AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A sad smile played on my baby’s lips. “I know.”
But everything was not okay. When we walked into the hospital hand in hand to face this new problem head-on, we discovered Atlas’s mother had suffered a blockage in the brain and slipped into a coma.
My mom was still in a coma and showing no signs of waking up. By day eight, the hospital walls had started to close in on me. Rowdy had left for Idlewild this morning to grab us more clothes and make arrangements since it looked like we’d be here for a while.
He promised to be back tonight.
An hour after he departed for the long drive back to Idlewild, I left the hospital for the first time in a week to check on my childhood home.
It had been exactly as Rowdy described it—a husk of what was.
The first thing I did was call the electric company and get the power back on. It was shut off after my mom was hospitalized, making the home seem even more dreary. It must have been a slow day because the lights were back on within the hour.
I sorted the mail, cleaned the house, and paid my fourteen-year-old neighbor fifty dollars to cut the grass. Afterward, I took care of the other overdue bills.
My mom had no money since she hadn’t worked since my father died, and the medical bills had eaten through their savings, so I used mine. I wasn’t working as many hours now that I was back in school, but Rowdy had been padding my account on the low, so it was pretty healthy, leaving me plenty to spare.
Taking care of my mom’s needs seemed like a poor substitution to if I had never abandoned her in the first place, but it was all I could do while I waited for her to wake up.
By the time I finished, the sun was starting to set. My phone rang, and I smiled when my man’s name and picture appeared.
“Hey,” I greeted after hitting accept. “On your way back?”
Rowdy released a heavy sigh. “Yeah, some shit went down, and I’m just leaving now. Don’t wait up for me, aight?”
“Is everything okay?” He sounded tired and pissed off, but that last one was nothing new. “What happened?”
“Just some shit with Joren. I’ll tell you when I get there.”
I ignored the sudden hollowness in my gut, knowing it had something to do with me, and swiftly changed the subject. “Oh, did you check the mail?”
“Yeah.” His tone hadn’t changed, so I knew what his next words would be before he uttered them. “It wasn’t there.”
Rowdy and I were expecting the results from the DNA test any day now. It wasn’t as if either one of us had been in the mood to fuck while waiting for my mom to wake up, so we’d completely forgotten about it.
“Just a few more days then.”
“Yeah.”
The heavy silence that followed said what we were both thinking better than either one of us ever could. The longer we waited for absolution, the more we lost hope. It was possible we were in the dying days of our relationship and would soon face the impossible decision of doing the right thing and letting go or living in sin.
My stomach turned at both possibilities.
I never thought I’d be here—actually contemplating incest.
My throat jumped when I remembered what we did a week ago, the risk we’d taken, and suddenly, I was racing to the half bath in the short hallway that led to the backyard.
There, I emptied my guts into the toilet. There, I cried for my and Rowdy’s soul. And for everything that could have been.
Rowdy was still on the line after I brushed my teeth with a spare toothbrush and dragged myself out of the bathroom.
“You all right?” he asked me flatly. By now, we were both used to my random puking spells. This was the ninth time in a week.
Rowdy presented his shame a little differently. He avoided looking at himself in the mirror.
“Just a little tired,” I responded. It was a lie and a terrible one. Exhaustion didn’t make you lose your lunch. “I guess I’ll see you when you get here?” I didn’t know why I’d posed it as a question.
Perhaps, deep down, I knew that it was best for both of us if Rowdy turned around now and forgot he ever met me.
