But, no, she couldn’t do this. She loved Greg and they were having a baby. Stop it, Nem, before it’s too late.

As she clung to reason, she knew she must get away from him and calm herself down. With every ounce of willpower left, she put several backward steps between them.

But the monster wouldn’t be denied. The thing rose up and she was powerless to stop herself.

“Since you’ve brought it up, if I want to keep my personal health issues to myself, I will. Marriage doesn’t guarantee I must disclose every little life detail to my husband.”

“I don’t think it’s a little detail, is it? Children are a big detail.”

His face was set hard but having said this, forcing what must have been troubling thoughts into the space between them, he seemed to deflate. Greg’s shoulders drooped as he took a cautious step toward Nem.

“We’re a team, you and I, aren’t we?” He motioned between them with his hand. “And now we’ll be parents. If there’s ever a time to be honest and harness the Force, it’s now.”

He’d said this to reason with her, calm everything, but something about his reference to Star Wars yet again, rankled Nem. The silly made-up words were prickles catching in her gut. Good Force, dark Force, light sabers, Jedi knights. Ridiculous, senseless, and so far from the truth. Nem had experienced real horror. Her mom’s murder, deaths of friends and enemies. She’d enacted her own power on the dark force.

This Good Force belief was a joke.

She stared at Greg without replying, her lips clamped tight, the anger humming inside and around her, a swarming hive of mounting fury. He seemed to think he’d diffused the situation, that his Star Wars reference was an apology. But the crazy little switch had been flicked and set to full steam, no emergency failsafe in place. Then a determined thought whooshed through her mind and she reached for it as a drowning man or woman clutches a lifeline.

Nem wanted out of this charade.

She didn’t need a husband nosing around in her business. She hadn’t wanted a child. Her desire was a quiet life, which seemed impossible in a marriage.

Nem wanted to be on her own again.

But she had no out. The trap had sprung on her during a weak moment. Now here she was married, pregnant and her husband standing before her unaware of the danger for him. This made her even angrier.

If he was sorry, well too late. He should have considered that before accusing her of lying and before he started talking to Gail; Gail who knew so much about ovaries and Nem’s health.

But you did lie! a tiny voice said in her head, to which she replied, For everyone’s own good.

A vision of her life stretched before her, with this same conversation repeated and never being resolved. The deception would always surface and bring pain. Damn it, she wasn’t normal, so why pretend to be anything other than herself. She’d tried, and that was enough. Always her mother’s fate lingered in the back of her mind, a warning beacon.