It’s almost morning by the time Mom, Dad and I get home. Dad’s cranky and sore, despite being medicated, and Mom’s stressed, and none of us gets more than a couple of hours’ sleep.
Mom says she’ll write me a note if I want to stay home, but I decide to go to school. It’s Friday, and I just want things to feel normal. As normal as possible anyway.
I shower, dress, force down some toast and send Leah a text: Call me. We need to talk.
Leah texts back almost immediately. On school bus. What’s up?
I chew on my bottom lip. Threats at hospital last night. Will be in news. Including my mom’s name.
You okay?
Am I okay? Good question. Not so much. Tired. Worried about your mom seeing news.
There’s a long pause while I wait for Leah to respond. I wish I was actually talking to her. I want to hear her voice.
Finally her reply appears on the screen. Come over after school. Better if you tell her yourself.
I text a sad face. Hope she doesn’t freak out.
Me too.
Love you, I type. XO
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO back at you.
Hugs and kisses. I touch the screen with my finger as if I can scoop them up and
hold on to them to get me through the seven hours until I see her.
School is a blur of hallway chatter and locker doors slamming and teachers’ voices droning. I have to fight to stay awake. I actually doze off in my afternoon math class, head on my desk, and wake up with my cheek in a puddle of drool. Charming.
Three o’clock can’t come fast enough.
Finally the bell rings and I’m free, in my car and driving to the Gibsons’, windows open to let in the cold, fresh air, radio blasting. By the time I pull in to their long driveway, I’m feeling oddly optimistic.
Maybe this is a good thing, having it all come out. After all, a few days ago I was arguing that we should tell Diane. Having secrets sucks.
Besides, if Leah and I are going to stay together, eventually our parents will want to meet one another. Sooner or later we’ll have to deal with this. And the more time that goes by, the harder it will be. I don’t want Leah’s mom to feel like I’ve lied to her.
I park by the barn and glance at the time on my phone. Three thirty. Leah won’t get here for another fifteen minutes at least, and Diane’s rarely home before four, so I head in to see Buddy. He lifts his head and whickers a greeting—or more likely a request for a treat. I keep a bag of carrots in my tack box in front of his stall door, and he knows it. It’s the main reason he loves me, but I don’t mind. I snap a carrot in half and hold it out to him, enjoying the warmth of his breath and the velvet softness of his lips against my palm.
“Buddy, Buddy, Buddy,” I say, leaning my forehead against his and kissing his white star. “What would I do without you?”
A noise startles me—a metallic clatter—and I turn to see Jake leaning his pitchfork against the wall. He must have been mucking out stalls at the other end of the barn, but I didn’t even hear him approach. He’s wearing baggy coveralls and a wool hat jammed over his short blond hair.
“Hi,” I say.
Jake grabs the handles of his wheelbarrow—it’s full of wet wood shavings and horse manure—and walks away without a word.
“Right,” I say. “Good to see you too.”
Even for Jake, that was rude.
Leah comes flying into the barn a few minutes later. She’s wearing a navy duffle coat and a white wool hat over her long hair, and her cheeks are pink from the cold.
I slip out of Buddy’s stall and hold my arms wide, and she throws herself into them as if we haven’t seen each other for days. I hold her tightly and wish we could just stay here forever.
“Leah, Leah, Leah,” I murmur.
She laughs, pulls away and unbuttons her coat so that I can slip my arms around her inside it. She’s wearing her school uniform—a plaid kilt, which is sexy as hell on her. It kills me that private schools still make their students dress in a uniform that is total porn-fantasy material. I mean, do they not know?
Leah kisses me, and I kiss her back, sliding my hand under her shirt to feel the warm silky skin of her lower back.
“Mmmm,” she says. “I’ve missed you.”
“Me too.” There’s a noise outside, and I’m so on edge that I actually startle, jumping back like a spooked horse.
“What’s wrong?” she says.
“I don’t know. Nervous,” I say. “But we shouldn’t start making out here anyway. Jake’s around. He was mucking out stalls, but he didn’t even say hi. Totally ignored me.”
