Chapter 22
Elena
I t’s a cold night in Blackport, and the icy wind cuts through my clothes as I stand shivering on the doorstep.
I have to knock three times before Aunt Frieda answers the door, clutching her robe around her throat and peering into the night as though she’s expecting to see burglars and murderers.
She seems even less impressed when she realizes it’s me.
“I need to speak with you. It’s urgent.”
“Elena, it’s after ten o’clock at night. We were about to go to bed.”
“Please,” I cry, and the urgency in my tone finally convinces her to stand back and let me in.
My aunts appear to have been right at the end of their bedtime routine.
There are empty mugs of tea on the table, and Aunt Astrid is partway through packing up her knitting.
Balls of wool, silver sewing scissors, and a half-finished piece of knitting with needles in it are laying on the kitchen table.
Aunt Frieda and Aunt Astrid sit at the table with sour expressions.
“You have to tell me who my mother is,” I burst out.
Aunt Astrid gives a hollow, mirthless laugh. “We absolutely do not. When did you get so high and mighty, young lady?”
“Please,” I implore her, tears burning the back of my throat.
Aunt Frieda narrows her eyes. “Why is this so important all of a sudden, Elena?”
“It’s always been important. I’ve been patient and good and following your rules, hoping that you’ll give me what I so desperately want, but I can’t wait any longer.”
“But why come here right when we’re about to go to bed?”
I still feel sick to my stomach. Telling them the truth is inevitable, and I hope that my revelation will make them realize that they can no longer keep the truth from me. “I’m having a baby.”
I have never seen my aunts lost for words. Both their mouths drop open.
Aunt Astrid is the first one to speak, and she hisses like a viper. “Shameful, disgusting girl. ”
Even though I was expecting them, I flinch at her cruel words.
“I knew this would happen the day you moved out of this house,” Aunt Frieda says, pointing a bony finger at me.
“You’ve always been halfway to being a disgrace, and now you’ve walked all the way down that path to spite us.
We tried to help you, Elena. Unmarried and pregnant, the shame of it all.
How will we hold our heads up in church? ”
It doesn’t matter what they say about me as long as they give me what I need. After tonight, I’ll never have to see them again, and I can cry in Cullan’s arms about all the horrible things they’ve said. I can cry in my mother’s arms. People who love me are the only ones who matter.
“Who is the father?” Aunt Astrid snaps. “Whoever he is, he won’t want anything to do with you once he knows. Men are only after one thing, and once they get it, they’re gone.”
“You haven’t got anyone but us now, Elena,” Aunt Frieda says with relish. “You’re lucky we can even look you in the face, because once he finds out, he won’t.”
That’s not true. Cullan held me and told me how happy he’d be if I fell pregnant. Why must my aunts seek to spoil all my hopes and dreams? “You’re wrong. Cullan wants another baby.”
“Did this Cullan make a commitment to take care of you?” Aunt Astrid asks slyly. “You can’t believe anything a man says when he’s between your thighs. He’ll tell any and every lie to get you on your back. ”
“Only a stupid woman believes anything a man says who’s after her body.”
Aunt Astrid nods in agreement. “That’s right, a stupid woman.
We’ll tell you the truth, Elena. You must move back in with us, and with Father Connell’s help, we’ll hide your shameful secret and find a new home for the baby as soon as it’s born.
It will be whisked away the moment you give birth, and you won’t even have to hold it or look at it. ”
I flinch every time she refers to my unborn baby as it .
“For a careless girl like you, it will be a relief to be rid of the burden, as it was for your mother.”
My insides shrivel up hearing those words.
Is that really how it was for my mother?
She couldn’t wait to get rid of me? I can’t comprehend carrying my baby for nine months, loving him or her and singing to them, caressing and holding my bump, only to have the child torn from my presence the moment they take their first breath.
Never seeing my child again? Cullan’s child?
I couldn’t bear it, and a loving father like Cullan never holding his baby is the most horrifying thing I’ve ever heard.
“No!” I cry. “I can’t do that. I won’t.”
“You’re not thinking of having an abortion instead, I hope,” Aunt Frieda says in a scandalized tone.
I shake my head. “I want my baby. I’m keeping my baby.”
I’ll be a good mother. Children like me, and I already know so much about taking care of infants and small children.
I’ve always wanted a family of my own to love and care for.
Cullan wants this, and even if he didn’t and I had to do this alone, I’m used to hardship.
It doesn’t frighten me. What frightens me is being trapped here with my aunts.
But I won’t be alone. I’ll have Cullan and the beautiful, safe home he’ll put over our heads.
Our baby will share Rosie’s nursery, and I’ll care for both of them and love them equally.
I already love Rosie, and I’m just waiting for permission to love her out loud and with all my heart, like a mother, not the nanny. I don’t want to be just the nanny.
Just the pregnant nanny.
