Chapter 28 – Hope
I heard the door from the garage opening, so I went back to my place in the kitchen where I stood at the stove making scrambled eggs.
I was wearing nothing but an apron. I couldn’t wait to surprise Darren with what I’d cooked up— literally— while he was in town. I could tell it was a big deal for him to venture out into public, and I wanted to celebrate his accomplishment.
“I hope that you brought your appetite, honey,” I said, scooping the eggs onto the plate and turning to place them on the table.
But it wasn’t Darren. It was my mother.
The plates flew out of my hands and landed on the floor with a crash.
“Mom! What are you doing here?”
My heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest. I just thought for sure that it was Darren coming back. I heard him leave this morning and I wanted to be ready with a sexy surprise when he got back. I never thought that it would be my mother standing there staring at me, mouth gaping wide open, a mixture of hurt and terror in her eyes.
“Hope! What are you doing? Where are your clothes? What’s going on here?”
I instinctively covered up and said, “I can explain…”
“What’s to explain? It’s been five weeks since you’ve left home and I haven’t heard a word from you. I try to call and get no answer. I was worried. I guess that I should have been worried. I was worried for the right reason, much to my dismay. I see you’ve moved in to his house to be a common whore.”
The tears begin again. I hated that it seemed like the last few times that I saw my mother, there were tears. Her tears. And what’s worse is that they had all been caused by me, lately. I hadn’t seen her cry this much in my whole life.
“That’s not what it is at all,” I told her. “And, honestly, it hurts my feelings that you would even say it like that.”
“Well, what am I supposed to think, Hope? I come in and find you half naked in his kitchen like this is just something normal to do. Are you his whore?”
“No! I’m not anyone’s whore! Stop saying that. Please?”
“Well, you please help me make sense of this.”
I was going to have to say something, but I wasn’t quite sure what.
“I’m going to have his baby.”
It was the truth, but I knew that it really didn’t explain the whole situation.
“What do you mean?”
“Just that. I’m going to have his baby. I signed a contract stating that I would have a baby for him and he would pay me for it. I am just upholding my part of the contract. That’s what you got the payment for. It was when I signed the contract.”
My mother stared at me in disgust.
“So, let me get this straight. You agreed to have a baby for this man. You’re having my grandchild… for money?”
The way that she said it made it sound so dirty or cheap. I told her as much. She told me that she didn’t care.
“Mom, you have to understand that this is my life and I am going to make my own decisions.”
“I know, but I feel like you are ruining things for me. Why did you have to do this with one of my clients? And to involve my grandchild? Hope, you know how important family is to me. Why would you do this?”
“I was only trying to help,” I said. And that was the truth.
We argued back and forth for about an hour. She pleaded with me to leave and I refused. I told her the terms of the contract. She told me that she didn’t care about any contract and that she would be willing to give all the money back if I would just leave with her.
I told her that I wasn’t going to leave. She yelled at me, called me all types of names that I never thought that my mother knew, let alone would use on me. When she saw that she wasn’t getting anywhere, she left in a storm of angry tears. I didn’t want her to be hurt, but I did want to stay in Darren’s house.
Part of it was the contract and wanting to keep the terms of my agreement. I had met Wilson, Darren’s lawyer, and knew I could be sued for a lot of money if I didn’t honor the contract. But, the other part was something else.
I knew that Darren would probably let me out of the contract if I really wanted him to. But, I wanted to stay in the contract. I was really starting to have feelings for him and I didn’t want to leave before I found out where things were going to go.
I mean, I did sign an agreement to give him a baby. But, I never expected that I would start to develop real feelings. In fact, I’d signed it saying that I knew we would be over after I had the baby and that I would not develop feelings for him. How someone could promise something like that, I do not know. But I had.
If I were to be completely honest with myself, though, I had already broken the contract. I already had feelings for him. And those feelings started to develop even before I moved into the house.
I needed to stay and figure out where all of this was going. I had a feeling Darren felt the same way about me that I did about him, and I couldn’t just walk out on him now.
For better or worse, I had to admit to myself that this cozy yet isolated mountain cabin had become my home. And Darren’s arms felt as comfortable as everything else in this place. I hoped that my mother could somehow forgive me, but I wasn’t going to leave this house— or him— for anyone.