up, eyes wide. ‘Oh my goodness! The bread!’
She threw the oven open and a cloud of black, acrid smoke billowed out. I slipped the oven mitts on and grabbed the charred french stick, tossing it in the garbage while Mom threw open the sliding glass door and started fanning the air with a kitchen towel. Chilly spring air blew through the house, dissipating the smoke. But the bitter smell of something burning remained.
Mom pushed at a lock of blonde hair stuck to her forehead with sweat. ‘I’m sorry, sweetie. I guess we won’t be having bread with our pasta.’
‘It’s okay. It wouldn’t be a homemade dinner if we didn’t burn something,’ I joked.
She laughed sheepishly. ‘Why don’t you tell me about school? Not too long and you’ll be a senior. How does that feel?’
Her words tumbled out too fast, her voice edgy as a serrated knife.
‘Mom, you haven’t answered my question. Did my dad have other kids?’
A puff of clouds rolled over the sun, shifting the light and casting sporadic shadows over Mom’s face. I felt a quiver in the air, a vibration like electricity that weaved its way through the burnt toast smell.
Mom met my gaze, her blue eyes innocent. ‘Nope,’ she said. ‘Your dad died before he even knew about you and he most certainly didn’t have any other children.’
I stared at her smooth face, trying to get a handle on the emotions rolling through me: fear, panic, confusion, anger. Mostly anger, because something told me she was lying.
A dark horror slid into my heart. I’d always trusted my mom. Trusted everything she said, obeyed everything she told me to do. I’d never thought twice about questioning her.
But now I felt that trust disappearing like evaporating mist. If she could lie to me about something as fundamental as this, what else had she kept from me?
ABI
october
As the hours bled into each other, I alternated between numbness and sorrow, each as intense and debilitating as the other.
‘I need to know what happened,’ I said to Sarah.
She was so still, barely moving since we’d settled in the family waiting room the doctors gave us. I couldn’t hold still, pacing the floor, counting the ceiling tiles, pouring water from one cup to another. I needed to move, to do something. My analytical brain needed to make sense of things, to question the facts and frame the story, to make the columns align, the numbers add up.
‘You should go home. Get some rest,’ she replied.
I glared at her. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Olivia and I were linked by birth, by life. I wouldn’t leave her in death.
More time passed. ‘Why does she have bruises on her arms?’ I asked Sarah, slamming an empty cup to the ground. I sucked my lips over my teeth, trying to steady myself. ‘Do you think somebody hurt her?’
Sarah looked startled. ‘I don’t know. The police – they’ll investigate.’
Tears tumbled down my cheeks, sliding into the hollow of my neck. I could barely breathe, whimpers racking my body as I sank into a chair. Sarah came to me, slid her arms around my shoulders. We held each other like that for a long time, our bodies shaking.
‘I wanted to keep her safe!’ I sobbed.
‘This isn’t your fault, Abi,’ she replied, her voice raw with pain.
I pulled away and looked into her reddened eyes.
‘What if it is?’
× × ×
Night washed over Olivia’s room. The hospital lights turned on one by one, and still I didn’t move from my seat next to her bed, the intermittent bleeps and swooshes keeping Olivia connected to this world a bizarre lullaby to my pain. Despair swirled inside me, a relentless fog that made me incapable of anything: eating, drinking, moving.
I stared, lost, at the bruises circling Olivia’s wrists. They were ringed with blue and purple, as if someone had grabbed her, staining her beautiful skin with the color of anger.
I laid my forehead on the edge of her bed, grateful to be alone with her. All day the doctors had encouraged me to go home, get some rest. Sarah had brought me a ham sandwich, left untouched and eventually tipped into the garbage, and then relentless cups of coffee. But it just made me need to pee, and I didn’t want to leave Olivia. So I stopped drinking altogether.
My head pounded from tears and dehydration, but I couldn’t leave. Not yet. I felt like I was living inside a tear in the fabric of time, the real world outside on pause.
Two days had passed since my dash to Olivia’s broken body, time shuffling past with excruciating slowness. More doctors trundled in, more reports, another CT scan, an ultrasound showing a fetal heartbeat. Cautionary whispers that she might miscarry and more whispers that if her heart held up long enough, they could save the baby.
Save the baby? I wanted them to save my baby.
I slept in fits and spurts, my forehead pressed against Olivia’s stomach. Night inched by. Alarm bells rang intermittently, and I imagined the people being told their loved one hadn’t made it. I imagined what would happen when it was Olivia’s turn.
I awoke with a start when somebody shook my shoulder.
‘Mrs Knight?’ Dr Griffith held a cup of water out to me. ‘Why don’t you have a drink?’
‘It’s Miss,’ I corrected him. ‘I’m not married.’ My voice rasped, my throat barren of any moisture. But still I refused the water.
He slid a chair across the room and sat next to me, the cup clasped between both hands. ‘Miss Knight. You need to take care of yourself. You need to eat, drink, get some rest.’
‘Why does everyone keep saying that?’ I burst out. Pain ripped through me, undiminished by the passing hours, and I pressed my fingers hard into my temples.
‘You have a long road ahead of you.’ He glanced at Olivia. ‘All three of you.’
I stared at him for a long moment, tried to lick my cracked lips.
‘Olivia isn’t coming back,’ he said gently. ‘But there’s a chance your grandchild could survive.’ It hurt him to say this, I could tell by the tightening of his eyes, and it made me like him. Or at least respect him.
‘How long?’ I finally said.
‘How long what?’
‘How long does Olivia have to be on life support for the baby –’ I broke off, the words skewering my heart.
‘We’d aim to get her to thirty-two weeks’ gestation.’
I did the math quickly. Eighteen more weeks on life
