Pricked

by Winter Renshaw

“What do you want to do today?” she asks, chomping on a piece of pink bubble gum before wrapping it around her finger a dozen times. “Can we go to the mall?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I say. “Have you heard from Brighton lately?”

  She wrinkles her nose. I’m sure she thinks it’s odd that I’m randomly asking about her Boys and Girls Club mentor, but she shrugs and says, “I haven’t seen her since two weeks ago. She got a job so we can only hang out on the weekends. We still text though.”

  “Recently?”

  She studies me. “Yeah … this week … why are you asking?”

  So she is ignoring me. Her phone’s working just fine.

  “Just wondering,” I say.

  “Mm hm.” She gets up from the sofa and heads to the kitchen, returning with her phone. For a second, I think she’s going to show me something … a text from Brighton or something along those lines, but she plops back down on the cushions and starts tapping out a message to one of her friends.

  For a second, I think about that text I saw on her phone last Friday from Thom-with-an-H. He was obviously asking her out Friday night—which is tonight. The thought of her going out with some guy while I sit around missing her makes me see red for a second, and then a rush of adrenaline courses through my veins.

  I get up from the chair because sitting there working myself into a bundle of ridiculous emotions isn’t going to change a damn thing.

  Glancing at Dev, I spot the biggest smile on her face as her phone vibrates and she reads a new message.

  “What?” I ask. “What’s that smile for?”

  She swats me away. “None of your beeswax.”

  I swipe the phone out of her hand and hold it high enough that she can’t reach it.

  “Who’s Dylan?” I ask.

  “Madden! Give it back!” She jumps but still can’t reach.

  “Who is he?” I tease. Kind of.

  “He’s just some boy,” she says.

  I hand the phone back. “Some boy who makes you smile bigger than I’ve ever seen you smile in your whole damn life.”

  She fights a smirk before clutching her phone against her chest and sitting back down. “I think I love him.”

  Rolling my eyes, I hook my hands on my hips. “Dev … you’re a kid. You don’t know what love is.”

  Devanie frowns. “Yeah, I do. It’s when you can’t stop thinking about someone and they’re the only person you want to be with and when you’re not with them you get sad and if you could only be with one person in the world, it would be them. That means you love them. It’s not complicated.”

  If I were to go strictly off of Devanie’s oversimplified definition …

  … a person could say I’m in love with Brighton Karrington …

  … and they probably wouldn’t be wrong.

  45

  Brighton

  “I’m sorry.” The tech performing my sonogram must be new because she’s taking forever, and she keeps squinting at the screen like it’s the first time she’s ever done an ultrasound before.

  Obviously this is my first time, but I feel like this is taking a lot longer than it should.

  “Is everything all right?” my mother asks.

  “Um.” The tech hesitates. “Why don’t I grab Dr. Robbins? I’ll be right back.”

  She leaves in a hurry and I look to my mom.

  “What’s that about?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure, sweetheart. Maybe she’s new?”

  The gel on my belly is cold and wet and I haven’t moved an inch since she left. A couple minutes pass before the door swings open, and in walks the tech and a woman with kind eyes the color of violets and shiny silver hair that curls in where it hits at her shoulders.

  “Brighton, hi. I’m Dr. Robbins,” she says. Her voice is sweet and mild, but she doesn’t smile. “Let’s take a look and see what’s going on, shall we?”

  I feel like that’s not the kind of thing an obstetrician would say to a patient unless there was a problem, but I wait in silence and let her do her job.

  Dr. Robbins squirts more jelly on my stomach and moves the transducer from side to side, trying to get a look from different angles. A couple of times she pushes so hard it hurts, but I don’t say a word.

  A few times she presses a button on the machine and pictures begin to print out.

  “Okay,” she says a minute later, handing the transducer to the tech. Flipping on the room lights, she takes a seat on a rolling stool. A pained expression paints her face and the tech hands me a warm washcloth to clean my belly. “I’m so sorry, Brighton, but it appears that you have an ectopic pregnancy.”

  She begins to explain what it is and how it happens, but I tune her out.

  “So we’ll schedule your procedure as soon as possible,” she says. “We’ll go in laparoscopically and remove the gestational sac. The sooner we get in there, the better the odds are that we can save that fallopian tube.”

  The doctor apologizes once more and tells me to call if I have any further questions after I leave. The tech hands me my file and tells me to check out at the desk around the corner, and that they’ll call me with my surgery appointment time by the end of the day.

  My mother walks me out a moment later, and as we head to the checkout desk, I glance down at my file where the doctor has marked the appropriate diagnostic code for today’s visit.

  ECTOPIC PREGNANCY – NONVIABLE.

  Nonviable.

  Like Madden and me.

  How poetic.

  We finish checking out a few minutes later and head to the parking lot. My mother is abnormally quiet today. Either she doesn’t know what to say or she’s still in shock from the initial discovery of “my situation.”

  “Are you still going to work?” she asks. “After … what just happened?”

  “I am.” I don’t have a choice. I’m three weeks into this job.

