The Storm #2
That’s what I thought I heard on my window at first, the rain, but somewhere in my fitful dozing, I realized there was a pattern to it, a rhythm, and I sat up, my heart pounding in the darkness.
It was Landon, standing outside in the rain, his fist still raised to the glass.
He looked young, I remember that, younger than usual, the rain plastering his dark hair to his face, his grin wide as he took in my shocked expression.
The bright green numbers on my clock radio said it was just after midnight, and I padded quietly out of my room, down the hall, through the lobby of the inn. We hadn’t even boarded up the windows, and the porch light illuminated the steady rain and, in the distance, the pounding surf.
Just as I stepped outside, Landon came around the corner of the inn, still wearing a tuxedo, one that probably cost more than all the clothes in my closet—maybe all the clothes in St. Medard’s Bay put together—only now it was soaking wet, ruined.
Even then, that was wildly romantic to me, him turning up like a groom caring more about seeing me than about his fancy dinner, his expensive suit.
Landon stepped onto the porch, and without thinking, I reached out both my hands. He took them, his skin cold, and he said something. “I’ve missed you, too.”
That’s what I’ve always told myself he said, but truthfully, I was so surprised to see him, so in love and confused and relieved, that I might have imagined it.
I do know what I said in response.
“Landon, I’m pregnant.”
I had to raise my voice to be heard over the rain and the wind and the sea, and the words felt too loud, too abrupt, and I watched as his grin—that beautiful, beautiful grin—slowly faded from his face.
“What?” he asked, the word flat, and before I could repeat myself, he turned away, one hand on the back of his head.
For a long moment, we both stood there, frozen in this weird tableau with the rain streaming off the porch roof and thunder rumbling somewhere far out over the ocean.
The air felt thick, mist and salt seeming to settle on my skin, but when Landon turned back around, he was smiling again.
This smile wasn’t right, though. It was a little too tight, a little too … shiny, I remember thinking. “Hey,” he said, and then he stepped forward, one hand on my cheek.
“This is going to be fine,” he said, and it was the first time he’d ever said something I didn’t believe.
“We’re going to be fine,” he went on, and then his other hand came to rest on my stomach, not unlike how my own had done earlier that afternoon.
But I didn’t like the way it felt there. It was too heavy, too firm, and I stepped back, but he followed, keeping his palm just below the waistline of my nightgown.
“This kid is going to be so loved, Ellie,” Landon said. “And that’s the most important thing, right?”
I nodded even as I heard myself say, “I haven’t decided what to do yet, but I wanted you to know. You—you deserved to know, I thought.”
The wind was a little stronger now, blowing my hair back, bringing the scent of rain and salt and Landon’s cologne.
“There’s nothing to decide,” Landon replied, and those words felt as heavy as his hand on my stomach. “This baby is a Fitzroy, Ellie. It has a destiny, just like its dad.”
She, I thought again. Her.
But to Landon, I said, “But it can’t be a Fitzroy, Landon. You’re married.”
His hand finally dropped from my body, and he stood up straighter. “I’m a Fitzroy, and any child of mine is going to be one. We can … we can make this work.”
He turned away again, pacing, that hand going to the back of his head again, his fingers tightening in his hair. “I’ll find a place, a really nice place where you can stay. You’ll tell your parents you … you got accepted to some kind of program, some study abroad thing, all expenses paid.”
I felt like he had suddenly started speaking in another language, and I could only stare at him as he went on. “You’ll have the baby, and I can adopt it. Alison and I will.”
A cold that had nothing to do with the rain began to seep through me. “No,” I said.
He didn’t hear me, or maybe he just ignored me because his eyes were brighter as he stopped pacing to stand in front of me.
“No, no, this will work.” Landon laughed then, a high, almost disbelieving sound, like he was shocked at his own brilliance.
“We’ll raise it, we’ll wait for all this political shit to get settled—Dad’s election, mine—mayor, senator next, maybe, who knows, and then—then!
—it’ll finally be safe to divorce Alison, and we—” He took both my hands in his again, but now his skin just felt clammy and dead to me.
“We can get married. We can be a family.”
He squeezed my hands, and I looked into his smiling face and had a sudden memory of Adam when he was about seven and I was five.
Christmas morning. He came down early, way before anyone else woke up, and when the rest of us found him, he’d opened every present under the tree. His, mine, even the ones Mama and Daddy had gotten for each other.
