Pop-Tarts in the house. And neither do we. Where are you getting Pop-Tarts, anyway? Good morning Grandma, Lily.”

  Naomi followed her husband and children. “I think it’s that boy Christian at school. His mother feeds him all sorts of garbage. And I’ve heard from another mother that he’s got quite a little business going, trading garbage for lunch money.”

  “That’s not trading,” David pointed out. “That’s selling.”

  “He only charges twenty-five cents for a Pop-Tart,” Michael said.

  “And only twenty cents for a Twinkie.” Malcolm eyed his bowl of hot oatmeal warily. “Can I have some sugar?”

  “No. Have a banana.”

  Becca came into the kitchen as her brother was handing his son a peeled banana. She felt the atmosphere change from one of tension to one of manic tension.

  It took a lot of effort to say “good morning” in a voice that didn’t betray the sudden nausea she felt upon facing the Rowans in the light of day.

  Her grandmother put a plate of toast on the table and said, “Good morning, Becca,” firmly, neutrally. David and Naomi each mumbled something that might have been a greeting or a curse. Lily, by now, Becca assumed, in the know, gave her a brief, awkward smile. The twins didn’t seem to notice anything but the food they were rapidly consuming, sugar or no sugar.

  Becca poured herself a cup of the useless coffee her parents served and took a seat at the table. The thought of eating anything made the feeling
of general nausea worse.

  Moments later, Olivia and James joined the others in the kitchen.

  “Good morning,” James said. His wife said nothing; she went straight to the coffeemaker and poured a cup for herself. Her husband, it seemed, was on his own.

  The kitchen door opened, letting in a blast of cold, clear air. Julie appeared, with Hank at her side. He shook himself dry—further dampening his unconcerned mother—and clicked out of the room.

  “Where’s Dad?” David asked.

  “Up at dawn and off to his studio. Your father hardly slept last night. Or so he tells me.”

  Becca felt everyone’s eyes on her, accusing. She was responsible for her father’s sleeping badly. She was always the one who caused trouble. She glanced up from her coffee; she felt, rather than saw, the eyes slip away.

  Fine. Let them not meet her eyes. She was glad. She knew all about alienation.

  Rain’s distinctive step was heard in the hallway. Becca’s fingers tightened on the cup’s handle.

  “Good morning, everyone,” she called brightly as she came into the kitchen. Immediately, she went over to where her mother sat next to the boys.

  Rain kissed the top of Naomi’s head and took a seat next to her. “You look kind of tired, Mom,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  Naomi managed an anemic smile. “Oh, I’m fine, honey. I guess I was just up too late.”

  “And she’s always telling me about the importance of sleep! Mom, you’re such a hypocrite.”

  Rain reached for the pitcher of juice, oblivious to the tension Becca felt was choking her.

  “I’m going for a walk.” Becca rose abruptly from the table, banging her thighs into it, causing it to shake. She hurried from the kitchen, grabbed her coat from the rack in the front hall, and let herself out into the frosty morning. Icy air and the snow that drifted through it were far less hostile than the atmosphere in the Rowan house.