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Mother of All Secrets by Kathleen M. Willett

Author: Kathleen M. Willett

Publisher: Lake Union Publishing

Genres: Fiction Other

Publish Date: August 1, 2022

ISBN-10: 1542038952

Pages: 272

File Type: Epub, PDF

Language: English

Book Preface

Tuesday, October 13

I’m running, or trying to, at least—staggering along, wheezing, fighting to get as far away from that house as quickly as possible.

I used to love running, but I haven’t even considered trying since having Clara. And I certainly didn’t expect circumstances like these, in which I would need to.

But here I am.

There are a few people on the street; it’s late, but it’s New York, so there are always people. I hope I just seem like a jogger exercising at a slightly odd time and not someone fleeing a horrific scene that I won’t ever be able to erase or unsee. I pray the people I pass can’t see the blood, that the darkness of both the night and my clothing will protect me and my secrets. All of them.

I have no idea where to go. I’m only a few blocks from my own apartment, but going home isn’t an option. I can’t see my husband and baby right now. Can’t risk catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, either. I’m scared of the woman who would be looking back at me.

I just need to keep moving until I figure out what the hell to do.

The problem is that the me who agreed to do what we’ve done isn’t really me. Not that I could tell you who that is. I haven’t been me for months. I’ve been an exhausted, overwhelmed, depressed woman I don’t even recognize. And this woman agreed to commit a violent crime. But she isn’t me.

There were so many holes in the plan. Why couldn’t I see them?

And now I’m going to lose everything. Clara. My sweet girl. What will you do without your mommy? What will I do without you? A life without you is no life at all. No matter how hard the past few months have been, I have never once doubted that I love you more than anything.

And even if we somehow get away with it—somehow, by some miracle—I’ll never really be me again, because I will always be able to truthfully say: we killed someone.

We killed someone.

Chapter One

Thursday, October 1

Screams woke me, as they had every night (and morning, and afternoon) for the past eighty-six days. Immediately, my heart started pounding. Despite eighty-six days of practice, I still wasn’t used to being yanked from sleep by shrieks. There was something so violent, so merciless about it, like it was some kind of military training drill I was being forced to undergo. Except this wasn’t a drill—it was my life, and there was no end to it in sight. I felt fairly certain I would never sleep again.

I looked to my left and could just make out the slow rise and fall of Tim’s shoulder blade. Could he honestly be sleeping through this? I wondered with an anger that surprised even me a little bit. Seriously? I checked my phone for the time, hoping it was at least 2:00 a.m. That would mean that I had been sleeping for nearly three hours. That maybe I’d feel okay tomorrow, even if the rest of the night was a disaster. Three hours was pretty good. But, predictably, I had no such luck. It was 11:53 p.m. Great. I had been sleeping for a glorious, blissful forty-five minutes.

I sighed as loudly as possible and made no effort to quiet my movements as I rose from tangled sheets, inadvertently kicking off a dirty towel as I did. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d changed our sheets and properly made our bed. There was a distinct sour breast milk odor clinging to our room.

Tim stirred—finally—and mumbled, “You need anything?”

What I needed was to go somewhere remote and sleep for a week straight. To shower more than twice a week. To look in the mirror and actually recognize my reflection, to see me, Jenn, rather than the swollen, grumpy, leaky ghost of who I once was. To think about something other than this now eleven-pound alien who had taken over our home and lives. Better yet, for my husband to miraculously start lactating.

What I said instead of all these things, huffily, was “No. I got her.”

I walked over to Clara’s nook. She slept in our bedroom—our tiny apartment only had one bedroom—but we had her partitioned off to maintain some semblance of separation. Apparently, a little distance between the baby and the mom was important for longer sleep stretches. I’d read on a lactation website that “babies can smell the milk” and she would never stop crying if she knew I was near. “Jenn, get that baby out of your room as quickly as possible,” my sister-in-law, too, had advised me enthusiastically. “As soon as we moved Tyler to his crib in his own room, he started sleeping through the night immediately!” But she wasn’t exactly in the trenches with me: they lived in Connecticut in a huge house, and her kids were in middle school now. I didn’t remind her that we didn’t really have anywhere to move Clara, but I did order collapsible room dividers from Amazon that same afternoon, recharged with hope that this would be a game changer. So far, providing her with a makeshift cubicle had made no difference. At three months old, Clara had not slept more than three hours straight, and even three-hour stretches were a rare treat. Of course, that meant I hadn’t slept more than three hours, either.

I stood over Clara’s bassinet for a minute, watching her face contort as she vacillated between a shuddering whimper and an all-out wail. I’d read in Bringing Up Bébé that I should pause for a moment before picking her up and give her a minute to settle herself. She probably wasn’t actually hungry, the book had advised, and the sooner babies started “doing their nights,” the better for everyone. Well, obviously. But as much as I wanted to be a cool French parent, with a chill, self-soothing baby, her cry set off every alarm in my body, and the only way to turn off the alarms was to pick her up. And pardonnez-moi, but she always seemed hungry to me.

I picked her up, and she stopped crying as if I had flipped a switch. I nestled her cheek into my neck and padded back to bed, whispering, “Hi, sweet girl. Shh shh shh, you’re okay, you’re with Mama now.” Sometimes it amazed me that as blind tired as I was, a part of me was still so relieved to see her. Sure, it wasn’t ideal that she was awake throughout the night, but her being awake meant that she hadn’t choked on her own spit-up or suffocated on her crib sheet, which was something I spent admittedly way too much time thinking about (and googling).

I flopped back down on the bed, holding Clara with one arm as I rearranged pillows behind me with my other, again not bothering to attempt to spare Tim from the commotion. If I was awake, Tim should be, too, although he didn’t seem to be anymore, with his back still to me, steadily rising and falling. Our pediatrician had recently given us the green light to start phasing out night feeds, since Clara was growing well, but I knew I could return to sleep sooner if I just stuck her on a boob. It was pretty much the only thing that soothed her; I’d end up being awake even longer if I tried to get her back to sleep without feeding her, engaging in an exhaustive and most often fruitless routine of rocking and shh-ing and deliriously singing weird songs that I made up.

As Clara latched, I vaguely considered with guilt the large glass of wine—had I topped it off?—I had consumed just a few hours before. But the challenge of getting up and walking to the fridge and preparing a bottle of pumped milk right now felt insurmountable. Clara nursed contentedly, her eyelids drooping and fluttering as she did so, falling back to sleep within seconds. I closed my eyes and willed myself to stay awake through her feed. I was constantly dozing off while holding her, and I knew it wasn’t safe; I could roll onto her, or she could roll off the bed. Stay awake, stay awake, was the last thing I remembered thinking when I opened my eyes to the clock showing 2:30 a.m., my neck a solid block from sleeping in such a contorted position, Clara stirring in my arms, crying out softly, ready to be fed once again.