My body felt like it weighed a hundred kilos. I dragged myself to the bathroom and ran a bath. I lowered myself into the water and leant back against my bath pillow. Thoughts were screaming so loud any rationality was drowned completely out. Any ability to reason my way out of the mess was far too soft to be heard. I lay there and cried until the tears no longer fell and the bathroom slowly began to dim as the sun set outside.
Danni tapped on the bathroom door. “Leah, do you want to come out for some dinner?”
“No.”
“Let me know if you change your mind.”
When the water was too cold to bear any longer, I stepped out of the bath and wrapped myself in a towel. I went to my room, drew the curtains shut and collapsed onto my bed, where I stayed until the sun rose the next morning.
I had been lying awake since dawn when Danni came in. She sat on the end of bed and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“Are you going to go into work today, Leah?”
I didn’t turn to look at her, merely shook my head.
“Do you need me to give Gerry a call for you?”
“Yes, please.”
“Sure. I’ve got to get head to work now, will you be alright?”
I nodded.
“If you need me at all today, just call me. I’ll keep my phone near me.”
Again I nodded.
When she left, I pulled the sheets up to my neck. I didn’t want to be awake or to think. So I slept.
***
I woke to the doorbell buzzing incessantly. I forced my eyelids open, looking blearily at the clock by the bed. It was four o’clock in the afternoon. I had been asleep for almost twenty-one hours. It made sense to push the pain away with more sleep, so I buried my head under the pillow. But the doorbell buzzed on.
I threw the pillow off my head and rolled out of bed. I pulled a pair of shorts and a singlet on and went to the door. I knew I must have looked like hell, but I didn’t care. It didn’t feel important. I opened the door, my heart skipping as I saw Brennan’s back as he walked away down the corridor. Hearing me, he turned and ran back to the door. The relief I felt to have him near me was more than I could have ever anticipated. I felt such immense longing in my heart hurt.
“Leah,” he said urgently, “can we talk, please?”
I didn’t say a word, just moved out the way of the door so he could come in. We took a seat on the couch next to each other. He was fidgeting, his mouth tight. I wanted to throw my arms around him and tell him I was sorry and have everything go back to the way it was, but I didn’t know if he would let me or if he had it in him to forgive me for what I had done.
“Brennan,” I said. “I… I’m really sorry not to have trusted you. I know now that I made a mistake.”
He exhaled, shoulders slumping. “I wasn’t sure if you would even let me in here to explain to you that I would never cheat on you, Leah. Not ever.”
I lowered my eyes to my lap. “I know you wouldn’t. I jumped to the wrong conclusion and…” I broke off crying.
He placed his hand on my back. “I’m sorry I yelled at you yesterday. But if you and I are going to work, I need you to trust me.”
I could feel the tears on my cheeks. “I know.”
“What happened yesterday?”
“I don’t know. I snapped. I had such a terrible day at work. Some woman is divorcing her adulterous husband. It brought back so many memories of what happened with Antony. And then when I saw you with Joanne, without your shirt on, I assumed the worst.”
Brennan shook his head. “I’m not Antony.”
“I know that.”
He sighed again and seemed to hesitate. “Perhaps we do need to take a break. I think you’ve got some issues you need to deal with. I don’t think you’re over Antony,” he said, his voice cracking at the end.
The last thing I wanted, now that I knew the truth, was to take a break from him. I couldn’t bear the thought of spending any time away from him.
“I was looking for an excuse to push you away. I was trying to find an excuse to end it, so I would never have to feel the pain I felt with Antony. But I promise you… I swear that it’s not because I still have feelings for him. It was an effort to protect my heart.”
“But that doesn’t even make sense.”
“I know. I know,” I said. “It’s ridiculous how my mind works. How it can seem so rational to push you away, to avoid being hurt. In doing so, I’ve done to myself what I’ve been trying so hard to avoid.”
“And hurting me at the same time,” he added, frowning.
“Yes. I know, and I’m sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”
He shifted in his seat and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “I think you need to tell me what happened with Antony. It might help me understand what’s going on in your mind.”
I shook my head, knowing that if I opened those flood gates again, I might never be able to shut them.
“Leah, please. I think we need this. I think you need this.”
I looked into his earnest eyes, so full of concern. I realised that, finally, it was inevitable. I was going to have to tell Brennan the ugly truth about the demise of my relationship with Antony. Taking a deep, uneasy breath in, I started at the beginning of a story I had never told another soul.
“Caitlyn and I went into business together when I was twenty-five. We used the money Mum left to us to start our own boutique recruitment firm. We were unexpectedly successful. We grew so quickly. We went from making a loss in the first year to a profit of over seven hundred thousand dollars, plus ten employees on our books, by year three.”
“So that’s what Danni meant when she said she worked for you and Cait?”
I nodded. “She worked as our secretary for nearly two and half years. I met her older brother Antony through the business. He was the CEO for one of our bigger clients. He was incredibly charismatic and persuasive. I didn’t want to overstep professional boundaries initially, and he was seven years older than me, so I kept everything between us very platonic. But for months Antony pursued me until I finally caved and went on a date with him. We hit it off, and eventually became a serious item. After eighteen months he proposed and I accepted. We bought an apartment in the city for our first home together.”
