parent, I’m not prepared for it at all. My own blueprint is blurry at best.
I shake my head. Try to shake these thoughts out, too. I can’t think about the baby right now. The baby is nine months away—the length of an entire school year—and there’s someone who, this very moment, needs me even more than the life inside me does. Her book still waits for me. Upstairs on my nightstand. Away from this kitchen and Ted.
“I’m sorry I upset you,” I say. “I’ll start packing in the morning.”
“Good. Because I’m finished with this conversation.”
And there it is—that ache again. That fist against my ribs. I rub my side as Ted heads toward the stairs, disappears out of view. In a few moments, the landline rings and Ted groans.
“Yeah,” he says in the hallway upstairs—his standard greeting when answering the phone.
“Oh, of course, Dr. Eric,” he says a second later. He hardly addresses Eric in any other way. He hits the middle consonants hard in “Doctor.” The condescension drips from his voice like saliva from a fang. “Won’t you hold on a moment, please?”
I’m about to climb the stairs to take the phone, but my foot freezes above the second step. This is the first time I’ll be talking to Eric since I took the pregnancy test this morning. I’ll have to tell him—there’s no way around it; he’ll hear it in my voice and ask—but I haven’t practiced my enthusiasm yet. He’ll know right away that I’m terrified, and my fear will be the pinprick in his ballooning joy.
I love my husband. I want to make him happy. But I don’t have it in me to do that right now.
“Tell him I’m sleeping,” I hiss to Ted.
There’s a moment of hesitation before Ted walks to the top of the staircase. He puts his palm over the mouthpiece of the phone and gazes down at me.
“Please,” I whisper.
Even from the bottom of the stairs, I see the twitch at the corner of his lips. He knows I’m scared of something. Last night, he said he wouldn’t do any Experiments on me while I’m in Cedar, but it’s obvious: his brain is still hardwired to my fear.
He removes his hand from the phone, lifts it to his face. “Sorry, Doctor,” he says. “She’s passed out in her room.” He stares straight into my eyes when he says the next part. “Been so busy packing, she must’ve worn herself out. I’ll have her call you tomorrow.”
He doesn’t wait for an answer before he ends the call.
“Thank you,” I say. “I just didn’t—”
He puts a hand in the air to stop me. “I don’t need to know,” he says with a smirk. “I need to get back to work.”
* * *
Astrid’s parents were the exact opposite of mine.
Where Ted and Mara were distracted, eyes barely skimming me on their way to separate spaces, the Sullivans were hyperfocused, eyes probably sore from squinting at their daughter so hard.
For Ted and Mara, doors were the things they shut to stay closer to their work. For the Sullivans, doors were dangerous. Keepers of secrets. Barriers that must be weakened.
Astrid’s life was bound by rules and expectations. Mine was without any bounds at all. I could come and go whenever I wanted, and no one cared to ask me where I was headed or when I’d be back.
Astrid hated her parents’ relentless attention. I was starved for a scrap from mine.
I’m turning pages, imagining the whisper of them as Astrid’s voice beside me in my room. I fly through the first chapter, sink into the second. These differences between us should make her feel foreign. But instead I feel closer to her. As if we’re long-lost sisters with two distinct upbringings, but the same central need: to be seen as we actually are. Not as an Experiment. Not as a pillar of purity and piety.
When Father Murphy steps onto the page in chapter two, pulling Astrid aside at her Confirmation party, my heart thumps. Here is someone I know. Someone I spoke to hours earlier. I try to imagine him as he would have been twenty years ago—more hair probably, but maybe the same sweat he wiped off his forehead today, the heat of a June sun similar to that of the airless hallway we stood in at the church.
My eyes speed ahead. Soon, the kidnapper will enter the story. But first, this conversation with the priest, just like Father Murphy relayed to me today. Except—something is