“Yeah. You should call Scoot tomorrow, explain you won't be coming back.”
“I'll talk to him. And I'll see him this weekend. We're still a family.”
“Uh huh,” dad says.
The screen door squeaks open and slams closed. I run to my window to watch the lights drive off into the dark farmland. When he's nothing but a speckle as tiny as a star, I creep back to my bedroom door. After a few minutes, the sewing machine starts churning. She just sews and sews and sews. I walk down the hall towards the room. The door is cracked open so I peek in. The room looks different than it used to, the walls and windows now covered with quilts she made. On one of them, there are a few newspaper clippings pinned up. I recognize they are about my accident.
She catches me looking in.
“How long have you been awake?” she asks.
I shrug.
“Well, your dad came and it's all working out. He'll come up with Scoot on the weekends. I think he's coming over to our side.”
I push the door open and point to the wall of articles.
“Oh. That's just a little project I'm working on. Trying to gather evidence about the accident, link the different people involved. But I don't want you to worry about that. That's for mama to take care of.”
“The w-windows?”
“Oh that's to make sure they can't see in here,” she answers matter-of-factly.
I whip my mask off before storming into the house, sucking in air as I pace, balling up my fist and banging it against my forehead over and over. Think. Think. Think. But I don't think with her. I have stretches of what seems like control, but it's like holding onto a ledge for dear life. And then I can't hold it any longer and I slip. I show weakness. This—my impulsiveness in grabbing her on what was supposed to be a quick hit, in fucking her over and over without the thought of consequences—I didn't make a plan. I keep patching shit together. I can't let this complication grow. I can barely plan for Vesper, let alone a child.
A child.
I'm not like those families whose windows I peek into, like a moving portrait, framed by their windows. I am a reject, and I don't want to make another me. I'm too far gone to pull things back and make a life.
I crouch down to the floor when the realization hits me. She was right, my mother. I could never be normal. They would all shun me. Hate me. Not because of the way I was born. Or my speech patterns. Or because the world was conspiring to kill me. No…I made it happen. I fulfilled her prophecy. I have become something so inhuman, that I can't ever have the thing I have been chasing. The very act of chasing it, of forcing it, has made it something I could never, ever grasp.
This child has nothing to come home to. The visions I had of making Vesper mine, all those fantasies I had as I placed myself in Carter's shoes, they were only meant to live in my mind's eye.
I'll always be the stuttering freak with the scars and the trail of screaming victims behind me. My most prized one, being the mother to this child.
I bow my head and take one deep breath before standing up and making my way to the shed. I rummage through the instruments until I find a suction hose. I pull and straighten it out to inspect its length and when I am satisfied, I grab a shop vac, some tape, and head back to the main house. In a frenzy, I grab duct tape and seal the hose to the vac. I take a moment to sit back and look at my work. I've never done this before, I've only heard about what women have done.
Before I can go any further, I realize I need assistance. So I barge into the kitchen and rummage through the cabinets. Usually a beer man, I look for the hidden bottle of whiskey and take a generous swallow, shaking my head at the burn.
I need more. A back up plan. I run to a downstairs closet and fling off a jacket from a metal hanger. I uncoil it so it's long and sharp, but keep the hook intact. Gloves. Whiskey. The vac. The hanger. Fuel for the generator. Cords. Lube.
This is a plan.
I speed back to the cabin, sweaty and buzzed. I've gotta stop this spinning out of control. My freedom is the most important thing. And with a baby, I will lose that inevitably.
I hear Night before he comes in. That's usually the case when he doesn't care if I know. He moves measuredly, exuding a false calmness. False, I know, because of the sweat dripping down his exposed clavicle down to his low slung jeans. His chest moving up and down tells me his heart is racing. The bottle of whiskey dangling from his hand tells me this man who has nothing to fear, who has never kissed me with the scent of alcohol on his breath, needs to calm his nerves. His mask—the dark face I have come to know as his—is saturated with sweat, but stubbornly, he won't remove it.