A Secret

With a firm grip on the steering wheel and a head full of anger and confusion. Carol was flying down an empty highway in her blue sedan. Driving in the opposite direction she was driving to just this morning. Her body was trembling as she replayed the events of the past hour. "We aren't your birth parents". These words kept ringing in her ears.

"Mommy what is that?" A voice said from the passenger seat. Carol looked over at her daughter, who had her finger pressed against the window. Carol leaned forward and looked up through the windshield to see what her daughter was looking at, she saw something bizarre but couldn't quite make out what it was. From her periphery she saw a car rapidly coming closer and immediately tried to swerve out of the way.

The night before these events, Carol's parents had called late at night, asking her if she could come see them urgently the next day. Worried from the tone in her mother's voice, Carol told them she would make the trip first thing in the morning. As it was late notice, Carol's sitter could not take care of her daughter, and although she would have preferred to see her parents by herself given the unsettling manner of the summoning, she had convinced herself that it would be good for her daughter to see her grandparents anyway. So the two of them packed overnight bags and made the trip to her parent's house early in the morning.

When they arrived, Carol's parents had prepared a huge breakfast, and to Carol's relief, as a result of waking up much earlier than usual, her daughter fell asleep not long after breakfast. Giving Carol and her Parents time to speak.

After some small talk during the clearing up of the table and washing of dishes, Carol and her parents sat in the living room, the same way they would when Carol would get into trouble as a teenager, with her parents on one side and her on the other. Carol could tell that something was wrong, her parents barely looked her in the eyes the entire morning, now they weren't looking at her at all.

Her mother began “Your father and I have always loved you so much, we truly have. We always said that you were our little miracle, our little angel from God.”

“I know that mom, and I've loved you guys too. What's going on with you two? Are you dying? Is dad dying? Are you guys getting a divorce? I'm not ten anymore you know? You guys can just talk to me without the preamble” Carol nervously responded.

“We know baby, it's just… whatever we say, we just need you to know that we love you.” Said Carol's father.

Carol: Guys, you're scaring me what's going on?

Mother: When your father and I met, we were hopelessly in love. After three months of knowing each other your father proposed and within a year we were married. It was the best time of our lives.

Carol: I know this story mom, you two have told it ad nauseam.

Father: Carol, just… just listen.

Carol: Okay, I'm sorry.

Mother: What we haven't told you is how difficult the next few years were. We were so in love, we had discussed the idea of having a family from the time we met, and times were different then, we waited until we were married and we tried to have children. I got pregnant soon after and we were thrilled. We were about to have the family we had always talked about.

Carol: Mom I don't understand why you would call me here just to tell me this, I've heard this a million times. If you guys want to see me or your granddaughter, you should just ask, there's hardly a reason…

Mother: CAROL WE LOST THE BABY!

Carol: What?

“ We lost the baby” Carol's mother says as she starts to sob.

Mother: We lost the baby, and we lost 2 more after that. We were devastated.

Carol: I don't, I'm so sorry Mom, I didn't know. But it worked out right, so don’t be so sad. Carol gets up to give her mother a hug and then sits by her and holds her hand.

Father: That isn't it Carol.

Carol: Okay?

Father: Well, it took us some years to recover, doctors told us there was no hope, your mom felt like it was her fault, I didn't know what to do to console her. Things were a mess for a while, we weren't sure we were gonna make it to be honest.

Carol squeezes her mother's hand tighter and gives her a light brush on her shoulder.

Father: Then Mr Daily’s daughter returned from college.

Carol: Mr Daily your dead neighbour?

Mother: Carol!

Carol: Sorry, I was just trying to move the story along.

Father: Yes, Mr Daily our dead neighbour. His daughter came back not long after he died, we figured she had come back to sell the house, or find tenants to lease it, given she was in college, her mom had died when she was young and now her father, she had no tether to this land no more.

