But it was the second time she shouted my name when I realized there was something very, very wrong. Her voice was strangled and full of pain. I ran from the kitchen, up the stairs and down the hall to Allison’s bedroom. Her door was flung open and Allison was on her knees, arms stretched out, holding on to the door frame for support. Her head was bent forward, her hair loose around her face like a veil. She had on her typical baggy sweatshirt and sweatpants. The neckline of the sweatshirt was dark with sweat.
“What’s the matter, Allison?” I cried, running to her and falling to my knees. “Oh, my God, are you hurt? Are you hurt?” I asked her desperately. But she did not answer—could not answer—because another spasm of pain seemed to overtake her. She swallowed a moan and pressed her hands so forcefully against the door frame that her arms trembled. After a moment, her chin dropped to her chest and a whimper escaped.
“Tell me what’s wrong, Allison, please tell what’s wrong.” I stood suddenly. “I’m calling Mom and Dad,” I announced, and tried to step by her to get to her phone.
“No!” Allison said forcefully. With effort she stood, blocking my way. Even in horrible pain she was tough. “No,” she said again. More softly, begging, she said, “Please, Brynn, please help me.” Then she fell into me and I could feel it. The firm roundness at her belly. I flinched at the unexpectedness of it.
“Allison?” I said as I carefully placed my fingers on her stomach again. I helped her pull off her sweatshirt, revealing a tank top and her small, swollen belly.
How could I not have known? How could my parents not have known? They are not stupid people. But they are selfish people. The minute Allison and I weren’t who they wanted us to be, they wanted nothing to do with us. I knew early on that I’d never be what my parents wanted. But Allison. Allison did everything right. Everything. Until she made a stupid mistake. Now it’s like she doesn’t exist to my parents anymore.
If anyone has the right to cut Allison out of my life, it’s me. She pulled me into her lies and secrets and I’ve been drowning in them ever since. Now here I am, getting caught up in the whole mess again. And you know who is going to suffer? Joshua. That little boy will never be the same if Allison and Charm start talking. But maybe I can protect him—the way my sister never did, the way my parents never did.
“I’m going to see what’s going on,” I tell Mrs. Kelby. “I’ll be right back.” I stand and begin to make my way across the bookstore to the front door. But I’m too late. It’s already happening.
Allison
I lead Charm outside the bookstore. She’s all dressed up, like she came from church, except she looks miserable and pissed off.
“What’s going on?” Charm asks frantically. “Why are you here? I thought you were in jail and now you’re working here? Are you crazy?”
“I didn’t know—” I try to explain, but Charm isn’t finished.
“Joshua is with good people. They love him. They take care of him. He’s fine. Why do you want to ruin that for him?”
“I don’t want to ruin anything!” I snap. With effort, I lower my voice. “I didn’t know. I got the job here and I had no idea about Joshua until I saw him come into the bookstore. But the minute I saw him, I knew. He looks just like Christopher. That’s the last time I saw him—with Christopher!”
“Well, Christopher left Joshua with Gus and me.” Charm is trying not to cry. Her eyes keep darting inside the bookstore window. “We tried to take care of him. But Gus was sick and I was only fifteen,” she chokes, tears flowing freely now.
“He left?” I ask. “Christopher just left you with the baby?”
Charm snorts with impatience. “Listen, you obviously had a relationship with my brother, but you didn’t know him. The minute you drove away, he shoved Joshua at me and Gus and took off.” Charm is breathing heavily and the fine mist that is falling collects with her tears and slides down her face.
For a moment I’m speechless. I don’t know what I expected, but I had thought Christopher loved me. I was the one who broke up with him. I guess I believed he would accept anything I offered him. Especially a piece of me. A piece of him.
“I don’t want to disrupt Joshua’s life. I see what good parents Claire and Jonathan are. I don’t want them to know who I am. I just needed to know what happened,” I try to explain.
