Of all the things Shelby expected that first summer with Beth, Quinn Fabray showing up on her doorstep was the one she feared the most. She knew that legally, Beth was hers now and that Quinn couldn't do anything about it. Even if the young girl had regrets, it was too late, and it was not any of Shelby's concern. Quinn had made her choice.
But that wasn't what Shelby feared. Despite how her actions lately may have made her seem, she wasn't an unfeeling monster (she forced herself to erase Rachel's heartbroken face from her mind and focus on the nervous-looking teenager in front of her) and she remembered with stark clarity what the first few months after giving up a baby felt like. Her eyes dropped from Quinn's face to her hands, which were pressed against her stomach, trying to cradle something that wasn't there anymore, something that was in her crib upstairs, napping. The gesture was so familiar Shelby's own hands twitched with the urge to do the same.
She couldn't deal with a young mother grieving the loss of her kid when she had never been able to deal with her own.
She realized that they had been standing in silence for a few long moments, Quinn shifting uncomfortably in front of her. Shelby cleared her throat before addressing her. "Quinn. Hello. What are you doing here?" You shouldn't be, she added in her mind, you're just hurting yourself. What if she had opened the door with Beth in her arms?
"It's not what you think." Quinn shifted her weight again and reached for something in her purse. "It's just, um. Rachel said something about... about a tape you had left for her." Shelby's breath got stuck in her throat. "With a song you're singing. That's why she recognized your voice that time. She didn't tell us what the song was, but. Um." She took out a CD case from her purse and held it with both hands, gaze fixed on it. "Puck and I recorded this a few days ago. It's just. It's just us, I'm playing piano and Puck's playing his guitar and he's singing most of it but, but I join him for the chorus, and." Quinn's words were choppy and Shelby could feel nervous energy radiating from her. Her knee kept bouncing and her thumb kept rubbing at the corner of the CD case. Shelby had only seen Quinn a few times and could not claim to know her that well, but to see her looking so out of sorts felt wrong. She looked too different from the composed girl who had quietly told Rachel that they would wait for her outside that fateful day in the Carmel auditorium, too different from the broken young woman who had wordlessly signed the adoption forms.
"And I just thought, maybe you could... I mean, you have no reason to say yes, but, maybe you could keep it and... and give it to her one day?" Quinn's licked her lips, gaze darting up to meet Shelby's eyes before dropping back down to the disc in her hands. "I know that by the time she's old enough to ask questions, CDs probably won't be used anymore, but I figure if you're anything like your dau– I. I mean." She frowned down at the case in her hand, thumb stilling, and cleared her throat. "If you're anything like Rachel, I guess you still have every single music-playing device that has ever existed, so..." Shelby lips turned up slightly, her heart squeezing slightly. Another thing her and Rachel apparently had in common. "So you'll probably still have something to play CDs with by then. Right?"
"Yeah. I'll give it to her. I promise." As soon as the words left Shelby's mouth, Quinn seemed to deflate before her eyes, nervous energy leaving her in an exhale, and she once again looked like the in-control girl Shelby had seen in the Carmel auditorium. For a fleeting second, Shelby wondered if she had really been so nervous that Beth would never get to hear whatever was on that CD, but then she remembered the sheer desperation in her actions to get Rachel to listen to her tape, and she felt her heart break all over again for the young woman in front of her.
She held out her hand and Quinn handed her the CD. Shelby looked at it through the clear case and saw the date it had been recorded written underneath the word Beth. The handwriting was different between the name and the date, and Shelby guessed that Puck had written one of them, so Beth would have as many little pieces of them as she coud; their music, their voices, their handwriting. Before she could stop herself, she blurted out, "Do you want me to say something to her? About you, when I give it to her?"
Quinn blinked and looked off to the side, lost in thought for a few moments. She opened her mouth once, but no sound came out. She then shook her head and answered. "No. Just... just give her the CD. Please. The song says everything."
"What's the song?"
"It's... it's Beth, by Kiss." Shelby slowly nodded, and Quinn took a deep breath. "I have to go now. I... thank you." Shelby swallowed against the emotion in her throat at the sincerity in those last two words and nodded again.
Quinn turned around and left. She didn't look back.