  “You’re a lot stronger than I give you credit for,” she says, her smile bittersweet as she rubs my arm. “I’ll see you tonight?”

  I nod, and she wraps her lithe arms around me before heading toward her car on the other side of the parking lot.

  It’s a fifteen-minute drive from here to work, but by the time I get there, I have no recollection of having driven at all.

  This entire morning has been a strange blur. The future I’m looking at now is very different from the one I was looking at when I first woke up a couple of hours ago. It’s funny how quickly life can change.

  While this pregnancy was unexpected, the tiniest part of me was growing more excited with each passing day … even looking forward to meeting the little babe when the time came.

  And now … they’re going to go in and remove it.

  Like it’s some kind of tumor.

  I head into the lab, stomach swirling, head pounding, heart breaking.

  My veins flood with a cocktail of grief, relief, and then guilt. When I board the elevator to my floor, I feel nothing at all.

  For the rest of the day it comes in waves—one minute I feel everything.

  The next minute I feel numb.

  Some minutes I don’t know what I feel.

  It’s almost like I’m broken—like that butterfly Madden caught as a child and set free.

  46

  Madden

  Another full weekend of silence.

  I won’t say I don’t deserve it, but I’m not sure how much more of this I can take. Even if she’d text me to tell me she hates my fucking guts, at least it’d be something.

  Despite the fact that I miss her like hell, I just want to know she’s okay.

  Dragging myself out of bed Monday morning, I get cleaned up and head down to the coffee shop on the corner to grab a drink and a bite to eat, and on my way back, I check the mail. It’s mostly junk, as per usual—until I get to the last piece: another letter from my dad.

  I’m not sure what compels me to open this one. Most of the time I toss them in the garbage without a second thought, but I rip the
side of the envelope and unfold the single sheet of lined paper.

  Son

  I know I don’t deserve your time, but it would mean the world to me if you could come down for a short visit. There’s something I want to tell you. Something I’ve wanted to tell you for years. And if you hear me out, I’ll never bother you again.

  Love,

  Dad

  I chuckle at the fact that the bastard had the audacity to toss the word “love” in there when he never once said it to any of us when he was a free man.

  Guess he’s had a lot of time to think too …

  I give the letter another read.

  And another.

  As much as I don’t want to see him, I do want to know what he needs to tell me.

  With a resigned sigh and nothing more to lose, I grab my phone and look up visiting hours at the Wheatonville Penitentiary.

  I sign in at the visitor’s desk Monday afternoon and take a seat in the waiting area until someone calls to take me back. When I woke up this morning, the last place I planned to be was here, visiting a man I haven’t seen in over a decade, but I’m here now and it’s happening.

  “Madden Ransom?” A man dressed in head-to-toe light brown calls for me from behind a secured door. I follow him back to a room lined with semi-private sections and payphone-looking receivers separated by thick glass partitions, exactly the kind of thing you see in the movies.

  The guard leads me down a ways, and as we get closer to the end, I spot my father before he spots me.

  I’m not sure why I expected him to look exactly the same as he did before, but the only thing I recognize are his dark, hooded eyes. His hair has turned from inky black to silvery gray, and he’s much paler than he was before. No more of that blue collar glow he used to sport from his days spent delivering mail.

  That’s right.

  Before he became a cold-blooded killer, he was your friendly neighborhood postal worker.

  I take the seat across from him and lift the receiver. He grabs his.

  “Madden,” he says, beaming like a proud father. “Look at you.”

  I’m sure my change in appearance is just as drastic as his. The last time he saw me, I was sixteen. Tall and scrawny. Longer hair. Attitude of a rebellious punk (though that part hasn’t changed much).

  “All right,” I say. I don’t have time to sit here and shoot the shit, nor do I care to. “You got me here. What’d you want to tell me?”

  He offers a tender smile, which is an ironic look on a hardened criminal, and then he cups his receiver with both hands.

  “I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry,” he says.

  I keep a straight face despite the fact that I’m annoyed as hell. He made me come all the way here just so he could apologize?

  He couldn’t have done it in a letter?

  “Okay. Well. Good talk.” I rap my knuckles against the table and hang up the phone.

  He motions for me to pick it up again.

  For whatever reason, I oblige.

  I blame curiosity.

  “Don’t go yet,” he says, an air of desperation in his voice.

  “I’ve got work to do,” I say. It occurs to me that he probably doesn’t know what I do for a living. As far as I know, Mom hasn’t visited him but once since he got locked up, and that was only to get him to sign the divorce papers. She won’t let Dev see him because she claims she’s too young to understand, but I think she just doesn’t want to make the time to take her.

  “Come on.” He chuckles. “Surely you have a few more minutes for your old man. You came all this way …”

  Exhaling, I say. “All right. Fine. Since I came all this way, I do have one question I’ve always wanted to ask you.”

  “Of course. Ask me anything.” He nods like an eager-to-please puppy. Not a good look for him.

  “Why’d you do it?”

  His eager expression disappears, replaced with furrowed brows and hard lines.

  “Son, if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” he says.

  He’s probably right.

  “Try me,” I say. “I’m willing to listen.”

