58. Wren
“Your total is twenty-seven forty-eight,” said the woman at the counter, her judgmental gaze assessing me over the rim of her glasses.
Digging into my wallet, I hunted through all the bills, counting out twenty-one dollars in fives and ones. Even after I’d dumped out all the loose change, I was still three dollars short.
I sighed, looking at the items she’d just rung through. I needed all of them, but maybe I could get by without the deodorant.
For now, anyway.
“Come on, girl,” the woman snapped, and I jumped, spilling some of the coins that had been in my hand onto the floor. “We don’t have all day. There’s paying folks behind you, you know?”
“Sorry,” I muttered, feeling my face heat in embarrassment. “Can I just take the food? I’ll leave the other stuff for another day.”
The woman huffed, but complied, removing the deodorant and the shampoo out of the bag. She reached for the last non-food item, but paused, looking at it before looking pointedly at me.
“I think you’ll still be needing these.” She shook the container of prenatal vitamins loudly, and I ducked my head again.
“Yes, ma’am,” was all I said. When she’d told me my new total, I handed over the cash before gathering my single bag and darting out the door as quick as I could.
I supposed I should have been used to it by now, the judgment and scrutiny from small-minded folks. Everyone in town knew by now that I was pregnant—it wasn’t like I could hide a six-month belly anyway—but it seemed to get worse as the weeks went on. It was as though they all seemed to expect my situation to somehow change, and when it didn’t, they were even more disappointed in me than they had been the day before.
Sighing, I started walking, the heat of the August sun making me regret putting back that deodorant. I trudged along, my feet aching after my early morning shift at the diner. I still had to do the closing shift at the Burger Barn tonight, but if I hurried, I could maybe catch a nap after I prepared an early dinner for Sabrina and her mom. I’d been so lucky, getting to move in with them after my dad kicked me out, and I tried to repay them in whatever way I could, which really just translated to cooking and cleaning. Tonight would be chicken and dumplings, the easiest thing I could manage on a budget.
I was standing at the corner, waiting for the light to change and trying to pretend I didn’t hear the whispers from the two ladies behind me—ladies I used to get smiles from at church picnics—when a sleek black car pulled up in front of me, stopping right in the crosswalk. I stared, seeing my confused face reflected back at me in the shiny glass.
The whispers behind me had turned into interested mutters by the time the rear window started rolling down. I had to admit that I was as curious as the rest of them.
At least until I saw the face that was now staring back at me.
Tori. The awful red-headed woman I’d had the unfortunate experience of meeting in Minneapolis.
She stared at me in clear disgust, her eyes drifting down my form to my clearly protruding abdomen as her lip curled, revealing those straight, perfect teeth that were too white to be natural.
“So, it’s true, then,” she said, and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was a hint of sadness in her voice.
For a moment, I just stood there, stunned, as my free hand dropped to cover my belly, as though I instinctively needed to protect it—protect my baby—from this woman.
But if she was here, then Hawk must have sent her. He was on tour for a few more weeks, which I knew from my obsessive tracking of the band’s website. Somehow, he must have gotten my letters, and he sent Tori to help me while he finished the tour.
The relief that swept through me almost had my legs collapsing under me. He hadn’t ignored me. He hadn’t thrown me away the way my father had just because the situation was mildly inconvenient.
I had doubted it, doubted everything, but somewhere deep down I’d always held out hope that Hawk would be a good man and do the right thing by us.
But the way Tori was looking at me had me second guessing my happiness. Because no one who wanted to help me would look at me with such undisguised hatred.
“Why are you here?” I asked, aware that the muttering old ladies may have grown quiet behind me, but that didn’t mean they were gone.
“I’m here because he sent me,” Tori replied, looking like just saying the words cost her something. “If you want to know more, you should get in the car.”
I did. I absolutely wanted to know what Hawk had to say and how he wanted to deal with this. Because if I was being honest with myself, I was fucking terrified. I had no idea how to do this on my own. My mother, always bowing to my father’s whims, hadn’t said a word when he’d shown me the door.
Except for Sabrina and her mother—whose charity was both a gift and a burden—I was completely and utterly alone.
“I won’t wait all day,” Tori snapped. “This town absolutely reeks of mediocrity and sadness. I don’t plan to be here longer than necessary.”
Choking back a snappy retort—mostly because she wasn’t exactly wrong—I skirted around the car and opened the opposite door, climbing awkwardly into the back seat beside her.
I barely had the door closed when the driver slammed on the gas, the momentum tossing me back into the stupidly comfortable seat.
“Let’s make this quick, yes?” Tori said offhandedly, reaching for a leather folder on the seat between us. “Hawk has sent some documents for you to sign.”
“Documents?” I asked, confused. “What do you mean?”
