Chapter 28: The Cause and the Consequence
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"You have two months to find somewhere else to live," Pettigrew reminded her as she signed over her house to the lucky buyer.
Rachel was shocked at how quickly her property had been snagged up. Apparently some old rich guy who owned a security company had fallen in love with the house. After briefly meeting the man herself, Rachel had a sneaking suspicion his dream was to turn it into a harem. She couldn't have cared less. It was one more weight off her shoulders, but then there was the dilemma of where to live next.
She hadn't talked to Frank once since she'd found out the truth about Nicki. She didn't know what to say to him, and he obviously didn't want to bring it up ever again. It frustrated her that he had come to see her with the intention of discussing what had happened between them, but the timing hadn't allowed them to do so. She burned with everything she wanted to say to him, but she knew that her cooling off period had not yet run its course.
Her nightmares of Nicki had increased the week following her birthday. Frank's revelation made them even more horrifying.
She had to escape it.
Bill was retired. Pettigrew was off duty. Fletcher was busy moving into his new apartment.
But she couldn't be alone. So the second her phone rang with an impromptu invite from her girlfriends to go celebrate her selling the house, Rachel jumped at the chance to distract herself with some much needed female company.
Unfortunately for her, Rachel's two closest local girlfriends were into a much different scene than she was. She found herself roped into visiting a psychic downtown, whom her friend Angela had insisted was "the real deal."
A flickering neon green sign outside the front of the building read "Nica's Place." The inside was more brightly lit than she would have pictured a mystic's office to be, the windows flanked by sheer blue curtains, the sills lined with crystals. The white brick walls were covered from floor to ceiling in zodiac signs, tarot cards, and star charts. For it being such a small venue, the waiting room was packed with a motley assortment of women about their age.
They were called back through a beaded doorway, and there sat Miss Nica herself at a small round table, clad in an exotic looking garment with long golden sleeves. Her large earrings looked painful, and her cool green eyes looked surreal against her dark brown skin. From the unsettling way the woman's eyes bugged out, Rachel assumed she wore colored contacts.
"Angela, darling, so good to have you back," Nica said in a calm, smooth voice. She smiled slyly. "I see you've brought some friends tonight."
Angela excitedly introduced them. "This is Molly, and this is Rachel."
"I sense a non-believer in the room," Nica sighed, her eyes fixed on Rachel. "Why don't we start with you, dear?"
Suddenly uneasy, Rachel reluctantly sat in the middle chair across from the woman, who closed her eyes and began to do strange flowing motions in the air with her hands.
"I'm picking up some very distressed energy from you," Nica accused, peeking between her lashes at Rachel. She reached out across the table and took one of Rachel's hands in her lanky fingers, tapping her palm experimentally. "You've had a great deal of change in your life in the past several weeks, haven't you?"
Rachel resisted the urge to roll her eyes. What person wasn't going through changes? Funny how all psychics seemed to parrot the same nonsense.
"And... you've made a very dark discovery recently, yes?"
Rachel swallowed hard, remembering Nicki's journal and her conversation with Frank. Her mind went dark. She shrugged noncommittally, perturbed by the silence in the small room. It was just a coincidence, she told herself. This woman was a professional who clearly knew just the right things to say to manipulate her clientele.
"You have a baby?"
Rachel shifted, taken aback by the unexpected question. "I have a son. He's eighteen but yeah, he's my baby."
"No, no, you have an infant," Nica insisted, her fingers tightening around Rachel's hand. "I'm seeing an infant."
"Uh… I think I'd know if I had an infant at home."
"Oh!" The woman slapped her bangled hands down on her lap with resolute certainty. "You're pregnant," she announced as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Rachel saw her girlfriends exchange a glance before they both busted out laughing.
"I'm forty," Rachel said angrily.
"God makes the rules, sweetie, not me," Nica drawled, her green eyes pale and patronizing. "If you've been messin' with that baby batter, you might end up bakin' a cake."
Rachel felt the heat rise to her face as she looked over at Molly and Angela, both of them now fanning themselves from laughing so hard.