“These are mine!” he had shouted, so excited he was practically vibrating.
He was holding as much as he could, a bizarre assortment of G.
I. Joes and Barbies and slippers and a box of Jean Naté and a tie and God knows what else, things he didn’t want, things for girls or grown-ups.
But it didn’t matter because he had decided that they were his.
That’s what Landon reminded me of standing there on the porch that night, his dark eyes bright as stars. A little boy clutching as much as he could to his chest, whether he wanted it all or not.
I pictured me, Lo, Alison, and now this child inside of me all gathered up in his arms as he crowed, “These are mine!”
Shaking my head, I backed away. “No, Landon,” I said.
Other words were there, waiting to spill out.
How I couldn’t stay hidden from my own family for nine months.
How Alison might have something to say about all this.
How the idea of waiting to be able to raise my own child filled me with a horror I could barely articulate, but in the end, I let those two words—No, Landon—stand alone, because they were the only ones I should have needed.
And like Adam when Mama and Daddy had very firmly told him all those things were not his, and he was in fact in big trouble, Landon’s face crumpled—first in confusion, and then in anger.
Unlike Adam, Landon covered it quickly, that shiny, fake smile sliding back into place. “Okay,” he said, reaching for me again.
I stepped back, and that anger flashed, harder to conceal this time.
“It’s a lot,” he said. “I know that. But Ellie, what other choice do we have?”
A shocked sort of sound burst out of me. “So many!” I cried. “I could—I could go to Mobile, to the clinic there, or I c-could marry Tim, or—”
“Unacceptable,” Landon said. For the first time, I saw the man others must have seen, the scion, the governor’s son. The man who always got his way. “I told you, Ellie, that baby is a Fitzroy, and he’ll be raised like one.”
“She!” I burst out, tears stinging my eyes, burning my throat, and then there was a flurry of movement from the corner of my eye, and suddenly Lo was there, shoving Landon so hard he stumbled back, his arm hitting my hip.
“Baby?” she shrieked. “Baby?”
“Lo,” Landon said, but she was all motion, all swinging fists and wet blond hair and fury like nothing I’d ever seen.
“Son of a bitch!” she screamed, and her nails went for his eyes.
“Stop!” I remember crying out, but it was chaos, and the rain was coming down harder now, the waves crashing seemed louder, and one of the smaller potted plants on the porch railing crashed over the side.
Landon caught her hands before she could gouge out his eyes—and she would have, I had no doubt—and shoved her back, her Keds sliding across the wet floor.
“Goddammit, Lo, we don’t need this shit right now,” Landon said, still holding her as she tried to kick him.
“Lo, please,” I said, and she turned to me then, her green eyes blazing.
But there wasn’t any anger there, or at least not for me. Instead, there were tears mixing with the rain, and she shook her head. “Why you?” she shouted.
I’ve thought about those plaintive words a million times. Did she mean why had Landon chosen me when he had her? Or why was I the one having his baby and not her?
I don’t know the answer, and I guess I never will.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, and now tears were spilling down my own face, hot against the cool rain. “I … none of this … if I…”
Words burbled out, tripping over one another because what could I say? What would make any of this okay? If only I’d told her before, if only she knew that Landon had been mine first, if not in body, then in soul …
“Ellen and I are having a baby, Lo,” Landon said, “and I need you to be mature about that.”
She swung back to him.
“Mature?” Lo laughed, the sound high and jagged. “If you want ‘mature’ women, Landon, maybe don’t fuck nineteen-year-olds.”
And with that, she spit in his face.
The anger Landon had tried so hard to hide from me came flaring back now as he shoved her roughly away again, wiping at his cheek.
He looked back and forth between us, pissed off, yes, but also …
bewildered. Like he just couldn’t believe this was happening to him, Landon Fitzroy.
Whatever Landon thought his destiny was, it wasn’t this, two women, one raging, the other suddenly not as biddable as he’d thought.
“Go home, Landon,” I said, suddenly exhausted, wanting nothing more than to curl up in my bed and let the storm come, let it tear down everything if it wanted to.
“I will, but you’re coming with me,” he said, and I shook my head.
“I said no, and I meant it. Whatever I decide to do, I’ll let you know, but I’m not hiding away and then handing my baby over to another woman.”
Lo made a disgusted sound. “Was that your big plan? Stick her in a convent like it’s 1890 or something and then give her baby to your frigid-ass wife?”