Page 187 of Poison Vows

“I was in love once,” she starts, her voice raspy. “Jared was a great man. We went to high school together. He was on the football team with a clear track to a Division One after being scouted by several schools. His future was set, and I was a nerdy kid, ready and excited to follow in my father’s footsteps of becoming a doctor.”

I heard about that last part.

Beverly Irving was a smart child. She did so well in school that she never gotB’slike me.

She was on her way to med school, which had made Gramps and Grammy so proud, but then, she suddenly dropped out.

“Without meaning to, or maybe we were just young and so in love that we…” She trails off again, her voice catching. It takes a full minute before she speaks again. “I found out I was pregnant with your brother the day we graduated high school.”

Thinking of Samuel and how he’s never been as idiotic as me to throw away his life and look for this woman, I can’t help but feel so unworthy of hearing this now.

“I tried keeping it a secret as much as possible, so after graduation, Jared and I quickly found jobs. I made an excuse to your grandparents that I was going away to volunteer at an at-risk youth campsite all summer, but I just wanted to leave town.”

“Grammy and Gramps never found out?”

“You were raised by them,” she smiles sadly. “I’m pretty sure you know how lightning sharp they are and their ability to piece things together.”

I almost smile, knowing firsthand how true that is.

“A month after I gave birth to your brother, they showed up suddenly at my door. By then, we were living off-campus from Jared’s school where he was juggling both football and work, trying to raise our son while I was breastfeeding a newborn, taking evening community classes to supplement my GPA for my college classes. It was hell.”

“You were on dual enrollment? With a baby?” I ask, feeling majorly impressed, but I don’t want to show it.

“It was an extraordinary situation and there was no way I was going to let my parents down.”

“All that just to still break their hearts in the end. Amazing!” I say sardonically.

Beverly looks away, but from her story, I can see now why Gramps and Grammy’s heartbreak over my mother was multilayered and why later they never bothered to look for her.

“Of course, when they suddenly showed up and confronted both Jared and me, they quickly demanded that I enroll fulltime in college while they took care of Samuel for me,” she says, a faraway look in her eyes. “For a time, life seemed to find a better course for us than it was before with the chaos, the fear and the uncertainty for the future. So by the time I was about to graduate college and had been accepted to the med school of my dreams, I thought life would be nothing short of amazing from then on, but…”

“I happened,” I say, cutting her off.

It’s clear this is where the story’s going after all.

I messed everything up for my mother and the beautiful life she was having.

“No, that’s not—” she starts, then trails off. “Jared broke up with me and married some rich girl that his parents thought would help his image when he was drafted to play professional football. Who wants to see an incredible player being weighed down by a child and some random poor girl from the other side of Westbrook Blues? That kind of baggage is a career killer.”

The sudden raw bitterness in Beverly’s voice hits me square in the chest.

This woman was hurt deeply, that much is clear, and as the tears suddenly start streaming down her face, I can’t help but shiver with pity.

“I was deeply hurt by that, especially because I knew Jared was in love with me. He had done everything to raise our son, made sacrifices that were too profound if he were not fully committed to me and Samuel, so for years after he left us, I was just stuck. I couldn’t go to school. I deferred my enrollment, then eventually rejected my offer to Johns Hopkins, which really hurt my father.”

An unfiltered image of Gramps pops up in my head.

He was a gentle soul, so loving and passionate about his work, his patients, and all the good he contributed to humanity that I knew he wanted his lineage to continue in the medical field.

But that hope died with my mother.

As for me, I’m too stupid. I have to manipulate test results just to get in.

Beverly looks at me with a shattered expression that she can’t hide. It’s the first time I’ve seen her so undone.

“After Jared left, and my depression hit the lowest, my parents came to pick me up and I moved back home.”

“To Westbrook Blues?”

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