Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Popeye
The silence in the office was fucking suffocating.
Grace sat in her chair, one hand pressed against her swollen belly, the other covering her mouth.
Tears streamed down her face. King stood behind her, hand on her shoulder, jaw so tight I thought his teeth might crack.
The weight of what we’d just learned, what Christina had written, what she’d endured, what she’d fucking sacrificed—it hung in the air like smoke.
I looked down at the journal in my hands. Christina’s handwriting. Her words poured onto these pages in desperation and guilt and fear. Words she’d never been able to say out loud. Words that had eaten her alive from the inside out.
And I felt it all crashing down on me at once.
The grief. The anger. The guilt. The confusion.
The crushing realization that I’d spent over twenty years searching for a woman I’d never truly fucking known.
That I’d loved her, or thought I had, but maybe what I’d loved was the idea of her.
The quiet woman who’d needed me to protect her.
The sweet woman who’d given me a daughter.
What I hadn’t expected was for her to disappear with my daughter based on the word of a man I thought I could trust.
But now I knew. Now I understood. And the truth was so much worse than anything I could have imagined.
“Dad?” Grace’s voice cut through my thoughts, small and broken.
I looked up. “Yeah, baby?”
Tears fell from her green eyes. My eyes. “I knew there was something wrong with her, but I never thought...” Grace’s voice shook, her hand trembling against her belly. “All those years... I thought she wanted... Oh God, I can’t even say it.”
King’s hands tightened on her shoulder, then rubbed up and down my daughter’s arms as he tried fruitlessly to comfort her.
“But she wasn’t cold,” Grace continued, and something in her voice shifted and broke open.
“She was drowning. Every single day, she was drowning. And I never saw it. Never understood that every ounce of energy she had was going into just... surviving. Just keeping the mask in place. Just making it through one more day without falling apart completely.”
“Grace—”
“I understand now,” she said, looking up at me with red, swollen eyes that held a devastation I recognized all too well.
A devastation I’d seen in my own mirror for twenty years.
“I understand what it’s like to be pregnant after being violated.
I understand what it’s like to wake up every morning and feel like you’re carrying proof of what was done to you.
Proof you can’t hide. Proof that grows inside you, moving, kicking, reminding you every second of every day. ”
King dropped to his knees in front of her, taking her face in his hands. “Baby?—”
Grace’s hand pressed harder against her belly, protective and instinctive. “When Kytten told me I was pregnant,” she said, her voice breaking, “I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t decide what to do. Because I didn’t know whose baby I was carrying. Yours or theirs.”
King’s jaw clenched, his hands tightening on her face.
“I made a choice,” Grace continued, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I decided to wait. Seven weeks for the paternity test. Seven weeks of waking up every morning not knowing if I’d be able to keep this baby or if I’d have to... if I’d have to make a different choice.”
My throat tightened. I’d watched for weeks as my daughter struggled. Watched her withdraw into herself until we knew the truth. But hearing her describe that waiting, that impossible limbo, gutted me in a way I wasn’t prepared for.
“Seven weeks of hell,” Grace whispered. “Seven weeks of looking at my body in the mirror and not knowing if what was growing inside me was from love or violence. Seven weeks of trying not to think about what I’d do if the test came back wrong.
If I’d have the strength to go through with an abortion.
If I could survive carrying a baby that wasn’t yours. ”
“Jesus Christ,” King breathed, his voice wrecked.
“But I had hope,” Grace said, looking at King with such raw vulnerability it hurt to witness.
“I had seven weeks where I could tell myself maybe it would be okay. Maybe the test would come back positive. Maybe I’d get to keep this baby and build a life with you.
There was a light at the end of that short tunnel.
And when it did, when I knew this baby was yours, I could finally breathe again.
I could want it. I could love it. I could imagine a future where I didn’t have to make an impossible choice. ”
She looked at me then, her hand still pressed against her belly, and I saw the moment it hit her. The moment she truly understood what her mother had endured.
“But mom’s tunnel was longer. She didn’t have a light at the end, just more darkness,” Grace whispered.
“She didn’t have seven weeks of hope. She didn’t have a test to wait for.
She didn’t have a window where she could tell herself maybe it would be okay.
She just had the certainty. The absolute, crushing certainty that this baby was proof of what they did to her.
What she had to do to survive. What she became to keep me safe. ”
“Grace—”
“And she carried him for nine months,” Grace said, her voice rising with a kind of awed horror.
“Nine months, Dad. Feeling him move inside her. Feeling him kick. Feeling him grow. Knowing every single day that she couldn’t keep him.
That she’d have to give him away. That she’d have to hold him once and then let him go forever. ”
“Jesus,” King breathed.
“I had seven weeks of uncertainty,” Grace said, and her voice broke completely.
“Seven weeks of fear and waiting and not knowing. But Mom... Mom had nine months of knowing she was carrying a child she wasn’t given a choice for.
Nine months carrying a baby she didn’t ask for.
