I go through the rest of the watercolor paintings, missing Aiden more with every second passing by. Tears stream down my cheeks even harder as I look at his works one by one.
He has painted many pictures of the three of us. Us playing in the swimming pool. Us eating dinner. Us sitting at the piano bench.
"Aiden," I rasp, the hammer in my head hitting me with such apowerful force, but this time, I don't fight it.
I'm letting it kill me, because I deserve it after what I've said to him.
When I finally hold the last piece of his watercolor paintings, my hand trembles. It's a picture of us lying on his bed, both Luke and I sleeping at his sides, while Aiden is awake, smiling, just like what happened after he was drowning in the swimming pool.
My breathing stops, and my tear falls onto the paper as I read the writing next to me and Luke in the painting.It reads,
Mom.
Dad.
42
________
CASSIE
Seven years ago
I'm pregnant.
I was sitting on my toilet. My hand was shaking when I stared at the result of the test pack in my hand. It was positive.
Now I knew why I'd missed my period for two weeks. I'd never thought that this would happen to me, that I would be carrying Luke's child.
He'd pulled out when we made love last time, but I was aware that we hadn't been completely safe. Despite that, I hadn't taken the morning-after pill—how reckless.
Oh, God, what should I do?
I would take the test again—I'd bought three packs—but there was a low chance that this test result was wrong.
My whole body was trembling. I'd never been this scared my entire life.
???
Four Months Pregnant
I'd decided to keep the baby. I would never have the strength to do the abortion—I didn't have the heart to do it.
There was another life inside me, and this was mine and Luke's. This was ours. I wanted to keep our child.
When I came back from Hallstatt at the beginning of the year,I was still in the holiday period after my high school graduation.
I hadn't raised any suspicion from anybody. Morgan had never pushed me to go into college, and with this pregnancy, I doubted that I would be able to prioritize my studies.
She'd always wanted to shove me into Hollywood and make me a celebrity, and I was terrified to tell her the news, because that would make her dream vanish into thin air.
But now that my tummy was getting bigger after I'd passed the first trimester of my pregnancy, I couldn't hide it anymore.
Even though I'd tried to hide my morning sickness, Morgan finally found out that I was pregnant. I'd been wearing loose clothes, but who was I to fool?
My tummy had always been Morgan's concern. It needed to be flat, even when I wasn't pregnant.
And she was livid. The nightmare that I'd feared all this time finally came.
