MARCH 30th, 1994, SEATTLE, WA

         THE NEXT MORNING, Kurt told Lindy that he absolutely needed to see his friend Dylan before he departed from Seattle. Lindy went on high alert as soon as Kurt pulled his t-shirt over his head and made the announcement, standing at her bedside.

"Why?" she questioned. There was really no need for her to waste her breath asking in the first place. In the pit of her stomach, Lindy already knew the answer.

"I've just got to get some things in order before I go," Kurt explained. "I'll be back in time for you to drive me to the airport."

Lindy pushed the sheets away from her body and stood up, feeling the cold prickle in her bare legs that stretched out from beneath her oversized night shirt. She folded her arms and nibbled her bottom lip, looking at Kurt knowingly.

"You're going to get high, aren't you?"

Kurt's first instinct was to glare away from her, electing to shoot daggers at the wall rather than into Lindy's gaze. But he sighed, guilty as ever.

"It's what you do before going into rehab. If you do a bunch beforehand, it will help through the first days of withdrawal."

"Yeah and it could kill you," Lindy berated, already hating Kurt's devised plan.

"It will be fine," Kurt said. He grabbed Lindy's face and kissed her forehead, unusually blasé for someone who had been so inevitably depressed about the world the day before.

Lindy knew she shouldn't have let him go. But for some reason, she found no will to bicker with him. Knowing he was voluntarily going into rehab had calmed her, and she figured that this hopeful glimmer on the horizon would be enough to hold her displeasure over.

Kurt was gone all day. Since she had not been scheduled to work, Lindy cleaned her apartment, called Trae to check in and send her love to Hannah, and painted her toenails a bright red on her bedroom floor.

She was slightly bothered that Kurt had chosen not to spend his last day in town with her. It wasn't like him, finding other plans when she was perfectly available to devote the day to being together. Whatever reasoning he had behind it besides getting high, Lindy could not understand. She could barely even dissect why she had ended up letting him go in the first place.

By the time the late afternoon came to a close, Kurt arrived back to her apartment wearing his corduroy jacket and behaving placidly. 

"Ready?" Lindy asked him, grabbing her purse. She had slipped her fingers into the purse's side pocket, checking for her ring. Sure enough, she felt the sharp edges of the diamond resting on its side.

"Yeah, I am."

His voice was strained, sounding similar to the way someone might hold back tears. Lindy frowned.

"Are you scared to go?" she questioned understandingly. Kurt was, by no means, being sent somewhere with a reputation of happiness. Lindy could understand why it would be intimidating for him. It was a place where he would have to confront his deepest, personal pitfalls head-on. Nothing in the rehab center could protect him from that.

"I'm sad to leave you," he professed. She knew that he was certainly not lying, but at the same time, Lindy could not help but secretly assume that Kurt missing her while away was only the tip of the iceberg of what was going on. 

They walked down the stairs of her apartment building and got into her car, Kurt gripping a small bag of belongings. Lindy did not ask what he had brought along. He had his wallet with him, and seeing as how she had put the picture of herself back inside of it, she wasn't worried about Kurt lacking any mementos of her.

On the drive to the airport, Lindy was engaged in a full-blown war with her mind. She was so busy battling herself that occasionally, she forgot that Kurt was sitting right next to her, his fists in his laps and his eyes staring out the window.

She was less bothered by Kurt's leaving and more so disturbed that once again, she had yet to reveal to him that in seven months time, they would officially be starting a family. Kurt seeking help for his addiction and being separated from Lindy hardly fazed her at all. She would have been accepting of him traveling across the world if it meant getting help for himself.

But that didn't change Kurt's unwilling ignorance of their baby.

Lindy told herself that if she permitted Kurt to get on his flight without officially knowing, she would go to Courtney Love herself just so she could be punched in the face for being so stupid. Kurt deserved the truth above anything. The only problem was, Lindy was still undecided on whether or not that truth would serve as hope or despair for him.

She pulled up to Kurt's terminal, idling her car by the curb and listening to the muffled sounds of announcements and airplane engines zooming over their heads. There were so many people around, dragging luggage and walking with purpose in every direction. The hectic nature of it all didn't make Lindy's indecisiveness any easier.

She heard Kurt's heavy exhale from beside her and was momentarily snapped out of her internal dialogue. She looked at him, noting how stringently he sat with his eyes trained ahead of him. There was no sure way for her to tell whether the reaction was due to nerves, sadness, or all of the above. Somewhere in his face, Lindy got the impression that he was strangely content with what was happening. Kurt was being as enigmatic as usual.

"I'd tell you to walk me to my gate, but I don't think that will help either of us," he finally said.

"I have to agree with you there," Lindy muttered. His departure was coming closer and closer and she still had yet to spit the words out of her mouth — I'm pregnant.

"I always knew that saying goodbye to you would be hard," Kurt said vaguely.

"Can you stop with that?" Lindy snapped, the thought of her pregnancy suddenly disappearing. "I wish you would stop trying to tell me goodbye. It's not goodbye. We'll be together soon."

Kurt smiled sadly, a tiny pull of his lips that was like a show of pity to Lindy. Kurt looked at her as if she had no clue what she was talking about and no remote idea of what was actually happening.

