by A. E. Murphy
His child.
Every day I’m wracked with the guilt of not telling him but I don’t know how he’ll react. I don’t know him well enough. He’s impulsive, irrational, he comes from a different way of life to me.
But then…
I think about the times he climbed into bed with me and rested his head on my abdomen. He loved sleeping like that. I used to stroke his soft hair. Hair that he no longer has.
I wonder if it’s grown, wishing I had a picture or a lock of it to immortalise it.
So yes, my guilt on leaving him is doubling and I’ve convinced myself the further I live from him the less I have to feel guilty about.
“You’re not breathing,” Melissa whispers, the woman whose back is against mine. “Are you okay?”
“Sorry, I’m getting a numb bum.”
Her laughter is quiet. “Me too. Shall we go for a walk after this?”
It’s not the first time we have gotten together after class and I am hoping it won’t be the last.
Melissa is a single mum, this is her first baby and she’s four weeks further along than I am which means I direct most of my questions to her. She’s amazing. She’s got a bigger network of support than I have but like me, there’s no father.
Her baby daddy knows but isn’t interested. Probably for the best as he’s an arsehole from what she has told me.
I wonder how she’d feel about my story. I’ve not told her. I’ve let her assume. It’s too complicated to get into and it wasn’t until our last meeting that she confessed her own story.
Class ends and we do as she suggested. We go for a long walk, her bump a lot bigger than mine but mine is now visible under my clothing. It’s warm and wearing any more than a baggy vest makes me sweat in a very unattractive way.
It reminds me of the time Larry was teaching me how to drop and raise the anchor on the Sea Whore battleship. There’s an electronic way and a manual way. It took me ten minutes to move it six inches the manual way and I was dripping with sweat and entirely pissed off afterwards.
Captain came, swung me into his arms, carried me back to his quarters and fucked me in the shower so hard I felt him between my thighs for days.
He was so sweet, so attentive, so caring. So sexy.
“You’re frowning.”
I look at my new friend and take a big lick of my chocolate ice cream. “I’m just thinking about his dad.”
“I was wondering when you’d bring him up.”
We sit cross-legged on the grass beneath a huge, old tree in the middle of Hyde Park. Fitting considering my surname is the same.
Melissa pulls on her dark ponytail to tighten it and licks creamy ice cream from her thick, dark lips.
“He doesn’t know I’m pregnant.”
She raises her brows. “Seriously?”
I nod and shrug my shoulders. “He’s in prison.”
“Oh… shit. What did he do?”
I laugh humourlessly and look her dead in the eye, despite the sun near forcing me to close them. “He’s a pirate.”
“You’re pulling my chain?”
“I wish I was.”
“Wow.” She looks gobsmacked. “How’d you meet him?”
I laugh for real this time. “Oh that’s a story you don’t want to know.”
Her brows come together, and she seems to forget about the cone in her hand until a drip of ice cream rolls over her thumb. “Why not?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.” But then after a pause, she looks horrified as she asks, “Did he attack you or something?”
“No! Nothing like that. I promise. He was always very sweet to me… well mostly.” After a pause equal to hers before, I add, “Maybe next time I’ll tell you. It’s hard to talk about.”
She nods, understanding of this at least. “How do you think he’ll react if he finds out?”
“I don’t know. And I’m terrified more about that part than I am the birth.”
“Shit, honey…”
“It’s messed up.”
“It sounds it.”
We both turn our heads when we hear a baby crying in the distance. As if to torment us the baby is in the care of a man who is likely its father. He shushes the infant in its pram gently, his lips smiling with so much tenderness.
“You should probably tell him though because I bet he’d be angrier to find out from others.”
“I know. I was kind of hoping to run away before the baby arrives but it’s a silly dream really.”
“Whatever happens, I hope he steps up, when he’s out at least.”
I look at my new friend with sad eyes and a firm set mouth. “It sounds awful, but I really hope he doesn’t. He couldn’t give either of us the life we need and deserve. Stability, a home, income.”
“Should have thought about that before you bedded a pirate without contraception,” she jokes and that heavy feeling in my heart lifts a little. “Let’s be the fathers to each other’s children instead.”
“Now that’s an idea I wholly support.”
We raise our melting ice creams and cheer playfully.
When I arrive at my house, I’m surprised to find my mother pruning a large bunch of lilies in a fancy, dark purple, glass vase.
“Secret admirer?” I ask, reaching for the card only to find it unopened and addressed to me. “When did these get here?”
“An hour ago, but the florist doesn’t know what she’s doing. They were a mess. As though she’d tossed them into the vase from a distance.”
I peel open the glued flap of the white envelope and slide the small, red love-heart-patterned card from its confines.
It simply says, “Rain, call me.” Followed by a new number I don’t recognise and a simple “C.”
He’s tenacious, I’ll give him that. He and my brother have called and texted. Mum has spoken to my brother. I’ve been avoiding them all.
She keeps telling me to speak to River. I think this might be the longest I’ve gone without even a text but I don’t know what to say.
