One Summer Night Read online

  ‘Yep. I am. How could I fall asleep on a night like this?’

  Lauren instantly regretted her little joke. Carefully, she wriggled herself out from under Alyssa, and Tim took her place.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered, after she had walked over to her brother. ‘It’s just that you’re being very quiet.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Sis. I’m here – and wide awake. I’m listening to you all and am sorry that I missed out on so much.’

  Lauren sat down beside him and leaned against his shoulder.

  ‘Don’t be silly! You had to do it. Look at you now – you’re a super star!’

  Ben laughed. ‘As if! I’m not half as strong as you are, and you know it.’

  ‘I am not, otherwise you would never have suggested beating Tim up for me. If I were that strong, I could have done the job myself,’ Lauren joked, offering Ben a sip from her wine glass.

  Ben smiled and turned to Tim.

  ‘Boy was I pissed at you, Brother-in-law! You were lucky that I didn’t get to lay my hands on you,’ he called out. ‘I didn’t know you then. You were just the guy who broke my sister’s heart.’

  In Maine, In Shock

  The bluish-gray floor tiles seemed to dissolve beneath Lauren’s feet and draw ever closer as if they were waves. Bile rose in her throat, and she felt herself retch.

  ‘Holy shit!’ Lauren panted, weakly supporting herself against the bathroom sink, and closing her eyes. Leaning her forehead against the cold ceramic, she took deep breaths, but it didn’t help. Someone had pulled the plug on her brain. She found it impossible to think straight.

  To make matters worse, her roommate Vicky was again pounding against the locked bathroom door.

  ‘Lauren? Open up! I have to get to class! And so do you, by the way!’

  Three more blows against the door increased the panic that was slowly washing over Lauren.

  ‘Open up, goddammit! What the heck are you doing in there? I need my antiperspirant!’

  Lauren knew she should say something. But what, though? She spat out the bitter reflux rising up in her throat, and turned on the tap.

  ‘Lauren!’

  The rush of water almost drowned out the noise of Vicky on the other side of the door, and Lauren held her hands under the gushing water. Cold to the point of pain, she let it run over her wrists. Without a detour through their electric heater, the water traveled through the pipes almost in the form of ice cubes. Last night had seen the first freezing temperatures of the season, and without the heating on the student dorms turned into a cold storage facility.

  ‘Fine! Don’t open the door then! Bitch!’ Lauren could hear the door of their shared room slam shut, and Vicky’s irate footsteps fading away along the hallway. Lauren breathed out, relieved – she hadn’t realised that she’d been holding her breath all this time. An icy claw was wrapped around her chest threatening to crush her to death.

  Slowly she opened her eyes, following the water drawing circles and burbling down the drain.

  ‘Shit!’ she repeated, and sank back down on the toilet seat. She wiped her wet fingers on the T-shirt she was wearing as a pajama top, and then ran her hands over her goose-pimpled skin. It took almost superhuman strength to turn her eyes back to the pale-blue test strip that was lying on the edge of the bathtub.

  This had to be a mistake! A huge mistake.

  Positive. The result of the pregnancy test was positive. But there was nothing positive about this experience! Tests could be wrong. Happened all the time, Lauren told herself, and yet she knew she was deceiving herself. She had skipped her last period. Her breasts were painful, and she felt sick every morning. For several weeks she had tried to ignore it. Blamed it on the stress of the new academic year. And still, subconsciously, it had been on her mind every single day. Now she would have to accept that her worst suspicions were right.

  ‘Holy mother of crap!’ She snatched the test strip from the edge of the tub and hurled it in the direction of the trashcan, which already held another test trip with the same positive result.

  One test could be wrong – but not two!

  Her legs shaking, she got up and looked in the mirror. The face staring back at her was truly pitiful. Her red hair was falling, tangled, into her eyes, and her skin was ashen, her lips lifeless. She raised her hand and left a wet palm print on the mirror. The dark shadows under her eyes became blurred.