This in itself was enough to make Lindy rash. She felt so boldly about Kurt's use of the word 'goodbye' that she nearly blurted out her secret; she caught herself and instead reached for her purse, sifting through the inside and finding the pocket that she had kept a strict eye on since Kurt's proposal.

She unzipped it and pulled out her ring, as glimmering and lovely as the day she had first received it. She held it in front of Kurt's face, watching as he raised both brows in modest surprise while the diamond threw rainbows in the dim terminal lighting.

"This should be enough proof that you can't actually mean to say goodbye."

Kurt touched a single finger to the ring and lowered it away, looking at it like an old friend whom he had forgotten. He met Lindy's eyes regretfully.

"You can't even wear it because of me."

"Bullshit," Lindy retorted. Frustrated with Kurt's sour outlook, she nimbly placed her fingers behind her neck and unclasped the necklace she wore that night. It was an old thing, something she had bought on an impulse one day at the store. But the up side to the purchase was that it did have an easily removable charm of a star that slid off the chain quickly. In its place, Lindy threaded the silver string through Kurt's engagement ring and put it back around her neck.

When she was done, she tossed her dark hair back and lifted her chin a little higher so that Kurt could see her audacious aspiration to prove a point to him.

"It probably doesn't make me any less trashy, but at least it's on me now," Lindy justified, tossing the now forgotten star charm on her car's dashboard. Kurt seemed flattered by her declaration, but didn't make much of a show out of it.

"You're not trashy. You're the most wonderful human I've ever met. And I love you."

Kurt leaned across the arm rest between them to kiss Lindy softly, barely pressing against her lips with his own. It was their pre-first kiss all over again; a brush of feeling and then it was gone.

Lindy opened her mouth, but no sound came out as Kurt opened the door and exited the car. She could hear the stuttering 'w-wait' leave her mouth but that was it. Kurt was about to leave with none of the knowledge that she'd desired to give him. He would walk away oblivious to the sort of information that would change his life forever.

"Kurt!" Lindy blurted, her hand springing off the wheel and grazing against her stomach.

Kurt froze, looking back into the car with innocent curiosity. A fleeting visage of concern crossed his face when he saw the wide-eyed stare that Lindy was giving him, her eyes huge with trepidation.

Tell him now, tell him now, tell him now.

"I love you," Lindy concluded, her looming swell of courage deflating like air from a balloon.

Kurt gave her a tiny smile and repeated the same three words, dreamily drinking in the visual image of Lindy sitting before him with her petite features and brown eyes, so light that someone could have probably looked right through them. It took strength for Kurt to pull away from Lindy's gravitational force and turn his back to her, holding his breath and hurrying into the airport.

If it weren't for the fact that Lindy was screaming on the inside, imagining herself pulling out her own hair in a fit of self-hatred, Lindy would have felt that for Kurt, this was what he thought would be their last moment together for the rest of their lives.

_________

"I fucked up!" Lindy wailed into the receiver of her house phone, short of breath as she replayed her larger-than-life fumble at the airport.

"What the hell happened?" Trae asked incredulously. Lindy could hear the background sound of Hannah babbling in baby talk. Not even hearing her niece explore the beginnings of her very first words made Lindy feel any better about the mistake that she had made.

"I dropped Kurt off for his flight to rehab in California and I didn't tell him I was pregnant!" Lindy said, grinding her teeth so hard together that she almost thought that she had chipped a tooth. She didn't know what emotion she felt more prominently; anger at herself, sadness, or confusion over how she'd so easily let Kurt leave the car without knowing.

"Lindy!" Trae scolded. "Why didn't you just tell him? What are you so damn scared of? He's finally getting help."

"Something didn't feel right!" Lindy moaned. "It's like it wasn't the right time. But it had to have been. I won't see him for twenty-eight days. I've already waited too long. God, I fucked up."

"I wouldn't say that."

"It's true! This is so bad. What am I going to do?"

Lindy refused to consider any optimistic perspective of the situation that she found herself in. She supposed she could have spent the money on a flight to California to go visit Kurt at his rehab center, the risk of Courtney finding out aside, but she couldn't decide when that would happen. There was after all, only twenty-eight days of timed distance between them.

"Look," Trae started, his tone morphing into a business-like inflection. "This could be a good thing, alright?"

Lindy resisted rolling her eyes. There was nothing even remotely okay with her hiding Kurt's child from him like a terrible secret, even if it was only for an extra month.

"Hear me out. Kurt goes to rehab, gets the treatment he needs and then he's going to finally be in a healthy state of mind for you to tell him about the pregnancy. There won't be any worry that he'll be upset over it, like you said before. Am I right?"

Lindy hesitated, curling her fingers around the phone cord and considering Trae's presented angle. Maybe her brother was right — if she let Kurt have a few solitary weeks in his rehabilitation center, he would finally see the good in the world and the good that would come from being made a father again.

"Okay," she whispered, deciding for the umpteenth time in her life to trust Trae's advice rather than let her mind wander.

"It'll be okay Linds. Things are going to turn around for Kurt. Just you wait."