Oh, oops — sorry that's my fault. I accidentally dropped my new chapter. Would you mind reading it for me? Thanks!

…

"Mom?" Jade came in through the front door of her house and threw her backpack and keys on the floor beside the door. "I'm home."

"Dining room!" Her mom, Claire, called back.

Jade walked across the house to the dining room. She found her mother sitting at the large oak table in front of a laptop, typing away. "Hi, Gem. I picked up Sittoos on my way home from work. I got you falafel, it's in the kitchen. There's baklava too." Her mother raised her eyebrows as if she were saying something enticing. And, well, food from Jade's favorite Mediterranean restaurant was pretty appetizing.

It seemed her mother was in a calm mood. There was no melodramatic tantrum being thrown. Jade could tolerate her mother when she was this way. Hell, she almost even liked her.

"Where's Julian?" Jade asked, referring to her younger brother.

"With your father." Claire sat back in her seat and examined Jade's reaction closely. Jade hated that.

She rolled her eyes, walking past her mother and into the kitchen where she picked a container of falafel up from the counter. "It's not dad's night with Julian." She pointed out as she grabbed souvlaki from another container and took her food back into the dining room with her.

"A colleague of his had basketball tickets he's not using so he gave them to James, and James asked to take Julian to the game with him," Claire explained. "Are you going to sit down or are you going to stand to eat your dinner?"

"I'm taking it to my room," Jade responded with the third, unspoken option. "It was so nice of Dad to include me in his plans. Wasn't it?"

"As if you'd have any interest in basketball." A scoff and a knowing smile graced Claire's face. "But it would have been nice if he had extended the invitation. I'm sorry he didn't."

"It's not like I care anyway." Jade shrugged. Of course, she didn't care. It was her father after all. She had given up on that relationship a long time ago.

Or, at least that's what she told herself.

"Why don't you and I do something fun together?" A gleam entered Claire West's eyes. No matter how many times Jade rejected her mother she always came crawling back with "fun" bonding activities.

"Oh yeah, like what?" Jade laughed bitterly. "Braiding each other's hair and talking about boys? Where is Matthias anyway?"

Claire's mouth pursed into a thin line. "Upstairs packing. He leaves for a business trip in the morning."

Matthias was Claire's live-in boyfriend of five years. Jade wasn't sure whether it was her mother or Matthias that had the commitment issues that led to them not tying the knot despite being together for so long. Ironically though, Matthias at least somewhat felt like a step-parent to Jade, unlike her father's wife, who actually held the legal title.

It wasn't that Jade liked Matthias, she didn't. But she didn't hate him either. Matthias minded his own business for the most part, he was a pretty decent cook and had good taste in music. Which made him okay in Jade's book. Plus, after he'd stuck around for a few years and it was obvious he wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, Jade just decided it was easier not to hate him.

"You know, I really do think it would be good for us to spend some time together. It's important for mothers and daughters to connect. I just want to understand you better, Jaybird."

"Yes, I get it. I'm an enigma. Impossible to figure out. Now, if I say I'll think about it will you promise to never call me Jaybird again?" Jade challenged, despite the fact that deep down she was actually somewhat fond of her old childhood nickname… and the fact that somewhere even deeper down than that she was pleased that her mother wanted to do things with her.

Aa smirk toyed on Claire's lips. "I can promise that I'll never call you Jaybird in front of your friends." her eyes lit up like she just thought of something. "How are your friends by the way? And your boyfriend, Beck. You've been around the house an awful lot lately, is something going on?"

Of course, it was that night that Jade's mother decided to stop being clueless. Jade had been moping around the house and spending all of her time locked in her room for weeks and her mother hadn't seemed to notice a difference.

Jade chose to ignore the question altogether. "I'm going upstairs to eat my dinner." She said as she was already walking away.

When Jade got to the top of the stairs, she noticed the first door on the right of the hallway, the "study' as they called it (though it was actually just a room to house whatever her mother's latest fleeting interest was,) was opened. This was odd because that area of the house was practically considered hallowed ground, and no one was allowed in.

She didn't dare step inside (more specifically, Jade didn't care enough to,) but she did poke her head in to see what was going on. All of the furniture was gone and there were newspapers lined up on the ground, and the windows were all opened. Jade wasn't sure what color the room was previously, but the walls were green now and based on the scene before her, as well as the smell invading her nostrils, she could guess that the room was freshly painted.

"What do you think?"

"I think it's better than when she went through her chakra phase and painted the room orange to match her aura." Jade turned around to find Matthias standing behind her.

Matthias had slicked back, jet black hair and olive skin. Actually, with Jade's mom being so blonde, Matthias really could pass for her dad. Plenty of people over the years had mistaken him for being her father.

"Anything is better than that hideous bright orange." He chuckled loudly. That was another thing Jade didn't hate about Matthias. Unlike most people, he never seemed to take her digs personally. He usually thought they were funny.

"So, what is her great big interest now?" Jade inquired.

"Indoor horticulture." Matthias rocked back and forth on his heels. "Maybe we can convince her to start growing pot. Not that you can participate in that sort of thing. It's bad for the baby."

"Right," Jade agreed. "Well I'm going to go to my room."

Jade started walking away. But after making it a few steps, she stopped dead in her tracks. "What did you just say?" She didn't turn around to face Matthias.

"I said your mom's latest interest is indoor horticulture and that maybe we can convince her to grow marijuana." Matthias answered, the teasing was obvious in his voice.

Jade bit back her fury at knowing he was messing with her. She turned around to face her sort of stepfather. "How did you know? How long have you known?"

