Snow Falls in Prague; I Won't Wait for a Heartless Man novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Tell Them

I took the microphone.

It was warm from her hand.

"My name is Freya Ostby," I said, and my voice went out over four hundred heads. "Two months ago I was in a bridal salon in Chicago, and I learned I was pregnant."

The hall was very quiet.

"The man I lived with told four guards to hold me down on a clinic table, so I could not keep it."

A woman gasped.

I did not look at Brecken.

"A woman in scrubs came in with a syringe that had no label. I fought her. The room caught fire. She died there, and everyone buried her as me."

"Poor darling," Bethany said, into the silence, to the front row.

"For two years," I said, "I took two pills a month from a white bag. The bag came from a pharmacy. It was carried to me by one person."

I put my hand into my coat.

I held the green-labeled bottle high, under the chandeliers, where the cameras could find it.

"A Prague lab tested this. It is not what the label says. It is a drug that scars a woman's womb so that she cannot carry a child."

A rustle ran through the room.

"The initials on the sticker are B.Q."

I turned and looked at her.

"Bethany Quarles."

Nobody breathed.

Bethany's hands came up to her mouth.

Her eyes filled, and I watched the tears run, perfect and fast.

"Oh, Freya," she said. "Oh, honey."

She turned to the room.

"You know me. You all know me. I stood up here every year and told you what the crash did to me."

Heads nodded.

I saw an old man take out a handkerchief.

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