The REASON Series - the Complete Collection (10 page)

"Hello, Vivienne. How are you today?" she asks.
 

"Better, thanks. I was going to go next door for a bagel. Would you like something?"
 

"Oh, no, dear. I have toast. Go have fun. Are you using your usual machine?" I nod. "I'll keep an eye on it."

I smile because I can't even begin to imagine the things she would do if someone was trying to steal my clothes. "Thanks, Ms. Wilson."
 

The coffee shop is decorated like a junkyard. There are tons of eclectic metal objects, from sculptures to wheels and old hubcaps. The furniture and tables are all mismatched, too, but in some strange way, it all works. There are a couple of computers lined up along the wall with a sign overhead that says,
Up to 1 hour free
.

The girl behind the counter is wearing a spiked dog collar, short jean shorts with pink-and-black striped leggings underneath, and a black fishnet shirt over a thin white t-shirt. The fishnet on her arms is ripped, and her black bra is visible beneath the t-shirt. It’s a look that I thought had died about ten years ago, but she manages to pull it off spectacularly. It compliments the massive, six-inch-long Mohawk she's sporting.
 

"Hi, there, what can I get for you?" she asks in an overly friendly tone. The black lipstick she's wearing cracks when she smiles.
 

"Hi. Just a bagel, plain."
 

"Sure thing. Anything else?"

"A large glass of ice water."
 

She rings it up and grabs my order.
 

"Can anyone use those computers?" I ask as she hands me my change. I don't want to be told to get up if I sit down.
 

"Absolutely. You have one hour, but unless we get really busy, take as long as you like."

"Thanks."
 

I grab my water and bagel and head toward the computer on the end. I'm not super familiar with computers, but I know how to search the internet, and that’s all I need to know today.
 

I sit down and jiggle the mouse, and the screen flickers to life. Clicking on the browser icon opens up to Google. I type in two words: Mikah Blake.

Thousands of results pop up in a matter of seconds. There's everything from his company to random news articles. I munch absently on the bagel as I start with the homepage for MSB Enterprises. Sure enough, there is a picture of Mikah. It’s a formal picture, and he’s not smiling. He’s barely recognizable this way. I read his bio.

Born Mikah Shannon Blake, 1987, Dublin, Ireland.
He’s a little younger than I thought. Well at least I was right about the subtle Irish accent.
Mr. Blake moved to the Boston area in 1990—
My jaw drops. He was in Boston the year I was born.
—with his father and mother, who later had three additional children, two boys and one girl.
 

I continue scanning the rest of the bio. I was right about the Ivy League education:
Mr. Blake graduated from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2009 with a Master of Finance (MFin).
Holy crap, he was only twenty-one when he received his Master's degree. My age. Wow!

The last sentence captures my attention.
Mr. Blake is the youngest entrepreneur to make it into Forbes 500.
This explains a lot. Mikah is a very driven individual; I have no doubt that he will stop at nothing when it comes to something he wants. I smile slightly at the events that led up to yesterday’s hospital visit.

I hit the back button and move on to some more articles. I finally find one that captures my attention, dated April 16, 2011.
CEO of MSB Enterprises, Mikah Blake, buries father, two brothers in Boston.

"What in the world?" I click the link.
 

Mikah Blake attended funeral services at St. Ambrose in Boston this afternoon for his father, Shannon, age 48, brother Shane, age 20, and brother Ronin, age 17. All three were killed when their vehicle was hit by a semi-truck going the wrong way down Highway 95 Tuesday last week....
 

I can't read anymore; my eyes are swollen and tears are falling down my cheeks. I click the button to go back to the search results. The next two or three pages are filled with more articles about his father and two brothers. I finally come across one that says something about his sister, Victoria.
 

Victoria Blake, younger sister to CEO Mikah Blake, was admitted to Boston Medical Center early yesterday morning after an apparent suicide attempt.
 

I don't need to read any further. I click the back button again, but not before I catch the date on the article: April 11, 2011. Just before the funeral for his father and brothers.
 

Bottom line in my research today: Holy crap. I never, ever expected to find that. My heart aches.
 

I close the browser window, grab my water, pop what's left of my bagel into my mouth and place the plate on top of the garbage can.
 

"Thanks for coming," the girl behind the counter says.
 

"Thank you, have a good day."
 

"You, too."

After finishing up with my laundry, I decide to head back to my apartment to drop off my clean laundry so I don’t have to haul it around the grocery store, which is in the opposite direction from my apartment as the Laundromat.

As I stomp up the stairs, I notice a piece of paper stuck in my doorjamb. I grab the note and go into my apartment, locking the door behind me. The handwriting is sloppy. So different from Mikah’s tidy penmanship.

Vivienne,
 

I stopped by just to make sure you made it home okay. Looking forward to seeing you in two weeks.

Dr. Anne Alston
 

Okay, this is getting a little bit creepy.
 

Something on the floor catches my eye: another envelope. No address, and this one is thicker. Weird.
 

I pop the seal. Inside are the ultrasound pictures that Dr. Alston took yesterday. The first one has a Post-it note attached to it:
These were left in the emergency care ward by accident when we moved you.

Odd that I hadn't even thought about them. Pulling them out, I look at them again. It is still so hard to believe that this little guy — or girl — is growing inside me. Flipping through the pictures, I notice that there are only seven of them.
 

"What the hell?"
 

I check the envelope again, but there is nothing else inside. One picture is missing.
 

“Who would want someone's ultrasound picture?"
 

But even as I ask myself that question, the image of one beautiful face comes to mind. Mikah Blake.

FOURTEEN

On Monday morning I meet with a really nice lady named Jessica at the W.I.C. office. She tells me that it usually takes weeks to get into their office, but because Dr. Alston had called, saying that it was an emergency, they were able to see me right away.
 

