The Promise of Stardust (35 page)

Jake stepped between Chris and me. Maybe Jake didn't trust me. Maybe he was trying to defuse the tension. God knows, I was incapable of reason at that moment.

“I'd never hurt Elle,” I said.

“You got her pregnant again—after she almost died last winter. And you knew she was scared of dying the way my mom did, and here you are, fighting Elle's living will.” Chris shoved Jake out of the way and got right up in my face.

“Believe me; I struggled over whether or not to keep her on life support. I'm still struggling with it, but she wanted a baby.”

“Yeah, well, that didn't bother you when my mom was dying, did it? You didn't care that Elle wanted to keep that baby. Nope. You just made her get an abortion.”

His words were like a match lighting tinder under my panic zone. My heart rate shot up in flame. I looked at my father-in-law, who, to the best of my knowledge, didn't know about Elle's teen pregnancy. Hell, I didn't realize Chris knew about Celina either. Whatever information he thought he knew was muddled. “She never had an abortion,” I said.

“What are you talking about?” Hank asked. “What abortion?”

“Matt got Elle pregnant when Mom was dying,” Chris said, like a simpering little tattletale. “Then he talked her into having an abortion. And now he's all holier-than-thou with his I-only-want-to-do-what-Elle-would-want bull. Well, I swear she wouldn't want to be lying in a hospital bed on life support.”

“That is not what happened. There was no abortion. Not then. Not any other time,” I said.

“That's why she was so desperate to have a baby now. She's always felt so guilty,” Chris said.

“No,” I said. “And it's not that simple, Chris. Besides, if she'd had an abortion and felt guilty about it, it would make my case all the more clear. I didn't make Elle get an abortion. I never would have done that.”

“You got my daughter pregnant while Alice was dying?” Hank pounded into my chest with the heel of his hand. “Damn you. Elle was only a child when Alice died.”

“She wasn't a child. She couldn't be a child because of you.
You
were the child. A lousy goddamned drunk. Yeah, she was young. We both were. And we messed up. But you weren't exactly taking care of your family back then. You abandoned them. You didn't even notice her big belly. That's how bad it was. But yes, Elle got pregnant. I got her pregnant—”

Before I had a chance to explain what happened, Hank stormed out of the bathroom.

I turned toward Christopher. “You don't get it. She didn't have an abortion. She miscarried. She was five months pregnant that first time. And it broke her heart. She felt guilty. Yes. But not because she aborted the baby. She felt guilty because she couldn't save our daughter. Every day of her life. Every child we've lost since. I'm telling you she would want to save this one.”

I slid onto the bar stool next to Hank. In front of him sat a line of empty tumblers. In his grip, one half full. And one full to the rim waited off to the side. “How'd you find me?” he asked.

I shrugged. “This is the fourteenth bar I've been to in”—I looked at my watch—“three hours. Persistence, I guess.”

The bartender, a redheaded girl, slicked-back punk and perky, stood in front of me and smiled as if by showing me enough dazzling teeth, I'd hand over a hundred-dollar tip. “What can I get you?”

“Corona, if you've got lime,” I said, turning my attention to Hank. “Thought you were a beer guy.”

“Only thing Alice let me keep in the house back then. She figured I'd get drunk slower on beer. She wasn't so bright in that regard. ‘Naive,' maybe, is a better term. Alice was always an innocent.” He bottomed up his glass, set it down hard, and nodded at the bartender for another.

She set down my beer. “Wait, haven't I seen you on TV, the astronaut's husband?”

“Pretend you didn't see us here, okay?” I said, setting down a twenty.

She slipped the tip in her pocket and stepped away.

I turned back to Hank. “You don't seem drunk.”

“I can drink a hell of a lot before I seem drunk. Besides, this is soda.”

I reached in front of him and pulled the tumbler filled with Scotch on semimelted rocks.

“All the others are plain Pepsi. The temptation is always there, real or imagined. Sometimes it's easier to look your enemy in the face.” He turned as if to study me.

“First off, Elle never had an abortion. Second, I was going to tell you about the first pregnancy. I meant to. Because … I'm going to talk about it when I testify. But the short version is we were kids in love and stupid. And things were bad with Alice.”

Hank nodded, picked up a stirrer, and then pushed away the Scotch. “I need to refresh this one. Take it and bring a fresh Scotch. On the rocks, please. I hate diluted Scotch.”

The bartender glanced at me and then went about her assigned task.

“You know, I never even suspected you and she were … intimate … back then. Jesus, she was a baby.”

“We were two teenagers, and a whole lot of horrible things were going on around us. We got swept up in the one good thing we had: each other. And she didn't want anyone to know because she didn't want to add to the trouble. Then she miscarried. Elle didn't abort. Chris got that part wrong.”

“You were going to keep the baby?”

“I don't know. We talked about adoption, but I honestly don't know.”

He bit his cheek. “And I was too drunk to even notice what was going on in my own house. Jesus. She was fifteen. You had sex with my daughter when she was fifteen. You should have known better. You were older.”

