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Katerina stayed the night with Kirstin as she was not quite ready to face her mother yet. In contrast Noah dropped Kaia home and arranged to meet her at a cafe the next day so he could end the relationship. But when the morning dawned and he headed downtown to meet her, things were not to go as planned.
He could tell immediately she had been crying. Her usually clear and beautiful eyes were puffy and a little glazed. He sat opposite her and asked tentatively, “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I have something big, something huge to tell you.” Something about the way she said it made his heart sink immediately.
“You can tell me anything,” he offered.
“It affects you too.” She couldn’t look at him and he just knew that his worst nightmare was about to come true.
“You’re pregnant,” he said flatly.
Kaia burst into tears and nodded. She cried awhile. Then she waited. Then eventually she said, “Please say something.”
“It’s mine?”
“Of course it is! I haven’t been with anyone else.”
The silence stretched out again. “What do you want to do?” he asked finally.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Well you can’t get rid of it.”
“Why not?”
Her answer caught him by surprise. “Because it’s a little person. You can’t kill a person just because they’re an inconvenience to you!”
“You’re wrong. It’s not a person until at least ten weeks.”
“But it has all the makings of a human being like you and me right from the start!”
Kaia shrugged. “Well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.”
“Wait a minute — you’re talking about something pretty big! This is our baby...”
“Are you saying you want it?”
“I don’t know. I...I need time to think about this.”
“What are you saying then?” she demanded, sounding ready to take offence.
“Nothing...just that I don’t know how I feel about this yet. I need time.”
Kaia looked at him for a long, intent moment then shrugged. “You can have twenty-four hours. Then I’ll make my decision with or without you.”
It was Noah’s turn to demand, “What do you mean?”
“I mean if you choose not to be involved,” she said slowly, “I’ll be making the decision that’s best for me, whether you like it or not.”
It sounded like a threat. But he was so overwhelmed he did not know what else to say. After that they sat in awkward, uncomfortable silence until eventually Noah said, “I might get going then. I have some things to think about.”
“Before you do, I have a question. Who was that girl you kept staring at, at the wedding yesterday?”
He knew immediately who she meant. “Just Katerina, an old friend.”
“You’ve never talked about her before,” she was watching him closely. “When did you meet her?”
“A while ago,” he replied vaguely. “Alice is friends with her too.”
She looked at him a moment longer, then shrugged. “Guess I’ll see you later?”
“I’ll text you,” he promised and made his escape gratefully.
After he left Kaia he walked around for several hours through a beautifully manicured park, busy pedestrian malls and the water-front with its sparkling blue outlook. Yet he was totally oblivious to his surroundings. There was so much to think about.
He was terrified. He was in wonder that he had created a child. He was full of regret for not having contained his passion, for getting them into this situation when he could have held back. He was confused about what to do — and strangely he was even a little relieved to have finally worked out the dilemma he needed to resolve.
The big question was what was the ‘right’ choice? But that was obvious to him too. He could not leave Kaia now. He could not walk away from his own child. But at what cost would he stay? That was the real crux of the matter, for the price was huge. To stay with a woman he no longer loved or wanted, to take on a child. What would that do to his dreams of travelling, counseling, photography? And what of Katerina? Because now that he was faced with the possibility of walking away from her forever he was suddenly unsure that he could.
Yet more than any of that, he was so overwhelmed with the fear of making any choice that would commit him to one path for life, he felt completely paralyzed.
That was no surprise though. He had been like that for as long as he could remember.
Even as he contemplated this, a memory slipped to the surface unbidden. It was one he had not thought of in years. Indeed, he had deliberately chosen not to think of it. It was the time his parents argued, his father hit his mother and his mother called the police. He must have been around eight years old because he could clearly recall his sister hiding behind the couch crying and she was about four.
A groan escaped his lips, unbidden. He looked around quickly but he was alone. The pain came then, as strong as if the incident had just happened. It was agonizing, as if someone was literally squeezing his heart. He felt the tears come too. Yet he really could not understand why the pain was still so fresh. It was years ago, and he barely ever thought about it.
He sank to the ground wrapping his arms around his legs. Why was it still so unbearably painful? Because he had never faced up to the incident for himself? Instead, at the time he had tried to comfort Alice. Indeed, from that day on he had become increasingly protective of her. But he had never considered how it had affected him.
His counseling training came to mind; the links between emotions, behavior and beliefs. He could see the behavior clearly — his avoidance of commitment. He could feel the emotion threatening to drown him, to swallow him up. It was fear; powerful and all-consuming. But the conclusions he had reached? What had he decided about life that was still with him now, stopping him from moving forward?
The answer came slowly, but with authority: ‘marriage is dangerous’ which had led to ‘commitment is dangerous’ which had led to ‘my survival (and Alice’s too) is all up to me.’
The answer was so obvious now, yet shocking. Was this why he had avoided committing to any of the many women he had met and dated over the years? He had always thought it was because he feared ending up like his parents, trapped in something intolerable. But maybe it was deeper than that, maybe the thought of being vulnerable to anyone felt so dangerous he would do anything to avoid it.
He had to get up and walk; let the discovery swirl around inside his mind.
It was crazy to think that he had built his romantic life on the attempt to avoid serious commitment. And yet he could see now it had affected more than that. The fear of being hurt had spilled over into other parts of his life too — he was cagey around committing to anything too serious just in case he became trapped in something he regretted. He crucialized all his choices. He didn’t truly let anyone but Alice in, and only because he saw himself as her protector. In some ways it had been them against the world. That she wanted to stand on her own two feet now both relieved and worried him. He was proud of her and he was afraid for her too.
