"Some people give you things out of goodness, but a lot
of them do it so they can feel superior. So they can sit smug and say, Look what I did for that poor woman and her children. And you see it on their faces."
She glanced over at him, her cheeks flushed with the heat of both pride and shame. "It's hateful. I didn't want anybody giving me anything. I wanted to get it for myself. So I worked, and I squirreled money away, and I made big plans. Then I got pregnant."
She looked back toward the archway to make certain Simon was still out of earshot. "Didn't realize I was until I was into my second month. Thought I had the flu or something. But it didn't go away, so I went to the clinic and they told me. I was about nine weeks already. God, nine weeks along, and too stupid to know it."
"You were a child." And one he ached for. "You weren't stupid, you were a child."
"Old enough to get pregnant. Old enough to know what that meant. I was so scared. I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't tell my mother, not right away. I went to the boy. He was scared, too, and maybe he was a little angry. But he said we'd do the right thing. I felt better after that. I felt calmer. So I went home and told Mama."
She drew a deep breath, pressed her fingers to her temples. She hadn't meant to speak of all of this, but now that she'd begun, she would finish. "Oh, I can still see her, sitting there at the table with the fan blowing. It was hot, awfully damn hot. She looked at me, and leaned over and slapped me.
"I don't blame her for that," she said when Brad swore. "I didn't blame her then, I don't blame her now. I'd been sneaking out behind her back to be with that boy, and now I had to pay the price for it. I don't blame her for the slap, Bradley, I had it coming. But I blame her for after. For finding satisfaction in knowing I'd gotten in trouble, the same as she had with me. For making sure I knew I was no better than she was, for all my ideas and plans. I blame her for making me feel cheap, and making the baby I was carrying into a punishment."
"She was wrong." It was said simply, in a matter-of-fact tone that had Zoe's breath hitching. "What happened with the father?"
"Well, he didn't do the right thing, as he'd called it. I don't want to talk about that right now. There's this business in my clue about forks on the path. I chose my direction back then. I quit school, and I went to work. I got my GED and my beautician's license, and I left home."
"Wait." He held up a hand. "You went out on your own, alone, when you were sixteen? And pregnant. Your mother—"
"Didn't have any say in it," she interrupted. She turned, facing him with the fire snapping behind her. "I left when I was six months gone because I was not going to raise my baby in that goddamn trailer. I took my direction," she said, "and maybe that path started me on the road to the Valley, and the Peak, and all of this."
Maybe she had to say it all, she thought now. Maybe she'd needed to go back, step by step so she could see it all.
And so he could.
"I wouldn't be here if I'd chosen another, if I hadn't loved a boy and made a baby with him. I wouldn't be here if I'd gone on to college and gotten that good job, and flown off to Rome for the week. I have to figure out what that means, about the key. Because I gave my word I'd try to find it. And I have to figure out if that's why I'm here, with you. Because God knows, it doesn't make any sense for me to be here otherwise."
"Whatever brought you here, it makes perfect sense."
"Were you listening?" she demanded. "Did you hear a word I said about where I came from?"
"Every word." He crossed to her. "You're the most amazing woman I've ever met."
She stared at him, then lifted her hands in exasperation. "I don't understand you at all. Maybe I'm not supposed to. But there's something we both have to consider. Because the world isn't small, and it isn't set. And, Bradley, there isn't just one world for us to worry about here."
"It circles around," he said with a nod. "And it intersects."
"And because it does, are you the choice I'm supposed to take or the one I'm supposed to turn away from?"
He smiled, but it was sharp and it was fierce. "Try to turn away."
She shook her head. "And if I turn toward you, and something starts between us, something real, what happens if I have to choose again?"
He laid his hands on her shoulders, slid them up until they framed her face. "Zoe, something's already started between us, and it's very real."
She wished she could be so sure.
When she rode home through the night sprinkled with the light of a quarter moon, nothing seemed quite real.
Chapter Eight
"Champagne and lobster and limos, oh my," Dana exclaimed as they maneuvered the wroughtiron baker's rack they'd bought into its place in their communal kitchen.
"Very classy," Malory agreed. "Maybe Brad will give Flynn lessons on how to prepare dinner for a woman."
"That's part of the problem. I'm the beer, burger, and station-wagon type. It was wonderful, absolutely wonderful, but the way a really good dream is."