“Yeah, but not that much. I was a kid, too. I'd be appalled if my fifteen-year-old daughter was having sex—especially after what happened to us—but when you're the teenager with your girlfriend, that's not what you're thinking. You're thinking you want her. And I did love her. I still love her. We messed up. She got pregnant. And then she wasn't.”

He stared at me long and hard. “I thought Elle was a good girl. Sweet, you know.”

“She was.”

“Did Alice know?”

“I don't think so.”

The bartender placed the drink in front of Hank, smiled at me, and then backed off again.

He sniffed it, and set it back down. “And I was too drunk for Elle to talk to me. You're right. I was a lousy father.”

“No.” I clapped Hank on his shoulder. “But for a while there you were a lousy drunk.” I took a long swig of my beer. Getting sloshed would be stupid, although it was a damned tempting idea. To get lost. To forget. If just for a few hours. But I had plenty of problems already. I pulled out my wallet, took enough to cover his tab and mine, a little more to buy silence from the redhead, and slapped it on the bar. “Let's get out of here.”

“Maybe Linney and Christopher are right,” Hank said. “Maybe we should let Elle go.”

Death comes with simple surrender, a word that allows the last breath to slip away. I stared at the black oak floor as if it were an abyss.

I could let go. I could let Elle go. I could let her be at peace. She didn't want to live this way. And then I could lie down and die—whatever that took, pills, a gun, stepping in front of a train. Our families could bury us together. And even if there was no heaven and no hell, there wouldn't be this agony of missing her. God. How could a benevolent God allow this to happen to my beautiful wife?

It had only been three weeks. I could never survive three months or three years. I couldn't survive without her in the world. I couldn't.

But there was a baby at stake. Elle's baby. Part of her could still live, and what did she say that afternoon? Life is about taking risks. And the baby was still alive.

“No,” I said to Hank. “I can't let her go.”

“Have you seen what it's doing to your family? That's what I have been sitting here thinking, not about Elle losing her virginity. Not about you taking advantage of her. We all thought you'd end up together. Me, Alice, your mom and dad. Not that that made it right, but we all figured someday … Besides, it's moot at this point, but … but, Matt, you're screwing this up the same way I did.”

My head snapped toward him. “I'm not a drunk.”

“I guess I deserve that, but it's not what I meant.” Hank sighed. “Chris might be right. He begged me to talk you into discontinuing Elle's life support. Linney is a wreck. And if they're right, that there is no hope, maybe we should let Elle go.”

“I am letting Elle go. I'm grieving, but I'm letting her go. There's no way in hell I can let the baby go. Not now. The baby has a chance. That's the only thing I can do for Elle. I owe her that. I owe her this baby. And no one, not you, not Christopher, not my mother or anyone else matters. If I lose everything else, if the baby lives, then …” I was going to say it would be all right, but I couldn't say all right. Instead I finished by saying, “I owe Elle and the baby everything.
They
are my family.” Oddly, I realized after I'd phrased it that way, that the baby was my child, too. Not just Elle's. And I wanted it to live.

In pounding silence, Hank studied his shoes. I don't know what I expected him to say. I nodded, turned, and walked toward the door. Hank had done some bad things over the years, yet in some ways, I respected him deeply. Maybe because he struggled. Maybe because, though flawed, he loved his wife and his kids. After he sobered up, he'd been there for me, too, helped pay for my medical education, and made a point to keep in touch after my own father died.

I reached for the doorknob and realized Hank was at my side. “You're not alone, son. We are family. And I owe Elle, too. Let's head back to the hospital.”

After I'd been away from Elle's hospital room for nine straight hours, the reality of her condition hit me hard, and my legs shook.

Hank pulled up a chair behind me. “Go ahead, Matt. Sit.”

I did. How the hell was I going to fix this situation? I couldn't fix Elle no matter how hard I tried to figure out a way. And kidnapping her and taking her somewhere safe until after the baby was born didn't seem like an option.

Hank's voice snapped me back. “It's like looking at Alice,” he said.

I nodded. I'd been trying not to see Alice lying in the living room of the McClure house, but I wasn't blind.

“Right now you're probably feeling like you don't want to survive this.”

I looked up at Hank.

“Well, that's how I felt when my wife was sick. I'm not saying this is ever going to get easy. I loved Alice”—he paused and swallowed hard—“every bit as much as you love my daughter. Every bit as much as I love my daughter. It took me a while to figure it out, but she's still …” He patted his heart. “Go home and sleep tonight, Matt. I'll be here. I'll stay with my little girl.”

I shook my head. “I've been gone all day because of the trial.”

“And chasing me down, but, son, you need to sleep or you'll break.”

   36   

I drove for an hour, out around Back Bay, up along the Eastern Prom, taking time to look out over Casco Bay and to clear my head, and then I headed north to my house, where Jake and I planned to meet. As I approached the usually deserted road, I spotted more than a dozen cars and minivans parked along the side. Faces stared through my windshield at me. Some of the people held crosses, and others held signs of support. A local NBC affiliate news crew aimed their cameras at me. Yep, there was the blond newswoman. I gritted my teeth and avoided eye contact.
Do not make a scene
. I pulled down our winding driveway and parked in the barn.