Page 57 of Dirty Love

“I’m sorry,” I say, my voice cracking.

She shakes her head.

“You didn’t know you couldn’t trust him.” I want to tell her more. I want to tell her that nothing she will tell me will change how I feel about her, but she doesn’t need that pressure right now. She doesn’t need to bear the weight of how much I love her when her heart is lost forever.

I get it now. I thought we were the same. I thought we were both so broken that love wasn’t possible.

But I’m broken because I’d never loved anyone, not in that formative way that teaches us how and who to fall in love with.

She’s broken because she’s loved with her entire being and it wasn’t enough.

“I should have known,” she finally whispers. “I should have protected him.”

I wait. I don’t know what she did or didn’t do.

It doesn’t matter.

She was a baby herself, in over her head.

“Keegan started moving inside me, or I started feeling him move inside me, the same day we got offered a recording deal. And that night, we…celebrated. I didn’t drink anything, I claimed I was still under the weather, but Grant wanted…he fucked me that night. That was the last time we ever…And he felt my baby move. His hand was on my stomach and he felt something, and he put it all together.

“Everything moved quickly at that point. His parents are devoutly religious, and he told them. They insisted we get married. I was too young for that, but they knew a judge, and made a petition for an exception due to the pregnancy.”

She’s given me enough information that I’d be able to find her real life identity if I went looking for it. Even as I tell myself to let it go, the data churn begins.

That my mind goes there is probably reason enough for her not to trust me with this story, but I’m in now. I’m in deep, and I’m in forever. I don’t care who she once was. I do care that her connection to that baby was stolen from her, though. I care about that with every fiber of my being.

Grant’s identity wasn’t created at age twenty-two. Why isn’t the marriage in his background file?

“Wilson?” Her voice wavers.

“I’m here. You can keep going if you want. I’m not going anywhere. I’m listening.” And thinking, God help me. “What happened next?”

“Everything happened so quickly. We were married a few weeks later, then we flew to L.A. and we started using these names from the start there. Grant said it would be better if nobody knew we were married, because of the age difference, and he was right. He said once I really started showing, I’d go back to Seattle and we’d make it work somehow.

“Like an idiot, I believed him. And it seemed to work at first. The record execs were all over me. It was a lot to take in, a lot to handle. Grant made it really clear we weren’t making any deals just yet. But he wanted them lined up for when we got back, and when I’d get run down, he’d give me a pill to keep me going.”

Her voice is straining now, but she hasn’t moved from her spot on the couch. I change cameras so I can see her from another angle. She’s twisting her hands together, and something inside me twists with them.

“Four weeks after we arrived in California, there was a party.” Her voice chills, the words sharpening, and I want to tell her to stop, it’s okay, I don’t need to know this part. But she needs to say it, so I want to listen. She needs a witness and I can be that for her. “There were producers and radio people there, label execs. It was at a big converted warehouse. Competing DJs, lots of drugs. We didn’t get there until midnight, and I was exhausted. He gave me one pill, then another. I knew I shouldn’t take the second one. I remember that thought so clearly. It was the first thing I said when I woke up. It was only later that the rest of the night came back to me. Flashes of people in front of me, offers of other drugs. I said no, no, no. I kept saying that, over and over again, and the party kept going. I was there until early morning, and at some point…”

She trails off.

I wait.

When she starts again, her voice is pure ice. “I did a line of cocaine. I can see myself in the bathroom. Another flash. Then an ambulance ride, and waking up in Emergency. I said, ‘I didn’t want it.’ I meant the pills. I didn’t know the rest, not until later. Someone said they couldn’t find a heartbeat, and then it was a blur again.”

This silence stretches so long I think she’s done.

She’s not.

“He was born sleeping, they said. He’d had a cardiac arrest inside me. I killed him. They cut me open to try and save his life. And when they told me he was gone, I wanted them to keep cutting me until I was a million pieces of nothing, because I didn’t deserve to be alive if he wasn’t.”

“You didn’t kill him.” I know it’s not what she wants to hear. I can’t say anything she wants to hear. I can only speak the truth, as impotent as it is. “You didn’t. Fucking hell, Tabitha, tell me that you know that now.”

“I don’t. And you can’t…please don’t. Others have tried. I’m not suicidal, I’m not a danger to myself. But I know what I did and I will never let myself live without that guilt.”

“Why are you still with him?”

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