Unspoken Vows: Returning to Him

The girl next door asked me for three thousand dollars.

The girl I'd been in love with since we were kids.

I said no.

I had exactly three thousand dollars in my pocket when I said it.

I told myself I needed it. My one shot at a future.

It took me years to understand what that no did to her.

Three thousand dollars. It almost cost Sylvie Vance her whole life.

Chapter 1

The first thing Sylvie ever taught me was how to send a wish up into the sky.

You light the little flame inside the paper lantern. You hold on until the heat fills it out. You let go. If it rises, the wish comes true.

Mine never rose on the first try. Sylvie always had another one ready. "That one didn't count," she'd say, folding it into my hands. "Go again."

She was the only person in my life who ever gave me a second try.

Sylvie came from a family that only counted in one direction. Her little brother was the sun everything turned around. Sylvie was the one they blamed for the dark.

Her name was Sylvie Vance, and she'd correct you if you got it wrong. "It's Sylvie, with an -ie," she'd say. "Like a song. Not plain old Sylvia."

My parents had split when I was young, and it clung to me like a smell the other kids could catch. They kept their distance. Sylvie was the only one who ever stood on my side of the room.

She was two years older and beautiful in a way I trained myself not to look at too long.

We were just friends. I said that a lot, mostly to myself.

She worked. New Year's Eve, while everyone else was home with their families, she was on her feet in a diner in heels and a stiff uniform. I'd bring her a bag of takeout after her shift and watch her rub her sore calves and unload about home.

Her family was as bad as mine. Worse, in one way. My dad played favorites. Her family had turned it into a science.

They told her she was lazy. Not driven, not like her brother. They said it the way you'd read a weather report.

"Doesn't matter how hard I try," she told me once. "The day I finish middle school, my dad's shipping me off to the cheap program. Nurse's aide. Six months and out the door."

I asked what that meant for her.

Her eyes did something complicated. "It means they get to stop paying for me," she said. "That's the whole point."

Then she smiled, like she'd caught herself being heavy. "It's fine. I'll save up. Once I'm grown, they can't touch me. And when I've got money, I'm buying you dinner."

Every time she said something like that, I'd look down at the bag of food in my hands and hold it too tight and find something to stare at that wasn't her face.

Because here's the ugly part. I asked about her life like it was small talk. Like I didn't care.

I cared. I was terrified. Terrified that one day she'd meet someone else, and that would be it. She'd be gone, and I'd have said the word friends one time too many.

The year I tested into the best public high school in the state, Sylvie was a year into the aide program.

She'd gotten even prettier. Long dark hair with a wave in it now, a little makeup. But with me she was exactly the same as when we were kids.

She still came around. Not to my mom's house. My mom would never have let a girl like Sylvie through the door. But my grandparents' place was different. My grandfather never cared who I brought home.

One summer night we lay out in the yard in a pair of hammocks, the dark warm and close around us.

"There's a girl in my class," I said, going for bored. "I kind of like her."

She turned her head. Smiled. "That's great, Theo."

She rolled a leaf between her fingers. "Couple guys have been after me too. Said no to all of them."

Something in my chest let go. "You've gotten a lot more mature," I said.

She laughed at me. "So have you. Smart kid like you, you're going places."

We talked the whole night through.

Around six the sky went pale, and we snuck out, and I took her to breakfast at the shiny chain place on the corner.

My allowance didn't stretch far. But buying her food made me feel like I was worth something.

I ordered a coffee and some overpriced pastry. She ordered eggs and a biscuit.

She took a bite and watched me struggle through mine. "All that fancy stuff," she said. "None of it beats plain home cooking."

The pastry was, in fact, terrible. I chewed and said, "This is better than a biscuit."

She didn't argue. She just broke her biscuit in half and slid one piece across the table to me.

I ate it without a word.

Chapter 2

I always figured a girl that steady could keep herself safe.

I was wrong.

I came home for winter break my senior year, and Sylvie was out in her family's front yard with a swollen belly and a bruise blooming across one cheek.

Not standing. Kneeling. They had her down in the frozen dirt, her father on one side, her grandmother on the other.

One of her hands cradled the curve of her stomach. The other covered her face. People kept passing on the street, and she was trying to fold herself down into something too small to see.

My grandfather has a soft heart. He went over to smooth it out.

Her grandmother's voice carried down the whole block.

"This little slut went and got herself knocked up," she said. "Who's going to pay good money for her now? Damaged goods."

She turned to my grandfather, and her voice went sweet and poisonous at once.

"Your family's blessed. Your grandson's got the grades. He'll be somebody, make real money." She jabbed a finger at Sylvie. "This one? Half a nursing certificate, never going to earn a dime, running around with some broke nobody."

