Emily laughed again, but this time through tears. Relief made her weak in the knees. The brick pulled at her dress as she sank to the ground. Her tailbone ached, but she didn’t care. She was shockingly overjoyed that she had peed herself. The dark places her brain had gone to when she’d assumed that blood was gushing between her legs were more enlightening than any ultrasound she could tape to her bathroom mirror.
In that moment, Emily had desperately wanted her baby to be all right. Not out of duty. A child wasn’t only a responsibility. It was an opportunity to love someone the way that she had never been loved.
And for the first time in this whole shameful, humiliating, helpless process, Emily Vaughn knew without a doubt that she loved this baby.
“It looks like a girl,” the doctor had told her during her most recent exam.
At the time, Emily had catalogued the news as another step in the process, but now, the realization broke open the dam that had for so long held back her emotions.
Her girl.
Her tiny, precious little girl.
Emily’s hand went to her mouth. She was so weak with relief that she would’ve fallen over if she hadn’t already been sitting on the cold ground. Her head bent toward her knees. Big, fat tears rolled down her cheeks. Her mouth gaped wordlessly, her chest so filled with love that she couldn’t form sound. She pressed her palm to her belly and imagined a small hand pressing back. Her heart lurched as she thought about one day being able to kiss the tips of those precious fingers. Gram had said that each baby had a special smell that only their mother knew. Emily wanted to know that smell. She wanted to wake up in the night and listen to the quick in and out of the beautiful girl that she had grown inside of her body.
She wanted to make plans.
In two weeks, Emily would be eighteen years old. In another two months, she would be a mother. She would get a job. She would move out of her parents’ house. Gram would understand, and what she didn’t understand she would forget. Dean Wexler was right about one thing: Emily had to grow up. She had more than herself to think of now. She had to get away from Longbill Beach. She had to start planning her future instead of letting other people plan it for her. More importantly, she would give her baby girl everything that Emily had never had.
Kindness. Understanding. Security.
Emily closed her eyes. She conjured the image of her baby girl joyfully floating around inside of her body. She took a deep breath and started to recite the mantra, this time from a place of love rather than duty.
“I will protect—”
The sound of a loud snap made her eyes open.
Emily saw black leather shoes, black socks, the hem of a pair of black pants. She looked up. The sun flickered as a bat swung through the air.
Her heart clenched into a fist. She was suddenly, inescapably, filled with fear.
Not for herself—for her baby.
Emily curled inward, arms wrapped around her belly, legs pulled up tight, as she fell to the side. She was desperate for another moment, another breath, so that her last words to her little girl would not be a lie.
Someone had always planned to hurt them.
They had never been safe.