Free The Rockin' Chair by Steven Manchester

that could only have been described as hatred.
    Tara wept for days, tears shed more for their unborn child than anything. What could be more horrible than to start out life unwanted? she wondered, and mourned the thought of it.
    Depression took its strong hold, as Tara struggled to push the drugs away for the love of her unborn baby. On some days, it was a losing battle. Bryce wasted no time throwing her out of the apartment and the nightclub. Tara was in trouble. I haven’t done anything but serve drinks for a man who knows everyone in the business , she thought. Besides, no one wants a cocktail waitress with a swollen belly. Adding insult to injury, she hadn’t set foot on one stage and had no real skills to fall back on. In more than one way, she was in big trouble.
    Left at the mercy of welfare and other humiliating means of struggling to make ends meet, Tara swallowed her pride and knocked on Nancy’s door again. Without a word, her only true friend in New York offered a hug and a roof to keep the rain off Tara’s aching head.
    Tara eventually picked up work waiting tables at a breakfast nook. If it weren’t for Nancy, she probably would have been working the streets as a prostitute. Bryce had trained her well. Tara had hit bottom with a greedy addiction, the fears of bringing a child into Bryce Badley’s self-centered world and the realization that she was unsure whether she could take care of herself—never mind a baby. It was terrifying and to her shame, it caused her to seek an escape. She knew only one—alcohol.
    The miracle of life was overshadowed by the guilt of drinking while pregnant and Tara fell into an abysmal depression. She steered clear of the weed and coke and the baby was born perfectly healthy. In fact, Lila was a beautiful girl. Still, Tara had compromised her child to feed her own destructive urges. The very thought made her turn to harder narcotics again. Right around then, she ceased all correspondence with Montana. There’s nothing good to report back to the family , she decided. Thank God for Nancy. The woman nearly adopted baby Lila, while Tara all but committed suicide the slow way.
    The remaining months in New York drifted by like big puffy clouds, each forming a very different picture until her sky became so overcast that the entire world grew dark. The rest was a fog, time lost to unbridled fears, a weakness in willpower and the strength of America’s fiercest enemy—drugs. That was it. A year and a half back, Tara’s recorder had been stuck on pause. As she searched for more, the look in her eyes said it all.
    Tara’s body convulsed like she was suffering a seizure. It was pouring out of her—the fear, the shame, the guilt, the anger—all of it. She managed to find the courage to look into Evan’s eyes. Between gasping breaths, she confessed, “Dear God, I can’t tell you when Lila took her first steps or the first word she ever spoke.” Almost at a scream, she finished. “I’m such a horrible person. How could I?”
    Evan dropped the fork into his plate and reached for her hand. Grabbing it tightly, he raised his voice. “No you’re not, T. You’ve just been surrounded by the wrong people for too long. You’ve forgotten who you are.” He shook his head. “And you’re not the only one.”
    Either she never caught the last comment or didn’t have the energy to look deeper, but it was clear. Between the depression and addictions, she’d missed a solid eighteen months of her life. It was gone with no way to ever retrieve it.
    Evan wondered whether her memory was being selective and kind, or the brain cells that stored the information had been chemically assassinated. He decided it didn’t matter; it was better that she blocked it out. There was enough guilt and shame to deal with. She didn’t need more. He stood. “Let’s go meet that niece of mine.