Page 30 of Michael: The Hawthornes

“Why?”

How had I not prepared myself for where this conversation would go? I’d imagined that I’d just tell the timeline of events, explain where I’d been, and then we would move forward somehow from there. What an idiot.

“Because it wasn’t,” I finally said. I wasn’t willing to clarify further. “I knew that I needed to go to college. It wasn’t an option not to. So, I went along with it.”

“You went along with it,” he muttered darkly.

“I was eighteen years old.”

“So was I,” he replied. “You think my parents coulda kept me from you?”

“They never would have,” I shot back. “That’s the difference.”

“No, the difference is I never woulda left you,” he said, pointing his beer bottle at me. “That’s the difference.”

“So, I went to Arizona,” I said, frustration making my words short. “Because I had a partial academic scholarship there, and they said that they’d pay for the rest. And they did. All through my pregnancy and up until Rhett was born.”

He was silent as I started to pace around the kitchen, the memories making me feel itchy.

“But then I couldn’t do it,” I said, coming to a stop across from him. “I’d picked the perfect parents. They were so nice, Michael. The dad was some kind of software engineer and the mom was the receptionist at a pediatrician’s office, but she planned on staying home once he came. They were perfect, and I—” My voice began to wobble and I stopped, swallowing hard. “I couldn’t give him up. He came out, and he looked just like you and I couldn’t do it and I broke their hearts.”

Mick stared at me, the muscle in his jaw throbbing.

“So, I brought him home and my parents were livid. They’d paid for school under the condition that I’d give him up for adoption and then I didn’t go through with it. So they stopped paying.”

“Fuckin’ cunts.”

“They let us live with them,” I said with a shrug. I’d been so thankful for that. “They supported us.”

“So you wouldn’t come back to me,” he said with a scoff, shaking his head.

I didn’t argue. It was something I’d always suspected but never said out loud.

“It was okay,” I said softly. “They loved Rhett, and it was okay.”

“So why are you here?” he asked, putting his bottle in the sink.

“Last year they were in a car accident,” I replied quietly, remembering the way the lights had lit up the front of the house when the state troopers had come to inform me.

“Both of ’em?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry. They were awful to you.”

“I’m sorry for you,” he said with a sigh. “They were still your parents.”

I nodded, my eyes watering. “So,” I said with a watery laugh. “Turns out that when your only skill is a perfect back handspring and you have no work history whatsoever, it’s nearly impossible to get a job that pays enough to support a child.”

“They didn’t leave you anythin’?” he asked dubiously.

“When I sold the house, it paid the inheritance taxes and their debts. There wasn’t much left.”

“Shit.”

“I made it work for a while,” I said, remembering how tight it had been. Selling clothes and pawning my mom’s jewelry. “But childcare pretty much wiped out my entire paycheck, so we were living in a dump and walking because I couldn’t afford to put gas in the car. It wasn’t sustainable.”

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