Rachel crossed her arms and smirked at the psychic. "Okay then, when's the baby due?"
"It's fuzzy . . ."
"Mm hm. Is it a boy or a girl?"
Nica squeezed her eyes shut. "I can't see that either."
"Sure, sure."
With a start, Nica opened her eyes. "The father is an Enneagram 1. His aura is very temperamental. And… he's a Virgo!"
Rachel gave a mock gasp. "Oh, heaven forbid!"
Nica's tone was full of warning. "He isn't a good match for you. I'm picking up a significant difference in your vibrations. Best to keep the baby a secret from him." Rachel's mouth dropped open as the woman extricated a business card from her sleeve. "But if you do happen to see him again, send him my way. He's in dire need of some chakra balancing."
Rachel tuned out during her friends' readings. Though she didn't believe in any of this stuff, the implication that she could possibly be pregnant had her worried. She hadn't been keeping track of things since the move, distracted as she was by the sudden upheaval in her life. She hadn't bled in a while, but it wasn't the first time her body had skipped a month from the stress. On the off chance it were true, there was only one man who could feasibly be the father. Suddenly, her ability to focus seemed to fly out the window.
Two hundred dollars later, they sauntered out of Nica's Place, snickering at their individual premonitions. "I don't know about you girls, but I could use some tequila to wash down that bullshit!" Molly declared.
"You just wait, hater!" Angela laughed, wrapping her arm around Rachel's shoulders as she got the attention of a cab. "Nica has a scary good track record!"
The car pulled up to the curb and Molly hopped inside. "Coming, Rach?"
Angela nudged her. "She can't drink, remember? She's knocked up!"
Rachel pushed her friend out of the way and stepped inside the cab. "Watch me."
There wasn't any harm in having just a couple drinks. Fletcher had told her no more "house parties." He hadn't said anything about partying out at the bar . . .
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She didn't understand how it happened so quickly. One moment they were all sitting at the bar, cackling hysterically together, and the next she felt a twisting, burning sensation deep in her abdomen that caused the breath to shoot straight out of her lungs. At first she'd thought she had laughed so hard she had burst a blood vessel or strained a muscle. Then as she straightened her posture in an attempt to make the pain go away, it only got worse.
"You okay, Rach?" Angela asked, touching her hand.
"Yeah," Rachel lied in a strained voice. "Stomach hurts."
"Mine, too!" Molly shouted. "Y'all are splitting my sides here."
"You want a water?" Angela asked. Rachel didn't answer. She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed through the pain as the bartender placed a thin glass of ice water in front of her.
"Rach?"
"I'm gonna go to the restroom," she forced the words out, embarrassed beyond belief. The others looked at her with concern.
"You want me to come with you, honey?" Molly called out.
"No!" Rachel shouted back over the noise. She sprinted through the dimly lit hallway, the smell of cigarette smoke making her queasy as she bolted into the women's restroom, threw open the closest stall door, and pulled down her pants.
"Shit…" There was blood. Not a lot of it, but enough to cause concern. Another cramp paralyzed her momentarily, and she fell back onto the toilet seat in terror. She began panting as she sat there, praying silently for the pain to ease up so she could pull herself together. Her head began to spin.
In her panic, she barely processed the sounds of people entering the bathroom, followed by the slamming of the stall door next to her. The muffled sound of a moaning couple next to her made her feel the sudden urge to vomit.
Eyes still shut, Rachel feverishly began to search the pockets of her leather jacket, looking for a pad, a tampon, anything to help with the bleeding. She hadn't worn this jacket in ages, maybe luck would be on her side. She continued to pray under her breath, tossing aside used tissues, chewing gum wrappers, old coins, and then her fingers collided with something cold and hard. Shaking, she pulled out the small enameled cross that Frank had given her on the night they went to the Mayan.
Her heart dropped. She clutched the cross in her right hand as she continued to bleed, eyes full of tears. The bathroom door opened again and this time Molly and Angela's concerned voices both called her name. The couple making out in the stall beside her fell silent.
