Lady Of The Church

Epilogue

"We have finals to worry about, Jill!" Austin has done nothing but stress her out the entire time she was driving. "Why do we still have to bother with them? I can't believe that-"

"Austin, stop!!!! I'm doing this for us, I'm doing this for you, I'm doing this for my own sanity!!! Austin!!!" Jill cried. "Stop complaining for once in your life."

"We have no right to go wherever you're heading us," Austin said simply. He still sounded annoyed even though he had no right to be. "But I'm fine with it as long as we get rid of him..."

"That's why I'm doing this, Austin. I'm doing this for you. Why can't you understand this?" Jill asked. "I can't drive while you keep annoying me about something that's been over and gone for a long, long time!"

"I'm sorry, babe," Austin said. He glanced over at her. "So, Elizabeth Ramsey told you that the Goody's want him?"

"Mrs.Goody has expressed an interest in wanting to raise him as another child she had at a more appropriate age. She understands how hard it is-"

"Especially because he looks just like him!"

"I was going to say how hard it is being full-time college students with a two year old. Geez, Austin. Let it go!" Jill said.

"Why don't you let it go?" Austin despised little Sherman Goody Jr. more and more everyday. The kid was the spitting image of the father. He had the same freckes, same red hair, same blue eyes, same everything.

Jill sighed. "Austin, I don't want to hear it ever again from you. It's hard enough having to say good-bye to my own child and give him to his grandparents. He's not even going to know that they're his grandparents." They were planning on giving little Sherman Jr. to the Goody's and they were going to pass him off as a child they had in their thirties. The kid would never even know Jill was its own mother. "But I'm doing this for us, okay?"

Since the Goody's left the entire Graymoor area after Sherman's death, they started over far upstate in the mountains. It was a good hour and a half drive from the city to where they were, but both Jill and Austin believed it was for the better of their relationship for her to give up Little Shermie.

"That kid changed you-" Austin started to say.

"I know that, Austin. I'm still a whale-"

"I meant actual Sherman Goody, Jill. He changed you for the worse. You lost yourself when you were with him. You alienated yourself believing you were all alone, just like him. But you were never alone to begin with. I was there the entire time, but you didn't realize it," Austin said. "I can't live with a child that looks just like him, Jill. He ruined you, I hope you know that. All the stuff you say about never feeling the same way and how you're going to feel forever alone...it hurts."

So it was going to be this argument again. "Well, I don't feel alone now. And I fell in love again." Sure, Jill cared deeply and had love for Austin, it just wasn't with the same kind of passion and purpose with which she fell deeply in love with Sherman. "Fine, maybe he changed me a bit and maybe I alienated myself a bit."

"It was like a nightmare that appeared as a dream to you. You always had a sort of darkness and loneliness to you, he triggered that in you. You were believing people hated you and that he was all you had and you were all he had. That you guys deserved each other. Consider yourself lucky that the nightmare is long over, Jill. And now all that's left is to get rid of his son."

Ignoring Austin's cold remarks, Jill nodded. "Maybe it was sort of a psychological thing," she guessed. "But you know I have that thing with me. That I kinda need someone. And he was that someone."