“Honey, you’re awake!” he said, setting the flowers on the table in front of the others.
“Hi, Dad.” Corabelle pushed her hair away from her face self-consciously. She always did care how she looked around her father. Her eyes darted nervously from him to me.
He’d apparently decided to go the pretend-the-jerk-isn’t-in-the-room route, keeping his back to me. “I heard you went for an ill-advised swim,” he said.
“Seemed a bit warm out,” she said. “Thought I’d take a little dip.” She sucked in a breath like she might cough again, and I almost jumped up, but she just cleared her throat.
I realized I was gripping the arms of the chair like I was about to be electrocuted. I forced myself to relax. I wouldn’t let Corabelle’s parents bully me into leaving. But I knew they had every right to be pissed off. I’d be more worried if they weren’t.
“We’ve been trying to call you, sweet pea,” Mr. Rotheford said. “I guess you don’t have your phone anymore?”
“It’s in rice,” Corabelle said. “We’re trying to save it.”
“I’ll get you another.” He settled on a stool, still with his back to me.
“Do you guys want to stay at my apartment?” she asked.
“Oh no, we’ll get a hotel close by,” her mother said. “Unless you need us to be there.”
“No, no. Gavin can check on it.” She looked around her father at me. “You have my keys?”
“I do,” I said, and I could see Mr. Rotheford’s back straighten in disapproval.
He turned around. “I can take those.”
“No, Dad, Gavin can handle it,” Corabelle said.
“I insist.”
Corabelle struggled to sit up. “No, I’m the one who is insisting.”
I wasn’t going to be pushed around. “I listen to Corabelle.”
He stood up, pointing a finger at my nose. “Listen here. I know what you did to my daughter. I was there to pick her up after you took off without any word to anybody. I don’t know how you insinuated yourself back into her life, but I’m watching you.”
He towered over me, but I didn’t challenge him, didn’t stand up. He needed this moment. I knew to let him have it. I tried to imagine having a daughter who got knocked up by some teenage lowlife and then all the things that played out for us, and I agreed that I deserved whatever they wanted to dish out. But I would not let Corabelle go, not now, not ever.
“Sir, I expect you to,” I said.
Corabelle searched for the bed button, which had slipped down the side of the mattress. I reached around her irate father and set it by her pillow. She moved the bed up a few notches, doing her Corabelle determination thing, aiming to not only do what the doctor said, but exceed his expectation on her recovery.
“We need to check in somewhere,” Mrs. Rotheford said.
“There’s a hotel on the next block,” I told them. “Easy walk.”
Mr. Rotheford still stood, stiff and angry, in the middle of the room.
“What’s it called, Gavin?” her mother asked.
“The Elms. Just go out the main entrance and turn right. I’d drive you, but I—” Maybe I shouldn’t bring up the motorcycle just now. “I would need to fetch Corabelle’s car.”
“We can walk it,” Mrs. Rotheford said. She turned back to the bed. “We’ll be back in the morning. Call us if you need us.”
Her father finally relaxed his shoulders. “I’ll pick up a new phone for you. We’ll be here.”
Corabelle nodded, then turned back to me, her eyes like a fawn’s, soft and dark. “Can you stay a minute?”
“Of course,” I said.
I stepped aside as her parents kissed her and left the room, their suitcases trailing behind them.
3: Corabelle
Gavin ran his finger across my palm, and I felt so much calmer. The rumble of the rolling suitcases faded down the hall as he pulled the stool up next to me by the bed. “That was tough, huh?” he said.
“Thankfully the pain meds are kicking in. I didn’t think I could take another minute of his beady glare.”
Gavin laughed. “He is pretty pissed at me.”
I pressed his hand to my cheek. “They’ll adjust. It’s all pretty new, even for us.” I kissed his fingers. We had to talk about what happened. I could play the sick card, but really, we should just dive in. Get through the hard stuff before it got too late to bring it up again.
“We haven’t really talked about that last conversation we had on the beach,” I said.
“You’ve been too busy trying to re-create the Pacific in your lungs.”
I tried to smile, even though my lips were cracked and dry. We had so much terrain to cover, I didn’t really know where to start. “Where did you find someone willing to give you a vasectomy so young?”
“Mexico. Cash-under-the-table thing.”
“Was it safe?”
He shrugged. “I went to a doc here and they tested it. Said it worked. Nothing seemed damaged. He was pretty pissed I had done it and wanted the name of the doctor.”
I let go of his hand. “Did you give it to them?” The heat rushing to my face made my head hurt again. I tried to slow my breathing, stay calm. A coughing fit would end the conversation fast.
“No.” He shifted over and braced his elbows on the bed rails, resting his scruffy cheek on his wrist. He was tired. He’d probably been in that chair for days.
“Have you gone home at all?”
He reached out and ran the back of his knuckles across my upper arm. “For clothes. Now that your parents have descended, this is all the time I get with you.”
“Maybe we can tell the hospital that you’re my husband.”
“Your dad won’t back us up like he did with Finn.”
I sighed. “They could kick you out, maybe.”
“They won’t.”
“Aren’t there visiting hours?”
“Probably. I don’t exactly play by the rules.”
“That’s true.” I laid my hand on his thigh. “I’m sorry I never told you about the marijuana.”
He exhaled with a long gush of air. “I never thought you’d keep a secret from me.”
“I was embarrassed. Katie got me started, and it helped me on the test, it really did.”
“But you never told the doctors. Not even when Finn was sick.”
Tears formed in the corners of my eyes, hot and painful. “I couldn’t bear everyone hating me.”
“We wouldn’t have.”
“Everyone would blame me.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I did!” I grabbed fists full of the sheets, pain shooting through my head despite the meds. I could feel another cough coming on, deep in my chest. I didn’t think I could suppress it.
Gavin reached for my arm, holding it tight. “I don’t blame you. I don’t think anyone would have. When you found out you were pregnant, did you keep doing it?”
“No!”
“Then you did what you were supposed to do.” He ran his fingers along my arm, gently, carefully. I relaxed back into the pillow, slowly bringing the upset down.
“I’m sure lots of women do it,” he said. “It probably didn’t do anything.”
I breathed in carefully, testing the cough. It had passed. “People always ask if you could change one thing, what would it be? I would change that.”
“Probably everything would have happened just the same.” He kept the pressure against my skin, feather light but comforting. He knew me. He knew what worked.
“At least then I would know it wasn’t something I did.”
He let go of my arm and stood up. I thought he was going to leave, and I could feel my chest tighten in distress, but instead he lowered the rail out of the way. “Scoot over. This bed is bigger than the one at your parents’ house, and we seemed to fit on it just fine.”