Before I Called You Mine by Nicole Deese

Author:Nicole Deese
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Romance;Single mothers—Fiction;Man-­woman relationships—Fiction;FIC042040;FIC042100;FIC027270
ISBN: 9781493422685
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2020-01-21T00:00:00+00:00

chapter

nineteen

As a young girl, I remembered questioning my dad about the four bedridden grandparents in the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie. My youthful body and active mind couldn’t grasp the concept of living in bed, eating nothing but boiled cabbage, and wearing only threadbare nightgowns—not to mention staring at the same three faces all day long. Like usual, I’d asked far more questions than my father was willing to construct answers for. An ironic exchange, considering only a few years later, he would choose a similar path after his fall.

But unlike my father, I refused to give up on life the way he had.

With shaky arms, I shoved the hundred-pound comforter off my weary body and found my footing on the icy floor below. As cold seeped into my bones, I repeated the mantra I’d been saying to myself since deciding to go in to work tomorrow morning. “Just one day at a time.”

Gail had advised me—numerous times—to use my three personal days and two of my stored-up sick days and take the week off. But I couldn’t do that to my students. They didn’t deserve a bedridden-by-choice teacher. They deserved the Miss Bailey before the call. The naïve first-grade teacher ignorant of soul-crushing computer glitches that stole children from the hearts of the mothers who loved them.

I’d give anything to be her again.

And yet, even as I thought it, shame descended over me like a storm cloud. Wishing I could be her again meant never having laid eyes on Noah’s sweet face. Never knowing the hope of motherhood to come. Is that really what I want?

Too afraid to wait for the answer, I headed for the shower and tried to will energy into my body. I needed to see what condition today’s sub had left my classroom in and read through any notes before I showed up to school tomorrow morning.

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