Hey all, here is the next chapter! As always, thank you to everybody for reading/reviewing/favoriting/sticking around. It means a lot. As some people were asking for, this chapter has a little bit more of Shelby in it. There will be a lot more from her perspective in upcoming chapters as more of her backstory comes to light.
Thanks again everyone. Until next time.
Chapter 10:
Quinn wakes up late the next morning.
She can tell that it's late because she is woken up by the angle of the sun as it reflects through the cheap blinds and settles directly into her eyes. It is already high in the sky. She wonders how much of the morning she has already wasted.
Groaning, Quinn rolls over on the lumpy mattress and ignores the pain in her lower back as she checks the ancient alarm clock on her bedside table. It is just after ten o'clock. The way her night had started, Quinn didn't think that she would have slept at all. She doesn't remember falling asleep, but realizes that she must have, and that when she finally did, she had been knocked out cold.
Stretching widely, Quinn sits up inside of the bed. She props herself up with her good arm and wipes at her tired eyes with the other. Rachel is already awake. Quinn spots her in the far corner of the room, packing some of her belongings in an organized fashion inside of her backpack.
Her back is turned towards Quinn. The blonde wonders if this is on purpose. She doubts very much that Rachel had forgotten about what happened last night, as much as she might want to. Quinn certainly hadn't forgotten. It hadn't been an ideal start to their… well, whatever they were, but Quinn didn't want to forget the feeling of Rachel's lips against hers. Not ever.
She falls back down against the mattress. She recalls, before last night's fiasco, that the brunette had mentioned that she wanted to leave the hotel and hit the road early. Quinn wonders if the reason she had abandoned that plan is because she is afraid to so much as look at Quinn, let alone talk to her.
"Rachel?" Quinn calls into the quiet room, turning onto her side.
The brunette flinches a little at the sudden sound in the room. When she turns to Quinn, her eyes look frightened for a moment. She is terrified of what Quinn is going to say to her. Is she going to want to talk about last night? Is she going to make fun of her? Is she going to tell her that she is a disgusting cretin that she never wants to see again? Will she leave her here in this desolate Iowa town and head back to Lima, leaving her to find her own way back to Ohio?
"Good, you're up," Rachel coughs, ignoring the obvious. She narrows her eyes, settling to go immediately back to business in the hopes that Quinn will follow her lead. Her voice is much stiffer than usual. In Quinn's mind, that is saying a lot. "You have to check out of the hotel in thirty minutes or else you'll be charged for another day. There's free breakfast in the lobby."
"Nice," Quinn swallows her real response and swings her legs over the edge of the mattress. The pillow that Rachel had thrown off the bed in a fit of embarrassment last night is still in the middle of the floor. It looks slept on. Quinn is confident that the brunette had actually spent her entire night on the floor. If Quinn's back hurts, she wonders what Rachel's feels like right now.
The blonde realizes immediately that Rachel is not going to talk to her about what happened last night. Quinn thinks to press but realizes that now might not be the right time. Her and Rachel have to spend another five hours in the car together, and that isn't even including the ride back. Besides, she recognizes that Rachel is already nervous enough about what they are going to find in Foster to worry her about anything else. With these thoughts in mind, Quinn decides not to press Rachel, at least not now. They can confront their futures together when they get back to Lima. If they aren't grounded by their parents for the rest of their lives, that is.
"Is breakfast any good?" Quinn asks, stretching widely.
"It's disgusting," Rachel scrunches her face and stands up, slinging her backpack over her shoulders. "I'm gonna get another cup of coffee, though. I'll meet you out there."
She scurries to leave the room as quickly as possible. Quinn doesn't pretend that she doesn't do this on purpose.
The blonde wants to call after her. She wants to tell her not to go, to come a little bit closer. They can lay in bed together for the rest of the morning, hell, the rest of the day. They can talk about what happened last night, and more importantly, they can make up for it. The right way this time. Quinn doesn't care if the creepy guy at the front desk charges her credit card another $25 for another night in his crap motel. Her father fits the bill anyway. The only thing that she wants is for Rachel to realize that none of this is her fault, that Quinn doesn't blame her, that she in fact feels the same way, that she may be the nightmare, but Rachel is the dream.
Shelby wakes up and goes to work the next morning.
She knows that she could, and that she probably should call out. She would hardly be of any use to her students being so distracted, and she could use the extra time to look for Rachel's and Quinn's - or more specifically - Peter's whereabouts. Then again, she realizes that the idle time would drive her crazy, and the school might be a better resource to locating Peter Gabbanelli than she is. She doesn't even know where to start. To be honest, she wouldn't have been surprised if somebody had told her that Peter was dead. Or maybe she just tells herself this to make herself feel better.
Either way, Rachel and Quinn had used the yearbook to find out that Peter existed at all. Perhaps they had gotten the rest of their information from the school too…
In the end, she gets herself ready, feeds Beth, and then drops her off at the babysitter like she does every morning. She sits in the same traffic as she always does. She drinks from the same coffee mug as she always does. She does everything exactly the same as she does any other day, except this isn't other day. It is far from it.
