All the Difference Read online




  Counting Down . . .

  “. . . nine . . . eight . . . seven!”

  “Hey, babe, you found me!” Molly saw Scott’s eyes crinkle the way that always made her heart skip a little bit, and smiled back at him. He leaned down to her ear and raised his voice.

  “I have something I want to talk to you about. I’ve been looking for you.”

  “. . . six . . . five . . . four!”

  Molly caught a glimpse of all the fawning women Scott had been dancing with earlier and cocked her head with a smirk. “Looking hard or hardly looking?”

  “Huh?” Scott squinted.

  “. . . three! Two! One! Happy New Year!” Molly’s friends threw handfuls of confetti in the air, making Molly cringe at the sight of the mess, and started blowing their noisemakers. Couples kissed and friends hugged each other. Jenny and her college roommate began singing a very drunken version of “Auld Lang Syne” while the televised crowds in Times Square danced in the streets.

  Scott moved closer to her, and she felt his arm snake around her waist, once again drawing her in.

  Molly wrapped her hand around Scott’s neck to move his head toward hers. His thin lips pressed against hers with a warmth that always spread through her like the heat she’d feel from a fresh cup of tea, though a spiked one, hot toddy–style. Molly raised her eyelids to look at her boyfriend through the haze the candle smoke had created and saw that his martini-olive eyes, murky now through the cloud of alcohol, were focused only on her own. It was going to be okay.

  “Molly,” Scott said.

  Before she could move, Scott dropped down one knee. One of his hands grasped both of hers, and up to her chest the other held a small, black velvet box. The box was open, and inside something glittered in the candlelight, flashing against the black silk. People around them started to catch on and back away, creating a small clearing around the pair. Molly looked at Scott’s earnest face, the beads of sweat rolling down his forehead, then down at the brilliant diamond ring on display. Wowza, she thought. That thing is big.

  “Will you marry me?”

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  This book is an original publication of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Copyright © 2015 by Leah Ferguson.

  Readers Guide copyright © 2015 by Penguin Random House LLC.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY® and the “B” design are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  For more information, visit penguin.com.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-18752-8

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ferguson, Leah.

  All the difference / Leah Ferguson. — Berkley trade paperback edition.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-425-27938-0

  1. Young women—Fiction. 2. Pregnant women—Fiction. 3. Decision making—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3606.E72556A79 2015

  813'.6—dc23

  2014045341

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley trade paperback edition / September 2015

  Cover art by Nina Tara.

  Cover design by Lesley Worrell.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For David, with thanks for the laptop(s)

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  CHAPTER ONE: New Year’s Eve

  CHAPTER TWO: January

  CHAPTER THREE: February

  CHAPTER FOUR: March

  CHAPTER FIVE: April

  CHAPTER SIX: May

  CHAPTER SEVEN: June

  CHAPTER EIGHT: July

  CHAPTER NINE: August

  CHAPTER TEN: September

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: October

  CHAPTER TWELVE: November

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: December

  EPILOGUE: New Year’s Eve

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Guide

  Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

  I doubted if I should ever come back.

  —ROBERT FROST

  CHAPTER ONE

  New Year’s Eve

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Molly Sullivan stared at the thin white stick she held in her fingertips. She couldn’t keep her hand from shaking. The wand vibrated back and forth like a baton conducting the most cacophonous piece of music ever performed.

  She sank down onto the closed lid of the toilet seat.

  “You have got to be kidding me.” The words bounced off the beige walls of Molly’s tiny upstairs bathroom. She concentrated on the feel of the cool tile beneath the bare skin of her feet, forcing herself to slow her breathing down, and willed her body to stop trembling. It didn’t obey.

  The test she’d used was one of those no-fail electronic ones. There was no second line that might not really be there, no vague plus sign that could raise a doubt of its accuracy. What Molly gripped in her hand, now moist with sweat, was a test—her third of the morning—with a window designed to say “pregnant” or “not pregnant.” She looked at it again, and closed her eyes.

  It definitely said “pregnant.”

  But it couldn’t be true. There was no way. No.

  Molly opened her eyes again and swallowed hard. Denial is an uncomfortable emotion for somebody afraid to make mistakes.

  “Coffee. Coffee can fix this,” she mumbled, and braced herself to stand up. Then she remembered that there was supposed to be a rule about pregnant women and caffeine, and her legs buckled underneath her again.

  She didn’t know how she was going to do this. It wasn’t in her plan.

  An awful metallic taste rose in the back of her throat, and Molly forced herself upright to reach for her toothbrush. She leaned against the shining granite countertop, grateful for its firm support, and swiped the brush around her mouth without looking in the mirror. She knew what she’d see, and that it wasn’t going to be pretty: hair flattened to one side of her head from sleeping in the exact same position for nine straight hours. Eyelids puffy over purple-shaded skin. Forehead and cheeks blotchy with broken veins from too many sudden bouts of morning sickness. Molly didn’t know why she’d been so surprised by the positive test. She’d been experiencing almost every symptom Google had warned her about.

