The Dark Light of Day (26 page)

A doctor with salt-and-pepper hair introduced himself as Doctor Hodges and promptly asked me to lie down and put my feet in the
stirrups. He looked to be in his mid-fifties. He was calm and
friendly,
but wasn’t going to be performing the procedure just yet. He
explained that it was just the initial exam before
the big show.

My words, not his.

I closed my eyes and took deep breaths as he poked and
prodded
with cold instruments and intruding fingers. It was so
uncomfortable. The burning inside me built to epic proportions. My eyes watered
and a tear ran down my cheek. I had to power through. I tried to
sing in my head to distract myself from what the doctor was doing.

When that didn’t work, I thought about Jake.

I wonder if Jake would have gone with me if he knew the truth. If he knew that I loved him and hadn’t willingly let Owen do what
he did to me. I couldn’t let myself linger on those thoughts. I was
pregnant with another man’s baby, and I needed not to be anymore.

“Miss Ford, I know you already spoke to the counselor so
forgive the repetition here, but may I ask, what brings you here today?” He gestured for me to sit up.

Relief flooded me instantly.

“I don’t want to be pregnant anymore.” I wondered if that
wasn’t the reason every seventeen year old came here.

“How did you get pregnant, Miss Ford?” His voice was steady and professional, but I sensed something else lingered behind his
question.

“Is there more than one way?” I faked a laugh to distract him.

He looked at me skeptically. “Miss Ford, I am going to be honest
with you. I see scar tissue within you that suggests you’ve been
through a
traumatic
injury recently.” He took a deep breath and flicked his
rubber gloves into the trash bin. “Frankly, I am surprised a
pregnancy resulted or survived such trauma.”

It was a statement, but he looked as if he wanted me to confirm his suspicion.

“Resulted,” I blurted. I instantly regretted telling this stranger anything that wasn’t his business.

“Have you filed a police report?”

“No.”
But, I’m facing some pretty hefty charges myself.

The Doctor didn’t press me on why I hadn’t. He just nodded as
he placed a manila file on his knee and started to write with a
fountain
pen from his lab coat pocket. He shook his head from side to side, like something he was writing was almost unbelievable to him.
“Strong
fetus you’ve got in there.” He looked up from his file, his
embarrassment written all over his face. “I’m sorry. That was entirely insensitive of me. My apologies.”

“It’s fine.” I wanted to silence his rambling. I hated being
apologized to. After all, he was right. This thing in me had such a will to be in this world, it had found a way to exist during the worst of the worst of conditions.

It was a survivor, just like me.

And I was going to kill it.

***

I spent the next three days searching for a new job with no luck. Bubba still wasn’t hiring seventeen year olds. Sally’s wasn’t hiring. The bait shop wasn’t hiring.

Jake’s home was no longer my home so I was back to sleeping in Nan’s old Chevy, the same one Jake had caught me in all those weeks ago. I’d put his keys on the counter, locked the door, and shut it behind me.

I didn’t want to live there anymore anyway. Just being there long enough to grab some of my shit and lock the door was painful enough. A few times I could’ve sworn I’d heard his bike pulling into the drive. I had to remind myself it wasn’t him.

He was gone.

The Chevy couldn’t be home forever, but it was all I had for
now. I’d made a little money working at Jake’s shop, but the hotels on the
island were tourist traps, and a single night’s stay was more than half of what I had to my name. I tried to rent a room, but being seventeen and jobless wasn’t exactly an attractive mix to potential
landlords.

I lay in the Chevy, tossing and turning.

It wasn’t just the stagnant heat of the night air that kept me
restless.

Has it really been only days since I had last seen him, since I let him
walk away? Where is he? What is he doing?

Jake had assumed the worst of me, and with that assumption he
revealed that we didn’t have what I thought we did. He didn’t love me the way I loved him. As far as he was concerned, it was all or
nothing.

I promised myself I’d push all thoughts of Jake out of my mind, in hopes of pushing him from my heart.

Yeah, right.

Even I didn’t think that was going to happen. In time, I hoped he
would become just a distant memory. Now, though, his memory
was
so strong, if I allowed it just a moment to occupy my mind, it
consumed me. I closed my eyes and could still feel his breath on my cheek, his skin on my skin. I would never again be able to let myself be as free as I was with him. That girl was gone.

Survivor Abby had returned, boundaries and walls firmly back in place.

Choosing the comfort of being numb over the pain of heartbreak.

On what was to be my third night of sleeping in the Chevy, I climbed in through the driver’s side door and plopped myself down
on the bench seat to get some much-needed sleep. I’d spent the
entire
day walking up and down the island looking for work and was just
drifting off when I heard something jingle. There in front of me,
reflecting the light of the full moon, was a key ring with two small gold keys and a large silver Ford emblem key chain hanging from it. The keys were attached to the steering wheel by a large janitor-style hook. A Dunn’s Auto Repair sticky note was attached to the center of the wheel. The note on it appeared to be written by a child:

abby

the apartment is urs fer as long as you need. yu can use the truck too it needs to be run ery once in a while and settin in the lot aint doin it no good. I dont no what happened with jake and I dont care but I know he dont want you sleeping in the fucking truck like a dam hobo. reggie is pissed you aint showed up fer work so be there in the morn. sorry about the punching ur face thing. Im a drunk asshole most of the time.

sorry again.

frank dunn

Tears stung the back of my eyes. Despite the fact that he’d called me a hobo, it was by far the greatest note I had ever received. I held the necklace Jake gave me in between my fingers, as it had become
my nature to do when I was thinking. It would be my constant
reminder he wasn’t just a dream.