The only thing that she can think about is her conversation last night with Hiram and LeRoy. It had been awkward to say the least.
It had taken them a long time to get over their initial shock of seeing their daughter's mother for the first time in nearly two decades, but they were motivated by the promise of getting an update on Rachel's whereabouts. They pushed past that and let the woman speak.
Understandably, they were upset that Rachel had found out the truth about her birth father. In their heightened state of anxiety, they had initially accused Shelby of spilling the truth, but they quickly realized that they were out of line making these kinds of allegations. Shelby would never tell Rachel about Peter. They realize that there were things about the man that not even she has told them about. She is terrified of him, and she has every reason to be.
Instead, they easily accepted that Rachel and Quinn were more persistent than any of them could have imagined, even for Rachel. The Berry men understand. While they prided themselves on raising a remarkably smart, independent woman, they never considered the fact that that would come back to bite them.
"Do you know where he is?"
The question was inevitable, Shelby should have anticipated that. Hiram and LeRoy had been hanging off the edges of their seats, panicking about what might happen if and when Rachel does find Peter. They want to know where he is because they want to know if there is still time to get to him before the girls can. Unfortunately, Shelby has to admit that she is less resourceful than her daughter and her friend in this sense.
"I haven't spoken to Peter since before Rachel was born," she had answered, much to the Berry men's disappointment.
"But you have to have some idea!"
It was LeRoy who had snapped first. He raised off his seat, gripping on the edges of the dining room table so hard that his fingers had turned white. Shelby had to insist three more times that she didn't even have an idea before the Berry's believed her. The closest thing that she could give them to closure was her reasoning that Peter would have to be somewhere within a tangible driving distance seeing how neither Rachel or Quinn were over eighteen and couldn't buy themselves plane tickets. They were a two or three day drive in any direction, but that is all she has to go on.
"We should go back to the police," Hiram insisted, nodding enthusiastically at Shelby's revelation. "I bet they hadn't thought of that. They can start dispatching nearby police stations. They can put Quinn's car and license plate number out. They can find them."
"I thought you said the police weren't helpful?" Shelby argued.
"They might be if they knew what that man is capable of!"
Silently, Shelby agreed, but Hiram had tried going to the police again, and they had proved just as helpful the second time as they had the first.
There other options were limited. They had tried calling Finn, although the tall boy had informed the Berry men that him and Rachel have been broken up for nearly two weeks, shocking them. They had no idea how much Rachel has been hiding from them. When they had attempted to get Judy Fabray involved, the blonde woman insisted that this was commonplace for Quinn.
"She always comes back," Mrs. Fabray had insisted. "I wouldn't worry too much."
At William McKinley, Shelby barely walks into the teacher's lounge before she is assigned to substitute a homeroom computer science class on the other side of the school.
It is a small class, unsurprising giving the fact that while kids these days are adamant to get their hands on the newest technology, they are less enthusiastic about learning how it works. Shelby herself has barely any knowledge on the subject. She takes attendance, plays the morning announcements, and lets the class work quietly on their personal coding projects.
She is almost halfway through the class when she realizes that she recognizes one of the girls in the class. She doesn't remember the girl's name, even though she had just taken attendance, but she does know that she has spotted her hanging around Quinn and Rachel, which is the part she really cares about.
The two girls haven't exactly been prone to letting people in lately. Maybe that meant that this girl knows something. Maybe it doesn't. Either way, Shelby realizes that it is worth a try.
She scans through the short class roster on the computer and pretends that she forgot to save it to give her an excuse to take attendance again. There, she learns the girl's name. Genesis. She knew it was something strange like that.
"Genesis, can I talk to you for a minute?" Shelby calls to the girl after the bell rings. She had been impatiently waiting for the end of class since discerning the girl's identity, waiting to talk to her. She did not want to call attention to herself by doing it in front of the rest of the class.
"Sure," Genesis shrugs indifferently, slinging her bag over her shoulder before approaching the teacher's desk.
"You're friends with Quinn, right?" Shelby asks in a low voice just as the last student walks out of the room. She pretends to ignore it as Genesis raises a curious eyebrow at her.
"We're more like acquaintances."
"I've seen you hang around her in the hallways," Shelby points out. She is starting to get the impression that this girl is going to be a harder source of information than what she initially thought.
"We run around the same crowd, that's it," Genesis insists. "Neither one of us are really the type for friends."
"I didn't realize there was a type," Shelby smirks, trying to loosen the girl up, but when Genesis remains stoic, Shelby feels her face fall all over again.
The woman leans forward, bracing herself against her desk with a sigh as she tucks her chin down and tries to search for another approach. She is starting to realize that the only way to get to this girl is to be direct. That is what she was afraid of.
"Listen, I'm sure by now that you heard that Rachel Berry was reported missing by her fathers, and that Quinn is probably with her."
"You think I have something to do with that?" Genesis asks. Shelby watches her defenses go up immediately. She sure as hell is not about to start admitting things.
"I just wanted to know if you know where they might be headed."