“Now you know. Christopher didn’t want him.” Charm is struggling to continue and I look over my shoulder, worried that Claire is going to come out here. “Gus and I tried to take care of him, we really did. But we couldn’t. After Christopher left and we heard about how you were arrested, I dropped him off at the fire station. Claire and Jonathan were the ones who adopted him. They’ve been good pa…” Charm trails off, looking past my shoulder. “Oh, my God,” she whispers.
I turn to look, and see a man and a woman walking toward us. The woman moves with purposeful steps, the man trying to keep up with her. “Oh, my God,” Charm says again. “You need to get out of here!”
“Charm, I need to talk to you,” the woman calls. She is holding something in her hand, waving it high above her head. The tap of her heels punctuates each word.
Charm’s eyes widen. She stumbles backward and bumps into the brick face of the bookstore. “Get out of here,” she whispers to me, but all I can do is just stand here and watch.
Brynn
As I move toward the door, I see Allison and Charm arguing. Charm looks angry, but I have no doubt that Allison can hold her own in an argument. Allison can be pretty intimidating.
“Brynn, you need to help me,” she kept saying over and over that night, crying and clutching at my wrist. “Please, you have to help me.”
“Do Mom and Dad know?” I asked her as I helped her to the bed. She shook her head, turned to her side and curled up into a ball as if trying to disintegrate into herself. I quickly moved to slam the bedroom door closed, wanting to shut Allison’s secret in the room with us.
“Let me think,” I said, standing above her. “Let me think.” I surveyed the room around me. The sheets on her bed were damp and bloodied in spots. “Listen, Allison,” I told her. “We need to call someone. Let me call an ambulance.” I reached for the cell phone on the bedside table. A website describing the process of childbirth was on Allison’s computer. This wasn’t the kind of test one could cram for, I thought.
“No!” Allison growled. Her long, strong arm shot out and grabbed the phone before I could. “No, don’t call anyone. Please, I can do this. Please, Brynn, please help me!” Another convulsion racked Allison and she groaned, but all the while she held tight to the phone. She didn’t want me calling anyone.
I sat down next to her and brushed her hair away from her sweaty forehead. “Why?” I asked in confusion.
“I screwed up,” Allison said breathlessly after the contraction had passed. “I slept with him. I slept with him and I got pregnant!” she said fiercely.
“Who? Who was it, Allison?” I asked.
“Christopher,” she moaned.
“Christopher who?” I asked. She didn’t answer. “It’s okay. This happens to lots of girls. You can give the baby up for adoption, it will be okay.” I tried to make my voice soothing and reassuring, but even I didn’t believe what I told her.
“What do you think Mom’s going to do when she finds out?” Allison spat.
“She’ll be mad, but she’ll get over it. She’ll help you find a good home—”
“She will not get over it!” I reared back at Allison’s bitterness. “She’ll try to fix it. She’ll want to raise the baby as her own or something, or she’ll make me raise it. I’ll be stuck in this god-awful town forever! She will make my life miserable!” Each word became more and more hysterical until she was sitting up and her nose was touching mine. “We have to get rid of it!”
“Okay, okay,” I tried to placate her. “Just tell me what to do.”
Allison must have been in labor for hours before she called out for me. She must have been hidden away in her room while Mom and D
ad were scurrying around getting ready for their dinner party. My mother had even barged into Allison’s room without knocking before they left and told her that there was money on the kitchen table to order a pizza for supper, to make sure the doors to the house were locked because they would be home very late, and no friends were allowed to come over because they wouldn’t be home.
Fifteen minutes after I discovered Allison in labor, she was ready to push. I have never seen my sister look so tired, so defeated. Her hair lay in sweaty clumps around her pale face and she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She held weakly on to my hand, her legs trembling. “Alli, let me call the doctor,” I begged. “I’m scared.” But she said no, that we could do this. That she needed me. No one else.
I had wanted to hear that from her my whole life. My beautiful, mighty, independent big sister finally needed me, the sister in the shadows.
“Please, Brynn,” she whispered through cracked, dried lips. “Please,” she whimpered. And that was the only word I needed to thrust me into action. I began to gather all the items I imagined would be necessary for the birth of a child: clean towels and sheets, cool, damp washcloths, rubbing alcohol, scissors, garbage bags. When I returned to Allison’s bedroom she was sitting up, clutching her knees, her chin tucked into her neck. “I’ve got to push!” she cried. “I’ve got to push!”