  Molly jabbed her toothbrush back into its holder and stumbled in the direction of the kitchen. She hadn’t felt like this since the night she went to that karaoke bar with her friend Jenny and drank so many of the margaritas on special she ended up performing the Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams” in a singing voice a little too close to hollering. Both the melody and the backing vocals, she winced to recall. In their entirety.

  All of a sudden she felt nauseous again.

  Molly reached for the coffee filters she kept in the pantry before she caught herself, groaning, and reached for the herbal tea
bags instead. This, she thought, cannot be happening. She was thirty years old, knocked up with a baby she’d planned to want but just not quite yet, and the only way she’d know how to deal with it would be to dust the furniture so well she’d wear lemon-scented tracks into its wood stain. Molly had to make sure the little realities in her life were organized—scrubbed clean, shining, and sorted to perfection—before she felt confident enough to face the messier, more abstract ones. Because that’s helpful, she thought, and opened the cabinet that held her cleaning supplies. She couldn’t tell if the nausea rolling around her stomach was from being pregnant or just from knowing she was pregnant. Either way, she knew her house was going to end up spotless.

  By that evening, Molly was on her hands and knees on the hardwood of her living room floor, scrubbing marks off the white baseboards with an eraser sponge. She was still wearing the old Amy Winehouse T-shirt she’d slept in, along with yoga pants she’d pulled from the folded stack of identical pairs she kept tucked in a dresser drawer. Her long brunette ponytail swung as she scoured the wall with a fury she didn’t know she possessed.

  Molly knew what she was doing was ridiculous, and she finally sat back on her knees, frustrated. She threw the dingy sponge to the floor, looked at it for a moment, then picked it back up and turned her attention to the darkening day outside her front window. Liz Phair was belting “Johnny Feelgood” from the stereo speakers, singing like she was mocking Molly, laughing at her. “I hate him all the time,” Liz sang, “but I still get up when he knocks me down . . .” Molly curled her upper lip and shook her head in resignation.

  She stood up, brushed herself off, and shuffled into the kitchen to set a plate of leftover carbonara into the microwave to reheat. She shuddered and wrapped her arms around her waist, hugging her elbows, and looked at a photo that hung on the side of her stainless steel refrigerator. Molly looked so happy in the picture, her arm slung around the waist of the man next to her. She should’ve called him by now. He’d have wanted to be here, too.

  She thought about the night it all started, a few years earlier. After work one Friday evening she’d wandered into the Barnes & Noble that loomed over a park on Walnut Street in the same neighborhood as her office building. A bunch of coworkers had left at the strike of five o’clock to head over to McGillin’s Olde Ale House for the usual happy hour festivities, but Molly was feeling a cold coming on, so had decided to stock up on some reading material for a weekend of self-imposed quarantine instead. Wandering around a bookstore on a Friday evening was a treat for her, anyway. She’d buy a latte from the Starbucks and thread in and out of the aisles of the fiction section, checking out the cover art for the new releases, looking to see if that hardcover she’d had her eye on was out in paperback yet.

  She had paused by the children’s area to smile at two toddlers chattering back and forth as they played with some cars on a train table. She was standing in the middle of the aisle between the literature section and the children’s room, coveting a little girl’s Converse All Stars, when he came ambling toward her for the first time. He had a grin spread wide on his face and a book held in a loose grip by his side.

  “They’re cute, aren’t they?” he said, nodding toward the children. “I’ve always said I’d want kids of my own, but only if I could get a guarantee that they’d never cry and never poop.” He chuckled, gauging Molly’s reaction, and reached up to brush his dark hair off of his forehead.

  Molly glanced up and met this stranger’s green eyes. She was only weeks out of a relationship that had ended before she was ready to let it go, so she was wary of new men. But Molly noticed that this man’s clear eyes were the color of olives, and that they were focused on her. She felt the quiet thrill of his attention, and mistook it for the feeling that she once again was in control.

  “Hey, if you can find a kid like that, you’d have women lined up to help you raise him. Probably some men, too.” She grinned.

  “I would, wouldn’t I? Babies are like dogs. It’s a proven fact that just holding one makes a man ten times more appealing to women. You agree with me, right?” Molly could swear his eyes sparkled as he looked at her. Ooh, he’s flirting with me, she thought. Keep it coming, dude.

  “Ah, well,” the man in front of her continued. “Guess I’ll just have to take my chances and see what life brings me. Though I should probably focus on finding the right woman first, and worry about the kids later, shouldn’t I?” He looked at her in a way that made it seem he was implying more than his words let on.

