He Sent Me to Prison for Her, Then Regretted It

Synopsis

Sometimes the truth didn't matter to me. All I wanted was to be done with everything that had anything to do with him. When I was three months pregnant, Charles Rivers told me to take the fall for Vanessa Stone. The confession lay on the table in front of me, black ink on white paper. It felt like a cold headstone pressing down on my chest. Charles sat across from me with his knuckles resting on the edge of the table. I stared at his long, clean fingers until my eyes lost focus. Charles said, "Emily, Vanessa isn't well. "She wouldn't survive prison. You're pregnant, and the lawyer says you have a shot at house arrest. It won't be that hard on you." I looked down at my belly and touched the little life growing inside me. "And if I say no?" I asked. Charles looked up at me for one second, then looked away. I understood. This wasn't a discussion. It was a notice. I clenched my fists until my nails bit into my palms, and the pain cleared my head. "After I take the fall for her, are we square?" "Yes." He had settled on that answer long before then. I stared into his eyes. "Do you swear?" Charles's brow twitched with a rare flicker of impatience. After a few seconds, he said, "I swear." I picked up the pen and signed my name carefully. Before I went to prison, I had an abortion at the hospital. When Charles found out, he lost control in front of me for the first time. In the visiting room, he stared at me through the glass, his palm flat on the counter, the veins standing out on the back of his hand. "Emily Shaw, what gave you the right to get rid of my child?" I watched the red creep up into his eyes. It struck me as funny all of a sudden. So he could feel pain too. Only it was never me he hurt for. "I won't let my child grow up with a mother behind bars, or with a father who put her there."