Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
TEN YEARS AGO
“ Goddamn it, Kelly .”
Jane flinched as Matteo’s voice carried across the club. She looked up to find Kelly, a barback not much older than she was, crouching over a broken bottle that had slipped out of her hands and shattered on the floor. Kelly bowed her head, slowly picking up the pieces and dropping them into a dustpan.
Matteo stood over her, his arms crossed, face red. “What were you thinking? That shit is expensive.” He let out another string of expletives. When he noticed Yolanda watching from behind the counter, he narrowed his eyes. “What are you looking at?”
Jane turned away and went back to wiping the tables before Matteo could notice her watching, too. She was slowly beginning to realize that Matteo’s flash of anger on the day she’d met him a couple months earlier hadn’t been a figment of her imagination. His temper tended to flare at the nightclub staff when they screwed something up, especially if that screw-up cost the bar money. Usually, it ignited quickly and then burned out before much harm was done. And once he’d calmed down, he’d always apologize. Well, except for that time he’d discovered one of the staff was stealing from him.
Jane shuddered at the memory of the blood spurting from the bartender’s nose, but then she shoved it out of her head. It wasn’t like Matteo had ever been violent or turned his temper on her. He’d snapped at her a few times upstairs in the apartment, but those were just normal arguments that all couples had. And he’d certainly never gotten physical. If she’d seen even a hint of violence from him, she would have been long gone.
It had been just a few months since Jane had started working at the club, and she and Matteo had been together for as long. She’d pretty much gone upstairs with him on that first night and then never left. When she took the job, she’d hoped to be able to move into her own place eventually, but it turned out that VIPs didn’t always tip as well as that first table. Plus, she hadn’t known then that she’d be expected to give a cut to the bar staff.
Matteo seemed happy to have her stay with him, and it was better than going back to that motel. Anything was better than that horrible motel. Matteo was nice to her—except for those arguments. But that was normal couple stuff. His place was comfortable, and she even enjoyed sleeping with him, though she would have preferred it if he used a condom. But he always pulled out, and he’d told her to get on the pill. She planned to, just as soon as she had a day off and could figure out the complicated bus system to get to the nearest Planned Parenthood.
Jane didn’t fool herself into thinking she loved Matteo, or that she’d ever love him. But she felt comfortable with Matteo and lucky about how things had turned out. She shuddered every time she remembered pulling food from the trash can, every time she walked past the people sleeping in bus shelters. It could have gone so badly for her.
Jane was proud of how she was making it on her own, and grateful to be as far away from her dad as possible. She had her guitar—the gift from Matteo—and had been practicing as much as possible. Matteo had promised that, soon, he’d talk to his friends about having her play in their bars, and she wanted to have a set list ready.
So, if her life wasn’t perfect, it was good enough.
Sometimes when she couldn’t sleep at night, memories of Nik would drift in, and her heart would ache for him. When Matteo was in one of his moods, she’d fantasize that maybe she and Nik could be together again, someday. But he’d be in college for a long time, and four years felt like an eternity. Who knew what could happen? Maybe he’d meet someone. Or maybe he wouldn’t want her anymore. So, lately when those thoughts of Nik drifted in, Jane had started digging her nails into her palm to stop them. That part of her life was over, at least for the foreseeable future, and the pain in her hand was nothing compared to the pain of knowing what could have been.
Jane pushed those thoughts out of her head now, focusing on a sticky spot on one of the bar tables. She sprayed an extra squirt of cleaner and scrubbed at it with a rag. The astringent lemon scent wafted up, and suddenly Jane’s stomach lurched. She dropped the bottle on the table and made a run for the bathroom.
Jane had just finished emptying the contents of her stomach in one of the ladies’ room toilets when she heard a voice on the other side of the stall: “Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good.”
She exited the small space to find Yolanda leaning against the sink with her arms crossed over her chest.
“I think I must have caught a stomach bug a couple of weeks ago.” Jane grabbed a handful of paper towels to wipe her mouth. “I just can’t seem to kick it.”
