A Selfie to Die For

28) Daddy's angry

"Mercy" by Hurts

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Emily couldn't sleep that night. She was restless. The note left on her purse left her thinking maybe Declan had a split personality. One side was capable of the upmost of wickedness, while the other side hated himself for it.
There were no answers as to why sent the note. It wasn't signed. The best answer Ben had was that Declan slipped it into her bag when Emily wasn't looking.


His idea was to send it to a crime lab to get prints, but even as he packed it away to bring with him back to New York Emily knew the paper would come back clean. Declan was many things but stupid was definitely not one of them. He seemed mentally ill to a certain extent, but stupidity wasn't among his problems.


Still, the note haunted Emily. It made her feel strange sadness for Declan's mental illness.
Each time she tried closing her eyes Emily  then thought of what was simply being referred to as "The procedure" the next day. Her family seemed to accept that abortion was what she was choosing, and her extended family even wholeheartedly supported the idea.

Emily in turn felt not only sick but also horribly guilty. She couldn't help but think of all the people who supported the pro-choice option. It was a little funny that all the people who supported abortion had already been born. Emily found a sick guilt was plaguing her, making her feel she'd be just as evil as Declan if she had the baby taken out of her. If everything happened for a reason, did her attack happen to make this baby exist, or was it all just unfortunate coincidence?

That was the question Emily battled with all of the next morning and early afternoon. She wrestled with the feelings that the baby was supposed to be born, that  it was maybe one small beacon of hope given all the ugliness that had happened. Or perhaps bringing the baby into the world would just make another Declan.
"It's nurture, not nature..." Emily muttered to herself as her mother checked her in to the women's clinic downtown. People weren't born evil. Innocent little babies didn't automatically become evil because that's what their parents were.

Emily felt she herself was now evil. She lied to Jake, telling him that she was giving the operation longer thought. He wanted to go with her if she chose to have one. Instead, Jake went off to school that day not suspecting in the least that Emily was lying to him. By one forty-five in the afternoon, Emily was in south Austin women's clinic. Her attorney had arranged it so the baby would be taken out and immediately sent to a special crime lab for forensic testing.

Emily felt she was not only evil for lying to the boy she loved, she also felt evil for taking away this baby's life solely because she didn't want to be inconvenienced. Could she choose not to abort it, could she choose to raise it, or give it up for adoption?

But, what if the little baby grew up and bore a striking resemblance to Declan himself? She shuddered at the thought of a tiny little person sporting Declan's evil grin. Still, Emily couldn't help but strangely feel protective of what she was mentally referring to as the tiny nugget in her belly. Even with only fifteen minutes away until the abortion, Emily still didn't feel certain this was a good idea. She had a very bad feeling she shouldn't go through with this.

"Okay...." Madison sighed after a while, her eyes now watering. "Are you...are you sure, honey?"

This had been at least the hundredth time Madison had asked such a question.
"Yeah" Emily lied with a straight face. She sat herself down in the chair beside her mother, but ignored all reassurances and comments Madison was spewing. She didn't care to listen. Emily only thought of the tiny little nugget in her stomach. She researched abortion, it wasn't pretty. Nothing too good sounded about scraping her uterus. Just the minor word scraping had Emily tingling in shudders.

A small cry sounded, startling the sleep deprived Emily. For a near nanosecond, she feared the baby inside her womb was suddenly staging a revolt against the situation by crying in indignation. Luckily, it was just a woman passing as she exited a room holding her newborn baby. The woman had apparently been to a fertility specialist and was now showing off the product of it. She held a tiny little baby wearing a light pink onesie.