Page 43 of Sealed in Ink

She waits patiently for me to go on, but this voice in my head tells me to stay quiet and stop. Maybe there’s something good that can come from this. I can finally stop listening to that voice. Stop letting fear trap me.

“Mary?”

I lower my voice, even though I know Brad is at the gym with Rust.

“Rust is the father. Oh, and I’ve had a crush on him for years. Mom left me this weird video about being pure and never sinning, but I have sinned and want to do it again and again.”

“Wait, Mary, hold up.” Chrissy is leaning over her desk, her elbows on the table, holding her head. “Just wait a second. One at a time.”

“Rust took my virginity the night of the storm, and he gave me a tattoo.”

“A tattoo?”

“He’s going to be a tattoo artist after he retires. I know it’s surprising, but he seems to like it. He can’t fight forever.”

He’ll be retired by the time the baby is five or six. They probably won’t even remember his fighting days. They’ll never have to worry about Daddy getting hurt in a cage.

“Um… can I see?” She sounds like she’s picked this question from a possible pool of hundreds.

“Sure.”

I pull my shirt down a little, then angle my phone. “You got that?”

“Why a thundercloud? Oh, duh, because of the storm, and it was thundering the night…”

“Mom committed suicide.”

“Wait,what?”

“Oh yeah,” I sigh. “Brad finally told me last night.”

“You’ve mentioned having suspicions, but that’s so different from knowing. I’m so sorry.”

I pull up my shirt, sitting on the bed, knees to my chest. “I just wish everything would slow down. When Brad told me, Rust was hiding in the bathroom.”

“What?”

“Yeah. We’d just… done stuff. Not sex, but he wanted to. I did, too, but I had to tell him about the baby.”

“You told him?” Chrissy says. “Did he freak?”

“No,” I reply, an offended note in my voice. “He cheered and spun me around, but that was before he had to hide. Then, after the news, I kind of yelled at him and made him leave.”

“That was probably smart with Brad next door,” she mutters.

“But I don’t want him to go. Ever. He washappyabout the baby.”

“So you’re going to raise a family together, are you?”

“You don’t have to say it like it’s impossible.”

Chrissy frowns, then fixes her bangs. “What did you say about a video of your mom?”

“Oh yeah,” I almost laugh. I’ve just unloaded years of tension. I feel lighter, even if I’ve told the wrong person. “You know how she was super religious? Well, she left me a two-hour DVD about being pure, the perfect woman, modest, and all that.”

“If you were going to be that, you’d never speak your mind; speaking your mind is your specialty. Just look at that video!”

I feel myself beaming despite the nerves, despite the sense of doom lingering over everything all the time. “Yeah, okay, fair point.”

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