Page 90 of Mending Hearts

“Maybe you should stayhere—”

“Are we done?”

“We can be, yes. I just didn’t want you blindsided tomorrow.”

“Today. Tomorrow. What’s the fucking difference?” I grabbed my purse from the seat and stormed out the door. Pasha, standing next to the conference room, fell into step beside me. “Not a word, Pasha or I might literally rip your head off.”

He grunted in response.

In my head, I did the calculations, tried to remember when Pasha had started working for us. He hadn’t been around. The first tour was when he started, but I couldn’t be completely sure. He wouldn’t know what happened.

“I want my mother in the car. I don’t care how you get her there.” We stormed into the lobby, and I locked gazes with Pasha.

He swept Laura off her feet like a linebacker, barreling through the lobby and out the doors ahead of me. She let out one noise of protest and then took his treatment without further comment.

Opening the rear door, he tossed Laura inside and slammed it shut. With his finger, he pointed to the front passenger seat for me and opened the door. He was probably right. The amount of anger racing through might cause me to do something rash like strangle her. I wasn’t sure Pasha would stop me if I did.

As soon as I was in the front seat, I turned on Laura. “Why? Why would you do that to me?”

“Don’t act like you didn’t know. You signed the paperwork.” Laura crossed her arms and eased into the seat as though I was being irrational.

“You forged my signature. You lied to me about what was happening that day.” My voice shook.

“And you had no clue? Never suspected? Never looked up the procedure online and thought, ‘Mmm…that’s not what happened to me.’ Never?” Laura scoffed. “You knew. It’s why you didn’t tell me aboutthisbaby.”

Sarah and I had spent a drunken night looking up ovarian cyst procedures when it turned out Sarah was prone to them and might need surgery. After several pages of the search engine, I’d realized my procedure probably hadn’t been for cysts. I’d been too afraid to look any further.

“You’re blaming me for this?”

“I didn’t knowhowyou’d gotten pregnant, but I knew you were.” Laura’s shoulders collapsed, and she sighed. She pulled her elbows closer to her chest and gazed out the window. “Okay? I was managing every aspect of your career so we didn’t screw up. We’d had that massive advance, and I’d bought us a house. Our first house. A place that was really ours. If we defaulted on our contract in any way, we had to pay back that advance. The housing market had soured.”

“What does that have to do with you drugging me and forcing me to have an abortion?”

“There was a morality clause in your contract. One of the things you weren’t allowed to be was a teenage mom. Right there in bold black and white.” She swallowed. “When I realized you were pregnant, I went to see Kenny.”

I stiffened.

“I needed some advice, and he’d always been easy to talk to. I thought…I thought he’d help us. I didn’t know he was the reason we needed help.” She shrugged. “He suggested the clinic, told me how to get it done if you were resistant, said the label would drop us and insist on getting their money back if you had the baby.”

“The house was more important to you than my health? Than my well-being?”

“No! No.” Laura glared. “With the market soured, we’d have lost money on the sale of the house, assuming we could even sell it in a decent amount of time. We would have been homeless, in debt, so much debt.”

“You should have told me.” My voice vibrated with rage. “If we were in that much trouble, you should have told me.”

“Would you have gotten an abortion?”

“I don’t know!” I cried. “I was fifteen. I probably would have done whatever you told me to do.”

“Telling you was too risky.” Laura shook her head. “You would have wanted to keep it. You’re softer than me. You wouldn’t have been able to do what needed to be done.”

Bile climbed my throat. For twenty-one years, I’d been chasing her love, but I’d been outrun even before I was born. “You never wanted me.”

“You’re so melodramatic.” She pinched the bridge of her nose.

My anger dissipated quicker than I expected. A deep sense of loss rushed into its place. The one thing I’d have done almost anything to earn, and I’d never stood a chance. “Pasha, I want you to remove my mother from this vehicle. I’m going to work on removing her from my life.”

“Mia, honey, don’t be rash.” Laura sat forward and reached for my hand, but I tugged it away, out of sight. “We can work through this.”

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