Page 126 of Rigid

Well, almost.

EPILOGUE

Eddie

We’re provided opportunities through our experiences. What we choose to pay attention to and what we choose to dismiss determine how our lives unfold.

That’s what I think, anyway.

What do I know? I’m just a seventeen-year-old girl.

Wish I had a piece of apple pie for every time I heard that one.

Seventeen, going on forty is more like it.

My experiences in life molded me into who I am, therefore I have no regrets. Not one. My pinky finger will never bend again, and every time I look at it, it stands as a reminder of the night I was attacked.

I wouldn’t erase that night if I could roll back the clock, though.

It was on that night that I decided that my mom was pretty special. It wasn’t because she saved me, or that she shot the guy who was sure to kill me if she’d been absent from my life. It was what she said in a time of desperation.

When she thought the least, and acted out of a mother’s God-given nature.

She called me her daughter.

My heart melted that night. But not as much as it did the day in the hospital.

Sit down for a minute, and I’ll tell you how it all unfolded.

We had an appointment to get the first ultrasound. I say we because the three of us went. Mom was excited, but not as much as dad and me. They wouldn’t let P-Nut come into the room, because he ended up trying to mack on a nurse, and then things went downhill fast.

Well, that, and he was acting like P-Nut. He’s a hard man to understand. Not so much for me, but for everyone else.

Anyway.

The doctor put the gel on mom’s tummy, and started the scan. Dad and I had our eyes glued to the screen, and mom’s mouth went a mile a minute. That’s sixty miles an hour, if you do the math.

“So, you can tell for sure?” mom asked.

The doctor pressed the device to her stomach. “Can you hold still?”

She reached for dad’s hand. “I’m sorry.”

Dad’s eyes stayed fixed on the monitor.

“Okay,” the doctor said. “You wanted to know sex, is that correct?”

The three of us said yes at the same time.

The doctor clicked a button and froze the screen. It looked like a jumbled up mess until she pointed to everything with her mouse.

She moved the pointer. “These are the hips.”

She moved it again, “This is the left foot.”

She slid it over a little more. “And this is the penis.”

“It’s a boy?” mom gasped.