Genesis' face hardens in a way that Shelby doesn't like.
"No idea," she says with a stiff tone that tells Shelby that that is not entirely true.
"Genesis, this is important," Shelby all but begs, but before she can convince the girl to say anymore, the door to the classroom bursts open and Will Schuester comes flying in, looking breathless.
"Shelby, Principal Figgins wants to see you, I think it's something about Rachel and Quinn." The man speaks before he even realizes that Shelby is not alone in the room. When he notices Genesis, his eyes dart between the girl and Shelby and he swallows.
"I-I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were in here with somebody."
"It's okay, Will," Shelby waves him off, letting him know that the secret is already out of the bag. "What does Principal Figgins want? Did they find them?"
"No," Will shakes his head and Shelby has to fight to hold in her disappointment. "I think he just wants to ask you some questions about your rehearsals with Rachel. Apparently, you were the last person to see her on Friday after school."
Shelby sighs, tight-lipped. The last thing that she wants to do is divulge details to Principal Figgins of all people about her complicated relationship with one of his students.
"Tell him I'll be right there," Shelby tells Will, seeing no other way out of it. Luckily, the man does not linger. He backs out of the classroom, leaving Shelby and Genesis alone again. When Shelby turns back to the younger girl, she is looking up at the woman curiously.
"Your name is Shelby Corcoran?" she asks after a long moment of consideration.
"That's me," Shelby sighs. She's not sure that she wants to be Shelby Corcoran any more. It's starting to feel like the worst role she has ever played in her life. And she's played a lot of bad roles.
"Last week, Quinn paid me to find some information out on some guy," Genesis finally breathes after a long moment of trying to decide whether or not she wants to say anything at all. "I'm good with computers, so I knew I could find him no problem. His name was Peter something. He had a weird last name. Anyway, Quinn told me that the guy was Rachel Berry's dad. The first thing I found was a restraining order. It was filed by a woman named Shelby Corcoran. Was that you?"
"It was," Shelby nods. She does not hesitate, figuring that it would be in her best interest not to be caught lying while asking Genesis for the truth.
"You're Rachel's mom?" the girl asks, putting the pieces together impressively quickly.
Shelby's lips curl in as she forces a deep breath. She doesn't want to cry in front of a high school student she barely knows, but for the first time in her entire life, a complete stranger has associated her with her daughter, and she has been craving that association for so long that for a split second, she almost forgets herself and loses it entirely.
"I am," she finally manages, the words shaking on the way out. "That's why I need to know, Genesis. Do you have any idea where her and Quinn may have gone?"
"I don't," Genesis answers, and Shelby can tell that she is telling the truth. "But I'm willing to bet that it has something to do with that guy that they were looking for."
"Me too," Shelby nods her head in agreement. "Did you find out where he lives?"
"Look, I'm not a snitch, okay?' Genesis tells Shelby, crossing her arms tight over her chest, insistent. "If Rachel and Quinn wanted to be found, they would have told you where they were going."
"Genesis…"
"I don't snitch," Genesis repeats, but her voice is softer like there is a but hiding somewhere inside of her statement. "But if you happened to tell me that you were interested in finding out some information about Peter Whats-His-Name too, then I just so happen to provide a service that could help you. In that case, it's not snitching. It's just business."
"A service?" Shelby asks, raising an eyebrow. She's not sure that she likes where this is going.
"$100," Genesis nods.
"Seriously?" The woman's eyebrows raise, disappearing inside of her hairline.
"You want an address, I'll get you an address," Genesis nods at her confidently. "It will cost you though."
Shelby takes a breath so deep that her entire body moves. She can't believe that she is even considering this, but what other choice does she have? The police won't be helpful until it's too late, and nobody else seems to have the resources to find this man.
"Meet me in the faculty parking lot in an hour," Shelby concedes after a moment's hesitation. "God, I can't believe I'm doing this."
She looks down at the teenager, who is smirking at her like she had just won the lottery.
"And I can't believe that Rachel Berry's daddy issues are making me rich."
An hour later, Shelby leaves Principal Figgins' office and heads towards the faculty parking lot.
As she had anticipated, Principal Figgins wanted to play detective. He asked Shelby questions about Rachel and Quinn and her relationship with them and she had spent the entire time biting her tongue and being vague. She hasn't worked here long, but she is familiar with the incompetence of the man. If she ever wanted to find the girls, she would not involve the school at all.
Once outside, Shelby slips Genesis a hundred-dollar bill in exchange for a wrinkled post-it with an address written on it in sloppy handwriting. It is the most expensive post-it she has ever seen in her life. She hopes it's worth it.
Shelby calls out of work for the rest of the day, and tomorrow as well. Afterwards, she calls Beth's babysitter, a retiree, although she is still on the young side. She asks if Beth can stay overnight tonight and possibly tomorrow as well, but she can't be sure. She figures if she hits the road now, she could reach Nebraska by the late evening. She doesn't plan on this trip taking any longer than the time it will take to drive there, force Rachel and Quinn into her car, and drive back.
