Chapter 11 #2
"Good grief. You're serious?"
She nods. "Absolutely."
"Wow."
“Yeah. My not having sex before marriage was a real big deal for them. Like, the biggest."
I swallow hard. "Did…did I pressure you?"
Her expression softens. "God no, Cole. You were the one saying you were willing to wait if I wanted to. I'm the one who didn't want to wait. If anything, I pressured you."
"As I recall, it was a mutual decision," I say. "I just… memory can be faulty. I didn't think I'd pressured you, but…"
She covers my wrist with her hand. "No, honey. You didn't. You were a perfect gentleman." She smiles at me. "I have the best memories of our first time, Cole. You were so sweet and so romantic. So gentle with me. You were so scared of hurting me."
I wipe my face. "Riley had just been with—god, I don’t remember her name, his first girlfriend. Short girl with bottle-blue hair and big boobs."
"Colleen Rickard," she fills in.
"Right. Colleen Rickard." I wipe my face again. "I was scared because Riley had told me how much Colleen had bled. He neglected to tell me at the time that it hadn't actually hurt her."
Lacey laughs. "Sounds like Riley. Saw the blood and panicked.
" She pats my hand again. "Anyway. The point is, no, you didn’t pressure me. I knew what I wanted. And to be totally honest, my parents had made such a big deal about how sinful sex was that I think part of me wanted to do it just out of rebellion and curiosity.”
I snort at this. "Nice."
"Not that it wasn't about you!" she protests.
I hold up a hand, laughing. "I know, I know. I was teasing."
"Jerk," she mutters. "So, yeah. Weekly, if not daily, my parents would harp on and on and on about being pure, about being holy, about all that bullshit that was just about controlling me. Anyway. That was my life. Especially with you and me dating, the older I got and the closer to graduation, the more they harped on abstinence. Which was a lost cause by senior year, obviously, considering we’d been sleeping together for two years by that point. "
"This sounds an awful lot like context," I point out.
"Yeah, I know, I know." She adjusts the blanket over our legs, sips coffee, stares at nothing; when she speaks next, it's so softly I can barely hear her.
"I missed my period. It wasn't super regular, back then, so I wasn't overly concerned at first. But when I started getting nauseous and puking in the morning, that's when I started to get scared.
Like, if a woman on TV gets nauseous, she either has cancer and is going to die or she's pregnant, and I was pretty sure it wasn’t cancer.
" Her voice shakes. "I was so fucking scared, Cole.
I knew if I told Mom and Dad, they'd…" a shake of her head.
"They'd disown me. They told me as much.
My father flat out said, in exactly so many words, that if I ever came up pregnant, I'd better not bother coming home with the news. "
My gut churns. "God, that's insane. What kind of a fucking monster does that?"
I'm not sure she heard me.
"I had to hide it from them. Pretend I hadn't spent the whole morning trying to puke silently.
Pretending I wasn't scared out of my fucking mind, panicking and alone.
" Her voice breaks. "And you—I couldn't tell you.
You wouldn't have gone to the academy. You would have married me because that's what my parents would have made you do.
It's what your dad would have made you do.
You would have put the academy on hold and gotten a job to support me—us. "
“Lacey, fuck." I cover my mouth with my palm. "You should've told me."
"I couldn't!" She screeches, voice cracking and shrill. "I couldn’t. Because I wanted that. I wanted to be Mrs. Mannix. I wanted us to get a one-bedroom at Foxwood Commons and be a little family on our own.” She shakes her head, eyes dripping tears.
"But you…All you ever wanted, your whole life, was to be a cop like your dad.
From the time you were able to walk and talk, you were a cop.
You wore that star everywhere for years, remember? "
"I was three!"
"You wore it until Kindergarten, and you only stopped wearing it because Tommy Rooney, Hank Grunwell, and Arthur Kinsinger made fun of you."
"Do you remember literally everything?" I ask in an annoyed mutter.
"Mostly, yeah." The humor fades. "You were a cop, a sheriff, or a cowboy for Halloween every year, Cole. Including high school."
"Because it was an easy costume!"
"Because it's who you fucking are!" she shouts. She holds up a hand. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't shout."
"No, it's fine. This is about saying everything, Lace." I pat her thigh under the blanket. "I'll never, ever ask you to restrain how you express yourself."
