Real Life & Liars by Kristina Riggle Page B

space to think, something that’s become a premium with Darius around.
    Thirty-five years her parents have been married, and together over forty years, dating back before Katya’s birth. Almost twice the span of her life. Irina can’t grasp it, and it makes her heart hammer to think about it. She feels more sure at that moment than she’s ever been about anything, that she can’t stay with Darius that long. She won’t even last five years with him.
    Irina remembers her best friend in school, Dawn. Dawn’s parents were split up, something she bore pretty well, all things considered. For one thing, it was as common as catching a cold to have divorced parents. So she didn’t have to worry about a stigma. But, Dawn was always missing out on something because she was at her dad’s house every other weekend. She even missed Irina’s sixteenth birthday party—a slumber party, with all the girls giggling on the second-floor sleeping porch—and Irina had told her just to switch weekends or have her dad drive her over.
    “No,” Dawn had responded solemnly. “Everything goes through the courts. We do exactly what the paper says.”
    Then there was the drinking. Dawn always was a drinker.
    Irina shifts, trying to get comfortable, despite a strange pulling sensation in her side.
    I can’t do it, she thinks, the silent admission bringing both fear and relief. Fear because of what she’s gotten into, relief that she could finally admit what she realized the moment of their kiss at the cheesy Vegas chapel. She hasn’t lied to Darius. She won’t abort his child. In her own mind the thing inside her is shifting from a cluster of cells to something resembling a person, and she can’t just throw it away at this point, even if she’s legally allowed to.
    He wants the baby. She can see it in the ardent smile on his face when she walks into a room. It’s not for her, she knows. It’s for the child.
    Before that missed period, he was nice enough, but he didn’t call consistently, and he canceled plans on her once with almost no notice, and Irina suspected that he was seeing another girl.
    She almost didn’t tell him about the baby, but her conscience prevailed upon her at the last moment, and she never expected him to start campaigning for marriage. The most she expected was cash toward an abortion.
    She still wasn’t going to marry him when he started wooing her so actively, with flowers and jewelry, and heartfelt if corny “I love you” cards that made everyone at the office jealous. The breaking point was that night when he formally proposed, on one knee,in front of the entire restaurant. He had the Vegas plane tickets already in his pocket.
    No, earlier than that, Irina corrects herself. It really started the previous week, when he told her that he and his first wife had lost a baby, and they just couldn’t keep their marriage together after that.
    Irina never stood a chance after seeing a single tear skim a laugh line on its way down his face.
    She resolves to give him the baby and a divorce. Annulment maybe, if that’s possible. He will likely hate her forever for leaving him. But Darius doesn’t understand he’s not getting a mother for his child and a life companion.
    No. He’s getting a girl barely out of adolescence who doesn’t know jack shit about anything, and who would never be able to finish the marathon of motherhood. Darius will marry another girl who is smarter and older and wiser, who will raise the baby just like her own, and they will all be happy together. She pats her belly. Sorry kid, but you’ll be better off without me right from the start.
    Irina hears two quick knocks and buries her head. What could Darius want now?
    But it’s Katya’s voice. “Irina? Are you in there? I need some help with my cell phone.”

CHAPTER 19
Katya
    KATYA STOMPS THROUGH THE HOUSE, SEARCHING FOR HER MOTHER. Her cell phone buzzes—thank God Irina knows about this crap, it’s finally just a buzz—and she