Early June, Four Months Earlier
Frantic.
I couldn’t breathe.
No.
I clutched her to me, rocked her at my chest.
No.
“You have to let her go.”
This was all I had of her, and they were trying to take it away.
I fought, fought for her as I crushed her to me.
I just needed a little longer. That’s all I asked. Just a little longer.
I needed to remember, needed to feel.
This was all I had.
I begged.
Fingers dug into mine, pulling me apart, tearing her away.
“No!” It wept as a ragged scream as the place inside me that had been carved out for her was ripped wide open.
Oh my God. Oh my God.
That was all I had. Didn’t they understand?
Pain slammed me from all sides, pushing in and pressing out, rending and severing and destroying. It all spread out in a consuming agony.
Subdued, quieted footsteps pierced the room as they resonated across the hard floor, fell silent as the door was opened then fell shut.
They took her.
It throbbed, this hollowness that swallowed me whole.
She was gone.
Then I felt his breath at my cheek, heard his voice as it prodded, seeking to penetrate my ears. I’m sorry.
I wanted to lash out at him, spit in his face.
He let them take her. He was the one who’d said it was time.
He forced me to cast her aside.
She was gone.
Gone.
Pain clamped down on my pelvis, and my breasts ached to feed.
There was no air.
I couldn’t breathe.
Six Weeks Later
“Mommy.” My name floated from her mouth on a whisper. A tiny hand pressed to my face. “Mommy, are you awake?”
I forced my eyes open.
Grief surged in.
I fisted the sheet against me and struggled to focus on my little girl. On the mattress, she leaned on her forearms, her chin to the sheets. Wide eyes peered into mine, her face two inches from my nose.
Rapidly, I blinked.
Lizzie turned a grin up at me, as if seeing my eyes open was the best thing she’d ever witnessed.
“Hi, Mommy,” she said.
“Hi, baby girl,” I whispered back, my voice hoarse from lack of use.
“You wanna play? I got my tea party all set up, and you have a special spot.” She smiled at me with wide, hopeful eyes.
I swallowed. The motion hurt. Everything hurt. My arms. My stomach. My head.
My soul.
My voice cracked. “Not today, baby.” I mustered a smile and reached out to gently touch her chin.
Her face fell with disappointment. “You don’t want to play any day,” she contended, almost whining, so out of character for my little girl.
Guilt slashed, raking its claws down deep in my skin, cutting as it splayed me wide. The wounds wept. I wasn’t strong enough for her. Wasn’t strong enough for either of them.
“I’m sorry, baby, Mommy doesn’t feel very well right now. Maybe a little bit later, okay?”
She nodded, watching me with an expression that read too much. She inched forward and placed a kiss on my forehead. “Okay, Mommy. Feel better.”
I mashed my eyes closed as she backed away, held them as I listened to her withdraw from my room. The gush of stagnant air I’d been holding in my lungs left me as I heard her retreating down the hall.
Within the safety of my bed, I burrowed deeper, tried to snuff it all out. The pain, the voices that continually told me one day it would be okay, as they spoke words that meant nothing.
I’d almost dozed off when I felt it.
Anxiety ratcheted through me the second I felt him emerge behind me in the doorway. Sickness crawled, slithered along the wounds that dripped from the surface of my skin. I could sense him, his intent stare as it swept over me. What used to feel like a caress now felt like an intrusion.
I pressed my eyes tighter, pretending to be asleep, praying that he would just leave.
I couldn’t handle him. Couldn’t handle his scrutiny, couldn’t handle the way he looked at me as if he understood.
I couldn’t stomach the anger.
“Elizabeth.” My name from his tongue was frustration and sympathy and raging disappointment. “You can’t keep doing this. Your daughter needs you. You need to get out of that bed.” His voice softened in appeal. “Baby, get up…let’s spend the day with Lizzie. Let’s go to the beach…do something.”
I stilled myself, trying to hold in the sob that rattled in my throat. If I just held fast long enough, he would go away. He would give up.
He would leave me.
This time, that’s what I wanted him to do.
When I didn’t respond, he released a frayed breath. “God damn it, Elizabeth, I know you’re awake. Stop ignoring me. You’ve been ignoring me for weeks.” He hesitated before he continued. “Please.”
