First Comes Baby Page 3

  She struggled to pull herself together. “I didn’t consider asking any single guys. I thought…” Laurel managed a laugh. “Well, that it would send you running in terror.”

  “I’m not running.” Why not?

  “No. I see.”

  “But you’re not saying what you think.”

  She let out a shaky breath. “That’s because I have no idea what I do think! I figured you’d try to talk me out of the whole idea. I haven’t even told Dad or Megan. I was sure they’d both say, ‘You’re only twenty-eight, Laurel. Give yourself time. You want a family, not the responsibility of raising a child alone.’”

  His mouth quirked. “Been airing all the con arguments to yourself, have you?”

  “I’ve been around and around, but I really want to do this.” She raised her chin, letting him see that he couldn’t sway her.

  He shrugged. “This is a normal age to start a family. I’ve been wondering about myself, too. What’s stopping me? Is it the travel? I’ve been thinking I’d like kids. You’re my best friend, Laurel. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have them with.”

  Them. Not just one. What kind of future was he imagining? With them as a family?

  Laurel felt a funny cramp start low in her belly. And even though her emotions were still pinging off each other, she knew: this was right.

  A little girl or boy with Caleb’s bright blue eyes instead of her hazel ones, his dark curly hair, his height and athleticism instead of her klutziness. A child who would dream, who’d become passionate about something like Egyptian mummies or dinosaurs by the time he or she was four years old, who would dazzle and annoy teachers all at the same time, who would make Laurel laugh.

  Until now, she’d wanted a baby, but that baby had been an abstract concept. Suddenly, the child she would carry would be Caleb’s. Caleb’s and hers.

  Goose bumps walked over her skin, and she shivered.

  “But…you’re bound to get married.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m twenty-nine. Hasn’t happened yet. The more business expands, the more time I spend on airplanes. Who am I going to marry? A flight attendant? I’m gone too much, Laurel. But I wouldn’t mind having a picture of my own kid to carry in my wallet. Having someone to spend time with when I’m in town.” He frowned. “Or am I making a big assumption here? Maybe you didn’t have any contact with the father in mind.”

  “If that’s what I wanted, I would have gone with a sperm bank. I actually was hoping that Matt—that the father,” she corrected herself, “would at least be a friendly figure in my child’s life.”

  “You know, our food is getting cold.”

  Trust a man to be thinking about eating. But she shot to her feet. “The broccoli.”

  SHE PICKED at her dinner.

  In contrast, Caleb ate with a good appetite. “I think they gave me some peanuts somewhere about lunchtime. Breakfast was…I don’t even remember when. A long time ago.”

  He’d flown from Santo Domingo, Laurel remembered, via Miami. He probably was starving. She decided to forgive him.

  Neither talked much as they ate. She mentioned hearing that a mutual acquaintance from college had decided to go back to graduate school. “Oh, and I got an e-mail from Nadia. I haven’t heard from her in ages.”

  “Your choice, as I recall.”

  It had been. At first Laurel had turned to her best friends, but finally one day she’d looked at herself in the mirror and saw what they did: a woman who bore no resemblance to the Laurel they’d known in college. There was a Before, and an After, and the After was a painful contrast. It was easier, somehow, to be with people who hadn’t known the Before version. Who didn’t ask difficult questions, didn’t look puzzled at her new timidity, didn’t keep expecting her to become herself again. Old friends had refused to understand that this was who she was now, that the old Laurel had died that night in the parking garage. So she made new friends, like Matt Baker. They knew she had been raped and that she hadn’t gone back to law school, but didn’t see the painful contrast. She could feel comfortable with them in a way she would never be able to again with people like Nadia and even Caleb.

  “It was still nice to hear from her,” she said, quietly.

  His gaze rested on her face, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “What did she have to say?”

  “It’s funny, but she just got pregnant. She said they weren’t planning to start a family yet, but it happened and now they’re excited.”

  “Does she still live on Bainbridge?”

  Laurel nodded. “I was thinking of giving her a call.”

  “You were good friends.”