  ‘You stupid, stupid girl!’ she scolded herself. ‘So what now? Was it worth it?’ She couldn’t stand the reproachful look staring back at her in the mirror accusingly, and she slumped back down on the toilet seat cover. She was cold. Getting dressed might help, but she wasn’t strong enough for that. It was hard enough to suck enough oxygen into her lungs. She felt dizzy again, and stuck her head between her knees, just in case.

  What was she to do now? What would her parents say?

  Fearfully, she placed a hand on her stomach and spread her fingers, as if protecting what was growing inside. The belly looked as it always did: not flat exactly, but there were no sign of a pregnancy. Of course not. It was way too early for that, but she had half-expected some kind of visible change. Could something as life-altering as that happen so quietly and so secretly? She put her hands over her full, aching breasts. These babies had changed. Was this it? Was this the proof she needed on top of the two positive tests?

  A child! A baby . . . What a crazy idea!

  Shit, she was having Tim Parker’s baby – the man who had shown no interest in her whatsoever since those few nights of passion. After their goodbye in the fall she had neither seen him nor talked to him. It was over. History. A brief chapter, a summer fling. That was how he’d seen it. And now that the first frost had arrived, the result of that meaningless fling was growing inside of her.

  What would he say?

  Lauren spent a full hour shocked and paralyzed. The faucet was dripping water, and her little toe was already blue from her being so cold, but she found no answer to her question. What might he say? And . . . how should she tell him?

  ‘Hi, Tim, do you remember how you used to stick your penis into my vagina? And did you know that condoms don’t actually offer one hundred per cent protection from pregnancy?’

  Maybe not.

  Lauren massaged her scalp with her fingertips, and got up. What Tim would or wouldn’t say was not the most pressing issue right now.

  With her legs heavy as if carrying lead weights, Lauren dragged herself over the heap of dirty laundry piling up in front of her bed, and fished an open bar of milk chocolate from the nightstand drawer. Then she crawled into bed, gloomily, pulled the comforter over herself and up to the tip of her nose, and took a bite of the chocolate. She barely noticed the snow falling outside her window. The murmuring of the heating system mingled with the roaring pain in her head. The chocolate in her mouth had no taste and did not make her feel better. Still, she ate the whole bar. It didn’t matter now – soon she’d be round and fat anyway, waddling around with her big pregnant belly.

  Exhausted, Lauren closed her eyes. Today was a lost day. She would not be able to come to any sensible conclusions and felt incapable of talking her problems through with anyone. Besides, she’d still be pregnant tomorrow. There was no rush today.

  A tear ran down her cheek and onto her pillow.

  Lauren knew why she was crying. Not because she was pregnant. Not because a baby would mess with all of her non-existent plans. And not even because Tim was the father.

  She cried because she was in love. In love with a guy named Tim who by now would have forgotten all about her. And because it was already hard enough trying to forget about him. It had hurt, a lot, but Lauren had resolutely removed this thorn in her side – only to now come to realize that the thorn had left a far deeper wound than expected.

  It wouldn’t be easy to forget about Tim Parker if she had his child.

  One tear turned into many, and the big knot in her stomach would not go away.

  Why couldn
’t there be someone around to make her a cup of tea? Why was she alone? Didn’t it take two to create a child? And why the hell had Tim not fallen in love with her? Was there something wrong with her? Why had he found it so easy to turn away?

  She rubbed her feet together as they were numb from the cold, and let out a sigh of relief when they at least returned to life with a tingle. Accompanied by an odd feeling of foreignness inside her own body, she finally fell into an uneasy sleep.

  Four days, three more tests, and a visit to the doctor’s, and there was no more doubt.

  She was pregnant.

  Her professor’s monotonous lecture echoed from the high walls of the lecture hall and created a soft, acoustic background to Lauren’s vaguely drifting thoughts. She had no idea what he was droning on about, even when she looked up and stared at the photo of the four presidents at Mount Rushmore. Apparently something about sculpting or stonemasonry.

