Christmas morning. He came down early, way before anyone else woke up, and when the rest of us found him, he’d opened every present under the tree. His, mine, even the ones Mama and Daddy had gotten for each other.
“These are mine!” he had shouted, so excited he was practically vibrating. He was holding as much as he could, a bizarre assortment of G. I. Joes and Barbies and slippers and a box of Jean Naté and a tie and God knows what else, things he didn’t want, things for girls or grown-ups. But it didn’t matter because he haddecidedthat they were his.
That’s what Landon reminded me of standing there on the porch that night, his dark eyes bright as stars. A little boy clutching as much as he could to his chest, whether he wanted it all or not.
I pictured me, Lo, Alison, and now this child inside of me all gathered up in his arms as he crowed, “These are mine!”
Shaking my head, I backed away. “No, Landon,” I said. Other words were there, waiting to spill out. How I couldn’t stay hidden from my own family for nine months. How Alison might have something to say about all this. How the idea of waiting to be able to raise my own child filled me with a horror I could barely articulate, but inthe end, I let those two words—No, Landon—stand alone, because they were the only ones I should have needed.
And like Adam when Mama and Daddy had very firmly told him all those things werenothis, and he was in fact in big trouble, Landon’s face crumpled—first in confusion, and then in anger.
Unlike Adam, Landon covered it quickly, that shiny, fake smile sliding back into place. “Okay,” he said, reaching for me again.
I stepped back, and that anger flashed, harder to conceal this time.
“It’s a lot,” he said. “I know that. But Ellie, what other choice do we have?”
A shocked sort of sound burst out of me. “So many!” I cried. “I could—I could go to Mobile, to the clinic there, or I c-could marry Tim, or—”
“Unacceptable,” Landon said. For the first time, I saw the man others must have seen, the scion, the governor’s son. The man who always got his way. “I told you, Ellie, that baby is a Fitzroy, and he’ll be raised like one.”
“She!” I burst out, tears stinging my eyes, burning my throat, and then there was a flurry of movement from the corner of my eye, and suddenly Lo was there, shoving Landon so hard he stumbled back, his arm hitting my hip.
“Baby?” she shrieked. “Baby?”
“Lo,” Landon said, but she was all motion, all swinging fists and wet blond hair and fury like nothing I’d ever seen.
“Son of a bitch!” she screamed, and her nails went for his eyes.
“Stop!” I remember crying out, but it was chaos, and the rain was coming down harder now, the waves crashing seemed louder, and one of the smaller potted plants on the porch railing crashed over the side.
Landon caught her hands before she could gouge out his eyes—and she would have, I had no doubt—and shoved her back, her Keds sliding across the wet floor.
“Goddammit, Lo, we don’t need this shit right now,” Landon said, still holding her as she tried to kick him.
“Lo, please,” I said, and she turned to me then, her green eyes blazing.
But there wasn’t any anger there, or at least not for me. Instead, there were tears mixing with the rain, and she shook her head. “Why you?” she shouted.
I’ve thought about those plaintive words a million times. Did she mean why had Landon chosen me when he had her? Or why was I the one having his baby and not her?
I don’t know the answer, and I guess I never will.
“I’m sorry,” I told her, and now tears were spilling down my own face, hot against the cool rain. “I… none of this… if I…”
Words burbled out, tripping over one another because what could I say? What would make any of this okay? If only I’d told her before, if only she knew that Landon had been minefirst, if not in body, then in soul…
“Ellen and I are having a baby, Lo,” Landon said, “and I need you to be mature about that.”
She swung back to him.
“Mature?” Lo laughed, the sound high and jagged. “If you want ‘mature’ women, Landon, maybe don’t fuck nineteen-year-olds.”
And with that, she spit in his face.
The anger Landon had tried so hard to hide from me came flaring back now as he shoved her roughly away again, wiping at his cheek. He looked back and forth between us, pissed off, yes, but also… bewildered. Like he just couldn’t believe this was happening to him, Landon Fitzroy. Whatever Landon thought his destiny was, it wasn’tthis, two women, one raging, the other suddenly not as biddable as he’d thought.
“Go home, Landon,” I said, suddenly exhausted, wanting nothing more than to curl up in my bed and let the storm come, let it tear down everything if it wanted to.