I swallowed hard, curled in tighter on myself, couldn’t stand the sound of his voice landing against my ears. In my mind, I begged for him to just go. I couldn’t do this with him.
But he just stood there. I could feel his eyes burning a hole into me. Subdued footsteps began to slowly move across the room, and he came around to my side of the bed.
Cold gripped me as he approached.
This was the man I thought I was going to love for all my life.
Even under the piles of blankets, I still felt frozen from the inside out. My pulse stuttered as I searched for the breath I could never seem to find.
A too-warm hand pressed to my ice-cold cheek. I tried not to cringe, but I couldn’t stop the anxiety from seizing me, from yanking at my heart and sinking like a rock to the pit of my stomach.
I gagged when he ran his thumb under my eye, his breath spreading over my face.
“Baby, you have to get up. You’ve been in this bed for six weeks. We need you.”
I flinched and jerked my face away.
Frustration left him in a weighted huff, his voice tight. “Damn it, Elizabeth, you have to get out of this bed. We can’t do this any longer.”
“Please, just leave me alone,” I begged, turning my face the other direction.
“I’m not going to leave you alone any longer. I’ve let you lie here and lie here, and nothing is going to change until you make a change. I know you’re hurting, but you have to do something different than this.”
Until I make a change?
A fresh charge of anger needled into my senses, pricking as pain in the deepest places of my soul. “Just leave me alone.” The words were hard, hoarse as they scraped up my dry throat.
He shot off the edge of the bed, and I buried my face deeper in my pillow and pulled the blanket over my head, praying for him to leave. I just wanted to sleep. Still, I could feel him pacing, could almost see him tugging at his hair as he stormed around our room.
I jumped when he tore the blanket from my face, and I jerked around to stare up at the man who I wasn’t sure I recognized any longer. He was raging, his jaw clenched as he glared down at me as if I made him sick.
Or maybe it was the other way around.
And I felt it, something well in the air that made it harder to breathe than it already was.
“Elizabeth, baby, it’s time.”
Flashes of them ripping my little girl from my arms slammed me, Christian making me, telling me it was time.
It’s time.
It clattered around in the bowels of my brain. Memories. That day. What he forced me to do.
A roil of too many emotions boiled in my blood. Burst free.
I pushed to my hands and knees. The effort took just about all I had. My head sagged between my arms, and I struggled to lift it as I leveled my eyes on Christian.
“Just leave me alone.” All the bitterness I’d been feeling manifested on my tongue. “Just leave me alone! You have no idea what I’m going through.”
“How can you say that?” he shot back. A deep line dented his brow. “You think I don’t understand what you’re feeling?” he demanded in sheer disbelief.
Incredulous laughter shot from my mouth in a contemptuous scoff. “What do you mean, how can I say that?” I pushed from my hands, sitting all the way up on my knees. “I was the one who carried her, Christian.” I jabbed my finger to my chest. “I was the one who loved her and cared for her. She died inside of me, and I had to give birth to her.” I lifted my chin. “So yeah, I can say that…you have no idea what I’m feeling. None.”
His entire face twisted in contention. “You think she meant less to me than to you? You think my heart isn’t broken over this?”
“You wouldn’t even touch her.” It dripped from my mouth as a sneer.
He blanched, like I’d just slapped him across the face.
Maybe I wanted to. I had to admit I did. I wanted to hit him, to pound whatever feeble excuse he had out of him. To demand to know how he could reject her that way. Our baby girl. The child we’d created. All those excruciating hours I’d held and rocked her, that I’d shown her all the love I possibly could before I wouldn’t be allowed to anymore, he never even looked at her.
All that time I’d tried to love her for the both of us.
If it was possible, it’d broken me a little more.
Then he let them take her before I was ready to let her go. I begged him for one more hour. Just one more hour and he couldn’t even give me that.
His entire body shook, and he blinked as if he couldn’t believe what I’d said. “You think because I didn’t hold her, I didn’t love her?” His raised, caustic voice bounced against the walls.
Mine was low, but held all the sting. “I know you didn’t.”
Agony contorted his face.