Mother: But we were wrong, it took us some time to figure out but I saw her in the backyard one day and I discovered the reason why she had come back so abruptly. The young girl was quite pregnant. Naturally I went over to check on her but I didn't like what I saw

Carol: What did you see?

Father: The girl was a mess! The tracks on her arms! It was obvious what she was doing to herself, to her baby. Just trying to throw away a precious gift like that? She was ungrateful!

Mother: Father, please calm down.

Father: No! She ought to know! She ought to know that we aren't monsters!

Carol: Monsters? Mom? What is he talking about?

Mother: I became close with the girl, she told me that no one knew she was with child, and that she had come back home. She got caught up with the wrong crowd that's all. The father of the child was some low life drug dealer who would have killed them both if he knew she was pregnant. But she still wanted to go back to him. She was adamant about that.

Carol: Mom? Dad? What's going on?

Father: Just listen baby girl.

Mother: One night, we heard knocking on the door, it was late at night, when we got to the door it was her, she was in pain, said her baby was coming. Now we brought her inside, and I had experience as a midwife so we helped her, we helped her give birth to her baby.

The room goes quiet, Carol and her parents just sit there, still, for a moment.

Carol: And then what?

Father: Well she died, her body had taken a beating, with all the drugs too, and giving birth is a dangerous business.

Carol: What?

Mother: She died, right in here, in this very room. But she left behind her beautiful baby, this child who had survived Lord knows what, was alive and beautiful.

Carol: What?

Father: We had a decision to make, The mother of the child was dead, the father was alive and from what she told your mom, he was a dangerous man, so that was out of the question.

Mother: If we called the police, They would call social services and this beautiful child would go into the system.

Carol: What are you two even saying?

Father: I have a criminal record, so adoption was out of the question for us. It was a gift from God, a baby was delivered to our door step. How could we squander that?

Carol: Squander? I think I'm gonna be sick.

Mother: So we did the only thing we could do, we buried her body and decided to raise her beautiful daughter as our own.

Carol: Oh My God.

Father: Carol, we aren't your birth parents.

Carol got up and ran to the bathroom to vomit. After which she washed her face. The information she had just been given was overwhelming. Carol just stood in the bathroom, hand over mouth, repeating “Oh my god" to herself over and over.

“Carol? Are you Okay?” Her mother said as she knocked on the bathroom door.

Carol knew she had to get out of the house, there was simply no way anything could be resolved that second. So she opened the door and sprinted to the bedroom to fetch her sleeping daughter. Who woke up confused by her mother's panicked behaviour. Carol picked up her daughter and began walking towards the door. Her parents tried to talk her down, tried to calm her down, but Carol just kept walking. Out of the house and to the car. As she tried to fasten her daughter into the baby seat, her father came to the car, trying to pull her out of the backseat. Carol turned around and pushed her father to the ground. Then she picked up her daughter and put her in the front seat, put on her seatbelt. Rushed to the other side of the car, got in and drove off. Leaving her father crying on the ground an her mother crying at the front door.

Carol drove for a while before she reached the empty freeway, and when she did, she only drove faster. Scared and confused, both Carol and her daughter didn't say anything for most of the drive. Her daughter, who could see that her mother was distressed, would look out the window of the car to keep herself distracted.

As they approached a tunnel that was surrounded by a mountain range the child saw something strange outside and she asked her mother what it was. As Carol looked up, out the windshield, she was distracted and did not see the car that had stopped in front of them. When she did see it, it was very close but with a stroke of luck she managed the swerve out of the way. She tried again to look, to see again what she thought she saw.

On top of the Mountain that was closest to the tunnel. There was something she couldn't quite make it, so she slowed down to try get a better look, something hovering over the Mountain, before long she had driven into the tunnel and the mountain was out of view. For a second Carol wasn't sure but then it came to her, what she saw hovering over that mountain was a spaceship. As soon as she realized this, she turned to her daughter, then the lights in the tunnel went off.

Knowlen A Mampuru