After a mostly uneventful dinner, I retired to my bedroom—pushed beyond my limits—but I invited Beau to stay the night again. I was certain he probably wanted to go home and get a change of clothes, but despite that, he agreed. At one point during the evening, Beau got up to get a drink. It was long before my siblings had gone to bed, and Beth caught him in the hallway outside my room. With my door ajar, I could hear every word.
“Thank you for helping Phoebe find her way back to us. I’ve missed her.” Her statement was a reminder of the way things had changed and the way my family had suffered.
They exchanged a few more words, but I tuned them out as I turned her thanks over in my head again.
Beau didn’t mention the conversation when he returned with two glasses of water. He simply placed the drinks on my bedside table and slipped back under the blanket beside me, as though what she’d said was no big deal.
Just like the first time he’d stayed, I asked him to hold me while we tried to fall asleep.
It was the best day I’d had in a long time.
IT WAS DARK.
The mattress around me was sticky. Wet. Slicked with blood.
I cracked my eyes open as I tried to figure out what woke me.
“Phoebe, are you awake?” A woman’s voice called my name.
“Stay. Away. From. Me.” Each word was a sob. My heart had torn in half the night before, and I didn’t have anything left to give anyone. My best guess was that it’d been about eight weeks since I’d been taken.
Eight weeks locked away.
Ten weeks since my last period.
Ten weeks pregnant.
I curled tighter around myself as I disintegrated back into the sobs that had filled most of my night. Apologies to Beau burned my lips—words I’d probably never get a chance to offer him. I hadn’t even known I was carrying his child until it was too late, but I would’ve given anything to have not failed him. To have been strong enough to resist Bee’s attack. To save our child.
“It’s time for your medicine,” Cora said, her voice quiet but almost cheery. It was the one thing I should have been grateful for; they were at least keeping track of the times and days for all my medication. Although, there were days I wondered whether it would’ve been easier if they hadn’t. I would’ve almost certainly been dead by then, but dead was preferable to the torture I endured regularly. It was better than the loss I’d suffered.
The overheads flickered to life, accompanied by the hum I’d now come to dread. “I hope you’ve gotten over your little tantrum from yester—” She cut off, no doubt seeing the discovery I’d made during the night. Even though it was too late to do anything, too late to save its life, I’d placed my baby on the pillow beside me. I had no idea whether the child was a boy or a girl, it was still too early to know—the baby little more than a jellybean sized child I’d rescued from a fluid-filled sac. Because I didn’t know the sex, I’d spent the night thinking of it as both.
Despite the horror, I hadn’t done anything to stop the blood. I didn’t care if I bled out. If I joined my child in the afterlife. I was ready for it. Deserved it for my failure.
“What . . . what’s this?” Cora asked.
The only response I had was to sob harder. I couldn’t talk to her. Couldn’t pretend to be anything but the broken shell I was.
I saw her shadow across my eyes a second too late; by the time I reached up to stop her, she’d moved away with my precious bundle in one hand. Under her breath, she muttered about evils and punishments. There was nothing in me left to resist, and all I could do was clamp my hands over my ears to block out the sound of her unceremoniously “resolving the issue.”
“Get up,” she barked when she returned to my side.
For a moment, I couldn’t move.
“Get up,” she repeated, grabbing hold of a handful of my hair and yanking me off the bed. I opened my eyes as she shoved me toward the small makeshift bathroom in one corner. I caught sight of myself in the mirror. Blood had dried in my hair from where I’d fallen onto the bed in the middle of the night after seeing my failure as a protector. It was my job as a mother to keep my child safe, and I’d failed. I’d let him or her be destroyed by hatred.
After stripping the sheets in an all-too-efficient manner and remaking the bed, Cora turned her attention to me. A pair of scissors made short work of the dress that was already destroyed by blood and the biting chains during Bee’s attack. I tried to care as the cold steel of the scissor blades ran up my stomach, accompanied by the snip of the material slicing apart, but I didn’t think I’d care about anything again. How could anything matter when I’d contributed to the death of my baby?
