Page 68 of The Cost of Forgetting You

Instead I say, “Bye, Tru,” then hit his porch at a run, jogging down the steps and onto the road that will lead me home.

Rather than boots or Keds, he should’ve bought me running shoes, because that’s all I seem to know how to do.

Chapter Twenty

Henry

July 8th, 1997

The next time I see Kimberly, she’s seated between her parents at my kitchen table. Her hazel eyes are overcast, like the forest floor when a storm blots out the sun. She thumbs the corner of the sonogram prints. To my untrained eye, it looks as though someone printed off a snowy television screen, but they tell me that dark spot is a fetus. A baby. Our baby.

Kimberly’s hair falls in loose blonde waves over her shoulders. She’s not wearing a lick of makeup. Compared to prom night, she seems so much younger. Less confident.

I know how that feels. That night, I felt on the verge of becoming a grown man. Faced with this? I’m suddenly no more than a scared child.

“Can I get y’all coffee? Tea?” Mom wrings her hands together. Her gaze darts from Kimberly’s mom, whose mouth is pinched tight, to Kimberly’s dad. His jaw is taut, the clean-shaven skin there twitching as he grinds his teeth audibly. Neither responds to my mother. She flattens her palms on the table, fingertips an inch from the sonogram, and sighs.

In the corner of the black photograph, I see Anderson, Kimberly printed. I realize I never even asked her last name. Part of me assumed it was Winters like her cousin. I fixate on this fact, reshaping her in my mind. Kimberly Anderson. The mother of my child.

It’s a distraction from the shitstorm brewing in her father’s eyes.

“What were you thinking?”

“We weren’t—” Kimberly murmurs.

“I wasn’t asking you,” her father bites. Her mother winces. He lifts a fat finger and aims it at me. “You took advantage of my daughter. Now you’ve ruined her life. She was gonna be an accountant, you know that? Make good money for herself. Now she’s gotta quit college to raise your baby.”

I wince but don’t reply. Because what could I possibly say? He’s right on all counts.

“Well?” He practically snarls. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

I glance at Kimberly, but her gaze is trained on the tabletop. After… Well, after we finished that night, she laid in my bed with her leg slung over mine and told me how she actually wanted to be a flight attendant, but her dad thought accounting was a more respectable position. Probably because it’s what he does. “It was a dumb dream anyway,” she whispered, and suddenly her dismissal of my music stung a little less.

My chest aches, realizing I’m yet another person taking a dream away from her.

“You don’t have to quit,” I say, directing my voice to her. She gazes up at me from beneath damp lashes, her lower lip trembling. “I make enough at the factory. I can put you through school at the community college?—”

Her father scoffs. “And who’s gonna raise this baby while you’re working and she’s at school? You can’t do both.”

“I’ll watch the baby,” Mom says. All eyes shift to her. She braces her shoulders, her signature pearls glinting in her ears. “I raised Henry. I can take care of my grandchild.”

His hard stare shifts from my mother to me. “And what a fine job you did there.”

“Greg,” her mother warns.

“Excuse me, but Henry is a good kid.” Mom swallows hard. She drops one hand beneath the table to grab ahold of mine and squeeze. “Accidents happen. And last I checked it takes two people to make a baby. At least he’s trying to make things right.”

Greg—what a friendly name for such an unfriendly guy—looks about to boil. His face is simmering red. I sense more than see his blood pressure rising. He sucks in his lips. My breath catches. I don’t know where we go from here. But like Mom said, I’m trying to make this right. As right as I can.

“So you’ll marry her, then?”

“What?” Kimberly and my mother say in sync.

Her mom lets her eyes drift closed. A tear falls silently over her cheek. She brushes it away with the hand that’s not draped over Kimberly’s, smudging her nearly perfect eye makeup.

In the few minutes I’ve sat across from Mrs. Anderson, I’ve realized she’s a proper lady. Quiet, and not one to disagree with her husband openly. But she carries herself with grace and poise, not unlike my mother. I get the sense she and Mom would make good friends if circumstances were different.

“If you two are gonna act like adults, then you’re gonna do what adults do.” Greg glances at the sonogram. At the shadow that my whole world has now shifted to revolve around. “That baby needs two committed parents. So you’re gonna do the right thing and marry Kimberly. Before she brings your child into the world a bastard.”

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