Second Birth

The snow was still falling as she carefully walked towards the broken water bridge. It was so cold her tears hardly had time to form before freezing onto her face. With each step she could feel her heart blackening just a little bit but she forced herself to press onward.

When she reached the bridge, she did her best to inconspicuously glance around the small park to make sure no one noticed her slip down under the bridge. Once hidden behind the rotting wood planks she loosened her clutch on the wrapped child in her arms.

She looked hard at the baby, this baby she had wanted so badly. She had prayed and cried for so long. But this hadn’t been what she wanted: a child suffering from disease and physical deformity. She told herself that this was for the best for the baby: that she was saving him from a life of abuse and degrading attention. But she knew deep down, this was for her because she didn’t want to have to deal with all the suffering that would come from such a child and the tears fell harder down her swollen face.

“I’m so sorry, Luke. Mommy is so sorry. But this isn’t the life I wanted for you. This isn’t the life I wanted for me. Things are better this way,” she whispered to the child still asleep in her arms. She wrapped the blanket up over his face, just a little too tightly and laid him down in the snow. Her tears had turned to almost hysterics now as she started shoveling the snow on top of him. She prayed that the weather and elements would take him over so no one would know, come spring time, what she had done.

* * *

As June came around, she sat in the bathroom once again, waiting for the results of the pregnancy test. Her heart hadn’t fully recovered from the death of her first child or the lies she told to cover it up afterwards. Tears of mixed emotions flooded down her face as the anxiety swelled up in her.

When she flipped the stick she felt both joy and fear to realize she was indeed expecting another baby.

She opened the door to finally let in her husband and did her best to only express the joy she felt.

* * *

As the years past and her baby girl grew up, the woman finally let her worry and fears fade. She finally let her troubling past slip from the forefront of her mind into just a painful memory.

The winter air blew cold around her and her daughter as they walked carefully through the park. The woman tightened up her jacket a little bit and then turned to do the same for her daughter.

Before she had time to redirect herself she found the bridge in front of her once again. That haunted bridge that brought up the black mark on her heart. She did her best to hide her tears from her daughter.

Slowly and somewhat begrudgingly, they walked towards the bridge to cross. She had planned on simply crossing as fast as she could and then continuing to do as she had done for years and put this memory behind her. But as they approached the bridge the little girl started to scream and cry. She pulled against her mother’s hand and refused to step over the bridge.

“Sweetheart, what’s wrong? What’s going on?” The mother asked crouching down to hold her daughter’s cheeks in her gloved hands. The hot air blew out quickly from her daughter’s screams and ragged breath.

“Please Mommy, I love you. Don’t you love me? I don’t want to die!” The little girl screamed.

“What are you talking about? Of course I love you. Why would you think you are going to die?” The mother started slightly petting the girls hair but the little girl was trying to pull away and run back away from the bridge.

“I love you Mommy, don’t kill me again. I don’t want to die under the bridge again,” the little girl screamed and a fear rose so deep in the mother she had no words.