Kayla wondered, briefly, whether telling Abby had been a good idea, if maybe she should have just figured it out herself. “Thank you for telling me.” Abby thought for a minute. “Would it be better if I took her? If it comes out, you and Andy can just say you had no idea.”
It was tempting… but Kayla made herself shake her head. “No offense, but I think Morgan probably wants someone who’s closer to her mom’s age.” She probably wants her actual mom, Kayla thought, but didn’t say.
Abby’s lips were pressed together tightly. “If Lily and her husband find out, if they’re angry enough to sue someone—and I’m not sure they would be, because that might expose Morgan—but if it happens, they’d probably be more likely to go after a company and not a person.”
Kayla nodded. “I—I still think I should take her. No matter what ends up happening. No matter what her mother thinks. If she’s going to go there, she shouldn’t go alone.”
Abby still looked troubled, but she nodded, and said, “I don’t think today’s going to be a riding day. Jasper will drive everyone to Seneca Falls. So maybe let’s get Mrs. Mackenzie on the first trip. Then, if you’re okay with it, you and Andy can take an Uber to the clinic and stay with Morgan during her appointment.”
“Do you think her mom will let Morgan stay with us?” But even as she asked, Kayla had a thought. “Maybe I could tell Lily we’re looking at Syracuse University—that because we can’t ride today we’re going to take a tour of the campus.”
Abby nodded. “And then Jasper can come back and get you guys.”
Kayla nodded. She was thinking that it would then be on Morgan to keep her secret and not let her mother know where she’d been or what she’d done. She wondered if Morgan would be able to pull it off. She didn’t think she would have been able to do it, to keep a secret of that magnitude at Morgan’s age.
“I think we’ve got a plan,” Abby was saying. “Let me know if anything changes, or if there’s anything I can do.”
“I will.”
Abby left the dining room and went trotting briskly up the stairs. Kayla watched her go before following, slow-footed, heavyhearted, wondering what the right thing was, what the moral thing was, and how she was supposed to know.
Morgan
7:00 a.m.
When she woke up, it was raining. Not a gentle shower, either, from the sound of it, but a genuine storm.
Morgan lay in bed, listening to the thunder rumbling above her head, and the hiss and crack of lightning. Wind slapped at her window, and when she pulled back the curtains, she saw the tree branches bent almost horizontal by the storm.
We can’t ride in this, she thought, followed by, I won’t be able to get to my appointment. Her stomach clenched, and bile surged up her chest. She swallowed hard, looking over her shoulder to make sure her mother was still asleep. Every day for the past five days, she’d felt on the verge of throwing up from the moment she woke up until around lunchtime. Her breasts ached. Her heart hurt even worse.
In the bed, her mother murmured something, smacking her lips as she rolled from her back to her side. Morgan closed her eyes. She wanted to crawl into bed with her mother, the way she had when she was little. To pull the blanket over her head until she was all in the dark, surrounded by her mother’s smell of powder and shampoo. To pretend that none of this was happening.
She shook her head sharply. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, and she couldn’t pretend. She got out of bed and started to gather the clothes she’d laid out the night before. She would get dressed, find Andy, figure out what to do next. She wasn’t giving up or giving in. She was going to get to that appointment and end the pregnancy. She was going to take her life back.
Morgan unplugged her phone, tapped out a text to Andy, and crept into the bathroom with her arms full of clothes, telling herself that, by this time tomorrow, it would be over and done.
Kayla
7:15 a.m.
Kayla Presser slipped back into her bedroom and got herself dressed in the dark. She could hear noise from the kitchen; the sound of voices and the radio. She could smell eggs and bacon and coffee. Breakfast smells. They made her stomach lurch as she went back downstairs, pulled up a chair at the dining table, and sat down to wait.
Morgan and I are going to meet in the dining room at seven thirty, to go over the plan, Andy had texted.
Let me talk to her first, Kayla had written back. She’d checked the forecast, which predicted thunderstorms all morning, and rain and gusting wind all day long. No one could ride in this, she thought as Morgan appeared, dressed in an oversize tee shirt and sweatpants that hung from her hip bones. Her body went stiff when she saw Kayla instead of Andy.