I frown. She wheezes, and I try to remain calm to hear her out.
She starts to talk,and I realize she is no longer with me, but in a place and time far away from here.
"I lost my baby.A little girl. She had dark hair and dark eyes like her father. I never knew how much I could love until I saw her face. She was silent, at rest, everything that I wasn't. Her father and I split before I found out I was pregnant, and I decided that she would be my secret. I didn't have to share her with a father that didn't love her the way I did."
I felt my insides clench, and I hung on her every word afraid that she'd stop speaking, take away this - whatever this was.
"She died, and there was nothing I could do to change that. I remained silent, pretended I was okay. They put me in a maternity ward with other mothers who'd given birth to healthy, happy babies. Babies that weren't carried away the way mine was. I slept most of the time I was in the hospital. I listened to the mothers around me. Eventually, they decided I needed help, needed to deal with my loss moreconstructively, and so they moved me to a general ward, away from patients with babies." She laughs mirthlessly at that and moves about in the bed. I almost think she's forgotten that I'm there.
"The night before the move, a couple who'd just had premature twins were being counseled by a priest."
I know I should feel something, but I don't. This is nothing I haven't heard before. It is why I found Sin, why I follow her the way I do. She got to go to a good home; I didn't. What is new about that?
She laughs. “What I never told you was that the couple wanted to keep the babies even though their parents were opposed to it. They were young, had too much life ahead of them, their parents said. The girl's mother was particularly hard, trying to convince them to keep one baby, and give the other one up for adoption.”
“I’d been lurking around them for a month. Watching the mother, Lisa, bond with the two red-headed girls. Her boyfriend promised her that they'd find a way to keep both babies, he even offered to walk out with one of them, and that was when I decided that I'd do it for them before the month was up."
“You took me?” my voice cracks.
"I did because they should not be so lucky. Two babies, when I had none."
“You’re the devil, Billy.” I hiss, standing.
She laughs manically. I doubt she’ll remember anything she said, but I would. I would remember the fact that she stole my life from me and didn’t have the decency to replace it with something better.
I have never cried the way I did that night, standing outside the Lovell house in the rain. I thought about walking up to their door and introducing myself. I imagined the joyful reunion, and then I realized that I was nobody. Anonymous. It's what she's called me my entire life. My ID displays a name, but this is who I am, who I will always be. Unnamed. Unidentified.
Chapter 28
Sinclair
You wrapped my truth in beautiful lies.
With no regard for consequence.
There are moments in life that stun you. Shake you to your very core, and you know, deep down, that there will be no coming back from it. I hold DNA results in my shaky hands, results that tell me my daughter isn't mine. That she's another woman's child. I think it's a poor attempt at a bad joke until I look into the eyes of the man I love and realize that he's been feeding me beautiful lies.
“Why?” My heart aches in a way it never has before. The life I’ve been living these past fifteen years was a lie. The hardest part is understanding the rationale behind it. We were happy before the accident, at least I thought we were.
"It's a lie, baby, you have to believe me." Blue eyes plead with me. He closes the space between us, and I back away until my back hits the wall behind me.
"Don't," I say through gritted teeth. "I just want the truth."
“The truth,” he spits, caging me in, his arms on either side of my head.
"You couldn't handle it then, and you won't be able to handle it now."
“Try me.” I stare him square in the eye. His closeness only makes me braver. He glares down at me then backs away.
“You changed. You changed when you lost Evan. You were aloof, somewhere else entirely.” He runs his hands through his hair. It was like a punch in my gut all over again.
“This has been going on that long? Since prom? You have got to be kidding me.”
He laughs. “You chose someone else, Sinclair, and so I did the same.”
“You're insane if you think that justifies all of this. So, this is true?”
I hold up the paper. “This makes no sense.”
