Reminders of Him

“You’ll be home in two minutes.”

She kicks my dash. “Pull over!”

I don’t say anything else. I do what she says. I flip on my blinker and pull over to the shoulder.

She grabs her tote bag, gets out of the truck, and then slams the door. She starts walking in the direction of her apartment. When she gets several feet in front of my truck, I put it in drive and move along the shoulder, rolling down my window.

“Kenna. Get back in the truck.”

She keeps walking. “You told her to leave! You saw me coming and you told her to leave! Why do you keep doing this to me?” I continue driving at the pace she’s walking until she finally turns and faces me through the window. “Why?” she demands.

I press on the brakes until we’re even. My hands are starting to shake. Maybe it’s the adrenaline, maybe it’s the guilt.

Maybe it’s the anger.

I put my truck in park because she looks like she’s ready to tackle this. “Do you really think you can confront Grace in the parking lot of a grocery store?”

“Well, I tried to do it at their house, but we both know how that turned out.”

I shake my head. The location isn’t what I’m referring to.

I don’t know what I’m referring to. I work to gather my thoughts. I’m confused because I think she might be right. She tried to approach them peacefully the first time, and I stopped her then too.

“They aren’t strong enough for whatever it is you’re here for, even if you aren’t here to take her from them. They aren’t even strong enough to share her with you. They’ve given Diem a good life, Kenna. She’s happy and she’s safe. Is that not enough?”

Kenna looks like she’s holding her breath, but her chest is heaving. She stares at me for a moment and then walks toward the back of the truck so that I can’t see her face. She stands still for a while, but then she walks into the grass on the side of the road and just sits down. She pulls up her knees and hugs them as she stares out over an empty field.

I don’t know what she’s doing, or if she needs time to think. I give her a few minutes alone, but she doesn’t move or stand up, so I finally get out of the truck.

When I reach her, I don’t say anything. I quietly sit down next to her.

The traffic and the world continue to move behind us, but in front of us is a big open field, so we both stare straight ahead and not at each other.

She eventually looks down and pulls a small yellow flower out of the grass. She rolls it in her fingers, and I find myself watching her now. She inhales a slow breath, but doesn’t look at me when she releases it and starts to speak.

“Other mothers told me what it would be like,” she says. “They told me they’d take me to the hospital to give birth, and that I’d get two days with her. Two whole days, just me and her.” A tear falls down her cheek. “I can’t tell you how much I looked forward to those two days. It was the only thing I had to look forward to. But she was born early . . . I don’t know if you know that, but she was a preemie. Six weeks. Her lungs were . . .” Kenna blows out a breath. “Right after she was delivered, they had to transfer her to the NICU at another hospital. I spent my two days alone in a recovery room with an armed guard keeping watch over me. And when my two days were up, they sent me back to the prison. I never got to hold her. I never even got to look into the eyes of the human Scotty and I made.”

“Kenna . . .”

“Don’t. Whatever you’re about to say, don’t. Trust me, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t come here with the ridiculous hope that I would be welcomed into her life and even given some kind of role. But I also know she’s where she belongs, so I would have been grateful for anything. I would have been so grateful to finally get to look at her, even if that’s all I was ever allowed to do. Whether you or Scotty’s parents think I deserve that or not.”

I close my eyes because her voice is painful enough. Looking at her and seeing the agony on her face when she talks makes it so much worse.

“I am so grateful to them,” she says. “You have no idea. The whole time I was pregnant, I never had to worry about what kind of people would raise her. They were the same two people who raised Scotty, and he was perfect.” She’s quiet for a couple of seconds, so I open my eyes. She’s staring right at me when she shakes her head and says, “I’m not a bad person, Ledger.” Her voice is full of so much regret. “I’m not here because I think I deserve her. I just wanted to see her. That’s all. That’s it.” She uses her shirt to dry her eyes, and then she says, “Sometimes I wonder what Scotty would think if he could see us. It makes me hope that an afterlife doesn’t exist, because if it does, Scotty is probably the only sad person in heaven.”