One Week In December by Holly Chamberlin Page B

to her neck. Maybe, she thought, someday Rain and I can move to a warm climate, or maybe take a second home in someplace exotic like Anguilla or Belize. True, Rain liked the snow—she had been skiing with the family since she was seven; she was like the childhood Becca that way—but Becca was sure her daughter would also get to love waterskiing, or maybe windsurfing.
    Olivia had said that Becca was out of her mind. David had threatened a thrashing. Her grandmother had told her she was being unfair. Becca squirmed under the blankets. It wouldn’t be easy getting to sleep that night, so she decided to indulge in a few of her favorite fantasies about life with her daughter by her side. The fantasies always soothed her.
    On Saturday mornings they would make a big breakfast together. Becca would forgo her usual breakfast of black coffee and a small yogurt and happily indulge in one of Rain’s favorite foods, French toast with lots of syrup. In the afternoons, Becca would take her daughter to a museum or a movie. Once a year they might take a plane down to New York for a shopping spree that would set Becca back in the thousands. But it would be worth it. Rain was too old for mother-daughter outfits, and the notion slightly sickened Becca, but maybe they could wear matching silver bracelets, something elegant and discreet but engraved with each other’s birthday.
    Becca reached to the end of the couch for another blanket and burrowed as deep as she could. One thing was for sure. She’d never make her daughter sleep on so uncomfortable a surface. When she and Rain traveled to Paris, and from there, on to Venice or Rome, you could be sure they would have first-class accommodations all the way. Becca had a lot of time to make up for and she would do it in style.
    And someday, far in the future, Becca would proudly walk down a church aisle arm in arm with her daughter, in the time-honored—if paternalistic—gesture of deliverance. After, of course, Becca had vetted the husband to be, had him thoroughly investigated, and had personally grilled him about his intentions.
    If Becca were any other thirty-two-year-old woman, single, successful, and attractive, she might have been dreaming of travel and cultural expeditions and walking down the aisle of a church as activities she might pursue with a boyfriend or a fiancé or a husband. But Becca had long ago stopped dreaming about—even thinking about—romantic relationships.
    Long ago she had convinced herself that she didn’t need a romantic relationship, that intimacy could only bring trouble. How could she ever know someone well enough to trust him with the secret of Rain’s birth? What if she made another horrible mistake? What if she so badly misjudged a man’s character that she shared her secret with someone who was incapable of keeping it safe?
    Becca shifted under the weight of blankets. The couch was a nightmare of lumps and bumps. But at least it was horizontal. At least her mother hadn’t asked her to sleep in a chair.
    A romantic relationship. Well, even if a man proved to be capable of keeping a secret, even if she trusted him enough to tell him the truth about her daughter, there was always the chance that he might react with shock and disappointment. There was always the chance that he might consider her duplicitous; he might even think her an uncaring mother, and Becca felt that such a wrong judgment would destroy her.
    There was, of course, the option of continued secrecy. But the thought of living with or marrying someone from whom she was keeping such a huge secret—well, the thought made her physically nauseated. She was tired of deception. It had made her isolated and afraid. It had alienated her from friends and, eventually, from her family. And if Becca had chosen the path of alienation rather than having it thrust upon her, well, she’d done so because she had seen no other way.
    Once it was known to the