The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [90]
Dan nodded, pulled his eyes from Cordy, looked at the refrigerator, where for years we had hung art projects and homemade magnets and now was a repository for expired coupons, notes from Rose that no one ever read, and one set of Shakespearean magnetic poetry, which had currently been arranged into a number of lines, including, “Tongue tart lustily among knights,” and, “Kate resolv’d blush footed groves hey kissed.” (Authors: our father, the former, and Bean, the latter. Thought it would be the other way around, didn’t you?)
“When are you due?” he asked.
“Christmas,” she said. “Or thereabouts. You don’t think I’m a bad person, do you?” She looked up at him, eyes round and bright.
“Why would I think that?”
“I can’t afford a baby,” she said. “This wasn’t really part of the plan.”
“There’s a plan?” Dan asked, mock surprise. “No one ever tells me anything. Let me have a look at this plan.” He smacked his hand, open palm, on the stove top, and the bowl shuddered agreeably.
“Don’t be an ass,” Cordy said. “I’m like one of those women they make documentaries about. A burden on the state.” She looked gloomily at her hands, still sticky with dough, and went to the sink to wash them.
“Okay, let’s put the cart back behind the horse for a minute,” Dan said. “This is not the smartest decision you could make right now. But for you, it’s the right one. So you make your decision and you go with it, or you spend nine months wishing and washing back and forth over whether or not you’ve done someone wrong.”
“Right,” Cordy said, and her voice fell to a whisper again. She dried her hands on the dish towel and they slipped again to cover her stomach. Mine. Nothing had ever been hers. Nothing.
Bean had been surprised at how hard it had been to do something good. She and Aidan had brainstormed a dozen charities, but every one had been full up with volunteers for the next three months. Who knew?
When she’d finally gotten to the bottom of the list, to the house-building duty Aidan had initially suggested, she’d nearly been ready to lie and tell Aidan that they were full up, too. Working outside? In this heat?
But she was really in no position to go pissing God off any more than she was doing on a daily basis, and lying to a priest and cheating a charity out of volunteers was two strikes too close to being struck down by an avenging angel. So she made the call, and of course they were delighted to have them. Of course.
She borrowed some of Cordy’s clothes, which couldn’t have gotten any grungier if she’d skipped the manual labor and rolled directly in the dirt, limited her makeup to sunscreen, mascara, and lip gloss, and headed out to the site. She was sitting on the trunk of the car, swinging her legs and whistling, when Aidan arrived with a group of the volunteers from St. Mark’s.
They’d all carpooled. Shit. She should have thought of that. That was what good people did.
“Bianca,” he said, shaking his head when he saw her. “You look far too nice for this.” She looked down at her clothes, surprised, since a look in the mirror before she’d left had made her fairly sure she’d be yanked off the street to serve as an orphan understudy in a revival of Oliver! He tapped his fingers against the arm of her sunglasses. Her hand went protectively, covered the mother-of-pearl logo. Well, she could have gotten them on Canal Street. He didn’t know.
“I’m not afraid to get dirty,” she said, the oversized lenses hiding any flicker of insecurity. Pursed her lips, shook her hair. She held up her hands, free of nail polish. “Bring it on.”
Bean didn’t know any of the other volunteers there. The people she’d known from school had grown wings and flown, just like her, albeit with less spectacular crash landings. Her friends from the loud, beer-drenched