Yolanda’s painted-on eyebrow rose. “Sorry, honey. But I don’t think that’s a stomach bug you’ve got in there. ”
Jane leaned over the sink to splash water on her face. “You think I have food poisoning?”
Yolanda snorted. “If that’s what you want to call it.”
“What do you mean?” Jane stood and reached for another paper towel.
Yolanda ripped it off and handed it to her. “You’ve been looking green for weeks. I have two babies and I’ve seen this a dozen times with my girlfriends.”
Jane pressed the paper towel to her face, and then froze as Yolanda’s words sank in. “Wait. Are you saying?—”
“You’re pregnant.”
“No.” Jane finished drying her face. “No, I can’t be.”
“You’re sure about that?” Yolanda cocked her head. “Are you on the pill?”
“No.” Jane turned away from Yolanda under the pretense of tossing the paper towel in the trash, but really it was so the other woman wouldn’t see her reeling. “I was going to make an appointment.”
Yolanda huffed. “Well, does he use condoms?”
Jane’s nausea came back in a wave. “He pulls out,” she blurted. I can’t be pregnant. Can I?
Yolanda’s face screwed up in an expression that said: Men. What do you expect? “Does he pull out every time?”
“Yes.” And then after a pause, “I think so.” Oh God. Jane wasn’t sure. The truth was, she didn’t have enough experience to know. Things down there were always a little… wet… after they had sex. But sex involved lots of fluids, didn’t it? There was her own lubrication, and Matteo’s, and the mess on the sheets and her thighs after he pulled out. Even when Nik had used a condom, things had still felt… damp down there. And since Nik had been her first time, she’d bled after. So how was she supposed to know what was normal?
Yolanda was looking at her sideways. “Oh, honey. ”
“Oh God.” Jane slumped against the wall. “Do you really think I’m pregnant?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Jane begged off work that evening, claiming a headache that was easy to fake when she was already pale and nauseous. Matteo wasn’t happy about it, but Yolanda offered to cover for her, so he waved Jane off with a grunt.
Under the pretense of buying some Tylenol, Jane ran to the pharmacy three blocks away and then quietly let herself back into the building. She tiptoed up the back stairs to the apartment and headed straight for the bathroom, carefully locking the door behind her.
It took her a couple of minutes to read the directions and examine the accompanying diagrams. She didn’t want to do it wrong and have to go and buy another one. Or worse, get a false response. But finally, Jane felt confident enough to uncap the plastic stick and pee on it. She set it on the counter and sank down on the edge of the bathtub to wait. Three minutes.
The longest three minutes of her life.
Jane sat frozen on the hard tile tub surround but her mind whirled. When had she gotten her last period?
I have no idea.
Those stressful, terrible first weeks after she’d left home came back to her in a wave. The pain of her injuries worsened by long hours in the car across Kansas and Colorado and Utah. And then she’d arrived in Los Angeles, and Kait had dropped her off at the motel, pausing before she drove off to ask if Jane was sure she wanted to stay here.
“Yes,” Jane had insisted. But she hadn’t been sure, not at all. And for those first weeks, her body had hummed with constant stress from the trauma of what had happened to her at home and the fear of how she’d survive. From literally counting her pennies and subsisting on ramen and other people’s discarded food. She’d probably lost five pounds that first week. Ten by the time she’d been gone from Linden Falls for a month. Jane wouldn’t have noticed when her periods stopped coming. That had been the least of her problems.
If she was pregnant, was it possible it had happened before she left Linden Falls? For one brief, unhinged moment, Jane’s chest filled with hope. If she was pregnant before she’d arrived in LA, she’d have to tell Nik, right? He’d have a right to know. Just the possibility of dialing his number, of hearing his voice, comforted her. But then Jane shook her head. Nik had used a condom. And Yolanda had seemed skeptical of Matteo’s pull-out method. Yolanda knew way more about this than Jane did.
The clock ticked down, but just as Jane was about to check the pregnancy test, there was a rap at the door.
“Jane?” It was Matteo. He knocked harder.
“Um.” Jane grabbed the pregnancy test box and stuffed it in the garbage. “One second.”
