Page 84 of Soft Tissue Damage
Frozen in shock, I turn back the days and weeks in my mind, but I can’t recall the last time I bled, or even the last time I bought tampons. Was I living in Cullan’s house? Was I still working at Archer’s Diner? My period hasn’t exactly been predictable over the years, but I thought being on birth control was supposed to make it regular. I wish I knew more, and it’s not like I can talk to my aunts about these things. Even getting my period the first time at eleven and a half was a shock I wasn’t prepared for. After I worked up the nerve to confess what was happening to me, telling them was excruciating. They threw their hands up in theair and paced up and down the kitchen, exclaiming as if a great calamity had befallen us all. All I could gather was that I was now dirty, and what was happening to me had something to do with S-E-X, which I must never, ever think about, let alone participate in. I was so confused. I had no intention of participating in any S-E-X. I was eleven.
If I am pregnant, it’s better to know than not know. I slip my nail under the cellophane on the box of pregnancy tests and slice it open, and then sit on the toilet and read the instructions. I stick the test between my knees, pee on it, and then wait for the results, sitting on the closed lid.
Two minutes later, I turn the test over.
Tears fill my eyes, and my hands shake.
Two lines. Pregnant.
I feel just like I did when I was eleven and pulled down my underwear and saw blood. Like the world has been ripped out from beneath me. My own body has been keeping secrets from me. I remember crying for my mother the day I got my period, longing for the kind, loving, sweetly smelling woman I’d imagined many times. The woman who would put her arms around me and tell me everything is going to be okay. I want her now. I need her advice and comfort more than anything. When this happened to her, did she tell my father she was pregnant? Was he angry? Pleased?
I have to tell Cullan, but right now there’s one person I dearly want to share this news with. Someone who can understand the swirling fear and anxiety of being young and unmarried and suddenly finding out you’re pregnant.Someone who must have felt like I’m feeling right now, lost in a storm of emotions. I don’t know my mother’s circumstances, but I can imagine that two lines on a pregnancy test were once a shock to her. She’s out there somewhere, and I can’t cry or panic or celebrate with her. I can’t receive her hugs and her promises that everything will be okay.
“I want my mama,” I sob brokenly in the empty bathroom.
I’ve waited so long to meet her. To prove myself worthy of knowing her. I’ve given so much money, shed so many tears, spent dozens of hours on my knees, and suffered so many sleepless nights. I’ve had my hopes dashed again and again. I haven’t got anything more to give, and I have no time to lose.
21
Cullan
As the garage door closes behind me, I get out of my truck, and a thought crosses my mind that has become familiar ever since Elena moved in with me. It’s good to be home.
I smile to myself as I open my truck bed and rearrange the contents, throwing things away and restocking others, as I always like to do at the end of a big job. Music plays on the radio, and I hum along to Interpol. As I finish, I check my phone for any messages I’ve missed. There’s a notification that someone has opened the front door twenty minutes ago.
Quickly, I pull up the video that was recorded by the cameras. Elena left by the front door and vanished into thenight. I check my messages from her, but there’s nothing. That’s not like her.
My thumb hesitates over the dial button. I need to speak to her, but I want more information about what made her flee my house. If she’s discovered something about me, I’d like to know what it is. I search through the security footage for several minutes, looking from various cameras in my house until I find her in the master bathroom. She stands still for a long time staring at something in her hands. She sits on the closed toilet for several minutes. There are things on the floor. I can’t make out what’s going on, so I head inside and upstairs to look.
The first thing I notice is Elena’s “contraceptives” have been scattered everywhere. The box of pregnancy tests I bought in hopeful anticipation a few weeks ago has been torn open and is sitting on the vanity. There’s an unwrapped pregnancy test face down on the floor as if dropped there in surprise.
Or shock.
I didn’t notice any pregnancy symptoms, like queasiness in the mornings or her breasts being tender. Maybe she saw the tests sitting in my bathroom cabinet and felt she had reason to, like she’d missed a period. If so, did she take the test with joy and hope in heart, or fear and anxiety?
Why did the results make her flee instead of waiting here or calling me on the phone?
With my heart in my throat, I reach for the pregnancy test, and turn it over. Two lines stare back at me. Elena ispregnant with my baby. This is what I’ve been hoping for, but a cold sensation creeps down my spine.
My mask is slipping. It’s slipped so far that it may as well have come off. Does she like the man she sees beneath the mask, or does he horrify her?
The empty, silent house is answer enough. Elena fled without a word.
I push my hands through my hair with a groan, and then whirl around and slam my fist against the wall.
Fuck.Fuck. This isn’t happening. I can’t give her up. I won’t. I need to get her back, no matter the cost.
22
Elena
It’s a cold night in Blackport, and the icy wind cuts through my clothes as I stand shivering on the doorstep. I have to knock three times before Aunt Frieda answers the door, clutching her robe around her throat and peering into the night as though she’s expecting to see burglars and murderers. She seems even less impressed when she realizes it’s me.
“I need to speak with you. It’s urgent.”
“Elena, it’s after ten o’clock at night. We were about to go to bed.”
“Please,” I cry, and the urgency in my tone finally convinces her to stand back and let me in.
