Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Chloe
"Ms. Bennett, your follow-up results are in. All your markers are within normal range. We found no pathological findings consistent with the initial diagnosis."
The doctor paused, took off his glasses, wiped them clean, and slipped them back on before offering me a small smile. The kind of smile that left me confused—like what he was about to say next was some kind of gift.
"And your latest bloodwork shows you're pregnant."
His eyebrows lifted, smile expectant. Like he'd just announced winning lottery numbers, and I happened to be holding the ticket. But I sat there in that cold plastic chair, face probably blank as a wall.
I didn't know what expression to make. Everything I'd done for the past two months was built on the premise that I was dying. I'd burned through my savings, torched my career, screwed my boss in an elevator—because I thought I'd never get another chance to be touched.
But I wasn't dying.
And I was fucking pregnant.
Before I could process any of it, the chair beside me scraped violently across the floor.
Martha shot to her feet. Face gray, jaw locked tight. She didn't even look at me. Just grabbed her purse from her lap, turned, and headed for the door.
"Martha." I jumped up, reached for her arm.
She yanked away hard. My fingers slipped off her sleeve. The force of it made me stumble back a step.
"You're not my daughter."
Her voice came out low and cold, each word bit off clean. She didn't even turn to look at me. Just said it and shoved through the door.
It slammed shut behind her, frame buzzing from the impact.
I stood there, feeling like everything had just gone to hell.
My mother, Martha Bennett, was a devout believer. In her world, premarital sex was sin. Getting knocked up out of wedlock was unforgivable corruption. She already hated me. Now she probably found me revolting.
This was bad.
I'd come back home to spend my final days with her for one reason—to get information about where my dead father was buried. I wanted to be laid next to him. He was the only person in my memory who'd ever actually loved me.
If Martha cut me off completely now, the last two months were for nothing.
"Ms. Bennett, are you alright? Do you need me to call a nurse?" the doctor asked carefully from behind me.
He probably didn't understand why someone who'd just found out they weren't dying looked like the sky had fallen.
I gave him some quick bullshit answer, grabbed my bag, and bolted from the exam room. Finally caught up with Martha in the parking lot. Her heels hammered the tile, sharp and fast, broadcasting her mood loud and clear.
"Martha, wait." I jogged after her. "Let me explain. I really didn't know I was pregnant."
She stopped dead. Spun around. I almost crashed into her. Her eyes were red but dry. Just pure, naked disgust staring back at me.
"Get in the car." The words scraped through her teeth.
I had no choice. She was my mother. And the first thing I'd learned in two months back here was how to take it.
The twenty-minute drive home passed in total silence. Martha's fingers gripped the wheel, knuckles bone-white. I sat buckled in the passenger seat, not daring to say a word.
The car stopped in front of her white single-story house. She yanked the keys out, shoved the door open, and walked to the front entrance. Took her three tries to get the key in the lock. I followed behind. We went in one after the other.
Martha threw her purse onto the shoe cabinet by the door and whirled around.
Before I could react, her hand cracked across my left cheek.
Loud. My head snapped sideways, ears ringing, skin burning. I stood there stunned for two seconds before I realized what had happened.
"You shameless slut!" Martha's voice had gone shrill, scraping against my eardrums. "You didn't just lie about dying—you brought a bastard into my house!"
"Martha, listen to me." I pressed my burning cheek, tried to keep my voice steady. "I really didn't know I was pregnant. I had no idea before I came here."
"You didn't know?" She stepped closer, finger jabbing toward my face. "You didn't know you were pregnant? You spread your legs for someone and have no memory of it? I don't remember giving birth to an idiot."
I opened my mouth. Couldn't say anything in the face of that kind of humiliation. What could I say? I thought I was dying. I wanted to be held. I was desperate to feel loved.
And anyway, whoever I spread my legs for—I was a grown woman.
But any of those sentences would've lit Martha's fuse.
"Who's the father?" When I didn't answer, Martha's voice dropped. That was always the sign that her rage was escalating.
I was quiet for a few seconds.
"I don't know who he is." The safest answer I could think of.
"Huh! You don't know who he is." Martha repeated it with a bitter laugh, every word ground out between her teeth.
"It was a one-night stand." I forced myself to continue. "The night I found out I was dying. I thought I only had three months left, so I did something crazy."
