Craving Absolution

by Nicole Jacquelyn

  By the time I made it downstairs, my room a mess and my face sweaty, I was wearing a lime-green pair of leggings and a Wham! T-shirt that hung off one shoulder. I’d thrown my hair into a side pony, and added a little blue eye shadow to my eyes and called it good, my irritation too far gone to make any more changes.

  “I’m having a fucking salad,” I announced as I walked into the kitchen. Gram and Lily were setting biscuits and gravy on the table, and my mouth watered as I walked right past them toward the fridge.

  “Why the hell would you do that?” Lily asked as she sat down.

  “Because eating your food is making it so I don’t fit into any of my freaking clothes,” I griped, searching for any type of greens I could find. “Where the fuck is the lettuce?”

  Gram huffed as she sat down and started serving up three plates. “Need to go grocery shopping. Unless you want to eat a cucumber I got from the garden this morning, you’re outta luck. Sit down so we can eat.”

  I slammed the door shut, irritated as hell, and stomped over to the table. The food smelled really good and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t hungry. “Nothing fits,” I announced, pulling my plate across the table. “I need to start being more careful or I’m gonna start busting out of Lily’s housedresses.”

  I shoved a bite of food into my mouth and watched as Lily and Gram’s concerned eyes met. “What?” I asked, my mouth still full.

  “Honey, if my food could make women grow breasts, I wouldn’t still be living in a broken-down old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. I’d be in a villa in Greece with a cabana boy feeding me grapes and fanning me with palm fronds,” Lily said, laying a paper napkin on her lap.

  I swallowed my food in embarrassment and drew my own napkin onto my lap. I was eating like the little piglet Cody had called me when we first got together. It took a few moments for her words to sink in and when they did, I was confused.

  “Huh?”

  “Darlin’, it ain’t the food that’s making your boobs and your belly grow,” Gram informed me, reaching out to grab the butter from the middle of the table.

  They were speaking calmly as if about the weather, but there was some sort of undercurrent that I wasn’t quite grasping. I looked from one to the other, trying to read their faces, but still couldn’t figure it out.

  And then I did, and I burst out laughing. “What?” I gasped. “I’m not pregnant!”

  Gram scowled. “You sure as hell are.”

  “No, I’m really not. I haven’t had a period in like three years. My shit doesn’t work right. No period, no getting pregnant.” I shrugged my shoulders.

  “You been to the doctor?” Lily asked cautiously, glancing at Gram and then back to me.

  “Well, not in a while, no. But when I went a couple years ago, he said I probably wasn’t ovulating because I had so little body fat. He thought it would probably correct itself if I ever got bigger, but it never did.” I looked between them, trying to make them understand. “I haven’t had a period in three years. I’m not pregnant.”

  It was quiet at the table for a few moments, all of us looking at one another, before Gram spoke.

  “Unless you got pregnant the first time you ovulated,” she told me seriously, making my stomach drop. “I know you, Farrah, and I know pregnancy. You’re pregnant.”

  My chair screeched across the floor as I stood up, unable to remain sitting any longer. “I haven’t seen Cody for three months! Who got me pregnant? Lily?”

  Gram followed me from the table as Lily stayed in her seat, and I felt my skin grow hot and my fingers start to tingle as she began to speak. “You’re further along than three months, darlin’. My guess is close to four. Not sure how you didn’t seem to have any morning sickness, but we’ve been watching you, baby girl. You’re getting thicker around the middle, not to mention your boobs.”

  “What?” I asked, my head feeling light. “How long have you been watching me? I don’t understand.”

  “Since about two weeks after Cody left. Something seemed different, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.”

  “Why haven’t you said anything?” My breath grew frantic as tears built in my eyes. “You just talked about me behind my back instead?”

  “You had to figure it out on your own, baby girl.” She took a step toward me, but I backed away. “I wasn’t sure at first, and then after you’d calmed down and seemed to be taking it easy here, I thought you’d figure it out.”

  “How the hell would I figure it out?” I yelled, wrapping my arms around my waist and digging my fingernails into my arms to anchor myself. “I haven’t had a period in three fucking years! It’s not like I could miss one and think, ‘Oh shit, Cody knocked me up!’”

  “You’re twenty-one years old, Farrah. Forgive me for believing that you’d know your own body,” she answered, turning back toward the table where Lily was wringing her hands.

  I watched her sit back down at the table as if nothing had occurred, and my mind finally calmed. It wasn’t her fault. Not at all. Did I wish she would have told me sooner? Of course. While I hadn’t smoked with Lily or had anything to drink in over four months, I also hadn’t been taking vitamins or any of that other shit that Callie had done when she was pregnant with Will. Shit. What foods were off-limits? Had I eaten anything I wasn’t supposed to?

  As if like magic, my breathing slowed down to normal. It was as if this new development had wiped out any other concerns I’d had because there wasn’t room in my mind for them. If Gram was right and I was pregnant, I had things to do. I needed to prepare. Shit, I was almost halfway done being pregnant already. I needed to go to the doctor; could I go to the doctor while we were hiding out?

  My mind whirled with plans and questions as I stood silently in the middle of the kitchen, and after a while Lily stood from the table and gently led me back to my chair.

