Finding Purgatory

by Kristina M Sanchez

  He raised his head so he could look her in the eyes. “It’s just not that simple.” His tone was gentle, it was also firm. “Ani. By your own logic, we should have kept Tori away from the other kids because she might repeat the cycle of abuse. Do you think that would have helped her?”

  Ani deflated. She fell into her chair, rubbing her temples. Her lower lip began to quiver, and she almost started crying. As she breathed in, she regained some semblance of calm.

  Shane sighed. “It all happened five weeks after I started working at the agency. I thought I could help people. I thought I could help kids. Idealism isn’t easy to hold on to in that job, but what happened to Tori and Zach almost killed mine.”

  “Poor baby.” Ani knew it wasn’t a mature response, but her nerves were raw. She didn’t care what the whole ordeal had done to Shane.

  To his credit, Shane didn’t call her on it. “I’m just saying I understand what you’re feeling. For a long time, I thought it was my fault. I thought I must have missed something. I thought I could have stopped it.” He rolled his shoulders as he sat up. “Maybe I could have. Maybe I did miss something. Or maybe bad things happen to good people, good kids.”

  Ani scoffed, and Shane nodded. “You know, my parents raised us Christian. Whenever we went through any hardship when we were kids, my parents would tell me, ‘God only gives us as much as we can handle.’ When I was younger, that thought gave me strength. West and I aren’t religious anymore, but I was back then. I believed there was a benevolent God, and everything happened for a reason.

  “But when that happened to Tori, after everything else I had seen, I was so mad. That was why Zach’s father, his father, touched him like that? Because he could handle it, because he was strong enough? There was some divine plan that required Tori to be hurt the way she was hurt all her life?”

  “It almost drove me crazy to realize, to accept I had so little control. I was about to quit. I couldn’t deal at all, but then West sat me down. He told me he’d been reading about reincarnation.”

  “Shocker,” Ani muttered.

  Shane glanced up. “Yeah. He’s fascinated with the subject. I don’t know if he believes it, but he likes reading about these kinds of things.” He waved his hand. “Anyway, he told me about this theory. There’s still an afterlife, which I personally believe in, but all lives here on Earth are a lesson. He said we choose. We choose our lives like choosing classes in college. Maybe we take one semester easy, get the life as the filthy-rich debutante, but then the next semester, we choose the class that’s just hell. Because we have to do it. We have to get it done.”

  “Why?” Ani’s voice was a bark. She was getting irritated with this story. “Why do we have to go through hell?”

  He looked down. “The point is it fit with what I can and can’t accept about the meaning of life, why we’re here, why bad things happen to people who don’t deserve it. It doesn’t have to work for anyone else. I don’t know what will work for you. For me, West’s story is what I fall back on to get me through the bad twists. And I need that strength, because I do help them. The kids. The parents who deserve to be reunited with their kids. I do help people. I just didn’t help Tori. I tried, but I couldn’t.”

  Looking up again, he pointed at her. “But you still have the chance to help her.”

  “I can’t help her. She won’t let me help her.”

  “What do you call this?” Shane gestured around them.

  Ani didn’t have an answer for that. She sighed. “I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t your fault. I shouldn’t have come at you like I did.”

  Shane nodded. “It isn’t your fault either, you know.”

  Ani scoffed.

  “It isn’t.” His tone was firm.

  “If I hadn’t left her alone.” She shook her head.

  “If you hadn’t left her alone. If her first foster family hadn’t abandoned her. If other families hadn’t ignored her. If Zach hadn’t done what he did to her.” He waved his arms, his gesture clear. A lot happened to Tori that shouldn’t have. “Ani, you were right.”

  “What?”

  “She should have been adopted when she was three. What happened with the Welches wasn’t typical. It was cruel. It was cruel of them to promise to love her as their own and then go back on their word. If things had gone as they were supposed to, she would have been fine without you.”

  Ani looked away, fighting tears.

  “Before Tori can forgive you, it would help if you could forgive yourself. You were a kid who didn’t know what to do. You weren’t trying to be malicious.”

  “I can’t forgive myself,” she whispered.

  “What’s stopping you?”

  “If I have to forgive myself, I have to forgive him.” Ani clapped her hands over her mouth, regretting the words as they left her.

  Shane was lost. “Him who?”

  Ani shook her head in a rough jerk, pressing the heels of her hands against her eyes. “No one. I’m sorry. I’m just upset.”

  She moved to get up, but Shane reached for her, taking her hand to stop her. “Him who?” he asked again.

  “The man who killed my family.” Her voice was shaking. “He wasn’t malicious either. He was abandoned and abused and he was desperate, which is more than I can say for me when I was nineteen.” She gasped. Her lungs felt too pulverized to hold air. “I don’t forgive him. I can’t. I can’t.

  “And I don’t deserve Tori’s forgiveness any more than Stephen Leung deserves mine.”

  Chapter 16: Sugar and Spice

  “Christ, where is this asshole?” Tori mumbled. As requested, she’d drunk her weight in water before coming in for her ultrasound appointment. She already had to pee. Well, she always had to pee, but it was getting urgent.

