style="font-size:15px;"> “Faith.” Ted took her hand. “You have to tell me what you’re going to do.”
“I’m not getting rid of my baby,” she said, jerking her hand from his, “if that’s what you were thinking.”
“I don’t know what I’m thinking,” he said honestly. “Aren’t you still in high school?”
“So?”
“So, how can you hope to take care of a baby?”
“I’ll do what I have to do.”
“Meaning, you’ll quit school, take a job at the Burger Pit, have your baby and bring him home to this place.”
Faith felt her cheeks flame. “‘This place,”’ she said, trying to sound offended but knowing she probably only sounded defensive, “is my home.”
Ted was blunt. “Sure,” he said, “and that’s what you want for your baby, right? And for yourself?”
How she’d despised him that day! He’d forced her to see that cramped, ugly little room; to smell the stink of beer rising from the sagging furniture; to hear her father’s snores coming through the pressboard walls while he slept off a drunk.
Cole used to hold her in his arms and tell her he’d take her away from all this someday but Cole had lied. Now she sat beside his brother while he told her, in painfully bleak terms, that she’d never escape this life, that, worse still, her child would never escape it.
“Let me help you, Faith.”
“I don’t want Cameron charity.”
“I’m not talking about charity, I’m talking about doing the right thing for Cole’s child. What are you going to tell people, when they see that you’re pregnant?”
“I don’t have to tell them anything,” she said, even though it was a lie. Liberty wasn’t the kind of town where you could tell people to mind their own business.
“You mean, you’d rather keep your pride and let people play guessing games about who put that baby inside you?”
“They’ll do that anyway.”
Ted shifted closer to her. She could still remember the sound of the ancient springs in the sofa creaking as he did.
“You’re right,” he said softly. “That’s why I’m not offering you money.”
“Well, that’s something. I meant it when I said—”
“I want you to marry me, Faith.”
She’d gaped at him, certain he’d lost his mind. “Marry you?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you crazy? I don’t want to marry you. I don’t love you. I don’t even know you.”
“That makes two of us. I don’t love you or know you and, frankly, I don’t want to marry you, either.”
“Then, why…”
“For the child, that’s why. You owe him a decent life.” Ted took a long, dismissive look around the trailer before locking eyes with her again. “Unless you prefer this.”
“I grew up just fine without your big house and all your money,” she replied fiercely.
“Yes,” Ted said, “you did. But don’t you want your child to have more? Don’t you want him to be legitimate?” He leaned forward, reached for her hand. “Tell me you love that baby enough to let me do the right thing for you both.”
“You think what you’re suggesting is the right thing?” Faith tried to tug her hand from his again but he wouldn’t let her. “I’d sooner marry the devil than marry a Cameron.”
Thinking back, she knew she hadn’t quite pulled it off. Her words had tried for bravado but her voice had quavered with despair.
“Cole asked me to look after you,” Ted said quietly.
To this day, she hated herself for the way her foolish heart had jumped at those words.
“Did he?” she whispered, then answered her own question. “No. No, he didn’t. Cole doesn’t give a damn about me. He proved it by leaving without so much as a goodbye. He never even tried to get in touch with me, right after the night we’d—the night we’d—”
“Faith.” Ted stood up. “My brother did what he had to do.”
“Oh, yes,” she said, rising to her feet. She gave a quick laugh. “He certainly did.”
“And so will you, if you’re half the woman I think you are. You’ll marry me, take the Cameron name, raise your baby as a Cameron—”
“And what about you?” She stared at Ted in bewilderment. “Assuming I were to agree to such an insane thing—which I won’t—but if I did, what would happen to your life? I—I’d never live with you as a wife should. Never, no matter how—”
“I know that. And I wouldn’t expect it.” Ted cleared his throat. “I’m going to…I’m going to trust you with something. Something you should know.” He swallowed hard. “I’ve—I’ve never been interested in women. Not the way a man should be.”
The truth took a long moment to sink in. When it finally did, Faith stared at him, speechless.
“Nobody knows,” he’d said quickly, “not even Cole. And nobody ever will, not in Liberty. I’ll be an exemplary husband. And, I promise you, I’ll love Cole’s child as if it were my own. Just don’t make this baby pay for what you feel toward my brother.”
“I hate your brother,” she’d said, and despite everything, the enormity of the lie had clutched at her heart.
“But you don’t hate your baby.” Ted had flashed the gentle smile she’d come to know so well over the ensuing years. “You’ll be doing me a favor, letting me enjoy a child I’d never otherwise have. No, don’t say anything. At least agree to think it over.”
She’d thought it over, trying to concentrate on the logic of it instead of on the pain of her broken heart. Then, one morning her mother found her retching into the toilet. She whispered the question Faith had feared for weeks, and Faith nodded her assent.
“Your father mustn’t know,” her mother had said, trembling. “You’ll have to do something, Faith, but not in this town. You’ll have to do it far away from here.”
A day later, she’d phoned Ted and accepted his proposition.
They’d been married at Town Hall while her mother stood by sniffling into a fistful of tissues. Ted put a thin platinum band on her finger, kissed her cheek and moved her into his house. He sent Cole a letter telling him about the marriage, but Cole never replied. And Isaiah never said a word to her, right up until his death.
Neither did anyone else in town, but she saw their knowing smiles.
