Rose - 2012
“I understand this is a shock, Rosalie. And given the circumstances, I want to be certain you know about every resource available to you before you leave here today. You don't have to make a single decision in this room.”
I can't stop looking at the monitor.
A baby. His baby.
The shape of it swims on the screen, gray and impossible.
A head. A spine. Tiny limbs tucked into a body that has been growing inside mine for months while I went to work, made dinner, helped Michael with homework and generally carried on as though my body wasn't quietly producing an entire human without bothering to send a memo.
Some far-off part of me understands that this is probably the most important thing anyone has ever shown me. I just can’t even make myself feel a single thing about it because I've gone somewhere else completely.
It’s quieter back here.
“Okay,” I whisper. My voice doesn't sound like mine, but then nothing about the last few months has felt particularly attached to me. I eat when I'm supposed to eat, sleep when exhaustion finally wins, get Michael where he needs to be, answer questions, sign forms, go to work and come home.
Apparently, I've also been pregnant.
Add it to the list.
The doctor keeps watching me with that careful expression people have started using around me since Mom and Dad died, the one that says they're trying to determine how much pressure the glass can take before it cracks.
“Based on the measurements, I'd put you around six months along.”
Fuck. Has it already been six months since the rape?
I finally look away from the monitor.
“Six?”
She nods gently. “Approximately. That would explain the weight change you mentioned and some of the other symptoms. And with the amount of stress you've been under, missing or irregular cycles wouldn't necessarily have seemed unusual. Your body has been through a great deal.”
That's certainly one way to put it.
My hand drifts toward my stomach before I realize what I'm doing, and the second my palm reaches the curve I snatch it back.
“Don't panic,” she says softly, mistaking the direction of my fear. “Everything I'm seeing looks very good. He's perfectly healthy.”
My gaze snaps up to meet hers. “He?”
“A healthy baby boy, yes.” The doctor smiles, because she has no idea about the panic coursing through my veins. “Congratulations, Rosalie.”
Congratulations.
The rest of her words start to fade at the edges.
A boy.
Another one of him.
The thought arrives fully formed and monstrous before I can stop it: I'm making another rapist. Another man built from the same blood, the same DNA, the same pieces that made the person who held me down while I begged him to stop.
My stomach churns.
I try to shove the thought back where it came from, but I don’t have the strength.
I do know better. Intelligence has not abandoned me entirely just because everything else has.
I know violence is not some neat genetic inheritance tucked inside a chromosome, waiting for puberty before it crawls out.
I know a baby is not guilty because of the man whose DNA helped make him.
I know all of that.
Still, the thought sits there.
Another one of him.
I can’t do this.
***
“What did the doctor say?” Michael asks while I plate the dinner that I don't even have a shred of appetite for.
He just turned fifteen. Mom and Dad have been gone for several months now, and we've still got years to go before anything about our lives feels remotely normal again.
Some days I can almost pretend we're getting there.
Most days I'm just keeping us both moving fast enough that neither of us has time to look down and notice there's still a crater where our old life used to be.
“It's my thyroid,” I tell him, easy as anything. “They've scheduled surgery in three months.”
The lie comes out clean.
Almost impressively so.
And technically, it's barely a lie at all. I do have surgery in three months. There will be a hospital, doctors, pain, recovery. I'm simply being creative about which organ is causing the problem.
A surgery to get this monster out of my body before it can take anything else from me.
“What does your thyroid have to do with you getting a big ass?” Michael asks around a mouthful of food, grinning like he's just delivered the finest joke in recorded history.
“Michael!”
I whip around so fast mashed potatoes launch off the serving spoon and land on the counter.
He immediately starts laughing.
“I am going to kick your ass for that. Thyroid issues cause weight gain, you know.
For someone so smart, you'd think you'd have picked up a single useful fact about the endocrine system somewhere along the way, but all that genius went straight into the part of your brain responsible for insulting the only person who cooks for you.”
He shovels another bite into his mouth. “I was kidding.”
“Good. Because the next meal comes with a surcharge.”
“What's the surcharge?”
“You cook it yourself.”
His face twists in horror. “That's abusive.”