She always did that. Used me as the stick to beat her own granddaughter with.

It was never about my grades. It was because I was a boy and Sylvie wasn't. That was the whole math.

Sylvie's head came up.

Her eyes found mine, brimming, and I knew exactly what she was asking for. One word. One friend, standing up to say one word for her.

My throat closed.

"It's freezing out here," I said. "Can Sylvie go inside."

Her grandmother shot me a look. My grandfather was standing right there, so she swallowed whatever she'd meant to say.

She took Sylvie by the ear and hauled her through the door, and Sylvie was crying the whole way in.

I couldn't sleep. I walked circles in my grandparents' yard until three in the morning.

That's when I heard it. One scream, from the yard next door.

Hers.

I ran up to their front door and jabbed the doorbell. Nothing. I pounded my fist on the door and shouted.

"Is everyone okay in there? Do I need to call 911?"

The threat of a phone call did what nothing else would. The door opened.

Her father stood in the gap, working up a smile.

"She's fine. Took a little spill. She'll sleep it off. Go on home now."

But behind him, through the gap, I could see straight into the yard.

Sylvie was on the ground. Soaked through, her cheek pressed to the cold tile, not moving.

A high, thin ringing filled my ears.

I turned and ran and called 911.

The ambulance came, and her family stayed calm. That was the part I couldn't get past. How calm they were.

Her father came out to explain. Just a fall. No need for all this fuss.

The medics went around him and straight inside.

A few minutes later two of them carried her out on a stretcher.

Under the streetlight I got a look at her face. Swollen past recognizing.

Below the waist, the fabric of her pants had gone dark, soaked through with blood.

"Who's riding with her?" one medic asked. Urgent.

Her father didn't move.

Her grandmother didn't move.

"I'll go," I heard myself say.

As the doors swung shut, Sylvie's eyes cracked open. Unfocused, searching, like she was checking for something.

They found me, and the breath went out of her, and one tear slid from the corner of her eye.

"Theo," she breathed. "You came back."

I still don't have a word for what that did to me.

Chapter 3

The doors to the OR opened just before dawn.

"She's lucky," the doctor said. "Strong constitution. She'll be okay for now. We saved the baby too."

"It's not serious?" I asked.

His face changed. "There's blunt-force trauma to her abdomen. Any later and we'd have lost them both. The mother and the baby."

He looked at me. "Are you family?"

I shook my head.

He sighed and had a nurse wheel her into a room.

She woke when it was already light out. The first thing she did was slide a hand over her belly. Checking.

"What happened last night?" I asked.

She stared at the ceiling and took her time.

"My grandmother wanted me to get rid of it. Said a baby would wreck my chances. That no decent family would ever want a girl with someone else's kid."

"I told her no." A beat. "So she made me stand barefoot in the yard and threw ice water on me."

"When that didn't take, she used a ruler on my stomach."

She said it the way you'd read a grocery list. Item by item.

I couldn't get air.

She let out a small breath. "Can you call my boyfriend? Ask him to come cover the hospital bill."

An hour later a guy in a leather jacket walked in. Good-looking, tall, exactly the kind of guy a girl her age falls for.

He sat with her a while. Twenty minutes. Then he went to the window, paid, and every line of his face said he resented it.

He didn't look at her on his way out. He just left.

When I came back into the room, Sylvie had a hand on her stomach, stroking, slow, over and over.

"Theo," she said. "What am I supposed to do?"

I didn't have an answer.

Then her face set. "If I keep her, she's mine. Real family. Someone who stays."

My voice came out dry. "Think about it. This is the rest of your life. There's no taking it back."

She nodded. "I know. I won't want to."

By the time I made it back to Ashford that spring, her daughter was a month old.

She'd named her Nova. Told me, proud, that she'd spent forever picking it. Something that meant new.

Sylvie was living in a cramped room in a shared apartment, every surface buried under baby things. I looked at that tiny person and hardly dared touch her. She had Sylvie's eyes. Round, dark, ridiculous.

Sylvie was two years older than me. I was still grinding toward the exams that would decide the rest of my life. She was already somebody's mother.

"The dad," I asked. "Is he helping at all? Money?"

Her hand paused mid burp-pat. "No. He's broke too. I don't blame him."

"So how are you getting by?"

She was quiet a long time.

The rent money, it turned out, was what she'd scraped together working through the aide program. She'd started a couple of accounts too, back then. Posting dance clips, little dessert videos. Pulled in a bit on the side.

But that money, stretched this thin for this long, was almost gone.

She looked at me, and her mouth opened, like she was bracing to ask for something she hated having to ask for.

Chapter 4

"Theo," she said. "Could you lend me three thousand dollars?"

"I know it's not okay to ask. But I'm out of options. The landlord's on me."