I dropped the armload of linens that I was carrying and stumbled to her side. “Let’s get your sweatpants off, Alli,” I told her gently.
“No!” she cried. “No, I don’t want it to come, Brynn. Please,” she sobbed, looking desperately up at me. “I don’t want it—make it stop, make it stop!” The sound that came from my sister was mournful—a keening wail so primal, from a place so hidden, so old, that I imagined only women in the midst of childbirth could open it. I peeled her wet, shit-filled underwear and pants from her sweat-slicked legs and turned on the ceiling fan. I cleaned the filth from her as thoroughly as I could and wiped her legs with a washcloth drenched in rubbing alcohol. The fan circulated the stale, copper-scented air and goose bumps erupted on Allison’s skin. The cool wafting air seemed to revitalize her for a moment. She bore down, clutching the bedsheets with white-knuckled fingers. Her frantic eyes met my own and I took her face in my hands. Taking charge.
I feel Claire come up behind me and through the window we see a man and woman coming down the block toward Allison and Charm. The man is fiftyish, a bandanna is wrapped around his forehead and he is wearing a leather jacket with an eagle embroidered on the sleeve. The woman is dressed improperly for the weather outside, wearing a skimpy black dress and stilettos. She’s clutching something in her hand.
Hearing the shouts from outside, Joshua and the dog quickly join us. “What’s going on?” Joshua asks nervously.
“Nothing good,” I mutter, and my stomach twists into knots. That poor little boy, I think. Who’s going to save him from his own past?
Charm
Charm’s mother stops directly in front of her. Raindrops cling to her thickly painted eyelashes and thin black streams flow down her cheeks. Despite her fear, Charm swallows back a giggle. Her mother looks like a trashy zombie.
“What the hell is this?” Reanne shoves the photo she was waving in front of Charm’s nose and any further inclination to laugh disappears.
Charm struggles for breath. “Where did you get that?”
“You had a baby?” Reanne’s voice is low and dangerous. “You had a goddamn baby and didn’t tell me?”
“Please,” Charm cries. “Please, don’t do this!”
“Do what, Charm?” Reanne asks heatedly. “Ignore this? Who is this baby? Where is he? Is this your baby?”
Everything is falling apart. All her secrets. All she wanted to do was protect Joshua and make sure he went somewhere safe. She wanted him to have a normal childhood with normal parents. She pushes the picture away, not wanting to look. “You went to the house,” Charm says incredulously. “You went to Gus’s house and went through my things.”
“Who’s the baby in the picture?” Reanne demands again.
“Shhh,” Allison says, trying to step between Charm and her mother. “Please.” Her eyes flit to the window of the bookstore, where Claire, Brynn and Joshua are looking out at them.
“You stay the hell out of this,” Reanne says, shaking a finger at Allison. She looks Allison up and down. “I know who you are. You sick bitch.”
“Rea,” Binks says pleadingly.
“Shut up,” Reanne snaps, and then returns her attention to Charm. “I talked to Christopher this afternoon. He told me to ask you about the baby.” Reanne puts her hands on her hips and glowers at her daughter. “So now I’m asking. Tell me about the baby.”
“Where did you get this?” Charm whispers, looking at the photo in her mother’s hand.
“I’m your mother,” Reanne shouts back as if that explains everything. “Did you have a baby, Charm? Did you go and have a goddamn baby and not even tell me?”
“Was it when we were at the funeral home?” Charm can hardly believe her mother’s nerve. “When did you break in?”
