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  Mother

  Family Values Trilogy

  Book 1

  Patrick Logan

  Prologue (Conception)

  The girl stared at her reflection in the mirror as the steam from the shower billowed about her soft, pale skin.

  She brought a hand to her chest and gently lifted her right breast, assessing the weight of it before allowing gravity to bring it back to its resting place.

  It seemed bigger today.

  No, not bigger—bigger is the wrong word for it. More full. Definitely more full.

  Her nipples, hard despite the moist, warm air that engulfed her body, looked a little darker than usual as well, but she chalked this up to her imagination.

  This can’t be happening… not yet.

  She felt like crying.

  While most girls her age might have confused what was happening to her body as part of the transition into adulthood, she knew that this was not that. Her first blood had come and gone many months earlier—young for her age—and she was smart enough to know that the changes her body was undergoing were happening far too quickly to be puberty-related.

  No, this was something else entirely.

  A deep frown, one that wrinkled the smooth skin around the corners of her lips and caused a rash of unsightly dimples to riddle her round chin, made its way onto her face. The desire to cry, to simply drop to her knees and sob, was nearly overwhelming, and it took all of her willpower to resist.

  This, too—controlling her emotions—would become more difficult as her body underwent even further changes. Hormonal changes.

  The girl turned sideways, her brow furrowing as she scrutinized her profile in the foggy mirror.

  It can’t be. Please, don’t let it be true.

  Her hands moved from her breasts to the spot just below her navel, to the slight but perceptible pouch of skin perfectly situated above the muscles that descended into a ‘v’ between her legs.

  It couldn’t be—but it was.

  No.

  If it hadn’t been for her breath catching in her throat, the word would have escaped her lips in a moan. And that would have had disastrous consequences.

  As she watched, her reflection began to blur, the edges becoming hazy like headlights cutting through thick fog. It was the condensation from the shower that gave her outline an ethereal quality, which was only fitting as her situation was anything but real.

  A sound from just outside the bathroom door startled her, and she paused.

  “Sweets?”

  A split-second hesitation was all it took; such a small, seemingly inconsequential act, but it carried with it severe repercussions. The girl swiveled on her bare heels, spinning so quickly toward the half-open bathroom door that she narrowly avoided pirouetting into the corner of the bone-white vanity. Yet despite her spin, she had acted too slowly.

  The neatly folded load of laundry that lay artfully across her mother’s arms—a pile of colorful socks, graphic t-shirts, and a couple pairs of jeans—fell to the ground in what seemed like slow motion.

  The girl slammed her palm against the bathroom door, closing it with a loud bang.

  “Mother!” she shouted, hoping that the anger in her voice usurped the fear—the embarrassment. “Mother! Privacy, please!”

  After wiping the tears from her eyes, the girl pressed both hands against the back of the door as if she were preparing for her own ‘Here’s Johnny’ moment.

  Or maybe she was waiting for that dreaded knock, or the sound of her mother’s patronizing voice.

  But there was no sound from her room, which, in a way, was worse.

  Say something!

  The girl pressed her ear against the door between her hands. Had Mother not seen? She fought the urge to look down at herself.

  Is it not that noticeable?

  She had slammed the door closed so quickly that she hadn’t seen her mother’s eyes… instead, she had been distracted by the falling laundry, the striped candy cane socks that had done a little dance as they tumbled to the carpeted bedroom floor.

  Could she have been distracted by the laundry as well?

  Her mind raced.

  Say something! Anything!

  Her hopes were dashed when she finally heard her mother’s voice, her words coming out low and slow, the universal pitch that mothers used to let their children know that they were serious, that they meant business.

  Oh, the woman had seen alright—she missed nothing.

  “Open the door,” her mother ordered.

  The girl pressed her forehead against the back of the door and squeezed her eyes shut.

  Fuck! How could I have been so stupid?

  Tears somehow managed to leak from between her closed lids and made wet tracks down both of her round cheeks. The liquid felt oddly cool on her skin, cutting through the steam that had coated the mirror and saturated the air in what felt like a thick paste. The humid air had begun to settle on all surfaces—including herself.

  Hot, sticky, uncomfortable air.

  Her heartrate soared.

  Please—just leave.

  “Open the door.”

  Please.

  When her mother spoke a third time, her voice was different. It wasn’t calm and demanding, but tight, bordering on hysterical. The sudden change in pitch shocked the girl into opening her eyes.

  “You can’t have it! You need to get it out!”

  ‘You need to get it out.’ She could barely believe that her mother had uttered those words. It. Get it out.

  The girl felt as if her soul had been crushed, as if all of her bones had suddenly been turned to dust and she was but a pile of skin lying on the wet bathroom floor.

  “It’s not—”

  —what you think, was what she wanted to say, but her mother cut her off.

  “You’re pregnant,” the woman hissed.

