Someone to Watch Over Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

alone and—”
    â€œYou’re having a fleeting maternal episode, babe. Don’t get down about it, all right? You’ll be up on your feet in a few days. This moment will pass,” he assured me. “I gotta go. I’ll call you when I get a chance.” He hung up before I could even say good-bye.
    My eyes began to sting and lumps jumbled in my throat. I’m having a fleeting episode? A moment of wanting someone to care enough to check on me? This ain’t no Twix commercial, this is life. I didn’t want a moment of being cared about—I wanted someone to care about me every day. For a lifetime.
    I blinked back the tears because crying, like vomiting, was not my forte. The last time I could remember crying, I mean shoulder-shaking, snot-flying crying, was when my mother told me not to cry. I was sixteen and had just delivered a stillborn baby boy.
    A nurse brought him to me, swaddled in a white blanket with pink and blue stripes. She said she’d leave me alone with him for a while. To say good-bye.
    His little body was perfectly formed, ten fingers and ten toes. He had my lips, his father’s nose. If the doctors hadn’t told me he was dead, I would have figured he was just sleeping. A guttural wail came from deep inside me as my tears fell onto my deceased son’s forehead.
    My mother sat beside me on the hospital bed and fingered through my hair. I wasn’t expecting her to do that. She’d been so distant—both physically and emotionally—throughout my unexpected pregnancy, I’d forgotten she could actually show affection like most human mothers.
    â€œIt’s going to be all right, Tori. Everything will work out for the best,” she whispered softly. Then she stroked my son’s plump cheeks. “He has your lips,” she agreed with me.
    I laughed slightly. “He kind of looks like Grandpa Henderson, doesn’t he, Momma?”
    She laughed, too. “Yes, he does look like my father—you’re right. He’s a handsome little thing.”
    â€œYou think Grandpa Henderson will recognize him and take care of him in heaven?”
    â€œI’m sure he will, Tori,” my mother said as she pulled me and the baby into a hug.
    Just then, Mr. James entered the room. My mother stiffened, then jumped up from the bed wiping her eyes with the back of her hands. She walked toward my stepfather and braced him, holding both his arms. Mr. James was short, stocky, and balding on top of his head. His mean black eyes peered from beneath hooded lids. How he’d managed to snag someone as beautiful as my mother was strictly business. She wanted financial stability, he wanted a trophy wife to complement his joke of a political career.
    â€œGive her a minute with the baby, James.” My mother attempted to stand her ground with him.
    â€œIt’s dead, Margie.”
    I burst into tears again. Why did he always have to be such a jerk?
    â€œNo use in crying over spilled milk. What’s done is done,” he snapped, and pushed past my mother to confront me directly. “I told you and your momma you weren’t ready to handle a baby. Even God agreed with me.”
    I secured the baby in the nook of my left arm, then used my right hand to bop Mr. James upside the head with the hardest thing I could get my hand on—the television remote control.
    Mr. James cupped his eye with his hand and stammered, “Are you cr-crazy?”
    My mother jumped in between us, as she’d always done. “Tori, stop this! You’ve lost your mind, hitting your stepfather.” No surprise there, either. She almost always took his side. “I’m going to call the nurse. Maybe they can give you a Valium. . . . James, go to the nurses’ station and see if you can get an ice pack.”
    My mother pushed the call button and seconds later, a nurse arrived to assist. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that the nurse