This Is How Families Are Made

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Reya was chasing toddlers in the park at one of the gatherings of their friends. She looked up and just caught it in Matt's face, realising that he'd been watching her the whole time. He tried to hide it, but he'd been too slow. That night, in bed, she'd finally gotten up the nerve to broach the subject.

"I saw the look, in the park."

"I was watching you. You looked so happy."

"Lizzibelle is just adorable. She's so cute."

"We could adopt."

"I know."

"I mean, if you've changed your mind about kids."

"I know."

The little darkness in their lives, laid bare.

The next morning, when she took her pill, she thought back to the conversation. The pill was a safeguard against the very thing he'd seen she wanted. They couldn't have kids, not because of his biology or hers, but because of history. In the share house, drunk and late into the night, Matt had confessed a secret, a seemingly trivial thing, but in the end it had doomed them both. He'd told her the name of his biological mother.

Claire Arnaud, wife of Henry Arnaud, had abused her children. There had been a boy and a girl. They hadn't been able to be fostered together, but that didn't seem to matter so much back then. The siblings had never seen each other again, until the day Reya had walked into the Young Orphans meeting.

The pill was a safeguard. It also meant that they could split up and find other people and still have families if they wanted to, keeping their options open. The forbidden secret seemed manageable and so they pushed it down out of sight, until eventually they almost completely forgot about it. It was packed up in that same storage box as the abandonment and the heartache, and then stored out of sight of their new life. In its place there was love.

Now, sitting at the dinner table in their nice house, in their quiet suburb, wearing matching wedding rings for a wedding that never happened, hands gripped fiercely, she looked into the face of the man she'd loved for years and saw everything fall apart.

"I guess, uh, the food poisoning. I guess the pill didn't get digested," Reya muttered.

She snuggled into his body, trying to fall into him, to find shelter from the monstrous burden that pressed down on her.

"Please, Matt, say something. I don't know what to do."

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