  “You just sit right down and finish your dinner,” she ordered softly, kissing the side of my head as I sat.

  I ate like a robot, silently and without any extra movements until I’d cleared my plate. It wasn’t until I was finished that the most pressing issue made itself clear in my mind. I looked up and met Lily’s kind eyes across the table, and had to clear my throat before speaking.

  “Do you think you could go to the drugstore and get me a test? Just so we know for sure.”

  “We’ve got two in the bathroom cabinet,” Gram answered for her, reaching out to pat my hand. “Let’s have some ice cream first.”

  She wasn’t in any hurry because she knew without a doubt that I was carrying her great-grandchild.

  And had been for months.

  Chapter 28

  Farrah

  After peeing on a pregnancy test to prove Gram and Lily right, we spent most of the night curled up on her couches talking. They assumed that I was keyed up because of the baby, and I guess it was partly true. But neither knew about my worry over Cody, or what I imagined happening while Gram knitted and Lily painstakingly sewed together small quilt pieces by hand. I’d been so immersed in my own little world while I was at Lily’s that I hadn’t noticed until that night that Lily’s quilt pattern was tiny, and Gram’s projects were being finished quickly.

  They were making things for the baby. Things I’d seen Will use but had never connected to the old women sitting next to me. Tiny beanies and booties and quilted pieces done in soft colors . . . all for a tiny little baby who hadn’t even made its arrival yet. It made me want to cry, or smile, or learn to do some of it myself. It made me ache that I’d never had things like that, precious little baby items that took hours to make and were given with love.

  It was close to four a.m. before Lily and Gram headed off to bed, and I followed them and said good night from my doorway. But I didn’t sleep. I crawled into bed and wrapped myself in my quilt, just lying there thinking until I saw the sun rise through my window. I was antsy with an emotion that I couldn’t name, and after a couple of hours, I wasn’t able to stay
in bed any longer.

  I dragged my quilt behind me as I walked quietly through the house, and ended up on the back porch in one of Lily’s rockers. The rhythmic sound the curved rockers made against the wooden porch soothed me as I rocked back and forth, trying to imagine being a mother. My own mother had been so horrible that before I’d met Gram, I would have assumed that I’d screw it up somehow. I’d had no role model for good parenting, and the thought of doing some of the things my mother had done to me to my own child made me shudder.

  Thankfully, as an adult I’d had a couple of really good role models. Both Callie and Gram had taught me a lot about being a parent, whether you gave birth to someone or not. Unfortunately, that train of thought brought me back to the anguish on Vera’s face when she’d described losing me to Natasha. I couldn’t imagine just giving up on my child, or even think about Will going missing. What was it that made a person just stop looking? I didn’t understand it, not at all, but I think knowing that I was carrying my own child gave me a small glimpse into how I’d feel if it were suddenly gone.

  It had been only hours since I’d found out that the little thing was in there, and I was already completely enamored with it. Instead of a hypothetical child that I enjoyed the idea of, I already felt as if I knew him or her, as if he or she were already an integral part of me. I wondered what it looked like, if it would be dark like Cody or light like me, and if he or she would have Cody’s clear blue eyes or my darker cloudy ones.

  My mind wandered through the different scenarios, boy or girl, dark or light, until I finally drifted off to sleep, my mind finally clear of my worry for Cody. He had to be okay; there was no other option because we were having a baby.

  When I woke up from my nap, the sun was high in the sky and Gram was sitting next to me in the matching rocking chair. For once her hands weren’t busy, and she sat still except for the movement of her feet that set the chair gently rocking.

  “Didn’t want you to fall out of that chair, so I figured I’d sit with you a while,” she said as I turned my head to face her. “Couldn’t sleep?”

  “No, I guess there was just too much going on in my head.”

  “I can understand that,” she said with a nod. “Big changes coming up for you. Cody too.”

  “Yeah, I’m not sure how he’s going to react.” I chuckled nervously, reaching down to rub what I’d thought was a result of Lily’s cooking. “We’ve always been pretty careful, you know? Even though I didn’t think I could get pregnant, we were still careful.”

  “All the precautions in the world ain’t gonna matter if it’s meant to be.”

  “Yeah, well, you might have to tell your grandson that after he passes out from shock,” I said ruefully.

  “Eh, I think my boy might surprise ya. Cody’s never been one to place blame on anyone but himself. Gets that from his father. I think his reaction will mirror your own, truth be told.” She leaned her head against the back of the rocker, and her voice dropped as we watched the mama deer and fawns come into the yard. “You tell him scared, like you’re worried about his reaction? He’ll worry right alongside you. You tell him with excitement—because that’s what this is, it’s exciting—well, I have a feeling that’s the reaction you’ll get out of him too. He takes his cues from you, darlin’, always has.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said, trying to imagine Cody’s face when I told him the news. It was scary. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I could do the single parent thing. I could. And it wasn’t because I thought it would ever come to that; Cody would never walk away from his child. It was the knowledge that Gram might be right, that he’d pretend to feel however I was feeling, even if it was the last thing he wanted. That thought killed me.

