Carry Her Heart Read Free Page B

nothing on Mela.
    I said, “Hi, Mela. I don’t think you’ve met my friend, Coop.”
    For a moment, we were visible as she responded, “It’s a pleasure,” in such a way that it was apparent it wasn’t a pleasure at all. Then she promptly turned us invisible again and said, “Ned, I brought that movie we were going to watch.”
    “You’re welcome to join our game of rummy,” Coop offered. “And I think Ned might have left a slice of pizza if you’re hungry.”
    Mela shook her head. “It’s been a long week. I just want to sit down, watch a movie, and relax with my boyfriend .” She put a heavy emphasis on the word boyfriend , just to stake her claim, I think.
    “Sure, hon,” Ned said. “Thanks for the game, ladies.”
    “Any time,” I said.
    Mela didn’t so much as touch Ned, but it felt as if she were dragging him out of the backyard.
    After we heard his back door slam shut, Coop whispered, “I feel like I’m ten again, and a friend’s mom just took him home because it was bedtime.”
    I laughed, then grew serious as I confessed, “She doesn’t like me.”
    “I’m expecting you to be nominated for sainthood any day now. I like you and I’ve got impeccable taste. How can anyone else not like you?” Coop asked.
    “The world is full of mysteries,” I joked, though the fact that Mela disliked me and I couldn’t think of anything I’d done to her in the few short weeks I’d known her, bothered me. “Plus, I don’t think that’s how sainthood works, and I’m absolutely sure, however it works, I’m not on the nominating committee’s list.”
    I was lucky to have Coop in my life. Everyone should have a friend who only sees the best in him or her. A friend who never notices the flaws, or if she does notice, simply ignores them.
    I had Coop, so I didn’t need Mela to be my new best friend, but I’d tried to be pleasant. If Ned and I were chatting when she came over, I always tried to include her in the conversation.
    She didn’t want to be included.
    Did I remind her of her mean sister?
    Was there a redheaded girl in grade school who’d beat her out for the lead role in the Thanksgiving play?
    What if she’d lost her last boyfriend and a part in the play to a redhead?
    And then what if . . .
    Ideas flitted in and out of my mind the rest of the evening. When Coop left, I jotted a few of the better what-ifs down as fodder for future stories, then took the journal into the backyard and pulled a chair near the dying embers of the fire and wrote my second message to Amanda.
Dear Amanda,
I think maybe I was always destined to be a writer because what-if has always been a question I’ve been willing to ask myself.
I need you to understand that I asked it throughout my entire pregnancy:
What if I kept you?
What if I gave you up for adoption?
I played scenario after scenario in my head.
What if I kept you, but couldn’t make it through college with a baby, so I continued working at my high school job at the restaurant? We could barely make it on my salary, so we lived in a less-than-desirable section of town, and then you joined a gang . . .
Or what if I kept you and did manage to go to college as a young single mom, but my classes took so much time away from you that you never felt loved?
And then what if . . .
I couldn’t see a way to keep you and give you the kind of childhood I’d had. One with a mother and father who might not be rich, but who lived comfortably. I wanted you to have a mother who would read you a book at night, not be sitting at a desk doing her own homework. I wanted to give you a father who would believe you were the best, the brightest, and the most marvelous being he’d ever met.
I kept playing what-if-I-kept-you scenarios, but at the end of each, I could hear the biggest what-if of all. It was the one I couldn’t shake.
What if I was as strong as my great-grandmother had been and gave you the gift of the type of childhood I’d had by sending you into the arms