It Happened One Night (6 page)

“Oh, no.”

The sound of Lana’s voice brought her back to the present once again. “What’s wrong?”

“Karin, I’m shutting down my register for a minute.”

“But I’ve got such a huge line here…”

“I
have
to go!”

Karin hung up the phone and started on the next order. Only one thought could get her through this day: a vision of having
a little boy all her own to take Father’s Day shopping. Gene was going to be an excellent father. She couldn’t wait to give
him children. She could think of nothing more rewarding than laying a newborn baby in her husband’s arms. She wondered if
it would be preemptive to start planning Father’s Day presents now.

In the bathroom Lana gripped the smooth, cold white sides of the toilet bowl. There was nothing left in her stomach. For a
moment she thought she might faint: She was dizzy and seeing black, sparkling stars. She flushed the toilet and scooted back
along the tile to sit against the wall.

She couldn’t remember the last time she was this sick. The oddest thing was that it wasn’t a twenty-four- or forty-eight-hour
virus. She wondered if it might be food poisoning.

Or… could it be…?

No
. She’d had her period. It had been a light period—an extremely light period—but still, it was a period.

Wasn’t it?

She forced herself to concentrate. She’d never been very good at paying attention to the signs of her body. She never knew
she was getting a cold until it was full on. And she didn’t really notice hunger until she was ravenous. But now her body
was screaming for her attention. She just didn’t know why.

She stood up slowly and used her hand to bring big gulps of cold water from the faucet to her mouth. She surveyed her reflection
in the mirror. Her hair was pulled straight back in a smooth ponytail, and she grabbed a bit of toilet paper and wiped at
the beads of sweat near her hairline. Normally she barely noticed her periods. They came and went with minimal cramping or
bloating. But now, coupled with the puking, it was hard to ignore the possibility that she was—

Oh, but she wasn’t. There was the period last month, and this month, she wasn’t due to get it until…

She’d missed a period.

No. She missed two—if she counted the one that was very light. The one that was more like spotting than bleeding. Why hadn’t
she paid more attention?

She felt the ground tip; her ankles turned to jelly.

This wasn’t possible. A baby. What would she do with a baby? She didn’t want a child. She didn’t have hard feelings toward
them, but a child of her own was unthinkable. Impossible. She wasn’t
meant
to have children. She couldn’t be a mom.

She put a hand on her chest, where her heart was frantic as a bird beating its wings against a cage. She couldn’t seem to
get enough air. There must be some mistake, she thought. But if there wasn’t, how on earth was she going to tell Karin?

She felt the world slipping out of place around her. She’d always held firm to the idea that the universe was more gentle
than cruel. But now she felt only that she’d been duped, violated, and maliciously used.

So much for her generous universe. A vision of Costa Rica flashed in her head—a narrow path through thick woods, hiking boots,
waxy-leaved trees, and a verdant green valley—steaming, catching fire, and then turning to ash.

“Lana?” Karin banged hard on the door, annoyed that her sister had been in the bathroom for so long. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she said, cheerful as ever.

“Can I open the door?”

Lana did it for her.

“Oh, Lanie, you look terrible,” Karin said. Lana’s lips had turned white and the capillaries under her eyes had darkened into
a purple-gray.

“I’m okay,” she said, not meeting Karin’s eyes.

“Are you really?” Karin asked, desperate. She wanted Lana to be okay. She needed her to be okay. She’d just got terrible news,
and she couldn’t bear it alone.

“I’m fine,” Lana said.

“Good. Because we have a problem.” She tugged her sister toward the door, but Lana stayed put.

“What’s going on?”

Karin dropped Lana’s hand. “I just got a call from the jail,” she said, not sure how to begin.

“The jail? Who do we know in jail?”

“Two guesses.”

She watched her sister’s face go a shade paler.

Karin nodded. “He wants us to come get him.”

Lana closed the lid of the toilet seat and sat down. She rubbed both her palms on the tops of her knees, a nervous kneading,
her hands clutching and going slack. Karin waited for her to ask one of the dozens of questions that were at this moment racing
around her own brain, but Lana remained silent, asking nothing. She just rocked a little on the edge of the toilet seat, totally
immersed in her thoughts.

