SEVEN
Laura worked her plan. She made an OB-GYN appointment the next day and saw the doctor the day after that. The kind and empathetic woman physician told her the same thing that the stick had.
That left her to relay the news to the next person who needed to hear it.
Sure enough, Grant texted her that same evening.
Hey babe, he wrote, thought id let u have the night off. If u were here ud get no nights off. And he entered a smiley. Feeling better?
As she did the last time he texted, Laura sat up on her bed staring at his words on the phone. Her heart felt almost as if it were rattling inside her rib cage. Her breath turned heavy and hot, and not in the way that it had when he was here. Her mouth turned dry. Facing her now was one of the most daunting moments of truth in her life; no, the most daunting moment of truth in her entire life. Everything that happened to her now would turn on the conversation she now needed to have. Everything that happened to her—and to the innocent third party now involved. Laura licked her lips. She poised her finger over the phone. Her hand trembled. She felt as though she were about to experience morning sickness in the early evening. Finally, she touched the phone to tap out an answer.
Grant, we need to talk. Not text, talk. I’m going to call you.
She fell back onto her pillow against the headboard and watched the screen, her heart still galloping like a horse that had jumped the fence of the corral. She watched and waited…
And his answer came back: Everything OK?
Yes, she lied. I just need to talk to you. Are you home?
Yeah im home. My own little place, I just wanted to tell u. Moved out of my sister’s. Got a nice big warm bed. Wish u were in it with me. And he entered another smiley.
Laura rolled her eyes and looked up at the ceiling, trying to calm herself but not having much luck. Grant and his sweet, dirty mind; he had to make everything about sex. Of course, when you look like that and you’re that incredible in bed, you can make everything about sex. But that was not making it any easier for her.
Returning her attention to the phone, Laura tapped out, Stay right there. I’m going to call in a minute.
OK, he tapped back.
Laura spent the next minute trying desperately to calm her nerves, slow down her heart, make her breathing more normal, and stop her stomach from dancing. She was half-successful. She resigned herself to no more stalling. Procrastination was not her style, and she could not afford it, especially now. She went to her contacts on the phone and hit his number. Immediately, she heard his voice—his warm, sexy voice.
“Hey, Laura,” he said. “Tired of texting. Wanna talk sexy for real?”
With a gulp, she replied, “Grant, we have to talk.”
“Sounds serious,” he said. “I don’t like to think of what it sounds like. You didn’t go back to Scarlet and Crimson, did you? Tell me you didn’t pick up somebody else…”
“No, Grant, it’s nothing like that,” she said. “This is…something else. Something important. Really important.”
“You’re not sick, are you? I mean, not really sick, more serious than just a bad stomach…”
“It’s not that, either, Grant,” Laura replied. “There’s just something we need to talk about. I just want you to listen to me.”
“Okay,” he replied. “What is it?”
And Laura told him. She actually put those words into the air, the words she had not spoken with anyone except the OB-GYN. She actually said it, out loud, to the other person concerned.
From Grant’s end of the call came the longest, most excruciating pause of silence that Laura had ever experienced in her life. She was on the brink of asking if he’d heard her—and then the silence ended.
The explosive reaction that came over the phone felt as if it would knock her through the headboard and the wall behind it. His voice came booming at her, not angry, but shocked--more shocked by far than Laura herself had felt when she had looked at the stick. More than shocked, he sounded horrified—actually filled with horror, dread, and even panic at the news. Laura winced at the sound of him carrying on, the tidal wave of curses and profanities that he sent roaring her way. She heard heavy footfalls and crashes and imagined him stomping back and forth, up and down whatever apartment he had just moved into, knocking things over, throwing things—and swearing at the top of his lungs. She pursed her lips and gulped, her skin turning pale and clammy. When he finally quieted down a bit, Laura feebly asked, “Grant…are you all right?”
“No, goddamnit, I’m not all right! Goddamnit, if there’s one thing I am not right now, it’s all right! Damn it to hell, Laura, what did we do? What the hell did we do?”
A deathly calm suddenly came over Laura. She did not know where the feeling came from or how she could even feel that way at this point, but there it was, an eerie, inhuman calm. She measured the tone of his voice and considered his choice of words, and on some level was grateful that he had chosen to use the pronoun we. At least he seemed to understand it was something on both of them.
“You know what we did, Grant,” she said.
