From the Top

by Dani Collins

  The news hit like an invisible force. Nate wasn’t aware of stepping back, but the door was unexpectedly clapping against the back of his skull. It probably should have hurt. He ran his hand over his face, but it didn’t feel like his. He had gone numb all over.

  “Glory said she’ll take her if you can’t.” Rolf’s expression was hard and alert, searching his.

  Nate’s brain could barely grasp that words were being said let alone make sense of them. “Are they sure?”

  “That’s why they need the test. Glory said they couldn’t find a heartbeat. I’m sorry. I knew Ilke was pregnant. I didn’t know it was yours.”

  Was.

  He couldn’t look at Rolf. Shame was closing his throat. Not because he’d got a woman pregnant out of wedlock, but because he’d had such mixed feelings about it. He felt really fucking small right now. Something was shriveling inside his chest and hurt like hell. Like unbearable hell.

  “Can you drive?” Rolf asked.

  “Of course.” Nate tried to pull himself together. “Tell her I’m leaving right now.”

  “I mean, I can drive you into Haven.” Nate had never heard that tone from Rolf. He barked like a Rottweiler most of the time. Compassion wasn’t in his repertoire and his quiet concern made this moment that much harder to endure, leaving a blistered feeling in his ears. “Glory and I can take both of you.”

  “No, it’s fine.” It wasn’t fine. Nate pinched the bridge of his nose, tried to take it in. “I can do it.”

  “Use the company card for anything you need.”

  Nate nodded dumbly and walked out.

  “Jesus,” Trigg said as Nate left Rolf’s office. “What’s wrong? Your kid okay?”

  “Personal matter,” Nate heard Rolf say behind him as he left.

  Deeply personal, but something Nate suddenly wished he hadn’t kept so private. His kid wasn’t okay and deserved better than to be treated as a disgraceful secret.

  *

  Nate didn’t remember the drive from the lodge. Everything went blank and didn’t come back into focus until he walked in the doors of the clinic. Frankie happened to be behind the administrative counter, writing in a folder. She looked up and mild surprise blanked her face.

  “Hi, Nate.” She wore the expression halfway between guilt and wariness that he always saw on her. He wouldn’t allow his son to be around someone who was morally bankrupt, which she wasn’t, but she had slept with his wife while they were still married. For Aiden’s sake, he had tried to forgive Wanda, but all of his conversations with Frankie tended to be strained and kept as short as possible, at least on his end.

  Not that he had anything to say to her right now beyond, “I’m here for Ilke.”

  “Sure—” Frankie did a double-take. Her jaw loosened and she blinked, asking point-blank, “You mean—Does Wanda know?”

  “Yes.” He felt like a zombie, speaking without any emotions or even physical awareness of his body. “Should I go through?” He needed to see her. That much he knew.

  Frankie hovered one more second before she shook herself out of whatever shock she was processing and disappeared through the door into the back. A few moments later, Ilke and Glory walked out.

  Ilke stopped when she saw him. Emotions flickered across her face—caution, chagrin, despair. She ducked her chin and zipped her jacket, hiding her expression.

  “Thanks for coming.”

  If he hadn’t seen that brief flash of anguish in her pale blue eyes, he would have thought her completely unaffected. He might even have thought this was a dark blessing, but what he realized then was, she kept her emotions even more tightly under wraps than he did. In fact, she was so tense with trying to hold herself in control, her normally coordinated movements were off. She couldn’t seem to match one edge of her jacket zipper to the other. They were like two magnets with the wrong poles, refusing to meet. A tiny choke sounded in her throat.

  “Are you guys okay? I can drive,” Glory offered, forestalling Nate from moving forward and helping Ilke.

  “I got it. Thanks, Glory.”

  She squeezed his arm. “Text me and let me know how it goes, ’kay? It might be nothing.”

  It was kind of her to say, but he could tell by the way everyone was acting that they already knew it was the wrong kind of nothing.

  Frankie came out behind Ilke and handed her some absorbent pads. “You’ll want to sit on these, just in case.”

  His heart fell right through the souls of his shoes. He barely comprehended what Frankie said next.

  “I’ll tell Wanda you had to run out of town. Don’t worry about Aiden.”

  Right. It was Saturday. “Thanks.” His voice was strained and came from somewhere beyond him. He was inside a bubble, waiting for Ilke’s gaze to come up to his again.

  “The hospital is expecting you,” Frankie told Ilke.

  She nodded and Nate reached to open the door for her, only realizing as she went through ahead of him and moved beyond his touch that his hand had automatically set itself in the middle of her back. He wanted to pull her in close, as if that could somehow protect all three of them from what was happening.

  Walking across the parking lot was like walking through molasses. His feet felt heavy and sticky. He couldn’t think a clear thought. He opened the door for her and set the pads on the seat, then helped her into it.