I’m terrified that if I keep involving myself with my own brother and Captain Calder that I’ll be forced to change the life I’m trying to create. It’ll tear down the foundations for the picket fencing I’m already building in my mind.
“Who are they from?”
“Just someone,” I murmur.
She snatches the card from my hand, making the bangle on her wrist that has the peace symbol etched into the smooth surface clank against the other one further down. Mum as fancy as she is now with her wedding suits as everyday wear and her prim and proper hair that she sets in curlers nightly, was in fact a hippie back in the day. I suppose personality-wise she always will be. She’s all for peace, love, equality, and everything else. She’s just always been terrified of the world and I can’t help but wonder if that has anything to do with my biological father.
Looking at pictures of her before us she had long, wavy, wild hair, much like my own is now when I let it dry naturally. She had a nose piercing and dark red lipstick. She was so free and feral, covered in mud, eating barbecued sweetcorn with dirty hands…
What happened to her?
What made her so fearful for us? She never let us hang around with people after school. She never let us build relationships with children she didn’t approve of. We were always too clean, too warm, too protected.
How does hippie mum go from that to this?
“Who is C?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I snatch the card back.
“Are you seeing another man?” Her lips part and her eyes widen with disbelief. “You’re pregnant with Niall’s baby!”
“One, drop the judgy bullshit.”
Her eyes narrow. “Language.”
“Two, it’s none of your business.”
“If you’re living in my house, it is my business.”
“That’s a bullshit response.”
“LANGUAGE!”
“ENGLISH!” I scream ba
ck.
“Niall is a good man… how can you do this to him? He doesn’t deserve it.”
She doesn’t know anything. I don’t deserve it either. I’m a good woman too. I’m just doing the best I can.
“Seeing another man while you’re pregnant…”
“Niall isn’t the fucking father, Mum!” I’m shaking with anger. Mum and I never did get on. She pushes all of my buttons. I wave the card in her surprised face. “This guy is.”
“What?”
“Yep, Niall and I got separated and I shagged somebody else. Okay? Yes, Niall knows. Our relationship is over. Okay? Done. Stop trying to save it.” I run my fingers through the top of my hair as my eyes blur with tears. “I don’t want to talk about Niall, or this guy, or anybody again. Not unless you’re willing to open up about my dad.”
“Your dad is a complicated topic.”
“My dad has never been a topic at all.” I brush past her. “So stop judging me. I seriously messed up and I’m paying for it every day. I don’t need you to make it any harder.”
“I just want what’s best for you.”
My shoulders sag. “I know. Trust me. I know you do. But what you’re doing right now isn’t what’s best for me or this baby. I’m stressed enough. I came home because I thought I’d feel better but ever since I did all you’ve done is guilt me.”
“That’s not fair.” She follows me to the stairs, caressing the handle of the pram as we pass, I see her do it in my peripheral vision. “I didn’t know and more than anything I want my grandchild, my first grandchild to grow up in a happy and healthy environment.”
“Me too.”
We arrive at the door of my bedroom and stop to look at each other. “Will I be meeting him?”
“No, Mum, he’s in prison.”
“Oh sweet Jesus,” she mutters so I throw her a look and she throws her hands up defensively. “Not judging.”
“He also doesn’t know, so don’t go hunting him down. Okay?”
“Okay,” she assures me and places a hand on my stomach. “We’ll figure this out together.”
“Thanks, Mum.” I place my hand over hers. “I hope so.”
“How is he sending flowers from inside prison though?”
I purse my lips and ponder that for a moment. “I don’t know. PayPal maybe?”
“Right.” Her look mirrors my own. “So, how did you meet if he’s incarcerated?”
“He obviously wasn’t at the time.” I point my thumb to my room. “I’m having a nap. Too much excitement for one day.”
“I love you, love.”
I pull her into me for a rose-scented hug. “I love you more.”
“Very unlikely.”
Three more days, three more gifts. Chocolates, flowers, and a necklace with an anchor on it.
I’ve eaten the chocolates, let Mum improve the flowers and then hidden the beautiful necklace in the middle of my jewellery box. So it’s not so far in that I have to dig it out, but it’s close enough to the top that I see it whenever I go for my favourite cherry earrings.
My silence is only fuelling his need. He’s captured, he’s probably bored, they’re likely mistreating him which tugs at my heartstrings, and here I am, ignoring his every advance.
I genuinely do not know what to do. I’m stuck between my feelings for him and my need to give my child a decent future.
It’s so back and forth in my head.
Mum is being attentive, extremely so. She’s being lovely. I almost never want to leave. My every wish is her command and hers is mine.
She even opened up to me about my dad and admitted the awful truth that he didn’t want to know. Then she admitted that he was married already, and she never tried to reach out again after she fled.
It was an emotional tale shared over wine for her and lemonade for me.
