“If you have this baby, you do realize that the cancer in your body will kill you? The only way that we can treat your cancer is to abort your pregnancy.”
Catherine didn’t even blink, her gaze firm. “I’m going to have this baby whether you like it or not. Your job is to keep me alive until my baby can be born. I don’t care about the cancer. All I care about is my little boy.”
Sometimes, Aiden wished that wasn’t how his life had begun.
Home videos shot by Kitty, Catherine’s sister, showed an overjoyed father crumbling as the life left his wife’s body. Doctors worked to get the baby boy out, presenting a wailing, pink infant to a broken, empty shell of a father. Kitty had caught it on tape—“Get that thing away from me!”—then he’d stormed from the room. Baby Aiden was left abandoned by his father, and Kitty took him into her home.
For the first three years of his life, Aiden was a happy child. He lived with his aunt, played with his two young cousins, and every day Kitty would tell him the story of how her sister gave up her own life in a selfless sacrifice to bring him life. Aiden loved that story, and if he thought hard enough, he could still remember it during the darkest of times.
On his third birthday, Jeremy showed up and wrenched Aiden from the only life he’d ever known. “He’s my son!” he’d shouted at Kitty, forbidding her from coming near him again. But home wasn’t a happy place with Jeremy. Drunk and angry, Jeremy blamed Aiden for everything—Catherine’s death, his alcoholism, the state of the house, anything the older man could think of. When Aiden started school, a teacher contacted CPS. Jeremy coached his son for weeks regarding how to lie to the social worker that showed up, and Aiden used these new lies to keep CPS from being called again.
He’d ended up in the hospital for three weeks after the first call. Jeremy said he’d fallen from a tree.
Fourteen years later, and Aiden was gifted at lying. No teachers ever suspected abuse; they suspected he was a shy, quiet student who kept to himself. They called him gifted, bright, and praised his schoolwork. Jeremy didn’t care as long as the house was clean, and there was food on the table when he came home from work. And beer. There always had to be beer in the house. Otherwise, Jeremy would beat Aiden then stalk off to a bar to drown his anger in alcohol.
Hooded blue eyes stared listlessly at the notebook in front of him. It was lunchtime, and Aiden hated going into the cafeteria. Instead, he would bring a sack lunch and find a small, unused classroom to sit with his lunch and his journal. Today, his father had slammed his head into a wall because he hadn’t gotten up in enough time to make breakfast. Aiden thought he might have a concussion, but he didn’t dare go to a hospital.
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