  Hearing those words out loud, even though she’d known them to be true long before her mother had come into her room carrying her stupid fucking striped socks, somehow made it all real.

  I’m just bloated, Mom, she wanted to say. It’s just my stupid period, Mom.

  But the only words that she could manage were, “I’m sorry.”

  And with the utterance of those two words, so very benign on their own, but when combined carried so much weight, tears began to fall in a deluge.

  How did this happen?

  Her body hitched against the back of the door.

  I’m too young for this! Please, I don’t want this!

  There was a shuffling sound on the other side of the door, and somewhere in the dark recesses of her mind, she realized that her mother was no longer waiting on the other side.

  A baby—I can’t have a baby.

  The idea was so foreign, so fucking bizarre, that despite her sobs, the notion of being pregnant, of having a living, breathing—was it breathing yet?—being inside of her was nearly incomprehensible.

  And that was all it was: an idea.

  A scraping sound, like nails on a chalkboard, brought her back into reality. The girl pulled her forehead away from the door and aggressively wiped the tears away from her eyes with the blade of her hand.

  The mixture of emotions roiling inside of her, accelerated by hormonal changes like kerosene fueling flames, came crashing down at once.

  And this time, so did her body.

  The girl collapsed to the damp floor, her legs crumpling uselessly beneath he
r.

  Her final resting place was just a few inches from the wire coat hanger that her mother had forced through the small opening beneath the door.

  “No!” the girl cried.

  Not this. This can’t be the way.

  But despite her pleas, her mother was having none of it.

  “Hurry! He can’t know about this!”

  The next word that came out of the girl’s mouth was tortured by mucous, rendering it barely intelligible.

  “Please!”

  But despite the desperation in her voice, Mother was having none of it.

  “Hurry!”

  * * *

  There was blood in the bathtub. Not as much as she would have thought, but enough to tinge the water a pale pink.

  The girl was still crying.

  “Hush now, we did what was necessary,” her mother whispered, her voice oddly detached.

  The woman raised the coral sponge and squeezed it on the back of her neck, allowing the water to spill down her back and over her breasts.

  The girl watched the water for a moment, her eyes following the lazy rivers of pink fluid as they traced ravines over her naked body.

  My blood. I’m being bathed in my blood, she thought briefly, but then instinctively shook her head. Not my blood—my baby’s blood. I’m being bathed in my baby’s blood.

  The thought drove a shudder up her spine. Mother took this as a cue to turn her head, and their eyes met.

  The girl expected sympathy in the woman’s dark green eyes, or in the very least a comforting expression. Instead, she saw neither; her mother’s eyes, as well as the rest of her heavily lined face, were a hardened mask that lacked any emotion.

  “You did the right thing,” her mother informed her, much like a teacher instructing a student that they had come up with the correct answer to a math problem.

  ‘Necessary’ had become ‘right,’ and ‘we’ had become ‘you.’

  These subtleties were not lost on the girl.

  After a short pause, her mother unexpectedly reached out and laid a hand on her cheek. The girl, mistaking this as a comforting gesture, instinctively leaned her head into the cupped hand, wanting—needing—some sort of justification, some proof that she had indeed done the right thing, something beyond her mother’s empty words.

  But the woman’s grip tightened, and the gentle caress became a forceful pinch. The girl in the tub sat up, wincing.

  “But you must never forget.”

  The woman’s dark green eyes were focused and unblinking.

  “A life for a life, sweets.”

  Mother paused as silent tears began to pour down the girl’s face. When these clear streams eventually met the bathwater, they too took on a tainted pink hue.

  Despite her daughter’s obvious pain, the woman’s grip did not lessen.

  “A life for a life. You must never forget.”

  * * *

  The texture beneath the girl’s feet slowly transitioned from soft and wet to hard as the ground changed from mud to asphalt.

  Head down, she put one foot in front of the other, moving slowly, methodically, traveling in a straight line to nowhere.

  One foot, then the next. One foot, and then the next, as dawn slowly began to creep around her.

  At some point during her walk she heard a car approach, only to come to an abrupt stop somewhere off to her right.

  Onward she walked.

  Then there was a second car, and then a voice.

  “Hey! Hey, are you okay?”

  Another voice now.

  “Look! She’s bleeding!”

  Something was gently draped over her shoulders—something thick like a blanket, and at long last her legs stopped moving.

  “Call the police! Quick, someone call the police!”

  The girl curled into the blanket, her broken mind only barely registering the fact that someone had finally picked up her frail body.

  Part I – Sow the Seed

  Chapter 1

  Arielle Reigns stared the goofy-looking doctor straight in the face.

  You think you know everything.

  The doctor’s smile grew even larger, as if mind-reading were one of the many skills listed on the diplomas wrapped in fancy gold frames and hung around the office.

  You think you know everything, but you don’t—you don’t know about this.