She explains the program to me and I sit through an orientation class about the W.I.C. process. Every four weeks I can come back to pick up new vouchers for various foods. It seems like way too much food for one person. I know it’s not true, but I feel like I’m taking the food away from someone else who really needs it.

On Tuesday I swing by the nursing home to see my mom. She's the same as ever: She just sits there staring out the window, seeing nothing. I ask myself why I go out of my way to visit her, and the only answer I can give myself is that she's my mom.
 

We didn't have the best relationship — if you can even call it that — while I was growing up. She never saw fit to take care of me, and more often than not, I found myself taking care of her. I got up every day in time for school, went to school, came home, studied, made dinner, cleaned the house, studied some more, and went to bed, only to repeat the process the next day.
 

Weekends often found me alone in whatever apartment we were staying in while Mom was off with God only knows who, doing God only knows what. Usually she’d stumble home late Sunday night or sometime during the day on Monday and pass out for a couple of days. Then she’d be right back at it again.
 

I learned to steer clear of her when she ran out of money. She had a venomous temper and would storm around the house yelling and throwing things. Sometimes she would hit me just because I asked a question. At the time, I didn’t understand what I’d done to deserve it. I understand better now that she was unable to control her own anger, and her means of coping were always drugs or alcohol.
 

On my way home from visiting my mother, I stop at the grocery store again, picking up some repeat things, and some new. I discovered very quickly after cooking up some chicken Saturday night that chicken does not sit well with me — I threw it up — so chicken’s out. I look at the store’s selection of red meat, and my stomach turns. Hm. Evidently all meat is out for now. I’ll talk to Dr. Alston next week about some alternative options.
 

For the moment, macaroni and cheese, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and scrambled eggs seem to be my foods of choice, and I'm okay with that.

Wednesday and Thursday pass quickly without incident; all I do is work, eat and sleep.
 

But Friday night at the diner is strange. It’s extremely busy — which is nice because it passes the time quickly — but only a few of our regulars are here. The rest are classier, well-dressed and well-behaved people who look like they’d be more comfortable in a swank hotel bar than in Bertie’s shitty little diner. Laura chalks it up to something happening downtown. It still seems odd to me, but I can’t complain. I leave work at around twelve thirty with over three hundred dollars in tips — something that is completely out of the ordinary. Happy with the fact that I've managed to make more than half of my rent in one night, I head home.

Once again, Al is behind the wheel. We have our typical conversation and I notice that I don't feel anywhere near as tired as I was just a week ago.
 

"You're looking well," Al says when we’re almost to my stop.

"Um, thanks," I say, confused.
 

"No, I mean it. Have you gained some weight?"

I think back to putting on my uniform before work and realize he must be right. "I'm trying," I say.
 

"Keep it up."

He drops me at my stop and lingers until I round the corner. As soon as the bus moves on, headlights appear behind me, casting my shadow across the pavement and illuminating my path. The vehicle isn't moving. I quicken my pace, my heart pounding.
 

I push on the door to my building, and as I slip inside, the car drives by. A black Mercedes.
 

Inside my apartment, I drop my mail on the counter, strip off my uniform and head toward the shower. I stop to check myself in the mirror – something I haven't really done since before the trip to the hospital – and I suddenly see what Al was talking about.
 

My eyes are a lighter, brighter blue. My cheeks are still a little hollow, but they seem to be filling out a bit. And I don’t look quite so pale. Though my collarbones are still visible beneath my skin, they’re a little less pronounced. The biggest shocker are my breasts, which seem a lot fuller. Not bigger, just fuller. And my nipples are a few shades darker than they used to be.
 

I look down my body to the bump between my hips. It too is more rounded and softer looking, though my hipbones are still well defined. I gently caress the bump with one hand as I remove the hair tie from my bun with the other, letting my hair cascade down my back.
 

I turn on the shower, all the way to the hottest setting, and pray. It's warmer than usual, so I jump in, but I barely get my hair washed before the water starts to run cold. I move quickly and hop out. For once in my life I'd love to take a shower that is hot and stays hot for as long as I want.
 

As I towel off, I notice that I'm moving more gingerly than I used too. I’m a little more cautious in my movements. After I get into my pajamas, I make myself a pb&j with grape jelly and grab the book Dr. Alston gave me. Flipping to the section on week twelve, I start to read by the tiny lamp near my bed.
 

While reading, I realize that Dr. Alston seems to be spot-on with her assessment of how far along I am. Over the last couple of days my breasts have switched from being painful to feeling heavy, my tiredness seems to be waning slightly, and I'm beginning to feel my energy level rising. I'm also hardly ever hungry. But then again, these days, if I feel hungry, I eat —something I've never done in my life. I'm beginning to wonder how I survived this long.

FIFTEEN

I'm running through our apartment. He's right on my heel, chasing me.
 

"Abigail, get her!" he says.
 

"You want her, you get her," my mother shouts from another room.
 

Suddenly I'm flying backwards. The pain in my scalp surges through my body and I go limp. I’m being dragged backwards by my hair into a room along the hallway. Only it's not a room, it’s a closet. He pulls my hair harder and suddenly I'm spinning around. A hard, heavy hand comes across my face.
 

My head snaps back, knocking into the jamb of the closet door. I see stars. He grips my arm so hard it burns. I start to cry. He grabs my other arm just as hard. I can feel the veins popping and burning.
 

"Get your sorry ass in that closet and stay there."
 

I can’t move because of the grip he has on my arms. Suddenly one of the hands is gone and I can feel him shift his weight. I try to flinch away but his grip tightens further as his hand comes down hard across the same cheek, snapping my head back into the jamb again.