He had become an island. Surrounded by friends who didn’t really know what was going on beneath the surface. All because he didn’t want to be like his parents?
Yet he was so different from his father — why had he not considered that before? And when he thought about it, Katerina was nothing like his mother. She would never let a man get away with mistreating her or her children. She knew how to stand up for herself and for what was right, whereas his mother had just disappeared. She had abdicated from her role as parent.
Even this revelation, massive though it was, still did not address the fear inside him. He felt panicky whenever he thought about being trapped with one person, whether Katerina or Kaia. How to process this? How to convince his emotions he did not need to hold on to these fears any longer?
The answer came in a flash with the memory of his conversation with Katerina and Aaron before Alexandre’s Ball. It was her comment that even though his emotions felt overwhelming, they were really just an illusion. Because the reality was that, even if the worst happened, even if the thing he feared came upon him, he actually could handle it. It would not kill him.
He thought about that for a while, trying to test the theory out. What if he committed to someone and it turned bad, really bad? How terrible would that actually be? It would be painful and difficult of course. But surely there would be things he could do? He could get counseling, read books, get a mentor, even separate if there was nothing else to be done. There would be options. Surely he would never have to be truly stuck? The feeling, just as Katerina had suggested, was certainly out of proportion to reality.
Besides, it was just a feeling, so surely he could get used to it; stop running from it? It had overwhelmed him as a child experiencing fallout from his parents’ craziness. But he was no longer a child and it was time to grow up. He had adult resources and coping skills now. He just needed to convince the child part of his brain of that; the part that was still afraid of being committed in case it meant he was trapped.
What had Aaron said? What we focus on grows stronger...
It was time to shift his focus then. Time to stop letting this huge emotional fear continue to rule him. He kept walking, knowing he had both a huge decision and a massive battle ahead of him.
{
Katerina stayed at Kirstin’s as long as she could then began the long trip back home. It was nice driving with the windows down and the soft breeze wrapping itself around her. It was relaxing not being in fear of her life.
As she had hoped, when she got home her parents were nowhere to be found. A note on the kitchen bench told her they were both working till early evening then out at a charity event they apparently could not avoid. Nothing surprising there, she reflected sarcastically.
She spent the late afternoon searching her parents’ room and private office thoroughly. The bedroom yielded nothing, nor did the obvious drawers and filing cabinets in the office.
But, because she was her mother’s child, she did not stop with the obvious. She tried the office walls for hidden recesses, she searched the carpet to see if it lifted anywhere, she checked drawers for false bottoms.
After searching for several hours, she was about to give up when it occurred to her that she should be just as thorough in her parent’s room. This time her search was rewarded and she found a corner of carpet under her mother’s dresser that lifted to reveal a loose floorboard underneath. Heart beating faster now at what she might discover, she lifted that to find a small flat box positioned beneath it.
She stared at it for a while, feeling conflicted about opening it. But a lot was riding on finding out what her mother was up to, so eventually she went ahead and opened the lid. It had a packet of papers inside along with a security clearance tag and three photos.
The first photo was an immediate shock. It was her and Patrick. She was circled with a red pen and sprawled across it in writing she immediately recognized as Patrick’s, were the words ‘I always have access to you.’ The second photo was of Sarah and several important-looking Arab men; the third of a building she didn’t recognize. Patrick had written on this one, ‘I know where you keep them.’
The papers were mostly bank records which made little sense to her, especially as there were no names on them. The sums were impressive however, in the hundred-thousands. The last thing in the box was a small, black diary. She flipped through it quickly then went back through again more slowly, reading everything. It explained the photos and Patrick’s words. It was shocking.
{
Noah made his decision around four in the afternoon and texted Kaia then. She was shopping and asked him to meet her at the mall. He made his way there still in somewhat of a quandary but, nevertheless, sure he had made the right choice.
They met at a cafe and settled into a quiet booth overlooking the river. It was peaceful; only a few other customers there. Kaia stared out the window blankly and waited for him to speak.
“I’ve been thinking and processing things all afternoon,” he began. “And I know what I want to do, what I think we should do...” he faltered, trying to muster up his courage. “I think we should get married and raise the baby together.” The words tumbled out.
Astonished, she looked sharply at him. “Are you proposing to me?” she asked.
“I guess I am. Although I don’t have a ring yet.”
“Well, that I was not expecting!”
“It’s the right thing to do...” he said, then realized how bad that sounded when she reacted immediately with,
“I don’t want to be your ‘right’ choice!”
“I didn’t mean it like that...I think we could have a great life together,” he said hastily.
A loud group of girls entering the café gave him an excuse to escape her eyes. He glanced over and froze in shock, seeing Katerina, half angled away from him. But then she turned and it was not her. It must have been obvious though, because Kaia followed his gaze and understood immediately.
“That girl.”
“It’s not.”
“But you thought it was — and your reaction says it all.”
“You’re wrong...”
“No,” she interrupted, “I’m not. You’re in love with her. You used to look at me like that when we first started dating, but you don’t anymore.”
“Okay. Yes, I do have feelings for her...but they mean nothing. She’s not the one for me — you are.”
“Do you still love me like that?” she waved towards the girl who looked like Katerina.
But he didn’t know how to answer that.
“That’s what I thought,” she said, after a few moments. “That’s why I can’t — why I won’t — marry you. But you can have some involvement with the baby if I decide to keep it.”
“Hold on...”
“I’ll see you sometime. But don’t call me. I need space right now.”
“Please, wait a minute...”
“No, Noah. I have to go,” and before he could pull his thoughts together enough to keep her there she was hurrying out of the cafe.
{