When she calls the Berry men, they tell her that they are confident that they can get to Rachel faster if they fly. Shelby is not sure. The closest airport to Foster is Omaha and that is still a three-hour drive, plus, flights between Lima and Omaha don't exactly leave every hour…
Still, the Berry's book a flight from Toledo to Omaha that will leave at dawn and the two groups agree to keep the other informed. Afterwards, the race is on.
Shelby stops at her apartment, only long enough to pack a couple of necessities. She is back in her Range Rover in five minutes. If she pushes, she knows she will make it there before the Berry men. Hopefully, she will make it there before Rachel and Quinn, too. If she knows Peter as well as she thinks she does, there will not be time to spare.
She pulls onto the highway. The radio is off, leaving her in her silence where she curses herself every couple of seconds for not just coming out and telling Rachel the truth. She thought that she had been protecting the girl by keeping her ignorant. She knew that Rachel would not stop searching, but truth-be-told she was naïve enough to believe that she wouldn't take her search all the way to the man's front door.
She realizes that she underestimated her daughter. She has been underestimating her daughter since the day she met her. When Shelby was Rachel's age, she would have done the same thing. Now she knows that despite their physical distance while Rachel was growing up, their genetic pull was just too strong. Rachel was just like her. Shelby hears herself curse again. She wanted so much more for her daughter.
For some reason, she can't stop thinking about the first role she received after moving back to New York with Beth. She had been hired to play the witch in an off-Broadway production of Into the Woods. She realizes that after spending six months playing a mother so overbearing, she had single-handedly led her daughter down the path of destruction, she should have been able to predict the ending of this story a little better.
Don't you know what's out there in the world?
The line turns over inside of Shelby's head over and over and over again, but she realizes that it is not helpful to dwell. Instead, she presses her foot against the gas pedal and she makes her way a little bit faster in the direction of Foster, Nebraska.
Eighteen-year-old Shelby Corcoran steps up to a professional building on the opposite side of Lima from where her and all of her peers live. She had done this on purpose. The entire city seems to know that she is pregnant at this point, but she had sought this privacy in an effort to keep a little bit of her child's dignity intact. Selfishly, she was considering her own dignity as well.
She swallows before stepping heavily inside of the building. An elderly man holds the door open for her, but he stares at her judgmentally the entire time he does so, just like everybody seems to do the second they notice her protruding stomach. She had hit her five-month mark only days before. She had been ballooning steadily for weeks. Her second trimester had not been kind to her. She doesn't know how much she can blame on the baby and how much she can blame on a never-ending craving for ice cream and peanut butter, but she chooses to place the majority of it on the growing baby inside of her.
She finds the sign that tells her that she can find the office of Hiram G. Berry, family lawyer on the third floor. She takes the stairs, because the elevator is packed, and she can't stand the pitiful stares she thought she would be used to by now.
The baby inside of her starts to kick at her ribs before she is even halfway up the stairs, like it knows what she is trying to do. The teenager lets out an emphatic oomph that nobody is around to hear and takes a break at the landing.
For such a little thing, her baby certainly is a strong one. Her daughter. She had found that detail out only last week at her latest doctor's appointment. For some reason, she hasn't been able to get it out of her head since.
With a lot of effort, Shelby makes it to the third floor. Her daughter is still rolling around inside of her and it is starting to make her nauseous. This is already going to be embarrassing enough, she doesn't have to make it worse by throwing up all over Mr. Berry.
"Settle down," she whispers to her stomach, wrapping her arms around the curvature of it before she risks pushing inside of the office.
"I have an appointment with Mr. Berry," she tells the secretary behind the desk, a thin man in a well-fitting suit and glasses that Shelby can't tell if he actually needs or not.
The man nods at her. He doesn't appear to be too much older than Shelby, maybe in his mid-twenties. Without a word, he stands up and knocks gently on a closed office door just behind his desk.
"Mr. Berry will be out with you in just a moment," he relays the information to Shelby before guiding her to a series of waiting chairs just by the front door.
It is not just a moment. Hiram Berry takes nearly twenty minutes to come out and invite Shelby into his office. In that time, the baby had stopped performing acrobatics inside of Shelby, but she did have to excuse herself once to throw up in the public restroom down the hall. Luckily, she has since learned to start carrying gum and a water bottle with her everywhere she goes.
"Mr. Berry, I'm here because I want to know what my rights are as this child's mother to make sure that her father can have no contact with her."
She hasn't even sat down yet before she is making her intentions known. She has her speech planned. She had written it out last night and rehearsed it in a mirror so late into the evening that she'd had to spend the last couple of hours whispering just to make sure her parents didn't hear her. At this point, they were well aware of her pregnancy, however, they were the types of parents who chose to pretend that it wasn't real. They didn't talk about it. They didn't deserve to know what she was planning on doing once the baby was born.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Corcoran, I don't understand…" Hiram Berry is a young man. Shelby wonders how long he has been out of law school. He was the cheapest family lawyer that Shelby could find, which leads her to believe that it hasn't been long.