“Just go.” This time I choked, a sob breaking free because I couldn’t understand what was coming from me, but I couldn’t stop it. I was so hurt, so hurt. “I don’t want you here.”
He dropped his head and shook it, harsh and severe, as if he were grappling to make sense of what I had said. When he raised his attention back to me, fury flamed in his eyes.
“That’s what you want?” he shouted as he flung his hand out in my direction.
Raging, he stormed to the closet and tore the door open. It slammed back against the wall. Christian fumbled around inside and threw a suitcase into the middle of the bedroom floor. It tumbled, the lid flopping open as it settled. He began ripping shirts from their hangers and throwing them inside. He stalked back out, fisting a handful of shirts out in front of him.
“Is this what you want, Elizabeth? You want me to leave? You think I don’t understand what you’re feeling? You think you’re the only one who has to go through this? You think you’re the only person who’s hurting? Then fine, do it alone.”
I was gasping, crying, because his words flew out at me in a constant assault. I couldn’t stop the slaughter, the way they took hold and destroyed the last piece of me.
He jerked the bottom dresser drawer open, pulled all his jeans out and shoved them into the suitcase. He glanced up at me as he ripped the zipper closed.
“I thought better of you than this, Elizabeth, but I was wrong. You are the most selfish person I’ve ever met.”
I felt sick, an ache I couldn’t understand gutting me. Still the words trembled from my mouth. “I hate you.” I said it through choked tears.
I’d told him it before. This was the first time he looked like he believed it.
It was the first time I thought maybe I meant it.
He leveled his gaze on me as he hefted the suitcase up by the handle. “Yeah, that’s pretty obvious.”
He started across the floor. Pausing in the doorway, he looked at me from over his shoulder. His throat bobbed heavily as he swallowed.
“Think whatever you want, Elizabeth, but I loved her. I loved her with all my life.”
I watched him go, and I didn’t try to stop him.
Instead, I wept, clutching my blanket to my face as I crumbled. My ears stung as I listened to him talking, his voice giving instructions to Lizzie. I couldn’t make them out. They were muffled as I buried myself deeper in the refuge of the bed. I begged for the darkness that sleep would bring.
All I wanted was to go there.
All I wanted was to escape.
Present Day
I desperately sucked at the stifled air. It hurt as it expanded in my lungs. Everything still hurt so badly. I missed her. That hollow void ached for her, and I knew it always would. I pressed the blanket to my face. Confused tears fell when I realized I found some kind of comfort in it. It was small, but just like the urge to fill the void had flickered this morning, it was there.
I rubbed the satiny edge of the blanket against my cheek, the one that Claire had once held Christian in. Memories of him ignited in every one of my senses.
Affection sparked. I pushed it down, stamped it out. Forgiving him, moving on from this, seemed impossible.
It just hurt too much.
That day, Christian had gone, and he’d taken Lizzie with him. At the time, I’d been relieved, relieved that my little girl had been led out my door because I didn’t have the strength to be the parent she needed me to be. Afterward, I’d slept for three straight days. I had never fully awakened until I’d been roused by Matthew sitting on the side of my bed, running his hand through my matted hair as he coaxed me from sleep. He said Christian had asked him to come check on me.
Christian had facilitated it then, Lizzie coming over to spend time with me. Through Matthew, he’d said Lizzie needed to see me. It was like I was being granted visitation, because I wasn’t competent to take care of my own daughter. Knowing Lizzie would be coming home had been the only thing that had finally forced me out of bed.
We slowly slipped into a routine. Lizzie would be at my house for a couple of days and then she’d spend a couple at Christian’s, though when school had started again, she began spending more time at my place. Still, Christian had insisted he come and pick her up each morning for school.
For my daughter, I’d done my best to be up as much as I could when she was here, though half the time, I felt only partially conscious. The rest of the time, I slept away.
Guilt throbbed within me. For all these months, I’d felt a sense of relief while Lizzie was gone, relieved because I could just succumb.
I realized this morning, in the vacant emptiness of my room, that I was no longer relieved.
I missed her, and she needed me.
I will try.
Lifting my face to the ceiling, where the single bulb glared, I inhaled deeply as tears continued to stream from my eyes.
And for the first time in weeks, I wanted something other than to sleep.
I wanted to breathe.