What's Left Behind (20 page)

W
hat would it be like to live with family again?

Sundown at Briar Rose meant Abby’s time to unwind on the porch. To kick off her shoes, lean back, and enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done. To give herself the proverbial pat on the back. Because, hey, if you didn’t appreciate your hard work, who would?

A slight breeze came off the ocean, carrying a hint of lavender bloom. A chorus of cicadas chirped, the hum competing with the roll of the surf, and the Charlie statement she kept rewinding.

You and me and baby make three.

Three sounded so much nicer than one. Abby had a sudden pang for Lily Beth, living alone for the past sixteen years. Sure, her mother spent her days entertaining the public at Heart Stone, invited friends over for dinners on the beach, impromptu nature walks. But visits ended. Friends went home to their own families, their own lives. And nights stretched, long as the late-day shadows.

Briar Rose buzzed with activity. Footfalls of guests, male and female voices, water running in the pipes. The commotion comforted Abby, to a point. She and her guests traded life stories. They bonded over trouble talk. Abby provided lighthearted complaints that skirted real issues. Guests offered earnest divulging. But even strangers who became friends were just passing through her life. Abby had no expectations otherwise. Form a relationship, see you next year. Easy come, easy go.

She scrolled through her cell’s missed calls, reviewed the history she’d already reviewed. Rob had called while she was out with Charlie, wanting to know how she was feeling. He’d asked her to phone back. But how could she return Rob’s call before she had an answer for Charlie? How seriously should she take Tessa’s threat? Fuzzy darkness swallowed the Briar Rose parking lot, night casting a blanket, and no sign of Tessa. To hell with impulse control.

Abby flipped through her list of contacts and hit
send.

Tessa’s father picked up on the first ring. “Professor Lombardi.”

“Hi, this is Abby, Abby Stone.” Silence. “Luke’s mom?” Abby savored the sweetness of the words on her tongue, like a widow who worried her wedding band.

“How are you, Ms. Stone?”

“I’m fine. Thank you for asking. And please call me Abby.” She waited for the professor to ask her to call him Noah. “Um, Professor Lombardi . . . I’m calling to let you know
Tessa
is doing well. She’s actually been a big help to me.”

Professor Lombardi harrumphed, a throat clearing with attitude.

Disbelief? Disgust? Disdain? Tessa had phoned to let her father know her whereabouts. But wasn’t he worried about her? “It’s just,” Abby continued. “Well, frankly, she seems a little confused . . .” The word
lost
belatedly popped into Abby’s head. Tessa was on a mission, searching. But for what?

“About?”

“About the baby.” Abby flipped a curl back and forth between forefinger and ring finger. Back-forth, back-forth, back-forth. Preschool Luke had loved to play with her hair, thumb planted in his mouth, index finger hooked around his nose. When he’d outgrown thumb sucking, he still liked to come up behind her and flip a curl, a just-between-them gesture that stood in for embarrassing hugs and kisses. When was the last time he’d done that?

The thing about last times? You never knew when they were happening.

A creak from Professor Lombardi’s end of the phone, as though he were rising from an office chair, even though she’d called him at home. Then the hollow tap of footfall and a slow release of air. Either disappointed or defeated. “I apologize for my daughter. I told Tessa she should leave well enough alone. No good would come from contacting you and bothering you with her problem. The child doesn’t listen, she—”

Abby’s brain hummed, as though the cicadas’ song had lit all her neural connections. She jumped to standing. “You told Tessa not to contact me?”

“You’ve so recently lost your son.”

“I’m aware of that fact.”

“Tessa obsesses. The child can’t let go of anything. I told her, clean breaks are best.”

“In what universe?” Abby’s voice sounded hushed. Tinnitus pin-pricked her left eardrum and then trailed to nothing.

Did Professor Lombardi imagine giving Luke’s child to a stranger would somehow spare Tessa’s feelings? Or was Tessa’s father suggesting Tessa break off her relationship with Luke?

Instead, Tessa had immersed herself in Luke’s life. Sleeping in his childhood bed. Becoming involved with Luke’s parents. Taking up the train of Luke’s childhood dream that his not-together parents get it together.

Another huff of air. Through the nostrils, Abby decided. Professor Lombardi was exhaling through his nostrils, like a bull. A stubborn, wrong-minded bull.