  They’d been more than that. Paired by the college as roommates their freshman year, the two, at first sight ill-matched, had continued to room together the entire four years. Nadia’s parents were Russian immigrants, and she’d grown up deferring to men in a way that infuriated Laurel, who had been a militant feminist. But they both liked the window open at night, they laughed at the same things and they committed to listening to each other. By graduation, Nadia had been more willing to stand up for herself, and Laurel had begun to see shades of gray instead of stark black and white.

  Laurel realized suddenly how much she missed Nadia. Who else could she call and say, I’m pregnant, and guess who the dad is?

  Caleb pushed his plate away and said, “So.”

  She gave up moving her food around and set down her fork. “So.”

  “Have I been persuasive? Or are you going to stick with Matt?”

  She shook her head. “No. Unless you want to think about it for a few days?”

  “No thinking.” He held out his hand, laying it on the table, palm up. “I’m ready when you’re ready.”

  Her chest felt as if it might have a helium balloon in it. She reached out her left hand and laid it on his, then almost jumped at how sensitive she was to such simple, everyday contact. The pads of his fingers tickled her skin, and when he wrapped his hand around her much smaller one, the scrape of his calluses might as well have been fingernails slowly, sensuously, drawn down her spine.

  Something flared in his eyes, too, perhaps only awareness of how startled she was. But his voice, if anything, was pitched to soothe her.

  “We’ve been good friends for a long time, Laurel. We’ll make this work.”

  She gave a jerky nod. “I think we can.”

  “So when? How?”

  The procedure sounded even more appallingly clinical, even degrading, when she described it to Caleb.

  “Does your insurance cover this? Or will it cost you?” he asked.

  “It costs, but it’s not that much.” She hoped he wasn’t planning to offer money.

  “Because I’m thinking, why can’t we do it ourselves?”

  Her chair lurched as she jerked back, pulling her hand free. That quickly, her breath came fast, shuddery, and she stared at him in shock.

  “Laurel.” He started to stand, but when she shrank further into herself he stopped, then sat again. “I didn’t mean that way. God! Do you really think I’m that big a jackass?”

  “No! Of course not!”

  “Then why are you cringing?”

  “You know I can’t…”

  A muscle spasmed in his cheek, and he closed his eyes for a moment. “I know. I do know. That’s not what I was suggesting. Only that we go the do-it-yourself route. Save bucks. I give you the sperm, you, uh, use a—I don’t know what—a turkey baster or something and squirt it in.” He winced at the imagery. “I’m just saying, it can’t be that hard to do.”

  As rattled as she’d been a second ago, Laurel started to think. He was right; it couldn’t be hard. Women got pregnant even when their boyfriends had used condoms. It might be…nicer, yes, nicer to get pregnant at home. They could laugh at the awkwardness and their own embarrassment, instead of him having to get aroused in some examining room at the clinic, and her having to lie on her back with her feet in the stirrups with the doctor a
nd nurses snapping on latex gloves and speculating about why she’d chosen this route to motherhood.

  It wasn’t as if she was afraid of sperm. Only of men’s bodies, of being overpowered, of…

  No. Don’t think about it. Don’t remember. Not now.

  “Crap,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m being insensitive, aren’t I? The last thing you want is me handing you…I don’t know what. A baggie of… Jeez. Forget I suggested it.”

  “No, I kind of like the idea. If you won’t be embarrassed. We could try, and then if I don’t get pregnant we could go to the clinic the next month.”

  “You’re sure? Wow.” A grin broke out. “Hey! We’re going to be a mom and dad.”

  “Together, to see our kid graduate from high school and college.”

  They were smiling at each other, foolishly.

  “An adventure,” Caleb said.

  Finally, one she could take with him.

  “An adventure,” Laurel agreed.

  THAT EVENING, AFTER HE LEFT, she called Matt.

  “Hey,” she said. “Listen, I hope this won’t break your heart, but Caleb and I talked, and… Well, he volunteered to father my baby.”

