25
Bea
Despite all the negative emotions that had been whirling around my head for weeks, even before the meet-up with Damon, I kept finding myself daring to think positive thoughts. They would arrive, like the memory of a dream as if out of nowhere, and at first I would dismiss them, but they kept returning whenever my anger and sense of injustice was caught off guard. It felt ridiculous to humor them, but happiness was a supple entity and, through all the fog of shame and disapproval, my mind kept coming back to the reality that there was a new life at stake here.
The child growing inside me might not have been conceived in ideal circumstances, but both my heart and mind agreed that it was more important than any of the goals I was pursuing in life. Whether it was my college qualifications, Damon’s personalized yacht dream or my father’s Presidential campaign; they could all stand aside as lesser priorities to my baby’s well-being. I might be angry because so many dark truths had been hidden from me, but I wasn’t about to be an awful parent like those that had sent Damon down a dark road in life. With my parent’s support or not, history would most definitely not repeat itself as far the baby inside me was concerned.
At some point, it was time to face up to the fact that I was reconsidering my opinion of Damon. It was with a cold, but not quite frosty, approach that I’d presented him the opportunity of redeeming himself by listening to his story. I’d deliberately held back from jumping to any conclusions or decisions as we spoke, but I knew that the meet-up had helped, and after sleeping on the dilemma for a couple of nights, I’d woken with a clearer head and, most importantly, found no real objection to not giving him a second chance.
The only question was…how much did he still want me? Was it just the baby he wanted to take care of, or did he still truly want to be with me, despite all these weeks apart?
“Hi, Bea.” Damon’s voice came over the phone soon after I dialed his number.
“Damon, what’s it going to be?” I blurted out, getting to the point without the benefit of an explanation.
Such an eloquent way with words, Bea, I chastised myself.
“What’s it gonna be? You mean with us? It can be whatever you want it to be, Bea. I’m not holding any more skeletons in my closet,” Damon replied.
“I mean…um…can you tell me how you feel about me?”
I could practically hear him smiling on the other end of the line. “You already know. I love you, and I love our baby,” he said. There was a long pause, then he spoke again. “Bea?”
Damon couldn’t see that I was smiling too. Not a wide and untroubled grin as I’d given him under the stars all those weeks ago, but a warmer expression than I’d managed since my final visit to Felicia’s office.
“I…there’s some things I wanted to know about what will happen when the baby is born and growing up,” I finally said.
“Shoot.”
“You’re not a secret disciplinarian like my father in any way?” I asked hesitantly. There was no way I wanted my child growing up like I had, living in fear of being slapped around or screamed at whenever he or she did even the slightest thing wrong.
“You mean with a kid? No. I’d never raise a hand to a child.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. I thought as much. I just wanted to make sure.”
“It’s fine. You can ask as many questions as you want.”
I smiled. “Careful Damon, you might just be on the verge of finding out how unbearable I can be to live with. I can ask a lot of questions.”
“Nothing you could ever do would be unbearable to me,” he said. “And I know I have absolutely no right to pressure you into anything, but if you choose to share this future with me, I promise never to let you down again.”
“I really hope you mean that.”
He chuckled. “I’m too terrified of you to do anything otherwise.”
I laughed too. “Well,” I replied, still keeping as enigmatic a tone as I possibly could, “I’m a little busy this evening and tomorrow, but tomorrow evening I’ll be packed and ready to be picked up if some handsome man feels so inclined to take me in…”
“Bea, I’m going to be counting the minutes.”
“Okay. I’ll call you tomorrow. And Damon? I…I love you too,” I finished before ending the call.
The whole scenario still seemed too hard to believe to really act over the moon about it, but I felt the happiness that I’d once felt with Damon coming out of the mist it’d been left in over the last few weeks. I still loved him, as much as I’d tried to deny that to myself, and now I knew he loved me too. Best of all, we were going to be parents in a few short months, and I was determined to show my own parents that I knew exactly how that was to be done properly—with love and respect.
Not that I really had a desire to welcome my parents back into my life.
It had been a sobering experience to walk out the door and realize I no longer had a home. There were many challenges out there that I’d never had to endure, and yet, as the days passed, I’d felt no yearning to run back to them and apologize, or beg to be welcomed back into a family embrace. I was happier at Claire’s and didn’t lose any sleep over the idea of living in a house without ten bedrooms, or having to shop for clothes that weren’t the latest designer brands. When I knew the alternative was being my father’s doll until the day he shuffled off his mortal coil, I was prepared to take whatever character-building obstacles came my way instead.
They had called me, though—my mother, to be precise. She’d had the courtesy of showing some parental concern and asking after my well-being, but any sympathy that I could muster for leaving her alone with my father and his Secret Service agents soon evaporated when she got around to the real motivation for her call. She had begun by asking me to reconsider coming back rather than living a life cut off from her family, before confirming that what she meant by ‘reconsider’ was indeed to think again about getting an abortion.
“If that’s all you can say, I’m done with you,” I’d replied and hung up—and I meant it.
***
The next day, I found a bit more of a spring in my step on heading out to college, despite the fact that I had three missed calls from my father.
I’d seen my phone ringing, I just hadn’t bothered answering.
In my new life, there was no one demanding I arrive or leave at a certain time, or get picked up outside a certain entrance, and I knew that when the day was over, Damon would be coming over to take me to a new home and future.
It was a nice day, and I was enjoying having the wind in my hair as I headed towards a meeting with one of my professors, passing through some of the college’s older buildings that I’d never really paid attention to. Did freedom make a person more observant? It certainly felt like my eyes were opening to the world.
Just not quite enough, as it turned out.
When rounding the last corner before the final path toward my building, an old man holding a map looked up and beckoned me over. “Excuse me, I don’t suppose you could tell me where I am on this map, miss? I’m a bit lost.”
“Sure,” I replied, thinking nothing of it.
There were plenty of visitors of all ages to the college, and I expected to hear that one of his children was attending an open day and he was trying to track them down.
What I didn’t expect was for the map I leaned forward to look at to be shoved in my face, and for the man to then grab me by the head so that I couldn’t draw myself away. The next sensation I remembered was a smell, and I knew exactly what it was. Years back, a high school chemistry teacher had taught my class all about how chloroform had the ability to knock people out if a sufficient quantity of it was suddenly inhaled. He had passed round a handkerchief with a sample on so everyone could find out what it smelled like and assess how potent it was from a safe distance. It had a memorably sweet odor, and I recognized it immediately…but that was still too late to do anything about it.
Everything went black.