wanted to tell him!’ she explained, blinking away a few tears that had suddenly welled up.
‘I went by his house on Christmas morning,’ she said, and suddenly she was back inside her own story. ‘I drove down his street, and there he was – with his bleach-blonde Barbie doll, Caroline. He was laughing, hugging her and all, and he didn’t seem to miss me all that much. And so I just kept driving.’
‘I understand that this must be painful for you, but still: go talk to him!’
Two weeks later the news had made the rounds, and after her parents’ difficulty adjusting and Rachel’s initial shock everyone had come to accept the fact that Lauren was going to have a baby.
Lauren blamed the fact that Tim was the only person not to know on a stressful holiday season, the end of the year and the beginning of a new one, and really on pretty much anything that might serve as an excuse.
She was leafing through a guidebook on pregnancy and baby care, trying to suppress the nagging anxiety inside. But she didn’t really succeed, and so she lowered the book and stared out the window.
Vermont was completely buried under the snow. To Lauren it seemed as if the world had never been as calm and serene as it had been these past few days. Winter brought peace.
Meanwhile, she had made herself fully at home at the lake house and enjoyed the changes. There’d be quite a lot left to do in the spring, but not now that it was cold. Lauren wanted a fresh coat of paint on the walls and to have the floors sanded, but for now she would make do with some extra furniture and a new showerhead. Ben and Chris had gone to the hardware store to get some supplies. She wanted to tag along, but today was a particularly bad day for her nausea.
Even the two cups of ginger-infused herbal tea had done nothing to make her feel better. To get her blood flowing again she decided to take a walk by the lakes, and so she wrapped herself in her winter coat, slipped on her boots and grabbed her hat. Maybe the fresh air would do her good.
Lauren had the sneaky suspicion that her nausea might also be related to the fact that she’d been putting off that conversation with Tim for so long. She would need to tell him, and soon – preferably before she was showing. But the longer she waited, the harder it became.
The ice-cold breeze blew snow into her eyes, and she pulled her hat over her face. The lake on the sides of the shore was frozen solid, but in the middle she could see the ripples on the surface of the water. The sun was nothing but a small, pale dot that kept disappearing behind a thick cloud cover. More snow had been announced over the next few days, and Lauren was glad that she didn’t need to be someplace else. Although this wasn’t quite true: her dad had asked her to start her new job at his office next week. Christmas season was over, and lawsuits were flooding in. Family feuds, set off by the holidays, and a whole bunch of accidents caused by the inclement weather offered the law firm a very prosperous start into the new business year. Since Peter’s vacation was coming to an end, Lauren, too, would have to bite the bullet. And she would have so preferred to pull her comforter over her head and keep sleeping the days away. At the firm, she wouldn’t be able to avoid running into Tim. If she wanted to prevent a scene from being played out in public, she would need to take action as soon as possible.
Lauren’s eyes wandered over the glittering lake all the way to the bare trees on the other shore.
‘Lauren!’ Her name being called yanked her from her daydreams, and her pulse was beating hard before she even turned around.
Tim came stomping toward her. He was wearing only a pair of jeans and a Norwegian wool sweater in a blue pattern. His cheeks were red from the cold, but he didn’t seem to mind.
Lauren looked around for help, but there was nobody there. Shit! No way out of this.
With her knees trembling she started walking toward him, her shoulders pulled back but her eyes lowered. She didn’t dare look him in the face.
‘Hi, Tim.’
‘Hi, Tim? That’s it?’ He stopped right in front of her and grabbed her arm. ‘Seriously?’ he snapped furiously. She could see a vein pulsating in his temple. He must know what was going on. ‘That is all you’ve got to say to me?’
‘Let go!’ She wrestled free from him and defensively crossed her arms over her chest. ‘You have no right to be getting so worked up!’
‘I have every goddamn right to be getting so worked up! I want to know if it’s true!’
Lauren avoided his angry gaze and stared at her feet in the snow.
‘Lauren! So is it true? Are you pregnant?’
His voice had softened somewhat, but there was still anger vibrating in it.
Fear of Tim’s reaction made her blood freeze and shook her to the core. Why was everything so complicated? And why had she waited all this time until he held a gun to her head?
Using all of her strength she managed to raise her head and looked him square in the eye. She recognized his uncertainty, and it hit her hard. Chris was right. She should have told Tim right from the beginning.
‘Would you like to have tea with me? Then we can talk?’
For a moment she was afraid he’d say no, given how unforgiving he seemed standing before her. Tim glanced over to the house, and then seemed to loosen up a bit, and nodded.
‘So there’s a reason for us . . . to talk?’
Lauren pressed her lips together tightly. She felt sorry for him. She remembered her own shock only too well, after she had first learned of her pregnancy. Tenderness came over her, and she reached for his ice-cold hand.
‘You’re freezing.’
She turned around and led him back to the house. What a strange feeling, holding his hand like that. And it was even stranger once the door had closed behind them. A little self-consciously, Lauren ran her fingers over his hand and, finally, let go of it. It was as if the echo of their nights spent together was still reverberating off the walls. At the same time, a wall of things unspoken stood between them.
Tim looked at the new furniture. The dining table with the chairs arranged around it; the pictures now hanging from the walls; and the pastel-colored curtains on the windows hiding the snow outside.
The last remaining embers in the wood-burning stove still radiated heat, and the snow on their shoes started to melt.
Lauren slipped out of her winter coat and her boots.
Tim, too, after hesitating for a moment, took off his shoes.
‘You don’t need to . . .’ Lauren motioned for him not to worry, but he shook his head.
‘It’s all right. You’ve made a lot of effort to make this place look nice. The least I can do is not leave water stains.’
‘Don’t be silly. Chris will be stomping through the house later, boots and all.’
A furrow appeared between Tim’s eyes.
‘Chris? The same Chris who kisses your neck?’
Lauren blushed, because she could hear the