  Ani, who’d been spaced as usual to that point, smiled at her. “Pregnant woman torture, isn’t it? The, um, the baby.” She swallowed, and it looked like it took some effort for her to straighten out her smile again. “The baby already thinks your bladder is a pillow, and then they thrust that wand at you.”

  Tori didn’t say anything. It struck her that as much as being pregnant sucked, her pregnancy had to be very painful for her sister. It wasn’t so long ago it had been her in Tori’s place. Good memories hurt more, and Ani’s pregnancy had probably been a good thing for her.

  This was an important appointment—the one everyone waited for. Yes, the insurance paperwork would talk about all the particulars. They were measuring the size of her uterus and the baby, all the usual things. They were looking for possible health problems, looking at the position of the placenta, checking fluid levels, and other things Tori wished she knew nothing about. But no one asked about amniotic fluid levels.

  Boy or girl—that was what everyone wanted to know.

  Tori hadn’t thought about it, but she wondered if Ani had.

  What Tori wanted was to offer some measure of sympathy, but when she opened her mouth, she had no words. She’d known darkness, but she couldn’t fathom the loss Ani had suffered. Tori didn’t have the words to say she was sorry for that, and sorry for the inadvertent pain she was putting her through.

  And it was confusing because Tori knew damn well if Ani’s family hadn’t died, if she hadn’t suffered that huge loss, neither of them would be here. Ani would have continued on with her beautiful life, oblivious to what had happened to Tori.

  “Do you want another girl?” Tori asked. She wanted to take it back when she saw Ani wince. She wanted to, but she also didn’t. Her last conversation with Emily echoed in her head.

  “If I were you, I’d want to know what she was thinking. A baby isn’t like a puppy. Does she think she can replace your niece? If it’s a girl, and she wants to call her Mara, I’d take the baby and run away.”

  Ani stumbled over her words before she could get them to come out right. “All I want is for the baby to be healthy. That’s the most important thing.”

  “Isn’t it g
oing to be weird for you? If it’s a girl?” She had to ask. She could see she was hurting Ani, but she had to. She was terrified this wasn’t going to work out, but she wouldn’t have been surprised. Her life was like that—a series of things that didn’t work out the way they should have.

  But this wasn’t her life they were talking about. The parasite deserved every chance. If Tori couldn’t give it anything else, she wanted to give it a good start. Even she had the benefit of three good years before everything went straight to hell.

  Ani looked away, rubbing the back of her neck. “She, if it’s a she, isn’t my Mara. She isn’t my little girl.”

  “So what does that mean?” Tori pushed herself up. “She deserves to be loved like she’s somebody’s little girl. That’s the whole damn point. If you can’t love her because she’s not Mara—”

  Before Tori could continue her diatribe, the door opened and the ultrasound technician came in.

  If he noticed that the air in the room was thick enough to choke on, the technician didn’t comment. He smiled and asked the usual question. How are we feeling, as if Tori had any right to speak for this little creature she was housing. She told him they were fine though she really wasn’t sure if they were.

  The blurry image of the baby, a lot more defined from the last time she’d seen it, appeared on the monitor. The technician pointed and narrated as he moved the wand along the swell of her belly. “Arm. Leg. And of course, the all-important question. Do we want to know the sex? This little one isn’t shy at all.”

  Tori looked at Ani. “Well?” The word was a challenge.

  Her sister looked like she was going to blow chunks. “Yeah, of course.” Her voice only shook a little as she spoke.

  Please let it be a boy, Tori chanted to herself. Maybe it would make a difference. Maybe Ani could love a little boy.

  The technician smiled. “It’s a girl.”

  At some point, Ani had hung a noose around her own neck, and the more her sister spoke, the tighter the rope got.

  It had started with that question, a damn stupid question in Ani’s mind.

  Do you want another girl?

  What an absurd thing to ask. She’d had to bite her lip so her automatic response wouldn’t slip out.

  She didn’t want another girl. She wanted her girl, her baby, her Mara.

  In a way, it was ironic. Before Mara had died, Ani had been preparing herself for her child’s burgeoning inquisitiveness. From what she’d seen with her friends, the endless “but why” line of questioning from young children could be maddening. Of course, she hadn’t had the chance to get there with Mara, but Tori’s persistent questioning couldn’t have been so different.

  As her friends had often warned, it was threatening to drive her right out of her mind.

  “People don’t throw baby showers in this situation, do they? You’re the only one who’s going to care about the stuff you need for this thing.” Tori gestured at her stomach. “Why aren’t you? Why aren’t you thinking about a nursery?”

  Ani counted to ten and affected a calm tone. “What’s the point of putting together a nursery if we’re going to move? Besides, I already have most of what you . . . I need.”

  Her heart gave a painful lurch in her chest. Mara had only barely outgrown her crib. Ani and Jett had discussed giving it to Goodwill, but then he’d gotten that twinkle in his eye.

  “There’s no sense in giving it away if we’re going to have to buy another one soon,” he’d said.

  The crib had been pushed off to the side in the garage, where it remained. Before Tori, Ani had been trying to bring herself to donate it. If she donated it, she could stop thinking about how she and Jett had just started trying for another baby.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Ani asked, trying to keep one step ahead of the thoughts she didn’t want to acknowledge.

