Descent (Black Heart Romance)

I start off with distractions— emails that aren’t crucial, logging into my mobile app game for a bit. But now that I’m back at Calvin’s after buying that baby blanket, my mind seeks out darker places.

He’s normally on the couch beside me when I have my phone. I have a little privacy, but not enough.

Today he isn’t here, and I have a lot weighing on my mind, so I take a darker path down memory lane—a foot path obscured by forest that I would ordinarily pick up the pace near so I could escape without it touching me.

There’s a question in my mind that I don’t want to ask. I don’t really want the answer. Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t be interested in it. Some crimes are too heinous, and the people who commit them don’t deserve redemption or second chances. My opinion on the matter is set, and I have no interest in reevaluating.

That’s my philosophical stance on the matter, but this pregnancy requires a more practical one, even if it’s deeply uncomfortable to think about.

I know there’s no chance I’ll be able to keep Calvin away from this baby if I have it, so the question must be asked.

Can a rapist be a good father?

I shudder just thinking it, but I’m committed to my course now, so I type his name into the search bar.

I pull up the page of the man who makes me sick. I haven’t looked at his profile in ages, and looking at it now makes my stomach feel all wonky.

When I looked on a particularly dark night several years ago, I saw that he had a daughter. A little blonde girl with blue eyes and his nose who stood beside him smiling and holding his hand, blissfully unaware of the type of person I knew him to be. He smiled too, that bland smile that said he was too cool to be here. He used to wear it all the time.

Of course, there’s probably no way to tell on social media if someone is actually a good parent, or actually a good anything. The image is curated, so they can portray whatever impression of their life they want the world to believe.

Still, I want to look and see if I notice anything. Any frayed threads that might hint at the truth.

His life has changed a lot since last I looked. His profile picture is one of domestic bliss—him standing on a wraparound porch with his arm around a woman with dark curly hair and glasses, four kids of various ages standing in front of them. It’s fall in the picture and it’s summer now, so I click to see when it was posted. Late October. Huh. He used to change his profile picture every week, but I suppose it makes sense that he grew out of that.

I’m stunned to see so many kids, though. There are four, but none are the little blonde girl from before. I click through to look at his other pictures. I dislike seeing his face and its unrelenting smile. They’re not all the too-cool smile. In some he grins and shows his teeth. In one he holds a bald-headed infant girl who giggles at his shenanigans.

I swallow. My stomach is sick. I want to stop looking, but I don’t.

It’s hard to reconcile the man I’m seeing holding his youngest daughter with the hedonistic monster who shattered me one night just for fun. He, too, was bored. I was sad and vulnerable from breaking up with a friend of his. He just wanted me to come over and hang out to help me get my mind off things.

What a guy.

Even back then he was fake as hell, and I remind myself of that as I swipe through picture after picture of him playing the devoted father.

Just because it looks that way doesn’t mean it’s real.

I click the picture of his wife or girlfriend, whomever mothered that baby girl. It doesn’t take long to realize the three boys in the picture must be hers from a previous relationship, and only the baby is theirs together. Other than the picture of them on the wraparound porch, there are only pictures of him with the baby or the woman, none of him and the boys.

I don’t know what happened to the other little girl I saw him with, but she’s not in any of the pictures. I know he wasn’t with her mother anymore, but it seemed like he still saw her since there had been pictures before.

I go deep down the rabbit hole searching for them, but the pictures are gone. I go through every one on his profile, but even the old ones I saw before seem to have been deleted.

I frown.

That’s odd.

Why would you delete pictures you took with your daughter?