And she did it. She survived it. She gave birth to him, held him, and then let him go because she thought it was the only way to keep him safe. To keep me safe.”
Grace pulled back from King, looking at me with a clarity that was almost painful to witness. The kind of clarity that came from finally understanding something you’d been blind to your entire life.
“I spent my whole life not understanding,” Grace said, her voice thick with tears and something else, something like wonder mixed with grief.
“There were days, sometimes whole weeks, where she was there. Really there. She’d laugh at my stupid jokes.
She’d braid my hair before school. She’d make pancakes on Saturday mornings, and we’d sit at the table and talk about nothing and everything and it felt...
normal. It felt like we were okay. Like she was okay. ”
Grace’s hand pressed against her belly, protective and instinctive.
“Those were the days I lived for,” she continued, her voice breaking.
“Because I knew they wouldn’t last. I could feel it coming—the shift.
Like watching a light get dimmed. She’d start pulling away.
Getting quieter. Disappearing into herself even when she was standing right in front of me.
I’d try to reach her, try to talk to her, and it was like she couldn’t hear me.
Like she was somewhere else entirely and I couldn’t follow. ”
“Grace—” I started.
“I never knew which version of her I’d get,” Grace said, looking at me with raw vulnerability.
“The mother who was present and warm and made me feel safe. Or the mother who was unreachable, locked inside herself, barely able to look at me. And the worst part, the part that made me feel crazy, was that I knew she loved me. Even when she was gone, even when she couldn’t be there, I knew she loved me.
But I couldn’t understand why it changed.
Why some days she could be my mom and other days she could barely survive being in the same room with me. ”
King’s hands tightened on her shoulders.
“When I was a kid, I thought it was something I did,” Grace whispered.
“That maybe I reminded her of something painful. That maybe if I was quieter, better, less needy, she’d stay present.
She’d stay with me. But as I got older, I noticed a pattern.
The days the men would come. When I was old enough to understand what she was doing, I would leave. I was so angry at what she was doing.”
Her voice broke completely.
“But I didn’t really understand anything, did I?
” Grace said, looking at me with devastating clarity.
“Those waves weren’t about me at all. She was drowning, Dad.
Every single day, she was drowning. And sometimes she could fight her way to the surface long enough to breathe, long enough to be my mom.
But then they’d knock on the door, and the weight would pull her back under, and all she could do was survive.
All she could do was keep her head above water long enough to make sure I was safe. ”
King pulled her into his arms, holding her as she sobbed against his chest. “You were always enough,” he murmured. “Always. Your mother’s distance wasn’t about you. It was never about you.”
“All this time I thought she was broken,” Grace said against his chest, her voice muffled but clear.
“And she was, because they broke her. But she was surviving. She was doing everything she could to protect me from the truth. From the darkness. From the choices she’d had to make.
And I judged her for it. I resented her for not being emotionally available when she was using every ounce of strength she had just to keep breathing. ”
I stood there watching them. My daughter and the man who loved her unconditionally.
And felt the weight of everything I’d been carrying for twenty years finally break open inside me.
Not cleanly. Not simply. But violently. Like a dam bursting.
Flooding me with shit I’d been holding back for so long I’d forgotten it was there.
The guilt hit first. Sharp. Suffocating.
I hadn’t been there for Christina. Hadn’t known what she was going through.
Hadn’t protected her. I’d hidden her away, thinking I was keeping her safe, and instead she’d been raped and used.
Broken down piece by piece until she’d felt she had no choice but to comply.
I should have been there. Should have seen the fucking signs. Should have known something was wrong.
But beneath the guilt was something darker. Something I didn’t want to acknowledge but couldn’t ignore anymore.
Anger.
I was furious at Christina. And the fury felt like betrayal because how the fuck could I be angry at a woman who’d suffered so much?
But I was. God help me, I was.
Maybe she’d always been too broken to trust anyone. Too scared to believe that I could protect her. Too convinced that the only way to keep Grace safe was to disappear completely. To cut me out of their lives and never look back.
I didn’t know. I’d never know. Because Christina was gone, and all I had left were her words in this journal and the daughter she’d left behind.
The truth was, I’d spent twenty years grieving a woman I’d never truly known. I’d built her up in my mind as this perfect, tragic figure—the love of my life who’d been stolen from me by circumstances beyond our control.
But now, reading her journal, seeing the choices she’d made, understanding the darkness she’d carried—I realized I’d been in love with an idea. A fantasy. A version of Christina that had never really existed.
The real Christina had been complicated. Damaged. Capable of violence and manipulation and ruthlessness. She’d killed people. Had given her body to men she didn’t want. Had made impossible choices that had destroyed her from the inside out. Had carried secrets so dark they’d eaten her alive.
And I hadn’t known any of it. Hadn’t seen it. Hadn’t been there to witness the slow unraveling of the woman I thought I loved.
I didn’t know if that was my fault or hers. And the not knowing was eating me alive.