Page 46 of Forbidden Pregnancy
“I’m not asking questions out of hunger,” Myra snaps. “I’m asking questions because you are currently kidnapping me, Michael. This is the third time, I might add.”
Third? That really doesn’t seem right at all, but Myra’s tone almost makes me too scared to speak up and stand up for myself. It’s better to allow her to be wrong.
“Get out of the car. We can talk in the house.”
This motivates her to listen, but I suspect she’s too tired to protest and hopeful that the house has some place where she can safely fall asleep. After getting tossed around the back of an SUV for a few hours, I doubt driving brings Myra any peace. Nothing will happen to her tonight and once we’re both completely off the grid, I’ll work on establishing her sense of safety again.
I lead Myra into my aunt’s house, hoping the mid-nineties suburban Italian-American home decor comforts her the way it comforts me. Reminds me of a simpler time, before I had as many responsibilities as I do now for my family’s organization.
Even then, during that simpler time, I still had to look after Cosima, and I still had room in my heart for Myra. She’s visibly exhausted when we get inside, but never too exhausted to fight with me.
“I don’t belong in your family,” she says. “Cosima doesn’t get that, but we both understand that all too well, Michael.”
“You’ll feel better once I get some rest.”
“That won’t change a damn thing. I’m black and you’re Italian. From a traditional family. I doubt your family will ever accept us.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Really? So that’s not who came after me?”
She turns to face me and we’re cramped in Aunt Viviana’s main hallway – the one lined with our childhood photographs and photographs from her younger days back in the Tuscan countryside. We used to race down these halls as kids on our way to play hide and seek during the rare occasions Aunt Viviana hosted Thanksgiving dinner for the Corsini family.
Those hallways feel a lot more narrow now. And if I want a family like the one I grew up with, I’m almost too late to start. Judging by the look on Myra’s face, I won’t get that family at all. She wants nothing to do with me and my people.
Why would she?
“I’m not wrong,” Myra says, making it even more difficult and frustrating for me to find my footing around my feelings and the words to make this right.
“It’s all a misunderstanding,” I grumble, frustrated with the situation around us more than I could ever feel frustrated with Myra. “And if it weren’t for Cosima, I would have had a chance to solve this earlier. But I didn’t. That doesn’t mean you’re unsafe and it doesn’t mean I’m going to abandon you.”
Her dark brown eyes flicker with warmth. Finally, there’s some sign that deep down, despite all the trouble I’ve put her through, I’m not wrong about Myra and she loves me just as much as I love her.
Chapter Twenty
Myra
4 months later
We made a deal. I won’t make my final choice about leaving until after the baby. Michael plans on doing everything in his power to convince me not to leave him, and so far, I don’t think anything will work. He doesn’t understand the painful choice I had to make when I was twenty-six years old and completely in love with him.
I won’t choose him over keeping our baby safe. I know Michael will keep his promise to provide for our baby, and that will have to be enough. I was never meant for romance – clearly. God gave me twenty-six long years of going without before my brief encounter with Michael.
Every sign in my life has pointed to this – if I was ever meant to have a child at all, I would have to have that child alone.
I mean… the freak accident at the clinic couldn’t have been anything other than divine intervention. I can’t exactly claim CC’s behavior was divine intervention, but it certainly was out of the ordinary enough that I’m going to read it as a sign.
I’m not at risk of changing my mind at all, but I would be lying if I said that the thoughts of leaving are getting harder the more my body changes. I am undeniably pregnant now. The part of my brain that wants to deny I’m carrying Michael’s baby has to acknowledge thathe’sthe reason that baby is here.
My last chance to have a baby and I end up in Michael Corsini’s bed,
I know Michael remembers it one way, but it’s not just that we had a fight and I didn’t come back. I didn’t just stay away because I was afraid of my feelings, despite what he thinks. I’m just not the type of woman to force my feelings to become his problem.
Lately, Michael and I have been arguing over the sex of the baby. Neither of us care that deeply about our baby’s genitals, but I want to know. Michael doesn’t. He thinks interacting with a doctor is far too risky for us to bother, but I don’t want this special moment of my pregnancy to slip by me. This baby is enough of a miracle as it is, but Michael doesn’t see it that way.
Since our new safe house is somewhere in the middle of the Pennsylvania wilderness, we barely have a phone signal, have no cable, and Michael thinks that watching him workout should be a sufficiently stimulating hobby for me along with reading old Stephen King novels. I can’t take naps in comfy chairs until the baby comes and it seems like a symptom of declining mental health that I’m considering asking Michael to take out the 1,000 piece Finger Lakes Map puzzle with me.
Ugh. He’s still sleeping in our shared bedroom – thank goodness. My peace and quiet doesn’t last long as I hear Michael’s body roll out of bed. He drops to the floor and completes his afternoon routine of 250 crunches, 250 pushups, and 250 jumping jacks. It’s a loud, obnoxious routine that I have no interest in participating in.
