That’s what I thought I heard on my window at first, the rain, butsomewhere in my fitful dozing, I realized there was a pattern to it, a rhythm, and I sat up, my heart pounding in the darkness.
It was Landon, standing outside in the rain, his fist still raised to the glass.
He looked young, I remember that, younger than usual, the rain plastering his dark hair to his face, his grin wide as he took in my shocked expression.
The bright green numbers on my clock radio said it was just after midnight, and I padded quietly out of my room, down the hall, through the lobby of the inn. We hadn’t even boarded up the windows, and the porch light illuminated the steady rain and, in the distance, the pounding surf.
Just as I stepped outside, Landon came around the corner of the inn, still wearing a tuxedo, one that probably cost more than all the clothes in my closet—maybe all the clothes in St. Medard’s Bay put together—only now it was soaking wet, ruined.
Even then, that was wildly romantic to me, him turning up like a groom caring more about seeing me than about his fancy dinner, his expensive suit.
Landon stepped onto the porch, and without thinking, I reached out both my hands. He took them, his skin cold, and he said something. “I’ve missed you, too.”
That’s what I’ve always told myself he said, but truthfully, I was so surprised to see him, so in love and confused and relieved, that I might have imagined it.
I do know what I said in response.
“Landon, I’m pregnant.”
I had to raise my voice to be heard over the rain and the wind and the sea, and the words felt too loud, too abrupt, and I watched as his grin—that beautiful, beautiful grin—slowly faded from his face.
“What?” he asked, the word flat, and before I could repeat myself, he turned away, one hand on the back of his head.
For a long moment, we both stood there, frozen in this weird tableau with the rain streaming off the porch roof and thunder rumbling somewhere far out over the ocean.
The air felt thick, mist and salt seeming to settle on my skin, but when Landon turned back around, he was smiling again.
This smile wasn’t right, though. It was a little too tight, a little too… shiny, I remember thinking. “Hey,” he said, and then he stepped forward, one hand on my cheek.
“This is going to be fine,” he said, and it was the first time he’d ever said something I didn’t believe.
“We’regoing to be fine,” he went on, and then his other hand came to rest on my stomach, not unlike how my own had done earlier that afternoon.
But I didn’t like the way it felt there. It was too heavy, too firm, and I stepped back, but he followed, keeping his palm just below the waistline of my nightgown.
“This kid is going to be so loved, Ellie,” Landon said. “And that’s the most important thing, right?”
I nodded even as I heard myself say, “I haven’t decided what to do yet, but I wanted you to know. You—you deserved to know, I thought.”
The wind was a little stronger now, blowing my hair back, bringing the scent of rain and salt and Landon’s cologne.
“There’s nothing to decide,” Landon replied, and those words felt as heavy as his hand on my stomach. “This baby is a Fitzroy, Ellie. It has a destiny, just like its dad.”
She, I thought again.Her.
But to Landon, I said, “But it can’t be a Fitzroy, Landon. You’re married.”
His hand finally dropped from my body, and he stood up straighter. “I’ma Fitzroy, and any child of mine is going to be one. We can… we can make this work.”
He turned away again, pacing, that hand going to the back of his head again, his fingers tightening in his hair. “I’ll find a place, a really nice place where you can stay. You’ll tell your parents you… you got accepted to some kind of program, some study abroad thing, all expenses paid.”
I felt like he had suddenly started speaking in another language,and I could only stare at him as he went on. “You’ll have the baby, and I can adopt it. Alison and I will.”
A cold that had nothing to do with the rain began to seep through me. “No,” I said.
He didn’t hear me, or maybe he just ignored me because his eyes were brighter as he stopped pacing to stand in front of me. “No, no, this will work.” Landon laughed then, a high, almost disbelieving sound, like he was shocked at his own brilliance. “We’ll raise it, we’ll wait for all this political shit to get settled—Dad’s election, mine—mayor, senator next, maybe, who knows, and then—then!—it’ll finally be safe to divorce Alison, and we—” He took both my hands in his again, but now his skin just felt clammy and dead to me. “We can get married. We can be a family.”
He squeezed my hands, and I looked into his smiling face and had a sudden memory of Adam when he was about seven and I was five.