“You advised Tessa not to tell me about my grandchild? To . . . to . . . to . . .” His nonsense-talk paralyzed her tongue. The phone shook in Abby’s hand, a violent wave of tremors.

The screen door cracked open. Abby’s guest, Bart Trombly, poked his bald head out to the porch. The retired high-school principal and his wife liked to hang glide and paint watercolor sceneries. Bart met Abby’s gaze and retreated inside the foyer, pulling the door shut behind him.

Dial it back, Abby. Dial it back.

Professor Lombardi deepened the timbre of his voice, as if he were speaking from behind a lectern. “I advised my child to do what I thought was best for her.”

Abby could’ve gone through her entire life not knowing a part of Luke was alive in the world. Bad enough Tessa was threatening to give the baby away. What her father had suggested would’ve been so much worse.

How was wronging another person best for anyone?

Abby’s hand slid down the porch railing. She tried swallowing down her anger, but, damn it, she wanted to jump on the bullheaded professor’s back. Ride that beast until he realized the error of his ways.

Abby knew the type. The know-it-all truck salesman who’d tried to lure her with payments that fit her budget, conveniently leaving out the fact she’d be paying interest alone. Did he think she was easy prey because she didn’t have a husband to handle the blue jobs? A guest who’d used another B&B’s coupon and tried to short her on the bill. A plumber who’d called her first cute and then crazy, when she’d dissembled the under-sink pipes herself and discovered his business cards clogging the trap.

Abby had talked the salesman down to size. She’d charmed the guest into paying his bill, plus a huge guilt-alleviating tip. She’d reported the plumber and earned a credit toward a new sink.

“What options did you and Tessa discuss?”

“By the time Tessa told me about the pregnancy, her options were somewhat limited.”

Translation: Tessa had been too far along for her father to talk her into an abortion.

Years ago, when Charlie had suggested an abortion, for a split second Abby had let herself consider it. She’d imagined herself and Charlie following through with their life plan. Graduate from college, get married, and, a few years later, start their white-picket-fence life, replete with a golden retriever and 2.4 kids. But how could she have looked their 2.4 kids in the eye, knowing she’d stopped their sibling’s beating heart because the timing had been inconvenient?

Seemed Tessa had shared that line of thinking.

Thank God thank God thank God thank God thank God.

“Okay,” Abby said. “So abortion was off the table.” Abby pressed her forehead against a porch support column, trying to snuff out the unintended double entendre, the image of a woman lying on a metal slab, feet in stirrups. A cold ache slid between Abby’s legs, and the backs of her knees softened. Abby lowered herself to the granite steps.

“That left one option,” Professor Lombardi said.

“Which was?”

“Giving the baby up for adoption.”

To a stranger.
It was telling that Professor Lombardi couldn’t say that to Abby’s face.

“But Tessa felt she had other options,” Abby said. A statement, not a question.

From the other end of the phone, an insistent tapping. The professor drumming his fingers on a mahogany desk? Abby didn’t press, just waited him out.

“She nagged me for months,” Professor Lombardi said.

Translation: Tessa had hoped in vain for her father’s approval.

“She talked about either offering the baby to you or keeping it.”

An exhalation whooshed out of Abby. Relief? Surprise? Utter shock? Tessa’s mother wasn’t a part of her life. Her father was a wrong-minded bully. Yet, all on her own, she’d opted to continue the pregnancy, had even considered raising Luke’s baby herself.

Her baby. The baby was Tessa’s, too. If she chose to take up the gauntlet.

Tessa wasn’t Abby’s daughter, but could she be proud of her anyway?

“Why not?” Abby said, and her voice lifted on a grin. “Why not encourage her to keep the baby?”

“She’s nineteen years old!”

“I was eighteen when I had Luke.”

“And you were able to take care of yourself and Luke’s financial needs? All on your own? Without any help?”

“Of course not. My mother helped us.”

Another harrumph. This one softer than the first, but Abby had heard it. The disdain had come through loud and clear.

“You didn’t offer to help Tessa?” No wonder Tessa was running scared. Her father had narrowed her choices, boxing her in a corner.

Just like what Tessa was attempting to do to her and Charlie. The child repeating the mistakes of the parent.

“You mess up, you suffer the consequences.”

Clean breaks. From his own child? “Did you threaten to disown Tessa if she kept the baby?”

