Page 5 of Death is Familiar

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Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

No. No. No.

No. That wasn’t possible. There was no way. We had been careful. We used protection, and I was on the birth control shot. Jack had said he couldn’t have kids. With the scars across my stomach from my stabbing ten years ago, I didn’t think I could either.

It was my first time for god’s sake! There was no way. Even though I took the test, I didn’t expect it to amount to anything.

But the little blue plus sign peered up at me. Clear as day. Fuck.

I knew something was off. Wrong. I was two weeks late. But I had held out hope that it was due to my work with the Almeidas. That they had given me so little to eat that my cycle had gotten off track. Then there was the chamomile. Tea that tasted like death and dying until a few weeks ago. And there was the tell-tale nausea. I had a decently strong stomach, except when hormones were involved, and I’d been sick enough to know that something wasn’t right.

I sat curled up on the bathroom floor, trembling.

I didn’t know what to do. How to feel. Other than completely and utterly shaken.

I hadn’t really given much thought about whether or not I wanted children. They seemed so far out of reach. I knew I wanted the choice on whether or not to have them. But given what all of the doctors had said post-stabbing… I never held much hope. And the life I led because of the stabbing wasn’t really conducive to bringing a child into the world

So much violence.

So much wrong.

I didn’t even know if I was good with kids. Sure, I’d gotten a bunch of them out of cults. I’d been around them in group settings, like with the Almeidas. But one-on-one? And for prolonged periods of time? Fuck.

What did this mean if the FBI found out? The terms of my release into FBI custody had required me to be on birth control, precisely so I wouldn’t be in this situation. So, I wouldn’t be… I couldn’t even think the word. Not when it was about me. That would make it real. Even more so than the positive test.

What would it mean for the contract, for my deal with the FBI, with Jack?

Fuck. What was I going to tell Jack? Oh god. Jack. Jack, who wanted nothing more in the world than to have a child. Jack who thought he couldn’t have children. And now, I carried a little passenger. Part me. Part Jack.

Get a hold of yourself.

I took a deep shuddering breath. I needed something to hold onto. Something to keep my thoughts from spinning further out of control.

What was the term I used? Passenger. Passenger seemed like the right word. It was less scary. Less overwhelming. Less potentially life changing.

I took another breath, more stable this time.

I didn’t need to make any decisions right now. I needed to allow myself to clear my head. Think everything through. All the way through and come up with a plan. Figure out what I needed to do. What was right for me, and my situation. Because there were options.

The first thing I needed to do was get rid of the evidence.

Because Todd had warned me about the FBI’s tendency to dig into the affairs of people in its employ.

“It’s the FBI,” he’d signed when he noticed my unease with the FBI-gifted roses after our return from the Almeidas. He’d held onto the flowers until we got to our apartment building. “If you don’t want them to know, you handle the evidence at home.”

I didn’t think Jack or Todd would be rooting around in my garbage, but given that my world had just been turned upside down, I didn’t want to take any chances.

But having a task, something to do, was enough motivation for me to get off the floor, wrap up the test along with its packaging, and dispose of it in the central garbage chute. There, at least, the test couldn’t be tied back to me.

One task done.

And that felt good. Like I had a semblance of control.

So, I assigned myself another task—rest. I wasn’t going to be useful to anyone, never mind myself, if I didn’t get some sleep. Give myself a chance to recover, passenger or no.

I drew my blinds, stripped down to my underwear, and crawled into bed. Holding onto Lawrence’s letter, unopened, in my hands, I watched my name in Lawrence’s consistently legible scrawl fall in and out of focus as my vision blurred. My eyelids grew heavy.