“No,” I said. “You’re leaving. Get out.”

“You’ll have to make me,” he exclaimed.

The yelp that came from his throat when I grabbed him by the collar was one that I had heard before. I had started throwing my dad out of the house when I was fifteen. I knew the drill. He did too, and instead of resisting, he padded along with me, stumbling down the steps and falling to the ground. The fake whine and drama were a tactic I was also used to, and I rolled my eyes when he clutched his ankle.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he cried. “Why are you throwing your old man away?”

“I left home because I didn’t want to be found,” I said, barely able to keep the tremble out of my voice.

I looked behind me and saw Helen holding up her phone. She was pointing at it and mouthing “police.” I nodded. There was no use pretending that wasn’t the way this day was going to turn out.

“You were just gone,” he said. “What else was I supposed to do?”

I sighed.

“Be a man,” I said. “You and Mom are grown adults. You don’t need me around paying your bills and keeping your shit together.”

“You’re an ungrateful little asshole,” he said, hobbling overdramatically. “I wish you had never been born. You know that?”

“I do,” I said. “You’ve told me that a thousand times by now. Usually right after I’ve thrown your ass out of the house or picked you up from jail. But this time, I’m done. You can sit and rot for all I care.”

“You owe me!” he cried out. “I took care of you when you were little. I gave you everything you needed!”

“You did the bare minimum!” I lashed out, finally unable to take it anymore. Blue lights were starting to fill the parking lot. The police station was only a few blocks away. “Parents are supposed to do everything they can for their children!”

A flash of Wendy and Olly crossed my mind, and I felt like my heart was caught in a vice.

“Sir?” a voice said from behind my father. “I think we’d all best come down to the station.”

I nodded. The officer was standing behind my father, his hand on his belt, close to his gun. My father wouldn’t make a move. He was too much of a coward to do anything like that.

The rest of the day was spent dealing with police and making reports and making sure he was going to at least spend the night in the drunk tank. Just like always, I lost time and money of my own to them. Sitting in the police station, making the report, I thought about Wendy again. It was true, Wendy was every bit the great mother Olly could ever ask for.

Maybe it was better for both of them that our relationship imploded. I came from bad stock. With my father as my example, I could only assume I wasn’t good for anyone.

26

WENDY

The alarm went off, and I turned my head into the pillow to prepare myself for the onslaught of nausea I knew would come. When I peeled my eyes open, the room around me seemed almost as dark as it had when I went to bed the night before. Outside the window, it was well before dawn, but there wasn’t the crisp blue that came before a clear day. I couldn’t see any stars or the moon glowing down from the sky.

A thick cover of clouds had blotted it all out and was creating an oppressive, heavy feeling. That wasn’t the best thing to wake up to first thing. Neither was the baby flopping around in my belly. It was still too early for me to feel any movement from the baby, but the amount of nausea that swept through me as soon as I so much as shifted my weight while my eyes were open each morning was enough to have me envisioning the new little one practicing an elaborate tap-dance routine on the walls of my uterus.

But I was prepared. I’d set the alarm five minutes earlier than I used to on workdays just for this situation. It gave me the time to carefully roll over onto my back and reach for the drawer in my nightstand. Opening it revealed two sleeves of saltine crackers, several plastic sandwich baggies of oyster crackers, and a small box of water crackers. All essentially the same thing, but my moods swung, and sometimes a saltine could simply not do the work for which an oyster cracker was called upon.

Eating a few crackers before even setting foot outside the bed was one of the things I’d learned when I was pregnant with Olly. Morning sickness hit me hard with him, but it didn’t feel the same as with this pregnancy. It was hard to explain, but the feelings were completely different. Both were enough to make me worry about humiliating myself if I were to go in public before the shifting and flipping of my stomach settled.

Tags: Natasha L. Black Romance
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