Читать книгу All I Want - Nicole Helm - Страница 15

CHAPTER SIX

“YOU BETTER GET IT together before Mom calls a therapist.”

Charlie tried to grin and bear it, but it was hard. His acting skills were failing him. Hell, what wasn’t?

He’d been unemployed for a month. He’d grown a beard. He felt like a ghost of himself, and his family was tiptoeing around him like he had some kind of communicable disease.

But he didn’t know what to do. Who to be. He’d finished out his last two weeks at Lordon, ever the dutiful employee working to ease the transition for all those who got to keep their jobs.

He’d been offered interviews by a few headhunters. There were companies interested in his experience in sales, in his years as management.

He couldn’t muster up the energy to make the calls. A decade ago he would have jumped at the chance to move to Chicago, California, Denver. But sitting in the middle of his niece’s second birthday party, he thought relocating was the last thing he wanted to do.

The whole love of the farm thing might be Dell’s shtick, and Charlie might have moved downtown to get out of the small-town atmosphere of New Benton, but that didn’t mean he didn’t love his family. He wanted his mother close enough to make him dinner and tell him he’d land on his feet. He wanted to watch his niece grow up. He wanted to be here.

Lainey was running around dressed up like a princess. His baby sister was talking intently with Mia’s baby sister. Except Kenzie and Anna weren’t babies anymore. Both had graduated from college, Kenzie was going on to get her master’s and Anna was taking over her father’s dairy farm operation. Mia and Cara were fussing over a table full of cupcakes while Dad, Cara’s husband, Wes, and Mia’s dad were standing around the grill. Dogs ran all around the spacious green yard, yipping happily.

He liked this. This right here.

“Dude, seriously.”

Charlie slanted his brother a look. “I’m reevaluating my life.”

“Reevaluate faster. You stay unemployed much longer, Dad is going to have a stroke and Mom’s probably going to sign you up for one of those online dating things.”

“I’ve had offers,” Charlie muttered.

“So take one.”

He let out a sigh. His relationship with Dell hadn’t always been an easy one, and it’d certainly never been one where they shared much of anything too deep. It would be easy to clam up, to say something snide and walk away.

But Charlie didn’t have the energy for that either. “So far the only jobs I’ve been offered are lower positions, less money, and...require relocation.”

“I’m guessing that means...far?”

“Yes.”

Dell was quiet for a minute. “And you don’t want to move?” he asked as though he’d chosen each word very carefully.

“I’m certainly not going through the hassle of changing my life for a job that isn’t up to my standards.” He sounded like a douche. He knew he sounded like a douche, but he didn’t know what this thing inside him was, just that it’d been there for a long time.

It was like he’d built armor over his real self, a shell the outside world, and even his family, could see, but it was impenetrable. He could only give people what they expected, because underneath this shell...he really wasn’t sure who he was.

Maybe he did need therapy.

Suddenly he thought about leaving. Ditching the party. He could go to the Shack. See if Meg would be there, still drowning her own sorrows. Why was that a fantasy? It wasn’t like he remembered much of what they’d done together. It wasn’t like he knew her.

He’d certainly made a very careful effort to avoid the market the past month. So, why did he still think of her at all?

“We’d miss you, if that’s what you decided to do.”

Charlie looked at his brother. They hadn’t always gotten along. In fact, there’d been some times they’d probably both felt they hated each other, but something about Dell having a kid had smoothed a lot of that over.

Still, the sentiment surprised Charlie, and maybe that was on him. So he’d offer some honesty even if it made him uncomfortable. “I don’t want to move. I’m not in dire straits quite yet.”

Dell gave a nod, looking over where the Wainwrights and Pruitts mingled in the yard. “Good. I mean, I’d offer help, but—”

“I’d tell you to shove it.”

Dell’s mouth curved. “Exactly. So...” He gestured to where Lainey was trying to ride one of Wes’s dogs. “I better get in there.”

“You’re lucky, man.” It felt odd to admit it aloud, to let some of that envy show. He’d spent so much of his life convinced he was better off than Dell, never made any bones about Dell’s choices being beneath him.

But Charlie had been wrong, and it felt imperative to say it. Out loud. To Dell.