“I didn’t break in,” Reanne says indignantly. “I had a key. You weren’t answering your cell so I went to the house. I was worried and let myself in. Then I called Jane and she said you were coming here. Listen, Charm, something is going on and I want to know what the hell…”
Reanne trails off and Charm turns to see her mother looking through the bookstore window at Joshua with intense curiosity. She sees the way she is taking in every inch of his thin, pinched face. If she doesn’t step in and do something, it will click in her mother’s brain. She will recognize how much Joshua looks like Christopher and it will be all over for Joshua. His safe, happy family. Reanne will find a way to squirm her way into his life, even if she has no legal claim to him, and make his life miserable, just like she did for Charm and her brother. “You need to leave now,” Charm says through her tears. “I can’t talk to you right now.”
“I’m not leaving until I get some answers,” Reanne’s says petulantly.
“That’s all you ever do, Mother—you leave!” Charm remarks acidly. “You use people up, get what you want out of them and then you leave. You have no right to come in here and demand that I tell you anything. You lost that right a long time ago when you chose another man, and another man, and another man over me!”
Reanne’s hand flashes out and with a sharp crack connects with Charm’s cheek.
Claire
“Why are they so mad?” Joshua asks as he tugs at his mother’s arm. Standing at the window, Claire sees a ripple of fear cross Charm’s face and the woman’s hand rearing back to strike. Joshua cries out and flinches when the woman slaps Charm. Claire rushes toward the door and Joshua calls after her. “Mom?” His voice trembles. “Where are you going?”
“I’ll be right back,” Claire assures him as she steps out onto the sidewalk. “Stay right here with Brynn.
“What’s going on?” Claire demands, looking from Charm to the strangers to Allison, who looks as confused as Claire feels. “Charm, are you okay?” Claire scrutinizes Charm’s face, where an angry red handprint erupts in stark contrast against her pale skin.
“She’s fine,” the woman barks.
“Jesus, Reanne,” the man says softly. “What’d you go and do that for?”
“Mom,” Charm says in disbelief and starts to cry harder, gingerly touching her face.
Mom. So this is Charm’s mother, Claire thinks. No wonder Charm has invested a small fortune in self-help books. Charm and her mother have the same dark eyes, the same full lips. Claire imagines the world-wise, tough woman in front of her once was very pretty. She looks her up and down, taking in the too-tight clothes, the lines around her mouth. Then Claire’s eyes stop on the photo that Reanne is holding in her hands. Something about it is strikingly familiar.
She reaches out, catching Reanne’s wrist. “Hey,” Reanne says angrily, trying to pull her arm away, but Claire plucks the
photo from her fingers. She peers carefully at the picture, which shows an exhausted-looking Charm, several years younger, holding an infant. The baby is wearing a blue hat snug over his ears; he has a small upturned nose, thin lips and a sharp chin. His eyes are wide and alert, his brow furrowed. The resemblance is unmistakable. Claire has a nearly identical picture of Joshua. But she is the exhausted one holding the baby. Jonathan took the picture the day after they had brought their son home from the hospital.
“Oh, my God,” she whispers in disbelief, and looks at Charm. “Oh, my God.”
Claire has always feared that one day she’d come face-to-face with Joshua’s biological mother, but nothing could have ever prepared her for this. “Charm?” She can barely speak the words. “Are you Joshua’s mother?”
Allison
I watch Charm’s crazy mother in disbelief and wonder if I still have time to get the hell out of here.
“Charm,” Claire says again, fear painted across her face, “are you Joshua’s mother?”
Charm opens her mouth to speak, but instead raises her face to the sky as if praying, the raindrops bouncing off her skin.
Reanne grabs Charm’s wrist and Charm tries unsuccessfully to wrench it free. “You little whore!” Reanne says, yanking at Charm’s arm.
Charm tries to speak, but nothing comes out but a gurgling noise. I can’t stand it anymore.
“It’s me,” I manage to say.
Claire looks blankly at me. Not understanding. “It’s me. I’m Joshua’s mother,” I say, speaking only to Claire. “It’s me.”
Brynn
Joshua is following me around, crying, bleating like a baby lamb. I want to stay by the window and see what’s going on outside, but I can’t stop moving. I feel like something is crawling underneath my skin. “What’s happening?” Joshua keeps saying. That poor baby, I think over and over. I try to shake the memories from my head, tug on my hair to try to stop the pictures flashing in front of my eyes.