“What are you doing in there?”
“Nothing!” It came out sounding nervous. Too loud.
“Jane, open the door,” Matteo barked.
“One second,” she repeated. Jane wasn’t sure why her instincts were telling her to hide this from Matteo. If she was pregnant, it was his baby, too, right? But maybe she just needed to have a chance to process it first. To figure out what she wanted to do.
But Matteo was rattling the doorknob now. “Do you have another man in there?”
“What?” Jane gasped. “No! Of course not.”
He pounded harder. “Open the door, Jane. Right. Now .”
She cringed at that familiar anger in his voice. It had the same intensity as that moment downstairs when he was yelling at Kelly. Suddenly afraid, Jane twisted the lock and flung the door open, hurrying out into the bedroom.
Matteo glared down at her. “Don’t think I fell for your sick routine. It was obvious you were faking to get out of work. Were you trying to sneak around behind my back?”
“Matteo— no. ” But she was a terrible actress. Because she had been sneaking around behind his back—just not in the way he thought.
“Then what’s in the bathroom?” He grabbed her and pushed her aside.
Jane stumbled, her shoulder knocking into the wall. Matteo stormed into the bathroom and flipped back the shower curtain as if she’d hidden a man in there. When he came up empty, he spun around, focusing on the counter by the sink. “What the hell is this?” He snatched up the pregnancy test and stared at the little plastic window.
Jane found herself praying like she’d never prayed before. Please be negative. Please.
Matteo flung the test in the sink and swung around to face her. “You’re pregnant? You’re fucking pregnant?”
Oh God. Oh no.
“How could you let this happen?”
Jane’s mouth dropped open. “How could you let it happen? You were supposed to pull out!”
Matteo’s face turned the same color red as it did when he caught the bartender stealing from him. “I told you to go on the pill.”
Jane took a few cautious steps toward him. “I was planning on it, but I didn’t have a chance yet.”
“I’m trying to run a business, and you’re my employee. Who the hell is going to take care of a baby?”
Jane closed her eyes as the reality of it sank in. Diapers and formula and crying at all hours of the night. Her friends were starting their freshman year of college, going to classes and parties and living the lives of normal eighteen-year-olds. And she was…
Pregnant .
How had she ended up here? And what was she going to do now?
“I—I don’t know.”
Matteo shook his head in disgust, pushing past her out into the living room. Jane trailed after him, pausing in the bedroom doorway to watch helplessly as he headed for the front door. A sudden terror seized her. What if he was so mad that he broke up with her and kicked her out? What would she do if she were back out on the street, pregnant and broke? “Matteo, wait. Let’s talk about this.”
He stopped walking and spun around in front of her guitar on its stand. But instead of calmly crossing the room to Jane, as she expected, Matteo reared back on one leg. Jane gasped as his foot flew forward with a terrifying amount of force, crashing into the center of the guitar. With a terrible, dissonant clang, the wood splintered, the neck cracked, and the instrument flew off the stand and into the wall.
And then he turned and stormed out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him.
Jane stared at the guitar pieces scattered across the floor, her heart cracking like the splintered wood. Unable to look any more, she turned back toward the bedroom, spotting her phone on the bed where she’d flung it when she’d arrived home with the pregnancy test.
She sank down on the mattress. Her first thought was Nik.
She’d ditched her phone with his number when she’d left Linden Falls, but Jane would never forget those ten digits. What could she say to him, though? I’m a server in Los Angeles, pregnant with another man’s baby. And I’m scared.
Nik would probably come and get her. But could she ask him to?
Instead of dialing his number, she switched over to her internet browser and googled his name. He was probably in Ithaca, starting classes at Cornell right about now. The first link to pop up in her search was an article about his scholarship. The Linden Falls Gazette had featured Nik in a story last spring. They wrote about his volunteer work with the local paramedics, how he was the youngest person in the unit’s history to earn his EMT certification, how he’d been chosen over all the other applicants for the competitive scholarship. The Linden Falls town council would pay his tuition, room, and board every semester of his undergraduate degree, as long as he kept his grades above a B average. Nik was well on his way to becoming the doctor he’d always dreamed of.