  Her little sister looked wary, but she waited.

  “Are you still sure you want me to keep the baby?”

  Tori blanched. “What do you mean?”

  From the expression on her sister’s face, Ani knew she was going to have to navigate this conversation carefully. “It’s just that you have a strong opinion about what I should or shouldn’t be doing. It’s okay if you’ve changed your mind.”

  “Is that what your game is?” Tori scowled as she stood up. “You aren’t doing anything to get ready for this baby because you’re going to dump it all on me at the last minute?”

  “That’s not—” Ani broke off and took a steadying breath before she tried again. “I want you to understand that you still have every option. One way or another, I’m not leaving you. If you want to raise your daughter, I’ll still help you.”

  “You don’t want her,” Tori said, the words an accusation instead of a question. Ani wondered if she even realized she was gripping her little bump, looking every bit the protective mother. “Tell me the truth. You don’t want her.”

  Ani couldn’t answer at first. In her fleeting thoughts, what little she felt for the life Tori carried frightened her. At the very least, the baby was her niece. Ani had a sense of responsibility and a need to do the right thing for her the same as she did for Tori. But the emotion she felt when she thought of them was warped at best. She didn’t know if she loved either of them, and they both deserved unconditional love.

  “Nothing has changed,” she said. “I meant what I said months ago.” She didn’t have another choice there. She couldn’t betray a girl who’d been betrayed by everyone she knew.

  But how could she take a child she didn’t know if she could love?

  She really didn’t know if she was capable of that kind of love anymore. She remembered the emotion with perfect clarity, but without Mara there to embody it, that part of her felt broken. Not even broken. Broken pieces might be mended together. That part of her was charred. It was ashes and the acrid smell of smoke.

  That couldn’t be fair. Avoiding something like that was the whole reason Tori was giving the baby up in the first place.

  It was a problem without a solution, at least not one Ani could figure out.

  Ani changed the subject again, finding a safe tangent. “The Realtor already has buyers interested in this house. If we’re lucky, things will happen fast, but that means we need to be ready to move. You should come with me to look at houses this weekend.”

  Tori crossed her arms over her chest, her stance moving from protective to defensive. “It’s your house.”

  “It will be your house, too.”

  “Not for long.”

  Ani studied her sister, feeling the pressure around her heart lessen a degree. This, at least, she could deal with. “I would like it if you could consider the new house your home.” She kept her tone even and unassuming. “I want you to feel comfortable there for as long as you need. There’s no rush, no deadline. You don’t have to move out after the baby comes. In fact, I don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation anyway. For one thing, where would you go?”

  Tori shifted her weight and shrugged. “I’ll figure it out.”

  Taking a chance, Ani angled her body toward the girl. She scooted as close as she dared. “The baby is due at the end of September. That gives you time to apply for the semester that starts at the end of January.”

  “You mean school? Like college?” Tori scoffed. “What the hell would I do at college? More importantly, how would I pay for it?”

  “Well, since I know what you’d say if I offered to pay for it . . .” She smiled so Tori would know she was teasing. “Consider this. You could go to the community college. I’m sure you would qualify for aid. You could cover your tuition credits with financial aid, take your general education courses there, work on your GPA, and then you’ll be able to transfer to whatever college you want.”

  “And live with you?”

  “Is living here so much worse than any other place you’ve lived?”

  “I’m not going to be a mooch
er. As soon as the kid is born, I’ll look for a job. I’ll get out as soon as I can.” She cocked her head, her expression far off as she muttered, “People are looking for roommates all the time. I could do that.”

  “Tori, you are such a smart girl.” Again, Ani cut herself off and closed her eyes. She knew from well-earned experience going down this road would not end well for her. “Please understand you have options. If it makes you feel better, when you’re up to it, you can find part-time work, and I’ll charge you rent while you go to school. Let me be your roommate. We’ll work it out.”

  “I told you at the beginning, I don’t want anything from you.” The girl’s voice was harsh but also tired. Ani wondered if her will was wavering, if she wanted to give in and accept her help.

  “This is what family does. We help each other. And I know what you’re going to say. What I did to you was the opposite of helpful, but I’ve never lied to you. I only left you because I thought you would have what you deserved. Helping you get on your feet is the least of what your family should do for you.” She hoped her fervent tone would convey her sincerity. Tori’s wariness made her heart ache. As much as she didn’t understand how she felt about her sister, Ani wanted to see her succeed.

  When Tori didn’t have any comeback, Ani had to force herself not to belabor the point.

  “I’ll go with you to see houses,” Tori mumbled under her breath.

  “Really?” Ani hadn’t expected even that slight win.

  “Yeah, whatever. It’s your house. It’s your choice. But it could be fun to see stuff. What some people think is good decor is hilarious.”

  Ani struggled to keep the smile off her face. “Okay.”

  “Hey, Ani,” Tori called just before Ani could make it out of the room.

  “Yes?”

  “You really want to do something for me?”

  “Yes.”

  Her sister leveled her with a challenging stare. “I want you to take me to where our parents are buried.”

  Ani’s heart skipped a beat.