Brennan sat silently, listening.
“Antony’s job meant that he was away a lot. In the fortnight leading up to the end of our relationship, he was in London on business.” I raised my eyes to Brennan’s, cautious of how my next words might affect him. Hesitantly I said, “Three days after he left, I found out that I was pregnant.” Brennan, ever so slightly arched his eyebrows before lowering them again. I could see that he was working hard to maintain his neutral expression.
“I was absolutely over the moon. I owned and ran a successful business, was about to be married to a man I believed was my Prince Charming, and I was also about to become a mother. I was bursting to tell Antony the good news, but I didn’t want to inform him until he came home from London. I didn’t think that it would be right to let him know that he was going to be a father over the phone. Also, wanting Antony to be the first one to know, I didn’t tell anyone else about it either, not even Cait or Sinead.”
I squirmed in my seat, not having spoken to anyone before about what happened next.
“The morning Antony was due home from London I started to get cramps in my stomach. Really painful cramps. I knew something was wrong. I tried to call Cait, but she wasn’t picking up. She was conducting a candidate interview off the premises. I tried to give Antony a call, on the off-chance that he might be home already, but his phone went straight to message bank. He was still on his flight back to Australia. I was so afraid that there was something wrong with the baby. I jumped in the car and drove myself up to the hospital. By the time I got there I had bled everywhere. The hospital staff rushed me in, but there was nothing that could be done. I had lost my baby.” I couldn’t continue. The force of emotio
n I had denied for so long came streaming back. The pain of losing a baby I desperately wanted, and having nobody around to support me while I went through the ordeal, was slamming against me again.
Brennan wrapped his arms around me. “I’m really sorry,” he said, his voice sounding as anguished as I felt.
I couldn’t look at him for a moment as I struggled to bring myself back from the brink. Feeling his empathy - seeing his sympathy - would be enough to completely unstitch me.
“I had a curette and was sent home. I kept trying to ring Antony and Cait, but they weren’t answering their phones. The drive home from the hospital felt like it took years, and by the time I had finished showering and changing into clothes that were not stained with blood, the silence of my apartment was so loud that I just had to get out of there.
“I drove into the office hoping Cait would be back. I desperately needed to talk to someone. Her door was closed, but I knew she didn’t have any clients so I just walked straight in. What I saw was…” I stopped and swallowed hard.
“What was it?” he asked.
“I saw a man’s back, his pants around his ankles. Cait was bent over her desk in front of him. At first I was just embarrassed that I had interrupted her having sex with someone, but then I heard the man speak. Heard him moan Cait’s name. I realised that the man was Antony. My Antony. I just stood there. I couldn’t even move. I guess I was in shock. It felt as though my breath had been punched out of me, and the last of my strength, everything I had left, drained from my body. I had never felt more betrayed in my entire life. I had just lost a baby and then found the man who I thought was the love of my life fucking my sister.”
“Leah. I don’t even know what to say,” said Brennan, features contorted with horror.
“There is nothing you can say.”
“So what happened?”
“I shut the door quietly, turned around and went home. They didn’t even know that I had seen them. I packed all my things in a suitcase, booked myself into a hotel, and didn’t get out of bed for three days. Eventually I gained enough strength to organise with Caitlyn for the business to be sold. I didn’t give her any explanation why, and she didn’t ask for any. Antony and I sold our apartment. I took out a lease on this unit with Danni. I never told Antony about the baby and after the sale documents were signed on the apartment, I never saw him again.”
Brennan threw his arms around me and pulled me in close to him, cuddling me tightly. I cried into his shoulder, long hard sobs, releasing all the emotion I had refused to acknowledge for such a long time.
“Sometimes things happen for reasons beyond our control or even comprehension,” he soothed, stroking my hair lightly. “Perhaps some omnipotent guiding force knew that you becoming a mother at that time in your life, to that pitiful excuse for a man, was not the right plan.”
I nodded. “I’ve often thought that myself.”
“I can’t even imagine… cannot remotely comprehend why any man would ever want to compromise a relationship with someone as gorgeous, and fun, and loving, and incredible as you,” said Brennan, his fists clenching and unclenching in his lap.
I shrugged. I didn’t have the answer.
“And I can’t believe that you had to give up your career and your lifestyle for some fucking self-obsessed wanker that couldn’t keep his cock in his pants. If I ever see him…” Brennan trailed off, preoccupied by his own imagination. Eventually he calmed himself and asked more steadily, “Does anyone know about this? Did you tell your dad?”
I shook my head. “Noone. I couldn’t tell Dad. It would have caused so much trouble in the family and, besides, it would have broken his heart. And then Cait was in a relationship with Greg, and I couldn’t bring myself to hurt Greg like that.”
“But you must have had to give a reason for selling the business and ending it with Antony?”
“I just said that I had burnt myself out professionally and personally and had to start afresh.”
“And they believed you?”
