Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 622(@200wpm)___ 497(@250wpm)___ 414(@300wpm)
The woman gave Autumn a suspicious once-over. “I am. What do you want?”
Autumn mustered what she hoped was a disarming smile. The woman’s eyes narrowed with even deeper suspicion. Fail. Well, she was already off to a crummy start, might as well dive right in. “Hi, I’m Autumn Clancy. I believe I’m your daughter.”
Deborah’s face did a number of things, none of which gave Autumn the impression the news delighted her, but then she leaned forward, peering more closely at Autumn. “What do you want?” The news, apparently, made that moment no different from the previous one, given she repeated the exact same question.
“To ask you a few questions,” Autumn said. “That’s all.” She might have given an alternate answer had the question been asked differently, but it wasn’t. To know you. She gave herself a heartbeat, two, of disappointment, not delving into the depth of it right then. That was for later, perhaps to process with Bill or maybe alone. But she acknowledged it so she could temporarily tuck it away.
The woman gave one long-suffering sigh but stepped back, opening the door wider and allowing Autumn entrance. The room was just as neat and tidy as she’d expected it to be based on the woman’s appearance, which was to say it was an abysmal wreck. Autumn gingerly picked up some form of undergarment on the back of the wooden chair near the bed, started to wipe at the crustiness on the seat, thought better of touching it with her bare skin, and sat down.
Deborah sat on the bed, drawing one leg beneath her and peering at Autumn again for several long moments as Autumn peered back. Upon closer inspection, she recognized her own cheekbones and the shape of her top lip. Perhaps Deborah did too, because her next comment was, “Huh. Yeah. I see it. Hold on.” She stood, walking to a dresser and opening the top drawer. She took a pile of papers out, riffling through them, all the while mumbling what sounded like, “Thought it was in here.” After searching deeply in another drawer, she paused and looked at whatever was in her hand. She walked back toward Autumn, holding out what looked like an old, weathered picture. “That’s me.”
Autumn took it from her and stared at it as Deborah sat back on the bed. It was Deborah, only much younger, a brightness in her eyes that definitely wasn’t there now, her skin smooth and flawless, hair half up and half down, coincidentally the same way Autumn was wearing her hair now. She looked even more like Autumn in this picture, and a part of her wanted to ask if she could keep it, but some deeper part knew instinctively that it meant more to this person than Autumn herself did. The tangible reminder, perhaps, that she hadn’t always been an emotionally void old shrew. She handed it back. Deborah stared at it with a wistful look, reinforcing Autumn’s assumption from a moment before.
“I spent my first fourteen years at Mercy Hospital with all the other ADHM babies,” Autumn said, though Deborah hadn’t asked and likely wasn’t all too interested. She wasn’t sure of another way to start the conversation though, so she started there.
Deborah bit at her nail for a moment but then shook her head. “No. I didn’t take any Lucy in the Sky. I almost did, but he slapped me right before I was about to inject it.” She shrugged. “It was his stash, the dude I was with at the time, and he flipped when he saw me about to use it. He smacked me good and hard, and I was seeing stars for the next few days. I went to the free clinic about it. They told me I had a concussion, and I was pregnant too.”
Confusion overtook Autumn. “Wait…you didn’t take it. Ever?”
“Not the hard stuff. Not while I was pregnant.” Deborah looked away as though considering. “Just the thought of it made me feel like pukin’. It was the damnedest thing. Maybe I should have kept on getting pregnant. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up here.” She waved her arm around the sad, dingy room with stains on the exposed bedding Autumn refused to consider.
“How is that possible though? I was diagnosed as an ADHM baby.” I was sick for the first fourteen years of my life.
“Couldn’t tell you. Maybe the hospital staff looked at me and assumed.”
Autumn’s gaze flitted over her. The sores on her pallid skin, the old track marks on her arms. The way she kept itching and twitching. If she looked even remotely like this twenty-four years before, Autumn might have assumed the same thing. “The man who slapped you, he was…my father?”
Deborah shrugged. “Who knows.” She tilted her head, studying her again. “You look a little like him in the chin. Pointy little thing. Stubborn.” She paused, her shoulders dropping. “Mean. But suppose he woulda been that with any kinda chin, because you don’t seem mean.”