Claiming Serenity(64)

“I love you, honey. To the Tardis and back.”

And Layla knew that was an immeasurable well of love. A bit geeky, possibly juvenile but it meant that Mollie’s love for her was grander than the world, bigger than any worlds beyond reckoning. The small endearment helped and Layla clung to it as her father screamed at her all the way back to their home with Donovan sitting there numb in the backseat.

Layla tried remembering Mollie’s words, and Declan’s as her parents fussed and cried, arguing about what would have to be done about her and Donovan’s “situation.” They all acted like she wasn’t there at all. She was invisible on that leather couch, a tiny spec of nothing amid the large furniture and the threatening, screaming adults who thought deciding her future was in any way their place.

“I don’t know what’s to be done.” Mrs. Donley’s pinched face tightened, made her look older, sterner than she already did, especially when she glared at Layla like she was a lowly tart. Idly, Layla wondered why people tended to blame the woman for an unplanned pregnancy. Why was it always a woman’s fault alone? As though somehow she’d siphoned the semen from an unaware man like an evil succubus, stealthily rendering a man utterly defenseless with her evil female wiles. And the “poor man” was helpless really, because of course he was just “being a man.”

Utter bullshit, she thought.

Layla knew that if Donovan’s mother took more than a second to think about her son and her husband she’d remember how they both were. That hornball gene had to come from someone.

“What do you expect, Caroline? This isn’t the fifties. We won’t send her off to some place until it’s all done and over. Really.” Her mother hadn’t said much, had only cried for the first hour but now, she stood up, got right in Mrs. Donley’s face looking fearless, her bobbed white blonde hair moving like a halo around her as she glared at Donovan’s tiny mother.

“Meara, this entire situation cannot be brushed under the rug,” Mrs. Donley said, looking up at Layla’s mother as though her nonsense was at all logical.

Donovan’s father sat on the brick hearth of the fireplace, the back of his neck reddening from the heat, or maybe the idea that his family was facing another scandal. He looked older than his wife, with deep lines around his mouth and eyes, and he could barely look at the women, certainly not at Layla.

Layla’s own father simply stood in the back of the room, shoulders stiff, his hands clasped behind his back as he stared out of the large bay window and into the dark Cavanagh night.

“Mom…”

“Sweetie, please. Just let me think for a second,” her mother said, barely glancing at her.

“Mom…”

“Layla, you’ve done enough. Listen to your mother and let us figure this out.” Maybe Mrs. Donley thought she was being helpful, that Layla was some simple twelve year who’d come home with a case of lice and not an actual, fully alive human person growing in her belly.

“I just think…”

“Layla… just… wait…” It was the first time Donovan had looked directly at her in over two hours and that is what he had to say?

Tired of them all, of the shouting and the passive aggressive attitudes, Layla stood, trying to make herself seem taller, stretch her shoulders, her neck to get at least one of them to look her way. “All of you shut the hell up.”

“Layla…”

Whatever clipped reprimand her mother was going to say ended when Layla picked up her crystal snow globe from the coffee table and smashed it to the floor.

“I said shut up!”

She could feel their eyes, those disappointed, heavy stares that absorbed Layla’s fury, her frustration and Layla could almost hear the rude things they thought, the regret, the names they were calling her to themselves. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter that she’d destroyed her mother’s holiday peace. She didn’t care that Mrs. Donley hid behind her husband as though Layla would become even more violent or that her father turned from the window, expression still furious, a cool calm that Layla knew was only the storm stirring before it raged out of hand and destroyed everything in its wake.

Her father’s expression reminded her of the first spanking she’d gotten, years ago, the one that made her father feel so guilty that he swore he’d never do it again. But Layla wasn’t the wicked eight year old she’d been when she stole a Hershey bar from the church bazaar because her mother told her she couldn’t have it. She was a woman. She was a woman who’d made a stupid mistake, who’d been careless, but she was nearing twenty-four. Legally, there was nothing any of them could force her into and they knew it.