“Well if they didn’t, they never let me know.”
“How could you even talk to Cait again knowing that she had done that to you?”
“At first it was ridiculously hard. I couldn’t even look at her without wanting to smash her nose in. But there was so much more at stake than how I felt, so eventually, after years of suppressing my emotions and pretending like everything was fine, it got easier.”
“Well, you’re a bigger person than me. I would have killed Alex if he did that to me.”
“We do what we have to, don’t we?”
He shook his head. “You really shouldn’t have bottled this up for so long. It’s not good to keep all that emotion inside.”
“I know. But it’s really not something you feel good telling people about.”
“I wish you could’ve felt comfortable enough to tell me. It would’ve made things so much easier.”
“I couldn’t.”
He sighed. “I know. I know.”
He stood up, breathing in deeply, running his hands through his hair. “Fuck. Have I ever told you how crazy you make me?”
“I might have heard you say that before.”
He kneeled in front of me, nestling himself between my knees. “Listen to me and believe every word I say,” he said solemnly. “I would never, ever hurt you like that. Never. I’m not like Antony, not even close. And I never will be.”
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut as guilt swept through my body. I opened them again to find his blue eyes fixed on me. “I do believe you, and I’m so sorry for ever doubting that.”
He kissed me, holding his lips against mine for a long moment. “I don’t care what happened yesterday. I don’t want to be apart from you.”
“I don’t want that either. I love you.”
He looked at me, his eyes widening. “I love you too. So much. Too much. Too much to ever lose you.”
“Then don’t lose me.”
He leant in and kissed me again, his lips still brushing against mine as he spoke. “I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. You’re my world now. You’re all that is important to me.”
Relief flooded my body as I felt the warmth of Brennan’s body, felt his lips moving tenderly with mine. How could I have ever doubted his intentions—his integrity— like that? Or let him come so close to slipping away and out of my life? I loved him. I knew that now. To not have him in my life would be a pain far worse than I had ever encountered.
“You haven’t told your mum and dad about this, have you?” I asked.
He offered a coy smile, nodded. “I needed someone to talk to about it all.”
I groaned. “I’m so embarrassed. I’ll never be able to face them again.”
He smiled. “Leah, don’t be embarrassed, please. Mum is the one who talked sense into me.”
“She did? What did she say?”
“She said to tread carefully with you and to be more patient, because you are extra special.”
“Extra special? How?”
He looked down at my lap, before raising his eyes to mine again. “She said that having lost your mother so young would’ve left a very big hole in your heart that required a little extra love and care and patience to fill.”
I could feel the tears starting again. “Your mother doesn’t know anything about what I need. She doesn’t know what it’s like to grow up without a mother. I’m fine. I don’t need special care.”
Brennan smiled sympathetically. “Leah, I think you’ll find that Mum knows exactly what it’s like to grow up without a mother. She lost her mum when she was seven.”
I couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. “She did?”
He nodded.
Brennan stood, pulled me off the lounge to meet him. “Come on. We’re going to the farm. It’s Friday, you don’t have to work tomorrow, and it’ll do you good to talk to someone else about all this.”
***
I packed an overnight bag, left a note for Danni telling her
what had happened and where I was going to be, then set off with Brennan to his parent’s property. By the time we pulled into the driveway it was dark.
Kerri met us in the lounge room. She took one look at me and threw her arms around me, holding me tight against her. She offered no judgement, just old-fashioned, homely empathy and generous compassion. I sagged against her, my throat painfully constricted, and released an uncontrollable whimper.
“Oh, darling girl. It’s okay,” she soothed.
I sobbed into her shoulder. Long, wracking sobs. She made me feel like I could finally let it all out. Let it all go. All the years of needing my mother, of needing that considerate voice, that warm hug, that beautiful smile, and that frown. It felt so good to have someone that I didn’t need to be brave in front of. To have Kerri who knew exactly how it felt to need someone so much your whole life, and no matter what you did you could never have her, never quite reach her. But more importantly, someone knew what it is like to push all those emotions to the bottom of your soul just so you didn’t have to admit that growing up without a mother was hard. Because to admit that it was hard meant that it was real, and if it was real, it was so painful you couldn’t bear it.
“Oh, darling girl,” she said again.
I stayed in her arms while twenty-six years of bottled-up emotions steadily emptied from my body via a torrent of tears. I finally let go of Kerri, feeling lighter. I lifted my head and wiped the leftover tears from my eyes. Brennan handed me a tissue and I blew my nose. I could see from his eyes that even he had given way to tears.
“Come on, Leah, Brennan. Into the kitchen,” ordered Kerri. “I’ll make us a cup of tea and we can have a nice long chat.”
I told Kerri everything about Antony and Cait. The miscarriage. The business. I told her everything about my life, growing up with only Dad, what it was like without my mum around, minus the usual bravado ordinarily used when I talked about my childhood with other people. She could empathise completely, having experienced the same thing herself. She told me how she also desperately wanted to become a mother herself, to fill that void her mother left when she died and when she couldn’t conceive, she thought her whole world was over.
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