Miles had never tried to contact her before. Why now? On this day. Could it be he wanted to talk to her for no other reason than to acknowledge this landmark eighteenth birthday? This was the day their daughter would leave childhood behind. Legally, anyway.
Years ago, Lark had been clear about not wanting to be in touch with Miles. But that was way in the past. Now he’d left his phone number. Same area code as hers, so he wasn’t far away, and he wanted to talk that very night.
Jittery nerves expanded inside her. Before she could take the next deep breath she sat at the table and held her head in her hands, conscious of the rapid beating of her heart as panic moved up from her solar plexus and filled her chest. This birthday meant so much to her, but Miles hadn’t figured into her thoughts. Not at all. He’d played no part in the hopes she harbored over what could—would—happen in the years to come, now that their little girl had turned eighteen. She’d seen Miles only once since their final meeting after giving up their baby, and their stilted conversation was painful to recall.
Odd, though, as much as she’d tried to suppress them, her memories of Miles weren’t all bad. When her thoughts drifted back to that cold December day in a hospital in Minnesota, Miles’s soft dark eyes appeared in her mind. In reality, he’d been her only comfort. But she’d been so wrapped up in herself, she hadn’t given much thought to his emotions. Whatever he’d been feeling he kept to himself and, instead, concentrated on her.
She and Miles had shared an important—and irreversible—decision. They’d given up their baby. Since neither had told anyone about her pregnancy, they’d acted entirely in secret. She didn’t know whom he’d confided in over the subsequent years, but she’d never spoken one word about the infant who’d come into the world already sporting thick dark hair and perfect hands. She’d counted the fingers and toes, a distraction, she later realized, from the moment she’d allowed the nurse to carry her baby away.
Her arms empty, Lark had gone limp, dead weight falling back against Miles. He’d half carried her to a chair, holding her until she’d pulled away.
His support in the moment aside, Lark also cynically assumed what Miles felt was relief—deep, profound relief. He’d been free and unencumbered as he headed back to Stevens Point to finish his senior year at the University of Wisconsin. Determined to keep her secret from the start, Lark had already transferred to a small private college in Minnesota early that fall. She’d known no one when she arrived and deliberately had made few connections.
She’d never blamed Miles for what happened, not for a minute. He had offered to help her with the baby if she decided to keep her. Sure, he’d said the right words, but Lark knew that’s all they were. No emotion, no conviction, propped them up and gave them a spine. He’d made gestures, but hadn’t tried to persuade her to make a different choice.
“Why don’t you go home, Lark?” he’d asked many times, genuinely confused about her refusal to confide in her mother.
“Impossible,” she’d insisted. “My parents will be fighting each other in court for months to come.” On the day she was with Miles in that hospital room in Minnesota, her parents were in Wisconsin locked in a struggle over custody of her younger brother, who was constantly acting out. Her dad had wanted to ship off Dennis to military school, but her mother refused, so the fight went on and on. Simply making it through Christmas at home would be a miracle.
She and Miles had covered that ground before. Lark preferred to keep this chapter of her life completely private, even from her mother. She would put it behind her.
When the hospital released Lark, she and Miles had gone to the shoe box of a studio apartment she’d rented near the campus. She’d spent the previous months studying, working in the library and pretty much keeping to herself as she slogged through the days.
Still weak, she’d settled into bed and watched Miles heat tomato soup on her two-burner stove and crush crackers on top.
“This is the champion of comfort food,” she’d said, feeling her mouth turning up in a smile for the first time since they’d left the hospital.
“Yeah, it is,” he agreed. But he hadn’t met her eyes and his mouth was set in a grim slash.
“You should go back to school right away,” she said. “I’ve got to study for my last two finals, anyway.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re really going to take finals.”
“You are, aren’t you?” she shot back, her voice sharp.
“I didn’t just go through what you... I didn’t have a baby. And I’m not driving back to Stevens Point today, or tomorrow. I’m staying here.” He pointed with his chin to the tiny stove. “I’m going to keep heating up soup and when you’re ready I’ll go out for pizza or Chinese food.”
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you don’t nag me about resting.” She felt surprisingly okay, physically, anyway. She’d been terrified of childbirth, but bringing their baby into the world hadn’t been all that grueling. Lark had prepared herself to face much worse. Even one of the nurses said she’d sailed through it. If she had anything to be grateful for, and at that time it was difficult to count her blessings, she’d been thankful for her strong body.
Over the next day and a half, Miles had kept his word and had seen to it that she ate regularly. He’d made a couple of trips down the street to the Hot Wok, the second time bringing enough egg-drop soup, vegetable shrimp and chicken-fried rice to last through her finals.
Most of the time they avoided talking about what they’d done. When he tried to express regret, she waved him off. They’d been careful, responsible. But they’d realized too late that nothing was completely safe.
“I’m sorry,” she’d finally said, hoping to end the conversation once and for all, “because we never should have let things go that far between us. It’s not like we were in love or anything.” She’d exhaled with a soft groan. “It was all supposed to be casual...you know, fun and games.”
Now, so many years later, Lark ran that conversation through her head. It had ended when she’d convinced him to head back to his apartment in Stevens Point. Then she’d carried out her plans to the letter. She took her finals and passed her classes, and dutifully went home for Christmas, where no one had any inkling that she’d had a baby a couple of weeks earlier. On New Year’s Day, she’d boarded a plane in Green Bay for the first leg of her trip to Dublin, where she’d spent her next semester.
Sitting at her kitchen table on a cold, clear night eighteen years later, she concluded that Miles must be going through some kind of flashback and for some reason wanted to acknowledge the years that had passed. But she wasn’t ready to talk to him. Monday was soon enough to return the call. She rubbed her forehead. She was accustomed to these solo trips into the past and unsure if she could handle a companion walking the same path.
She turned off her kitchen light and carried her mug of tea into the living room, where she stared out the window at the expanse of Lake Michigan visible from her picture window. The sliver of a moon vaguely illuminated the whitecaps dancing erratically across the water’s surface in the strong wind. The scene mirrored her unsettled mood. She couldn’t shake off Miles’s call. Maybe something important had happened. What if he had information about their child? Or, what if he wanted to find their daughter? She let her mind drift to another place. Impossible as it seemed, could their daughter have found him?
She’d never sleep until she talked to him. She went back to the kitchen to retrieve her phone.
* * *
HE WAS GETTING way ahead of himself. Like an observer of his own thoughts, Miles had watched his mind take so many