My blood ran completely cold as I held the paper.
During my relationship with Elias, I had wanted to be a mother more than anything else in the world.
Every month I cried when I saw a negative pregnancy test.
He would hug me and whisper that it would happen eventually, and that we just needed to keep trying.
I decided to go to the prison to face him one last time.
I found him looking aged, thin, and hollowed out with a dull, vacant gaze.
“Thank you for helping Leo get his treatment,” he said, looking at the floor.
“I did not come here to talk about that,” I replied sharply.
He swallowed hard, trying to find his words.
“You were never infertile, Ella.”
I felt the room start to spin as I sat in the hard plastic chair.
“What did you just say to me?”
“My mother was obsessed with our plan,” he confessed.
“She used to give me emergency contraceptive pills that she would crush into a fine powder.”
“I would stir it into your morning smoothies whenever we ate at her house, or I would swap your daily vitamins with them.”
“She said that if you got pregnant, it would be much harder for me to file for divorce, and that a child would ruin our entire plan to take your assets.”
I could not breathe as the memory of my tears and my doctor’s appointments flashed through my mind.
I remembered Elias stroking my hair while I blamed myself for not being able to give him a family.
“You drugged me,” I whispered, my voice barely audible.
He started to cry in the sterile visitation room.
“I was a coward, but you have to look at it from my perspective.”
“If we had actually had a child together, you would still be tied to me for the rest of your life.”
I stood up slowly, looking down at the man who had stolen my body and my time.
“You are right about one thing, Elias.”
“My children will never have a single drop of your blood in their veins.”
“Ella, please, when they ask for my parole hearing, say something good about me, you helped Leo, just help me too.”
“Leo is an innocent child, Elias, but you are not.”
I left the prison building trembling with a mixture of rage and relief.
I cried in the parking lot until Daniel came to pick me up.
He hugged me without asking for any explanations, the way only someone who does not want to fix you, but just hold you, can possibly hug you.