"My baby's father," Shelby repeats, gesturing down to her pregnant stomach. "I am afraid that he will pose a threat to my child, both right now and after she is born. I want to know if there is any way that I can protect her from him."
The man raises a very curious eyebrow at Shelby.
"How old are you, Ms. Corcoran?" he finally asks her after a long moment, leaning far forward on his desk on his elbows.
"I'll be nineteen in November," she answers, trying to sound older than she is.
"And what do you do for a living?"
"I just graduated from William McKinley in June," she informs the man and she hates the pitying look that she isn't even sure he realizes that he is giving her. Her eyes narrow. She doesn't need anymore pity. She needs somebody to help her. "And as soon as I have this baby, I am moving to New York to be on Broadway."
"Do you plan on taking the baby with you?"
"No," Shelby answers stiffly. "I plan on giving her up for adoption."
"Yet you think that the baby's father will still be a threat."
"Can I put her up for adoption without him knowing?" Shelby asks, pulling her bottom lip in between her teeth, nervous for the answer.
"He wants to keep the baby?" Hiram Berry asks, trying to get to the bottom of the story.
"He doesn't want her to be born at all!" Shelby argues. She doesn't understand what is so difficult to understand. Her child is in danger and she is trying to protect it. How much more does this lawyer need to know? "He's an ambitious man, Mr. Berry. He doesn't like anything getting in the way of his future, and right now, he thinks that me and this baby are getting in his way."
"You think that he is capable of harming you and your child?"
"I think that it is in my best interest not to underestimate him," Shelby nods.
The man leans back inside of his chair, thinking very carefully for a moment. "
Are you married to the baby's father, Ms. Corcoran?" he finally asks.
"No."
"In the state of Ohio, an unmarried woman is considered the sole custodial parent."
"But he can fight it," Shelby argues. She watches the man raise an eyebrow at her, like he is impressed by the scope of her knowledge. "I looked it up. He could take it to court. The only thing that it would take is a DNA test. I can't place the baby up for adoption if we're in the middle of a legal proceeding. Who knows what will happen by the time it's over."
Mr. Berry takes a deep breath. Shelby watches him remove his glasses very purposefully, wiping his hand over his face.
"Has your baby's father ever harmed you, Ms. Corcoran?" he finally asks. "Has he ever hurt you or your baby in any way?"
Shelby hesitates, her eyes flickering into her lap. It is an answer in itself, in Hiram Berry's eyes, but she can't say it. She doesn't want to think about it. She doesn't want to consider the day that she told Peter that she was pregnant, the day she told him she was considering keeping the baby, the day she got pregnant in the first place….
"His behavior has been erratic as of late." She chooses to answer vaguely.
"What do you mean by erratic?"
Shelby closes her eyes and tries not to cry in front of this man. There had been a time not so long ago that Shelby thought that she was in love. She found out that she was pregnant, and she was foolish to believe that her and Peter and this baby could be a family. But then she told him, and response wasn't what she had expected at all. When rumors started circling around town, Peter's position in his father's "business" for lack of a better word, was threatened. Too much attention, the man had told Peter. Before then, Shelby didn't realize what the man did for a living, or why he had to leave Brooklyn for a place like Lima, Ohio in the first place…
Peter blamed Shelby for the lost opportunity. Worse, he blamed the baby. He had gone so far as to rob a gas station at gunpoint to prove himself to his father, but that only made things worse after he was arrested. The arresting officer had been on his father's payroll, meaning he got nothing worse than probation, but that only put Peter more at odds with his father. It only made him angrier at Shelby and his child. With Peter growing increasingly erratic and the court system inside of the Gabbanelli family's pockets, Shelby knew she couldn't risk it. She had to be sneaky. She had to take matters into her own hands.
Shelby returns to Hiram's office several times over the next several weeks. He proves to be a kind man, sympathetic to her plight. He knows that Shelby doesn't have a lot of money. Everything he does for her, he does pro bono, even though Shelby knows his tiny law office doesn't get much business to begin with.
He starts by petitioning for the court to file a restraining order against Peter on behalf of Shelby. His secretary, who Shelby has since learned is named LeRoy, signs off as the witness. A week later, he is calling Shelby to regretfully inform her that the petition has been rejected. Shelby is disappointed, but not surprised. The reason she had started all of this in the first place was because she knew she couldn't trust the courts.
He asks her to come into his office as soon as possible to discuss another possible solution. Hiram sets an appointment for after hours. Shelby does not realize how unusual that is until she is sitting inside of the now-familiar office in the dead of night, with nobody but Hiram and LeRoy there with her.
"I have a possible solution to your problem," Hiram informs the girl. "But I have to admit to you that it's rather unorthodox."
"What do you mean?" Shelby questions, raising her eyebrow.
"My partner and I have been trying to have a baby for about two years now," he explains slowly.
"Partner?" Shelby raises an eyebrow. She has been coming to this office regularly for almost a month now and never once did Hiram Berry mention anything about being married. There is not one family photo on his desk, or even a ring on his finger.