“Yeah, goddamnit, I know what we did!” he cried. “But how…how could we do that? How the hell could it turn out like this? Goddamnit, Laura, we were just supposed to be having fun. That was all we were supposed to be doing, just jumping in bed and having fun together for a couple of days! Just two people who liked each other having a good time. Damn hell, I was just screwing you for fun…”
And he trailed off, and his voice dissolved into another long string of profanities. This time, he did not sound angry. He sounded as if he would collapse into tears at any moment. Laura did not understand how or why, but for some reason, Grant seemed vastly more stricken than she was. The strange sound of his voice made it seem as if he were actually grieving. She had never heard such fear, such sorrow, and such despair in a man’s voice in all her life, and it frightened her. Laura’s face was soon wet with tears of her own.
“Grant,” she said, “I know this is a shock. I’m shocked, too…”
He cut her off. “Laura, I’m more than shocked. I’m way the hell past shocked. This wasn't supposed to happen. This was never, ever supposed to happen. Oh, Laura, damn it to hell. What did we do? What the hell did we do…?”
Fighting the quivering of her own voice, Laura said, “We didn’t take precautions, that’s all. And listen, I thought I was safe. I thought…I thought I wasn’t ovulating. I thought I’d counted the weeks correctly and it would be all right. And I was off my pills, and we didn’t use any…”
“Yeah, I know what the hell we didn’t use. I just got you in bed and didn’t think and just banged your brains out.” He cursed again, bitterly. “This has never happened to me. Goddamnit, I’ve been banging women since I was fifteen, and this has never happened. Should have known it’d catch up to me. Goddamnit, Laura…”
“We did this together, Grant,” she said. “We’re both responsible, and now we have to decide what we’re going to do about it.”
“Hell yeah, we’ve gotta decide.” His voice softened now, and into his tone, the sound of despair returned—despair and remorse, again far deeper, far more painful than she had ever heard from any other man. For all that Laura thought Grant was the most lecherous, lascivious, sex-drunken horndog she had ever met, she knew that there were other depths to his character; other, deeper feelings beneath all that rampaging lust. She was hearing something of those feelings now, she knew. She found it strangely reassuring, even with the gravity of their situation.
“Listen, Laura, babe,” he went on, “I’m sorry. I’m really so sorry. You’ve got no idea; you don’t know how sorry I am for this. I got you in bed for a good time, and we had so much fun, and now I went and did this to you. Oh, Laura, I am so sorry. You don’t know, babe, you don’t know how sorry I am for this.”
Laura’s heart broke to hear him speak this way. There was something about the way he sounded—something strange that she could not identify, that sounded like far more than just remorse. He was more than sorry; it was something else, something he was not saying. And it was beginning to frighten her.
“Grant,” she replied, unable to stifle the trembling of her voice completely, “I know you didn’t mean it. Neither of us meant it. But we did it; it’s done. It’s happening.”
“Laura,” he said, “listen. I want you to know, I don’t hold you to blame for any of this. Not any of it. The least I should have done was man up and gotten some goddamn rubbers. But I didn’t. If I had, we wouldn’t be in this mess. And listen…you’re not obliged to me, you hear? You don’t have to make any decisions on my account. You don’t owe me a thing. You can do whatever you want. Even if…”
“Even if what?”
“Even if you don’t want to keep it.”
Laura’s breath froze in her throat. She could not believe what she had just heard, what he had just implied. She tried to respond, but for that moment, she could not find her voice.
Grant spoke up again. “Laura? You there? Did you hear me?”
She choked out, “I-I…I hear you, Grant. Did you just say it was all right if I…didn’t go through with it? Didn’t have it?”
“What I mean is, I understand if you don’t want to have it.”
Laura felt as if her skin were turning to ice. She could just imagine the way her face must have looked upon hearing this. Even her tongue felt bitter cold. “Does…does that mean…you don’t want it? Does that mean you…don’t want to be its father?”
“All I’m saying, Laura, is that I put you in this situation, and you don’t have to live with it. You shouldn’t if you don’t want to. If this isn’t something you want…”
“But is it something you want?” Her tone turned more urgent now, gravely urgent.
“I’m saying this isn’t something either of us planned for, and it’s something neither of us is ready for. And believe me, there’s…there’s…”
Now she felt both anxious and frightened again. “There’s what? Tell me, what is it? What are you not saying, Grant?”
There was another pause, an awful, leaden pause on the other end.
Laura almost shouted, “Grant, what is it? Just tell me!”
He replied, “Can you come and meet me here? Can you come up to Talon Valley and see me? There’s some stuff we have to talk about, and we need to do it face to face, not on the phone.”
Something began to dawn on Laura, something she had not considered, and something she now did not want to think about, but she had no choice. Shutting her eyes as if to shut out the idea of it, she asked, “Grant…are you married? Is that it? Are you married, or is there another woman? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“No, Laura,” he replied. “I’m single. No wife, no girlfriend. I’m single, and I’ve slept and screwed around my whole life, including with you. It’s not that. It’s just…there’s something about me that we need to talk about, and I don’t want to do it on the phone.”
