"Ready to go inside so Mama can grab her things?" I ask softly and Lyra nods.
Is it ethical to have my own daughter in my classroom? Not really, but I don’t care. She tried Mrs. Jones’s, but apparently, she was treated differently because she’s my kid so like a normal parent, I threatened to quit if Lyra wasn’t placed with me and considering I’m very well liked with the students and parents – not to toot my own horn and all that – but the principal quickly moved Lyra much to Mrs. Jones’s disagreement.
The woman has issues.
"Come on then," I say, gently pulling Lyra’s hand toward the big yellow building while Mrs. Jones continues to shout at her kids to line up which makes me smirk.
Lyra skips at my side and my heart clenches at the innocence and the love I feel for her despite everything that happened after her conception and the hardship I’ve had, the losses, the loneliness.
After waking from a coma I didn’t know I was in, I had found out Adam was dead just as I remembered seeing his cold eyes, eyes that I sometimes dream about, like he’s haunting me for surviving, and I was in shock. Then his mama not only blamed me for his death, but also his drug use, his cheating, his assault on other girls that kept coming out of the woodwork after his funeral, all claiming he sexually assaulted them meaning I was extremely lucky and she blamed me as to why he hurt me, why he cracked four of my ribs.
She held me responsible for a good four months after the crash for things that were completely out of my control, things I had no idea about all while I was struggling to come to terms with everything.
I was barely eating. I skipped school, unable to face my peers, who had filmed my assault from a guy I thought I could love, a guy I willingly gave my virginity to before they finally realized what was happening and eventually, I enrolled in homeschooling.
Freya texted a few times during those months, but I couldn’t answer, especially when I didn’t know if she hated me, if she blamed me like her mother who ensured she had shouted from the rooftops that everything was my fault, making the whole town believe her story even though the only evidence, now locked up with the police, says otherwise.
Mr. Collins and my dad both threatened to sue anyone who had a copy. They didn’t need the reminder of what happened, didn’t need me to go more into myself.
A few months after the fateful day, after my horror, I ended up collapsing. Dad rushed me to the hospital, and I had found out I was sixteen weeks pregnant with a baby girl, that the condom Adam wore failed, or was old. Either way, it didn’t work and I wasn’t on anything because my mother didn’t know I had planned to sleep with my boyfriend, she wouldn’t have allowed it.
While I sat in shock, looking at the monitor that showed my little girl, my dad cursed the hospital out and demanded the doctors terminate the pregnancy, claiming it was conceived by force, that I didn’t know what I was doing despite being seventeen.
He lied, trying to use Adam’s history as an excuse, not thinking about all the girls Adam had hurt, only thinking about himself because he didn’t want me having Adam’s baby. He didn’t wantany part of me associated with his family but I couldn’t do what he wanted, she had a heartbeat and I—I….
I squeeze Lyra’s hand as we walk up the steps, my thoughts still caught between the laughter at the school gates and memories that never quite leave my side, the pain, the hurt.
Would I have become a victim of Adam’s if he had survived?
Would Lyra?
His hazel eyes flash before me and I quickly blink.
The therapist my mother forced me to see before we had found that I was pregnant explained I have survivor’s guilt but in my mind, I have unfinished business.
He cheated on me, he hit me, broke my ribs, he tried to kill me and instead of paying with years behind bars for what he did to me, to the girls who have come forward, he died.
He didn’t surfer in my eyes which probably makes me evil but I don’t care, he got the easy way out while I have to live with what he did every day.
“Is Caleb coming for dinner tomorrow, Mama?” Lyra asks as we walk inside and I smile at my little girl.
“No, princess, he’s coming next week. Matty’s going to pick him up,” I reply and she nods, releases my hand, then darts through the doorway into my classroom to grab her things.
My parents disowned me, which I never expected.
As soon as I butted in and denied my dad's wishes for a termination, he couldn’t look at me. My mama tearfully told me I had to leave if I kept a rapist’s baby—her words, not mine. That I wouldn’t be welcome in their family, my own family and when the town found out and all the whispers begun, one claiming I tried to trap Adam which made him go down the deep end, those people being Mrs. Collins friends, I knew I couldn’t stay in town.
Mama accidentally told a talkative friend and most thought I should terminate when it got out. Even Mr. Collins visited as I packed and demanded that I end his son's evil spawn – again hiswords not mine – but I didn’t see the baby as his child. I saw her as innocent and a part of me but he just made the decision to leave town instead of trying to get my parents to see sense even easier and what slammed the nail into the coffin so to speak, as soon as Mrs. Collins and Freya found out, they demanded I moved in with them. Mrs. Collins said it was her grandbaby and that she was going to take sole custody once she was born and that I wouldn’t be allowed near her son reincarnated. – Without a word, I dragged my bags out of my parents’ home where they stayed in Dad’s office and I walked away while she screamed I couldn’t take her grandchild and tried to stop me from getting into the car. She grabbed me roughly while her daughter stood in shock at her mother’s behavior, though it was obvious where Adam got his temper from.
Thankfully, the neighbors called the cops because they knew she wasn’t allowed near me and forced her to step away from me while I got in my car and drove away. Without looking back while cop cars raced towards my parents’ home, a home I grew up in but was no longer welcome.
After I left, I had the protective order include Lyra which just made things worse apparently. According to Freya, who texted begging to meet her niece, the order caused her mother to have a mental breakdown.
Her son assaulted me, he tried to kill me, yet in her eyes, I’m still the bad guy so when my uncle, Mathew, in Louisiana, whom my dad contacted when I decided to keep my baby, said he’d take me in, I said yes. Even if it was only until I graduated from college then after that I was to be on my own, which again I was fine with, even when he kept to his word because I worked hard to get to where I am now, giving Lyra has everything she needs.
I worked nights while my cousin, Matty, watched Lyra and I saved as much as I could while attending school and before I even graduated from college, I had already rented a small two-bedroom apartment. Last year, I upgraded to a three-bedroom townhouse with Matty, though I know I need a better car at some point. I can admit, it would be nice to buy somewhere instead of renting but all that will come in time.
I haven’t heard a peep from my uncle and nothing from my parents, which hurts because we were close before everything happened. I’ve thankfully heard nothing from Freya in five years so that’s a plus.
