The Beach Quilt (31 page)

“Only a few weeks to go,” Cordelia said. She and Sarah were in Cordelia's bedroom again. Sarah practically lived at the Kane house these days. Cordelia wondered why she didn't just sleep there, too. She had suggested as much, but Sarah had said no thanks.

“Assuming I actually make the due date,” Sarah replied. She was lying on the second bed, her feet up on a stack of pillows. “I feel as if I could explode.”

“I know you, Sarah. You're the most punctual person ever. You'll have the baby exactly on time.”

“I might be punctual,” Sarah argued, “but that doesn't mean my body is. The body has a mind of its own. I might not even have the baby until a week or two after my due date.”

“Oh, I know, I know. I'm just being—”

“A good friend.”

“You know, I've been thinking. There are advantages to being a young mother.”

“Like what?” Sarah asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Like, you won't be one of those forty-year-old moms running after a toddler and complaining about all the stuff older moms complain about. You'll be healthy and strong and have a lot more energy. When the baby is ten, you'll only be twenty-seven. When he's eighteen and goes off to college you'll only be—wait, um . . .” Cordelia did a quick, eye-squinting mental count. “Thirty-five. You'll have a whole life ahead of you.”

“You're sweet, trying to find the bright side.”

“Well, someone has to!”

“Just don't say that people will think we're brother and sister.”

“They might,” Cordelia said, “if he looks a lot like you. What would be wrong with that?”

Sarah shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. It would just be a reminder that I was a teenage mom. It might embarrass him.”

“Oh.” Cordelia hadn't thought about that. “What if he looks a lot like Justin?”

“That'll be a bit weird, I guess. But I'll love him no matter what. And it's not like Justin isn't attractive.”

Cordelia thought that point was debatable. “Do you think you'll go to the senior prom next spring?” she asked.

“I doubt it. I mean, who would ask me? Who would want to go to a prom with a
mom?
”

“We could go in a group,” Cordelia suggested. “Not everyone goes with a date.”

“Maybe. But something tells me I just won't care about the prom.”

“Oh. Because you'll have this adorable baby at home.”

“I hope I feel that way,” Sarah said fervently. “I hope I'm head over heels in love with him.”

“Why wouldn't you be?”

“Some women aren't. I can't imagine how horrible that must be, not to feel madly in love with your baby.”

This was news to Cordelia. Aside from those mentally ill women who killed their children, she thought that all women loved their children as a matter of course. “So all that stuff about maternal instinct isn't always true?”

“From what I've read, no, it's
not
.”

Cordelia remembered what her mother had told her about how painful it had been to give up her baby.
She
had had plenty of maternal instinct. Cordelia felt a stab of pity for her mother. She had been so young and so alone, having to make a decision no teenager should have to make, the sort of decision that would affect the shape of her future. And now, there was Sarah. . . .

“What about applying for college?” she asked. “Will you wait a year or two?”

Sarah sighed. “I'm not really sure. I guess I won't know until the baby is here and we all have time to get used to our new life. So much is going to change. . . .”

“So much has already changed.”

“Like my body! I can hardly see my feet. Do you know how weird that is?”

“You're not fat, you know,” Cordelia pointed out.

Sarah laughed. “I know that! Besides, do you think I'd care about something as trivial as an extra few pounds, especially now?”

“No. I'm the one who freaks about weight!”

“You shouldn't. But you know that.”

Cordelia shrugged.

“You know, when the condom broke, my first reaction was sheer terror.”

Cordelia was startled. Sarah had never talked about—specifics. “Oh,” she said.

“I've never been so scared in my life as I was at that moment. I felt sick to my stomach. I thought I would faint. I thought I would—die. Right there in Justin's shabby little apartment, just drop dead.”

“What did Justin say?” Cordelia asked, though she wasn't sure she really wanted to know what the Idiot had said.

