One Summer Night Page 7

  ‘What about Rachel?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m seeing her for the first time tomorrow as she’s been away skiing with Mason, remember?’

  ‘You have to tell him!’ Chris wrinkled his forehead and reached for the wrench. ‘He needs to know,’ he insisted, before tackling the last of the chairs. Lauren silently watched him for a while, then sat down next to him on the floor.

  ‘But we’re not together,’ she explained quietly.

  Chris thrust a screw anchor into her hand and reached for the next brace.

  ‘He has a right to know.’

  Angrily, she pressed her lips together.

  ‘He’s seeing someone else! Do you think I can just walk up to him and tell him that he’s about to be a father?’

  Chris stopped and thought on this. Then he looked at her.

  ‘I would want to know.’

  Lauren moaned and shook her head.

  ‘I wanted to tell him!’ she explained, blinking away a few tears that had suddenly welled up.

  ‘I went by his house on Christmas morning,’ she said, and suddenly she was back inside her own story. ‘I drove down his street, and there he was – with his bleach-blonde Barbie doll, Caroline. He was laughing, hugging her and all, and he didn’t seem to miss me all that much. And so I just kept driving.’

  ‘I understand that this must be painful for you, but still: go talk to him!’

  Two weeks later the news had made the rounds, and after her parents’ difficulty adjusting and Rachel’s initial shock everyone had come to accept the fact that Lauren was going to have a baby.

  Lauren blamed the fact that Tim was the only person not to know on a stressful holiday season, the end of the year and the beginning of a new one, and really on pretty much anything that might serve as an excuse.

  She was leafing through a guidebook on pregnancy and baby care, trying to suppress the nagging anxiety inside. But she didn’t really succeed, and so she lowered the book and stared out the window.

  Vermont was completely buried under the snow. To Lauren it seemed as if the world had never been as calm and serene as it had been these past few days. Winter brought peace.

  Meanwhile, she had made herself fully at home at the lake house and enjoyed the changes. There’d be quite a lot left to do in the spring, but not now that it was cold. Lauren wanted a fresh coat of paint on the walls and to have the floors sanded, but for now she would make do with some extra furniture and a new showerhead. Ben and Chris had gone to the hardware store to get some supplies. She wanted to tag along, but today was a particularly bad day for her nausea.

  Even the two cups of ginger-infused herbal tea had done nothing to make her feel better. To get her blood flowing again she decided to take a walk by the lakes, and so she wrapped herself in her winter coat, slipped on her boots and grabbed her hat. Maybe the fresh air would do her good.

  Lauren had the sneaky suspicion that her nausea might also be related to the fact that she’d been putting off that conversation with Tim for so long. She would need to tell him, and soon – preferably before she was showing. But the longer she waited, the harder it became.

  The ice-cold breeze blew snow into her eyes, and she pulled her hat over her face. The lake on the sides of the shore was frozen solid, but in the middle she could see the ripples on the surface of the water. The sun was nothing but a small, pale dot that kept disappearing behind a thick cloud cover. More snow had been announced over the next few days, and Lauren was glad that she didn’t need to be someplace else. Although this wasn’t quite true: her dad had asked her to start her new job at his office next week. Christmas season was over, and lawsuits were flooding in. Family feuds, set off by the holidays, and a whole bunch of accidents caused by the inclement weather offered the law firm a very prosperous start into the new business year. Since Peter’s vacation was coming to an end, Lauren, too, would have to bite the bullet. And she would have so preferred to pull her comforter over her head and keep sleeping the days away. At the firm, she wouldn’t be able to avoid running into Tim. If she wanted to prevent a scene from being played out in public, she would need to take action as soon as possible.

  Lauren’s eyes wandered over the glittering lake all the way to the bare trees on the other shore.

  ‘Lauren!’ Her name being called yanked her from her daydreams, and her pulse was beating hard before she even turned around.

  Tim came stomping toward her. He was wearing only a pair of jeans and a Norwegian wool sweater in a blue pattern. His cheeks were red from the cold, but he didn’t seem to mind.