  Long silence. Waiting in apprehension, she feared she was hurting his feelings. She’d asked, he’d accepted and now she was saying, By the way, I don’t need you after all.

  “Got to tell you, that’s a little bit of a relief. Sheila wouldn’t have withdrawn her blessing, but she keeps suggesting other ideas for you. I don’t think she was happy.”

  “No, I got that impression. Tell her… Well, I’ll tell her myself. The fact that both of you agreed was incredibly generous. You’re good friends.”

  “But you found a better stud, huh?” He was grinning, she could tell.

  “A single one. Probably better all around.”

  “But you’re still going ahead with this?”

  Her fingers tightened on the phone. “It wasn’t a whim, you know.”

  He fumbled through an apology. She assured him she hadn’t taken offense. How could she? He was a good friend.

  But…he wasn’t the right man to be the father of her baby.

  NOT AT ALL TO CALEB’S SURPRISE, Laurel insisted on a parenting plan, with rights and responsibilities down on paper, signed and even witnessed by a next-door neighbor. The one part included at his insistence was the child support he intended to pay, although they finally compromised on an amount less than he liked. The plan was Laurel through and through. She liked everything hashed out thoroughly, no detail misplaced, everyone crystal clear on where they stood.

  Caleb had known within the first week of meeting her that she would end up a lawyer.

  It broke his heart that she hadn’t.

  No, what really broke his heart was why she hadn’t.

  A 4.0 student at PLU, she’d scored high on the LSATs and been promptly accepted at the University of Washington Law School, one of the top handful in the nation. She’d e-mailed him often that first semester and into the second one, excited and energized, thriving in the competitive, challenging environment.

  Traveling weekly to Quito to check e-mail and respond to friends, he’d been first puzzled and then alarmed by her silence, which started in early April. Tough exams coming up? he’d e-mailed. No answer. Three weeks later, he’d heard from Nadia. Laurel had been attacked in the parking garage on the UW campus late at night, after she’d stayed studying at the law library. Brutally raped and beaten, she was left for dead. Not until morning had someone seen her feet sticking out from behind her car and called 9-1-1. She hadn’t come out of the coma for a week. Her face was damaged—cheekbone shattered, eyes swollen shut, three ribs broken, one penetrating a lung. She was expected to recover, Nadia had written, but…

  Caleb had almost flown home. But when he’d called, her dad had said she didn’t want to see anybody. She was confused, struggling to remember what had happened. A few days later, in a second phone call, he’d told Caleb she didn’t want him to come.

  “She’s proud of what you’re doing there,” he’d said. “She says she’s okay. She has Meggie and me, of course.” Laurel’s mom had died of cancer when Laurel was a girl. “Nadia has been at the hospital almost daily. There’s nothing you can do, Caleb. Not right now. She’ll need all her friends later.”

  When she’d finally e-mailed, near the end of May, she’d told him that the police hadn’t arrested anybody, and she’d missed too many classes to go back to school. Maybe in the fall. Her message had concluded, Thanks for the flowers and your good wishes, Caleb. But…can we not talk about what happened?

  Their e-mail conversations over the next year had been surreal. She wanted to hear every detail about his village, from the goat that chased toddlers and finally ended up in the dinner pot to his work organizing schools. She was evasive about her own life except for the most superficial details. He knew she’d given up her apartment and was living with her father in Shoreline, just north of Seattle. She had decided not to go back to school that fall.

  I’m still feeling some physical effects, she’d written, in what he guessed was a masterly understatement. The dean says whenever I’m ready. Next fall looks better.

  She talked about autumn leaves and lilacs coming into bloom, about windstorms and politics, but not herself. Mention of mutual friends became rare. In fact, he began to suspect she wasn’t seeing anyone but her father and sister.

  She always responded to his e-mails, but started to take a couple of weeks to do so. When the time for his return to the States neared, she wrote, So, are you coming back to the Seattle area? If so, we’ll have to get together some time.

  Some time? They were best friends. What did she mean, some time?

