“Thanks for coming round,” I intoned, my voice completely free of any emotion. I was genuinely happy to see Lucy, but it was hard to express that when it felt as though my soul ached with every breath I took. I just didn’t know how I was meant to get over this.
No body had been found as they excavated the rest of the house; they had rung me up a couple of times in the hopes of straightening everything out, but I couldn’t give them much. I mean, I wasn’t even Ella’s mother; what did I know about her? I had been able to confirm that the mangled toys found in the attic were hers, but that was about it. Fuck, I hadn’t even been around there because of the fire—I had taken three days to pluck up the courage to tell Jazz about the baby, and it just so happened that some twisted cosmic joke played out in my timing.
I had decided to keep the baby—or, at least, that had been my plan before Jazz vanished off the face of the Earth. What had it been, a week, and I’d heard nothing from him whatsoever. I was terrified to think about what he might have done in response to this. He was hardly the most temperate guy at the best of times and now…well, I just hoped no one else had been hurt in the process.
Except me, of course.
I had no idea what I was going to do now. I had spent those three days convincing myself that I was making the right decision—that no matter what, Jazz and I loved each other and we could work through this pregnancy as partners. But instead, he fled, without even finding out that I was carrying his baby. And who could I talk to about it? Not Amanda or anyone from work—they had taken his fleeing to hint towards his guilt, no matter how much I tried to convince them to the contrary. If they found out I was having his baby, they’d just tell me to get rid of it or give it up for a adoption—neither of which seemed like particularly enticing alternatives. Even though I had only known about our child for a few days, I was growing to love him. But I would have to consider other options now—now that Ella seemed to be gone for good, and her father had no intention of coming back.
I had never seen him as he was that day. I had seen him mad—scared, angry, guilty, any combination of the above—but I had never seen him like that. It was hard to explain the emotions that radiated off him in waves, thick and strong and heady. He seemed as lost in them as I was, struggling to process even a little bit of what had happened. Of course he ran—because if he ran, he never had to face up to the fact that this had really happened at all. I couldn’t blame him. If I could have done the same, I would have.
So I called Lucy, and bawled down the phone to her about what had happened that day—Ella’s toys, the fire, the baby, all of it. She listened in silence and, as soon as I was done, told me that she was coming round to stay with me for a few days.
“No, you don’t have to—” I protested, instantly feeling guilty that I had burdened her with all of this. But she cut across me, not hearing a word of it.
“I’m coming over and I’m sorry to say there’s nothing you can do to stop me. You’re off work, right?”
“Right.” I nodded, dabbing at my eyes and wiping my nose on the back of my hand. Amanda had given me more time off when she heard about the latest development in Ella’s case—I wondered if I would ever truly start working for her, judging by everything that had gone down over the last few months. It felt as though the job I’d been promised had turned into a kind of nightmare where at every turn something traumatic happened. If my first case hadn’t been Jazz and Ella, maybe none of this would have occurred. Well, at least I wouldn’t be aware of it—and I wasn’t sure if that was for better or for worse.
“Well, I’m not dumping you there in the city by yourself,” she replied. I could hear her gathering herself, probably already planning her route into town to make sure she could get to me as fast as she could. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
“Thank you,” I sniffled, feeling pathetic, and she hung up the phone. I tidied as best I could, doing away with the takeout wrappers that littered my floor. I’d have thought that with everything going on my appetite would have dropped through the floor, but it seemed that my baby was a hungry one. I laid out some covers on the couch for Lucy, already feeling better knowing that she was on her way.
I knew she couldn’t fix it all, but she could at least provide me some company to guide me through all of it. She’d been there since the start, after all—she knew what was going on. She’d met Jazz, knew how I felt about him. I would have gone to my family, but that would have involved filling them in on everything when I had only been giving them the vaguest details in our monthly calls. The thought of catching them up on everything now wasn’t just exhausting but depressing. Recounting every detail, of how I’d failed and given in and given up—I already felt like a big enough pile of crap as it was. No, I needed my best friend—and thank God, because she was here for me.
She hugged me as soon as she was in the door. Lucy wasn’t a hugger, so I knew it must have been serious. I smiled into her embrace, remembering in that second just how much human contact seemed to make all this easier.
“I can’t believe any of this.” Lucy shook her head as she sat down on my couch, dumping her bag next to her and stretching her arms up over her head.
“Me neither,” I sighed heavily and flopped down into the armchair next to her.
“So, do you know how far gone you are?” She nodded towards my stomach.
“No idea. Maybe a month, at the most?”
“And…” She hesitated, and I knew the question that was going to come out of her mouth next. “What are you going to do with it?”
“The baby?” I patted my stomach protectively, and shrugged. “I don’t know. I wanted to keep it, but I don’t want to be a single parent. And with Jazz AWOL…”
“Have you stopped by the club house? That biker thing that he’s part of?” she suggested.
I’d called earlier in the week, but there had been no answer—and I found it highly unlikely they would tell me where Jazz was even if they knew. They were loyal to him, at the end of the day, and not me. I wondered if they even knew what had happened, or if Jazz had dumped them the same way he had me.
“I called, but nothing, and I don’t want to actually go down there without him.” I sighed. “I don’t know where he would have gone. If he’s gone anywhere.”