  Lauren pulled the end of her pencil out of her mouth, scrunching up her nose when she noticed the impressions her teeth had left on the soft wood. She stared at her watch, breathing out and feeling irritated. Another hour.

  The other students were sitting in their seats, equally unenthusiastic, and all the oxygen seemed to have drained from the room ages ago.

  Why was she even doing this to herself?

  She was pregnant after all! Whatever was this supposed to mean for her future.

  While the professor up front inadvertently picked one of the presidents’ noses with his pointer stick, Lauren went through the different possible scenarios in her mind.

  She most liked the idea of being a chilled, relaxed mom, raising the child by herself and living off her art by the Maine coast. Except, this was quite a stretch, because even though she was studying art she didn’t have much talent for it. Not for painting or sculpture, anyway. With her degree she’d be allowed to teach art classes, however . . . which didn’t sound half as glamorous in her imagination as being a famous artist.

  And back between her teeth the pencil went. She would stand there before a horde of students, just as bored as her professor. And then she pictured herself throwing all of her career plans overboard, devoting her time to her child and only her child. Not such a bad idea either but, at the bottom of her heart, playing such a passive role did not fit with her idea of living an independent life.

  The only option she was able to rule out right away was terminating her pregnancy. Why? Lauren didn’t have a good enough answer for herself, but it was simply out of the question. Life was precious. Always. Every life. And with that, the most important decision had already been made – no matter what the rest would look like.

  Deep in thought she started drawing circles in her notebook, filling them in with various shades of crosshatch patterns. She felt nauseous. Was that a side effect of her pregnancy, or the result of her decision-making?

  She tied her hair up into a loose bun, and noticed how her hands were shaking. Shit, why did everything have to be so complicated?

  For a while longer, she tried to follow her professor’s lecture. Then she got up, grabbed her papers, carelessly stuffed them all into her bag, and left the lecture hall.

  When the heavy door closed behind her with a thud and her footsteps echoed through the empty hallway, she started feeling better. She closed the top few buttons on her winter coat and stepped outside into the drifting snow. The snowflakes floated down, thick as cotton wads. The entire campus descended into a soft white blanket of glittering snow crystals. Snow crunched beneath Lauren’s feet, and she made it a point to only step where the snow cover was virgin and untouched.

  Even though more than a week remained until Christmas break, Lauren decided to return to Vermont right away. She had a few things to clear up. The presidents at Mount Rushmore would understand.

  Her breath painted little clouds into the cold air, and she felt strangely relieved considering the fact that something was weighing so heavily on her mind. When she reached her car, snowflakes were sitting on her hair, and her cheeks were flushed. The freckles on her nose were glowing. She sat down behind the wheel, started the card and turned into the deserted campus road. The wheels found almost no grip on the slippery snow cover, but her dorm wasn’t far.

  Getting there didn’t even take the time she needed to come up with what she would say to her parents and, most importantly, to Tim. She was afraid of the conversations but at the same time felt hope rise up inside of her, hope that Tim would maybe be happy.

  ‘Highly unlikely!’ she reminded herself.

  Still, she could not quite shake that hopeful feeling.

  * * *

  ‘I was really overwhelmed by that decision back then,’ Lauren confessed. She noticed how Mia pricked her ears, and waved her oldest daughter over to join her and Ben on the other side of the bonfire. Mia looked tired. There were dark rings under her eyes, and she kept yawning. ‘I was overwhelmed because I was scared of being a mom,’ Lauren explained to her daughter and hugged her tight. ‘Scared that maybe I wouldn’t do as good a job as my own mom.’

  Celeste clicked her tongue, visibly touched by the unexpected compliment.

  ‘But you were doing a great job,’ Celeste returned the compliment.

  ‘Thanks, Mom. I’m not so sure about that. I’ve been thinking about that time, especially these last few months. Back then, all I felt was scared at the idea of having a child. Today, all I feel is grateful.’

  Lauren pressed a kiss against Mia’s dyed black hair.

