Read To Have and to Hold for Free Online Page B

an entry-level job available on the show that would involve at least part-time work on set design. I think it could be a chance for you, if it’s something you still think about. I’ve got a friend whose apartment will be available the next month or so; you and Phoebe could live there while you looked for a place to stay. It would mean a lot to me. I know I’ve been a shit father, but I’ve grown up a lot and I’m ready to do better.”
    She’d almost deleted the voicemail unheard. Then she’d listened and almost deleted it again. But she hadn’t. It was still on her phone. And suddenly it seemed like a very different proposition.
    She’d met Stefan in high school. They’d done theater together and bonded over their shared plans to head to Hollywood after graduation.
    Stefan was gangly, an unlikely leading man—until he wasn’t. Until he came back to school the fall of his senior year after a summer of working on his grandparents’ Iowa farm. The sun had cured his acne and tanned his skin, and manual labor had put muscle on his frame. Trina had had trouble looking away. Plus, he was still her friend Stefan, the one she’d conspired with about sharing an apartment after they both managed their escape to Tinseltown.
    Then he got the part of Harold Hill in The
Music Man
.
    Up there, on the stage, strutting and commanding—
    Night after night, wooing and winning over the audience, softening them up until they were putty in his hands—
    And finding his confidence, his own best self, of course.
    Trina was a
goner
.
    She made up her mind she’d have him.
    Only thing was, she had Marian for competition. And Marian was up there onstage, being kissed, having Harold’s—Stefan’s—arms around her. So Trina needed a trump card. And she had one. Marian was a good girl. And Trina wasn’t.
    After cast parties, when Marian the Librarian demurred, Trina had no such compunctions. She’d drown Stefan’s adrenaline or soothe his post-performance depression, whatever it took. Kisses in the living room, blow jobs in the dark backyard of some cast member’s family’s house, and eventually, after some wooing, sex in the backseat of Stefan’s car.
    A broken condom.
    He didn’t see why she couldn’t just terminate the pregnancy. And she got as far as making the appointment. She’d been an accidental third child, herself, her mother pregnant at forty-nine, Trina’s next youngest sibling thirteen years old. In the car on the way to the clinic, Trina asked her mother,
Did you think about—having an abortion?
And her mother had said,
Yes
.
    And why didn’t you?
    I don’t know. I just couldn’t.
    A long silence, in which Trina heard condemnation. Even at sixteen, she was old enough to wonder whether it was in her mother’s voice or in her own head.
    Do you think it’s wrong that I’m going to?
    I was forty-nine, Trina. You’re not even seventeen yet. Having a baby right now will cut off so many possibilities for you.
    But she hadn’t actually answered Trina’s question.
    And in the next block of silence, Trina understood that she wouldn’t go through with it.
    Even though Stefan had made it abundantly clear that if she went ahead and had the baby, he didn’t feel like he owed her anything.
    Stefan went to L.A.
    Trina had Phoebe. And fell in love.
    She worked harder than she’d ever worked in her life—and that was
with
her parents’ help. She waited tables and made espressos and handed clothes into the T.J. Maxx dressing room and did whatever it took to make a life for her daughter. Eventually, L.A. and Stefan drifted farther into fantasy.
    Trina toyed with the rubber edge of her phone case, then made up her mind and tapped Call Back.
    “Stefan. It’s Trina.”
    “Oh! Hey. Wow. I didn’t think you were going to call me back. Not that I would have blamed you.”
    For twelve years, they’d spoken only when money was on the line. When Phoebe’s needs outstripped Trina’s budget, those few but scary times.