The pregnant nanny with no money who could be out on the streets by morning. The pregnant nanny who slept with her boss to keep a roof over her head when her life fell apart. According to my aunts, now that I’m a liability because I got pregnant, no man will want me.
But Cullan isn’t like that.
He wouldn’t do that to me.
He couldn’t .
My aunts are wrong.
I feel myself spiraling. All I’ve been told for twenty-one years of my life is that unwed mothers are shameful and the whole world will turn its back on me for getting pregnant while I’m single.
I swipe the tears from my cheeks. I can’t let my aunts get in my head and distract me from my purpose. “Please can we talk about why I came here tonight. Now that I’m pregnant, I need to know who my mother is. She’ll want to know that I’m having a baby. Grandmothers love their grandchildren. ”
Aunt Astrid scoffs at this, and the two women continue their tirade about how disgraceful I am.
I slam my fist on the kitchen table and raise my voice. “I have given you so much money. I have asked you nicely. Now I am begging you. Tell me who she is. ”
The two women exchange a look.
From her prim perch on her chair with her hands folded in her lap, Aunt Frieda says, “We will never tell you who your birth mother is.”
“Why?” I cry, and when they don’t answer, I demand louder, “ Why? ”
There’s a cruel gleam in Aunt Astrid’s eye. “We couldn’t tell you even if we wanted to.”
“What are you talking about?”
No response.
As the silence stretches, I remember that there are no photos of me and my mother.
No original birth certificate. No keepsakes or baby clothes that belonged to me before I entered this house.
My aunts have referred to my mother as both Sally and Sybil, even though no one called Sybil is nicknamed Sally.
What if my aunts never intended to tell me who she is because they don’t know?
What if they’ve been blackmailing me for money all this time, seeing how long they could keep it up before I caught on?
For years I’ve been handing over every spare cent I have, scrimping and saving and going without in the hope that I would earn the right to know her name.
Have they been laughing at me all this time ?
“Do you even know who she is?” I ask faintly, hoping that I’m wrong.
The seconds on the clock tick by.
“Does it matter who she is?” Aunt Frieda asks. “We raised you. We fed and clothed you, and what a thankless task it was.”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. All this time they’ve been lying to me and taking my money under false pretenses. The last scrap of hope that I’ll ever meet my birth mother bursts into flames and burns away. I’m all alone in the world without any family who cares about me and my baby.
The cruel gleam in Aunt Astrid’s eye grows brighter. “No doubt she was a disgraceful whore who spread her legs for a disgusting, unworthy man. Like mother, like daughter.”
Something deep inside me snaps. The insults against the two people I most care about in the world, my unknown mother and Cullan, drive a red-hot spike through my skull.
The pair of pointed sewing scissors on the table glint provocatively at me.
Rage at my aunts fills me from the top of my head down to the tips of my toes.
Rage like I felt when I heard Cullan’s ex berating him and saw Leon happy and laughing with the woman who taunted me with his infidelity.
Only this time, the rage is even stronger, coursing through me and electrifying my limbs.
My hateful aunts have revealed all, and they’re both still yapping at me, denouncing me in the cruelest words.
Telling me I’m filth. Telling me that I have to give my baby away to a churchgoing, God-fearing household where they can be raised properly, as I was given away.
I picture it clearly, my mother standing in a house just like this one, pregnant with me and being berated and shamed and told that she must give me up.
I can feel her hot tears. Her misery and confusion.
She was forced to abandon me to this horrible fate, and now my aunts want me to do the same thing.
My child, Cullan’s child, growing up in a house like this one, without love, or warmth, or one scrap of happiness in their lives?
That will never happen.
I snatch up the sewing scissors and brandish them point-first by the handles. Aunt Astrid’s lips are moving, but I can’t hear what she’s saying apart from whore and disgusting and shameful . I can’t take this anymore. I have to protect my baby.
“ Shut up! ” I scream, and lash out with the scissors.
I just want her to stop. I plunge the scissors point-first into her heart.
I stab her three, four times in the chest and throat, feeling something warm spraying over my face with each strike.
Astrid’s eyes grow larger than I’ve ever seen them before, and a strange noise gurgles in her throat.
All the cruelty in her face finally drains away.
Her hands grasp at me, and I remember all those times she snatched my money out of my hands and greedily counted it.
I haven’t got anything left for her to take.
Aunt Frieda cries out and leaps to her feet.
For a moment, she’s frozen in horror as she stares at the bloodied scissors buried in her sister’s body, and then she turns and dashes for the front door.
She runs headfirst into an open cupboard door, her head slamming into it in her panic to get away from me.
She’s knocked off her feet and falls backward, and cracks her head hard on the sharp corner of the kitchen table.
Her eyes are wide and staring. Her body is motionless as blood slowly spreads around her head.
Aunt Astrid’s hands loosen on my shoulders, and she slithers to the ground. Blood from both of my aunts spreads slowly across the kitchen floor, the two pools meeting each other and mingling.
I stare in horror at the scissors that are grasped in my bloodied fist.
What have I done?