The questions hung in the air. Was she pregnant with another man’s baby? Three months had gone by since Jane had been with Nik, and then she’d started sleeping with Matteo a couple of weeks later. Her nausea had started up maybe a month or two after that. How did the math work? Could this be Nik ’s baby?
Jane quickly dismissed the idea as longing rather than reality.
This was Matteo’s baby, and there was no way she could call Nik. If her staying in Linden Falls would have ruined his life before, what would showing up pregnant do now? She’d gotten herself into this and she needed a plan.
Jane typed in the search bar again. How much does an abortion cost?
The first link to come up was the website for Planned Parenthood. She scanned the text. The average cost of a first trimester in-clinic abortion at Planned Parenthood is about $600. The average ranges from about $715 earlier in the second trimester to $1,500–2,000 later in the second trimester.Your abortion may be free or low-cost with health insurance.
Jane didn’t have any idea what trimester she was in, and she didn’t have that kind of money. Maybe she was still on Dad’s insurance—she had no idea—but she definitely couldn’t use it to get an abortion.
So, Jane did the only thing she could think of. She picked up the phone and dialed the one number she knew by heart other than Nik’s. Mom picked up on the second ring.
“Mom?” Jane hadn’t heard her mother’s voice in months. Despite everything that had happened, it comforted her in a way that nothing else could. “Mommy, it’s me.”
“Jane. Oh, my goodness!” Mom exclaimed, but then she cleared her throat and dropped her voice. “Jane, where are you?” she whispered.
“Why are you whispering? Is Dad home?” Jane checked the time. It was early evening on the East Coast.
“No, but he’ll be home any minute.”
Jane could picture Mom clutching the phone to her ear, pulling aside the curtain to peer out the front window, braced for Dad’s patrol car to come down the street.
“We were so worried about you.”
“I left a note.”
Mom’s voice shook. “It didn’t say anything about where you were going. Where are you?”
Jane hesitated. “California,” she finally said. It was a big state, and she didn’t think they’d be able to trace her to LA. She didn’t rent an apartment, didn’t have any bills in her name. Matteo paid her under the table and had given her the phone. “Mom.” Jane scrubbed her sweaty palms on her pant leg. “Things aren’t great here and I could use some help. Is there any way you could send me some money? I don’t need a lot. Just a thousand. Maybe two.” It sounded like a fortune to Jane, but it couldn’t be that much for her mom. After all, her parents had an entire college fund they’d saved and wouldn’t be using.
Jane listened to the silence on the other end of the phone. Finally, Mom cleared her throat. “Your father would notice if I took money out of the account.”
“I know, but…”
“He’s very angry you left. ”
“Mom, please.” Jane felt tears welling in her eyes. “I need help.”
“Well, Jane, you could come home.”
“I can’t come home. You know I can’t.” She grabbed a pillow and held it to her chest. “What if you left him and moved somewhere with me? We could go to Canada.” Maybe she could get a bus out of Los Angeles and start fresh somewhere else. Vancouver, or if that was too expensive, maybe a small town in British Columbia. Mom could meet her there, far away from Linden Falls and Dad’s control. If Jane went through with having the baby, Mom could take care of it while Jane got a job to support them.
“I don’t see how I could possibly leave…”
“You could get a lawyer, right? You’d have a right to some of the money? Savings, or alimony, maybe. And I could work. I’m a really good server?—”
“Dad would never let me go,” Mom interrupted. “And no lawyer in this town would go up against Chief McCaffrey.”
“He couldn’t hurt you in Canada.”
“It would never work.”
“It would never work?” Jane repeated. “Or you’re not willing to make it work?”
“Jane, you don’t understand…” Mom began, but Jane hung up before she could hear any more of Mom’s excuses.
Jane woke, disoriented, and in the dark. She sensed movement by her knee and sat up abruptly. The streetlamp shone in through the crack in the blinds, slanting across Matteo’s face. Jane threw off the blanket and scrambled to the other side of the bed.
