Mom stood up, quickly swiping under her eyes. “Oh, kids!” she said with false excitement. “How was dinner?”

“Okay,” I said. “You all right?” I asked.

“Fine. Fine. Just fine,” she spat out quickly, standing and leaving the glass in the pan on the floor.

“Uh, listen,” I said, shoving a nervous Bridge into the seat opposite from Dad.

I sat next to her, but Mom didn’t make a move to sit next to him. He was obviously ignoring all of us. She picked a chair to our right and sat. My dad got up, his nose still in the paper, and started making his way to his office.

“Dad,” I said, and he turned around, stunned I’d disturbed him. “Yes, I know, but you need to hear this.”

His scowl would have burned holes through me if I wasn’t so used to it and if we didn’t have something so dire to tell them. Plus, around the age of sixteen, I noticed he’d become aware of my size and he’d stopped manhandling me. I could be a serious threat if I needed to be, and he knew it.

He sat, crossed his legs and folded the paper across his lap.

“Bridge,” I said, opening the floor for her.

My mother, distracted before, finally noted Bridge’s puffy eyes and red nose. “Bridget, honey, are you all right?”

The tears started streaming anew, but she stayed my mom with a hand when she attempted to comfort her. “I’m fine, well, not fine, but I have something to tell you both.”

She took a deep, cleansing breath and I sat forward, fists clenched, preparing for the inevitable blowup from my father.

“I’m pregnant,” she said.

The quiet was deafening.

“This isn’t a problem,” my dad said, with eerie softness, pressing the creases of the paper over and over.

“It’s not?” I asked, bewildered.

“No, this is an easy fix, especially since it’s over Christmas break.”

“No,” Bridge said, realizing what he meant.

“Excuse me?” our dad said, breaking his cool exterior and uncrossing his legs.

“No,” Bridge said strongly.

“Dear, lovely, stupid, whorish Bridge,” my dad said, sliding forward and staring right into her eyes, his face pinched with the most evil expression I’d ever encountered, reminding me of Piper yet again. “You will get rid of that thing, or I swear to God I will have you killed and make it look like an accident.”

My mother gasped.

“Dad!” I said, jumping up.

He stood and met me nose to nose.

“She wants to keep it,” I said.

“I don’t give a shit. This will not be tolerated. I’m in the middle of the biggest merger of my life and I will not have our family name tarnished!”

“Oh, but having her murdered won’t bring unnecessary awareness? Possibly negative awareness?”

He considered what I’d said, the sick bastard.

“Perhaps,” he agreed, “but it’s got to go to save this merger.”

“Give it up, old man. This family name is soiled beyond redemption and you know it. It’s why Peter Knight said no. It’s why they all initially say no. It’s why I’m always called home to fix it.”

His neck turned beet red.

“Shut the fuck up, Spencer!”

My fists clenched tighter and my chest met his. “Make me, you lousy piece of shit!” I yelled in his face.

Bridge stood and pulled me away. “I’m keeping it, Dad,” she said, charging past me toward the stairs.

Mom stood with her hands over her mouth, unable to speak.

“Stay right there!” Dad yelled, and she, like I, was powerless to disobey. “Come here,” he said more steadily.

She descended into the sunken living again and stood beside me once more, this time trembling.

“I—” she began.

“Shut up.” Her mouth shut tightly. “You forget,” he said, with frighteningly quiet intensity, “I have a lot of political pull in this city. I’ve got a handful of doctors sitting in my back pocket right this minute. So, I’m only going to say this once. You will take care of this of your own volition and immediately, or I will have you deemed of unsound mind and get one of my judges to approve any medical procedures I see fit. Now, think about this for a moment, Bridget. Imagine how difficult I could make your life if I had this kind of power over you.”

My heart pounded in my chest. “You wouldn’t,” I said, scared by him for the first time in a very long time.

“Wouldn’t I?” he asked me and only me, a devilish smirk across his face. And, of course, I knew he would. “I consider it your job to make sure she goes through with this,” he told me.

He walked out of the room, never looking at Bridge or my mom again.

“Bridge,” I said softly, edging toward her.

Her eyes became glassy. “No,” she whispered. Tears spilled over. “No,” she said again.

“Bridge,” I said, reaching for her, “we have to.”

My mom wrapped her arms around her, and I wrapped my own around both of them.

Chapter Seven

Bridge and I talked all night and I finally convinced her that going in was the best thing because either way, dad would make sure it was done. Going in voluntarily would at least save her the punishment of my dad controlling every aspect of her life for the rest of her life. He would do it too, just to punish her. I didn’t trust the man before, but I never thought him capable of the threat against Bridge until I saw the expression in his eyes. He showed me how truly heartless he was, how he was willing to take down his own daughter to achieve what he wanted and any miniscule feeling I had left for him was snuffed out the second he proclaimed it.