“First there’s the NDA, of course,” she went on as though I hadn’t spoken. “Standard stuff, really. Then there are the financial details. The document saying that you’ll never seek additional funds after this initial offering. And of course,” she added, her evil smile stretching wide, “the document where he’s signed away his parental rights.”
“He what?” I asked, feeling like my heart had just crumpled to dust. “What are you saying?”
“Oh, you simple little thing,” Tori said, giving me a look of utter pity. “You didn’t really think he’d want anything to do with you and your bastard baby, did you?” She peered at me, and whatever she saw in my face caused an ugly laugh to bubble out of her. “You did! Oh,” she pressed her hand to her chest, her overfilled lips offering a crimson pout, “that would be sweet if it wasn’t so fucking pathetic.”
Her words stung like a snakebite, and I turned my head away, blinking back the traitorous tears that threatened.
I didn’t really think that when Hawk learned of my situation, he’d come riding into town and sweep me away from all the judgmental stares; I knew this wasn’t a fairy tale. But somewhere, deep down inside, I’d hoped he would at least want to meet his child. Maybe set up some sort of visitation schedule, like the kids in school all had with their divorced parents.
I thought we would manage something. Together.
I never considered that when he learned of the baby, he’d want nothing to do with us at all.
“Where is he?” I finally asked. “Why didn’t he come here himself? Why send you, of all people?” I didn’t have to tell her that I remembered their interaction that night in February. How Hawk had fought with her to leave him alone, how she was basically tossed off the bus into the snow.
She knew I’d seen it all go down; I could see the shame burning in her evil eyes.
“Hawk and I share a very special relationship,” she said, her words a low hiss in the quiet of the car. “Artists like him are passionate people. They live lives full of extremes. There’s very little room for the kind of stability that a”—she dropped her eyes to my belly, and I hugged it even tighter—“child would require.”
I swallowed down a sob. She was right; there was never a hope that Hawk would want anything to do with me. With us. I was a complete burden on everyone else in my life, so why would he think any differently?
“What does he want me to do?” I whispered, unable to look Tori in the eye.
“Simple. You’ll sign these papers absolving him of all responsibility, you’ll take this check for fifty thousand dollars, and you’ll—”
“I don’t want his money,” I said, a sick feeling churning in my gut. I couldn’t stand the idea that Hawk thought he needed to buy my silence.
“You don’t want his money?” Tori repeated, then tossed her head back and laughed loudly. “You idiot. Everyone wants his money. That’s all anyone ever wants. To have his money or to use him to make themselves more money.”
I stared at her, wondering which of the two categories she fell into.
“What exactly do you think you’re going to do without this?” she asked, waving the check in my face. “You think you’re going to be able to provide for a child on your own? Kids need a lot of shit, and Hawk is willing to give you this money on the condition that you never contact him again.”
“What?” I asked, feeling dizzy. “What do you mean?”
“You really are stupid, aren’t you?”
“I’m just a little overwhelmed at the moment,” I snapped, turning on her with a furious glare. “It’s been a long couple of months, so excuse me if I’m a little slow on the uptake, but it’s not every day that the father of your child offers you hush money so that he never has to lay eyes on you again. Now, if you could please lay it all out for me, slowly, I’ll do my very best to keep up, alright?”
“Well,” Tori said, her gaze assessing. “Looks like you’re not a complete waste of skin after all.”
“How kind of you to notice.”
“Here’s the deal then, sweetheart. Hawk will give you and that kid fifty grand, right now, but you are to never speak about who the child’s father is. Ever. You don’t talk to the press, you don’t hint at it in your Tweets, and you sure as fuck never come after him for more. From this moment on, you have never heard of Black Kite. They don’t even exist to you. You don’t listen to their music, you don’t know any of their songs. They come on the radio, you change the fucking station. Got it?”
I nodded, swiping angrily at the single tear that managed to escape as I listened to her rant.
Because that’s what I was now.
Angry.
I was angry at Tori, angry at Hawk. But mostly, I was angry at myself for ever believing that I deserved something good in my life.
“If you break any of the clauses laid out here,” she continued, holding up the thick packet of papers I had no hope of understanding, “then Hawk, Black Kite, and Castor Records will sue you to within an inch of your pathetic little small-town life. You’ll be so tied up in litigation, not even Johnny Cochran could get you off.”
“Who?”
“Shut up. Now, sign here.” She held out a pen and pointed to a highlighted space on the first page. “And here. Now here.”
I signed everywhere she told me, my hand shaking more with each pass, feeling like I was both protecting my baby and digging a hole we might never get out of at the same time.
But I had no idea what else I could possibly do.
When it was over, Tori had her driver drop me off at the same corner she’d picked me up at earlier, my pathetic grocery bag in one hand, and an envelop full of papers and a check for fifty thousand dollars from Castor Records in the other.
But it was my soul that felt empty.