It was just before seven o’clock in the morning, in the bed-and-breakfast they’d arrived at the night before, and she could hear rain drumming on the roof. Dale was still sleeping, lying on his back on the left side of the bed, the same side he occupied at home. When she opened the bedroom door she saw Andy in his pajama bottoms and a hoodie. His feet were bare, his hair was rumpled, and he looked very young.
“Mom?” he said. She still hadn’t gotten used to how deep his voice was these days; how he no longer sounded like a kid. “Can I talk to you?”
“Of course.” Kayla reached up with her thumb to smooth his eyebrow. Andy had grown six inches in the last eighteen months. His face had gotten more angular, his jaw more defined as he’d lost that little-boy softness, but Kayla could still catch glimpses of the toddler whose thighs had once been as soft and squishy as loaves of Wonder Bread, the little boy who’d worn yellow rain boots and a Batman cape to preschool for three weeks in October, in advance of Halloween. The sweet, good-hearted boy who’d once asked her to put extra cookies in his lunch because his friend’s mom never packed dessert and who, in elementary school, had invited his whole class to his birthday parties so that no one would feel left out.
Kayla pulled on her own sweatshirt and a pair of socks and led Andy downstairs. The house where they’d stayed was a redbrick Georgian house in a quiet, residential neighborhood, with a wraparound porch and eight bedrooms, half of them with fireplaces. She could hear someone—Jasper, she assumed—in the kitchen. There were already carafes of coffee on the dining room table, with a platter of mugs beside them. Kayla poured herself coffee and sat down at the table. Andy took a seat opposite her and asked, quietly, “Can this be just between us?”
“Sure,” said Kayla. She wondered if that girl Morgan had already broken his heart. When the first girl Andy had gotten a crush on, two years ago, when he’d been in ninth grade, had told him she just wanted to be friends, Kayla had been sad, but not surprised. When she’d been a teenager, she wouldn’t have given a boy like Andy a second look. Just wait, she’d told him. You’re going to find someone who thinks you’re the best thing since sliced bread. He’d looked at her, red-eyed and miserable, asking, Is sliced bread really that great?
Kayla sipped her coffee, waiting until Andy got his long arms and legs settled. “What’s going on?”
Andy knit his fingers together and looked down at them as he spoke. “If I knew a secret… if someone told me something, and made me promise not to tell, but I thought the person maybe wasn’t going to be safe…” His voice trailed off. He unlaced his fingers and started drumming gently at the table.
“Okay.” Kayla’s pulse sped up. “The person with the secret. Is it someone I know?”
“Yes. But I can’t tell you who.”
Kayla thought. “How about this? Tell me what’s going on but don’t use any names. We’ll just say it’s theoretical.”
Andy nodded. “Okay.” More drumming. “What if, theoretically, I knew that someone was pregnant and didn’t want to be? And she can’t, um, do anything about it where she lives, so she made an appointment at the Planned Parenthood in Syracuse, and, theoretically, she wanted me to come to the appointment with her, and she made me promise not to tell her mom?”
Kayla swallowed hard. “This wouldn’t be a pregnancy you had anything to do with? Theoretically?”
Andy looked shocked. Then he shook his head. “Theoretically, no.”
“So this girl wants an abortion, and she doesn’t think her mother would let her get one?”
“I said I’d help her. Theoretically.” Andy sounded wretched. “I want to help. She needs someone to go with her, and make sure she’s safe. Only…” His shoulders slumped. “I don’t want her to get in trouble, and I don’t want to get in trouble myself.” In a low voice, he said, “I wish she could tell her mom. But she says she can’t.”
“Is there another adult she could talk to? Is her dad a possibility?”
Andy shook his head. “Her dad’s, like, a pastor. And I’m worried that, if her mom finds out she did this, she’s going to be mad at me. Like, she’ll think that I encouraged her or helped her set it up or something.”
Kayla could certainly imagine things unfolding in just that fashion. Her throat was tight, her belly felt knotted. “When is this theoretically happening?”