  My father clears his throat. “Jesus. Okay. Where do I start?”

  I listen intently as my father tells me his version of events … and he’s right. I don’t believe him—at first.

  And then it all makes perfect sense.

  When I leave the prison, I make a detour to Park Terrace—to the office of Charles Karrington, President and CEO of Monarch Pharmaceuticals.

  The entire drive there, I practiced everything I was going to say … my epic confrontation. I was going to tell him I knew all about what he did, how he hired my father to kill his in-laws so he could inherit the pharmaceutical company they started from the ground up. I was going to tell him I knew how much he paid my father down to the penny and how he ran into my father—his former classmate—one night, saw he was struggling to provide for his young family, and then made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.

  But here I stand in front of his receptionist who claims he’s in a meeting and asks if I’d like to leave a message, like this is some fucking phone call.

  “No.” I’m seething. “I need to speak to him immediately.”

  She stammers as she asks me to have a seat, and then she trots off, disappearing into one of the hallways.

  I think about what my father told me, and while I’m still struggling to wrap my head around how someone could so easily put a dollar value on a human life, I will say that I was shocked to hear he took the fall for the whole thing because if he ratted Karrington out, he wouldn’t have been paid a single dime, and he only did it so his family would be provided for.

  He claims he gave the quarter million to Mom.

  I don’t tell him we didn’t see a single cent of it.

  I can’t be certain, but I’m guessing most of it went to the Wild Rose Casino just off the highway.

  Before I left today, I asked him one more question—I wanted to know why he took Dallas with him that night. The old man surprised me once more by getting choked up the second I mentioned my brother’s name, and then he started rambling on about how Dallas was always his little shadow, worshipped the ground he walked on and all that. He claimed he needed someone else with him for alibi reasons, and he told Dallas to stay in the car, that he had to run in and chat with a friend for a couple minutes. But for whatever reason, Dallas got out of the car and went into the house, and as soon as he walked in that front door, Karrington’s father-in-law was standing there with a loaded handgun. Shot him at point-blank range. That’s when Dad shot the old man and then his wife came running down the stairs, screaming, a cordless phone in hand, and he shot her too. After that, he threw Dallas over his shoulder and rushed him to the nearest hospital, but he’d already bled out by the time they got there.

  Charles’ assistant returns from the hall. “He’ll be with you shortly.”

  Perfect.

  Every second that ticks by only adds another layer to the animosity I feel toward that sick son of a bitch. While my father is a fucking moron and deserves to rot in prison the rest of his life for what he did, Charles Karrington is just as guilty, and yet he’s been living high off the hog for the last decade.

  How he looks himself in the mirror every day is beyond me.

  “Madden.” Charles appears from the hallway, greeting me with an audacious smile. I’m guessing he has to put on a show for his employees. God forbid they catch a whiff of his true persona. “Come on back.”

  He leads me down a long hallway, toward a set of double doors engraved with Monarch Pharmaceuticals’ logo.

  I don’t wait for him to shut the door before I start laying into him.

  “You piece of fucking shit—” I begin to say.

  “—no,” he interrupts. “You don’t get to march into my goddamn office in the middle of a goddamn work day and make a scene. Now I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing here or why you think it’s okay to walk i
n here calling me a piece of shit when the real piece of shit is the small-town loser who knocked up my daughter.”

  For a second, I disregard everything I came here to say.

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “You got her pregnant, you prick,” he says. There’s nothing but contempt in his eyes, like I’m the fucking monster out of the two of us.

  “I had no idea …”

  “Yeah, well. It doesn’t matter. She’s taking care of it today,” he says. “I’ll be damned if any grandchild of mine has an ounce of your blood.”

  Before I have a chance to respond, his double doors swing open and two men in security uniforms come at me. I’m sure he called them right before he came out to get me, knowing he’d have just enough time to say his piece before having me dragged off.

  One of the guards reaches for me, but I take a step back, lifting my hands in the air.

  I will not be dragged out of here like some criminal.

  I leave without saying another word. I’ll deal with him later. All I can think about right now is Brighton and how fucking scared she must be.

  Walking back to the parking lot, I call her number, only it goes straight to voicemail.

  “Brighton,” I say, “It’s me … call me as soon as you get this. Please. There’s something I want to tell you.”

  I leave it at that, hoping that my vagueness might pique her curiosity enough to get her to finally call me back.

  Heading back to Olwine, I keep picturing Brighton pregnant with my child. The whole concept of parenthood never really appealed to me, and Dev reminds me on a regular basis that I’d be the worst dad ever because I’d probably never let my kid do anything or go anywhere, but the idea of having a baby with someone like Brighton makes the idea of being a father more palatable.

  God, she’d be an amazing mother.

  Sweet and tender, funny and intelligent.

  And so much love to give …

  A warm sensation floods my chest when I picture the three of us. Maybe that’s love, maybe it isn’t. All I know is that I want to be with Brighton. I want to take care of her. Of our child. I’m sure she’s terrified right now, feeling alone and low on options. I can only hope I can get a hold of her before she makes a permanent solution out of a temporary problem.