"Abby?" Mrs. Fuller called up the stairs, "Abigail? Can you come join your father and I downstairs please?"
"Yeah!" her distant reply drifted down. "Be there in a second!" Abby was experimenting with her hair. Her long brown waves were dreadfully dull and average. Her mother wasn't so keen on letting her dye it blonde or some other, more interesting color, so it stayed in its normal, muddy-colored state.
Abby let her hair fall down and spread across her shoulders. Her dark blue eyes closed as she took a deep breath. Conversations with her parents never went well. They always lectured her on something stupid that she'd done, or was going to do in the future.
As she walked down the stairs the scene was almost comical. Her parents sat side by side on the ugly, olive green loveseat in a frozen, flawless state. Her mother's reddish-brown hair was arranged perfectly in a ponytail that flopped over her shoulder. It was quite casual, and meshed well with her red sundress and black heels.
Mr. Fuller looked equally perfect, sans the dress and heels. He'd just shaved and automatically looked much better without the stubble. His black hair was messy, but not in a bad way; sort of the rugged, sexy kind of messy, for his age anyway. He had on a red polo with khaki pants. Figures, they were wearing the same shade of red. That was cute, up to a certain age, but at their age...no. It was weird.
So there they were, on the couch. Stiff as a board, creepy smiles plastered on their faces. Did it scare Abigail? Yes. But, was this display expected? Yes.
Abby flopped down on the equally ugly, olive green sofa opposite them. Her parents whispered softly in tones impossible to hear, so Abby scanned the family photos that hung on the walls. After she turned about six, Abby started noticing a difference from her and her family. They looked perfect, and she looked flawed and messy. Every year it got visibly worse until they were almost painful to look at. She looked like a thrift store next to a designer store; A tent next to a luxury camper.
Mrs. Fuller cleared her throat, and Abby snapped to attention. How long had she been spacing out? Her cheeks turned slightly pink out of embarrassment. "Abigail?" her mother whispered patiently. Her mother? Patient? When did this happen?
"Hmm?" she grunted.
Her mother stuttered, also something that she didn't normally do. "H-how much do you love me, I mean us. No; what I mean to say is, will you still love us no matter what we tell you in just a moment?"
Her eyes were frightened, as were her dad's. What on earth would they tell her that needed that as a preface? She answered slowly, trying not to let her confusion show, "Well...yeah. You are my family, so I think I still can. Depending on what it is."
An audible sigh was heard from her mother. And then she began the story. "First of all, I love you, Abigail-as does your father. And no matter how you react, I still will. There is nothing that could ever cause me to stop loving you. Do you understand that?" Abigail nodded. "Good. Moving on; do you know that it's incredibly hard for me to get pregnant?"
It's a rhetorical questions, Abby didn't answer. She paused for effect, "It is. Your father and I tried for months to get pregnant. Nearly the entire first six months of our marriage was spent in the bedroom. Which I'm sure your father didn't mind at all."
She turned her head and winked at him. Her father smirked back, suggestively, and replied, "Not at all." They gazed into each other's eyes and mentally reminisced those days. Abby tried not to gag. The thought of her parents doing anything like that wasn't something she aspired to see.
"Anyway, back to the story," her mother broke the gaze and turned her icy blue eyes back to Abby. "I wanted a baby, I wanted one so badly."
Her father spoke up. "We went for a walk one day, after getting another 'negative' on a pregnancy test. Then, we got thinking. What if she pretended to be pregnant for the full nine months and in the meantime we set up an adoption?"
"My parents were against adoptions, but what they don't know won't hurt them!" Her mother injected with a grin.
"We decided that was a good idea, and started the process for adopting a newborn-"
Abby cut him off. "Hold up, so I'm...adopted?" Huh, she wasn't expecting that. But, she guessed that explained the painful difference in appearance.
Her parents glanced at each other and her mother replied cautiously, "We'll get to that in a minute, sweetheart." Abby was confused again. "So there I was, pretending to be pregnant. And I wasn't just pregnant around people, I was 24-7. I wanted to get the full experience, or as close as I could get to it.
"My family and friends all believed that my pregnancy was real, which amazed me. The only downside was having to put on all the weight with not really much of a reward at the end. I gained almost thirty pounds, but in the end I lost forty-five." She smiled proudly at that.
"What a Barbie." Abby scoffed, mentally. Her mother was wisp thin and gorgeous as ever. Abby always called her a Barbie-for her perfection-behind her back. Never to her face, as she thought Barbies were a bad influence on girls for giving them an unreachable level of perfection. As a result, Abby never had been given any Barbies.
"But, enough about me and my fake pregnancy woes. We had found this beautiful, baby girl up for adoption-the mother was still pregnant. Her due date was close enough to mine, everything was arranged. We bought a house in New Port, Massachusetts to be closer to your dad's family and further away from mine.
"Finally, we got the call that her baby was born and I was so excited that I thought I might explode. Then," her face suddenly fell, "We got the other call. The baby had died from a serious infection in her lungs soon after birth. I was about to get on the plane to pick her up." Tears streamed down her face, and her father picked up the story.
"That caused your mother to just...not think very clearly. She was angry and sad, and grieving. True, she wasn't technically our baby and we had never met her, but she could have been. Three days after her death, our stuff was being moved to New Port, and we would follow them with the remaining stuff the next morning. That night, your mother went out..."
Her mother finished the story, because it was obvious that her father hadn't a clue exactly how it ended. "I snuck into some pregnant woman's house and preformed a make shift C-section on her. And...I took her baby. Sweetie...that was you. Then, I named you Abigail and took you home."
Abigail's eyes flooded, and poured over the edge. Her hands clenched into fists. She was so upset and angry that it felt like she would burst. Everything had been a lie. Everything.