"I'm fine," Rachel lied again, gritting her teeth to hide the pain from her voice. "I'm fine, I just need a few minutes."
"Okay," Molly hesitated. "You want us to wait for you?"
"No, go back to the bar!" Rachel couldn't think of how to explain her situation, especially not in the public restroom of a bar with a pair of strangers practically fucking in the stall next to her. She waited until Molly and Angela were gone before she started sobbing.
The stall door next to her opened then shut, and the footsteps of the people who had previously occupied it scurried out into the hall.
What had become of her life? Rachel continued to sob on the toilet, her heart breaking as she wheezed through some of the worst pain she'd ever known, still clutching Frank's cross in her hand as if her life depended on it. It seemed one moment she'd gone from being on top of the world, an A-list celebrity who topped the charts every week, to a pathetic, washed up, 40-year-old single mom whose dead sister had once tried to kill her.
Rachel gasped at another cramp followed by a gush of blood. She wasn't stupid. She knew what was likely happening to her. She didn't know how long it would take before she could give up being in denial about it.
She waited for the bleeding to slow again before stuffing her panties full of rough single-ply toilet paper and flushing the toilet behind her. Her hands were shaking as she washed them quickly, escaped to the back hallway, and found a safe spot to lean hidden against the wall. She reached for her cell phone and dialed the only person whom she was certain would answer her call no matter how ungodly the hour.
"Rachel." She could tell from his voice that he'd just been asleep.
"Frank, I'm…"
She stopped cold, unable to bring herself to say what she wanted to say. She immediately regretted calling him, and wished she could just hang up. But it was too late.
She could hear his suspended breathing on the other line.
"Rachel?" His voice grew stronger. "If you're talking, I can't hear you over the background noise."
"I'm sorry… I'm at a bar."
"Who are you with?"
She winced. He sounded pissed.
She counteracted him by trying to sound as casual as possible. "Some girlfriends."
"Is Pettigrew with you?"
She hesitated. Frank was going to kill her. "He doesn't know I'm here."
She could hear Frank's heavy sigh on the other line. He was quiet for a moment, during which her eyes began to well up with tears. "Do you need me?" he asked, and it tipped her over the edge. She started sobbing uncontrollably.
"Rachel?" His voice cracked with concern. "What happened?"
"I think… I think I'm having a miscarriage."
From the sudden sounds of his panting, she could tell he had already gotten up and started heading to the door. "Where are you?"
"The Blue Room on South San—"
"I'm coming." And he hung up.
Rachel walked quickly over to the bar entrance, but stopped in her tracks as she caught a glimpse of her friends, laughing flirtatiously with two much younger guys. The nausea and cramps overtook her again, so strong that this time she bent over and groaned through the pain.
She hobbled back into the hall and lingered there for some time, hiding around the corner every time she heard footsteps. She was slightly surprised that neither Molly or Angela had come back to check on her. They must have gotten so drunk that they forgot. The pain seemed to ease up a bit, enough for her to check her phone. She had no messages or missed calls. The minutes ticked by so slowly.
Rachel waited more, pacing under the dim, flickering purple lights. She checked her phone again. 1:17 A.M.
She looked back in her call history and saw that her call to Frank had been placed at 1:10 A.M. If he was driving from his house in Chatsworth it would take at least twenty minutes for him to get there, even if he sped.
Rachel backtracked through the hallway until she found a side exit onto the street. She settled herself down on the curb and covered her face on the off chance that someone would recognize her. It was dark and cold, and there were drunkards cussing and cackling in every direction. Rachel didn't remember the last time she was this frightened. She reached back into her pocket and held the cross again, gripping it tightly in her right hand.
She nearly jumped out of her skin as a strange man who reeked of weed tapped her on the shoulder and asked in a suggestive voice if she needed someone to go home with. Despite her stomach twisting in pain, Rachel straightened to her full height, wound up her right hand and threw a hard punch square in the man's chest. "Get the hell away from me!"
