Page 3 of Beautiful When He Breaks

I don’t mean a little tremor either. I mean full-body, bones-rattling, stomach-gone-cold shaking. The paper crackles so loudly I can hear it over the silence packed into the foyer.

Celeste’s handwriting is still pretty; that’s the first stupid thought I have. My throat closes so abruptly I nearly gag.

Eli,

I’m sorry to do this to you this way.

My eyes drag over the words once, then twice, then a third time because they refuse to make sense the first two times. I know the guys are watching me. I feel every stare, but I can’t look up. I can’t move. I can barely keep air in my lungs.

My parents found out. They said they didn’t raise me to kill a baby, but they also said they weren’t letting me shame them by having a child out of wedlock. They wanted me to give her to a family from church. I didn’t want that. I thought you should have her because she’s yours.

“She,” I whisper. Not it. Not baby. She.

My daughter is asleep in that car seat on the entryway table, wrapped in a pale-yellow blanket with tiny white stars, her mouth soft and open, one fist tucked under her chin.

My daughter.

Jesus Christ, the words don’t fit inside my head. They scrape against everything I thought my life was supposed to be until nothing feels solid anymore.

Attached is the lawyer’s paperwork. I signed away my parental rights. I don’t want anything to do with her. I’m sorry. I know you’re probably going to hate me, but I can’t be a mom. I don’t want to be. Please don’t call me. Please don’t try to find me.

Celeste

Behind the letter is another sheet—thicker paper, formal letterhead, legal language blurring in front of me. Voluntary relinquishment. No intention to seek custody. No visitation. Counsel retained by parents. I see Celeste’s full name. I see my name. I see a birth date.

Born one month ago.

One month.

She’s been alive for one month, and I didn’t know.

I make a sound I don’t recognize. It comes out cracked and small—nothing like the version of myself who my parents raised to stand straight, speak clearly, keep clean hands, pray before meals, confess sins, and never embarrass the family name.

I think about my mother’s rosary beads looped around her fingers every Sunday morning. I think about my father’s work boots by the back door, mud on the soles, and judgment in his silence. I think about the crucifix above our dining room table and the way my mom once cried when I missed Christmas Eve Mass because my truck broke down.

A baby out of wedlock will break them open. No, it won’t just break them open, it’ll make them furious.

My mom will cry first. Dad will sit with his jaw tight and his knuckles hard on the kitchen table, and he’ll ask me what the hell I was thinking. Then Mom will ask whether I understand what I’ve done, whether I understand the sin, whether I understand how this looks, and whether I understand what people will say.

And the worst part—the part that makes bile crawl up the back of my throat—is that I don’t know what I’ve done.

Because I never had sex with Celeste.

Not once. Not when she begged, not when she cried, not when she said I made her feel unwanted, and she told me other guys didn’t make their girlfriends feel ugly for wanting sex. Not when she said God would understand because we loved each other and called me cruel when I pulled away.

I wanted to wait. I hated myself for wanting to wait some days, but I still did.

My body remembers other things, though… that’s the problem. My body remembers sitting beside her at parties with a cup in my hand that she kept refilling, and her laughing when I said I felt weird. It remembers the sticky heaviness behind my eyes after movie nights in her room. It remembers waking up with my shirt off and my head pounding while she curled against me, smiling.

I remember asking if something had happened.

I remember her kissing my jaw and saying, “Don’t be dramatic, Eli. You were tired.”

Tired.

I was always so fucking tired after spending time with Celeste.

“I didn’t,” I say. “I never slept with her.”