  Arielle glanced over at her husband for support and was surprised to see that he was staring at her, his light brown eyebrows high on his forehead. He had his typical, ‘Well, Arielle?’ expression plastered on his handsome face.

  She looked away before anger overcame her, and her gaze fell to her hands tucked in her lap. After a deep breath in through her nose, she looked back at the doctor.

  “No,” she said bluntly. “I will not undergo any tests.”

  The smile on the doctor’s face slid off like ice warming on a windshield. What replaced it was a look somewhere between concern and frustration.

  Dr. Barnes reached up and scratched at the stubble on the back of his head. While some men shaved their heads because they liked the way it looked, or maybe because the style required less work, Dr. Barnes shaved his head because most of it had fallen out naturally. And if nature is guiding you in a direction, why fight it? Why bother fighting it?

  You can’t fight nature.

  Just try shooting a hurricane or smothering a tsunami.

  “Well,” the doctor said at last. The jovial lilt that had been in his voice only moments before had vanished like his smile.

  Arielle stared expectantly, but the man just continued to scratch. His long, thin fingers and short nails kept moving up and down the back of his head, making a sound like someone repeatedly doing and then undoing Velcro shoes.

  The sound irritated her.

  Everything about the man irritated her.

  “Well, what?”

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her husband reach out to her, but she preemptively pulled away, all the while keeping her gaze trained on Dr. Barnes.

  “Not now, Martin,” she said. Then to the doctor, she continued, “Well, Dr. Barnes, can you help us or not?”

  For the second time in less than a minute, the doctor seemed at a loss for words, which annoyed Arielle even further. The man had been all talk five minutes ago, asking personal questions—How long have you been trying? How are your periods? Regular? Are you having sex when you are ovulating?—but when she put him to the question, the man could only stand there gaping… and scratching his balding fucking head, of course.

  “Well?”

  Dr. Barnes cleared his throat and brought his hands to his lap. Leaning forward, he finally spoke.

  “We need to do some tests first before I—”

  Arielle shook her head quickly, her shoulder-length blond hair whipping back and forth. Forced to pull strands away from her face, she wished that she had put it up in a ponytail.

  “No,” she stated firmly. “No tests.”

  The doctor turned his dark, beady eyes to Martin.

  “No,” Arielle interrupted, wagging her finger back and forth in front of her. “No, don’t do that. Don’t look at him. It’s not up to him.”

  The doctor raised a hand defensively.

  “Mrs. Reigns, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Can you help us or not?”

  Dr. Barnes shook his head.

  “Without performing tests, there isn’t much I can do, I’m afraid. I mean, if you wanted to undergo just a few tests, we can consider going the in vitro route.”

  The man was speaking slowly, and it was obvious to both Arielle and Martin that he was choosing his words very carefully.

  “No, not in vitro. It’s not natural.”

  The doctor’s expression remained neutral.

  “Well, I’m going to be frank with you, Mrs. Reigns, at forty-one years of age—”

  “Thirty-nine,” Arielle corrected him.

  The man stared at her for another moment before interlac
ing his long fingers and continuing.

  “At your age, it’s going to be difficult to conceive. I can prescribe some iron pills and something else to try to make sure that you are ovulating. But, without doing some tests—which are completely harmless and minimally invasive—my hands are tied.”

  “No tests,” Arielle reiterated.

  Martin reached for her again, and this time she let his hand rest on the back of her arm.

  “Sweetie, why don’t we get some tests done? I’ll have my sperm analyzed and you can—”

  She pulled away and turned to face him.

  “No tests! I said no tests! What’s wrong with you?”

  The words had come out more forcefully than she had expected, and Martin recoiled. When his shock faded, it was replaced by a sad and confused look.

  He doesn’t deserve this.

  Arielle took another deep breath in through her nose. She had been scared that something like this might happen, that she would lose her cool.

  Her thoughts turned briefly to how well Martin had treated her over the past seven years, ever since the day her maternal instincts had switched on, and from then on out, there had been no way to shut them off.

  ‘It’s okay, baby,’ Martin had told her countless times. ‘You are more than enough for me.’

  He would always smirk when he said this, letting her know that he was only partly kidding—joking around to try to lighten the tension… the tension that seemed to constrict around her throat like a noose.

  No, Martin definitely didn’t deserve her outburst. The doctor, on the other hand…

  Arielle was about to apologize to Martin—the words were on the tip of her tongue—when Dr. Barnes suddenly chimed in.

  “Mrs. Reigns, if you think you would be more comfortable with a female doctor, I have a colleague—”

  Arielle turned back to the doctor, her eyes narrowing.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you? I said no tests!”

  “Woah!” Martin exclaimed, once again reaching for her.

  Arielle stood and her husband’s hand fell short. Her blood had started to boil, and she was quickly getting to a point from which even deep breathing wouldn’t bring her back.