  Lauren looked around for help, but there was nobody there. Shit! No way out of this.

  With her knees trembling she started walking toward him, her shoulders pulled back but her eyes lowered. She didn’t dare look him in the face.

  ‘Hi, Tim.’

  ‘Hi, Tim? That’s it?’ He stopped right in front of her and grabbed her arm. ‘Seriously?’ he snapped furiously. She could see a vein pulsating in his temple. He must know what was going on. ‘That is all you’ve got to say to me?’

  ‘Let go!’ She wrestled free from him and defensively crossed her arms over her chest. ‘You have no right to be getting so worked up!’

  ‘I have every goddamn right to be getting so worked up! I want to know if it’s true!’

  Lauren avoided his angry gaze and stared at her feet in the snow.

  ‘Lauren! So is it true? Are you pregnant?’

  His voice had softened somewhat, but there was still anger vibrating in it.

  Fear of Tim’s reaction made her blood freeze and shook her to the core. Why was everything so complicated? And why had she waited all this time until he held a gun to her head?

  Using all of her strength she managed to raise her head and looked him square in the eye. She recognized his uncertainty, and it hit her hard. Chris was right. She should have told Tim right from the beginning.

  ‘Would you like to have tea with me? Then we can talk?’

  For a moment she was afraid he’d say no, given how unforgiving he seemed standing before her. Tim glanced over to the house, and then seemed to loosen up a bit, and nodded.

  ‘So there’s a reason for us . . . to talk?’

  Lauren pressed her lips together tightly. She felt sorry for him. She remembered her own shock only too well, after she had first learned of her pregnancy. Tenderness came over her, and she reached for his ice-cold hand.

  ‘You’re freezing.’

  She turned around and led him back to the house. What a strange feeling, holding his hand like that. And it was even stranger once the door had closed behind them. A little self-consciously, Lauren ran her fingers over his hand and, finally, let go of it. It was as if the echo of their nights spent together was still reverberating off the walls. At the same time, a wall of things unspoken stood between them.

  Tim looked at the new furniture. The dining table with the chairs arranged around it; the pictures now hanging from the walls; and the pastel-colored curtains on the windows hiding the snow outside.

  The last remaining embers in the wood-burning stove still radiated heat, and the snow on their shoes started to melt.

  Lauren slipped out of her winter coat and her boots.

  Tim, too, after hesitating for a moment, took off his shoes.

  ‘You don’t need to . . .’ Lauren motioned for him not to worry, but he shook his head.

  ‘It’s all right. You’ve made a lot of effort to make this place look nice. The least I can do is not leave water stains.’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Chris will be stomping through the house later, boots and all.’

  A furrow appeared between Tim’s eyes.

  ‘Chris? The same Chris who kisses your neck?’

  Lauren blushed, because she could hear the accusation in his voice, but she would not explain herself to him. After all, she wasn’t asking him about his Barbie doll.

  ‘The same. Do you want peppermint or fruit infusion?’

&
nbsp; ‘What?’

  She lifted the kettle and motioned toward the stove.

  ‘What kind of tea do you want?’

  Tim shook his head and slumped down into one of the chairs, exhausted. Strands of hair were hanging in his face, and he carelessly brushed them aside.

  ‘Forget about the tea, Lauren. I’m not here to . . . I want to know what’s really going on. In town, they are saying you’re having a baby, and now all I want to know is if . . .’

  ‘If it’s yours?’ she finished the sentence for him, and sat down across from him. She rested her hands on her belly – the same spot he was staring at.

  ‘Yeah.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I think it’s a fair question. So?’

  ‘You’re right. I . . . I have been meaning to tell you, but . . . I didn’t know how.’

  ‘It’s true, then? Are you sure? And it’s mine?’

  She tilted her head to the side and gave a bitter laugh.

  ‘Yes, Tim. It is yours, and yes, I’m sure. Because strictly speaking, there are no other possibilities.’