Sarah kind of laughed. “He told me to stop crying. He told me that everything was okay. He told me that nothing had, you know, happened. He told me to take a shower and wash really thoroughly. So I did.”

Cordelia felt her cheeks flame. How could Sarah, a straight-A student, the most reasonable person Cordelia knew, have been so naive? “You believed him?” she asked, hoping her tone didn't betray the tiniest bit of the disappointment she felt in her friend.

Now Sarah blushed. “Yes. I did. I was petrified, Cordelia. I guess at that moment I
had
to believe him.”

“You poor thing,” Cordelia said, and she meant it.

Each girl lay quietly for a while. Cordelia felt that there was so much still to say and yet, nothing more to be said. It was a weird feeling.

Sarah finally broke the silence. “I feel like that me, back in January, was an entirely different person from this me,” she said. “I feel as if I've aged ten years in the past few months.”

“Matured, you mean?” Cordelia asked.

Sarah laughed softly. “Well, I hope so, but I did mean aged. Like as in getting older. And I feel—peaceful. For the first time since I found out I was pregnant. No. Maybe for the first time ever. Really and truly peaceful. It's amazing.”

Cordelia's eyes widened. “You'd think that you would feel anything but peaceful, with what's about to happen!”

“I know. Maybe it's just that I've finally accepted the inevitable. No, it's more than that. It's like I feel—happy. Calm.”

“Well, I'm glad for you,” Cordelia said. “Because I'm still a nervous wreck!”

Sarah turned her head to look at Cordelia. “Why? All you have to do is get ready to be the fun aunt. And you'll be the best fun aunt ever.”

Cordelia grinned. “I know,” she said. “I am good at fun.”

Sarah had fallen asleep for a while. When she woke, she turned her head to see Cordelia where she had last been, on her own bed and flipping through a fashion magazine.

“Sorry I dozed off,” she said.

Cordelia turned another page. “It must be exhausting, growing an entire person inside you. Besides, you were only asleep for, like, fifteen minutes.”

Sarah adjusted her position and stretched her legs. She thought she had been dreaming about Justin. Could you actually dream when you had only been asleep for fifteen minutes? Maybe Cordelia was wrong about the time. Anyway, images of Justin had been floating around in her head.

“I never talked to you about this,” she said now, aware that on some level she was talking to herself. “In fact, I never talked to
anyone
about it. I think that was one of the problems.”

Cordelia sighed dramatically. “Sarah,” she said, “I have no idea where you're going with this!”

Sarah looked over at her friend. “My feelings for Justin,” she said. “The, um, passion I felt for him.”

Cordelia closed the magazine. “Oh.”

“I didn't think there was anyone I
could
talk to about how I felt. I didn't think anyone would understand the strength of my attraction to Justin, how much I—how much I wanted him. I'm sorry. Is this making you uncomfortable?”

“No,” Cordelia said quickly. “Well, a little. But you should talk, Sarah. What's there to hide now?”

“The truth was I was really embarrassed about how I felt. It—it isolated me.”

“I never . . .” Cordelia shook her head. “It never occurred to me that you were so
into
Justin.”

“Well, I was. And the odd thing was that keeping those feelings to myself made them grow even more powerful.”

“Really?”

Sarah nodded. “Absolutely. I didn't know it at the time, but I've figured out that keeping everything such a secret from you and my mom gave all those feelings an irresistible strength. It was like I was cherishing the sense of my feelings being forbidden. Okay,
I
was the one who decided they were forbidden in the first place, but still. Forbidden fruit is so much sweeter than the fruit it's okay to eat.”

“Wow,” Cordelia said. “That's a pretty deep thing to realize about yourself.”

Sarah laughed. “I've had a lot of time to think this summer. I figured I should put it to good use. You know, get smarter. If I'm going to be responsible for another human being, I need to be as smart as I possibly can be.”

“I don't think I'll ever be smart enough to be a mother. A good one, I mean.”

“Yes, you will,” Sarah said. “You're a natural.”