The man cursed loudly and stumbled away. A few people nearby who had seen the altercation started whistling and laughing in approval. Rachel winced, hoping no one had recognized her. She moved quickly around the corner of the building, trying to escape being noticed. If she wanted to stay here any longer she would have to lay low. It was getting harder and harder to do that the longer she loitered outside.
She didn't know if she was just being paranoid, but it seemed that everyone on the dark street was staring at her. She was obviously struggling, and maybe they could tell. No one approached her directly from that point on, though, and for that she was grateful. She buried her face in her arms and crouched down against the brick wall in the alley between buildings, wondering if she would ever again experience such heights of misery.
Desperate for a distraction, she pulled out her cell phone and dialed Tina Brennan.
It was not quite five in the morning on the East Coast, so Rachel was shocked by the immediate response.
"Rachel, are you alright?"
Rachel instantly began to sob. "No, Tina. I'm not."
"Oh, my God. What happened?"
Through spluttering sobs, Rachel spilled the entire story of her reconnection with Frank at the Sheraton and the sexual escapades in Tahoe that had followed. She could barely bring herself to utter the word "pregnant" over the phone; it still felt like a nightmare.
Thank God for Tina being a morning person. She was more supportive than she should have been after hearing the story, and Rachel could not recall a time when she had been able to have honest and vulnerable girl-talk like this before. She had just spent an entire evening with two of her closest girlfriends in L.A., and neither of them had even bothered to come looking for her. It was a wake-up call that had come far too late.
"I'm flying out there to be with you!" Tina announced.
Rachel laughed through her sobs. "Honey, don't be ridiculous! Frank's coming to pick me up now, I'll be fine. I just needed to tell someone." She paused to catch her breath, staring out at the dark alley. "...I'm so beside myself right now."
"Everything will be okay. I know it will be! Your knight in shining armor is coming."
Rachel had to smile sadly at Tina's overly romantic tendencies. But was she really that far off? It had been so long since Rachel felt she had needed rescuing. With the promise to update Tina on how things turned out, Rachel disconnected the call. At the same time, her phone at last buzzed alive with a text from Frank.
Parked outside. Black Cadillac Catera.
She ran. She didn't care how crazy she looked to everyone else on that sidewalk. She knew that in just a few more seconds she would be safe, and that was her only driving force.
Rachel callously shoved aside two men on the street who were admiring the car. She yelled at them to get out of her way, opened the passenger door, and jumped inside. Not a second after her door slammed shut, she heard the loud echo of the locking mechanism on all four doors of the car, then the screech of tires as he sped off.
"Are you okay?" Frank asked urgently. Her heart rate seemed to settle instantly at the sound of his voice. Embarrassed and flustered, she refused to look at him.
"No," she replied honestly. "Nothing like this has ever happened to me before, Frank. I haven't even had a scare since Fletcher." She began to cry softly. He reached over and snapped open the glove compartment, revealing a black Glock.
"Fuck, Frank!"
"It's not loaded."
"Isn't it illegal to have a gun in an unlocked glove compartment?" she spluttered.
He didn't answer her. Instead he shifted the gun aside and pulled out a packet of tissues.
"Oh," Rachel muttered. By the time she'd wiped her tears away, the tissue was blackened by mascara. "You and your damn guns," she sniffed. She still couldn't bring herself to look at him.
After he'd been driving for about five minutes, the cramps started up again. At first they were mild enough that she could pretend nothing was happening, but they soon became painful to the point where she was writhing in her seat.
"Do you want me to take you to the hospital?"
She whimpered in protest. "No! I'd be recognized."
"Are you sure you don't need to go to the E.R.?"
Rachel adamantly shook her head.
"I'm taking you to my house," he decided, swerving through the intersection to make a last minute right turn.
Frank was driving about ten miles above the speed limit and had already run at least three red lights, but once he made it to the freeway, the car engine roared like a lion escaped from its cage. Rachel curled up against the car door, clutching her abdomen as the car zoomed through the HOV lane. "We'll be there in under ten minutes," he said assuredly.
He kept true to his promise. Though it seemed like an eternity, they finally arrived in a residential neighborhood. Rachel managed to squint out the window at a dimly lit street sign which read Variel Avenue.