"A week or so." Matthias crossed his arms as he leaned against the doorway. "Some raccoons got into the garbage and I found the pregnancy test box on the ground. Considering your mom can't get pregnant anymore, and you've been more standoffish than usual, it wasn't hard to put the pieces together."

Matthias quirked his eyebrows together for a moment, he appeared to be considering what to say next. "To be honest, I'm a little relieved. I was convinced you were developing bulimia. I was about to confront your mother about getting you help."

"Are you going to confront her about the test?" Jade swallowed thickly as she felt more and more panicked.

"I'll be in Arizona for a week. If she still doesn't know by the time I come home, then yes I'll have to tell her. But let's make one thing clear—" Matthias held up his pointer finger in a one to emphasize his point. "I don't want to be the one to tell her."

"I'll try to make sure you don't have to." Jade promised.

She didn't have energy left in her to continue with the conversation, so she walked away before Matthias could have a chance to continue. It was exactly like Matthias to have her presently deepest darkest secret figured out even when her own mother was oblivious. She was grateful for him for not immediately taking control of the situation, but she didn't appreciate the timer on telling her mom that he set. Even if she knew she had to come clean soon enough one way or the other.

Inside of Jade's unsurprisingly purple and black room, Jade set her plate of food down as she noticed a bag with a note tacked to it taped on her bed.

Jade — take once daily w/ food. — Matthias

Inside the bag Jade found prenatal vitamins. She couldn't help but roll her eyes. She wasn't even sure why it annoyed her, but like most things, it did.

As she took a bite of falafel and relaxed into her bed, Jade pulled out her phone and drafted a text to her little brother. Julian spending time with their dad always made Jade uneasy. Which she knew was stupid. Regardless of how James West treated his daughter, he was always great with his son.

Granted, he was once great with Jade too. — Until he wasn't.

How's the game with dad going?

Jade ate as she awaited a response, which came fairly quickly.

do u want the real answer or tge fake one

Jade smirked and rolled her eyes. Curious, she sent her response.

The fake one

its the worst. dad eats babys for dinner jst like you said

Real answer.

he got me a brand new jersey and the biggest chili dog ivd ever seen in my life its awwwwsome

Jade wrinkled her nose at the thought of a chili dog. As much as it hurt, she was happy for her little brother having a good time with their dad. She just always worried that one day the other shoe would drop for him like it did for her.

Well, at least if there was one saving grace in the midst of the mess she was in, it was that she didn't have to worry about having a baby ruining her relationship with her father. That ship already sailed about seven years earlier.

Jade took a moment to contemplate her parent's potential reactions to her pregnancy. Matthias was obviously calm about it, though that was the Matthias way of life. C'est la vie was his motto.

Her mother's response would be much more unpredictable. She could see her mother being more pragmatic when confronted with the news. But she could also end up in full blown hysterics. There was no way of predicting either way.

Jade debated on whether or not she should just wait for Matthias to come back and tell her with him that. Matthias always had a way of reining in Claire's emotional outburst. But ultimately Jade decided that was just too awkward of a position to put him in.

As for her father, he'd be furious. There was no doubt about it. The only question is whether he would delve straight into the screaming, name-calling, belittling kind of furious. Or if he would just get quiet and leave. There was a decent chance, according to Jade's predictions, that her pregnancy would be the nail in the coffin on her relationship with her father.

As for his wife, well she wouldn't really care. She was very hands off on the whole stepmothering thing. If she had an opinion on the lives and decisions of Jade and Julian, then she didn't express them.

After finishing her dinner, Jade decided that it was best if she just put the thoughts out of her mind for the time being. She'd have to tell her mother within the next few days, but there was no use in obsessing over her potential reaction in the meantime.

She figured she could at least wait a few more weeks to break the news to her father and stepmother, considering she didn't live with them and they had much less of a hand in her life. They were on a need to know basis and did not need to know for the time being.

Jade allowed herself to play a movie on her laptop, she neglected her homework for the night and went to bed.

…

Not a huge fan of this but then again, when am I ever. However, I needed to establish a bit of Jade's familial situation in this chapter. Obviously only a tiny portion of the full picture is seen here, but I dropped some hints about the dynamics that we'll see play out later on.

I know a lot of stories out there have a tendency to represent dysfunctional familial relationships as being blatantly dysfunctional 100% of the time. And there's nothing inherently wrong with that, it matches up with many peoples real life experiences.

That being said, my experience growing up in a less than stellar situation was quite different. There were plenty of times (especially when I was young and had not yet gained my own voice) that I absolutely adored my father and had tons of fun with him. There were plenty of afternoons where my flight-risk mother did the caring and nurturing motherly thing perfectly well. It was not all screaming matches and wondering if mom was just passed out or dead all of the time. In fact, it wasn't even necessarily that way the majority of the time (though that sort of thing would be hard to quantify.)

Anyway, I want to present that more complex dynamic in this story, as I think it's an often unrepresented but very common experience for many people. So my goal with this chapter was to show a calm evening with Jade's family, but still reference and foreshadow much of the dynamics we will come to see in this story.

And, ultimately, I think another underrepresented aspect of childhood trauma is that even parents who truly care about and love their children and "did their best" can still cause immense trauma and harm to their kids and even be abusive. Even parents who try can fuck up their kids. Some people just don't have the faculties necessary for decent parenthood. So that's another thing we'll explore in this book.

But it takes time to build that sort of thing up and show it in an accurate way. I'll do my best though.