Page 14 of Hold on Tight

“Why is my father writing you checks?”

“Just—some money he gave me.”

“Dinner for two?”

“He wanted me to take you somewhere nice.”

“That’s—that’s kind of weird, Aaron. Has he done that before?”

“A couple of times.”

“You never mentioned it. You should have told me.”

His expression told her exactly why he hadn’t. Because he’d known it would make her uncomfortable. “Aaron. You have to tell him you can’t take his money like that.”

Silence.

“Aaron?”

“It’s not such a big deal, is it, Mir?”

“You don’t want to tell him you won’t take it.”

“I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

“You don’t want to hurt his feelings, or you don’t want to tick him off?”

“Either. He’s my friend.”

Of course she knew that. Aaron and her father had hung out before she and Aaron had started dating. They were woodworking buddies, and Aaron worked occasionally for her father as a weekend-and-evening apprentice. And then he’d started sticking around for meals, and then sometimes her dad had encouraged her to go out with Aaron alone …

“Which is it, Aaron? Are you his friend? Or my boyfriend?”

“Can’t I be both?”

“I guess so,” she’d said.

But it rankled, and then it rankled more, until it was like a splinter under her skin.

ShebelievedAaron cared about her. She believed her father’s motives were pure. But that wasn’t the point. The point was, she was starting to see that there was nothing that was hers. No piece of her life she could make without her father’s “help.”

There had been other moments like this, and they had all piled up on her. The day her father had told her he wouldn’t pay to send her to art school because art wasn’t a real career. Because it wasn’t practical.

The night he’d found out she was pregnant.

She’d gone off to college and waited until it was too late to terminate the pregnancy before she’d told her father.

“Why?”

He’d asked it over and over again.Whyhad she let this happen,whyhadn’t she told him,whyhad she waited until it was too late?

And she couldn’t answer the questions. She couldn’t explain why.Because I can’t. Because …

Because one night she’d paintedit, the not-yet-him, a bean in an ocean in her belly, and she’d used her tiniest brush to put intricate details on his little bean face. And she’d known she’d keep him.

The bean in her belly felt like a secret. It felt like a rebellion. It felt like the best decision she’d ever made. “Why, Mira? Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you consult us?”

Because she’d known he’d poke and prod anddoubt. She’d known that he would erode her certainty, that he would question her conviction that carrying the baby to term was the right thing for her to do.

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