She says past like it’s a dirty word. And I know when she’s saying past, she really means me. My chest squeezes.
“And talking with them and the Lord, I felt called to reach out to you. I wanted to see how you were doing.”
“How I’m doing?” I almost laugh.
“Well, yes,” she says in a sickly sweet tone.
“How did you get my number?”
“My boys are so tech-savvy, even being so young, they showed me—” She cuts herself off, as if realizing the bomb she just dropped on me. “I guess I should’ve started with that. I have two boys and a little girl. Half-siblings for you.”
I collapse against the wall. Bricks scratch through my shirt. My head spins as my knees grow weak.
She has three other children. Siblings of mine.
Another little girl. How fitting. One to replace the one she gave up.
Children she takes on cruise vacations.
While I sometimes went to bed with my belly aching because neither Gina nor Patrick bothered to cook dinner.
“Are you still there, honey?”
Honey? That single term of endearment that she has never earned to use with me turns every single ounce of shock and hurt in my system to rage.
I chuckle bitterly. “You have three other kids.”
“Yes. My boys are twelve and ten, and Elody is six. My oldest is the one who showed me how to look you up.”
“Your oldest? You mean, the oldest of the children you kept?”
She sputters for a moment. “That’s not what I…” She trails off, whatever excuse she had dying on her tongue. “Honey, maybe we should get together. Talk in person. That would be best.”
“Best for who?” I demand. “For you? To ease some sort of guilt you have?”
“I don’t feel guilty?—”
“Then what? Why did you call me?”
“I told you. I felt called to reach out to you. You are a part of my testimony?—”
That does it. I drown out her voice with a bitter, angry laugh. “A part of your testimony. Interesting. I’m sure everyone loves to hear about the daughter you abandoned for the sake of their community.”
“I was fifteen,” she says, defensiveness cutting through the sweetness of her tone. “I wasn’t prepared for a child. I was a child myself.”
“And I don’t blame you for that.” I can’t imagine being pregnant myself at that age and struggling with the responsibility it brought. “But you tried to pawn me off on your sister and husband. They didn’t want me.” I could tell even when I was a child that I was unwanted by them. And the first opportunity they had for an out, they took it.
“You don’t understand. Our church?—”
“I don’t really give a fuck what the church thought of you getting pregnant before you were married!”
My outburst silences her. But it fuels me.
“I’m sure you have a million excuses. Your parents talked you into it, your church shamed you, trust me, I heard them all already when I was younger. I don’t need to hear them again from you.”
Reid’s car appears at the end of the alley. The engine cuts off and he smiles a lazy grin at me as he steps out. But it wipes away the instant he gets a better look at me.
He jogs down the alley, immediately coming to my side. One look at the phone pressed to my ear and realization washes over him.