“Sometimes the Lord works in mysterious ways,” Cora said as the scissors ran between my breasts. She often spouted biblical bullshit, even though there was nothing religious or God-fearing about her household. I knew real Christians, and they weren’t batshit crazy like her and her son. And Bee was the farthest thing from a man of God I could imagine. “And sometimes it is clear why things happen. Products of sin will be destroyed. Now you are clean, and you can repent.”
If it wasn’t for the memory of Bee’s abuse burned into my brain from the night before, I would’ve told her to fuck off. I would’ve scratched at her face and torn out her eyes.
She yanked the cuffs around my wrist to force me into the corner of the room where the tap in the ceiling and drain on the floor created a makeshift shower. Before I could even prepare myself, the water streamed over me, cold enough that my skin tightened and my nipples puckered.
“We’ll get you clean,” she said as she worked the soap through my hair and over my body. “You need to be clean for the wedding.”
I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I was anywhere else. For a moment, I could imagine the water running over me and dripping against the concrete floor was the Cedar Creek Falls Angel and I had visited a year ago. It didn’t last long though because Cora’s voice cut into my attempts to escape.
“Then Peter said to them, repent, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Do you repent, Phoebe?”
There were a hundred things I wanted to say to her, but I was too dead inside. Too lost in the memory of the night spent mourning a child I’d never known existed until it was far too late to save them. “Yes, Cora. I repent.”
Please, God, take me away from here.
“I repent. I repent.”
“What are ya sayin’? Dawson? Dawson? Wake up, darlin’.”
“Go away,” I murmured as I realised where I was—and who I was with. Why the memory of that night had to surface after what had been an overall positive experience with Beau, I had no clue, but I couldn’t face him with the guilt over not being able to protect our child burning in my chest.
“Darlin’?”
“I said go away.” I sobbed.
I could feel his hesitation in his lack of movement. Was he wondering whether I was still lost in a dream?
“Go home, Beau,” I added, leaving no doubt that I knew who I was talking to.
“It’s three in the mornin’.” Even as he said the words, he moved out of the bed.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but the apology wasn’t just for kicking him out of bed. “But I need you to go.”
“Okay, darlin’. I’m gonna go, but if ya want me back, just call me, ’kay?”
“I need to be alone.” The words came out harsher and crueller than I’d intended, but I couldn’t be around him anymore.
Before he’d even shut the door to my room, my sobs started. How could he love me when I couldn’t even let him comfort me?
Some time later, there was a knock on my door.
“Pheebs, can I come in?” Dad’s voice was filled with sleep as he made the request.
My reply was a sob almost loud enough to wake the whole family. He was at the side of my bed in an instant.
“What is it?”
He put his hand on the pillow near my head, and I reached out to hold it. I held my hands in front of my face like I was saying a prayer, leaving Dad’s sandwiched between my palms.
“She wasn’t the product of sin,” I murmured, knowing Dad would probably have no clue what I was talking about, but unable to articulate anything more. Just like every time I spoke of my baby, I shifted pronouns and wished I’d known whether it was a girl or a boy. My baby deserved better than to be relegated to an “it.” “He was the product of love. I should’ve been enough to save my baby, but I failed.”
Dad’s fingers twitched between my palms, no doubt as he yearned to offer me some comfort. “You didn’t fail. You couldn’t have done anything more.”
“Was it because I sinned, Daddy?”
“No, baby girl. You did nothing wrong.” His own tears were clear in his voice. He rested his head on my pillow as his hands trailed through my hair. “You. Did. Nothing. Wrong.”
He sat with me until I finally succumbed to sleep once more.
WHEN I woke again, it was bright and I was alone. Another nightmare—memory—had haunted my sleep and I woke, unable to breathe with the feeling of Bee’s hand clutching around my neck. I found Dad asleep beside my bed with his hand draped over my pillow. I woke him with a gentle shake and ignored his apologies for staying in my room after I’d fallen asleep.
