Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
“I’m coming,” Kimberly called from the top of the stairwell. She wiped developing solution on the pant leg of her faded denim coveralls and then pushed her dark rimmed glasses to the top of her head. “Just a minute,” she added as she rushed to unlock the front door.
“Carly. Hi.”
“Hi. Lindsay and Samantha have a birthday party this afternoon. I dropped them off, and I thought since I was in the neighborhood, I would stop in to see you,” Carly explained cheerfully, although Kimberly didn’t fail to notice that she avoided eye contact.
Kimberly placed a hand on each of her hips. She didn’t buy her sister’s story for a minute. “Are you saying the girls are attending a party in my neighborhood, Carly? Forty-five minutes from home? The schools really must be busing children all over the place if your daughters know children who live around here. And where’s the baby?” Kimberly raised a challenging eyebrow toward her younger sister. She planned to bar Carly’s entrance into the house until she confessed the real reason for her unexpected visit .
“Fine, you win. But I didn’t exactly say I dropped them off in your neighborhood. I said that I dropped them off and then was in your neighborhood.” Carly took in her unbending stance and in typical Carly fashion, refused to be unnerved by it. “Let me in. It’s raining out here. Besides, can’t a sister drop in on her sister without her motives being challenged?” Carly huffed and brushed past Kimberly on her way into the hallway. She removed her jacket and hung it up in the closet before she gave Kimberly a chance to protest.
“If a sister is a normal sister, maybe. But, you’re not, nor do you ever do anything on a whim. You always have a motive. What is it this time? What harebrained scheme are you going to try to get me to go along with today?” Kimberly probed, not feeling a bit of remorse for giving her sister the third degree. She left one hand on her hip, as she repeatedly tapped the tip of her shoe on the floor, a habit she knew annoyed Carly.
“Kimberly, I am not up to anything. The girls really are at a birthday party this afternoon, and Damien is with the baby. I had a couple of hours to kill. That’s all. I came by to see how you are because we haven’t seen you lately,” she justified with a tilt of her chin.
“I’ve been busy. I’ve taken on a lot of freelance work the last two months. You caught me in the middle of developing some pictures I need to send out tomorrow morning, and I’m not nearly done.” She’d be daft to think Carly would take the hint, but at least it was worth the try. Resigned to the idea that her sister was not turning around and leaving, she decided to offer her something to drink. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“That sounds wonderful,” Carly beamed and followed Kimberly into the kitchen. “You know, the girls were terribly disappointed when you didn’t show up for Thanksgiving. You should have seen them. Lindsay dressed up as an Indian Princess, and Samantha was a Pilgrim. ”
“Yes, well, I’m sure they were adorable, and I’m sorry I couldn’t make it, but I had an assignment I had to finish.” Plus, I just couldn’t face any more questions about Jake, she added to herself. She still felt the pain of his leaving almost eight weeks earlier. She turned on the coffeepot and took out two cups from the cabinet.
“Kimberly!” Carly screeched and nearly caused Kimberly to drop the cups from her hands.
“What is it?” Kimberly whipped around to look at her sister. The way Carly startled her, she better be looking at a spider the size of a small dog.
“Kimberly, why don’t you tell me what’s really going on here? Look at you. How much weight have you lost? Ten pounds? Fifteen? Kimberly, you’re all skin and bones. I didn’t notice when I walked in but seeing you here in the kitchen where there’s more light, Kimberly, you look terrible. This is my fault, isn’t it? If I hadn’t pushed Jake and you together, you wouldn’t be here, wasting away to nothing,” Carly cried dramatically.
Kimberly’s eyes traveled over her sister. She took in her perfectly coifed blonde hair, set in a coil at the back of her head. Her fingernails, painted fire hydrant red, were all the same length and not a broken one amongst them. She shook her head. Her beautiful sister had to have more things to do with her time than pry into other peoples’ lives. Especially when, nine times out of ten, Carly assumptions came so close to the truth. She had been miserable since Jake left, but she needed to work it out for herself. Jake wasn’t coming back, and with time, she would adjust to the idea. Yeah, right.
“Carly, you are not to blame for anything. I told you. I’ve been working a lot of hours lately. I haven’t been eating right the last couple of weeks.” Actually, her appetite was all but non-existent. The thought of food nauseated her more times than not, but she certainly would not share that with her sister.
“Jake has nothing to do with it.” She turned her attention to the coffee maker after choking out the lie.
“I don’t have any cream. Is milk okay?”