She agreed that her friends and classmates would desert her, judge, and mock her as well. She didn’t think she’d be able to weather their torment. She remembered a classmate of hers getting knocked up and the hell she was put through. She decided she wouldn’t go through that.

The next morning was cold and bleak, as the sun had yet to rise. The early morning noises felt overgrown and ominous, leftovers from an unusually black night. I opened the car door for Bridge, the chill in the air seeped deeply into my bones, the weight of our decision, of what we had to do, heavy on our hearts. The sadness emanating from her made me hesitate opening my own door. I would have given anything not to sit inside the car with her. Maybe it was the fact that I knew I was forcing her to do something she didn’t want to do. Maybe sitting next to her was a reminder of that. Either way, I was a selfish asshole and I knew it.

The chill in the air made me shiver. I got in, started the engine and blasted the heat. Bridge had curled up into herself, the leather creaking beneath her, a little ball of a girl, her long blonde hair in a messy bun on her head, not a stitch of makeup on her face and her eyes red from crying the entire night.

“It’s okay, Bridge,” I assured her, pulling out onto the long drive that led from the house to the main street.

She curled up tighter, resting her head against the freezing window, staring out into the dark morning. Six in the morning and we felt so alone on the road, only the occasional city truck or passerby would grace us with a roar as they crawled past us, their tailpipes puffing into the frosty air. It was a farce that California was seventy year round. In the winter, we occasionally got fifty- or sixty-degree temperatures, which doesn’t seem that low, but when the sun is vacant, it feels like it could snow and the cold bites your fingers with stiffness. That morning it felt like my entire body was numb with that same stiffness.

My stomach ached and my mouth went dry when we pulled into the clinic’s parking lot, a seemingly opaque haze fell in a fog over its surface. I pulled into a space near the front and got out, wrapping my jacket tighter around my chest and walking to Bridge’s door. When I opened it for her, she just sat there. I had to lean in and unbuckle her belt.

“Come on, Bridge,” I said softly, her dazed eyes stared ahead of her into nothing. Her expression gave away that she saw the same.

I grabbed her upper arm gently and guided her out of the car. She leaned into me and I locked it with my key fob.

When I opened the door to the clinic, it appeared, for lack of a better word, used. The chairs were old, fading and peeling their pleather cushions. The walls were, at one time, white but had dulled and stained yellow. The ceiling was missing a few fiberglass tiles; some were present but cracked or missing large chunks where protruding wires fell at strange angles. The floor was a checkerboard pattern of light blue and white vinyl tiles. A bronze trash can from the seventies rested near the door beside a low fiberboard table full of magazines whose subject matter contradicted the very purpose of the clinic itself. The chairs lined the walls, and there was a row of two seats in the center.

There were four people already in the waiting room, a couple who sat against the wall nearest the door and two girls around the same age on the opposite end of the room from them. I sat Bridge in a chair toward the center, facing the couple, and approached the window. An older woman in her fifties slid back the glass partition.

“Yeah?” she asked, smacking her gum.

“Uh, we had an appointment today at seven a.m.”

“Name?” she asked, picking up a clipboard.

“Bridget Blackwell.”

She checked a list then grabbed yet another clipboard and handed it over. The pen was attached to the top with a chain. “Yeah, fill this out. We’ll call you.”

She pushed the partition closed without a second glance and I sat next to Bridge.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t do this at a hospital, Bridge,” I told her. “The whole point of this is to be discreet so people don’t find out.” She nodded. “You need time to recover before school starts too.”

“I know, Spencer,” her worn voice told me.

I looked at her then noticed the guy in front of us. He was laughing at something on his phone while his poor girlfriend looked terrified, her arms pressed tightly against her abdomen. He looked up at me and smirked, gesturing with his head toward his girl before rolling his eyes, an attempt at camaraderie. When I didn’t bite, he went back to his phone with a picture of a naked girl on the cover, and obnoxiously laughed at whatever text he’d gotten. All he made me want to do was kick his ass and tell the girl to run as fast as she could.

I began filling out the paperwork while Bridge sat bent into herself on the chair. Halfway through the tedious process, I looked over again to check on her and looking at her hair triggered something. For some reason, I was bombarded with memories of when she was little. She had this ridiculously curly hair, and it was always wild about her face, regardless how hard my mom tried to contain it. She’d put it up in some sort of clip but sure enough, five minutes later, it was a blonde halo around her face.

I remembered her being four or five, her melodious little squeaky voice with a lisp inviting everyone she could within a five-mile radius, stranger or not, to her ballet recital. She wore her leotard, ballet flats and tutu every single day for two weeks, practicing every opportunity she could, dancing to imaginary music throughout the whole house. I thought she was so goofy in the head but, and I’d never had said it out loud, especially at the time, I thought she was adorable.