  ‘Grateful for every moment that I was allowed to be a mom.’ Lovingly, she smiled at Mia, hoping her two daughters would forgive her one day. She felt a deep wistfulness because it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

  A Lonely Decision

  With a peal of thunder, the sheet of snow and ice broke off and slid down the roof of the lake house, at long last allowing light to filter in through the skylight. It was warm and cozy inside, thanks to the roaring fire in the wood-burning stove, and steam rose from the coffee mugs on the table.

  ‘Lorelei, hand me the wrench, will ya?’ Chris said, wiping his forehead with dirty fingers. He was fully focused on the third of the four chairs that Lauren had bought for her new dining table. He was slowly getting the hang of it, and construction was going without a hitch.

  ‘Could you please explain to me one more time why I have to be the one doing this?’ he asked when Lauren handed him the requested tool.

  ‘You’re the only one with any technical skill whatsoever.’

  Chris tightened a screw, brushed his long hair from his face and sat down, the wrong way round, on the finished chair.

  ‘Seriously, Lorelei! I’m a mechanic – not a carpenter or an interior designer or whoever else normally does this kind of thing.’

  She laughed, handing him a coffee mug. And noticed the brand-new tattoo on the back of his hand.

  ‘At least you know what these tools are called, Chris. Which makes you better suited for this job than anyone else I know.’

  ‘Huh. Just goes to show what a professional baseball player with his million-dollar bank account is really worth!’ He was hinting at Ben who, the day before, had given up on the project as he didn’t have the correct size wrench. Ben had spent the Christmas holidays at home, and everyone was so happy about his visit that this had unexpectedly smoothed over the family crisis which arose when Lauren broke the baby news. She shook her head to chase away the memory.

  Chris took a sip from his coffee, staring smugly at the finished chairs that were placed around the table.

  ‘Besides, you told me you were my hero and that you would always be there for me. No complaining now,’ Lauren returned to the topic at hand.

  Chris smirked.

  ‘So maybe you want to at least tell me why I’m doing this? Ben was being very mysterious and all. He only said that you dropped out of art school . . .’

  She shrugged her shoulders. That, at least, was the one point she and her parents w
ere able to agree on. She would help out at the law firm, doing office work, until the baby arrived. But after that, who knew.

  ‘So I guess you can’t bear being away from me for so long, am I right?’

  Chris couldn’t help but flirt. That was the way he was, and Lauren didn’t mind. It took the seriousness out of every conversation, and she knew exactly how he meant it. They were like brother and sister and enjoyed teasing each other. But today even Chris couldn’t help her forget what was actually going on.

  ‘I wish I could say it’s because of you, Chris, but . . .’

  She folded her hands in her lap, awkwardly pressing her lips together.

  ‘What is it? Did something happen?’ She could tell from his eyes that he was worried.

  Lauren attempted a smile.

  ‘I . . . I’m pregnant. That’s why I’m coming back.’

  Chris gasped for air, and his eyes wandered down to her belly which, at the end of the first trimester, still looked quite inconspicuous.

  Her friend looked so shocked that Lauren almost laughed out loud. Underneath his tattoos his skin had turned the same color as the snow that was blowing against the window outside.

  ‘Don’t worry, lover, it’s not yours,’ she explained, feeling amused.

  ‘Ha-ha, very funny, Lorelei! As if you’d ever have me touch you.’

  ‘Don’t be sad, Chris – you know I’ve always loved you, but you’re just too handsome for me,’ she teased, and Chris’s skin finally returned to its normal healthy color.

  ‘Is it Tim’s?’ he asked, gently. She nodded.

  ‘What did he say?’

  Lauren took a deep breath. She was holding onto her warm coffee cup so as to not lose her cool.

  ‘Lauren – what did he say?’ Chris repeated when he didn’t hear her reply.

  ‘He . . .’

  ‘He’s sticking by you, right? He’s going to support you and the baby, isn’t he?’ Lauren reached for his hand, because Chris seemed upset.

  ‘He doesn’t know, all right?!’ she said quickly, looking him in the eye. ‘Nobody knows. Only me, Ben and my parents.’