After he left my room, I buried my head in the blanket and tried to hide away from the nightmares.
“Where’s Beau?” Mum asked when I finally emerged from my bedroom after everyone else had gone to school and work. It was Monday, which at least meant I could expect a few days containing a few hours of relative peace.
“He went home.”
“Last night?”
I nodded as I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and took a bite. Even though it’d looked appetising enough in the bowl, the sensation of the crisp juice hitting my stomach twisted everything up. Or maybe it was the guilt from kicking Beau out like I had.
“Why?”
“I needed him to go.”
“That explains why Dad was awake, I guess.” Mum’s frown grew. “Are you okay?”
I shrugged, unable to find the words to talk to her about the things that had filled my night. Mum knew the sting of losing a child, and although the circumstances were different, I didn’t want to remind her of Emmanuel or give her any more reason to worry about me. To worry about anything. Despite knowing a similar loss, she was the last person I could talk to about my miscarriage.
Part of the guilt that played in my mind was the thought that if Emmanuel had lived, and I had died—like it was supposed to be—no one would be suffering through the things we had to face. He wouldn’t have disappointed everyone like I had. For most of my life, I’d felt his presence in my darkest times. He’d abandoned me in that place—or more accurately, I’d abandoned him.
And that had happened the instant I’d learned of my baby.
“I’m going back to bed.” I spun away from Mum and headed back to my bedroom. It wasn’t that I expected to get more sleep, I just couldn’t face anyone anymore.
I WANTED to call Beau and apologise for kicking him out in the middle of the night, but I didn’t know how. Couldn’t find the courage. I lay in my bed until I heard the house fill with noise as everyone returned from their Monday at work and school. When I heard the rabble of dinner, I headed into the shower and cleaned myself up, dressing back in my pyjamas, and then crept back into bed.
By the time I woke on Tuesday, I was ready to face the music. Only, when I tried to call Beau, I couldn’t push the Call button. Instead, I typed out a text asking him to come over. I didn’t warn Mum he’d be arriving but figured she’d know he would only come with my invitation.
Less than fifteen minutes later, Beau was leaning on my door frame. “Did ya wanna talk about it, darlin’?”
I shook my head and crossed the room to him. “I can’t.”
“Did you wanna at least get some sunshine?”
“It’s June. It’s the middle of winter. There isn’t a lot shine to the sun out there.”
His reassuring smile widened as I made it clear that I was moving into his embrace. His arms wrapped around me, and he rested his cheek on the top of my hair. “I’m willin’ to bet it’s more sun than you’ve seen in a while.”
“That’s beside the point,” I argued.
“Come, it’ll do ya wonders. It’s just a shame there ain’t no lake near here, or a boat to take out.”
“Sorry, I can’t help you there. There’s an ocean thataway, and a really great waterfall up on Tambourine Mountain that I’ve been to with Angel—” I cut off when I said her name.
“You miss her, don’t ya, darlin’.”
“Let’s go outside,” I said, changing the subject.
He stepped away and offered me his hand. “I won’t say no to that invitation.”
I led him out the back sliding door onto the back patio.
He laughed when he spotted Dad’s shed. “D’ya think that garage is big enough, darlin’?”
I chuckled in reply. “I can’t remember a house we’ve been at without something at least that size. Dad needs the space. So do I.”
“Ya got your bike down there?”
It looked like he was going to go down to check it out, so I diverted him to the jungle gym Dad had built for Beth and Parker when we’d first moved into the house. I took a seat on one of the swings and dragged my feet along the ground as I pushed myself slowly. He took a seat on the swing beside me and matched my arc.
“I’m sorry about the other night,” I said.
“Ya still don’t wanna tell me what I did wrong?”
I frowned as I shifted my gaze to him. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Oh, I jus’ assumed . . .”