“Jane, wait.” Matteo held out a palm. “Please.”
She stopped, but still kept her distance .
Matteo hung his head. “I am so sorry, Jane. You have to know that.”
She eyed him warily. “Do I?”
“There’s no excuse for what I did.” He took a deep breath and then blew it out slowly. “I thought you’d gone on the pill, and I just wasn’t expecting this.” A hint of an incredulous smile played on his lips. “I can’t believe I’m going to be a father.”
“You don’t want this baby. You made that very clear.”
“I do, Jane. I was in shock at first. I think that’s why I”—he coughed—“reacted like I did. But when I left here, I realized I want it so badly.”
Gingerly, Jane pressed her hand to the tender spot on her shoulder where he’d shoved her into the wall. “You know that’s no excuse, right? There’s never an excuse for what you did.”
“I know. I’m sorry. You’ll never know how sorry I am.”
Jane wished the room was brighter so she could get a better look at his expression. But part of her didn’t want to switch the lamp on. Didn’t want to face her life in the harsh light.
Matteo got up and walked around the bed to where Jane sat. She slid back an inch. “I’ve been thinking about it all evening,” he said. “I can hire another server at the club. You won’t need to work; I’ll take care of you and the baby.”
Jane’s first instinct was to shake her head. If she gave up her job, she’d be entirely dependent on Matteo, and she couldn’t let that happen. But then she hesitated. If she said no, he could fire her and toss her back out on the street. Jane would be worse off than she was the first time around. She’d be homeless and pregnant. Jane clutched her abdomen. How had she let this happen?
Matteo reached out and took her hand. “Think of it, Jane. Neither of us has any family. But the three of us will be that for each other. A real family.”
Matteo had only told her a little about his upbringing. His father was never in the picture, and he’d been close with his mother, but she’d passed away a few years ago. Jane had been vague about her own home life. Matteo knew she came from Linden Falls—he still liked to call it East Bumfuck —but she’d told him very little about her family. Only that they were estranged, and Jane wasn’t in contact with them.
“You don’t push someone you care about. You don’t break things ,” she said accusingly.
Matteo leaned in, meeting her eyes, and Jane was stunned to see that they were red and rimmed with tears. “You’re right.” He slid closer, and in her shock, she let him. “I am so sorry,” he repeated. “It will never, ever happen again.”
“How can I believe you?” She could still feel the vibration of the broken guitar as his foot connected with it. Could still hear the wood splintering. Jane had been here before, and she’d be crazy to stay with Matteo. Wouldn’t she?
“You have to let me make it up to you. You have to let me try.” He reached across the bed to pick up a shopping bag he’d set on the side table. It was from the 24-hour pharmacy, the same one where she’d bought the pregnancy test just a few hours ago. How did it feel like days already?
“I got you some things.” Matteo reached into the bag and pulled out a container of pills. He held it out to her so she could read the label. Prenatal vitamins. Next came a stuffed elephant. And then a handful of chocolate bars. “In case you have cravings.” He gave her a crooked smile, and despite every part of her that knew better, Jane felt herself wavering.
Matteo cocked his head. “What do you say? Can we be a family?”
A family.
The sound of Mom’s voice came back to Jane, telling her she couldn’t help. She wasn’t willing to help. Jane’s family really was gone, and there was no going back.
“I’m going to be the best father to this kid you’ve ever seen.” Matteo swiped at a tear on his cheek. “I can be a better man if you let me prove it to you. ”
Dad had never, ever apologized to Mom the way Matteo was apologizing right now. He’d doubled down and blamed everyone except himself. But not only was Matteo sorry, he was crying. She felt her own eyes well up. What if Dad had shown some remorse, some desire to be a better person? How would her life have ended up differently?
“What do you say?” Matteo asked, taking her face gently in his hands, brushing the tears from her cheeks.
“Something like today can never happen again,” Jane said.
“It won’t.” Matteo leaned in to kiss her, and she let him press his lips to hers, let him settle her back on the bed. “I promise.”