“Do you want to have the baby?” asked Deanna. “I’ll support you if you do but this boy has to be responsible too. Him and his family, and you will have to accept that you are stuck with him as the father of your child forever,” began Deanna with a shake of her head.
“He's rich but he's a deadbeat. They're not together now and he doesn't know about the baby,” contributed Lizzie.
“This just gets better,” cried Deanna loudly causing Connor to pout in shock as he prepared to cry.
Tasha sat him up and made faces at him before Danielle finally spoke. “Lizzie is right. His dad's an attorney and I think they would want to see the baby and stuff, but him, he probably won’t be involved.”
“Oh, Danielle,” sighed her mother. “Have you thought about a termination?” she asked thoughtfully.
“Or adoption.”
Lizzie’s suggestion startled Tasha with the idea of carrying a baby to term and then just handing it over. She gripped Connor more tightly, maybe too tightly as he began to cry.
Comforting her son, Tasha stared disbelievingly as Lizzie continued talking and Connor continued crying.
“What about if my dad and Tasha adopted the baby?”
Everyone stared at Lizzie and suddenly Tasha understood why this had been orchestrated to include her and why the location chosen had been her home. Fortunately, Jim appeared at that exact moment and shot Lizzie down immediately,
“Elizabeth, this is not a litter of unwanted kittens you are rehoming and if Tasha and I were looking at increasing our family we would not need your assistance.”
“But Daddy,” protested Lizzie.
“No! This is not even a discussion we're going to have, although there is another one we need to have later,” said Jim firmly before taking a seat next to Tasha where he reached over and took Connor. “Hey buddy. What's all the noise for?” He settled his son on his lap.
“I am sorry Deanna, so sorry for all of this,” said Tasha, suddenly overwhelmed with a variety of feelings and emotions. “I think we’ve been played somewhat. That somehow the girls thought they'd found a perfect solution, but they really didn't think this through.” She turned her attention to Danielle. “I am so sorry that you find yourself in this position but I can't make this right for you. You need to decide, with your mother, what happens next, whether you have the baby or not and if you do I will do anything I can to help and support you. We all will. But I can't adopt your baby. Imagine how hard that would be seeing him and knowing he's yours and yet he wouldn't be. How would you feel if you thought the way we parented was wrong to you? How would you not try to intervene? We don't do personal adoptions like this in the U.K. they're illegal I think and I can see why after today but if you want to do that then there must be lots and lots of prospective parents who would care for your baby if you have him and if you don't, well nobody here will think any less of you, but I don't think you can have it both ways, to give him up and yet keep him in your life.”
“Thank you, all of you.” Deanna turned to her daughter, “Come on, let's go home and we can talk some more.”
“Can Lizzie come too?” asked Danielle.
“No, she can't,” interrupted Tasha, her fury at her stepdaughter suddenly rising and threatening to burst free. “Lizzie and I need to have a conversation that won’t wait.”
Both Lizzie and Jim stared at Tasha but while Lizzie looked nervous Jim looked quite proud of his wife. She was obviously going to take his daughter to task for her insensitive and ill thought out plan and it was no more than she deserved.
“If there's anything we can do,” Tasha offered as Deanna got to her feet and gestured for her daughter to do the same.
The door had barely shut behind them when Sandra appeared. The atmosphere was thick enough to cut so it was no surprise when Tasha turned to the other woman and gave her an escape. “Would you mind taking Connor for a little while? He's fed and clean, so if you want to pop back home or take a stroll.”
Without a question or even an enquiring look, Sandra nodded. “Of course, we can go and see Mike.”
With a slightly forced smile until she took the gurgling little boy from his father to strap him into his stroller Sandra could feel the tension and anxiety rising all around her and was relieved to be disappearing through the back of the house.
Turning, Tasha stared across at a slightly nervous looking Lizzie who attempted to speak, “I know you might be thinking that was a bit weird—”
“Weird?” asked Tasha in a high-pitched tone, then took several deep breaths before continuing. She was relieved that Lizzie didn’t take her temporary silence as an opportunity to continue speaking because she was unsure what she might have done had Lizzie tried to speak and make excuses. “This is so much more than weird, Lizzie. I have never felt so embarrassed or uncomfortable in my whole life and you, you,” she cried twice with a point of her finger to emphasise the point that this was Lizzie's doing. “You brought this into my home. If you’d been honest with me from the start I would probably have still facilitated today, but could have explained to you, in private why your well-intended idea was complete madness.”
“Sorry.” Lizzie looked suitably contrite, but for Tasha that simply wasn’t enough, not this time because she was angry. Angrier than she could ever remember being and the apologies that were leaving Lizzie’s lips were actually causing her annoyance to increase rather than reduce.
“No! That's not gonna cut it here, Lizzie. I have done everything since we first met to be something between a friend and a surrogate parent to you. To love, respect and support you and I thought that was reciprocal, but this just shows me how wrong I was. I am so angry with you that I can barely think straight and I’m more than a little hurt,” Tasha said with a break in her voice now. “Danielle needs to find a solution she is happy with and whether that means adoption, a termination or keeping her baby it has to be her decision, not mine and certainly not yours. How dare you do this to her. To allow this stupid fucking plan to even register as a possibility,” shouted Tasha becoming angrier as she continued.
“Tasha, baby, please don't swear,” began Jim but he was soon cut off too.
“Swear! I am using every last ounce of self-control not to scream, shout and break things. You have no idea how dreadful I felt before I knew we'd been pencilled in as the new parents. I was embarrassed for both of them and myself, not to mention my own emotions at the predicament your friend finds herself in.” She glanced at Jim whose eyes held understanding of what she was saying and the relevance of it regarding her past.
Briefly, it looked as though Jim was going to intervene, maybe even just pull Tasha in closer and comfort her, but that was the last thing she needed.
Tasha quickly turned back to Lizzie before she lost what little control she clung onto. “How do you think that would have panned out for Danielle, coming around here and seeing her baby growing up and every time wondering how it would have been if she'd kept it? Hating herself every time she missed out on a milestone. Resenting us all a little more every single time her baby called me Mommy or when she was excluded from family time or celebrations. Maybe in a moment of madness she could have blurted out the baby’s true parentage and screwed up another life a little more. I have always made allowances for you, Lizzie; your age and innocence, your parent's overindulgence, but this goes beyond youthful naivety,” Tasha told her with a sigh.