“Huh?” Lucy furrowed her brow.
“Maybe he just…went for a drive?” I shrugged, groping around for some kind of answer. I hadn’t felt obliged to find one for myself, but now that Lucy was sitting here in front of me, I couldn’t help but feel even more impotent than ever. “Maybe he’s back at the house?”
She leaned forward. “Have you checked?”
“Yes,” I admitted. “I…I’ve gone by there every day, and no one’s been home. Or at least no one’s answering the door.”
“Moan,” she began gently, and I knew what was coming next. Lucy wasn’t a coddler, so when that tone of voice came out I knew she really, really meant it.
“I know, I know.” I waved my hand, not needing to hear it. “I know he’s probably gone. I just…fuck, I just needed to think he was still in this with me, you know?”
“Well, now I’m in it with you,” she replied firmly, and I couldn’t keep the smile from my face. Despite everything that had happened, someone was still on my side. And that was priceless.
“If he’s gone, what are you going to do?” She nodded towards my stomach again.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess I’m waiting to see if he’s really gone or if this is just…I don’t know, if this is just panic or something.”
“You know that even if he comes back, things aren’t going to be the same,” she warned me. “I mean, he loves you, and you love him, but he’s never going to get over this.”
“I know.” I bowed my head, conceding her point. I knew she was right—that even if Jazz were to walk through that door right now and tell me he loved me and wanted to raise our baby together, it wouldn’t be as easy as that. Ella would haunt us, hanging over our heads, the ghost of the child he once had. Life would never be the same—and not in the overdramatic way that most people used that term. No, our lives had been changed irrevocably by what had happened. Though I still held out some small hope that Ella was alive, I knew that the chances were slim, and that moving past that would be almost impossible.
“But…you still want to be with him?” she pressed.
I cocked my head at her, not sure exactly what she was getting at. I nodded again. “Yeah, I do. I know it’s crazy, but I have to know whether or not we could make this happen.”
“You love him?”
I nodded, unable to get the words out. But she didn’t need to hear them. She reached over and squeezed my knee.
“Then we need to go out and find him,” she murmured, a small, slightly sad, smile on her lips. I raised my eyebrows at her.
“The fuck?”
“Everything that’s happened…” She hesitated, as though trying to make sure this was coming out how she wanted it to. “You deserve a shot at something you want. I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life wondering what would have happened if you’d done things differently.”
“Neither do I,” I sighed. “But where do we start?”
“We don’t have to think about that now.” Lucy waved her hand, dismissing me. “But I just want you to know that I’m here for you, and that we can figure this out, the two of us.”
“Girl detectives.” I managed a grin. She flashed one back at me in return, and for a second I forgot about all of it—all that mattered was that my best friend was here, and that she and I were going to put the world to rights. I found myself welling up once again—Jesus, I was like a fucking faucet in the last few days. I dabbed at my eyes and lay back in the seat, finding myself suddenly exhausted. I hadn’t been sleeping all that much in the last few days thanks to my thoughts bouncing off the walls of my head endlessly when I lay down at night, but now that I had passed them on to someone else, I felt able to relax again. It was as though someone had stuck a pin in me and let out all the tension that had accumulated since last week.
“Tired?” Lucy smiled at me gently, and I nodded. My eyes were already drifting shut as she tucked an arm around my waist and pulled me to my feet. She guided me through to bed, pulling off my shoes as I flopped down on top of the covers.
“Thank you for all of this.” I propped myself up on my elbows in a moment of lucidity. “I don’t…I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“Anytime,” she replied sincerely.
“And hey, you know I want to hear that gossip about the guy at your work when I get up tomorrow.” I raised my eyebrows at her. “Promise?”
She laughed, the sound almost sounding odd to my ears it had been so long. “Of course!”
“Are you okay to get yourself set up on the couch?” I yawned, rolling under the covers and shimmying out of my jeans. “I put out the covers—”
“Of course I am,” she assured me. “Seriously. Now will you just go to sleep?”
“Whatever you say.” I peered over the edge of the covers at her, and she went to switch out the light. I felt like a kid again, coddled and tired and taken care of.
“Goodnight,” she called softly.
“Night.”
She flicked the light off, casting me into darkness, and I found myself staring at the ceiling as I drifted off to sleep. I had no idea how I’d ended up here—pregnant, alone, mourning the loss of a daughter I never even really got to call my own. But all I knew was that I wouldn’t opt out of it if I’d had the chance. If someone had come to me all those months ago and told me that I would love and be loved by the two of them as much as I had been—I wouldn’t have walked away. I couldn’t have. And yes, things hadn’t gone according to plan—but there was still hope. That was all I needed, at the end of the day, the promise of something more, of something better.
We could still put the pieces together if we wanted to. The life we made after this, I knew it would be different—it would exist on a far different plane to the one we had lived beforehand. But maybe that was for the best. Maybe starting anew was the only way we could make this work. I thought of Jazz, and Ella, and the baby—and for a moment, could see the four of us together, a family, happier than we’d ever been. And it was on that image that I allowed myself to drift off to sleep, clinging to hope, and the promise of a future that I could be happy in.