“No. It’s just”—I wrapped my arms around myself, as though their flimsy protection could help keep the pieces together—“I needed to be alone after the dream I’d had.”
“’Bout repentin’?”
“About our baby,” I whispered. Outside of my confession at the racetrack, we hadn’t spoken about the miscarriage. I still wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about it, but I owed him an explanation.
I saw he’d stopped moving and was staring at his feet. His next breath was slow and shuddered through him. “I haven’t known how to talk to ya ’bout that,” he admitted.
“I know what you mean. How do you talk about the fact I murdered my own child?”
“No! That ain’t what happened.” He reached out for me, stopping inches before he touched me.
I yanked my shoulder away from him. “You don’t know what happened.”
“I know that ya didn’t do anythin’ to intentionally hurt her.”
“It could’ve been a little boy, you know.”
“Either way, I know whatever happened wasn’t your fault.”
I stared out at the horizon—our house had what they called “sea glimpses” and on a clear day you could see a patch of ocean in the distance. It wasn’t a clear day though, so all I saw was the grey sky of winter. It was almost fitting considering the conversation that had to happen.
“Xavier was convinced we were going to get married,” I said.
He nodded. “He was talking like a madman the day we found ya, but I gathered that much from his ramblin’s.”
“His mum used to come down to make sure I was clean and dressed for his sick little dates. He’d turn up with flowers and a movie, sometimes with takeaway as well, and then he’d sit beside me on the bed, holding my hand. No matter what I said or did, he was happy to pretend we were a normal couple. When his Mum came down the day I lost our baby, she was talking as though the wedding was days away. Endless inane chatter about fucking updos and make-up. I couldn’t take it anymore. I screamed at her to try to force her to get a clue, but all it did was send her running to Bee, who took great pleasure in punishing me for my rudeness.”
“Darlin’—�
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I held up my hand. I had to get through this. “He came to me, I’m sure intent on his usual practice of stringing me up like a fucking carcass, but my wrist slipped out of the cuffs. He was so mad. It was like I was personally responsible for it, even though it was just because of how much weight I’d lost. He kicked the shit out of me before whipping me with the chain while I was on the ground.”
I risked a glance at Beau, who was staring straight ahead, horror-struck.
“So, you see, it was my fault.”
Beau’s gaze whipped to me so fast I would’ve thought it was impossible. “I fail to hear how any of that is your fault, darlin’.”
“If I hadn’t shouted at Cora, she wouldn’t have gotten Bee involved. If I’d been honest about the fact that the cuff could slip off my wrist, he wouldn’t have gotten angry when he found out I was halfway to freedom.”
Beau stared at me as if I was speaking a foreign language and he was trying to decipher it. “So you’re tryin’ ta say that if it hadn’t been for those things, Bee woulda left ya unharmed. He never woulda lost his temper ’bout nothin’ else?”
“Of course he would’ve. He was a psychopath. I don’t have a clue what went through his head most of the time, other than the fact he got his jollies out of beating the shit out of people and blamed my dad for all of his failings, which made him enjoy beating me more than anyone else.”
Beau shifted until he was in front of me. I tried to block out the memory of sitting with Xavier in almost the same position—with me on a swing and him in front of me.
“Darlin’, there is not one part of me, not even a teeny tiny part buried right down deep, that blames you for what happened. I was devastated when I heard you’d lost our child, but for you as much as for me. Maybe in a different world or another time—”
“No.” I could see his train of thought, and although it was designed to comfort me, I had to stop it in its tracks before it built an unhealthy hope in him. “That’s not in the cards for me. Not anymore. Even if I can overcome all the noise in my head, and be with you again that way, having children isn’t in my future. I-I can’t risk the damage to my kidney. You have to realise the package I have on offer is broken, Beau. It’s one of the items on the clearance rack, discounted because of all the missing pieces.”
Physis (Phoebe Reede: The Untold Story #4) Page 10