“Sure,” Carly answered distractedly. Kimberly felt a flush crawl up her cheeks when she opened the refrigerator door, and she hoped Carly missed it. If Carly thought she was still depressed over Jake’s leaving, she would demand that they discuss it.
Kimberly placed the milk on the kitchen table, along with a can of Coke for herself. “I feel warm all of a sudden.” She made her way to a kitchen chair and sat down. She pressed the cold soft drink against the side of her cheek. The cool metal felt good against her skin. Her body cooled off almost immediately.
“Kimberly, your face is flushed all of a sudden. Are you sure you are all right? Do you think you have the flu? I heard it’s going around,” Carly added with growing concern.
Kimberly raised her hand and pressed it to the side of her face. She’d welcome the warm flush if it distracted her sister from drilling her any further.
“I don’t know.” Kimberly searched her mind for a plausible explanation and could think of only one. “A couple of the models I worked with last week did mention coming down with a bout of the flu over the past month. Maybe I caught something from one of them.” The coffee maker buzzed, and Kimberly jumped up to turn it off. Halfway to the counter, she felt lightheaded, and her legs grew weak beneath her. She grabbed the edge of the sink, right before her legs gave out.
“Kimberly!” Carly scrambled out of her chair and rushed over to her sister. “We have to get you to the doctor. We can go to one of those twenty-four hour clinics. You might be dehydrated or, or, I don’t know,” Carly rambled while assisting Kimberly into a kitchen chair. “Stay right here while I get our coats.”
Kimberly bobbed her head weakly. She did not have the strength to argue with Carly. Kim didn’t dare tell her that this was the third time, in the last month, that she had nearly fainted. Her sister would surely panic from that news.
“Here, let me help you put this on.” Carly, in typical fashion, Kimberly noted, took control of the situation. She had her own coat on and held Kimberly’s open for her.
“Carly, I can put my own coat on. I’m not dying. I got dizzy, that’s all. I probably have the flu, and it’s left me a little weak.” The ‘month-long flu’ she realized and hoped there was such a thing.
“Hello, Ms. Urbane. I’m Doctor Hayes,” a middle-aged man with graying temples informed her soon after she was seated on top of the examining table.
“Let’s see,” the doctor murmured as he looked over her chart. “Seems that you fainted this afternoon?—"
“Almost fainted.”
“Ah, yes, almost fainted. You think it may be the flu. Why is that, Ms. Urbane? Have you been exposed to anyone with the flu?” he asked with a pleasant smile.
“Ah, well, I think so. I’m a photographer, and some people I worked with last week mentioned that they had the flu recently.”
“That may very well be your problem then, Ms. Urbane, but just in case, I need to ask you some questions. First, how long have you been having flu symptoms? ”
“Actually, a month, maybe a little longer. Maybe two?”
The doctor looked up from his note pad. His eyes squinted in concentration. “I see,” he mumbled and jotted down some notes. “Perhaps you better explain your flu symptoms to me.”
Kimberly squirmed on top of the examining table, her hands clasped tightly together. Doctors had made her nervous since childhood, and Dr. Hayes was no different. Despite his small gestures to make her comfortable, she still felt uneasy when she answered his questions. “Well, I’ve lost my appetite recently. Food sort of turns my stomach, I guess you could say,” she told him and laughed uneasily. “I get dizzy occasionally and sometimes I feel warm, and the next minute I’m freezing.” She shrugged, unable to think of any other symptoms.
“Hmm,” Dr. Hayes said, as he wrote furiously on his notepad. “Anything else, Ms. Urbane? Shortness of breath? Loss of vision?” Kimberly shook her head. Loss of vision? What sort of flu virus strand was this?
“Ms. Urbane.” He scribbled several words and then looked up from his notepad. “When was your last menstrual cycle?”
“My last menstrual cycle?” Kimberly mumbled and then realized she wasn’t sure. “I, ah, well. I’ve never been regular. Sometimes I skip a month...I don’t know for sure,” she stammered. “Maybe two months ago? Or almost three? I’m not sure.”
“I see,” the doctor replied in a way that did not reduce her building anxiety. “I’d like to take a test first, but I think I may know what our problem is Ms. Urbane.”
“You do? What is it?” For the first time, she was frightened that something may be seriously wrong with her. She pulled her lower lip between her teeth, her eyes large, and fearful.
“I think we better wait until I know for sure before we discuss it. Now, please relax while I call the nurse in. There’s a simple test I’d like you to take.”
Carly looked up from her magazine just as Kimberly walked out into the waiting room. Her sister’s eyes widened at the sight of her, and Kimberly was tempted to laugh. Only tempted, because there was nothing funny about the doctor’s diagnosis.
