Page 135 of Captive Souls

“Do you want children?” he asked as he set various ingredients out. I’d leaned on my kitchen table, watching him.

I pondered the question which had been hurled out of left field. Of all the things I’d thought he might ask me, that was not one of them.

“I can’t have children, remember?” I replied carefully, though I was pretty sure he remembered. He held on to the most minute details, saving them up, storing them somewhere important. That’s how intense his feelings were for me. It felt immensely world changing to have someone want to know you that deeply. Study you that deeply.

“Yes, but do youwantthem?” he probed. “Traditional pregnancy is not the only way to be a mother.”

I watched his face for a sign of where his mind was going, but he wore a mask so solid, even I couldn’t find a tell. And I’d made it my business to study this man very deeply.

I tapped my finger against my thigh. “No, it’s not the only journey to be a mother.”

I’d thought about being a mom many times over the years, more since my thirtieth birthday come and gone. Then my thirty-first, and so on. I might not have had a biological clock, but I felt the window of time closing in on me. If I did choose to be a mother, the process was infinitely more complicated for me—especially doing it alone. It would take a long time to even get achild, by then I’d be older, and society demonized older mothers almost more than those who didn’t have children at all.

“The process is long and expensive…” I said instead of voicing the conclusion I’d come to long ago, what I’d always known in my heart of hearts.

“Money is no object, and I could get you a baby within a month, if that’s what you wanted.” His posture was rigid, eyes full of ice.

I stared at him. “You don’t joke, and now is asuperweird time to start.”

He didn’t answer me, which I assumed was his menacing way of saying he was not joking.

“You could ‘get’ me a baby?” I air quoted. “You’re in the business of trafficking infants?” Previously, I had been certain that there was nothing Knox could do that would affect my feelings toward him, taint them. But children were a hard line. I’d been sure that he wouldn’t touch them, wouldn’t harm them.

He shook his head, and I sagged with relief, knowing he caught the gesture. “I know powerful people, and I have money. I’m owed a lot of favors.” He filled up a pot with water. “You think the billionaires of this world wait for anything? They jump the line for healthcare, organ transplants, drugs not available to the general public and children—if they want them.”

Okay, he was serious. Deadly serious. And deadlyrichif he was talking about having the kind of money required to procure a baby through murky ‘legitimate’ means.

I hadn’t thought about Knox’s financial situation. It hadn’t really been top of the list when we first met. Or any time after. Sure, he wore very nice suits, everything about him was expensive and sophisticated, but I’d never equated that with what it might’ve meant in the real world.

We’d lived in a suspended sort of reality, never giving myself the luxury of thinking about us in the real world. I was suddenly clutched with panic as to what that would look like.

How that would work.

We’d made it through the entire Italian mob trying to get us and a boatload of childhood trauma just to have the mundanity of life destroy us? Surely not. That was too tragic for even a tragic love story.

I forced myself back into the present, with Knox, where he was waiting not so patiently for my response. His energy had gone even tenser, eyes clouding over with a sharpness I knew he used as a defense.

“No,” I whispered. “No, I do not want to be a mother.” I drew in a long breath after releasing the words that were so shameful and frowned upon even in our post-feminist society—if such a concept ever truly existed.

Who was a woman who didn’t want children? There must’ve been something wrong with her. She must’ve been cold, selfish, damaged. Or simply not smart enough to know her own mind.

The few women I had told this secret to early on in my twenties had rolled their eyes, patted my arm patronizingly and assured me I’d change my mind. As if my own mind wasn’t mine. Since then, I hadn’t spoken of my plans not to have them, had tightly smiled whenever people raised the subject.

My eyes fixed on Knox. “Even before the cancer, I knew that’s not what I wanted. I’m sure it has a whole bunch to do with the trauma I grew up with, my own mommy issues, but whatever the crux of it is, that’s not what I want. Not who I want to be. I want to be the eccentric aunt to Daisy’s brood.”

I thought good naturedly about my sister who, thankfully, was safe and to her eternal knowledge that she’d be the mother to break generational curses and heal generational wounds. If there was anyone who could do it, it was her.

“I love my job,” I continued. “I get to be around the best of children and fill that void inside of me that nature created. And I also get to be around the worst of them, to remind me that I don’t have the tools to navigate that on a full-time, never-ending basis.”

I waited. For him to assure me I’d change my mind or to reject me for being horrifyingly unfeminine and wrong for not wanting to be a mother. Even if he was sure about not wanting children. Men had a funny way of doing things. They wanted women with a backbone, but they wanted to be able to bend it. Didn’t want children but wanted their partner to have that nurturing instinct. Without it, she was damaged.

Though I thought better of Knox, knew better of Knox, the concrete admission sent a thread of fear through me.

“Good,” was all Knox said.

Then he turned around to make dinner.

“Good?” I stepped forward, unable to let sleeping dogs lie. I had to pick and pull, see if there were any loose threads that I could tug on, that would unravel us.

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