Page 68 of Harper

It’s too late. I stand up and lurch forward, my dinner from two hours ago coming up quick and splattering all over the mud just outside of the shed. I cough up more, and then stagger backward to my seat, leaning my head back on the wooden planks with my eyes closed. I can’t look at her. I can barely process the horror of what she’s saying to me.

“Joe,” she says softly, tears in her voice. “Please, just listen.”

“You killed our baby,” I say. “How could you do that?”

“I couldn’t,” she sobs, raising her head to look at me. “I couldn’t. I didn’t! That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

I open my eyes. “What? What do you mean?”

“I went to the appointment,” she says, her voice small. “They had to do an ultrasound first…before the, you know, the procedure. And I heard her heartbeat. And I—”

“Her?” I gasp. “Her? A girl? A…daughter?”

“Please,” she begs me. “Please let me keep going. You have no idea how hard this is for me.”

For her? Holy shit…how hard this is for her? Fuck, I just found out that I had a daughter at some point in time. There was a day, on this earth, when I was a father…and I never even knew it. I feel like I’ve been run over by a car. I look at Harper, and from the way she whimpers, then sobs, I know my face says everything I’m feeling—betrayal, disbelief, rage.

“I…I heard her heartbeat, so I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get the abortion.” She takes a long, deep breath, but it isn’t smooth and fluid; it’s choppy and broken.

“Keep going.”

“I didn’t know what to do. I—I still didn’t want to be a mother. I couldn’t, Joe. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t want a baby.” She wraps her arms around her body. It occurs to me that she’s probably cold, and I’m wearing a jacket, but I don’t offer it to her. “I moved in with my aunt Charlotte in Oregon and decided to have it.” She winces before looking back at me. “I never went to Chile. I was in Oregon. Pregnant.”

Holy shit.

So, she lied that whole time. All those emails from Chile about traveling the world and working abroad. And those later, heartbreaking fucking missives about how she didn’t want to be tied down to me anymore, about how I wasn’t what she wanted, and she was breaking up with me once and for all.

And me? Stupid, fucking, naïve me. I still didn’t give up. I still wrote to her every day until she eventually blocked me. Only after three months of returned emails due to an “unknown recipient” did I finally give up on her.

Meanwhile, she had made the decision—the cold-blooded choice—to break my fucking heart. And she’d done it on purpose to keep me in the dark about my child.

“I decided to find a family for her,” she continues. “I met her adoptive parents, Joe. I chose them for her. They were a little older, in their thirties, and couldn’t have kids. Really kind and fun. Big backyard. Dogs. A perfect family for—”

“Shut up,” I mutter.

“W-What?”

“She didn’t need a family. She had a family…and it was me.”

Harper takes a choppy breath and uses the back of her hands to wipe her tears away.

“But you didn’t give me that option, did you?” I demand, my voice low with fury, my body cold with shock. “And that was against the law, Harper. It was against the law to put my child up for adoption without my consent.”

She stares at me, her arms still wrapped around her body. She’s not crying anymore. Though her eyes are watery and red, no more tears fall. She’s heartless. Emotionless. Colder than I ever realized. The person sitting in front of me right now feels like a complete stranger.

Lightning strikes. Thunder booms.

“Do you want to hear the rest?” she asks, her voice clipped. “Or should I go?”

“Finish it,” I say, feeling so weak and so fucking sad, I wish the earth would offer a gaping hole beneath my feet, and swallow me whole. “Finish this fucking horror story.”

“Her birth was traumatic. I almost died from blood loss. I was unconscious for days, and it took weeks to recover. I was told I’d never be able to conceive naturally again.” She pauses for a second, her voice far away when she continues. “I didn’t want to come home after that, so I didn’t. Not for years. Not for five long years.”

Right this minute, I don’t care what Harper went through, or how she felt about giving up our daughter. I only have one question:

“Where is she?”

“I told you. She was adopted by a really great—”

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