  He shook his head incredulously.

  ‘So you haven’t been with anyone else?’ he pressed, and Lauren realized that he was clutching at straws. Nevertheless, his question offended her.

  ‘No. But thanks for thinking of me as a slut. Well then, if you have no further questions . . .’

  She was about to get up, but Tim reached for her hand.

  ‘Wait. That . . . was unfair of me. Sorry!’ His shoulders slumped forward, and he looked pretty beat. ‘It’s just that . . . We were being careful . . . This is all very unexpected.’

  ‘I know. But I’m not asking you to do anything, you know. I . . . have decided to have the baby, Tim, but this . . . doesn’t mean that . . .’ She was grasping for the right words. After she had made the decision to keep the baby, she was well aware that she might need to raise the child without a father. She had accepted that fact. But now that Tim was sitting across from her and she realized her feelings for him were far from dead, she quietly yearned for more. It was silly of her, she knew.

  ‘Lauren, I . . .’ He got up from his chair and started pacing up and down without looking at her. ‘I’m not trying to weasel my way out of this responsibility . . . Really, I’m not, but . . . but how do you see this playing out? We barely know each other, and . . .’

  ‘We know each other well enough to make a baby!’ Lauren interjected, because she wasn’t about to make it too easy for him.

  His face turned red. ‘Right, but you knew that I wasn’t prepared to turn my life upside down for a relationship. I came to Vermont to jumpstart my career. Plus, right before Christmas your dad offered me a job at the New York office.’

  Yes, Lauren knew about that. She suspected that her dad was trying to remove Tim from the picture to spare her the heartache, but Dad was of course adamant that the priorities of the law firm had nothing whatsoever to do with her personal affairs.

  ‘I know. And I wouldn’t want you to change your plans on account of me.’

  Tim snorted.

  ‘So how do you expect this all to go?’ He sounded gloomy. Lauren would have much preferred him to be furious. Furious she could handle. This way, though, her heart opened wide, and all she wanted was to walk over and take him in her arms.

  ‘I have no idea, Tim. All I know is that I’m going to have this baby. I’ll figure out the rest.’

  ‘But you made this decision without even thinking of discussing it with me.’

  ‘Yes, because no matter what you said I wouldn’t have changed my mind.’

  Tim didn’t reply. He walked over to the window and stared outside. Thick snowflakes were dancing in the air, and afternoon was giving way to evening. The sky turned a murky blue, and the snow-covered lake stood out as a bright patch against the evening dark.

  ‘I see. In that case I . . . I should better get going.’

  He turned toward the door, but Lauren blocked his path.

  ‘Tim, wait . . .’

  He shook his head and looked at her with sadness in his eyes. Then he took her face into his hands and breathed a kiss onto her lips.

  ‘It’s obvious to me that you prefer to make your decisions by yourself. So you shouldn’t be surprised when they turn out to be lonely decisions, Lauren.’

  He ran his fingers down her arms and grabbed her hands, his gaze resting on her belly.

  ‘If you need anything, Lauren . . .’

  ‘No, don’t worry. I’ll be fine.’

  She built a wall around her heart, higher and higher, because his warm hands brought back memories of all that tenderness that had been between them. But that was such a long time ago.

  She had made her decision. Her lonely decision.

  * * *

  The wind from across the lake was picking up, and the bonfire threw sparks like shiny rubies high up in the air. They all huddled a little closer.

  ‘Tim, you haven’t said a word,’ Rachel observed, looking back and forth between him and Lauren.

  ‘I’m thinking,’ Tim explained his silence. ‘I . . . feel as if tonight I am just as helpless as I was that day back then. Lauren makes her decisions, and there’s nothing for me to do but accept them. And even though I know it’s the right decision, it’s not easy. Not then, and most definitely not now.’

  Out of New York

  ‘Honestly, reaching a settlement is our best option. Once the jury reaches a verdict, everything is up for grabs. The judge is on our side, but the prosecutor has left the members of the jury seriously unsettled.’