“Kimberly, what is it? What’s wrong?” Carly questioned, fear evident in her tone. She hopped up from her seat and followed Kimberly out of the clinic’s revolving door. She half-hoped Carly hadn’t followed her, as she was in no mood to explain anything to her sister right now, not when she had yet to figure things out herself.
“Kimberly, you’re scaring me. What is it?” Carly demanded from behind her.
Kimberly spun around and Carly’s eyes widened when she looked up at her. Kimberly knew she should be reassuring her sister, rather than let her think the worst, but she wasn’t thinking clearly, not yet.
“Oh no.”
“Please take me home,” Kimberly whispered in a tight voice. Sheer terror crossed her younger sister’s perfect features, and Kimberly shook her head in frustration.
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
“Carly, please just take me home. I’m not dying if that’s what you’re worried about. I’d rather not talk about it while we are standing in front of the clinic, however. We’ll talk when we get home.”
Carly took her car keys out of her purse and shook them at her sister. “Kimberly, I can’t believe you sometimes. You walk out of the clinic looking worse than when you walked in. What do you want me to think?” She quickly followed on her sister’s heels. “Do we need to stop at the pharmacy and pick up a prescription or anything else?”
“No, it’s not necessary. Just take me home.” Kimberly sat down in the front seat of her sister’s BMW, buckled her seatbelt, and then closed her eyes for the duration of the ride home from the clinic.
“I’m not waiting another minute for you to tell me what’s wrong,” Carly demanded with a careless toss of her jacket over a kitchen chair. They had driven the fifteen-minute drive home in silence, which for Carly was probably a record, Kimberly thought, each of their nerves on edge for the entire trip.
Kimberly tossed her coat over her sister’s and then walked over to the sink. She poured herself a glass of water and swiftly drained the contents. She placed her glass down on the counter and turned around to face her sister. She leaned against the back of the counter and lifted her hand to brush a wayward curl from her face. “Well, I don’t have the flu.” She looked directly at her sister and then laughed without a trace of humor.
Carly wrinkled her finely carved eyebrows in confusion. “Then, what’s the problem?”
“The problem is not what I have. It’s what I am.”
“‘What I am? Stop playing games, Kimberly, and tell me what’s wrong.”
“Okay. Here it goes, and brace yourself sis, because you’re going to need it. I’m pregnant.” Kimberly watched her sister’s expression go from annoyance to stunned silence. Carly Urbane was finally shocked speechless. If the whole situation weren’t so serious, Kim would be tempted to laugh. “And don’t you dare ask, Carly, because it’s Jake’s. There’s been no one else. I swear.” It was the truth. There had been no one in the two years prior to Jake and no one in the nearly ten weeks since he’d left. As incredulous as it seemed, Jake was the father of the tiny baby growing inside of her.
“Oh, wow,” Carly choked out from her spot on the kitchen chair. “Oh, double wow,” she repeated, bringing her hand to cover her mouth. “Kimberly, how?”
Kimberly folded her arms in front of her and tilted her head in a way that told Carly she certainly wasn’t going to explain that part. Kimberly blushed just thinking of the times she had made love with Jake. The incredible night they had spent together and then the fast and furiously passionate lovemaking the following morning flashed before her eyes, and she had to shake herself out of the memory.
“That’s not what I mean, Kimberly. Jake told you about his, ah, problem, didn’t he?”
“Yes.” She sighed. “I don’t know how either. I asked the doctor the same question.”
“And—"
“And he says it has to do with chemistry or something like that. I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I told the doctor about Jake’s case of the mumps, and he said that’s more of a wive’s tale than anything else. Sterility does happen in some very rare cases, but it’s highly unlikely. As for Jake and his ex-wife’s problems, the doctor explained that sometimes it’s a matter of chemistry, combined with a whole lot of stress. He said he hears of cases all the time where people divorce because they can’t have children. Then, they marry someone else, and within a couple of years they find themselves with a whole house full of children.”
“I can’t believe it,” Carly stated incredulously. “Jake’s going to be thrilled.”
“No, he’s not, Carly, because I’m not telling him. ”
“What?” Carly gasped. “Of course you’re going to tell him. He’s the baby’s father. He has the right to know.”
“He gave up his rights when he left me?—"
“He didn’t know. Give him the benefit of the doubt,” Carly interrupted.