Dell stared at him, a kind of deer-caught-in-headlights, who-abducted-my-brother look. But then he glanced back out at the yard, daughter and wife with another kid on the way. Then Dell simply shrugged. “Yeah, I am.”

“How’d you do it?” Charlie said, knowing it sounded like a crazed demand but not being able to help it. He wanted to know. What steps did he need to take? How could he build his own version of what Dell had?

Eyes still on the yard, Dell seemed to consider the question. “I figured out who I was. Who I wasn’t.” His smile went soft as Mia approached. “And I let the unexpected happen.”

Mia took the stairs of the porch before Charlie could answer. She fisted her hands on her hips and glared at them. “Are you two going to come help, or stand here and gossip all afternoon?”

Dell’s arm slid around his wife’s waist easily. “Just talking about how lucky I am.”

She rolled her eyes. “Sure.”

“He’s not lying. We were,” Charlie returned. Seriously, probably way too seriously.

Mia cocked her head, looked at him, then Dell, then back again. “Well, that’s...nice. I’ll feel a whole lot luckier if I can get something into my stomach before I feel like puking.”

“All right, let’s get you some food, sugar.” And they walked off, but not before Charlie heard Mia murmur to Dell, “Is Charlie okay?”

No. He wasn’t. Because he didn’t know who he was, or how to find out. And he certainly didn’t know how to let the unexpected happen.

* * *

MEG WOKE UP in a cold sweat. She grasped around in her bed for...for...what? She stopped, realizing she had no idea what she was trying to reach. She had no idea why she was breathing so heavily or why her heart was pounding.

“A dream,” she said aloud. “Just a dream.” It felt steadying to hear her own voice in the pitch-black of her room.

Three nights in a row. Ever since the little niggle of worry had sprouted in the back of her head. Every night it had grown, every night the dreams had grown more vivid and more disturbing.

Stress had always brought on nightmares for her, long before she’d understood what stress was. But now she understood, and she couldn’t keep pretending that idea wasn’t looming in the back of her mind...waiting.

She couldn’t put it off any longer. She couldn’t keep hoping it would go away. It wasn’t going to go away, and her psyche was going to drive her absolutely bonkers until she sucked up all her fear and acted.

She forced herself out of bed and into the little bathroom. She’d shoved the offensive box under the sink after running errands in Millertown yesterday. She’d been so determined and hopeful it was unnecessary, and that the moment she purchased the test and brought it home she wouldn’t have to use it.

But if she was going to get any sleep before milking the goats, having breakfast with Elsie, followed by an afternoon meeting with a local store that might want to sell her soaps, she had to suck it up and do it.

She pulled the test out of the box with unsteady hands, read the instructions and then followed them to the letter.

She waited the three minutes feeling exactly as she had upon waking up. Shaking, heart beating too fast, breath coming too hard. It just couldn’t be.

Except when the timer went off...there it was.

Pregnant.

Her breath whooshed out of her. Pregnant. Pregnant. She had fallen not just off the wagon, but utterly, completely. The condom wrapper either a false promise, faulty or possibly drunken user error.

It didn’t matter. The results were the same. She was pregnant with a stranger’s child. All those years she’d punished her body for some foolish insecurity inside herself, but she’d kept herself out of this kind of trouble.

Clean and mostly sober, for years, and now, at thirty-two, she’d made this mistake too.

She swallowed at the nausea that swam up her esophagus. But it wasn’t a mistake, was it? It was a life. She’d created it in bad choices, but that was hardly the thing growing inside her’s fault.

Meg squeezed her eyes shut. Dear Lord, she was pregnant.

Needless to say, she didn’t sleep. She tried, lying there, staring up at the ceiling in the dark, but then her alarm went off and the goats needed milking, and dawn slowly rose on a new day.

A new day in which she had to start facing the consequences of her actions. That was scary, because all the options felt wrong and hard and overwhelming.

She got ready to go to breakfast with Elsie, determined to keep her problems to herself. Elsie’s chemo was showing promising results, but she was still weak and frail. The reality of the situation was Meg had come to rely on the company probably more than Elsie did.

Funny, Meg thought she was finally getting her life together, and now it felt unraveled and pathetic.

