Page 159 of Finding Noah

Dad was still at work, and Miles was at a friend’s house. Neither of them was expected to be home for another couple of hours, but that didn’t stop me from hoping they’d walk through the door early, just to relieve me from this torture of sitting with Mom.

I should’ve gone upstairs, I thought, tightening my hold on a throw pillow. Maybe I can run up there now. I could say I have homework or something.

She pulled in a deep breath, twisting her lips to the side. Her attention was hardly on the show we were supposed to be watching, and I knew she was going to say something. I didn’t want her to. I didn’t want this moment to become any more uncomfortable than it already was. But it’d been two weeks since my talk with Dad, a week since Ashley had used her mouth on me, and there hadn’t been an opportunity in this whole time for Mom to talk to me about anything. I knew it was driving her crazy. I could tell from the way she forced her smiles and dropped her gaze whenever I looked at her.

I hated it.

Our relationship had never been a bad one. I had always been able to talk to her. But something had happened along the way. Or maybe it’d been a bunch of tiny somethings that piled up until our easy bond became something more strained and … weird.

And I really hated it.

But how was I supposed to fix it when I didn’t even know what was wrong?

Maybe it’s me.

“So, um …”

My stomach knotted with trepidation as she began to speak reluctantly.

Here we go.

“Dad …”

“What about him?” I asked, glancing at her sidelong.

She blew out a breath, keeping her eyes on the TV. “He told me he talked to you … about something, um … regarding how … you were, um …”

She let her words fade, unable to finish the sentence. But she didn't need to. I knew what she meant.

My conception.

My beginning.

I cleared my throat and pulled the pillow against my chest, burying my chin against it. Then I grunted a half-assed sound of acknowledgment.

“Did you …” She sighed, then continued, “Did you have any questions? Anything, um … anything you wanted to ask me?”

I didn’t mean to laugh. It wasn’t funny. Nothing about it was. But I couldn’t help it as I asked, “Like what?”

“Well, I just figured … it must’ve been hard for you to … learn that—”

“What? That I started my life as a mistake?”

She turned to look at me, a forlorn scowl on her face. “Who ever said you were a mistake?”

I huffed, squeezing the life out of that pillow now as I bit my bottom lip. “Come on, Mom,” I muttered, my voice barely an audible croak. “At some point, you must've thought that—”

“I have never … ever, not once, thought of you as a mistake,” she pressed, emphasizing every word.

“But Seth—”

“Noah, Seth was an evil, awful piece of shit,” she interjected harshly. “He got what he deserved.”

I turned to her fully, looking into her emerald-green eyes. It hit me then that she and I had never talked about any of these things throughout the years. Not once after Seth's visits had she talked to me about the things I'd heard, things I'd seen. Life just simply continued as the horrors he'd inflicted upon us were swept under some proverbial rug.

“What about what we deserved? What about you?” I asked in a breathless whisper. “You didn't deserve any of that shit. You didn't deserve to be hurt. And … I wish …” My throat clenched around a burst of emotion threatening to choke the life out of me. I blinked away from her, fixing my watery gaze on the rug at my feet. “I wish … I wish it’d never happened. None of it.” My life included, but I wouldn't say it.

I let my voice fade as I swallowed the thoughts of regret, keeping them inside. And it wasn't that I wished to die. But I simply wished it had never happened at all to spare my mother the torment she'd endured.