Before Hiram can answer, Shelby watches LeRoy take a tentative step forward. His hand slips inside of Hiram's and squeezes tight and Shelby feels her face dip with realization.
"Oh…" she breathes. Perhaps she was being naïve, but never once had she considered that Hiram and LeRoy might be a couple.
Understanding floods into her like somewhere inside of her, a dam had just broke. She realizes exactly what Hiram is suggesting. It isn't that he was having a difficult time having a baby, it is that he couldn't. The state of Ohio was not exactly a breeding ground for gay rights. While the rest of the world was slowly coming to grips with the AIDS epidemic, Ohio was always several beats behind. The people here still believed you could contract the disease by looking a gay man in the eyes. They were terrified, and more often than not, ignorance displays itself in an ugly manner. Shelby might get stares on the street for being the pregnant teenager, but Hiram and LeRoy could not even publicly display their relationship without risking their dignity, their careers, their lives…
"We tried an adoption agency," Hiram goes on to explain after a moment. "They kicked us out without saying a word. We have no legal documentation identifying our union, meaning we have no grounds to adopt or use a surrogacy agency. We looked up a few at-home methods, and even got a couple of women to try them, but nothing worked. This is our last chance."
"What do you suggest?" Shelby asks, and not even she can believe how strong her voice sounds when she does.
"I can place my name on the birth certificate," Hiram offers.
"Can you get in trouble?"
The man hesitates. "I can be disbarred."
"Mr. Berry, I couldn't…"
"You would have to sign a contract, turning over your parental rights and agreeing not to make contact with the child until your eighteen," Hiram cuts the girl off before she could lose her bravado.
"Why?"
"Because if something ever did come up regarding a custody issue, the state of Ohio would side with the mother before they ever sided with an unwed gay man, regardless of my name being on the birth certificate or not."
Shelby takes a deep breath. This seems to be happening very fast.
"What about Peter?"
"If my name is on the birth certificate, then Peter will have no legal right to the child."
"But he knows about the baby already," Shelby sputters, searching for holes in this arrangement, mostly because she doesn't know if she wants it to be fool proof. "I can't just stop being pregnant."
"Maybe you can," Hiram lowers his eyes at the girl, who understands what he is saying immediately.
"You want me to tell him I lost it?"
"You would have to lay low until the baby is born," Hiram nods. "LeRoy and I have a guest bedroom that you can stay in. Afterwards, we will give you a significant sum of money to help you relocate and establish yourself in New York."
"I'm not selling my baby for money."
"It's not for your baby," Hiram insists. "It's to help you get away from Peter."
Shelby takes a deep breath. She can't believe that she's considering this, but the more she looks for a break in the plan, the more she realizes that there isn't one. She wants to protect her daughter from ever having to know that Peter Gabbanelli didn't want her. This is the way to do it. Finally, she feels her confidence soar.
"Okay," she nods to the two men. "I'll do it."
Despite their late start, Rachel and Quinn make it to the small town of Foster, Nebraska by the early evening, just as people are starting to trudge out of work.
Their ride together could be described as awkward at best. The girls hardly spoke a word to each other, and in the middle of nowhere, the radio didn't have signal more often than it did, meaning that the majority of the drive was spent in silence.
Following the map she had brought back in Illinois, Quinn takes an unmarked exit off of a one-lane highway, which spits her out on a dirt road that is labelled as Main St. on a handwritten sign. Once the dust that her tires have kicked up settles, she sees the sign up ahead welcoming them to Foster, Nebraska.
"Jesus, what a dive…" Quinn breathes as she continues to pull her car down the quiet street. The blonde isn't bold enough to consider herself a city girl, but compared to this town, Lima might as well be New York.
As her and Rachel ascend further into the town, she notices that there are a lot of people out on the streets. They stop and stare as Quinn's tires crinkle under the gravel road, looking at her and Rachel like they have never seen a BMW before in their lives.
Come to think about it, Quinn wonders if maybe they haven't.
There is only one restaurant in all of Foster, Nebraska, and it just so happens to double as the town bar.
Not quite ready to confront her estranged father yet, despite hours of preparation, Rachel comes up with the excuse that maybe they should eat dinner and give Peter an opportunity to wind down from a day of work before they go knock on his door. Quinn knows the truth behind Rachel's suggestion, but the brunette hardly needs anything rubbed in her face right now, so Quinn simply agrees and follows the girl inside of the building, which looks like something straight out of an old western movie.
Immediately upon entering, the girls' senses are assaulted. It looks and smells exactly what one might expect a small-town bar to look like. Quinn has half a mind to ask the owner for their latest health inspection results but realizes that they probably don't even have one.
It feels like each one of the fifty-one residents of this god forsaken town are inside of this bar right now, which doesn't help to ease either Quinn's or Rachel's nerves. The patrons are packed around the bar, drinking watered-down beer with grimy, forlorn expressions on their faces, trying to decompress from an endless cycle of back-breaking labor.
Cigarette smoke hangs low in the air, choking the girls. They stare as though they are watching a circus but notice that people are staring back at them with the exact same expression.