He drove a little further, not caring to stop at any of the posted stop signs. Not a single other car shared the road at this hour. At last he pulled into the driveway of a beautiful two-story home concealed by loads of tall cottonwood trees.
He didn't bother pulling the car into the garage. Instead he put it in park, ran around to her side of the car, and flung open the passenger door to help her out.
Rachel gasped at the rush of blood that came out of her as she stood up.
"It's alright," he told her, having caught the discreet location of her hand. "Hold onto me." He steadied her and helped her walk up the front porch steps and through the door. She still had managed not to look at him; she could only stare at the ground in shame. Through her teary eyes, she saw that he had been barefoot the entire drive.
As soon as they were inside, he flicked the lights on. She grunted in pain as he attempted to help her up the staircase. Realizing she wasn't going to have an easy time of it, he scooped her up and carried her instead.
Surely he assumed she was exaggerating the pain just to get him to carry her again, she thought. Fuck it, she didn't care. Her head rested against his cotton sweatshirt, trying to hide her face from him. She knew she must have looked an absolute mess. If she died tonight, only then would her vanity be put to rest with her.
She finally opened her eyes when he brought her into his bedroom and carefully placed her down, heels first on the carpet. His hand never left her back as he opened the bathroom door and guided her inside. As they passed the large mirror on the wall above the sink, Rachel saw her sorry reflection in contrast to her rescuer, who incidentally looked the most handsome she'd ever seen him look before. Unable to handle the humiliation, she again buried her face in her hands and resumed sobbing over the sink. As she did so, the cross he'd given her fell from her hand and into the sink with a soft metal 'clink.'
He said her name. It was different than how he'd ever said it before. Kind of like someone had pinched him in the wrong spot the moment he said it. She looked up at his reflection in the mirror, weeping.
A bit forcefully, Frank turned her away from the sink and pulled her against him. She cried into him for what seemed like forever while he held her, stroking her hair.
He whispered her name again after some time, causing her to look down at the small pool of blood that had gathered on the white tile around her feet. She cursed, mortified, as she had no choice but to strip herself from the waist down.
She couldn't have felt more foolish, sitting in agony on the toilet, blood all over her now bare legs, still wearing her expensive jewelry, leather jacket, and strappy black heels. If this had to happen to her, she wished it would have happened any other night but tonight.
"Rachel, how… how far along are you?" he asked tentatively. She used the brief break between cramps to think. Was he trying to figure out if it would have been his? The thought made her go cold.
"I don't know." She blotted her eyes with the back of her hand. "I've been so out of it lately, I . . . I don't know."
She could only bear to look at his face for a second, but his expression was unreadable. The unspoken question lingered in the room between them. She knew what he didn't. She hadn't slept with a soul since she was with him at the cabin. And she hadn't slept with anyone for nearly eight months before she saw him at the Sheraton. She wondered if she should just tell him, but before she could think of a tactful way to say it, the pangs in her stomach returned with a vengeance. Blood began pouring out of her now, much more violently than it had been back at the bar.
She was vaguely aware that Frank had knelt down beside the tub and began to draw a bath. When the pain had finally let up enough for her to speak, she asked him what he was doing.
"Leah had two miscarriages while we were married," he stated grimly. "The water helped her with the pain."
Rachel broke down again. Her mind was being torn in so many different directions. She was remembering the pangs of childbirth when she delivered Fletcher. She was thinking of all the times she'd heard other women's experiences of miscarriage and how they'd made it through. She was regretting not continuing her therapy sessions. She was overflowing with sympathy for Frank having to watch his ex-wife go through similar pains, and saddened by the idea that he now knew exactly what actions to take when such an event occurred.
When she finally managed to calm down again, Frank settled his hands on her shoulders and gently attempted to get her to stand.
"Get in the bathtub, Rachel," he said.
She resisted. "I don't want to bleed in the tub."
"It's alright." His voice was tender. "You can bleed in the tub."