"I know. That's exactly the kind of girl you are." Martha let out a harsh laugh, voice turning colder and more vicious. "You knew how to seduce your stepfather when you were thirteen. Now you roll into bed with some random man and end up pregnant with a bastard."
"That's not true." My voice shook when I said it. "Richard tried to assault me. I didn't lie. I never lied."
"Shut up!" Martha lunged forward, grabbed my shoulders, and slammed me backward. My back hit the wall. The back of my head knocked into the crucifix hanging there. Pain exploded behind my eyes. Her nails dug into my skin through my shirt, shoulders screaming.
"Martha, let go of me!"
"You ruined my life! Richard left me because of you! Now you come back with a bastard to humiliate me! You're cursed! You've been cursed since the day you were born!"
Martha's hand went up, about to come down on my face again, when rapid footsteps came from the doorway. A neighbor lady rushed in and grabbed Martha's arm.
"Martha! What are you doing? Calm down!"
Martha struggled to shake her off, but her mouth never stopped. "Let me beat this shameless thing to death! She's a whore! Rotten to the core, just like her dead-beat father! The worst mistake I ever made was giving birth to her!"
I leaned against the wall, holding my burning cheek and throbbing head, not remembering when I'd started crying.
My body could take the slaps. Could take being shoved around. But I couldn't accept that these soul-shaking words came from my own mother.
I was so stupid. I never should've come back. I thought time would've changed Martha, thought she'd think of me sometimes the way I sometimes thought of her.
Nothing had changed.
The neighbor coaxed and pulled until she finally got Martha into the bedroom. But her curses still leaked through the door, filthy and cruel.
I stood alone in the living room, staring at the shattered crucifix and crooked picture frames on the floor, tears still wet on my face while new ones fell. Chloe, congratulations. You just proved again that your mother doesn't love you. She hates you.
I wiped my eyes, bent down, picked up the crucifix, and hung it back on the nail. Then I walked down the basement stairs to my room.
Calling it a room was generous. It was a converted storage space. Single bed, old wardrobe, dim lamp. Nail holes still visible in the walls from old shelving. Martha made me stay down here. The upstairs guest room had to stay empty—church sisters sometimes came to visit.
I sat on the bed. Suddenly felt exhausted.
Honestly, in that moment, I almost wished the diagnosis had been real. I couldn't find a reason to keep living. If only, like Martha said, she'd never given birth to me at all.
I don't know how long I lay there. Ten minutes, an hour. Until I shifted and saw my stomach. A thought yanked me back.
There was a life growing inside me.
My hand slowly covered my belly. Through the thin T-shirt, warm skin underneath, flat enough that nothing showed yet. But it was there. A two-month-old thing that didn't know anything. Didn't know what a failure its mother was. Didn't know what kind of wreckage it was about to be born into.
But it chose me. Out of all the possible times and all the possible wombs, it came to me.
I couldn't just lie here waiting to die. Besides, I didn't even have a fucking disease. What right did I have to give up? Martha didn't want to be my mother? Fine.
But I could be a mother. A good mother. A completely different kind of mother than her.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand, took a deep breath, and closed my eyes. First step to being a good mother—get some sleep.
Three seconds later, my eyes popped open. Closed them again. Opened. Tossed and turned several times. Still couldn't sleep.
My head was a mess. Misdiagnosis, pregnancy, Martha's slap, Enzo's face, New York, money, work. All of it churning like a pot of stew, bubbling away in my skull.
I had to talk to Martha. I needed a place to stay, even temporarily. I needed to save up money for the baby. Needed to find Dad's grave. I could endure her cold violence, endure her verbal abuse—just like I had for two months. I just needed to hold on a little longer.
I was working out how to approach her when I heard Martha's bedroom door open upstairs. Light footsteps moved across the ceiling. Then the front door opened. Heavy footsteps followed. More than one person.
Why? Who would come over at this hour?
I sat up, pressed my ear against the wall by my pillow, trying to hear what was happening upstairs.
But the sounds headed toward the basement. The doorknob turned.
I sprang off the bed, backed up two steps, spine pressed against the cold concrete wall, eyes locked on the door.
It swung open. Not Martha. Two men I'd never seen before. Dark clothes, built like tanks, faces blank. One held a black cloth. The other walked toward me, and I caught a sharp chemical smell.