Everly

Dear Bella,

I can’t believe it’s nearly been two years. It feels like such a long time, and yet it doesn’t feel as if a day has gone by since it all happened. Time is like that—it can pass you and linger all at once.

I quit work at the practice. Too many memories. Every woman I saw was you, Bella. Every time one of them mentioned her baby, or spoke of her partner with love, or tried to dismiss a worry that was completely valid—it was you. Every. Single. Time.

Now, I’m studying family counselling. I want to try and help people who are struggling through tough times, just like you were back then.

You always made me feel as if I could make a difference, you know? After that second meeting, once we decided to investigate the heartbreaking possibility of your baby having Down syndrome further, I remember the way you looked at me, as if you trusted me. We spoke about your child with such honesty, and we shared this strange sense of camaraderie—as if we’d been in the trenches together. I wasn’t just a midwife to you anymore. And when you asked if you could call me if you had any questions—it was with such need in your eyes.

I’ve always been a fixer. Always been someone to do things myself, and I wanted to help you. I wanted to make a difference.

I think, subconsciously, I knew something was going on with Bentley. Knew I should have been more suspicious of the late hours he was working. Knew the unexplained gifts, the slight scent of flowers that lingered when he loosened his tie—knew they were all too coincidental. I welcomed you into my life because I needed something to keep my mind from adding all that up. I needed the distraction to stop one and one equalling infidelity.

Three Swallows had just opened up twenty minutes away from the clinic. It was a great little café-bar, with the very best selection of craft beers and a really good barista, too. The cute little courtyard had received a full-page photo in the latest Sunday paper lift-out, and I’d heard nothing but good things about how tasty the food was.

It had seemed like such a natural suggestion. “I’m due for a break. Why don’t we go and have lunch?”

Your answer had been so quick to come. “Please. I’d like that.”

That lunch could have been so awkward. It could have been full of long silences, of “pass the salt” and “how about that weather”, and yet for some reason, it wasn’t. How was it possible that we spoke like two people who’d known each other for years instead of weeks? We spoke like two women connected on some greater level than just client and practitioner. We spoke like friends, and I was so thankful for your presence in my life. I think it was then I realised how lonely I’d actually become.

I told you about Bentley, the supposed great love of my life. If only I could take that back now. I remember telling you how attentive he was, how thoughtful and considerate. Smart, funny, too—the whole package. No, we weren’t going to have babies. I’d laughed off the question as if it didn’t sting every time I saw the beautiful curve of a pregnant woman’s stomach. Children weren’t for us.

I didn’t tell you until later, four weeks later, that it was because they couldn’t be. Because after two years of trying, doctors had suggested I couldn’t carry a child. A bitter truth.

A truth you helped me temporarily forget. You made me laugh and smile as you told me all about Cameron, how you were friends for so long before he finally made a move at a friend’s party, when you were picking up pizza from a driver in the parking lot. How you got married in Vegas, and now you were going to have a second ceremony here in Australia so your family and friends could join in. You spoke of your great longing for a baby, a family, something you’d yearned for all of your life, and I remember thinking “she has so much love to give. So much heart to share.”

Perhaps that’s why even now, a year on, I still visit your grave. There are never any flowers there, aside from mine. But I know that’s not because he doesn’t care. The heartbroken man I saw every time I turned on the television for weeks after the attack wouldn’t have let go of his feelings so quickly.

I imagine he doesn’t come because it hurts too much.

And who could blame someone for that?

Things are different for me now. When you died, I lived with the guilt. I was responsible for what happened—I should have been at that café. Not you.

Now, I’m doing what I think you would want me to do—live. I write for a parenting blog, offering advice to new mothers and mothers-to-be. I’m nearly finished my course in counselling. I have well and truly settled into the place I’m renting at Copacabana. I swim in the ocean, I hike along the cliffs, and I spend as much time going out with the girls from work as possible. I’m living as vividly as I can.

And whenever I think of you, the way it all ended and the horrible thing that happened to your husband, I do whatever I can to help someone.

You’ll always be a part of my life, even if you don’t know it.

With love,

Everly

* * *

I’d never believed in fate. Fate wouldn’t allow what happened to have happened. It wouldn’t have allowed me to choose to toy with my life, to delay my appearance at that café. It wouldn’t have allowed Bella to die.

And yet, there he was. Standing there, right in front of the lookout to the ocean, almost two years on from the attack.

Him.

My blood ran cold. Months of living in the moment, of being stronger than the past, came back to smack me in the face.

Cameron Lewis.

His dark hair was longer now, mussed, as if he’d run his hand through it to try and rid himself of all the worries of the world over and over again. Stubble dusted his jaw, and his blue eyes were wild, as wild as the wind tossing the Pigface, sea rocket and hare’s-tail grass on the sand dunes below. Somehow, he looked at one with this wild and woolly day. As if he belonged here. As if he wouldn’t have been found anywhere else.

It took me a long time to see her—a baby girl in the pram to his side. Cameron stood a few feet from her, like he didn’t want to get too close.

He’d entered my mind on several occasions during the last twenty-three months. I’d checked in on his Facebook from time to time, wondering what he was up to, if things were getting better for him like they had for me. If he was living with his loss.

It seemed he had. He’d found someone else. He had a child.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank God. It was all okay.

