Page 46 of Sweet Little Thing

As we drove home, I clutched Beulah’s hand. I needed to feel her. Know she was there. I hadn’t lost her. This wasn’t over. Really, it had only begun. We hadn’t spent a holiday together.Hadn’t danced or been on a date. I wanted to take her to France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. Show Beulah my favorite places. Experience life with her. Maybe we should drive to the airport? Fly away, run, and protect what we have without giving Portia time. What we’d discovered was so new that nothing my mother said would change my love for Beulah. My need for her couldn’t be swayed.

“I love you,” I told her with a fierceness clear in my tone. I wanted to remind her that what we had, how I felt was stronger than whatever my mother had to show us.

“This will be okay,” she reassured me but didn’t say the words back. That fucking terrified me. Was she not saying them because she thought things were about to change?

I wanted to fucking scream. The dread percolating throughout my body. I’d never been happy. She’d been my first real happiness, and it was stupid to think that it would last. I wasn’t meant to have that in my life, no matter how wealthy I was. Happiness never sought me out. Not until Beulah.

When I pulled into the drive, I parked the car. Staring straight ahead, I gripped the steering wheel needing to break something. Shatter it into a million pieces. This was it. Walking inside that house I could lose all that I cared about.

I had to trust what we’d created, and that Beulah loved me enough to withstand whatever horror my mother exposed because together, we could overcome it. If divided, we had no chance. I wished she’d said she loved me. Given me that reminder. That reassurance.

“Let’s go,” I said, looking at her; Beulah said nothing, only nodded.

We walked into the house. Our hands no longer joined. The heaviness and ache of loss already washing over me. Dark waves were waiting to take everything I wanted. Pushing past my feet, threatening to drown me, and I couldn’t save myself or Beulah.This was going to be something my mother had done. Something Beulah couldn’t forgive. A reason for her to run from here. To never look back.

I stopped and grabbed her hand. “Beulah, don’t hate me because of her. Whatever she’s done, please don’t quit loving me. We can get away from her. We don’t have to ever see Portia again…just…please don’t let her sins become mine. Don’t let it separates us.”

Beulah smiled—not her bright, happy smile, but one that was soft. She placed her hand on my face. “Jasper, stop worrying. Portia can’t change the way I feel about you.”

God, I hoped that was the truth.

We found Portia in the great room with a shoebox on the table and a glass with at least two shots of bourbon in it—no ice, pure whiskey. She was ready. Turning to us, she took a drink. “You both need to sit. A drink would also help.”

We didn’t need a drink, nor did we sit. “Just tell us. Get this shit over with,” I demanded. The anxiety and anticipation making the air around me vibrate.

Portia raised her eyebrows, unappreciative that I’d spoken to her that way. She then reached into the box and withdrew a piece of paper. She came to stand in front of me just far enough away to hold it out to me. I stared at the folded item.

“Look at it. Then I’ll explain,” she said.

Reluctantly, I unfolded a birth certificate. While reading my first thought was why my mother had Heidi’s birth certificate. But the sickness that grabbed me after I discovered PORTIA EDWARDS’s name listed as the mother almost knocked me to my knees. I shook my head and moved away from her. “No. . .this. . .isn’t real.” My world was spinning. I didn’t want the answers to the questions that had to be asked. This was worse, catastrophic, more brutal than expected, and I. . . was trapped. . .here. . .staring horror in the fucking face.

“I was young and engaged to your father. I’d lived in a small, two-bedroom home that didn’t have heating or air. My parents were strict religious people, and I hated the world I’d grown up in. Luckily, beauty was on my side. I used that to get away. I was searching for my dream, my fairytale, the life I wanted to live. Then, there was a man that I considered to be an uncle. A deacon in the church. Someone that everyone admired and he raped me without blinking an eye. I’d been sent to take him a meal from my mother. She said he’d been feeling sick, and she wanted to do the Christian thing and send food for him. I wanted my sister to take it, but she’d been ill as well. She’d been throwing up that week and no one knew why. . .not yet. . .anyway.”

Portia drank. Then drank again.

“I took the food. He wasn’t sick. He was drunk. A big man, sixty-two or sixty-three, but he was tall and kept in shape. He propositioned me outright. Tried to get me to have sex willingly. . .consensual. . .without a fight. I said no and fought hard, but in the end, he won, and I, to tell the truth, told no one about it. Two days later, my sister found out that her illness was morning sickness. She was pregnant by the best-looking guy in town. He rode a motorcycle and lived in the moment, but he wasn’t going anywhere in life. But my sister was in love. My parents were going to send her away to have the baby and then force an adoption. Within a day, my sister was gone. There was a note apologizing. It was a scandal. One I hated her for. Our family was now the talk of the town, and I was sure I’d lose my fairytale, though as it happened, I did not. Your father still wanted me. He didn’t care about my sister or my insane parents, with their psychotic religious ideals. We were engaged. I started gaining weight. I then realized I was pregnant. I thought it was ours. We’d had sex for a while. Without telling anyone what was happening, we rushed the wedding and went to Paris—finished my pregnancy there, away from his friends and our world. Aftera time, we’d planned to return, bring our baby with us but that all changed when we were told she had trisomy 21. . .Down syndrome. . .”

“No!” Beulah’s cry sliced through me and the room. She was backing away, shaking her head, screaming, “No! That’s not. . .right, there isn’t. . .” Beulah pointed at the birth certificate in my hand and yelled, “That’s not Heidi’s! No! That’s not Heidi’s! No!”

My mother stared at Beulah. There was pity in her eyes. She was destroying Beulah; that was all she felt, or what I could read on her face. Pity. Only fucking pity.

“We couldn’t keep a child like that. I was young. We had this life to live with all its social aspects. Travel and parties and well. . .Heidi would’ve made that impossible. We discussed putting her in a home. But I couldn’t. She was a baby. Heidi needed a mother, so I found one I knew would love and care for her. Treat Heidi like she was her own. I found my sister and did what I did. Rather, we did what we did. Jasper, your father agreed.”

Sister, that one word slowly consumed my heart and then shattered it to pieces. Disbelief and despair numbed my senses. My mother continued to speak.

“Pamela was my sister. She was younger than me. More beautiful even but she’d had eyes for the worst boy in town. My sister thought she could save and change him. She’d been saving animals by nursing them to health our entire lives. That was her way. I found Pamela living in a trailer park in Alabama impoverished and struggling. I gave her Heidi and two hundred thousand dollars. She took both.”

Something this desperate had to be a nightmare. I would wake up soon. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

“That can’t be right,” Beulah said pointing at me. “Jasper is older than Heidi. She’s only nineteen.”

A wave of relief hit me so hard I sucked in the first deep breath I’d had since walking inside the house. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Because I had been so fucking destroyed.

“That’s not true. Look at the date on the birth certificate. You’ll see Heidi isn’t nineteen. Your mother had a miscarriage with that first pregnancy, but it was after she had fled our parents’ home. Heidi was her replacement baby. However, the only man my sister ever loved came back around and like a fool she forgave him. When she got pregnant with you, he ran. Just like before. That was the last time she saw him.”

Beulah had paled. Seeing her like this made me feel sick. I hated it. Every fucking word out of my mother’s mouth.

Portia took the remaining items from the box: a hospital bracelet, several photos, and a few crumpled letters. “Throughout the years, she sent me letters along with photographs. Though. . .I. . .never responded. I kept them. You’re welcome to read them.”

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