The moment they are seated, the noise swelters inside of the place. It doesn't take the girls long to realize that everybody is talking about them. They don't belong here, that much is obvious, and the girls know from their years in Lima that for what small towns lack in population, they make up for in gossip.
The restaurant has no vegetarian options. Basically, if it is not a cheeseburger or beer, they don't have it. Quinn is totally fine by this, but it leaves Rachel a little more stranded. In the end, they both order cheeseburgers, for which Quinn eats both while Rachel picks on the double order of fries. By the time they are finished, they are clamoring so hard to get out of the place that they almost forget where the next stop on their adventure is.
"You okay?" Quinn asks Rachel as they slide back into the BMW. They have been straying away from saying anything real to one another all day, but this is the moment that they have both come all this way for, and Quinn could hardly get away with not saying anything if she still wanted to make things work with Rachel.
"I'm fine," Rachel breathes. It comes out as shaky, but not so prohibitively so that Quinn would question whether or not Rachel can handle this.
Before either girl could fall back on their insistences, Quinn pulls the car in drive and continues down the main dirt road. Her map is not so detailed that it gives street names in a dumpy little town like this, but there are only about ten roads that make up this entire town, so she figured she would have to find Schneider St. eventually, which she does, tucked away into the far corner of town.
It terminates at a dead end about a mile off of the main road, but for being such a long street, there is only one building on the entire block, a dilapidated old trailer that has so much junk strewn all over the front lawn that it takes Quinn a couple of minutes to find the wooden sign hammered into the ground with the numbers 310 spray-painted in orange paint on it.
The two of them stare out the window, taking in the building, which looks seconds away from collapsing in on itself.
Rachel's back is heaving up and down in motions that move her entire body. Quinn has half a mind to ask her if she is okay again, but before the blonde can even get the words out, Rachel rides her adrenaline wave and steps out of the car before she can stop herself.
The brunette storms towards the trailer. There is no driveway or path leading to the front of the house, so she has to weave through the trash dotting the overgrown front lawn to get to the door. Behind her, she hears Quinn rush out of her car to follow, but she doesn't look back because she knows that if she does, she will be lost, and she will just ask the blonde to take her back home to her normal house in her normal town with her normal parents…
She has no idea what she is going to say to Peter when she finally does come face-to-face with him, but if she starts to think about that now, she knows she will lose her cool, so she doesn't. Instead, she keeps walking forward. Even when she hears Quinn get out of the car and run to catch up with her, she doesn't think about the blonde. She is glad to have Quinn by her side to face this, but she can hardly tell her that. She had already crossed her maximum threshold for embarrassment with the blonde. Doing so again right now, of all times, would be suicide.
She knocks on the door while she still has some of her nerve left. She hears a dog start to bark on the other side immediately, but otherwise there are no lights on inside of the house, even though it is starting to get dark outside.
When there is no answer, Rachel knocks again. The dog continues to bark with a renewed vigor, but when Rachel listens more carefully, she realizes that there is no other sound coming from inside of the house.
"Maybe he's not home?" Quinn suggests. Rachel looks over her shoulder at her. She is starting to tremble now. Her confidence is dwindling quickly. What if they got the wrong house? What if Genesis had given them an old address and Peter doesn't even live here anymore? What if everything that everyone has been telling her is true and what is on the other side of that door proves to be nothing but danger?
But she hadn't come all this way for nothing. Narrowing her eyes and determined to override all of these negative thoughts plaguing her, Rachel knocks one final time, this time louder than the other two. When there is still no answer, she concludes that Peter could have very well been at the same bar her and Quinn had just been in, drinking away a day of work. The place was packed, and Rachel and Quinn had been actively avoiding eye contact with anyone. Maybe they just missed him. Maybe he would be home soon.
"Should we wait for him?" Rachel suggests.
Quinn shrugs. She knows that they probably shouldn't. She knows that they should probably just get another motel room and wait until the morning, when it is light outside with more people around, reducing the risk. But she also knows that Rachel doesn't need to hear that right now. Besides, if there is a dog in the house, Peter couldn't be gone for too long, right?
"Sure," Quinn agrees, despite everything that she wants to say.
Rachel looks up at the blonde and smiles appreciatively, albeit shyly. She stares at Quinn and realizes despite the embarrassment she'd caused herself, still, nobody has the capacity to heal her like Quinn does. Not even herself.
"Thanks Quinn." Rachel expresses her gratitude softly. Quinn nods her head and for a second, she forgets all of the awkwardness that has been brewing between them all day. Reaching down, she grabs onto Rachel's hand and squeezes hard.
"It's all gonna be okay, Rachel," she assures the girl and she hopes she isn't lying. She looks deep inside of Rachel's dark, brown eyes and feels them pierce her from the inside out. Suddenly, everything that happened between them yesterday seems obsolete. The awkwardness, the embarrassment, Rachel's desire to crawl in a hole and disappear, it's gone.
Silently, Quinn informs the girl that she has nothing to be embarrassed about; that, if anything, it should be Quinn who is embarrassed for going nearly eighteen years of her life without knowing this person who has somehow managed to transform her in the last couple of weeks alone.
