Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Henry
July 8th, 1997
The next time I see Kimberly, she’s seated between her parents at my kitchen table. Her hazel eyes are overcast, like the forest floor when a storm blots out the sun. She thumbs the corner of the sonogram prints. To my untrained eye, it looks as though someone printed off a snowy television screen, but they tell me that dark spot is a fetus. A baby. Our baby.
Kimberly’s hair falls in loose blonde waves over her shoulders. She’s not wearing a lick of makeup. Compared to prom night, she seems so much younger. Less confident.
I know how that feels. That night, I felt on the verge of becoming a grown man. Faced with this? I’m suddenly no more than a scared child.
“Can I get y’all coffee? Tea?” Mom wrings her hands together. Her gaze darts from Kimberly’s mom, whose mouth is pinched tight, to Kimberly’s dad. His jaw is taut, the clean-shaven skin there twitching as he grinds his teeth audibly. Neither responds to my mother. She flattens her palms on the table, fingertips an inch from the sonogram, and sighs .
In the corner of the black photograph, I see Anderson, Kimberly printed. I realize I never even asked her last name. Part of me assumed it was Winters like her cousin. I fixate on this fact, reshaping her in my mind. Kimberly Anderson. The mother of my child.
It’s a distraction from the shitstorm brewing in her father’s eyes.
“What were you thinking?”
“We weren’t—” Kimberly murmurs.
“I wasn’t asking you,” her father bites. Her mother winces. He lifts a fat finger and aims it at me. “You took advantage of my daughter. Now you’ve ruined her life. She was gonna be an accountant, you know that? Make good money for herself. Now she’s gotta quit college to raise your baby.”
I wince but don’t reply. Because what could I possibly say? He’s right on all counts.
“Well?” He practically snarls. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
I glance at Kimberly, but her gaze is trained on the tabletop. After… Well, after we finished that night, she laid in my bed with her leg slung over mine and told me how she actually wanted to be a flight attendant, but her dad thought accounting was a more respectable position. Probably because it’s what he does. “ It was a dumb dream anyway, ” she whispered, and suddenly her dismissal of my music stung a little less.
My chest aches, realizing I’m yet another person taking a dream away from her.
“You don’t have to quit,” I say, directing my voice to her. She gazes up at me from beneath damp lashes, her lower lip trembling. “I make enough at the factory. I can put you through school at the community college?—”
Her father scoffs. “And who’s gonna raise this baby while you’re working and she’s at school? You can’t do both. ”
“I’ll watch the baby,” Mom says. All eyes shift to her. She braces her shoulders, her signature pearls glinting in her ears. “I raised Henry. I can take care of my grandchild.”
His hard stare shifts from my mother to me. “And what a fine job you did there.”
“ Greg, ” her mother warns.
“Excuse me, but Henry is a good kid.” Mom swallows hard. She drops one hand beneath the table to grab ahold of mine and squeeze. “Accidents happen. And last I checked it takes two people to make a baby. At least he’s trying to make things right.”
Greg—what a friendly name for such an unfriendly guy—looks about to boil. His face is simmering red. I sense more than see his blood pressure rising. He sucks in his lips. My breath catches. I don’t know where we go from here. But like Mom said, I’m trying to make this right. As right as I can.
“So you’ll marry her, then?”
“ What? ” Kimberly and my mother say in sync.
Her mom lets her eyes drift closed. A tear falls silently over her cheek. She brushes it away with the hand that’s not draped over Kimberly’s, smudging her nearly perfect eye makeup.
In the few minutes I’ve sat across from Mrs. Anderson, I’ve realized she’s a proper lady. Quiet, and not one to disagree with her husband openly. But she carries herself with grace and poise, not unlike my mother. I get the sense she and Mom would make good friends if circumstances were different.
“If you two are gonna act like adults, then you’re gonna do what adults do.” Greg glances at the sonogram. At the shadow that my whole world has now shifted to revolve around. “That baby needs two committed parents. So you’re gonna do the right thing and marry Kimberly. Before she brings your child into the world a bastard.”
“And what if I don’t want to?” Kimberly says.
She avoids my gaze. Instead she’s staring out the bay windows at Abel Johnson’s sprawling farmland. The simple view that’s been the background of my life. I wonder what it looks like to her. If it all seems too small compared to the skies she once imagined flying. Compared to a big university in Mississippi and a career and fun. I wonder which of those things she’s already missing, based on the devastation crumpling her features. She asked the question, but she already knows the answer as well as I do.
Her father gives it all the same.
“What you want stopped mattering the day you dropped a positive pregnancy test on our kitchen counter.” His mouth is a firm line. Even my mother doesn’t dare argue. “We’ll go back to South Carolina and pack your things. Henry, you better start shopping for houses.”
“They’ll stay here,” Mom says. She studies Kimberly, sympathy softening her features. “If I’m gonna watch the baby, it makes the most sense. Then y’all can put away your money for a nicer house when you’re out of school.” She rises from the table like that’s the end of discussion. I guess, for her, it is. “Now, does anyone want some tea?”
August 23rd, 1997
Pastor Timothy glares down at me from the pulpit, a self-satisfied smile twisting his lips. I shift my feet, Dad’s oxfords dragging on the green carpet at the foot of the stairs. My mom is seated in the front pew, face swollen from the unrelenting tears that have been spilling out of her all morning. The room is sweltering in the late summer heat, like the pastor couldn’t even be bothered to turn the AC on for us. That’s how beneath him this wedding is.
