Page 91 of Until You Found Me

“I’m good. Not sore, just tired.”

The TV runs in the background as they take bites of food in bed until she breaks the silence. “I’ve been having cravings for beet and applesauce cookies. Sounds disgusting.”

“Beet flavored cookies?”

“No, you can’t taste the beets, or the applesauce. I used to make them when we ran out of supplies at home. Of all the things to stick.”

“We made cornbread cookies when I was growing up. Always had boxes of Jiffy lying around even when we didn’t have much else. Tasted like shit, but you get used to it.”

“Rose said the beets made everything look fake strawberry flavored. Like raisins try to look like chocolate chips.” She lowers her food back to the plate, staring at it a moment, hernext question sudden. “Did you ever think of having children, Logan?”

He blinks in surprise.

“Sorry, you don’t have to answer.”

He doesn’t know how to answer. One moment they’re talking about beets and the next she’s asking about his paternal instincts. His first reaction is to scowl, but she is eager to know and he won’t risk her shutting down again. “Never thought I’d be a good parent. Didn’t wanna risk my father’s genes getting passed down again. Never seemed like a good idea.”

I couldn’t provide for a child even if I wanted to.

Finding a partner to start a family with was impossible.

What if I turned out like him and traumatized my own kids?

He voices none of these things but they hang between them unspoken.

“You would have been an amazing father. Any child would have been so lucky.”

‘Rose would have been lucky.’ Is what he hears in her tone and sees in her eyes, but he could only be filling in the blanks with what he hopes she meant.

Placing her plate on the side table, she sinks into the pillows with a long sigh. She is just as tired as him and he wishes he had the strength to carry her now. That he didn’t feel so damn useless while she suffers. She is unpredictable at the moment and he’s wary of crowding her, but she curls onto her side in his direction and he follows like a magnet, drawing patterns across her arm where it rests between them.

“You wanna hear something else outta the blue? Because that’s all my life is now, one random memory after the next.” She offers.

“Hit me with it.”

“You’ll think I’m terrible, but that’s why I need to tell you. So you know who I am.”

Well shit, now he’s scared, but he stays silent and waits for her to continue.

“I stole something once. I had been planning to leave again, but I didn’t have enough money for a bus ticket. I’d been selling Avon. He didn’t know. I found a booklet at the grocery store and called them when he was at work and just like that I had my own booklets to hand out to the neighbors and…”

“It’s alright, go on.”

“I think they felt bad for me. That’s the only reason anyone bought anything. I made three sales to the sweet older ladies at the end of the block. They gave me their money, never thinking twice about it. I was going to order those lotions and makeup and give it to them. I was. I was.”

She rolls away onto her back, staring up at the ceiling instead of him, and he props himself up on an elbow.

“He beat me a few days later, bad enough that I could hardly walk and I knew I couldn’t wait, so I took the money they gave me and grabbed Rose while he slept. I was going to use it all for that bus ticket and a motel, but he caught me before I made it past the driveway. Kept the money for himself. Beat me again until I told him where I got it.”

“And you think I’ll think less of you because you took money from those grannies?”

She shrugs. “They were sweet to me. It was two hundred dollars worth of orders and I was about to run with it. They didn’t deserve that.”

“They ever say anything about it later?”

“No. Probably because I barely left the house after that.They never came over.”

“I think they would have given you the money if you asked and you don’t have to feel bad about doing what you had to. Neighbors know what goes on behind closed doors. Even if they don’t say, they know.”

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