Thin Love (Thin Love, #1)(111)
“I don’t care.” Again, Keira closed her eyes, moving her fingers to her temples, trying to ease the pounding there. “I’m legally responsible for myself and I don’t want this woman or her husband anywhere near me.”
Two small steps and her mother reached for her. “Keira…”
“Get. Out.”
And for once, the woman listened. For once, she didn’t exhaust herself exerting her will over her daughter, and when she walked out of that hospital room, Keira felt the heavy weight of her mother’s presence leave with her. It moved from her shoulders, from her chest and finally Keira could breathe.
A yellow brick wall greeted Keira as she waited in the Orleans Parish Prison lobby. The clerk copying her driver’s license moved the card between her plump fingers as though she was looking for a flaw, some small indication that Keira’s I.D. was a fake.
She still felt sore, achy and the fresh bout of morning sickness that Leann was convinced was psychosomatic had Keira feeling woozy and uncomfortable, like her skin had been pulled taut over her bones. Only three days out of the hospital, three days since she’d determined never to see her mother again, and Keira sat waiting for a suspicious jail clerk to tell her it was okay to walk through those heavy metal doors to speak with Kona. Keira didn’t know what she’d do or where she’d go the next day. She only knew she had to see Kona. She had to tell him about the hope growing inside her.
“Miss?” the clerk called and Keira jumped to her feet, pulling her I.D. and a Visitor’s badge under the glass in the metal dip of the desk. “Ten minutes until the end of the last visiting period. You’ll have a half hour with the inmate and then I need that badge back.”
She’d arrived twenty minutes earlier, scribbled her name on a faded form attached to a clip board. Keira glanced at that list, spotting a name that filled her with unease and the rumble in her stomach only got worse. “Lalei Alana.” Kona’s mother, and then, under that name, “Koa Hale,” his grandfather.
Keira closed her eyes, not eager to see either of them. It wasn’t fear of what they’d say to her that had her ready to bolt from the room, but the heavy weight of guilt she felt. Luka had gone with her to rescue Kona. He’d gone willingly, eagerly, but he’d gone because Keira had called him. He’d gone because, like Keira, he wanted to rescue Kona. That wasn’t an excuse. Luka had still ended up dead and Keira didn’t think Kona’s family would thank her for leading Luka to that death.
A screech from the large metal door that opened to the visitor’s area brought Keira’s attention away from the Admin desk and when she saw Professor Alana walking towards her, several thoughts came at once. The first was that the woman looked older. The death, the burden of burying your own child and the empty future of another seemed to wear on her; it was written in the unkempt wrinkles on her linen shirt and the loose fitting hang of her worn jeans. She had always walked with her chin uplifted, shoulders back and her stance elegant, but the woman who caught her eyes, who slammed the door shut behind her, slumped her shoulders, took sloppy steps toward Keira.
“You have a lot of nerve coming here.” Professor Alana swatted at her eyes, brushing back the hair falling from her loose bun. Keira didn’t jerk away from her when the older woman gripped her elbow, or when she pulled her toward the back of the lobby. “He doesn’t want to see you.”
She wouldn’t believe it. In all honesty, Keira didn’t care if Kona hated her right then. She knew telling him about the baby would change things. She knew him; she knew how he’d blame himself for Luka’s death. He needed a glimmer of hope and Kiera wanted to give him that. “I don’t care, Professor Alana.” She twisted out of the woman’s grip and stepped away from her. “I need to talk to him.”
The woman lifted her eyebrows, her gaze working over Keira’s face and then she sighed, sitting on the plastic chair to her left before she opened the purse on her lap. “This is about that baby.” She kept her eyes downcast, her fingers rustling through her purse until she withdrew her checkbook. A swipe of her pen and the woman tore out a check, shoving it at Keira without a word.
Five hundred dollars. Alana thought her grandchild’s life was worth five hundred dollars. She spotted the Memo and Keira crumbled the check between her fingers.
“To fix Kona’s lapse in judgment?”
“What else would I call this?”
Keira’s heart would not soften, despite the bags under the professor’s eyes or the dark circles that told her sleep had not been easy for her. She understood the heartache, felt echoes of her own father’s death in the shadows beneath Professor Alana’s eyes, but she wouldn’t be written off. She would not let her mother or Kona’s decide the course of their lives. He had a right to know about their baby. Despite his possible anger at her, despite the gut-wrenching loss she knew he must be feeling, he still had to know that hope would come to them.
“I don’t want your money. Take this.” She waved the wrinkled check back at the professor, then slipped it in her back pocket when the woman only glared at her, top lip twitching.
Suddenly Professor Alana grabbed Keira’s arms and shook her twice. “I will not let some stupid bitch ruin my son’s future. You say a word to him about that damn baby and I will destroy you, little girl. I promise you that.” Her fingernails bit into Keira’s skin and she tried to break away, to pull out of the woman’s touch. “You’ve already taken one son from me, you will not take Kona!”