Yet at the same time, a tiny surge of anger swelled within me. He’d moved on. He’d moved on, when I’d spent so long trying to reconcile the death of his wife. He’d found love somewhere else. Just like Bentley had.

A gust of wind chilled me to the bone, and I braced my arms around my body. No. I was being irrational. Cam was nothing like my ex, and after all he’d been through—worry for the baby, losing his family—he deserved to feel joy. He deserved to move on.

BOOM.

I spun around. A car hightailed it up the street, smoke blowing from its exhaust. Idiots.

As I turned back to the ocean again, Cam was—

He was on the ground.

Shaking.

In the pram, the little girl screamed, her pacifier dropped in the dirt beside her. Maybe that’s why he’s there. Looking for it.

But something told me it was much more than that.

“Are you … okay?” The word seemed so incredibly inadequate when it was clear that he wasn’t.

He stood, his hands trembling as he unclipped the child from the pram, holding her close and muttering into her hair.

“It was a car backfiring. Doesn’t usually happen around here,” I said. “Probably just tourists.”

But for you, was it that bomb? Was that day replaying in your mind?

“Thanks.” His voice was gruff as he strapped the child back in the pram, avoiding eye contact and picking up the pacifier from where it had fallen.

This was it. Where he left and I continued with my life.

But for some strange reason, I couldn’t stop myself opening my mouth.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” I blurted.

He didn’t speak. Didn’t reply.

“Sometimes I feel as if it’s too dark. But today, it’s just … beautiful.” Because it was. I’d rebuilt my life—and so had Cameron Lewis. Yes, he’d freaked out when the car backfired. But I didn’t know that was PTSD. And even if it was, he had a baby now, probably a wife waiting at home. Bella would be so happy.

Just as I was about to turn and walk away, to try and pretend this moment had never happened—

He looked at me.

All hope I had of good health and forgiveness fled.

Grief stormed through his eyes. Pain, raw and real, was etched into his squared jaw, the strained muscles of his forearms. His lips were thinned into a line, one so tight I wondered how long it had been since he last smiled.

Cameron hadn’t healed.

Standing before me was a man in ruins.

And in that one look, my heart crashed. It smashed against the shoreline of my chest with the sort of ferocity the waves did against the sand in front of us. He was dying.

“Y … yes.”

He didn’t say anything more, but I couldn’t let it go. I wanted to see him smile. I wanted to make him smile.

I stabbed one finger toward the waves in front of us. “You know, too many people think the ocean is all pretty and poetic. But it can be a monster. Just last year, three people drowned. Here. On this very beach.”

Brilliant work, Everly. That’ll cheer him up.

“It’s not all holidays and sandcastles, huh?” Cameron asked, flashing me a nervous smile.

“Not at all.” Oh God. He must have thought I had a mental disorder. He obviously didn’t recognise me from Dr Rosalie’s practice, and who just unloaded on a stranger like that? I tried to smile, but I was sure it came out as a grimace. “Hi. I’m Everly. Everly Jenkins. Reciter of grim facts and sandcastle murderer.”

“Hi. I’m Cameron Lewis.” He seemed to study me for a moment, as if waiting for something, then extended his arm.

I took his hand to shake.

I took his hand.

My body thrummed. He looked into my eyes, and even though I saw the ocean raging behind his crystal-blue gaze, I felt something—this force of energy zipping between us.

I’d never thought of him as attractive before. He was someone’s husband—a guy I barely knew. But in this moment, he was raw and real and man. He was so warm, his hand so big, so all-encompassing—so hot.

Wait, what?

I jerked my hand away, hoping he didn’t notice the speed with which I did so. What was wrong with me? How could such a simple touch from someone I barely knew have such an effect?

Damn it, he was staring now, as if waiting for me to say something. “Cameron,” I repeated. Oh good. Now that was Einstein-worthy. “Do you live around here?”

I already knew he didn’t. That file was still inside the drawer of my bedside table, because no matter how hard I’d tried, I hadn’t been able to let it go. But perhaps his new partner was from the area.

“I’m just—we’re just staying here for a while. Down the road.” He tilted his head toward one of the main arterials. “You?”

“Me too.” God, what was wrong with me? “Not just staying here. Yes. Yes, I live here.”

“Do you, uh …” He looked at the ground for a moment. “You don’t have kids by any chance, do you?”

That question.

That question so many people felt was appropriate to ask, when it was akin to taking a vice to my heart and tightening the screws.

“Unfortunately not.” And I never will. “But I do love them. I’ve worked with children my whole career. Babies, and now older ones.”

“Really?” He looked at me, studied me with those fierce crystal eyes, and I knew.

He knew.

He knew who I was.

I wish you’d never been through what you did. I’m sorry.

“Cammo!”

I whipped my head toward the voice. A man strolled across the parking lot, headed straight for us. He gave a wave as he battled against the wind, tugging at the sides of his jacket as he zipped it closed.

A man from Cameron’s life. His present life.

Not the past, where I belonged.

It didn’t matter that I’d seen grief in his eyes. Cameron had a new life. A new child. I didn’t need to blame myself. Didn’t need to carry that feeling of guilt with me.

It was just the reality shock I needed.

“I should go.” I looked to the ground, almost afraid to meet his gaze. “But perhaps I’ll see you around.”

Perhaps.

But I hoped like hell I didn’t.