  Molly took a moment before she responded, as she was distracted by the line of muscled shoulders under his coat. He raised his eyebrows with amusement, watching her look him over, and it had the effect of crinkling the skin around his eyes in a way she found endearing. He was tall. Really tall, actually, with those shoulders and a broad face with a square jaw she thought only existed in Calvin Klein print ads. His brown hair was the kind of wavy she had always wanted for herself, and he wore it tousled and swept back from his face, like he couldn’t stop running his hands through it. He dressed like most of the professional men she avoided in the bars, who talked too much about the mothers they lived with in South Philly and whether the Sixers would finally get a shoulder up on the Celtics: dark jeans, black T-shirt, sleek black leather jacket that fell to his hips. But on this guy the Philly uniform seemed different, intriguing. He looked like he could either be an advertising exec or a bartender.

  Hey, baby, you can mix my drink anytime, she thought. She laughed to herself before realizing too late that she’d snorted out loud. Molly coughed, hoping he hadn’t noticed. He tilted his head with a bemused expression and nodded at her hands.

  “What, no books? You just like to come to the bookstore on a Friday night for the five-dollar coffee?”

  “Of course not! The five-dollar coffee is just the beginning,” Molly teased. “Don’t let the empty hands throw you off. I have the rare ability to turn book-shopping into an epic event. It’s not like a person should just walk into a bookstore and settle for the closest thing she sees.”

  He had leaned against a display, his expression amused, waiting for her to continue. Encouraged, Molly gestured at the stacks around them. “It’s all a matter of instinct and fate: What’ll it be tonight? Young adult? Historical fiction? The latest vampire series? It’s too exciting a process to rush, frankly. These things take time.” She took a sip of her coffee and looked at the handsome stranger standing in front of her. She liked having this feeling again, the charge of someone’s interest, the adrenaline jumping through her veins. He straightened and laughed, sliding the book in his hand behind his back in an exaggerated arc.

  “Then I probably shouldn’t tell you that I ran into the store to pick up the latest Nicholas Sparks novel for my mom’s birthday, should I?”

  “Nope, you totally shouldn’t. At least the book’s not for you, though.”

  Molly turned her head to look at this new man from the corner of her eye. “It’s not secretly for you, right? I’d have lost all respect for you then.”

  He leaned forward, closing the distance between them until she was certain he could smell the latte on her breath. But he didn’t seem to mind, and took a step closer.

  “So you’re saying I’ve earned some of your respect? I was starting to think that I was going to be like one of your books—I’d be lost among the shelves until you decided if fate would make you lean my way.”

  “And why would I want to lean your way?” Molly tilted her head as she smiled up at him. Her heart was thumping in her chest.

  “Well, to see how irresistibly charming I am, of course. And how else would I be able to persuade you to join me for a drink?”

  Standing in her kitchen, Molly ran her hands over the muscles of her flat belly. The microwave hummed. The man’s name had been Scott Berkus, and he’d been in her life off and on for the last three years. Soon enough he’d be at the door. She wou
ld wait to tell him then.

  “No, no, no,” Molly muttered. A wave of dizziness washed over her, and she slid down the face of the cabinet into a cross-legged heap on the kitchen floor.

  There was another person in her belly. There was a creature, with cells that multiplied and a body that was growing, attached to her insides. It had been living off of her for weeks. Molly retched. This was happening.

  This was happening.

  The microwave beeped. The smell of homemade pasta wafted through the kitchen and forced its way into her awareness, replacing the sinking sensation of realization with a new feeling, this one roiling around in her stomach, sloshing against its walls, climbing up her throat like the legs of an angry spider. Molly lurched over to the trash can, opening it just in time.

  It was New Year’s Eve. In three hours she was supposed to be on the doorstep of her best friend’s house, on the arm of her boyfriend, entering the same party she’d been attending every year for most of her adult life. It was routine by now, the music she’d hear and the drinks she’d pour, the jokes they’d make, but tonight was going to be different. This time everything was about to change. Molly wiped her mouth with a fresh napkin and set the untouched plate of warm food back into the refrigerator. She had to get ready.

  A short while later, the doorbell was buzzing like a wasp caught in her door frame. Molly patted some gloss onto her lips and ran down the stairs, the polished hardwood slippery against her bare feet. At the bottom, she paused for a moment to let her nerves settle themselves, then opened the door to greet her boyfriend.

  “Hiya, sweetheart.” Molly reached up to plant a kiss on Scott’s lips and glanced at the wrought-iron clock that hung over the fireplace mantel. “Nice of you to appear.”

  “Oh, hey, I’m not that late, am I?” Scott’s gaze traveled the length of Molly’s body and he wiggled his eyebrows in a hopeful leer. “Though if I’d known you were going to look this good, I wouldn’t have stuck around my parents’ house for so long.” Scott placed his hands low on Molly’s hips, guiding her back into the living room, and leaned down to nuzzle his nose against her neck. She had to tell him, she knew.