“Abby—”

“Ms. Stone,” she corrected.

“I offered to give her a dose of reality.” His voice sounded tired, pulling from the last reserves of a long day. Or a long life. “Tessa has a lot of growing up to do. Who am I to take much-needed life lessons away from her?”

“You’re her family.” Family stuck together. Family never ever gave up on each other.

Especially a family of two.

“I’m aware of that fact,” he said, borrowing Abby’s previous statement and delivering it in a flat tone. “Perhaps we have different ideas about the meaning of family.”

Headlights swung into the driveway, pulling shadows along the porch posts. Tessa backed into an open space between two cars and cut the engine. A familiar sensation washed over Abby, relief at a loved one’s return, an up-shift of contentment.

The way she felt whenever family walked through the doors of Briar Rose. Luke, Lily Beth, and now Tessa.

Tessa wasn’t family. Was she?

That decision was up to Tessa.

“Tessa just pulled in. Hang on a second.” Abby held the phone to her chest, waited till Tessa made her way to the porch. “Would you like to talk to your dad?”

Tessa set down two big-handled white shopping bags. She squinted at the phone, rocked from side to side. “Do I have a choice?”

“You always have a choice.”

Tessa met her gaze, and her chin jutted forward, as though she might cry. But then she took the phone from Abby’s hands.

Abby went into the foyer and perched on the edge of the love seat. She straightened her sachets in the wicker basket, held one to her nose, inhaled lavender. Flipped open the white cardboard honor box and counted the cash.

The foyer light leaked onto the porch and lit the back of Tessa’s head. “Yes.” Pause. “Uh-huh. Dina sent me my vitamins.” Pause. “I don’t know. Why does it matter? You already paid my rent for the month. It’s not like you’re going to get it back.”

Tessa’s father paid her rent, but he wouldn’t if she had a baby?

“Not yet. I told you, I don’t know. And, really, Abby is none of your business.” Tessa sat on the rocker. “Wh-What?” The rocker creaked and moaned, Tessa pushing the chair to its limits.

Tessa burst through the door, stopped short, and thrust the phone at Abby. “Thanks for having me. I’ll leave in the morning.” Tessa sidestepped past Abby, slid aside the pocket door, and race-walked into Abby’s apartment.

What had just happened?

Abby followed behind Tessa, closed the door behind them, and threw on the overhead lights. “What did your father say to you?”

Tessa halted in the middle of the living room. Her shoulders rose to her ears and then fell sharply with a huff, as though Tessa were mimicking one of Abby’s blowfish breaths. Tessa set her bags on the floor and spun on her heel. “I don’t stay where I’m not wanted.”

“Tessa, I haven’t asked you to leave!”

“Then why did you call my father?”

To figure out whether adopting her grandchild necessitated committing to Charlie.

Blackmail was a lousy reason for agreeing to marry someone. Whether or not Abby was still the girl of Charlie’s dreams, he deserved better. So did she.

“I don’t know,” Abby said.

Tessa snapped up her bags and huffed into her bedroom.

Luke’s bedroom.

Abby tried not to laugh at the absurdity. Abby never believed Tessa when she claimed ignorance either.

“I called your dad to let him know how you were doing.”

“Oh my God, you told him! You told him about, about—” Tessa’s eyes widened, as if they were trying to escape her face. She slapped her thigh once, twice.

“Stop it!”

Breathing hard, Tessa met Abby’s gaze, her hand wavering midair.

“Shh,” Abby said. “Hush, now. Nobody’s asking you to leave. Nobody’s leaving you. You don’t have to hurt yourself anymore. I didn’t tell your dad about the cutting.”

Tessa’s mouth twisted sideways, and her eyes watered. “Swear?”

Abby held up a pinkie, and Tessa’s expression softened, the hurt draining from her pink cheeks. Her hand floated to her side. “You still shouldn’t have called my father.”

“You shouldn’t have gone behind my back to try to emotionally blackmail Charlie. I’m the one seeking adoption. If you have a question, or a demand, come to me first. Leave Charlie out of it.”

“I don’t even know what emotional blackmail means.”

Not knowing the term hadn’t stopped Tessa from excelling at the practice. “It means you set impossible conditions,” Abby said. “It means you’ve threatened to give Luke’s baby to a stranger, strangers, if Charlie and I don’t get married.”