“He got pulled over for not coming to a complete stop,” Karin said, unable to read her sister’s blank face. “But they hauled
him to the station for driving without a license—or registration—I can’t remember which.”

“What do we do?” Lana said. Her voice was faint, barely a whisper.

“Nothing,” said Karin.

A customer in the store shouted. “HELLO? Is
anyone
even
working
here?”

Karin ignored the voice. She loved the Wildflower Barn, but she wouldn’t dream of putting her work before her family. Especially
not now. Her sister was trembling. Karin could only imagine the memories that were sluicing right now through Lana’s veins.

“We can’t just leave him,” Lana said. “He needs help.”

“Are you kidding?” Karin folded her arms. “Watch me.”

“You stay.” When she looked up from her perch on the edge of the toilet, there was a focus, a determination in her eyes that
hadn’t been there before. “I’ll get Calvert.”

“But we’ll lose business,” Karin said. Her sister had completely taken her aback. She’d expected Lana to whimper and cower,
not dive headfirst into the fray.

“People are understanding,” Lana said, her voice soft. “We’ll put up a sign that says there’s a family emergency.”

“People are not understanding. And we
don’t
have a family emergency because Calvert is
not
our family.”

“We have to do the right thing. Whatever the right thing is, that’s what has to be done.”

“And what are you going to do with him once you’ve got him?”

Lana put her head in her hands. “Oh, God, I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I have to do something.”

Karin shook her head. “I just don’t get you sometimes.”

“Karin, oh—I don’t know how to say it. Something’s gone wrong…”

“Fine. We’ll close down the whole store and get him if that’s what you want.”

“It’s okay. You can just stay here with Meggie.”

“I’ll come with y—”

“No! I want you to—I mean, someone has to stay.”

Karin felt the first hot currents of anger taking shape, burning inside her. Lana was irrational; she never made sense. Karin
hadn’t told Lana about Calvert being in jail because she’d wanted to go get him; she told her because she wanted sympathy.
Someone to understand.

Lana stood up. She held tight to the lip of the sink as if she didn’t trust herself. “Eli’s plane got in a few hours ago.
I’ll see if he can come with me.”

“HELLO?” another customer called out.

“Just
wait
a minute!” Karin shouted over her shoulder. She turned back to Lana, panic making her stomach twinge. “Just think about this
rationally for a second, okay? Who knows what he’s here for? I don’t trust him, and I don’t want you to go anywhere near him.
Lana, listen to me. Please?”

“But someone has to get him.”

Karin squeezed Lana’s wrist, part desperation, part command. “Please. Don’t do this.”

Lana wiggled her arm to free it.

“Fine. Go then.” Karin turned her back.

“Karin…”

“Just go if you’re going to go!” Her heart beat hard. The room full of bustling, angry people fell silent.

Lana nodded once, her face utterly blank and passionless, then left.

Eli put his car in park and unbuckled his seat belt. Lana sat beside him. She’d called him twenty minutes ago, and now they
were at the police station, on the strangest errand Eli had ever imagined. He could count the number of times he’d heard her
say her father’s name. And now here they were, picking him up just like they would have done for any old friend.

Eli glanced toward the woman beside him. The car was tinged lightly with the smell of her, something floral he couldn’t place.
She seemed so small and feeble—younger in a way, as if some of the spirit had been drained from her body. She’d said only
a few necessary words to him when he’d picked her up. Then she’d looked out the window, turned away from him, and grown silent.
In the glass he could see the translucent reflection of her face, ghostly white like the moon at midday.

He wished she would let him touch her. Not because he wanted something from her—though part of him did—but more because he
wanted to give. He could put his arms around her, lay her head on his shoulder, and stay that way until their breathing was
in sync. And yet, the distance between where he sat and where she sat seemed as expansive as years measured in light.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

“We can go back. You can change your mind.”

She turned toward him now, her eyes glassy and distant. “We’re already here. We might as well.”