Here's the thing.

I had exactly three thousand dollars.

My dad had wired it to me that week. His exact words: "This is for your prep courses, you little punk. Don't get into a top school, don't bother coming home."

I couldn't meet her eyes.

My fingers closed around nothing and opened again.

"Sorry," I said.

Right as the word left my mouth, the baby started to cry. Sylvie ducked her head to soothe her.

"It's fine, it's fine," she said, light, easy. "You're not even working yet. Of course you don't have money lying around. I was just asking."

Motherhood had softened her. There was something warm lit up in her now. I couldn't lift my eyes to look at it.

We talked a few more minutes. Then I left in a hurry.

After that I could barely make myself contact her.

Part of me kept saying she had other friends, she'd scrape it together somewhere. The other part of me knew most of those friends weren't worth much.

When the long weekend in May came around, I bought the cheapest ticket back to Ashford. I told myself that if she was still struggling, I'd give her the rest of what I had.

I knocked on the door of that shared apartment, and her roommate answered. Wine-red hair, a ring through her nose. She frowned.

"Sylvie. Miss Popular." Flat. "So many guys coming around for her. She's out."

Somewhere behind her, a baby was crying.

"She went out without the kid?" I asked.

The girl yawned. "I watch her. Twenty bucks a day."

I froze. Sylvie, who guarded that baby like her own breath, leaving her at home?

The roommate looked me over, half a smile on her mouth. "If you're trying to find her, cutie, I'll give you her work address. Go give her a surprise."

That settled something in me. She'd found a job. Good.

It never crossed my mind, back then. A girl with a middle-school education doesn't just walk into honest work.

The address was a dessert shop downtown. She'd been hired to make the sweets, I figured.

I heard the music before I reached the door. Loud enough to feel in my chest.

A little knot of people had gathered out front. Men, almost all of them. Phones up, filming.

One of them leaned against the wall, voice greasy. "Hair like that, all shiny and black. Girl's definitely got a boyfriend."

"Boyfriend? Heard she's already got a kid."

"Tsk. Pretty little thing. No telling how many guys she's"

I didn't hear the rest.

I shoved through the crowd.

And then I saw her.

Sylvie. Dancing in the doorway of a dessert shop, a knot tied at the hem of her shirt, a short skirt, her body barely back from the birth.

Phones up all around her. A dozen men filming a girl who'd been on a delivery table a few weeks ago.

My hands were fists. I don't remember making them.

Chapter 5

I stood at the edge of the crowd, and I couldn't make myself walk over.

The song ended. Sylvie stopped and took a sip of water.

When she looked up, she saw me.

She broke into a smile and jogged over. "Theo. Don't you have the big exam coming up? What are you doing back here?"

A bead of sweat ran down her jaw and slipped under her collar.

I looked away. "Came to see my grandfather."

She nodded, earnest. "I live close to him. If you're worried, I'll check on him for you. You don't have to come all this way, it's such a waste of your time. The exam's what matters. Go home and study."

I was quiet for a few seconds. Then: "I've got some money on me. Take it. Use it."

"Stop dancing out here."

Her hand stopped halfway to her mouth.

"Theo," she said. "You think this is embarrassing. Me, like this."

"No. I think it's too hard on you."

She looked at me a long moment, then smiled, bitter. "So you do think it's embarrassing."

"But I don't have a diploma. This is the best job I could find."

And she went back to dancing.

Except this time she didn't get halfway through the song before it stopped.

Her father and grandmother had shown up.

Her father killed the speaker and started shoving people back. "Nothing to see here. That's my daughter. She's got a marriage to make someday."

Her grandmother grabbed Sylvie by the ear, her voice going shrill. "You have a baby out of wedlock, and now you're out here shaking yourself around with your stomach bare? Who's ever going to take you after this?"

A clerk came over to smooth it out, said Sylvie was their employee.

Her father waved both hands. "She quits. My family can't afford this kind of shame."

The customers hadn't come for dessert anyway. They scattered fast.

Sylvie's eyes went red. "Why do you keep showing up to wreck this? This is the third shop I've had to move to."

"Didn't I line up a match for you?" her father said. "You'd be his second wife. He's willing to look past your little piece of baggage. That's the best you're ever getting."

"I am not marrying some fifty-year-old creep."

"Damaged goods like you, and you think you get to be picky?"

Sylvie threw off her grandmother's hand. She looked them dead in the face, and she said it one word at a time.

"Fine. Since you're all so ashamed of me, I'll take my daughter and go somewhere you'll never reach us. And I'll be done with you. For good."

Her grandmother rolled her eyes. "We raised you all these years, and you think you can just walk out? It's not going to be that easy."

Sylvie bit her lip and sank slowly to her knees