“Call CPS. I'm sure they'll be thrilled to hear your complaint.”
He grins around a mouthful of food, and I start to pick at mine.
After a few quiet minutes, he sets his fork down.
I glance up, and his face has gone serious on me, the way it does now, too fast and too often for fifteen.
"I was worried. I… am… worried."
"I'm okay, Michael. I am," I tell him.
Another lie. At this rate, I'll be running for office by Christmas.
“You're not.”
He says it quietly, eyes dropping back to his plate.
“I'm not either. But I know we will be. I just...” He clears his throat, and I watch him fight with whatever is trying to climb up it. “I can't lose you too.”
A tear slips down his cheek. He wipes it away immediately, embarrassed before it can become a whole thing, and I'm already moving.
I put down the spoon and cross around the table, gathering this too-tall boy who's still mostly a kid into my arms. He folds into me without hesitation, and I hold him tight, one hand against the back of his head while his arms wrap around my waist.
“You won't, Michael.” I press a kiss into his hair. “I promise you. You won't.”
He holds on harder.
I close my eyes.
He'll never know what it costs me to sound this sure, and if I do this right, he never will.
That's the whole point.
That's the job.
***
Three weeks and two days later, I find myself sitting across from Samson and Lauren Monroe.
I've spent every one of those three weeks and two days going down the adoption rabbit hole, turning the problem over from every angle a sleepless mind can find.
Laws. Agencies. Private adoption. Closed adoption.
Open adoption. Medical consent. Birth certificates.
Parental rights. Revocation periods. By the end of the first week, I'd accumulated enough tabs on my laptop to qualify as a cry for help.
I kept going.
That's what I do when something scares me. I research it until fear becomes paperwork.
Eventually, I came out the other side with what felt like a logical decision, clean enough to survive contact with reality.
Based on the looks on their faces, I may have slightly overestimated the clarity of my thinking.
Lauren has been wiping a steady stream of tears for a solid five minutes, and Samson looks like he wants to murder someone. Neither reaction is particularly useful, but at least Samson's feels actionable.
I didn't pull any punches when I told them. There wasn't any point. If I'm asking these two people to raise a child that I don't think I can raise myself; they deserve the whole ugly inventory.
The night. The assault. The phone call that came while I was driving myself to the hospital. The detour to the airport. Mom and Dad. Michael.
And now this.
The pregnancy.
They're stuck, I think, on the last part. Specifically, the part where I've just asked them to adopt it.
Him.
Adopt him.
“I'll pay you, of course.”
The second the words leave my mouth, I hear exactly how they sound. Samson flinches and Lauren closes her eyes, which is really all the feedback a person needs to know she's chosen poorly.
Still, I keep going, because money is the one lever in this room I understand.
“My parents left us a great deal. Millions, in fact. I can send a monthly stipend, whatever he needs for as long as he needs it. School, medical expenses, clothes, college. You wouldn't be out a cent.”
Why won’t they say anything?
“Would one of you please say something?”
Lauren presses her lips together. Samson finally stands.
I've been pacing in intervals this whole time, sitting for two minutes before some restless thing under my skin sends me back to my feet. By the time Samson crosses the room, I've stopped near the window with one arm folded across my stomach and the other hand worrying at my thumbnail.
Then the giant bastard pulls me into a hug.
No warning. Just arms. One massive hand cradles the back of my head against his chest while the other closes around my shoulders, and every muscle in my body locks.
“I'm so sorry this happened to you.”
I hear him. I do.
But my face is pressed against somebody else's heartbeat and my body has already decided we're in danger.
The air disappears from my lungs, my chest tightens, and that old wrongness starts climbing up the back of my throat, the one that turns being held into being trapped before my brain can explain the difference.
I don't shove him away.
I want to.
Instead I stand there and force myself through it because these are good people, and more than I need to breathe comfortably for the next thirty seconds, I need them to believe I can hand them a baby without falling apart in their living room.
Samson seems to feel me go rigid, because he lets me go without making a thing of it.
Thank God.
“Tell me the plan,” he says, returning to the sofa and taking Lauren's hand in his.
I pull in a deep breath and straighten my shirt. “Michael can't know. No one outside this room can know, especially not James.”