In the early hours of the day lied a misty-eyed Janet thinking about her life, she often did this most days while her husband was asleep because she felt like it was the only time that she could think.
For her, she had constantly felt like all odds were against her, and even when life showed her a glimpse of hope, it was taken away by one problem or another.
Janet's life wasn't one that would alarm most people when they tried to look into it, she grew up in a home that seemed very typical to the public eye, with a father who was a candidate for governor, but like most families, Janet's had a secret.
Her family secret was a guided one that even Janet’s husband wasn’t aware of and most days she had to make questionable choices just to keep it hidden.
Janet could remember the day she was told the secret, it was on her 21st birthday, and while she had an elegant party going on, her mother called her aside into her father’s library.
She walked into the library feeling ecstatic because she felt like she was getting a new car or maybe an apartment in the city which she hinted at a lot but on getting there, she was surprised to see a gathering of all her family.
She began asking questions about what was happening before her mother told her to take a seat and began speaking.
“J, my princess, you know that I and your father love you and we would always want to protect and that is why we are doing this”.
Immediately after her mother said that she was handed a locket that belonged to her mother and her father continued by explaining how the locket was a family inheritance passed down from generation to generation because of a curse that was placed on the daughters of the family by a sorcerer.
He further explained that the curse was placed because the sorcerer was jilted by a member of their family decades ago and because of it, when a daughter turns 21 in the family, automatically her mother has to choose between giving her daughter the locket which saves her life and ends the mothers or keeping it for herself.
He told her that after the curse was placed, their ancestors took note of what was happening and tried to break it but to no avail so they ended up with the locket which was created by another sorcerer and each generation had to make that decision.
At that point, Janet couldn’t believe what she was hearing and she tried to laugh it off as a prank but she realized quickly with the tension in the room that she couldn’t laugh this away.
She then decided that she wasn’t going to take the inheritance because inheritances are supposed to be good and she would rather die but her mother pleaded with her and she finally wore it.
The next morning, she was woken to the news that her mother had passed away and while she wanted to cry, she felt numb and at that moment she made a promise to herself that the curse would end with her meaning she never planned on having children.
After being lost in thought for a few minutes, she decided to go back to bed when she saw a mail popup from their local hospital, in her head she had nothing to worry about because even though she felt sick, she had removed her womb years back which meant she was safe, but the moment she opened the mail, the first line read;
“Congratulations, you are pregnant”.