on the table, palm up. “I’m ready when you’re ready.”
Her chest felt as if it might have a helium balloon in it. She reached out her left hand and laid it on his, then almost jumped at how sensitive she was to such simple, everyday contact. The pads of his fingers tickled her skin, and when he wrapped his hand around her much smaller one, the scrape of his calluses might as well have been fingernails slowly, sensuously, drawn down her spine.
Something flared in his eyes, too, perhaps only awareness of how startled she was. But his voice, if anything, was pitched to soothe her.
“We’ve been good friends for a long time, Laurel. We’ll make this work.”
She gave a jerky nod. “I think we can.”
“So when? How?”
The procedure sounded even more appallingly clinical, even degrading, when she described it to Caleb.
“Does your insurance cover this? Or will it cost you?” he asked.
“It costs, but it’s not that much.” She hoped he wasn’t planning to offer money.
“Because I’m thinking, why can’t we do it ourselves?”
Her chair lurched as she jerked back, pulling her hand free. That quickly, her breath came fast, shuddery, and she stared at him in shock.
“Laurel.” He started to stand, but when she shrank further into herself he stopped, then sat again. “I didn’t mean that way. God! Do you really think I’m that big a jackass?”
“No! Of course not!”
“Then why are you cringing?”
“You know I can’t…”
A muscle spasmed in his cheek, and he closed his eyes for a moment. “I know. I do know. That’s not what I was suggesting. Only that we go the do-it-yourself route. Save bucks. I give you the sperm, you, uh, use a—I don’t know what—a turkey baster or something and squirt it in.” He winced at the imagery. “I’m just saying, it can’t be that hard to do.”
As rattled as she’d been a second ago, Laurel started to think. He was right; it couldn’t be hard. Women got pregnant even when their boyfriends had used condoms. It might be…nicer, yes, nicer to get pregnant at home. They could laugh at the awkwardness and their own embarrassment, instead of him having to get aroused in some examining room at the clinic, and her having to lie on her back with her feet in the stirrups with the doctor and nurses snapping on latex gloves and speculating about why she’d chosen this route to motherhood.
It wasn’t as if she was afraid of sperm. Only of men’s bodies, of being overpowered, of…
No. Don’t think about it. Don’t remember. Not now.
“Crap,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m being insensitive, aren’t I? The last thing you want is me handing you…I don’t know what. A baggie of… Jeez. Forget I suggested it.”
“No, I kind of like the idea. If you won’t be embarrassed. We could try, and then if I don’t get pregnant we could go to the clinic the next month.”
“You’re sure? Wow.” A grin broke out. “Hey! We’re going to be a mom and dad.”
“Together, to see our kid graduate from high school and college.”
They were smiling at each other, foolishly.
“An adventure,” Caleb said.
Finally, one she could take with him.
“An adventure,” Laurel agreed.
THAT EVENING, AFTER HE LEFT, she called Matt.
“Hey,” she said. “Listen, I hope this won’t break your heart, but Caleb and I talked, and… Well, he volunteered to father my baby.”
Long silence. Waiting in apprehension, she feared she was hurting his feelings. She’d asked, he’d accepted and now she was saying, By the way, I don’t need you after all.
“Got to tell you, that’s a little bit of a relief. Sheila wouldn’t have withdrawn her blessing, but she keeps suggesting other ideas for you. I don’t think she was happy.”
“No, I got that impression. Tell her… Well, I’ll tell her myself. The fact that both of you agreed was incredibly generous. You’re good friends.”
“But you found a better stud, huh?” He was grinning, she could tell.
“A single one. Probably better all around.”
“But you’re still going ahead with this?”
Her fingers tightened on the phone. “It wasn’t a whim, you know.”
He fumbled through an apology. She assured him she hadn’t taken offense. How could she? He was a good friend.
But…he wasn’t the right man to be the father of her baby.
NOT AT ALL TO CALEB’S SURPRISE, Laurel insisted on a parenting plan, with rights and responsibilities down on paper, signed and even witnessed by a next-door neighbor. The one part included at his insistence was the child support he intended to pay, although they finally compromised on an amount less than he liked. The plan was Laurel through and through. She liked everything hashed out thoroughly, no detail misplaced, everyone crystal clear on where they stood.
Caleb had known within the first week of meeting her that she would end up a lawyer.
It broke his heart that she hadn’t.
No, what really broke his heart was why she hadn’t.
A 4.0 student at PLU, she’d scored high on the LSATs and been promptly accepted at the University of Washington Law School, one of the top handful in the nation. She’d e-mailed him often that first semester and into the second one, excited and energized, thriving in the competitive, challenging environment.
Traveling weekly to Quito to check e-mail and respond to friends, he’d been first puzzled and then alarmed by her silence, which started in early April. Tough exams coming up? he’d e-mailed. No answer. Three weeks later, he’d heard from Nadia. Laurel had been attacked in the parking garage on the UW campus late at night, after she’d stayed studying at the law library. Brutally raped and beaten, she was left for dead. Not until morning had someone seen her feet sticking out from behind her car and called 9-1-1. She hadn’t come out of the coma for a week. Her face was damaged—cheekbone shattered, eyes swollen shut, three ribs broken, one penetrating a lung. She was expected to recover, Nadia had written, but…
Caleb had almost flown home. But when he’d called, her dad had said she didn’t want to see anybody. She was confused, struggling to remember what had happened. A few days later, in a second phone call, he’d told Caleb she didn’t want him to come.
“She’s proud of what you’re doing there,” he’d said. “She says she’s okay. She has Meggie and me, of course.” Laurel’s mom had died of cancer when Laurel was a girl. “Nadia has been at the hospital almost daily. There’s
