“You want to explain what the hell is going on, Mother?”
Finally, Cora rested her hands on her lap and when she looked at Keira, her eyebrows arched as much as the Botox would allow, she frowned.
“You’re pregnant. About five weeks.”
That revelation hit Keira like an anvil to the chest. She turned away from her mother’s frown and dates, weeks, flitted through her mind. When was her last period? When could this have happened? She took her pill religiously, every night, eight p.m. like clockwork and she and Kona were always careful.
The shower, she thought. The damn shower.
“Are they sure? How… wait, I don’t understand…”
“They’re sure. It’s one of the tests they ran when you came in. They had to know before they did the X-rays. You were down with the flu last month, remember? All those antibiotics.” Her mother rolled her eyes as though she thought Keira was the simplest, stupidest idiot she’d ever seen. “Antibiotics counteract the pill.” Keira could only stare at her mother, ignoring how deep her frown had pulled wrinkles on the side of her face. Keira didn’t care about the scowl the woman gave her or how her lip twitched with a curl. She was carrying Kona’s baby.
A baby?
It didn’t seem real; felt somehow like she was outside of herself; like this was a dream, a nightmare that was vividly, achingly detailed. She didn’t know how she felt. The news was raw, a gaping wound that bled as hard as Luka’s loss. Then a small thought came to her. Would this baby heal Kona’s broken heart? Would it be a small replacement for the brother that had been stolen from him?
Wait. Termination. The word felt dirty, bitter and when Keira realized what her mother wanted, what she’d already planned, and that small glimmer of hope in her chest dulled.
“I’ve spoken with Kona’s mother.”
“You did what?” Keira had never wanted to hit her mother more than she did then. What the hell had she done while Keira lay unconscious in the hospital? It was clear that she was rerouting Keira’s life, making attempts to change the course of how it would go. It didn’t surprise her in the least, but to reach out to Kona’s mother? Especially when their family was dealing with Luka’s loss?
“Steven saw her yesterday morning. She’d come to claim the body and arrange the burial.” Her mother waved her hand as though Luka’s death was a footnote to the point of her story. “I introduced myself and explained to her about your tests. We both agreed that terminating this pregnancy would be in both your and Kona’s best interest.”
“You both agreed?”
“Of course. You are too young to be a mother and that poor woman is dealing with far too much to be saddled with the role of grandmother. Trust me, you’ll thank me one day.”
Keira felt like a puppet. Her mother pulled the strings, twisted her this way and that until she danced, until she moved toward a long stage, one that her mother had set with checkpoints of expectations. She wanted to clip those strings. She wanted to clip them and wrap them around her mother’s neck.
She knew the open mouth, then the closed, hooded look she gave her mother was full of anger, but Keira didn’t care. Kona’s mother, her own, were thinking about this child’s impact on their lives; they wanted to snatch the decision, the responsibility from both of them and Keira wouldn’t have it. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“Watch your mouth, Keira.”
The laughter, when it came, moved up her belly. It was loud, rude and highly unamused and it hurt with the dull ache that tasted like bitterness. “You tell me you’ve decided that you want me to kill my baby and all you can think to say is ‘watch your mouth’?”
That laughter turned cold, tipped into the smart burn of tears that Keira let fall over her face. She took to holding herself around her middle, trying to comfort the small person growing inside her, the one she hoped would be a salve over the anguish of the past week. She wanted Kona. She needed his arms, his strength, his protection from the world, from her mother’s cruelty, that she’d come to depend on so desperately. Brushing off her mother’s useless touches, Keira rubbed her face dry with the back of her hand. “Where’s Kona?”
“You don’t need to worry about him right now. He’s got enough trouble.”
Keira knew her mother meant to disregard her question. She didn’t want Keira asking about Kona or caring what happened to him and when the woman moved away from her, sitting back in her chair as though she wouldn’t give Keira any news on what happened to her boyfriend, she reached out and grabbed her mother’s wrist, jerking her forward. “Where is he?”