Reed’s eyes circle my features, study my wide eyes and trembling lips before he takes his arms off the dresser. Before he lets the abused furniture go and opens the muscular cage that he was trapping me in.
He steps back and my sweaty palms slip on the dresser.
“You have a week,” he explains, all tall and unapproachable now.
“For what?”
“To come to me and tell me. And this time, Fae, you can’t run. You can’t hide. Because I need to know.” He glances down at my belly again for a second before looking up. “I have to.”
With that, he leaves and I sag in relief.
I take my first full breath and all the tightness leaves my body because I have time. He gave it to me.
To figure things out first.
My mother was eighteen when she had my brother Conrad.
She was a senior in high school and absolutely in love with my dad. When they found out she was pregnant, my mother dropped out and my dad got a job at a local construction company.
I think that company was owned by the Jacksons. Because everything in Bardstown is owned by them.
But anyway, they both dropped out and got married. My mom got a job as a waitress in a local diner and they both promised that they would do everything that they could to love their child and give him a good life.
And then slowly over the years, they had more kids.
With more kids came more jobs, more responsibilities.
Until they had me.
I was an accident. They planned on stopping after Ledger. And I think the fact that I was unplanned — the second unplanned baby after Conrad — made my father decide that he’d had enough.
And so he left.
I’ve never seen my dad. All I know is that his name was Jeffrey Thorne and he had golden brown hair and blue eyes. Conrad and me, we take after him. The rest of my brothers take after Mom, dark hair and brown eyes.
I guess when I was little, since no other father figure was ever around and since Con has always been there for me, I thought he was my dad. I think I even used to call him that, Daddy. I don’t remember doing any of this but my brothers tell me.
And then Con told me the truth one day when I was old enough to know it; by then my mom had already died.
He told me about our dad leaving right after I was born.
When I asked him if it was me who made him go, he hugged me and he said that no, it wasn’t me. That Dad was going to leave anyway. When I asked him if he was going to leave too, he looked me in the eyes, the color of his slightly darker than mine, and said that nothing on this earth would ever make him leave me, nothing at all.
So I guess I never really wondered about my dad because I had Con and the rest of my brothers.
But I have wondered about my mom, Cora.
Over the years, I have dug out her old recipe books, her old clothes that my brothers never threw away. She was the one who always baked and who always knitted sweaters and mittens. I found tons of her knitting books in our attic.
I have wondered about how it would feel to have a mother.
In my head it feels like the most fun ever.
Someone to talk to, someone to gossip with, someone to giggle with. Someone to watch all the chick flicks with, eat ice cream with, talk boy troubles with.
It feels like heaven.
And hell at the same time, because I’ll never ever get to experience it.
I’m wondering about my mother now.
I’ve been wondering about her for the past few days. I’ve been wondering what she would tell me, how she would react. If she’d be disappointed in me.
That I’m following in her footsteps.
Or if she’d be supportive. If she’d lend a hand and guide me. If she’d be there for me.
Like my friends have. Wyn and Salem and Poe.
I told them. I had to.
I mean, they would’ve figured it out on their own. I’ve been throwing up a lot more this week than I was the previous week. And right now, as of this moment, I hate all kinds of meat.
I hate its smell. I hate when I accidentally see it on someone’s plate in the cafeteria. I hate when someone even says bacon cheeseburger.
So yes, I’ve been throwing up.
And not only in the mornings. At nights too.
The only good thing is that miraculously, somehow I make it through classes and so no one else, other than my girls, knows what is up.
I thought they would judge me when I told them. I thought they’d call me an idiot. If not that, then at least a cliché. A high school, small town statistic.