She started crying yet again, this time purely from humiliation and not from pain. She tugged on the sleeves of his sweatshirt, her tears leaving damp gray dots all over the fabric. Lord, couldn't she do anything in her life without it being this dramatic?
He rubbed her back for a minute or two, deciding not to try and force it. Rachel began to shudder with the pain of her next series of cramps.
In her stupor, she didn't resist this time when Frank lifted her by her armpits and lowered her into the bathtub. Her wails of pain began to subside as her lower half was submerged in the hot water. She found the loud rush of the water soothing, despite being worried for what was to come. She couldn't even hate him for being right again. All she wanted was to escape the pain.
He asked her if he could take her jacket off, and she nodded listlessly, truly not caring if the genuine leather was ruined by the water. Once her jacket was removed, she decided the hell with it, and tossed her silly black sequined top over the side of the tub too.
She reached down to unbuckle the tedious straps of her shoe on her right foot while Frank began working on the left shoe. They both came off at the same time, and Frank set them aside with the rest of her discarded clothes.
Still afraid to relax, Rachel sat upright and hugged her legs against her breasts, suddenly bashful in front of this man who had seen her naked countless times now. The older she got, the more fluorescent lighting became her ultimate enemy. She discreetly looked over at Frank, watching him as he rubbed the floor down with towels, cleaning up the blood. The front of his sweatshirt was soaked with water from the bath, and there were streaks of dried blood on the cuffs of his sleeves.
When the water was high enough to cover her up to her chest, he turned the faucet off. The silence that followed was oddly harrowing. Rachel shivered in spite of the hot water surrounding her. She looked down, surprised that it seemed no more blood had made an appearance since she'd gotten into the tub.
"What if it gets worse?" she murmured.
"I'll be here," he said simply, the inflections in his voice so comfortingly familiar. "You won't go through it alone."
His words carried so much weight for her. There was an unspoken invitation in his voice, that her entire life could be something she wouldn't have to do alone. She wished she could tell him how she really felt about him. She was so tired of playing up her independence. She didn't want to do anything alone anymore.
Frank jolted at the sound of her phone vibrating somewhere behind him in the pile of clothes. "Shit," Rachel breathed.
He pulled the cell phone out from under her jacket and announced, "Angela Wagner."
"She was with me at the bar." Just then Rachel began to heave in pain again.
"I'll take care of it," he said, flipping open the phone to answer the call. "Hello?"
Rachel strained to keep her whimpers to a minimum so Angela couldn't hear from the other line. Right as she felt Frank's hand grasp her shoulder again, he spoke into the phone, "She's fine. I picked her up and brought her to my place."
There was a pause during which Rachel could hear both Angela and Molly stumbling over each other with questions on the other line.
"No," he began carefully, meeting Rachel's eyes. "She was just horny."
Rachel spluttered a pathetic laugh, her expression grateful in spite of her pain.
"They want to hear your voice," he said softly, holding the phone to her mouth.
Mustering up all the energy she had, Rachel quickly apologized and assured her friends she was fine.
Frank took the phone back when she started to rock back and forth in the bath.
"Thanks for checking on her." He hung up.
The rest of the night was overwhelming. At times it truly felt as if she were in labor, but instead of waiting for a baby to arrive, all she could do was pass all of the blood. Frank changed the bathwater each hour, brought her Gatorade, and got in contact with her OB-GYN emergency line.
Around five o'clock in the morning, her cramping finally stopped. He loaded the bathtub once more with hot water and gently washed the blood from her body. She wanted to resist at first, but she was so tired she didn't have the energy.
He helped her out of the tub and wrapped her in a clean towel. She leaned on him as he walked her to his bed, and she collapsed into the mattress, exhausted.
He didn't say one word to her, but quickly got to work cleaning up the rest of the bathroom. She drifted in and out of a fitful sleep for a few hours, listening to the sounds of him shuffling around the room, the rolling of the laundry machine downstairs, then the birds chirping outside the window. At long last she succumbed to a hazy dream that she was holding a naked baby to her breast.
Author's note: Just trust me, things will not stay bleak forever.
Love to all my readers,
XOX, Mack