Page 125 of Necessary Cruelty

Everything I have ever done has been in the hopes of breaking the legacy that she left for me. And she had actually managed the one thing that I couldn’t.

Finally escape Deception and never look back.

But I’m not the same as my mother, for all the good it will do me. I won’t be able to abandon a life that I created, no matter how difficult it will be to stay. And if I’m lucky enough to have a girl, she will never be tempted to sell her soul for a better life. I’ll provide for her the life that I always dreamed of having.

A new sense of determination washes over me as I think about it. All the PTA meetings that my mother never bothered to attend, the afternoons when I would get home from school to a dirty house because she was still asleep in bed, how she never managed to hold down a job for more than a few months.

What she did to Vin was just the culmination of a lifetime of terrible decisions. Maybe it was jealousy or some desire for Vin to stay weak so she could keep her job taking care of him. I’ll probably never know, and I don’t really care about the reason anymore.

She had been a perfect example of all the things that are the polar opposite of motherhood. I shouldn’t expect anything she has ever done to make sense to me.

I’m going to be everything she wasn’t.

I’m going to be everything for this baby she refused to be for me.

I’m going to be the kind of mother I deserved to have.

Something good will come out of the twisted wreckage of whatever it is we used to be. Something new and innocent, born a freshly blank slate that will know from the moment it enters the world that it has its mother’s unconditional love.

I’ll turn Zion’s old room into a nursery and enroll in night classes at the community college. My job at the Gas and Sip is almost certainly still waiting for me, and I can probably convince Amelia to help out with babysitting. If Vin has even the tiniest bit of his soul left, then he’ll keep his promises. Grandpa can stay in the care home, and Zion will stay at a place that actually cares about rehabilitation.

This baby and I can make it on our own.

Lightness fills my chest for the first time since I woke up in the hospital. It amazes me that I could so easily flip that switch in my brain, but I’ve gone from dreading the thought of what this new life would mean for my future to embracing it.

A nurse comes in with a handful of pills in blister packages, rattling off long confusing names as she pops them into a plastic cup.

“Are all of those safe to take when your pregnant?”

She looks up at me in obvious surprise. “You’re pregnant?”

“Tested positive yesterday.”

“We should have that on file, I don’t remember seeing it.” Brows furrowing, she leaves the cup of pills on the table and goes to a computer terminal in the corner of the room. She pecks at the keyboard a few times while mumbling to herself. “The damn techs should have drawn enough blood for a full panel. Results need to be cleared before any orders get put in.” Her sigh of relief is palpable. “Nope. We always run a pregnancy test with the full workup, blood not urine because that’s the only way to be sure. You are definitely not pregnant.”

Her words hit me like a punch to the gut. “I took a test yesterday. Did I lose the baby because I went into the water?”

The smile she gives me is gently reassuring. “No, honey. Your hCG levels would still be elevated if you had a miscarriage that recently. It takes weeks for them to go back to normal.” The nurse returns to the side of the bed and holds out the pill cup to me, giving it a little shake. “Word of advice, always double check those drug store tests. Peeing on a stick is great and all, but they’re not always 100% accurate. Consider yourself lucky it was a false positive this time and not a false negative.”

Not pregnant.

I sit with that realization for a moment, feeling a unique sense of desperate relief and keening loss.

Nothing good could possibly have come from this twisted situation, and it was stupid of me to think that anything could.

Definitely not pregnant

I start to cry when the words bang off the insides of my skull.

But I can’t say if they are tears of relief or pain.

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