The Notorious R(uth) B(arakat) G(rimaldi)

Chapter 18: A Friend in Need

"So?" Ruthie prompted Amelia.

"I have to apologize first," Amelia began, "for every--"

"No," Ruthie interrupted. "We don't have time for that. Let's just assume you're sorry, I accept your apology, blah, blah, blah. Okay, done. Now tell me about the other thing."

Amelia nodded, taking a sip of her tea. "I told him today, hoping he'd, just, I don't know, get happy and cry or something. That he'd hold his arms out and tell me it was what he'd always wanted, you know? That we could get married and live on the back house on their family's property?"

Ruthie nodded. The Carmichaels owned substantial acreage, planted mostly with almonds, and they had a small house, a cottage, really, far back in the orchards. It would have been a cozy place to begin life with a baby, Ruthie had to admit.

"But he just looked at me and said he wasn't interested, that it wasn't his 'problem,' Ruthie!" Amelia started to cry again. "Then he said he couldn't even be sure it was his with how I got around, even though I don't, I don't sleep around, you know that, right?"

Her words were becoming unintelligible by the end of her sentence, but Ruthie knew what her friend had said. "I know, I know," she reassured her friend. "And you know that you could do a DNA test, Amelia, and you could get a court order and compel him to do the same thing, force him to pay child support? You know that better than anyone! Did you tell him that?" Amelia's father had deserted her and her mother when Amelia was a baby, and her mother had compelled something similar so she could go after him for child support. He'd finally fled the jurisdiction to get out of paying, and Amelia was lucky if she saw him once every few years.

Amelia shook her head, tears streaming down her face. "Ruthie, I don't want his money, I don't want to force him to pay and visit his child! I want him to love me, to love us, to marry us, and make a life with us, don't you get it?" she turned a red and puffy countenance to Ruthie.

"But what about medical school? Being a pediatric oncologist? Johns Hopkins?" Ruthie's voice held confusion. "What about all the things you want to do with your life?"

Amelia shook her head. "All that stuff sounded nice, but once I was with Brett, things kind of changed." She shrugged. "I don't know. I went to his house for dinner a couple of times, and his family was so nice, and it seemed like such a great life, to have all that family so close, and then I held his nephew, and it was so amazing, he was so amazing, Ruthie! His little fingers, and his eyelashes and everything? And Brett was after me all the time to go all the way--"

"Oh god," Ruthie interrupted Amelia, putting a hand on her shoulder. "Amelia, are you saying you got pregnant on purpose?"

Amelia looked at Ruthie with eyes that flashed fire. "We're not all like you, Ruthie Grimaldi! We don't all have two parents who adore us, and more money than we can count, and the possibility to be anything we want, to go to any college at all! Do you know how hard my life is going to be if I try to become a doctor? Undergrad, then med school, then an internship, then residency, then a fellowship, if I make it that long, all while paying off my humongous debt?" Amelia was nearly yelling by now. "We're not all going to have our way paved in gold, so don't sit in your million dollar house and judge me.

"Brett didn't say anything about birth control, so I didn't either, that's all. Then, this afternoon, he asked about it--"

"That's our Brett, a dollar short and a day late," Ruthie interrupted, shaking her head.

"And when I told him I hadn't used anything, he said he assumed I was on the pill because I didn't say anything, and this was all my fault, and he was finished talking about it. Then he told me that no one in his family, or from his church, better ever hear anything about this. Then he told me to get the fuck out of his truck."