Before You Go: A heartbreaking page-turner about love, loss and family by Kelly Heard

Author:Kelly Heard [Heard, Kelly]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781838880057
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2019-10-29T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Four

Before

July 1990

Dell wasn’t sure where she was going when she left, only that she needed to get out. She made a quick stop at a pharmacy, then found herself back at Mason’s house. She went to the back door through the screened porch, which was always unlocked. London greeted her in the kitchen; she scratched his ears and hurried past. She tore open the cardboard box holding the pregnancy test, then went into the bathroom. Dell glared at the box, with instructions advertising “results in four minutes” to tell her what she already knew, adding up the nausea, the tired spells, all the little ways her body had told her something was not the same. She didn’t have four minutes to wait.

Dell walked up the two creaky flights of stairs, collecting her things: a pair of shoes, a once-worn pair of jeans there, a bra that laid on the floor by the bed. Her father’s red baseball cap. She opened the drawer in the dresser that had been designated hers and pulled out its contents in handfuls, stuffing whatever would fit into her shoulder bag with shaking hands. She knew abortions were legal, if not discussed in polite company. She still had an out. But that dread muddled with the rest of the morning, images of Mason’s cold eyes, his father’s over-polite smile, a picture of her father’s body in its coffin. In perplexing straits, the heart wishes for simple solutions. It wanted the stark surgery of the pipeline through the forest, a boundary drawn clean through a tangle of confusion.

Her bag was full to overflowing. Dell saw pieces of clothing that belonged to her, but, without room in the bag, decided she didn’t need them. Her old astrology book lay on the bedside table. It could stay there. She knew it by heart, anyway.

There were other things that belonged to her here: the left side of the bed, the tangled garden behind the screened porch, the left-hand chair at the breakfast nook in the kitchen. Those things would have cost her too dearly to keep. But Dell tripped back across the room, took the blue paint chip from where it rested on the floor. She tucked the little square of Juniper Berry Mist into her pocket and gave the loft one final look as she walked out.

Holding the banister to steady her steps, Dell walked back down the stairs. She passed the second floor with its airy bedrooms, the smell of fresh-cut wood and paint in the foyer. Watching the stained-glass panel above the front door, Dell walked right into Mason in the doorway.

“What’s all that?” He scanned over her bag, a disorganized bundle of clothes sticking out of the half-zippered top.

“What does it look like?” Dell ducked her shoulder and squeezed past him, walking outside onto the porch.

“Wait a second, Dell.” Mason removed his jacket and threw it on the coat rack, then tugged at the top button on his shirt until it pulled loose. “Can you tell me what’s going on here?”

“I don’t know,” she said, considering his question.

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