  “Something feels off today, don’t it?” Gram asked suddenly, her eyes coming to mine. “Can’t put my finger on it. Just feels off.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been feeling the same way,” I replied, unsure whether I should burden her with my concerns about what was happening with the Aces.

  “Callie called me last night, said Grease was heading out with the boys. He told her to tell us so we’d be extra careful the next few days,” she said knowingly. “You talk to Cody?”

  “Yeah.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “I figured it was something like that, but he hadn’t told me.”

  “Probably didn’t want to worry ya,” she said.

  “You’re probably right,” I said, but that didn’t help the hurt feeling in my chest. “Wait, does Callie know I’m pregnant?” My raised voice carried over the field and the deer scampered off into the bushes.

  “Hell no! That’s your news to tell, darlin’.”

  “Oh, good.” I sighed. “I just think Cody should know first.”

  “You tell people as you see fit. Ain’t none of my business,” she assured me with a nod, reaching her hand out as I stood so I could pull her from the chair.

  “Do you think the baby’s going to be messed up since I haven’t taken any vitamins or anything?” I asked nervously as we walked into the house.

  “Nah, we didn’t take any of that crap and my boys were just fine. ’Course, back then we smoked too. No, she’ll be fine.” She patted me on the shoulder. “Lily’ll get you some vitamins when she goes to the store.”

  “You think it’s a girl?” I asked curiously.

  “Yeah, I’ve got a feeling.” She started taking things out for breakfast, slamming around the kitchen until Lily stumbled into the room.

  “What’s all that racket?” she yelled over the noise, her hair sticking up in fifty different directions.

  “Time for your lazy ass to wake up,” Gram informed her with a mischievous smile.

  “Shit, a woman needs her beauty sleep!” she retorted before turning to me. “How you doing, sweet cheeks?”

  “I’m okay. Wigging out a little, but okay.”

  “You should go on up and go through the green trunk in the attic while we make some brunch,” she said, patting my belly as she passed. “Pretty sure that’s the trunk with my old maternity clothes in it.”

  “No shit? Wait, you have kids?”

  “Had two, a girl and a boy, both gone now,” she answered stiffly. “You’ll probably find something in there that you can use. Go to town.”

  “You sure?”

  “When the hell am I going to wear it?”

  By the tone of her voice, she was clearly done with the conversation, so I left her and Gram and raced into the attic. I was excited to see what she’d kept that I could wear; vintage maternity clothes weren’t something I’d come across very often as I’d searched in old thrift stores. I spent close to an hour looking for the right trunk, and made three trips to my bedroom with my arms full of clothes to try on. It gave me something to keep my mind off Cody, and the fact that it was midafternoon and he still hadn’t called.

  Later as I washed and dried dresses, jumpers, and a pair of elastic-waisted bell-bottoms, I tried to ignore the fact that I still hadn’t heard from him, and Callie hadn’t heard from Grease either. It seemed everyone was in the dark as we waited.

  I fell asleep that night worried out of my mind, but too exhausted to stay awake a minute longer.

  We still hadn’t heard from the men.

  Chapter 29

  Farrah

  Morning found me quietly rocking myself in the same chair I’d been in the day before. I’d woken up early to check my phone, and hadn’t been able to fall back asleep when I hadn’t seen any missed calls or text messages. Waiting for Cody to make contact was brutal, and it reminded me of when he’d been shot and I’d hoped for any type of reassurance that he was okay.

  I wrapped my quilt closer around me, waiting for the sun to finish rising over the hill. Gram and Lily were waking up, I could hear them moving around the house, but things were still pretty quiet as I soaked it all in. I was going to miss this place when it was time to leave. I’d grown used to waking up to birds outside my window and crickets chirping me a lullaby as I fell
asleep, and I wasn’t sure how I’d ever get accustomed to the sounds of the city again. I hadn’t even heard the sound of a car in days. The quiet soothed me in a way nothing else ever had.

  I’d also miss my little deer family. They were in the field again, taking advantage of the apples Lily had left for them. She claimed that she couldn’t stand the things because they got into her garden, and said she’d shoot them if her eyesight were better. But after dinner almost every night when she thought no one was looking, she’d bring a few apples out into the yard for them to find the next day. The old softie.

  If I hadn’t been watching them closely, if I hadn’t been completely focused on the graceful line of their necks and the white-speckled coats on the babies, I would have missed the way the mama deer’s head shot up and looked toward the side of the house before fleeing into the woods with her little ones trailing behind her.

  My heart racing, I turned my head slowly toward whatever had spooked her.

  Chapter 30

  Casper

  We staggered our departures, driving in and out of the club gates over and over using different cars and some of the women to cover our tracks, and it was dark by the time we reached Portland.

  Poet knew the area pretty well, and had decided that we’d meet up outside a McDonald’s that turned out to be less than a mile from the warehouses. Half the lights in the parking lot were burned out, and there was a row of overgrown trees at one edge of the lot that hid us in plain sight. It was insane how smart the guy was; I had no idea how he would have known in advance how deserted it would be that time of night. The guy’s instincts were always spot-on, though, and while I didn’t understand how he’d picked the perfect place to meet up, I also wasn’t surprised.