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You’d think I’d be high as a kite since I left Baxter Loop and drove back to the trailer park. Either that, or you’d think I’d dismiss what Grandma Lucy said as the words of an old woman whose sanity is already in question.
I don’t doubt her at all, though. As soon as she told me my daughter would live, it’s like I’d known that from the beginning. I just needed someone to teach me how to have that faith. I’ve never been into signs and wonders and junk like that. Even when I lived with Sandy, her husband’s church was way more subdued. You wouldn’t find white-haired grannies standing up and making proclamations or prophesies directly from the Lord. But even though this kind of faith is so far out of my comfort zone, it fits me. It suits me.
The irony is that my soul is even heavier now than it was when I went in search of Grandma Lucy. Because now that I’ve told someone the whole story start to finish, I’m even more convinced that everything that happened to my daughter was my fault. The preterm labor. The bedrest. Who knows, probably even the brain hemorrhage — they’re all my fault for going to that clinic.
I’d been holding onto a shred of hope that maybe the two things were unrelated. I didn’t go through with the abortion. And for a little bit, I was smug enough to think that made me a decent mother.
If I was a decent mother, I would have never driven myself to Spokane in the first place. I would have never allowed that nurse to insert those stupid sticks up inside me. And I would have gone straight to a doctor instead of driving home to Orchard Grove once I took them out.
A thought flashes uninvited through my mind. I could sue the abortion clinic. They didn’t tell me what would happen if I left early. But in order to do that, I’d have to let Jake and his mom and the whole world know what I did. I’d have to sit there while a lawyer proved that my daughter would be perfectly healthy if the clinic hadn’t prepped me for an elective abortion.
Nothing’s worth that amount of torture. Not even a settlement large enough to buy a dozen trailer parks.
I’m pulling onto our street. It’s so ugly here. Ugly and colorless. No wonder I’m unhappy all the time. It’d be different if I lived in one of those cute little rustic homes on Baxter Loop.
Safe Anchorage Farm is less than ten minutes away. I wonder if I’ll ever go back and visit with Grandma Lucy again.
I doubt it.
Something’s wrong. My brain registers danger before my eyes tell me what they’re seeing. I speed up.
Red strobing lights.
Strangers on my lawn.
An ambulance in front of my house.