Page 157 of American Hellhound
If she got one more surprise visit today, she was going to scream.
Denise set the magazine aside and looked at Maggie expectantly. “Well?” she asked, drawing curious glances from waiting patients.
“I’d rather not talk about it in front of anyone.”
Denise’s mouth pinched up into a tight, pink bow. “You’re pregnant, then?”
“No, Mom,” she hissed. “I’m not, I just…”
Several of the other women in the room looked away, eyebrows climbing to their hairlines.
Maggie sat down beside her mother, whispering. “I’m not, and I knew I wasn’t. I didn’t have to go through all this.”
“What about the other tests?” Too loud, entirely too loud. She didn’t give a damn if anyone overheard; maybe she wanted them to.
Jesus. The woman was relentless…and Maggie was not. Her body went boneless, suddenly, betraying her. It was too much effort to fight with her mother and she didn’t have the fortitude to press on, not after she’d been poked and swabbed and been made to feel shameful about the time she’d spent with the man she loved.
She slumped down in the chair, head leaned back as her neck went weak. “They’ll call later in the week with the results.”
“Good.” Denise gathered her purse and stood. “I’ll follow you to your FBLA meeting.” Where she would no doubt wait until Maggie was securely in the building before she went home to microwave tonight’s dinner.
“Okay,” Maggie said, dragging herself upright.
Each step seemed to drain her a little more. By the time she’d parked in front of the school, among the smattering of cars up near the front that belonged to teachers and students staying late for extracurriculars, she felt herself nodding off behind the wheel. She pinched the inside of her wrist, told herself to get it together.
As predicted, Denise sat behind the wheel of her own car, watching her walk into the building.
Maggie ducked into the first restroom she came to. She was hyperventilating.Idiot, she told herself, but couldn’t seem to take control of her breathing. Her heart pounded and her head swam, and she grabbed the edges of a sink to keep from slumping to the floor.
She was having a panic attack, she realized. The pink-painted cinderblock walls pressed in around her, her blood roared in her ears, and she allowed herself to truly panic about her situation for the first time.
She’d felt hopeless before she met Ghost, but now, after tasting freedom for a little while – no rules, no curfews, no cutting stares and biting criticisms, nothing but warmth, and love, and banter, and waking with a smile on her face – the return to her old life was intolerable. She stared at her pale, hollow-eyed reflection and reminded herself that people all across the world lived in truly intolerable conditions: famine, war, illness, violence. Told herself that she was healthy and whole, even if she felt scraped-clean inside.
But it didn’t lessen the pain of loss. Because that’s what it was – loss. She’d lost her man, and her new life, and her freedom, and she ached for it.
She stared down her reflection. Deep breath in, slow breath out. Deep in, slow out. Slowly, her heartrate calmed. Then the crushing tide of exhaustion again, dragging at her, weighing down her arms and legs.
Denise was doubtless going to sit out front until the meeting let out. She wouldn’t come in and talk to her teacher-sponsor about her attendance, because that would be gauche. But she’d make sure Maggie left with the other kids, climbed back in her car, and then follow her home.
I could leave out the back, she thought, wildly. Go on foot. Ghost’s place was only a few miles away. But she imagined herself turning up on his step breathless, wild-eyed, desperate, a runaway, and she dismissed the idea. She couldn’t lower herself to that level, manipulate his feelings that way, when she was the one who’d made the decision to go back home.
Home wasn’t really home anymore, was it? But she was stuck for now. She’d started this; she had to see it through.
She gave her reflection one last look – what a sad specter of a girl she was right now – and went to her meeting.
~*~
“Daddy?” Aidan asked, voice quiet and unhappy.
Ghost sipped his whiskey. It was five o’ clock somewhere, right? Who cared. “Yeah?”
“When’s Maggie coming back?”
He sighed. He couldn’t look at the kid, because the hope in his eyes was too much. Instead, he stared blindly at the TV and said, “She’s not.”
Aidan didn’t speak to him the rest of the night.
Twenty-Seven