But she was going to keep that to herself. She would be cheerful and encouraging with Elsie. She ordered their food at Moonrise, took the bags from the waitress and smiled the whole time. She was fine. She could handle this. Tonight, when she got home, she would figure out what she was going to do. Alone.

Because she was alone.

When Elsie opened the door, Meg burst into tears. Elsie didn’t hesitate, didn’t ask what was wrong; she bustled her onto the couch, took the bags of food and plopped a box of tissues next to her.

“Eat, please, eat, while I get myself together,” Meg croaked, trying to breathe, trying to cope.

Elsie pulled out her foam container of food, and then she handed Meg hers on the little TV trays that more often served as a dining table for Dan and Elsie than their actual kitchen table.

“Now, I’m not taking a bite if you don’t spill what’s troubling you.”

“That’s mean.”

“Darn straight it is. I’ll use a little meanness to get my way.”

Meg swallowed, tried to manage a wobbly smile. “Take a bite and I’ll talk.”

Elsie gave her a suspicious look, but she unwrapped the plastic cutlery from the bag and cut a bite of pancake before lifting it to her mouth.

Meg waited for her to chew a few times, and then she knew she had to be honest. When she was honest with Elsie, Elsie was honest with her, and Meg liked to believe it had helped at least a little in these weeks Meg had been visiting with her.

“I... It’s...”

“Spit it out, child.”

“I’m pregnant.”

Elsie’s eyes widened and she set her plastic fork down. “Well, didn’t know you was seeing someone.”

Miserable, Meg shook her head. Her own pancakes made her stomach turn, and she didn’t think it had anything to do with pregnancy. It had everything to do with Elsie being disappointed in her.

She wanted someone to be proud of her. Someone to look at her and see success instead of failure.

Maybe she should stop failing.

“Now, I don’t condone getting the sheets sweaty with someone who you ain’t married to, let alone not well acquainted with,” Elsie said primly. “’Course, I can’t exactly judge either, as I’m not a hypocrite.”

Meg wanted to laugh—leave it to Elsie—but it just came out like more of a sob. “What am I going to do?” she asked in a hushed whisper. Elsie pursed her lips and studied her sternly. “Don’t have any people, do you?”

Meg swallowed. It sounded so harsh when she put it that way, but it was true. Even her friends who’d gotten clean had a hard time being around each other; it dredged up memories of how they’d wasted their youth. And then, of course, her family pretended she didn’t exist, and it had been hard to make new friends with the hours she poured into her business.

Charlie Wainwright was the most non-business-related interaction she’d had—besides Dan and Elsie—in years.

And now she was carrying his child.

“Well, you’re my people now.”

Meg shook her head, afraid she’d cry harder. “You have so much on your plate already.”

“That may be true. But if my daughter was crying on some other old, sick woman’s couch, I’d hope she’d do the same. Now, first things first, you should tell the father. Unless he’s not a good sort.”

“I think he is. Not bad anyway.”

Elsie nodded. “Then you tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

“The truth. Easy as that. You give him a chance to have half a say—half, mind you, as you’re the one doing the carrying and the laboring.”

Oh. God. Labor. “But...what if I don’t know what I want?”

“Doesn’t matter, honey. You got a life growing inside you.”

That she did, and while there were options in that regard, options she’d supported a friend through when they were only teenagers, Meg didn’t think she had that option in her as a solvent adult. A solvent adult who’d always wanted to be a mother someday—in some abstract world when she had it all together. But...maybe she was never going to have it all together. Maybe she had to jump in, not quite ready. More than a little scared that she’d be terrible at it.

Which meant she had to admit something exceedingly scary for someone who’d failed at almost everything until her farm had come along. She’d have to admit she wanted to do it, and that she was scared of screwing it up. She’d have to admit a lot of things she usually faked her way through.

“You need to call yourself a doctor, honey, and then the Wainwright boy.”

Meg jerked her head to face Elsie, who merely shrugged. “Dan’s got no secrets from me.” She then reached over with a frail hand and patted Meg’s knee. “But we’ll keep yours, sweetheart. Don’t you worry about that.”

Don’t worry. Yeah, she didn’t think she’d be able to follow that advice anytime soon.