Chapter 33
Now
Bea
Silas is changing his mind. At least, I think he might be having second thoughts. Maybe I pushed telling his family too quickly.
No, that’s not it. He’d been happy about telling them. Maybe a little more nervous than I’d imagined, but happy nonetheless.
Maybe he’s just considering everything deeply and that’s why he’s been strained and distracted every time we’ve spoken. That and he’s probably just plain exhausted.
I wanted him to feel like he was safe to reconsider, right?
This is the thought spiral I’m stuck revolving around when I turn my shopping cart out of the chip aisle and collide with my mom.
After not seeing her or speaking to her for almost three months, the longest we’ve ever gone, she’s here across from me in the Spunes Grocery, wide-eyed and slack-jawed in front of the sour cream.
All the fears lingering in the mean corners of my head, all my anxieties, all the ways I’ve missed her—it all sharpens into the kind of anger I want to hurl directly at her. I want to scream at her. Give her the cold shoulder, move past her, and pretend I’m unbothered.
I want to run into her arms and have her hug me and tell me everything will be okay.
“Who convinced you to get blond highlights?” I say instead.
She breaks first, her face crumpling into a sob, then rolls her cart away with a flick of her wrist—almost tripping a passing customer—her arms outstretched for me. I don’t even fight it. I reach for her and practically fall into her embrace, let out a cracked cry into her sweater. “Mom.”
“Oh, Bea, oh, my girl. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Sweetie, I’ve missed you so much. I’m so sorry, honey. Please forgive me. I’m—oh my god.” She moves me back with her hands on my shoulders and examines me from head to toe, eyes brimming when they meet mine again. “You’re pregnant.”
“How did you know?!” I wail accusingly.
She smiles, one hand covering her trembling mouth before she’s wrapping me up again.
“You don’t get to be mad. I’m doing really great,” I cough out. I certainly sound like it.
“I’m not mad, Bea. I’m not mad at all,” she assures me. “I never should have—just—here. Let’s go somewhere private.” She calls out to the store manager, Mr. Phillips, and lets him know she’s using the employee lounge before she hauls me over to it, both our carts abandoned.
I plop down on an ancient plaid sofa while she takes her time shuffling around the space. She prepares us each a mug of tea while we gather our thoughts and composure.
“You know, I really enjoyed working here when you were little,” she says, pensive and wistful.
“Your grandparents couldn’t stand it. They’d done everything to give me every opportunity to get away, all for me to end up back here, pregnant, and working at the local grocery store cash register.
” She passes me my mug and slumps down on the other end of the love seat, tucking her knees beneath her.
“Once you came along, they softened up. But I never felt like I had their approval, really. . . . Not until I met Kurt and stopped working altogether.”
“Why was that?” I ask, confused.
She toys with the string on her tea bag, shrugging.
“I don’t know. Probably some antiquated notion ingrained in them?
Like I wasn’t capable of making good choices for myself up to that point, but I finally chose well with Kurt, maybe?
” She snorts. “Your grandfather even pulled me aside once and told me I’d done a great thing, bringing Kurt into your life so he could take care of you and me.
It was the only time he’d ever outright told me he was proud of me. ”
“Mom,” I say, hands spreading over my mug as I try to swallow past the lump in my throat.
My hormones are terrorizing me already. “You were incredible. You took care of us. You taught me how to prioritize taking care of myself, too.” I let out an aggravated scoff.
“Why do you think I felt confident enough to do this by myself in the first place? It was because of you. Because of how well you did it.”
“Thank you,” she whispers hoarsely. Her brow folds, and her chin wobbles.
“Kurt told me what he said to you, you know. And while I haven’t been quick to tell him and have been an absolute hag about it, unfortunately, the man was right.
” She gives her head a shake. “Kurt honestly was the best thing to happen to me, second to you. He loved us both so easily. I just—I couldn’t tolerate the idea of him ever disappointing you, after your father.
Of you ever being sad because of another man, and I think, because of that fear, I tried to limit his role in your life so I could limit any fallout.
But you never can set limits with love, not really.
Love is always having pieces of your heart walking around outside your body.
” She reaches over with a watery smile and gives my knee a squeeze.
“What I’m trying to say is that I think I did it again, by asking you to leave, and I’m sorry.
Maybe I internalized some of my parents’ disappointment in me and that became part of it, too, but after Merritt .
