Blank Slate Kate

Chapter 33

Ethan opens his eyes and waits for me to respond, but I can't find any words so he says, his voice gentle, "You don't remember that, I assume?"

I shake my head. "My only memory of that sort of thing is getting my first kiss from Drew Keating. I'm not even sure I ever got another from him."

"Not that you told me about," he says deadpan.

We have to laugh at the unlikeliness of my choosing to share my dating details with my little brother, but we both sober quickly and I say, "I... Ethan, I can't believe I slept with Jamie. Are you sure?"

He nods slowly, uncomfortably. "And it wasn't just him either. They kept catching you. People would call saying you'd been in bed with their son, you even got caught after breaking into the church down the road with a boy... I didn't know at the time what you were doing, what 'in bed' meant, but yeah. I'm sure."

I broke into a church to have sex? "What the hell happened to me when I was sixteen? If I was such a good girl before, what happened?"

"I don't know, Donna," he says, and I try not to flinch at his use of the name. That's how he knows me, after all. Just because I'm not Donna doesn't mean he can't call me that. Besides, he's going on. "I really don't. But whatever it was, you went from being the perfect child to making Mom cry herself to sleep nearly every night in a few months."

I rub my hands over my face and give a deep sigh. "Geez, Ethan. With all that sex I'm lucky I didn't--"

A horrible thought occurs to me.

He frowns, then his eyes widen and I know he's had the same thought.

"No," he breathes. "It couldn't be."

My mouth moves, trying to form words, while my brain is still struggling to accept the possibility. Eventually I'm able to say, "I was gone for ten months or so. You thought I was in England but I came back with no accent and no presents. And fatter than I'd left."

"And you lost the school year."

We stare at each other, then I make myself say the unthinkable. "Ethan, did I have a baby?"

He swallows hard. "I don't know. I..." His eyes shut fast and tight. "The fighting. When you wanted to go. You said you had to do it, that it wasn't right to do anything else. I knew about the trip so I assumed it was about that, but..."

"They wanted me to get rid of it."

My whisper is so soft I can barely hear it, but he opens his eyes. "God, you must have refused to... not have the baby. I can't believe they wanted you to do that. But you know how they were about their reputation."

We share a brief moment of eye-rolling recollection at how Mom always said, "What will people think?" then the amusement fades.

"They'd have been horrified to have a pregnant teenager."

"Especially since..." he grimaces but goes on. "Since you might not have known who the father was."

I hadn't thought of that, and it makes my stomach twist, but he's right. If I'd been even half as promiscuous as he thinks, there's a good chance I didn't know.

Ethan shakes his head. "I think it makes sense. But there's no way to know for sure. The parents are both gone, you don't remember any of it, if they were keeping it a secret they certainly wouldn't have told everyone else, they even..." He stares at me. "We moved because people at your school either knew or guessed you were pregnant."

"Definitely." I give him a sad smile. "So it was my fault."

"And I told you I wished you'd killed yourself. After you gave up your baby."