It had certainly felt like one, though.

I hadn’t even been sure that Frank remembered who I was, especially under the circumstances of our first encounter. But there I
was, reading his offer of salvation.

The Dunn men may have seen themselves as being worlds apart
in every way, but when it really came down to it, both men were
deeply
troubled by pasts they’d rather forget, and they both had laid
themselves on the line for me when I really needed it.

Selflessly. Easily.

It was in these acts of kindness that I saw the similarities in them for the first time.

I laughed to myself because Jake would shit a brick if I ever told him that he and the man he hated most were in any way similar.

Mr. Dunn had just offered me the chance to save money and
have a place to stay when the baby came.

The baby...

I didn’t know if I would be a good mom, or if I would even be
able
to be one at all under the circumstances. But when it came right down to it, I couldn’t bring myself to kill someone who didn’t even
know they were the product of a hateful act, especially after he or she had been
created despite the horrible condition my body was in. This baby
was a fighter, a survivor like me.

We were already kindred spirits.

It was because of, not in spite of, the life growing inside me that I was able to move forward, a little at a time.

I had the chance to have a real family, for the first time in my life.

I was going to try my damnedest to protect it.

FOUR YEARS LATER…

IT WAS SEPTEMBER WHEN MR. DUNN’S
already weak body gave out and was crushed under the heavy weight of his addictions.

Leave it to the people of Coral Pines to turn what should have
been a small simple service into an event that could rival their annual mullet-toss festival.

Every meddling church lady and bored husband within twenty
miles dressed to the nines to pay their “respects” to a man they
didn’t really know, and certainly didn’t respect.

A group of chatting woman smiled and laughed on the top step
of the church before the service started. They all clutched
handkerchiefs as if letting everyone know they were capable of springing a leak at
any moment. Although a lot of people had cared about my Nan,
more people had come to her service as an excuse to finally dust off their best mourning outfits and compete in a
Who’s Sadder
competition than to celebrate her life.

This felt just like that had.

Mrs. Garrith, a woman with white blonde hair and bright pink nails, was getting ready to jump into the fray as I approached the steps. “And when he lost his sweet Marlena I made sure to bring him a casserole every day for a month. I could tell he really appreciated my gesture of kindness... told me so himself. Those casseroles were a lifesaver to that man.” She adjusted the fingers of her short black laced gloves.

“Well, bless your heart, Mary,” Mrs. Morrison added. Everyone knew it was Southern slang for
Go fuck yourself
. “Did you know that Franklin asked me to go steady with him in high school? Practically begged me, really, before he and Marlena became an item of course. That boy was sweet on me, I tell ya.” She fanned herself with one of the funeral programs handed out by choir boys.

I took a program from one of the boys and pushed passed the
crowd into the church. Loud whispering had always followed me
wherever I went, and today was no different.

Mrs. Morrison might as well have been speaking into a
microphone. After she spotted me, the comments about my inappropriate funeral
attire began. She leaned in close to her cohorts and whispered, “I
think that Abigail Ford and Franklin had a ‘special’ relationship.” She had the balls to quote the air when she said the word
special.
“It turns out the girl helped plan this entire service. Don’t you think that’s odd?”

That statement was met with gasps and exaggerated sighs from
the clones that surrounded her. The group added their own speculations, fueling the rumor. It was like listening to creation itself
in the beginning, where it all started, with these dumb bitches poisoning the water.

I don’t know how Nan ever got along with those ladies. It never seemed to me that she ever really fit in with them. Nan was someone who would show up to a funeral wearing her brightest floral colored sundress instead of a black funeral gown. I don’t know how she did it all without drawing all the negative attention I seemed to attract,
or maybe she did draw negative attention and I just never really
noticed. Maybe, I was too wrapped up in my own self-pity and
bullshit to notice that these ladies hurt her, too.

I’d thought about her a lot when I got dressed that morning. Her funeral was the last one I attended, over four years earlier. It was in
her honor that I wore a bright coral colored spaghetti-strapped
sundress that crossed in the back with a long-sleeved white cardigan over it and wedge sandals instead of the black mourning uniform of the gossip mafia.

Not because I was ashamed or afraid anymore.

I just thought it was more appropriate for church.

It was those people, those nasty two-faced women who
preached
their impossible morals about town to whoever would listen, that pissed me off the most. Those women didn’t live the lives they
preached about any more than the people they shunned for it. They just knew how to
hide it better. The more I heard them talk, the more I realized they
weren’t speaking about Frank’s life. All their stories or revelations were about their attempts to associate themselves with him. They wanted to paint themselves into the picture of his life for the
attention only.

The truth was that, even with all his problems, Frank Dunn was
someone who would be missed, even if it was only by me. The
know-it-all church ladies on the steps were just selfish bitches.

Those were always the worst kind of bitches.

So, I was going to have a little fun with the ladies.

I squared my shoulders and walked back out of the church and
right to the center, where the coffee klatch from hell was taking
place. Before they could pick their jaws up off the floor or squawk out a
fake greeting, I spoke first, laying on my Georgia accent much
thicker than usual.

“Why, hey y’all,” I started. I smiled at the two ladies who
seemed
to be the leaders of the group. My voice dripped so much false
sugary sweetness, I probably made their teeth ache. “Thank you so much for comin’, I know that Mr. Dunn would have appreciated his dearest
friend—” I gestured toward Mrs. Garrith. “—and his high school
sweetheart—” and I gestured toward Mrs. Morrison. “—goin’ out
their way to pay their last respects.”