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And I wouldn’t have to deal with it much longer. The lawyer said we’d likely be getting an interview notice soon. Then we’d have to fake it for one meeting, and we’d be home free. With the combination of all of our ‘evidence,’ the fact that Fiona was going to be visibly pregnant at the interview, and with my service to Uncle Sam, our lawyer doubted we’d get much trouble.
I could get the fuck out of here and go… I didn’t quite know yet. I’d figure that out on the way.
I didn’t let myself think about or question that decision. Not until I saw Fiona, when I couldn’t look away from her. How fucking beautiful she was. How there was a small swell in her belly now. How she seemed… changed, somehow. Not physically, but something inside her. The way she carried herself. It might’ve been a cliché, but she was fucking glowing. Every day she was more and more beautiful.
Thank fuck she wasn’t sick anymore.
I couldn’t live with that. Seeing her like that. It tore me to goddamn shreds.
Despite her, my resolve had held.
Now there was a fucking picture.
Multiple pictures. Black-and-white. Ultrasound. Of a baby. Not a fucking blob or a gummy-bear-looking thing. No, an actual baby.
My fucking baby.
My hand was shaking as I brushed the edges of the paper.
I’d held one of those pictures before. In the middle of a warzone, my fingers stained with dirt and grime. I’d carried that picture around with me. Added to it when my daughter was born. There had been a bunch as she grew. I carried them like lucky charms. Reminders of what I had at home. What I was going back to.
And then I’d burned them when I visited her grave.
As much as I wanted to tear the photo from the fridge and set fucking fire to that too—I even lifted my hand to take it down—I stared at it for one more second, committed it to memory, then walked the fuck away.
fiona
“What the fuck?”
I didn’t look in the direction of the voice. No, I kept staring at the TV, eating my chips, and crying.
Sobbingmight be a more accurate description.
Footsteps sounded, and then Kip rounded the sofa and sat on the coffee table in front of me.
“What the fuck?” he repeated, brows knitted, that serious expression he’d worn since I’d broken the news firmly in place.
He hadn’t smiled since. Not once.
Inmonths.
Kip, the man who I’d thought had a permanent smirk attached to that fucking mouth of his, was constantly grimacing like he was in physical pain.
That only made me sob harder, although the asshole really did not deserve my tears.
“Why the fuck are you crying?” he demanded, harsher now.
Nor did he deserve an explanation as to why I was crying. He certainly didn’t need to know thatIdidn’t even know why I was crying, not really.
Sure, there were a whole lot of reasons why I could be sobbing right now: the estranged fake husband, the dire financial straits, the precarious immigration situation, my veiny tits, my heartburn, my night terrors, or my leg cramps.
Those were all cry worthy, but none of them were the reason why I was bawling at this specific moment.
“Go away,” I snapped. Or tried to snap. The hiccup in my voice really dulled the sharpness of my tone.
Kip did not go away. Which, of course, only served to make me cry harder. I did not have the energy to fight him further. And his presence only served to complicate all of my overwhelming feelings.
“Fiona,” he said urgently but softer now. In a voice I almost recognized from before. From the real Kip. Or wasthisthe real Kip? Cold, cruel, and unfeeling.