For some reason, this makes her cry even harder. "Stop being so goddamned nice to me. Jesus." She scrubs her face hard, as if she's trying to forcibly push the tears back inside. "It's who you were, and who you are. And if I'd told you, it would have ruined your life."
“I really want to argue with that," I whisper.
"But you can't," she finishes, “because you know it's true.
" She touches my jaw with her fingertips.
"You wouldn't have the life you have if I'd told you, Cole.
You wouldn't be the sheriff. You'd be another statistic.
Another promising young light who had his life derailed by an accidental pregnancy.
You'd be driving a dump truck or something, Cole.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just not who you are—it's not who you were meant to be. "
"But Lacey—"
"You deserved the chance the make the choice for yourself?" she asks, cutting in over me. "I know. I thought of that back then, too. And I knew it was true. You did deserve that. But I made the choice for you. I did it willfully and intentionally, knowing exactly what I was giving up."=
"Lace. Jesus."
She closes her eyes; her lips press together, wobbling. "I didn't tell anyone. I just…I made the decision sitting at home alone on a Friday night. Everyone else was at your football game."
"The night you said you had a stomach bug."
She nods, snorting a soft laugh. "Get it? Stomach bug?" Her eyes glitter with humor. "I've waited fifteen years for that joke to pay off."
"Oh my god, Lace. Really?”
She nods, cackling. “Oh yeah." She sobers swiftly.
"I sat at home alone looking at the positive test—and the three others I took.
And I knew what I had to do. I packed a bag while everyone in town was watching the great Cole Mannix and the all-state Three Rivers Wildcats play a perfect game to cap an undefeated season.
I waited until Mom and Dad were asleep, and then I walked to the bus station, used my savings to buy a ticket to Detroit, and I left before I could chicken out.
If I'd told anyone, they would have talked me out of going. "
I wait, knowing I can't interrupt her, now.
"It's still the second hardest thing I've ever done, getting on that bus and riding away from you, knowing you wouldn't understand. Knowing I was breaking your heart. It nearly crushed me."
"I can't imagine," I whisper.
“No, you can't," she breathes.
"Where did you go? What did you do?"
"Do you remember Tabitha Toomey?" she asks.
I nod. “Yeah. She was captain of the volleyball team your sophomore year."
"We were close, even after she graduated and moved down to Detroit for school. We talked all the time."
"She was Tabs in your phone," I say, recalling seeing that name in her calls and texts a lot, back in the day.
"Right. Well, I called her. She let me stay in her dorm with her on the D-L for a while. I got a job waiting tables and started a new life."
"While alone and pregnant at eighteen."
She nods. "Yup. The plan was to save up for an abortion. I thought I could maybe do that and then move back up here with some made-up story. But I was a dumb kid. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know anything."
"Oh god, Lace." My stomach is tight and sour with anticipation.
"I didn't know how expensive an abortion was, or how expensive life was.
It took me weeks to save up enough for a deposit, and then I had to buy work clothes and food and things for living on my own, and I just…
every time I tried to save money, life got in the way.
Life got expensive, and I was never able to put enough away for the abortion.
By the time I had enough cash stashed aside, it was too late.
I was too far into the pregnancy. I had to carry it to term.
" She tips her head back. "I was fucking crushed by that news, Cole.
I was a sheltered kid. I didn't know anything about abortions.
I mean, god, can you imagine my parents if they knew I'd planned that?
Unmarried and pregnant at eighteen is bad enough.
But an abortion, too? You may as well just burn me at the stake, as far as they were concerned. "
"But they didn’t know either?" I ask.
She rolls her head in a sloppy negative gesture. "Nope. Not right away. I did call them eventually and tell them, but at first, for the first several weeks, no one but Tabs knew. Tabs literally saved my life. She fed me. She let me sleep in her bed with her. She never asked for a damn thing."
"Where is she now?"
"Connecticut, married to a big-shot financial guy and raising a bunch of cute, perfect kids." She smiles. "I sent her a Birkin as a thank you, a few years ago."
"I don't know what that is."
“A very expensive purse that you have to be on an approved list to be able to buy. Like, worth more than your truck, or close to it.”
"Oh. Got it."
A wave of her hand. "She sent it back unopened with a note inviting me to lunch."
"Did you go?"
A nod. "I did. I spent a weekend with her. She's lovely." Another pause. A glance at me. "Ask the question, now, Cole."
I pinch the bridge of my nose. Breathe in, hold it, and let it out slowly. "What happened to the baby, Lacey?"