Danielle Steel - The Gift

“How old are you, by the way?”

“Sixteen,” and then they discovered that their birthdays were only weeks apart. They were exactly the same age, but their situations were very different. However useless to him they were at the moment, he was still part of a family, he had a home, he was going back to school in the fall. She had none of those things anymore, and in less than five months she was having a baby, the baby of a man who had never loved her. It was overwhelmingly scary.

He walked out into the lake after a little while, and she went with him. They stood together while he fished, and when he finally got bored, he walked back to the shore and left his fishing pole, and dived into the water, but she didn't join him. She waited for him on the sand, and when he came out, he asked her why she hadn't gone swimming. It was a hot sunny day and the cool water felt good on his flesh. She would have loved to swim with him, but she didn't want him to see her bulging belly. She kept her father's shirt on the entire time, and only slipped her jeans off while they stood in the water.

“Can you swim?” he asked, and she laughed, feeling silly.

“Yeah, I just didn't feel like it today. I always feel a little creepy swimming in lakes, you never know what's in the water with you.”

“That's dumb. Why don't you go in? There aren't even any fish, you saw I couldn't catch one.”

“Maybe next time,” she said, drawing designs in the sand with her fingers. They ate lunch sitting in the shade of an enormous tree, and talked about their families and their childhoods. She told him about Ryan and Noelle, and how her father thought that sons should get everything, and girls didn't need to do anything except get married and have kids. She told him about how she wanted to be something one day, like a teacher or a lawyer, or a writer, how she didn't want to just get married and have kids straight out of high school.

“You sound just like my mom,” he smiled. “She made my dad wait for six years after she finished high school. She went to college and got her degree, and then she taught for two years, and after that they got married. And then it took her seven years to have me, and another ten to have Annie. I think they had a really hard time having kids. But education is really important to my mom. She says the only valuable things you've got are your mind, and your education.”

“I wish my mom felt like that. She does everything my dad tells her to. She thinks girls don't need to go to college. My parents don't want me to go. They would have let Ryan, probably, if he'd wanted to, but he just wanted to work in the shop with my dad. He'd have gone to Korea, except he was 4-F, but Dad says he's a great mechanic. You know,” she tried to explain things to him she had never said to anyone before, “I always felt different from them. I've always wanted things no one else in my family cares about. I want to go to school, I want to learn a lot of things, I want to be really smart. I don't just want to catch some guy, and have a bunch of kids. I want to make something of myself. Everyone I know just thinks I'm crazy.” But he didn't, and she sensed that, he came from a family that felt exactly the way she did. It was as though she had been dropped off at the wrong place when she was born, and had been doomed to a lifetime of misunderstandings. “I think my sister will do what they want in the end. She complains, but she's a good kid. She's thirteen, but she's already boy crazy.” On the other hand, Noelle hadn't gotten pregnant by Paul Browne in the front seat of his car, so Maribeth felt she was in no position to cast aspersions.

“You really ought to talk to my mom sometime, Maribeth. I think you'd like her.”

“I'll bet I would.” And then she looked at him curiously. “Would she like me? Moms are usually pretty suspicious of the girls their sons like,” especially her, in a few months. No, there would be no way she could meet Mrs. Whittaker. In another month she wouldn't be able to hide it anymore, and she wouldn't even want to see Tommy. She hadn't figured out what she would tell him yet, but she would have to tell him something eventually, even if he just came into the restaurant and saw her. She'd have to tell him the story about a young husband dying in Korea, except that now it sounded so stupid. She would have liked to tell him the truth, but she knew she couldn't. It was too terrible, too irresponsible, and much too shocking. She was sure he'd never want to see her again. She'd just have to stop seeing him in a few weeks, and tell him she was seeing someone else. And then he'd be going back to school, and he'd be busy anyway, and he'd probably fall for some high school junior, a cheerleader probably, some perfect girl that his parents knew …

“Hey …what were you thinking about then?” he interrupted her. She had been a million miles away, thinking of all the cheerleaders he was going to fall in love with. “You looked so sad, Maribeth. Is something wrong?” He knew she had something on her mind, but he had no way of knowing what it was, after they'd known each other for such a short time, but he would have liked to help her.

She had made him feel better about Annie for the first time in months, and he would have liked to return the favor.

“Nothing …just daydreaming, I guess …there's nothing special …”Just a baby growing inside me, that's all, no biggie.

“Want to go for a walk?” They walked halfway around the lake, sometimes balancing on rocks, sometimes walking through the water, and sometimes across sandy beaches. It was a pretty little lake, and he challenged her to a race on the way back, once they hit a long stretch of beach, but even with her long, graceful legs, she couldn't keep up with him. And they finally collapsed side by side on the sand, and lay there, looking up at the sky, trying to catch their breath and grinning.

“You're pretty good,” he conceded, and she laughed. For her, in some ways, it was just like being with a brother.

“I almost caught up with you, except I stumbled on that rock.”

“You did not …you were miles behind …”

“Yeah, and you started before I did by about eight feet …you practically cheated …” She was laughing, and their faces were inches apart, as he looked at her, and admired every single thing about her.

“I did not!” he defended himself, wanting desperately to kiss her.

“Did too …I'll beat you next time …”

“Yeah …sure …I'll bet you can't even swim …” He loved teasing her, lying next to her, being with her. He often thought of what it would be like to make love to a woman. He would have liked to know … to find out with her …but she seemed so womanly and so innocent at the same time that he was afraid to touch her. Instead, he rolled over and lay on his stomach on the sand, so she wouldn't see how much he liked her. And she lay next to him, on her back, and suddenly she got an odd expression. She had felt a twinge, just the oddest feeling, like butterfly wings flapping inside her. The feeling was entirely unfamiliar, but within an instant she knew what it was …the first signs of life … it was her baby …

“You okay?” He was looking down at her, concerned, for a moment she had such a funny look, as though she had been startled, and was distracted.

“Tine,” she said softly, suddenly stunned at what had happened as she lay there. It brought it all home to her again, how real the baby was, how alive, how time was moving forward, whether she wanted it to or not. She had thought about going to a doctor to make sure everything was all right, but she didn't know one here, and she couldn't really afford it.

“Sometimes you look a million miles away,” he said, wondering what she thought about, when she looked like that. He would have liked to know everything about her.