. . Oh, Bea, you were so sad. You were in so much pain.
I didn’t want you to risk any more of it. ”
I lose it. Mom gently pries the mug from my fingers after a minute and cradles my head down into her lap, stroking my hair while I cry.
“What is it, sweetie?”
“I’m . . . I’m doing the same thing, and I don’t know how to stop,” I admit.
“Except it’s worse because I’m only protecting myself.
” I tell her about everything with Silas, barring the explicit.
I tell her about college and the complicated guilt I had where Merritt was concerned, the timing Silas and I couldn’t get right.
I tell her I went and fell in love with the man who’s become my very best friend but that I’m still trying to hold back pieces of myself because I’m terrified of losing him, knowing how hard it was to find myself after loss before.
“I told him I saw him and understood him. I told him I loved him, and the first way I showed it was to not include him. He only got to take me to the transfer appointment because Bonnie got sick. And I didn’t even wait for him to take a pregnancy test!
Which would not have been a big deal at all.
I do know him and know he’d forgive me in an instant, but god, Mom, I still—I feel myself being scared.
“I’ve been using the baby as an excuse, as the thing I want to protect,” I say thickly.
“But the truth is, anyone would be so lucky to have Silas for a father. You know he told me he’d do this with me?
Like on a legally binding level? And I didn’t take him up on it because I told myself I wanted him to have a clean way to back out, or like no strings or something.
But, Mom—” I’m sobbing again. “Maybe I should have offered him strings! I should have offered metal chains! Wrapped him up in every complicated knot and locked him in a box!” At that first dinner at Starhopper, I’d said that I didn’t think it was fair to get into a relationship with someone when they’d have to come second, and no one deserves to come first more than Silas.
I think of him putting aside his friendship with Ian.
Him stepping aside for his siblings, waiting patiently for his turn at a hug.
Mom makes a comforting noise and combs more hair away from my sticky face.
“I understand what you’re saying, Bea, and maybe you did make that choice out of protecting yourself a little .
. . but to me, it sounds like you did this from a loving place, too.
Giving our loved ones options—choices . .
. that’s loving. You cared enough about him that you wanted him to be able to choose himself.
You didn’t tell him you didn’t want him involved.
Are you going to be less of a mother to this baby because you have no biological connection to it?
Will you love them less than any other kids you go on to have? ”
“Of course not.” My hand rests protectively and possessively on my lower belly. It’s unthinkable. They’re nothing but a tiny bundle of cells, and yet I keep cracking open inside, new places filling with new shades of light and love. It’s boundless and entirely without limits.
I feel everything click into place. A Rube Goldberg machine of thoughts and feelings, every memory corresponding to a realization.
Silas is the one who had it right from the first, back when I thought he was naive. I can love so much more bravely and broadly than I ever thought I was capable of. Unlimited, undefinable shapes that will move and grow with me.
And even if the very worst comes to pass, I know I can handle it because of him.
I’ve learned this over and over, but the right dominoes are falling in the right direction and pushing into the correct pieces, finally.
I wouldn’t spare myself an ounce of pain if it meant missing out on Merritt, and I won’t hold back for another second when it comes to him.
I am allowed to hope at full force. I’m allowed to trust that he means what he says, to believe in everything he’s shown me.
I can be brave with my heart, no reservations.
I don’t need protection from the fallout.
“Then have faith in him, too,” Mom says.
I sit up and dry my eyes. Let out an airy, mad laugh. “I will. I do.”
Oh my god, do I have faith in Silas Byrd. My mind slowly illuminates with a plan, full of all the ways I’m going to keep choosing him. To make him feel chosen. He deserves to be my first call, forever. He deserves to know how much faith I have in him.
My mom is grinning from ear to ear when I meet her stare again. “I always thought he might be good for you.”
I roll my eyes so hard it’s refreshing. It slaps me back into my body and steadies my feet under me. It is refreshing to feel something as basic as annoyance for my mother. “You did not.”
“I did,” she insists primly. “You really love him, don’t you? He’s good to you?”
“He would die for me, Mom,” I say, hand returning to my stomach. “But he’d live for me, too. For us both.” The corners of my laugh catch my free-falling tears. Salt on this achingly sweet feeling. “I’m going to love him so hard he won’t know what to do with it.”