Maybe. She was such a wreck back then, even before the tests confirmed her worst suspicion.
Afterward, she remembered trying to conceal her thickening waistline and swelling breasts beneath her ugly, ill-fitting school uniform in those last four months of school. She had always been slender; a few people-especially her mother-commented that she seemed to be “filling out.” Aurora Zephyr even jokingly told her she’d better watch out that she didn’t add the notorious “freshman fifteen” pounds when she got to college.
Had her friends been whispering about her escalating weight-and speculating about the possible cause for the gain-behind her back?
Maybe. Probably. Her group of friends, always tight knit, seemed to splinter after Jake’s death. Even Kristen and Rachel, her closest confidantes, became distant.
If that hadn’t happened-if Jake hadn’t been killed-Lindsay might have confided in them. She might even have told her parents, who would have been disappointed but probably would have stood by her and helped her hide her condition-if only to protect the family name.
But she didn’t share her secret with her parents or her friends.
Instead, she miserably battled round-the-clock morning sickness on her own, hoping no one would overhear her daily vomiting sessions in the school bathroom.
When somebody eventually did, it was the last person with whom she would have expected to share such a scandalous confidence.
Perpetually patrolling the corridors in her black habit, leaning heavily on her wooden cane, the Reverend Mother was an intimidating figure. Never more so than the day Lindsay emerged from a bathroom stall to find Sister Neva standing there, expressionless, obviously having heard every last gag and retch.
“Are you sick, child?” she asked, fixing Lindsay with a level stare.
Lindsay started to stutter, then burst into tears.
To her shock, Sister Neva folded her into a firm embrace-more bolstering than affectionate, but it was what Lindsay needed in that moment.
She found herself being led to the inner sanctum: the Reverend Mother’s office, furnished only with an austere desk, guest chair, file cabinet, and of course the ubiquitous crucifix on the wall.
There, Lindsay confessed her greatest sin-and was met not with disapproval, but stoic support.
With resignation, the aging nun agreed not to tell Lindsay’s parents, on the condition that Lindsay allow her to make arrangements for the baby to be delivered-and adopted-on the East Coast.
There was no question, ever, that she was going to have the baby. She was a devout Catholic.
But Sister Neva stepped in and took all-encompassing control of the situation as if it were her own personal mission to ensure that there would be no other option. She was determined to propel Lindsay through the pregnancy until the baby was safely delivered to deserving Catholic parents.
Until she arrived on the scene, Lindsay hadn’t given much thought to what would happen after she gave birth.
Which seemed hard to believe now, from an adult perspective. As a high-powered Manhattan event planner, her entire career was based on intricate short-and long-term calendar organization.
But back then, she was more concerned with the immediate future-her own-than the long-range repercussions of her condition on herself or anyone else. Even the baby.
So it was a relief to defer that monumental decision to somebody with infinitely more wisdom and connections. The nun cleverly arranged for her to take a summer class at Fordham University so that her parents wouldn’t question her early departure for college. Not that they would have anyway, after all she had been through.
They tiptoed around her for months after Jake died, attributing her withdrawn behavior entirely to the fact that her longtime boyfriend had been brutally slain and she had found his body.
They seemed relieved when Lindsay announced she was leaving two months early for college, and they didn’t bat an eye when she said the campus dorms were unavailable until the fall semester. No, they never suspected that her temporary summer address was a diocesan-run home for unwed mothers.
Lindsay left the details in Sister Neva’s capable hands without a second thought…until it came time to hand over her son to the waiting adoption official.
That was her first moment of regret-and far from her last.
But by then, it was too late.
In a matter of seconds, the baby was gone, whisked from her life and into another, presumably with a pair of loving parents, a stable home, and a brighter future than an unwed, unemployed college freshman could provide.
She went on to get her undergraduate degree at Fordham and her MBA at Columbia.
In the two decades that followed, not a day had gone by without Lindsay wondering about her lost son. Wondering what he was doing, where he was, who he was. Every time she passed a boy about his age on the street, she did a double take-especially if the boy happened to have dark hair and eyes like her own…and like the father’s.
The father.
She had long since taken to thinking of him that way, ever since the nuns in the home first questioned her about him that summer.
“Have you told the father, child?”
“No. He…died before I could tell him.”
It was easier that way, she told herself and God, asking forgiveness for the lie.
She alone signed the adoption papers. She alone suffered the barren consequences that lingered for years, lingered even now.
Especially now.
Thanks to those unsettling phone calls.
Obviously, somebody had stumbled onto the truth and wanted to torment her now, just when her life felt settled at last.
But who would do such a thing?
Chuckling softly to herself, she hung up the telephone, pleased with Lindsay Farrell’s frightened reaction to her taunts.
I bet you thought nobody knew what you did, she silently told her former classmate, picturing her, alone and scared, in her far-off East Coast apartment. You tried so hard to hide your tracks.
Or so Lindsay Farrell must have believed.
She’d had no way of knowing that her every move was being watched. That someone had stealthily followed her up and down the aisles of the drugstore, watching her furtively pluck a pregnancy test from the shelf. Her forced nonchalance was laughable. She did everything but roll her eyes skyward and whistle tunelessly as the cashier rang up her purchases.
Of course, I couldn’t follow her into her bathroom back at home and watch her take the test…
No, but it didn’t take a genius to figure out the results. Not when she proceeded to buy test after test in the days that followed, as if hoping to convince herself that the first one was wrong.
So. Lindsay Farrell was pregnant with Jake Marcott’s baby.
Whether Jake carried that news to his grave or was oblivious to it was unclear.
What was clear was that to this day, Lindsay remained troubled by what she did.
I can hear it in her voice.
I just wish I could see it in her eyes, too.
But it wouldn’t be long now.
The reunion was less than two months away.
Lindsay would be winging her way back to Portland, unaware that her first trip home in twenty years would be her last.
Unless…
What if she isn’t planning to attend the reunion at all?
That would be a shame.
No, it would be more than just a shame. It would be disastrous.
I’ll just have to give her a good reason to come home.
Phone still in hand, she quickly dialed general nationwide directory assistance.
“Yes, I’d like the number for United Airlines, please.”
Settling her head against the pillows once more, Lindsay inhaled, held her breath for as long as she could, then exhaled, the way she did when she was stretching and winding down from her strenuous Saturday morning spinning class.