“But why?”

She closed her eyes for the briefest of moments. “Because. When someone needs help, we have to help them. There’s nothing
more to it than that.”

Eli narrowed his eyes at her, not quite trusting her words. There was something different about her, something he couldn’t
put his finger on. But as usual, he had no choice but to take her at her word.

“Is that him?” he asked, though the question was pointless. He would have been able to pick out Lana’s father from a police
lineup, even though he’d never seen the man before in his life. He was leaning against a wide-leafed oak, a black bag at his
feet. He was as tall and leggy as Lana, but more gangly than svelte. Even from a distance Eli could see that he shared her
fair coloring.

“Yes,” Lana said. “I think that’s him.”

He looked at her for one last moment; if he saw the slightest bit of hesitation in her eyes, he would have put the car in
drive and ensured that Calvert would be nothing but the memory of a man leaning against a tree in his mind for all time. But
Lana didn’t waver. Instead her face was blank, as if all emotion had been drawn out of it, and whatever animated her was less
human than machine.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

He got out of his little car, slammed the door, then headed straight for Calvert. Lana might be afraid of this man, but Eli
wasn’t. And before Eli let him in the same car as her, there had to be some ground rules.

As he approached, Calvert met his gaze, a cautious question in his almost freakishly blue eyes. Eli stopped walking a few
feet away and crossed his arms.

“You her husband?” Calvert asked.

“What are you doing here?”

“Lost my house.” He stuck out his chin in a way that suggested the admission had cost him something. “The State took the property
for redevelopment. Paid me as little as they could and still have it be legal. I got nowhere to go.”

“Well, you can’t stay here. She doesn’t want to see you.”

“I don’t expect she does.”

Eli was quiet for a moment. What little he knew about this man had come from Karin. She’d explained that Calvert had married
their mother, Ellen, because of an unplanned pregnancy when they were both quite young. He took off shortly after Lana was
born. Then, when Karin was ten and Lana just six years old, Ellen had died in a car accident one day on her way to the lawyer’s.
Apparently some kind of child support–related letter from Calvert had set her off, and to this day Karin held Calvert to blame.

For a day or so, Karin and Lana had been wards of the State. Then, for the next twelve years, they lived in their father’s
boardinghouse inside the endless revolving door of his tenants, buddies, and girlfriends. Eli couldn’t help but wonder about
the connection between the come-and-go population of Lana’s young life and her penchant for come-and-go boyfriends now. But
aside from that vague connection, he knew little about Calvert and her past. All he knew was that the only way Calvert was
going to bother her again was over his dead body.

“Here’s how this is gonna work,” he said. “You’re gonna get in the car, say hello, and after that not a peep. We’ll drop you
off somewhere you can stay, but then we don’t want to hear from you again. Have I made myself clear?”

Calvert kicked his bag with the toe of his work boot. “Why’s she helping me?”

“She always tries to do the right thing and be a good person. Even when she doesn’t want to. But just because
she’s
nice doesn’t mean
I
am. And I’m not gonna let you take advantage of her on my watch.”

“I already done enough of that,” Calvert said.

“We have an understanding?”

“I won’t bother her.”

Eli nodded. Then he headed back toward the car and left it up to Calvert to follow.

Lana closed the door to her house, closed herself in. Through the translucent white curtain of the window beside the door,
she watched Eli walking in long strides down the uneven concrete walkway toward his parked car. She wondered where he was
going. Home? Or someplace else? Someplace with Kelly?

He’d offered to stay with her. She wanted him to stay. But there was no sense in postponing the inevitable. At some point
she would have to be alone with herself. With the truth. With the baby that had staked a claim on her body and now demanded
a reckoning.

She pushed the curtain aside, watching him hitch up his dark jeans and then bend his knees to look at something on the hubcap
of his old green car.

She’d always assumed that if she were to get pregnant she would know the moment it happened. There would be some spark, some
quick shift in her sense of herself that would alert her that she was no longer alone in her own body. But the revelation
hadn’t been a moment of mystical female intuition; it was just a dull and unfeeling fact.