FIVE
At this all the guests trembled, and many of them began to weep. The king and queen wept loudest of all. For a curse like this could not be broken.
Jessica
My sleep-starved mind turns the question over like it’s completely new. Like I’ve never before wondered if anyone could help me. First my mother had failed me. Then my father. God, every person who looked the other way on the sidewalk when a teenage girl cowered beside a man old enough to be her father had failed me.
That was the way the old Jessica saw the world.
Then the little window on the pregnancy test showed positive, and everything changed. This was my fresh start. Ky had a real chance at life. And I learned to look on the bright side.
Like the fact that I can take care of myself and him. Usually.
Loneliness rises like acid. “No.”
Crickets serenade us in the pause that followed. The sheriff doesn’t look like he’s coming up with an idea. He looks like he’s trying to talk himself out of one.
Finally he says, “You can sleep at the police station.”
My mouth falls open. “You’re putting me under arrest?”
“Absolutely not,” he said smoothly.
“Would I be sleeping a cell?”
After a pause, “Yes.”
“So let me get this straight. You want to take me, in your police car, to the police station, where I’ll spend the night in jail. How is this different from being arrested?”
He cocks his head. “Less paperwork?” At my small noise of protest, he looks apologetic. But unrelenting. “The cot is very comfortable, I’ve been told.”
“Oh great, well if the cot is comfortable…”
“We do it all the time when someone has a little too much to drink at the bar in town. They can’t drive home so they sleep it off.”
I can’t believe how wrong I had been, not only fifteen minutes ago. Immediately wrong. I thought things couldn’t get worse? I’m going to jail. My optimism was well and truly deflated, punctured by a handsome sheriff and a country road that last for eternity.
“And what about Ky? He’s going to be under arrest? He’s six months old!”
“He won’t be under arrest.” The sheriff’s brown eyes soften. “His name is Ky? Does it stand for something?”
His interest makes my heart swell with pride, a maternal instinct that overwhelms self-preservation. “It’s not short for anything. Only Ky. I wanted to honor my mother, Makenna.”
To honor the woman she could have been if she hadn’t been beaten down to the mere shadow of a woman by the time I was born. This is how they kept us docile, generation after generation of girls broken before they were even women.
The sheriff takes a step toward my car, looking at Ky through the back window. “He’s a handsome boy. I’m sure she’s proud.”
Sometimes it’s a relief that she died before I could be sent away as a gift, fourteen years old and crying like a child. What would she think of me being a mother? What would she think of me running to keep Ky safe? Would she be proud? “I like to think so.”
Recognition flashes over his face, grief for a woman he didn’t know. “I’m sorry.”
I manage a pained smile, tears pricking my eyes. At least it’s dark enough that he can’t see my lower lip trembling, my breath shuddering in and out of my chest.
“I’m not arresting anyone,” he says gently. “It’s just a safe place for you to rest.”
Something clicks into place inside me, as if I’ve been waiting for this offer my whole life. A sad little jail in a country town shouldn’t be anyone’s idea of paradise, but I’ve been afraid for so long. A safe place to rest sounds like heaven.
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Why don’t you grab what you need from your bags? I can move the carseat over.”
I pull the baby bag from the backseat, then move aside so he can unhook the carseat. He does so with a quiet efficiency that has me raising my eyebrows.
“I have three nieces,” he says when he sees my face.
And he does handle the carseat like a pro, lifting the heavy weight with ease, using his free hand to keep the base steady while he circles my car to his. I watch him lean into the backseat of his patrol car, latching the seat into place and measuring out the bands so that it fits securely.
The beige fabric of his uniform slacks pulls taut over his ass and thighs, revealing strength and leanness in one package. Shock rises inside me, swift as a flood. I’m checking him out. That’s what I’m doing right now—checking out the man who’s not-arresting me.
I can’t remember the last time I checked someone out.
I can’t remember ever checking someone out.
My sexuality was stolen from me a long time ago. Before I became a mother. Before I had even become a woman. Men were always things to be feared. Monsters that sometimes had nice smiles, which only made them scarier.
And in the middle of nowhere I had found something other than fear.
I found desire.