He paid her to abort us and instead she used the money to flee. He never came after her but she was terrified of what he would do if he found out. The man loved his wife, she was a one-night mistake. He would have done anything to keep his wife. When she told him she was pregnant he strangled her, she thought she was going to die.
Mum’s tears from the night of her confession are still fresh in my memory as I recall that part of the story. She’s still so plagued by it, even now after all these years. I will relay the information to River but I’ll not bring it up with her again. Though even now I still want to know who it is.
We were a one-night mistake to him with the potential to destroy his happiness.
Now I don’t blame her for not telling me and River, growing up. I don’t think we’d have been able to handle it. It also makes sense as to why she was so protective. If she constantly worried about him discovering us. Really, it’s irrational on the outside but on the inside it’s terrifying. I know because I’m there.
Except he does want me, and he might even want this baby.
Why couldn’t the baby have been Niall’s? It would have made everything so much easier.
I need to call my brother and find out what’s going on. My silence and inability to communicate based on my own fears is tearing my world apart and triggering the boiling point of my stress levels. I will end up like my mother if I don’t start facing it all.
So I do what I didn’t have the courage to do a few weeks ago. I pick up my phone and ready to ring my brother.
But then I hear a thud, followed by a smash and calling my brother is the least of my worries.
“Mum?” I call, racing towards the noise and I find her, lying on the tiled kitchen floor, eyes closed, chest unmoving. “MUM!”
I press against her chest with both hands. I breathe into her mouth. I sob and beg into my phone which I carelessly tossed onto the tiled ground, straight into the pool of orange juice and broken glass by her body after dialling emergency services.
She was gone before she hit the ground.
It isn’t until they’ve gone and taken her body with them… her body… her body… that I fully understand what just happened and finally make the call that needs to be made.
The call I was already going to make to my brother but for different reasons.
A call that should be handled face-to-face.
Everything is about to change.
“River…”
“Sis? What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t…” Choke. “I can’t… I don’t… It’s Mum, River. Mum’s dead.”
“No.”
“She had a heart attack… she’s been complaining of indigestion. I tried to make her go to the doctor.”
I’ve never heard my brother wail before, never heard him cry… I’ve never felt him break like he is now.
Our mum is gone and if my future was uncertain before, it’s completely gone now. I don’t know how I’m ever going to get through this.
My brother was almost late to the funeral this morning thanks to his guards for the day. He has three of them and has to remain cuffed for the entire day because he’s considered a flight risk, yet he still got compassionate leave which is more than most in his position would have gotten.
We see each other, and I race towards him. He lifts his arms and loops them over my head so he can hug me as tight as his cuffs will allow. It’s awkward and he more just squeezes me with his massive biceps.
“I’m so sorry, River,” I sob. “I wanted to come and see you but I just… I couldn’t. I haven’t left the house.”
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” he soothes. “It’s not your fault.”
I bury my face into his chest and cry but we’re ushered on to join family and friends we’ve not seen in a while. They don’t bother with the convict twins, why would they? We’re an embarrassment to them. Though today they’ve been nice enough. I suppose it takes a really shit person to be bad to another on the day their mother is being buried.
“You’re getting big,” he whispers, bringing his arms back over my head so he can touch my belly. “It’s noticeable.”
&nb
sp; “I’m having a boy,” I reply and tears stream down my cheeks again. “Mum wanted me to call him Lake.”
We both share a laugh but it’s he who says gruffly, “That woman and her obsession with water.”
“Yet she never taught us to swim.” Captain Calder taught me that. He held me in the sea as I kicked and splashed, making a fool of myself. He didn’t stop until I was confident enough to travel twenty metres and back alone. Though most of that fear was because of the sharks and other nasties in the water.
“I miss her, Riv. So much.” I hug him around his arms and back before we’re escorted to where we need to be. Sent to listen to words from a preacher and then watch her body be taken. She set up her funeral and will years ago when she learned her body could essentially be turned into a tree.
She’s actually doing it. She’s getting what she wanted in death.
But she’ll never get to meet her grandchild.
I sob into my brother’s shoulder as his tears fall onto my hair.
It isn’t until the wake that we speak again.
“What are you going to do?” he asks. “Can you afford the upkeep on the house?”
I shake my head. “You know I can’t. Even working.”
“Mum’s life insurance will pay out soon.”
“It’s forty grand, River. It’s nothing really. I’m not getting more than half pay for my maternity leave. I can’t even afford the house on full pay. I’m in the most expensive city in the bloody world.”
“Move then. Buy a house in a smaller town.”
“And then what? Who’s going to employ me in my condition?”
He blows out a frustrated breath. “I don’t know. I wish I could help you.”
“I’ll be okay. I’ll figure it out.”
“What about Niall?”
More tears fall. “We broke up.”
“I thought as much when I didn’t see him here today.” His eyes sharpen with anger. “He should have been here for you.”
I shake my head. “He’s not in the country, River. He’s chasing down some leader of a child trafficking ring. He wouldn’t have made it whether we were together or not. Living kidnapped children are more important than this. Mum would agree.”