She makes a face. “Let’s go up to my room. He won’t bug us there.”
At the sound of Diane’s car door shutting and the beep of her alarm, we leap off Leah’s bed, straighten out our clothes and rush down to the living room so that when she walks in, we’re sitting on the couch like we’ve been there the whole time.
I don’t know if she’s fooled at all, but from the way she greets me—relaxed, friendly, normal—I guess she hasn’t heard about my parents. Which is good. I’d rather she heard it from me.
“Can you stay for dinner, Franny?” she asks me. “You’re very welcome.”
“Thanks,” I say. “If it’s no trouble. I feel like you’re always feeding me.”
She smiles. “I like feeding people. And I’m used to having lots of hungry mouths to feed. With Esther and Hannah gone, the house feels so quiet and empty.”
“You should see my house sometime,” I say. “Quiet and empty is normal for me. But thanks. Can I help?”
“You and Leah can make a salad,” she says. “I’m just reheating some soup from the freezer, and there’s some corn bread a friend made.”
“Perfect,” I say. The first few times I ate dinner here, Diane made a big fuss—cooking up these complicated meals. Leah said it was her mom’s way of letting me know she was okay with Leah and me being together, but I’m glad she’s relaxed enough now to feed me reheated soup. It makes me feel more like part of the family.
Leah pulls lettuce and assorted vegetables out of the fridge, and I start washing and chopping while I wonder how on earth I am going to bring up the subject of my parents. I can’t just blurt it out—oh, by the way, my parents are abortion providers—but there’s no obvious way to lead into the subject. I look sideways at Leah, who is dicing avocado, and mouth, Now what?
She just gives me a deer-in-the-headlights stare and shrugs helplessly.
Diane is standing at the stove, stirring the soup, which smells really spicy and good. She glances over at us. “You look a little pale, Franny. Are you okay?”
“Just super tired,” I say. “Um, last night? I was at the hospital and—”
“Of course,” she says. “Your father. How is his ankle?”
“He has to stay off it for a while,” I say. “But, uh, there was a…my parents… um…”
She waits, holding my gaze. The look on her face—steady, patient—is the exact same look I often see on Leah’s face. Right down to the blue-green eyes and the head tilt. It’s a little freaky how alike they are. I take a deep breath.
“One of the things they do at the hospital is abortions,” I say. “And this week we’ve been getting some threats.”
Diane looks shocked, but I can’t tell whether she’s shocked by what my parents do or by the fact that someone is threatening them. “He called our house,” I say. “Last night.”
“Oh no,” she says. “You poor dear. You were home alone, weren’t you? You should have stayed here…”
“So I went to the hospital.” I plow on, just wanting to get this all over with now that I’ve started. “And he’d called there too and said he’d left a package in a restroom.”
Her eyes widen. “A package? Like… not a bomb?”
“A warning,” I say. “To show us he’s serious. Next time it’ll be a real bomb, he said.”
“Oh, Franny.” Diane turns off the stove element. “You poor thing. How scary.”
“It’ll be in the news,” I say. “Because they’re trying to find who did it.”
Leah tips a heap of sliced avocado and red pepper into the salad bowl and carries it over to the table. “Franny thought you might hear about it,” she says. “And she wanted to tell you herself.”
I swallow. “I know I just said my parents were doctors. I don’t usually get into what they do because—well, because people have different feelings about it, and it’s no one’s business anyway. But I didn’t want you to feel like I was hiding things from you.”
Diane takes four bowls from the cupboard and puts them on the table. “I appreciate your telling me,” she says.
“Telling you what?” Jake says from the doorway.
“Nothing,” Leah says.
Diane ladles soup into the bowls. “Sit down, all of you. Let’s eat.”
We sit, and Diane says a quick grace. From across the table, Jake’s gaze locks onto mine, his jaw tight and eyes narrowed, and I wonder how much of our conversation he heard.
Maybe Diane’s reaction wasn’t the one I should’ve been worried about.