The duo retreat to Quinn's car, and Quinn has to actively stop herself from thinking about Rachel, who still hasn't let go of her hand.
They only separate when they get back to Quinn's car and they have no choice. Once inside, they both sit stiff in their seats, breathing heavily as they attempt to figure out what to do next for so long that their breath fogs up the windows and Quinn has to roll them down just to get some fresh air into the car.
"I'm sorry about what happened yesterday," Quinn finally breathes after the silence starts to crawl under her skin. It is the first time that either girl has mentioned what happened at all.
Rachel feels her eyes dart to the side to stare surprised at the blonde for being the one to apologize when she is the one who had ruined everything.
"What do you have to be sorry for?" she asks, the color flushing high inside of her cheeks in a way that Quinn can see even through the increasing darkness.
"I just… I didn't want to push you away," Quinn admits, forcing her eyes away from Rachel and down into her lap. "I've been waiting for something like that to happen with you forever, but you just seemed so sad, and so broken that I… I felt like I was taking advantage of you. I didn't want whatever happens between us next to be defined like that, so I pushed you away. I should have told you all of that last night. I'm sorry for letting you go so long thinking that you did something wrong."
"So… so you're not mad?" Rachel asks hesitantly.
Quinn shakes her head, staring hard at the brunette like she is seeing color for the first time.
"Never," the blonde breathes, and before she knows it, she is reaching up to pull one of Rachel's chestnut locks behind her ear.
She watches Rachel close her eyes into the touch and physically relax, like Quinn had just somehow given her permission to feel something again.
"I don't think that I could have done this without you," Rachel admits, reaching up to hold Quinn's hand tight against her cool cheek.
"Of course you could have," Quinn smiles at her. "You're Rachel Berry."
Rachel's eyes turn down. She pulls out of Quinn's grasp and sinks deep into her seat. Quinn retreats as though burned, afraid that she has said something wrong.
"Sometimes I feel like I don't know who I am at all anymore," she admits quietly. Quinn nods. If she understands anything at all, it is what that feels like.
"Me too," she nods, but then forces Rachel to look at her again. "But for some reason, whenever you're around, I know exactly who I am again."
Rachel blushes at the blonde in a way that makes her look more than beautiful, but she doesn't say anything. Instead, she lets out a breath so deep that it sounds like she has been holding it in since they have left the hotel room. She tilts herself sideways over the center console and rests her head gently against Quinn's shoulder. Her hair tickles underneath Quinn's nose. It smells of cheap motel shampoo, but her familiar scent still lingers underneath it and Quinn inhales for all she is worth.
The two of them fall into a comfortable quiet for the first time since last night. Quinn feels her shoulders relax as she lets the moment take over. Feeling bold, she even goes so far as to reach over and put her casted right hand on Rachel's knee, squeezing it reassuringly, like she is feeling the promise from this unspoken step forward in their relationship.
The night is still young, but neither one of them had gotten a lot of sleep last night. The stars lingering above this desolate town are magnificent, and they provide just enough glow that Rachel is fast asleep within a couple of minutes. Quinn can tell that she has fallen asleep because she hasn't heard the girl breathe so easily in weeks.
The blonde wants to stay awake. She wants to keep vigil for Rachel, protecting her while simultaneously keeping an eye out for Peter, but the comfort of Rachel's body against hers feels like the biggest, warmest blanket Quinn has ever felt in her life and it isn't long until her eyes start to grow heavy too.
She blinks against her exhaustion a couple of times. She can think about nothing other than her desire to break the clock so that the hands of time will never move again. She wants to stay right here with Rachel for the rest of her life.
Quinn takes a deep breath through her nose, counting the seconds that pass by through Rachel's steady breathing next to her. This time when her eyes close, they don't open again, and she is lulled into oblivion with the image of Rachel's eyes looking into her like she has never seen another person in her life m, keeping her safe.
The blonde's eyes snap open again after only a couple of minutes, or has it been hours? She realizes that she doesn't know, that she had been in a deep sleep, and that she never would have woken up on her own if it wasn't for that sound, which she quickly realizes is the sound of knuckles wrapping against her driver seat window.
Quinn fidgets a little bit inside of her seat, struggling to regain an understanding of her surroundings. She sits up, reluctant to wake up completely from the dream that she was having where Rachel was on top of her, staring down at her with those big, brown doe eyes bearing right into her soul. Then, she hears the sound again and she realizes that she is still in her car and Rachel is still asleep on her shoulder and they are still in middle-of-nowhere Nebraska.
Quinn follows the sound and blinks out the window with bleary eyes. For a second, she thinks that she is still dreaming, because when her vision finally does focus, it is on those exact same eyes that she had just been dreaming about, still looking down at her.
It takes her a couple of seconds to realize that these eyes aren't looking at her in a seductive way. Instead, they look angry, and as the sleep clears out of Quinn's brain, she realizes that they do not belong to Rachel at all, but to the man that had given them to her in the first place. Peter Gabbanelli.