“I hope this sets you straight, boy. I hope you step up and make a good husband of yourself. A good father. Time to start setting a good example. You can’t be thinking about just yourself anymore. Not with a wife and a baby on the way.” His voice is low, meant only for me to hear. “Your daddy would be so disappointed in your actions these past few months. Now’s your chance to make it right.”
I don’t give him the satisfaction of meeting his dark stare. Instead I try to catch Lucy’s attention. She’s sitting at the piano with her fingers poised over the keys, talking to Waylon in hushed tones. His arms are crossed over a plaid button-down. His dark hair is slicked back. An ironed pair of khaki slacks complete the look. He certainly plays the part of the pastor’s pet well, which I’m sure is how he managed to get that engagement ring on Lucy’s finger. The sight of it when we walked into the church nearly brought me to my knees.
Why? I want to ask her. Why him? The girl who played a masterpiece at my side, who slipped me notes and snuck out of her house and held me as I collapsed under the weight of my grief… How could she agree to marry Waylon? Anyone else I could’ve accepted. But not him. The territorial way he stands guard over her. His treatment of any girl he could get his hands on when he was in school. The cool, calculated mask he wears when he’s tailing the pastor, mimicking his every move.
None of it settles well in my stomach. Blame it on jealousy, I don’t care. I know he’s not good enough for her, because I’m not either, and he’s a hell of a lot worse than me.
“Eyes on your bride, son. She’s coming your way.”
The music has started. A choppy wedding march fills the cavernous sanctuary. My brows furrow. I know for a fact Lucy can play better than this. Does it hurt her to be here? Does she feel the ache in her hands, the sickness in her stomach, the way that I do? My head swims, the room spinning, as I tear my gaze from her face, which is half-shrouded by the piano’s cover. I find Kimberly already halfway up the aisle, accompanied by both of her parents. Resignation tugs the corners of her mouth down. Our eyes meet, and a shiver runs the length of my spine.
We’re about to promise a forever to each other that neither of us had a say in. One day I will grow to love her, I’m sure. A lifetime together will do that at least. But will my heart ever be so enraptured with her that her presence feels like a warm fire burns beneath the surface of my skin? Will the mere thought of her ever pull music from my fingertips? Enough to fill an entire church with its sound.
My hands flex. The scent of vanilla candles burning on the pulpit fills my nose, clogging my throat. Or maybe it’s the tears that I suddenly can’t choke back. They fall freely, and as I turn to search for my handkerchief, it’s then that I finally catch Lucy’s gaze. Her chest heaves. Her arms tremble with every note. And her eyes, the blue-gray of a summer sky, are filled with tears.
“Who gives this woman to be married?” Pastor Timothy’s voice reverberates in his throat, thick with the weight of his own self-importance.
“I do.” Greg unravels Kimberly’s arm from his and cradles her hand reverently as he places it in mine. For the first time I see the dam of control break in his eyes. He’s scared, possibly devastated, to be giving his daughter away. It’s there in the twist of his quivering lips. In the pool of unshed tears gathered over his hazel eyes, the same shade as Kimberly’s. “You take good care of her, son.”
I nod. “Yes, sir.”
The pastor launches a monologue on the sanctity of marriage. On the ways it binds two souls together so that they become one life in the eyes of God. It reminds me of my parents. When Dad left, it broke my heart in two. But Mom? She buried half of her soul that day. I study Kimberly. The tight pinch of her lips, so similar to her mother’s. Her wide, determined gaze. The simple lace gown she chose hangs like a sheath over her body. The swell of her stomach is beginning to show, and I find myself smiling despite the fear that quickens my gut.
I can’t yet imagine Kimberly as the other half of my soul, but already I feel that way for our child. And that is more than enough.
“Do you, Kimberly Anderson, take this man, Henry Ridgefield, to be your lawfully wedded husband? To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, for as long as you both shall live?”
Kimberly’s lips part, but it’s not her words I hear. It’s Lucy’s soft inhale, audible now that the music has faded out, that captures my attention. I glance her way, noting the subtle shake of her head at the same time Waylon does. His stare locks on me and hardens in a warning.
“Henry?” Kimberly whispers.
My gaze jolts to hers. I’ve missed her answering the pastor, I realize. Missed that it’s my turn to speak, based on everyone’s expectant gazes, in the time I’ve spent watching Lucy.
A single tear falls from the corner of Kimberly’s eye. “Could you at least try to pretend like I’m the one you wish was standing here right now?”
All warmth drains from my face, replaced by a fresh wave of shame. “I am.” I wince. “No, that’s not what I mean. I’m sorry, I—” I close my eyes and draw a deep breath, gathering myself. When I open them again, everyone in the room is waiting for me to answer a different question than the one she levied. A more important one, in my opinion. Because wishes mean nothing at the end of the day. They’re the stuff of fairy tales. Of fictional worlds where fathers don’t die young and soulmates always end up together .
But vows? Those matter. They make up the foundation of a life. First my parents’, and now ours.
I hold her gaze and try to convey the weight of my words as best I can. “I do.”
Her eyes drift closed at my words. She stands there, unmoving, as Pastor Timothy declares us married before God and everyone in this room. She’s still motionless as I take her in my arms and kiss her for the first time since that night.
When her eyes finally flutter open, a wall has come up behind them. One made of steel, same as her rigid spine. I’m afraid I’ll spend my whole life searching for a way around it.