Page 124 of Breaking the Dark

The realization hit her after her scan. She and this kid, they’ve already bonded. She is coming, regardless of Jessica’s personal circumstances.

“Good,” says Amber. “That’s great. And tell me. What happened in the UK, what that woman did to you…How are you feeling now about that?”

“Disgusted.”

Amber nods. “Right,” she says. “The same way the other person made you feel.”

“Yeah.” Jessica’s eyes widen with dreadful clarity; the parallels are almost sickening. “I mean, there was no trauma involved. I wasn’t abused. If anything, it was amazing to feel that way, to feel all that wonder and awe, so at peace with myself, the world around me, the way I looked. It was quite magical. But to be in that same place again, like I was before, to be used to further another person’s sick fantasies, their twisted ideals, to be used like a puppet, like a pawn, like I had no…” She feels hard for the word and then she finds it and grabs it. “Agency.”

Amber nods encouragingly. “Right,” she says. “Exactly.”

“And the feeling of that woman’s dirty fingers inside my head, using my head. For her goals. Making me believe that something good had happened to me, something sweet, something wholesome, when in fact it was so, so bad. Making me watch those cutesy movies with her, eating popcorn together. Urgh.” She growls, feels nausea rising through her just thinking of it. “It’s sickening, and I still feel waves of that when I think of what I experienced. I still find myself in that beat-up old kitchen, the smell of roast lamb, dog’s breath, that kind of damp old house smell. I get that a lot. And then her…Ophelia.”

“Tell me about her? What was it like finding out that she had these powers?”

Jessica sighs. “Kinda unsurprising. Explained a lot a stuff about her, about the vibe. About all of it. But also, I’m kinda angry with myself for not realizing it in the moment. For going in unprepared, leaving myself open. I feel like such an idiot to let that happen to me again. Like I can’t trust myself. Like maybe I need to just lock myself away from the world. Stay home. Become…I don’t know. Smaller.”

Amber puts her hand hard against her heart and says, “No. Please don’t ever, ever do that. The world needs you to be big. As big as you can be. The world needs you to show us how to be better, how to be strong, how to be women. I mean, look at you.”

Jessica wriggles a little, throws Amber a questioning look.

“You’re awesome, Jessica. I would kill to be you. You’re gorgeous. You’re clever. You’re cool. You’re loving. You’re scary. You are so, so strong. What those people did to you, it doesn’t make you weaker, it makes you stronger. You just need to believe that. And you need to open your heart to yourself. Break through the dark. Find the light. Do you see?”

Jessica nods, just twice, feels a solitary tear fall from the corner of her eye and roll down the side of her nose.

Amber passes her a tissue from a box and smiles at her. “And tell me, what’s next for you? Are you working another case?”

“No. Not yet. I’m thinking…”

Amber eyes her questioningly.

“Yeah. Get to twelve weeks with this”—she pats her stomach—“then I’ll tell the baby’s father. Then I’m gonna slow down. And yeah…a new chapter.”

“What does that look like to you?”

“It looks like…well, I will definitely still wanna work. I’m thinking maybe journalism?”

“Oh! Right, of course. I can see the crossover. Did you study? Go to college?”

“No. Nothing like that. But I have connections. I know people. And I can, you know, string a pretty good sentence together, believe it or not. I just think, being a mother, I need something more stable, less dangerous. But I will need something more than motherhood. I know that much about myself.”

Amber nods. “That makes me happy,” she says.

“Yeah,” says Jessica, a warm plume of realization building in her gut. “Yeah. Me too.”

Amber’s eyes go to a clock on the wall. “So, Jessica, we have another forty minutes. I’d really love to use that time to do some work with you around this idea of disgust. Of uncleanliness. This idea that other people’s dirty fingerprints are still in there”—she taps her temple with her fingertip—“in your psyche. But it will mean doing some deep digging. How do you feel about that? Are you ready?”

Jessica breathes in hard, thinks of the little girl sitting tight inside her right now, thinks of the sort of mother she wants that little girl to have, and she nods. “Sure,” she says, feeling ready for this, at last. “Let’s go.”

FORTY-NINE

“HEY.” JESSICA SLIDES across the stone steps, making room for Luke as he approaches his apartment building holding two coffee cups.

“Decaf?” he says, passing hers to her. “You sure?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I already had my two hundred milligrams of caffeine today.”

“They have a limit on that?”

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