  Tim shook his client’s hand and rose from his seat. The jury had withdrawn to consider their verdict, and he and his client only had a small window to accept the prosecution’s offer of settlement. Tim’s client had turned to his wife, and they were now discussing their options. Tim had done everything in his power to cast doubt over his client’s guilt, to at the very least achieve a reduced sentence.

  He quickly crossed the empty courtroom, taking long strides, and switched on his cell phone as soon as he found himself beneath the giant glass dome of the marble, column-framed atrium.

  Seven missed calls during the last two hours? From Peter Latham’s office?

  He pressed the call-back button. Only one ring, and he heard Florance, the secretary’s smoky voice.

  ‘Hi, Florance, Tim Parker here. I just noticed that you’ve been trying to . . .’

  ‘Right, Mr Parker. Thanks for calling back. Mr Latham asked me to put you through to him as soon as I have you on the line. Just a moment please . . .’

  He found himself on hold, with piano music playing on the other end, and nervously bobbed up and down with the tip of his shoe.

  The door to the courtroom opened, and a bailiff asked him to enter.

  His client must have signed the offer of settlement. It was his turn now to inform the prosecution accordingly, before the jury could reach their verdict. Quietly cussing under his breath, he stared at his watch.

  ‘Tim?’ Latham’s voice sounded from the cell phone.

  ‘Mr Latham, I . . . ’ he started, but Peter cut him off.

  ‘Get yourself to an airport immediately, and return to the office!’ he demanded.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Tim almost tripped. Pushing past a clerk of the court he re-entered the room, toward his client, who was holding up the signed settlement.

  ‘Lauren’s been in a car accident. I need you to come back right away.’

  Tim stopped. The courtroom blurred before his eyes. He had been living in New York for four months now, but not a single day had gone by that he hadn’t thought about Lauren and the baby. Most of the time, he was just angry at himself for not being able to give in to his feelings. He wished that he could turn back time and have the opportunity to work things out somehow. How, though, he was unsure.

  ‘Sir, I’m at court,’ Tim replied, utterly confused.

 
‘Hand the case over to Maxwell, and get yourself over here.’

  The situation overwhelmed him. Peter Latham’s message was loud and clear, but this case was as good as closed. His client at one end of the desk and the prosecutor at the other were both giving him quizzical looks.

  He forced himself to keep going and took the signed document from his client’s hands, the telephone still to his ear. With a nod that pleaded for leniency, he silently handed the papers to the prosecutor. The prosecutor understood and opened the leather-bound portfolio with the legal motions.

  ‘Sir, I . . .’

  ‘Now listen here. I didn’t say a word when you got involved with my daughter. I didn’t say a word and stayed on the sidelines when . . . Well, when Lauren told me she was expecting your child. I didn’t even say a word when you decided to leave Lauren alone with this . . . situation. But now I need you to go and reassure her that everything is going to work out just fine, because I for one don’t honestly believe that it will! Am I making myself clear?’

  Tim ran his fingers through his hair, and noticed the prosecutor smirking. Tim turned away and lowered his voice.

  ‘Yes, sir, I understand. I just want to clarify one thing. I didn’t decide to leave Lauren alone with this. It was she who did not include me when she made her decision.’

  ‘Well, one more reason to come here, then.’

  ‘Sir?’ Tim said quickly, before Latham could hang up.

  ‘Yes?’

  Tim cleared his throat and let out a sigh of relief when he noticed the prosecutor scribbling his signature next to this client’s. The offer of settlement was now legally binding, and all that remained was to submit it to the judge.

  ‘You mentioned that Lauren had been in a car accident . . . Is she all right? What about the baby?’

  Tim could hear Latham inhale deeply on the other end of the line.

  ‘Yes, they’re both doing all right under the circumstances. But Lauren is going to need to stay at the hospital for a few more days, for observation.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  After he finished his call, Tim just about managed to finalize the proceedings. His knees felt like jelly, and his pulse was racing at an alarming speed.