Red Heart Tattoo by Lurlene McDaniel

because that was hospital protocol. Jane and Paige had left the room, leaving the girls alone. Seeing her friend in the bed, eyes bandaged, broke Kelli’s heart, made her feel guiltier than she already did. “How are you?” Kelli asked.
    “I’ll be all right. What about you?”
    “They said I’ll be fine. I ache all over, but I’m going home today.”
    “Wish I were,” Morgan said. “Why didn’t you tell me? We’ve been friends forever, and yet you couldn’t confide in me that you were pregnant?”
    “I—I don’t know. I was so ashamed, I guess. I mean, Mark dumped me like a bad dream when I told him inAugust. I kept telling myself that I could change his mind. That I could make him want to get married. I couldn’t.”
    “Did Trent know?” If he did, Morgan was going to skewer him the next time he visited her in the night.
    “I don’t know. Guys don’t talk to other guys like girls—” She stopped. “I mean, like girls are
supposed
to talk.”
    “And all the times I asked you, ‘What’s wrong?’, you just pushed me away.”
    “I wanted to tell you more than anything. I started to a hundred times. When Mom found out, she made me swear to keep it a secret. But I should never have kept it from you.”
    Morgan picked at the bedcovers, needing something to do with her hands. She longed to see people’s expressions when they spoke. Without her sight it was like filling in a puzzle piece that didn’t exist. She could fall back on images of people she knew, but with strangers, she had no road map, no way to gather an image except through their voices and touch. In many ways Kelli was a stranger to her at the moment. “How did she find out?”
    “You know Mom.” Kelli offered a short derisive laugh. “She watches my weight like a hawk. She saw I was gaining around the middle.”
    Morgan had seen it too but had said nothing. She should have. She’d watched Kelli change right before her eyes but had been too caught up in her own life to press her friend very hard. She realized she shared some of the blame for Kelli’s silence. “I might have helped you figure it out,” she mumbled. “I should have helped you.”
    “Once Mom figured it out, I was almost five months along. I’d already made up my mind I was going to have the baby. What I hadn’t decided was what I was going to do after he was born.”
    “You were going to have a boy?”
    “Yes.” Kelli’s voice quavered. “But I didn’t know it was a boy until …” Her voice trailed off, ebbed into a heavy silence. Morgan felt Kelli’s pain and loss. “Mom took me to a free clinic in Grand Rapids because I hadn’t been going to a doctor.”
    “Not at all?”
    “Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.” Kelli quoted the old joke. She forced herself to smile, but realized Morgan couldn’t see her effort.
    “And after he was born, what were you going to do?”
    Kelli didn’t answer right away, and when she did, Morgan heard the resignation in her tone. “There were only two choices—keep him and raise him or put him up for adoption. I kept bouncing between the two. Couldn’t decide. One day I wanted to raise him. The next day I wanted to give him up.”
    “What did Mark want?”
    Kelli took a deep rattling breath. “He said he didn’t care, but I knew he wanted me to give him up. Mark said that he loved me, but that nothing was going to derail his plans for a football career.”
    Morgan heard the forlorn hopelessness in Kelli’s voice. The words made her mad. How could Mark be so cruel? “And your mother?”
    “Adoption.” Kelli’s voice fell to a whisper. “No one wanted him except me.”
    “I’m really sorry, Kelli.” Morgan held out her hands and was rewarded by Kelli grasping them tightly.
    “Doesn’t make any difference now, does it? I lost the baby. And Mark’s going to be a paraplegic for the rest of his life.”
    Morgan already knew Mark’s fate—her mother had told her yesterday—but sorrow in Kelli’s