Chapter 114

After several of the same sort of interviews, I somehow found myself at the edge of one of the playfields, watching a group of children. My mind was wandering at first. It was the predictable sort of wandering for a writer.

I drew in the smells, the sights, and the sounds, translating all those sensations into the prose, which would become my portion of the story. My mind noted the contrast between the green space and the buildings of the city, how the trees along the outside edge seemed to dampen the noise of the cars, and even the very grass seemed to give a breath of relief from the outside hustle and bustle of daily life.

Unlike Lupinton, where everything was so supposedly perfect it got creepy, numerous parents did mention that several blocks from here marked the start of a legal red-light district. Evidently, there wasn’t too much crime associated with the district. But it did house businesses that parents didn’t want young children witnessing. On the scale of a city’s faults, it didn’t sound too threatening to me.

Most of the kids I saw playing at the park were far too young to wander several blocks away on their own. So, the likelihood of them wandering into the red-light district unattended seemed small.

The more I watch the children, the more my focus seems to land on them. I hadn’t spent much time with children. In fact, the closest I’ve been to kids in a very long time was the day and a half we spent with Charles’ niece and nephew.

Even then, Charles and I had spent most of the time off by ourselves having sex. Could I really count that as time around kids? I found the little creatures fascinating.

There was something relaxing in watching the unadulterated joy on their faces as they chased after the ball. The black and white sphere spun across the green of the grass. Their shouts of joy and flailing arms and limbs as they ran to catch it and send it back toward the goal made me reminisce on my own youth.

Childhood was such a precious time, and it really hadn’t been that long ago for me. Yet, somehow, it seemed like a complete world apart. Women my age weren’t supposed to be indulging in their own past childhood. They were supposed to be focused on their children’s.

This brought me to a whole new set of thoughts, some of which I wasn’t particularly fond of. So many of the mothers surrounding the field, watching these children, must have assumed I had kids out there, too. The moms were virtually my age.

And yet here I was, childless. Instead of a baby on my hip, I had a satchel full of everything I needed for reporting and a laptop. I found my career fulfilling. Yet, somehow, that seemed to set me apart from all of these other women.

I hadn’t seriously thought about having children, at least not in concrete terms. I suppose such thoughts had been made more difficult by the fact that, until Charles and I had got together, I hadn’t ever considered anyone as a serious match for myself. It was hard to imagine a happy family if you didn’t have a partner to help you.

And while I knew plenty of strong women raising children on their own. I didn’t think that most of them had pictured single parenthood for themselves. I certainly wouldn’t have. But now I did have Charles. And we were talking about marriage. So, what did I realistically want from my family?

Because children had always seemed like such a far-off concept, I’d never given full thought to what I would do with my career. I didn’t even have one of them for myself, and they were still distracting me. How would I ever do a job if one of them belonged to me?

My career was just taking off. I’d finally gotten the story that had broken me out of small columns and onto the front page and into the center of everyone’s attention. That was every reporter’s dream.

I was in a city across the continent from my home under protection because the news that I had uncovered was so explosive. They expected me to continue working on it. I’d continue to be in danger. For any journalist who’d ever wanted any sort of notoriety, this was the reality. This was the dream, and yet…

I bit the inside of my cheek. How could I have been so careless? If I wanted to continue with this level of reporting, it would be very difficult with a child. I would feel horribly guilty if I kept myself in danger while I was pregnant. Because if anything happened to me, what would happen to my child?

Worse, if I brought a child into my life before I’d cleaned up the current situation, then I would simply put an innocent life in danger. And what if this wasn’t the only story that ended up creating a dangerous situation? What if I continued to write and continue to put my family at risk?

All of this sent uncomfortable waves through my stomach, cramping my guts. If I was going to be a responsible mother, did that mean that I could not be the kind of reporter I had just earned the right to be? I certainly wasn’t ready to give up being a reporter.

I watched a woman wiping up the sticky hands of a toddler in a stroller and another tucking the bottle away, her shoulder revealing a trail of spit up from the baby she had just finished burping.

My nose wrinkled. That was so not what I wanted right now. While I didn’t like being in danger, and Theo’s presence beside me was a very tangible reminder of the trouble such stories could cause, I certainly didn’t want to give it up for sticky fingers and puke.

Did that make me a horrible woman? Worse, what if these feelings made me the kind of woman that Charles didn’t want to be with?

I wasn’t all that old. I had plenty of years, a decade and a half at least, during which I could have children. But what if he wanted them now? Would he still want to be with me if I insisted on living out my dreams of my career before I had my kids?

It wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to focus on my future children. I just wasn’t done focusing on myself yet. I had just learned to speak up for myself, to love myself, to be my own advocate. And now I was going to have to give that up to be the advocate of some ungrateful little child?

I hadn’t realized the ingratitude before today, but still people-watching, I saw one child snatch a snack from his mother’s hand just before she put it in her mouth. And another one threw his toy at his mother, hitting her in the forehead with a hard teething ring.

Seriously? Were all children such brats? But if I thought children were brats, did that also make me a horrible woman? Where were my maternal instincts? Why didn’t I want one of these little creatures? Was there something wrong with me?