At last, Laura admitted, “Grant, you’re scaring me.”
“I know,” he said. “And I’m sorry. More sorry than you know. I never meant for this to happen. But there’s just some stuff we’ve got to talk about now, and it’s not a phone conversation. It’s not. I want you to come up here. If you can’t come here, I’ve gotta go back there. We need to sit down and talk. Seriously talk. Babe, can you just trust me about that? Please, can you just trust me and believe me about that? Please?”
Laura half-whispered, “All right, Grant. All right, yes. I can come and see you. I can come up this weekend. I’ll leave first thing Saturday morning. Just give me your address.”
“Okay, good,” he said. And Laura reached into her nightstand and pulled out a pad and pen onto which she wrote the information he gave her that she would later transcribe into her iPad.
“I’ve got it,” said Laura. “I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
“Okay,” said Grant. And he repeated in a tone that she could tell was the most sincere thing in the world, “And Laura, really…I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. Please believe me.”
“I do, Grant,” she said. “And…I’ll see you soon.”
“Okay. If you need anything else, call, on the spot. Or text, or whatever. Promise?”
“I promise.”
“All right. I’ll see you. Bye.”
Before she could speak again, he ended the call, leaving Laura alone in silence, bewilderment, anxiety, and fear--a jumble of too many feelings and too many things unknown.
She put down the phone and made herself relax on the bed again. The last thing she needed now was to compound her stress. But now the unknowns nagged at her: the way Grant had sounded when she’d told him, the way he’d sounded when they talked it out—or talked it out to a point. What was it that had come after that point? What was it that he did not say, or could not say, on the phone? And into what new and daunting place would her life spin when he told her?
The rest of the week before her was going to be very, very difficult.
_______________
Kendra Boone was curled up on the sofa with a cup of tea and a book she had been putting off starting, looking forward to an evening of nothing but that, when the sharp and rude sound of banging on her kitchen door jolted her upright on the sofa.
She dropped the book beside her and put down the cup and saucer on the coffee table, and the banging persisted, so loud and so harsh that she felt as if someone were banging not on her kitchen door but on her rib cage. Who could this be? Some medical emergency? No, someone with a medical emergency would have called, wouldn’t they?
The clangor from the kitchen door went on, and she got up, pulling her robe closed and tightening the belt. “All right,” she said into the empty living room, “all right, I’m coming. Hold on…” And she got herself into her slippers and made her way through the living room and into the kitchen. The night light she had left on in there showed her who it was, still battering away at the door frame as if to beat it down.
“Grant?” she said. Now what could possibly be the matter? Her big brother looked absolutely frantic. She had never seen him this way and found it decidedly unnerving. Quickly, she went across the kitchen to the door and let him in. He half-charged, half-fell into Kendra’s house. He steadied himself against the kitchen counter and leaned there, wide-eyed and panting, in a state that made her think he would need emergency treatment even though he did not appear to be hurt.
“Grant, what on Earth is going on? What’s happening?” she asked. “Is there some trouble at your place? Did someone get hurt in the move?”
He shook his head as if trying to shake his senses back into place. “No. No, it’s not that. It’s something else. It’s something…” He staggered from the counter to the kitchen table, whipped out a seat, and fell into it. Kendra pulled up a seat facing him and took him by the hand. To her further dismay and worry, his hand felt clammy and shaky.
“Tell me, Grant,” she said. “Just say it. What’s going on?”
With a lick of his lips and a gulp, Grant managed to say, “It’s not me. It’s…it’s Laura. You know…Laura.”
“Laura who?”
Urgently, squeezing her hand, he answered, “You know—Laura! Laura Winslow! The woman I spent the weekend with before I moved back here! It’s Laura!”
“Okay. So, is she hurt? Did something happen to her?”
“Kendra,” Grant said gravely, “she’s pregnant.”
Kendra pulled back her hand and put it to her mouth, sifting a gasp. “Grant…no!”
“Yeah,” he said. “Laura’s pregnant. I knocked her up, Kendra. I slept with a human and knocked her up. And…” Kendra could see the fear and dread etching every line of her brother’s face now, “…she doesn’t know. I didn’t tell her about me. She doesn’t know.”
Kendra’s voice lowered in a dread that matched his. “She’s pregnant. And she doesn’t know…what she’s pregnant with.”
Grant shook his head. And for a dire moment, brother and sister were both at a loss to say anything further.