“I can’t talk to Alice. She sees this pregnancy as some sort of divine gift sent from Rick. I can’t tell her that this was a mistake a side effect really, from the birth control. My body was to stay my own and my husband was to be the one I spent my life with, not a child.” she scoffed at her own thoughts as he dropped her head down to look at her hand rolling her finger back and forth. “This tucked away secret is killing me. I look at the nursery and I see Rick.” Tina stopped to look at her wedding ring, still so comfortable on her finger.  “His life is the only one I ever wanted.” Tina said with her body still, a lifeless heartbeat the only movement she wanted in her, not this child. “I think she wants to see Rick come out of all this, like she hasn’t let go.”

“Have you?” Bette tenderly asked. She saw how a small movement of a sad scoff left Tina in thought.

“I don’t know if I want to.” Tina said pinching her thumb nail, feeling relief as she finally was able to release what thoughts she’d held in silence since the beginning of her pregnancy. These otherwise taboo thoughts sat so heavily on her that all it took was one release and she couldn’t stop them from taking her over. Alice was rooted in the idea that this baby was going to make everything better for them all, she’d never say that but Tina knew her well enough to know that even this baby wouldn’t satisfy her. Rick meant more to her than anyone else knew, when Alice felt like an outcast in her family for knowing her sexuality early they all seemed to drift aware from the fact that maybe she was just weird, to her being a deviant, all except for Rick. He seemed to love her more for not conforming to their ideology of what she was suppose to be, and he protected her for that. Tina knew what he’d been to them all and she hoped beyond everything she knew to be true, that this baby was going to appease the need that Alice had to be with Rick all over again. She wanted that to be true, she wanted this baby to be everything that Alice wanted in Rick, but she knew that this baby could only hold Alice together for so long, and she didn’t know what was going to happen when she finally fell apart from it all. 

The weight of Tina’s pain and the sudden speech made Bette look away from her. She threw her attention to whatever wasn’t near Tina. She looked at the fireplace and looked across the mantle, there she’d seen pictures of a man kissing an African American woman on the cheek as her eyes and face held a wide smile. He was fair skinned with deep sandy blonde hair that curled in length, with a beard a few shades darker than his hair. Tina looked to Bette and followed her line of sight. Her attention was trapped on a picture of Rick kissing Trish on her 48^th birthday, they’d surprised her by coming home and joining in the family for her celebration.

“Rick liked goading Trish into surprises. He’d tell her we couldn’t make it or that we were to busy to come home for the holidays and she’d believe him. The disappointment in her voice made it all the more sweet when we’d surprise her, I guess. She was always so gullible that way, he took advantage of that, every time.” Tina fell silent again and Bette felt it was more that Tina wanted to say to her, so she just sat in silence. “I don’t think I can be the mother he wanted me to be.”

Bette just appreciated the voiced thoughts rather than listening to her own mind telling her to run as far away as possible. Never in her professional career has she had such a convoluted prospective of one of her clients. They were always A or B and she provided C for their well being. Everything in her wanted nothing to do with this conversation or the circumstance she was in, but there was nothing she could do to avoid it. She was set dead in the center of it all and for the first time she’d seen her client as a human being, flawed, rigid and fragile maybe, but definitely more than a body to see through a series of events. This was all interesting, to say the least.

TBC…………………………………….