Cordelia made a face. “Sarah, my priorities are food, fashion, and fun. In that order. I'm not exactly mature.”

“You're way more mature than you think, trust me.”

“Whatever. If I do have a baby someday, you can tell me what I'm doing wrong. But it will be way, way in the future.”

“Deal. Do you know,” Sarah said thoughtfully, “that my mom got married when she was eighteen? Actually making the decision to get married so young seems so—impossible. My pregnancy was an accident. But my mother
made
that huge conscious decision to commit to spending the rest of her life with my father. How did she know she was doing the right thing? It could have been a disaster.”

Cordelia shrugged. “She was in love. Love makes you do silly things and totally heroic things. That's what my dad always says, anyway.”

“I really admire her, you know. I think she's an incredibly strong person.”

“She is,” Cordelia said. “And she's so talented, too. Henry's quilt wouldn't be half as awesome if it weren't for her.”

“And look at your mom,” Sarah added. “Running her own successful business. We both lucked out. We both got a good role model.”

Cordelia raised an eyebrow. “Yeah. Talk about pressure!”

Adelaide rarely took advantage of the deck and now, stretched out on a recliner, she wondered why. Really, you could pretty easily convince yourself you were on vacation at a fancy resort. Okay, the Kanes didn't have a swimming pool, but they did have several large planters each spilling a profusion of flowers. Another long, low planter held her thriving herb garden. There was a glass of cold lemonade on the pretty little table at her right. And the view wasn't bad at all. The Kanes' backyard and deck faced the backyard and deck of their closest neighbors, Stan Lancaster and Mike Perez. Stan was a magnificent gardener, and Mike was a hardscape designer. Together they had created a gorgeous space complete with a bubbling fountain, an orderly herb garden, and a sweep of flowers in blocks of orange and purple—and Adelaide got to gaze at it for free.

Daydreaming was also free and not a bad way to spend her afternoon off from The Busy Bee. And right now, Adelaide was daydreaming about adopting another child. A baby, preferably, someone who would grow up knowing only Jack and Adelaide as his parents, someone they could cherish from the moment he was born. How fun it would be to have a fat, healthy, giggly baby to hold and to love!

Adelaide took a sip of lemonade. Of course, she thought, bringing another person into their household at this point would entail huge changes for all three of them. There were Cordelia's feelings to take into consideration. She was a sensitive person and had already battled troubled feelings regarding her mother's past. She might feel as if the baby were a replacement child, now that she would soon be going off to college.

And Jack would be under more pressure to make money, especially when the baby was little and Adelaide couldn't work on expanding her own business. And making money wasn't enough. It had to be saved, too, and invested. There wasn't only college to consider. There was retirement, too. They had talked about doing some traveling when they both stopped working. Nothing elaborate, maybe just long car trips, but still, travel would take money.

Adelaide's back hurt. She shifted on the recliner until the pain eased somewhat.
And,
she thought, there was the fact that neither of them was as young as they used to be. Starting over with a new baby meant midnight feedings, and erratic hours and . . . huh. It was pretty much what Cindy and Joe would be doing. If she and Jack acted quickly, their new child could be raised along with Sarah's child and the families could share some responsibilities....

But that didn't address the fact that Jack might be opposed to the idea. Adopting a child just wouldn't work unless both partners were one hundred percent behind the idea. You couldn't force your partner to accept the reality of a child, not if you wanted to keep your relationship intact.

There were so many obstacles and difficulties.... Adelaide choked on another sip of lemonade. What, she wondered, had she been thinking? She didn't really want another child, did she? What she wanted was her first child back! Of course that was what she wanted.

One child could not be used as a substitute for another child. It would be completely unfair to everyone, an enterprise bound to fail, an entirely selfish act.

No. An adoption wasn't going to happen. Her family was already complete. She would remain content with the wonderful child she had been lucky enough to keep.

Adelaide was surprised to find tears streaming down her cheeks.