“No. You don’t understand, Carly. You weren’t there. You didn’t have your heart shredded to pieces when Jake told me he didn’t love me. He said he liked me, but he didn’t love me. And...and that he no longer wanted the family thing.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks, and Carly stared back at her as if she wasn’t making any sense, which she wasn’t.
“You mean Jake suspected you were pregnant before he left?”
“Of course not.” Kimberly exhaled an exaggerated breath. “He spoke in general terms. Carly, I begged him to stay. Literally begged him. Do you know how humiliating that is? Especially when he throws it back in your face with something as unemotional and detached as ‘we can always be friends’? No. No way, Carly. I am not contacting him. I know he would sacrifice his happiness for the sake of the baby, and we would both be miserable that way.”
“And how do you plan to keep Jake from finding out?”
“I thought about that on the way home from the clinic. First of all, Jake is out of the country, so there won’t be a chance of us running into each other. Secondly, Jake would never suspect the child was his because he thinks he can’t have children.” And, she added to herself, I can’t tell him, because I’m terrified of his rejection. Once was enough for one lifetime.
“Don’t you think people are going to question who the father of your baby is? Not many people know that Jake can’t have children, Kimberly. Or thought he couldn’t, I guess is more accurate now.” She twisted her hands together in her lap as she looked over at her sister .
“Not many people knew he lived here. I doubt Jake will ever be a consideration among the gossip mongers,” she responded more harshly than she intended. She had enough problems at the moment without having to worry about a bunch of busybodies. Even though she could hardly consider her parents as busybodies, there was no doubt that they would question her repeatedly about the father of her baby when they returned from their year living abroad with her Dad’s sister in Ireland. Ask? she mentally repeated. No, her parents would not respect her privacy enough to simply ask her. It was more likely that they would demand.
“Kimberly, what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet.” She stared back at her sister and told her, “and you are not to breathe a word to anyone, do you hear me Carly? No one. Thank God Mom and Dad are in Ireland right now staying with Aunt May. At least I won’t have to deal with them for another two or three months,” Kimberly muttered. How she would avoid her brother George was another thing. She cringed at the thought of her overprotective brother learning that his unmarried sister was pregnant and by one of his closest friends. She was grateful Carly hadn’t thought of George’s reaction either, or they would spend the afternoon in debate over it.
Carly glanced at her watch. “Look, Kimberly, I’ve got to go and get the girls. Why don’t you lay down for a while and take it easy? I’ll call you later tonight.”
“Sure.” Kimberly followed Carly to the front of the house and hugged her tightly before she left. After closing the door, Kimberly turned around and pressed her back against the door frame. “What am I going to do?” She repeated the question over and over on her way up the stairs to her bedroom.
Exhausted, both mentally and physically, she flounced down on top of her bed. She stared up at the ceiling, her eyes open but not seeing anything in particular. She sighed longingly and placed her hand on her still flat stomach. What was she going to do? That was a very good question. She could always move and leave California. That way she would be able to avoid questions about the baby’s father. She gave the idea only a few moments of thought. That would be running away from my problems, not solving them. Besides, she didn’t want to give up her house or move from her family. No, moving was definitely out of the question.
Her job, she groaned inwardly. How would she travel with a small baby in tow? Could she really leave her child every day, sometimes for twelve hours at a time? She couldn’t. Although only aware of the life that grew inside of her for less than an hour, her maternal instincts had already kicked in at full blast. She would need to alter her work schedule somehow. After some consideration, the idea of a portrait studio began to take hold of her mind. Somewhere in town possibly, where clients could come to her. Kimberly made a mental note to investigate the idea first thing tomorrow morning.
Now to tackle her biggest problem: what would she tell people? She could always say she had gone to a sperm bank, she reasoned. The concept was very trendy. Kimberly shuddered. The idea of carrying a stranger’s child inside of her did not appeal to her, even if it wasn’t true. A one-night stand while in Paris might be a good excuse, she mused, and then killed the idea. Visions of her parents’ look of horror flashed before her eyes. They would be mortified at such behavior from their daughter. Despite the fact that she was thirty-one years old and living on her own, her parents maintained old-fashioned ideals, ones that did not include their daughter sleeping with strangers.
Maybe she would just tell people the truth. She had fallen in love with someone, and unfortunately, he didn’t return her love. They no longer saw each other, having gone their separate ways. It wasn’t a lie; that’s for sure. Kimberly reached for a pillow and clenched it tightly to her. Why, Jake? Why didn’t you love me? We could have been so happy together. Kimberly yawned. The day’s events had taken a toll on her weary body. She curled tightly into a ball, and a faint sob slipped from her lips before she drifted off to sleep.