1973

Author's Notes: In Slaughter House, Speed tells Eric that his parents may have wanted him to disappear on occasion when he was growing up. And then in my story A Walk in the Dark, he is shown as having a good relationship with them. So this is my explanation of how they got from wanting him to go away to wanting him to come 'home'.

Irene's POV:

What am I doing? How can I possibly be someone's mother? I'm still a kid myself. I don't know how I'm going to survive this...this humiliation. I'm not even seventeen and yet here I am pregnant and married. Your father is a good man. Not someone I would have chosen for my husband, but... I guess maybe I did choose him. I did have sex with him and I ended up pregnant. There was no choice really. I don't believe in abortion... and well, after the shock wore off and he proposed... I guess it could be worse. I could be Mary Catherine. Her baby's father disappeared after he was told she was pregnant. At least David is doing the right thing. But is it really? Is keeping you and raising you the right thing? Would you be better off with a rich family, one that can provide for all your wants and needs?

I stop and reread what I've written as I feel my baby kick for what seems to be the hundredth time in the last twenty minutes.

"Stop kicking me!" I shout at my extended belly.

The shouting seems to work, sort of. The baby will stop moving for a few minutes and then just as I start to get comfortable again…wham! with the kicking all over again.

I wonder if this was how The Virgin Mother felt. She was around my age, according to Father Matthew. But, no. She couldn't have felt this way. She was carrying the Son of God, not the bastard child of David Speedle.

As I sit here gently stroking my stomach, wondering what my child will be like, the enormity of it all hits me. I'm going to be a mother in just a few weeks. I'm married to a man I hardly know and I'm going to have his baby. I won't be able to graduate with my friends, go to homecoming or prom... From now on my life will be so very different from what I had thought it would be. Tears begin to cloud my eyes as I bury my face in my hands.

"Oh, God! Please help me!" I beg, sobbing. "I don't know what to do. I can't possibly raise this child. I..."

"Irene? Are you home?" David. My husband of four months.

"In here," I say as I wipe the tears from my face.

"Happy Mother's Day!" he exclaims as he hops through the bedroom door with a pink carnation in his hand.

"Oh, David!" I wail as I start crying again.

"What? What's wrong?" he's just so wonderful sometimes. And of course I can't tell him what's wrong because I'm crying so hard.

I shake my head trying to let him know that it's really nothing. That I have realized that as long as we're in this together it won't be so bad or so hard.

"Oh, baby," he croons as he wraps his arms around me and rocks me gently back and forth. "Our child will be here soon. It will get better, you'll see."

But will it really? Will it be better once I've given birth?

main story listing | next | email me