  A couple of his buddies were at the airport along with his parents to greet him when he landed at Sea-Tac. Not Laurel. When he called and tried to set up a dinner, lunch or anything else, she had excuses. Caleb called Nadia and found out that she hadn’t seen Laurel in six months. She’d given up. Finally, he just went by her dad’s house.

  Laurel was shocked to find him on her doorstep, but not as much as he was by the sight of her. It wasn’t so much the injuries—he’d expected those. A scar ran from the crest of her cheekbone into her hairline. Her face wasn’t as perfectly sculpted as it had been. But that didn’t matter.

  What got him was the weight she’d lost, the paleness of her face, the dullness in her eyes. She was thin, washed out. Her arms were wrapped around her waist instead of outstretched to draw him into a big hug. Her smile didn’t reach her eyes.

  He couldn’t say, What in hell happened to you? He already knew. He just hadn’t known how far the effects went beyond the physical.

  He hugged her, pretending he didn’t notice the way she shrank away. He talked about his flight, about his culture shock, persuaded her to take a walk to a small park he’d noticed driving there.

  The next time he called, she made excuses again. He dropped by again. And again.

  She quit even talking about going back to law school, but she did heal to the point where she got a job at a downtown law firm and with her dad’s help bought the house and moved out on her own once again. By that time, few of her old friends came around anymore. Even Nadia, now married and working full-time as a marketing executive, had given up. Only Caleb stuck it out. Sometimes he wondered why he persisted. But…she was Laurel. He’d known from the first time he saw her that she was special. He’d said friends forever, and meant it.

  He used to think they might get together sometime. As in, sleep together, or maybe even fall in love and go off into the sunset. At first it didn’t happen because their timing wasn’t right. He had a high school girlfriend when they first met; by the time he and Danica called it quits at October break, Laurel was dating some guy. It worked that way until their senior year, when they were both briefly single. He thought about making a move on her. He wanted to make a move on her. Damn, he’d wanted to. But then he looked at her and thought, Yeah, but she�
��s my best friend. It can’t work out long term. I’m leaving for two years. What if screwing her now ruins what we have?

  In the end, it hadn’t seemed worth it. But he’d left for a summer in Europe believing that someday Laurel would be the girl for him. If he had a choice between time spent with Laurel and anyone else, Laurel always won. Once he got back, he thought, then he’d get bold.

  That wasn’t how it happened, of course, or how it ever would happen. They’d stayed friends, since he wouldn’t let her quit on them. But romance was not a possibility anymore. She wouldn’t let it be.

  Nonetheless, he’d been royally pissed when she told him she had chosen Matt Baker to father her baby. She’d decided to pick a friend, and she hadn’t picked him? He hadn’t even made her goddamn list? For a minute, he’d seen red. Or maybe green, because he was jealous as hell. If any man’s sperm was swimming inside Laurel Woodall, it was going to be his.

  It would, that is, if he could get it up and manage to jack off in her bathroom, knowing she was sitting out in the living room pretending to watch TV. Him, he’d never felt less aroused in his life.

  And this was the big day, outlined in red on his calendar. The day of the month she deemed her most fertile. Something he had never expected to know about her.

  Of course, instead of being the big day, it was going to be a humiliating one for him if he couldn’t perform.

  To start with, her bathroom wasn’t conducive to erotic activities, even self-managed ones. The damn room was tiny—as in, you could wash your hands while you were still sitting on the toilet. For that matter, you could stick your head in the shower and wash your hair without leaving the toilet, either. Good thing if he ever had to take a shower here, because his entire body sure wouldn’t fit in that stall.

  His real problem, though, was that the bathroom felt virginal. White-painted cabinets, wallpaper—although there wasn’t much wall—that was also white strewn with violets. He used to think it was funny that tough, argumentative, take-no-prisoners Laurel had a secret girlie side. Right now, gaze on the tiny, green-glass bottle with tiny white bell-shaped flowers in it that sat next to the sink, Caleb wasn’t so amused. Trying to get worked up, he felt as if he was raping her in a figurative if not literal sense.