  “Are you in pain?” he asked as he got in on his side.

  “They gave me something.” Her voice was disembodied. “It was your night with your son. I didn’t realize. I shouldn’t have asked you to take me.”

  “Of course, you should.” The sunshine, dipping toward the peaks of the mountains because it was late in the afternoon, cut straight between his eyes, sharp as a migraine.

  “Frankie knows your ex-wife?”

  “That’s who Wanda lives with.”

  “Oh. I saw her today.” Her voice sounded disembodied. “Aiden was at the playground with some other children. All the kids seemed to like her. They were having fun.”

  “She runs the local preschool. She asked to keep him late today, so she could take him to the festival.”

  Their child would never go to festivals. He swallowed.

  “Did something happen? Did you slip or something?”

  “No.” Her voice seemed to come from really far away, like she was lost in a house of mirrors. “It just stopped.”

  “What did?”

  “The pregnancy. I realized it this morning, as we were driving in here. I didn’t feel pregnant anymore. Then the bleeding started.”

  That sounded bad. Hopeless bad.

  He took his hand off the wheel and reached to cover hers. For a minute, her loose fist remained lifeless under his. Then slowly, she unfurled until her palm was under his and her fingers curled to hold on to his.

  *

  This was the worst day of his life.

  They didn’t speak again until they reached the hospital. It was a small relief to be seen so quickly, but ultimately cruel to have their hopes dashed so quickly.

  “Do you want me to come in with you?”

  “Do you want to?”

  “I do.”

  She nodded permission and disappeared to change into a gown.

  He remembered how much anticipation and excitement he had felt seeing the ghostly shape of Aiden inside Wanda’s womb. The astonishing magic of seeing his tiny heartbeat fluttering.

  Today, that same procedure was a dreadful thing. The glow inside the darkened room was cold and gray, the stillness soul-shattering.

  After a brief consultation, Ilke opted for a procedure that took about ten minutes. He sat with her afterward as she lay quiet in the recovery bed, only the blink of her lashes telling him she was conscious and alive.

  He might have thought she was at peace with all of this except she clung to his hand again, fingers cold but gripping firm. She swallowed convulsively a few times. He was surprised she didn’t cry. His own eyes were hot, but he just ran his thumb al
ong the bumps of her knuckles, trying not to feel.

  When she was discharged, they drove the two hours back to the lodge in dense silence.

  He parked in the staff lot and came around to open her door. She was already sliding to the ground. “You should have picked up Aiden. Now you’ll have to go back.”

  “Wanda is keeping him. I wasn’t sure how long we’d be.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  He followed her into the lodge through the kitchen entrance. They went up the back stairs and her room came up before his.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as he followed her into it.

  He closed the door and searched her pale, blank expression. “I don’t think you should be alone.” He didn’t want to be alone. That was the naked truth.

  *

  “I’m fine,” Ilke insisted, skimming off her jacket and throwing it on the foot of the bed. “It’s for the best, don’t you think?” She was shaking the way she did when she had had a fall that had scared her. Fine trembles originated in her organs and left the rest of her quivering like a dry leaf.

  “No.”

  She looked at him, unable to process that response. Any of this. Through her whole life, she had felt some kind of pain every single day and ignored it. Whether it was disappointment in herself for not performing to perfection, or the ache of taxed muscles, sore feet, or cold air in her lungs, or even old psychic scars of exploitation and abandonment, she simply blocked it out.

  This, however, was fresh and raw and completely unexpected. These last three weeks, as she had looked into the future, she hadn’t known what it held for her, but she had known that she would hold a baby.

  That had scared the hell out of her, but it had also held a strange draw. She hadn’t just warmed to see Nate with his son and think of him bestowing that affection on their baby. She had begun to see herself embracing a little body and seeing a round face grin up at her with something she barely understood—unconditional love.

  Now that was gone. All that was left was a sensation of such grave emptiness she could hardly breathe.

  Nate was standing there as if he expected something from her, but she had nothing. In fact, as she contemplated that she had failed to win a race, failed to win a man, and failed to carry her baby to term, she realized that she was nothing.

  The shivering inside her grew worse.

  “I keep thinking it’s my fault.” The ache in her throat spread to her chest and cheeks, making her feel compressed and stretched at once. The pain was suffocating. Her eyes stung unbearably. Even her ears felt plugged with pressure. “If I hadn’t been so ambivalent, maybe it would have been okay.”

  “I thought it was going to be—” His voice broke, which fractured a huge crack behind her breastbone.

  She lifted her head.

  He was looking toward the window. It was curtained against the night. No stars to offer hope, no soothing fall of snow. Not even a glimmer of moonlight, just the harsh glare of the overhead light leaving not even one shadowed corner for pain to hide. His expression was ravaged, his eyes wet.

  “I thought it was going to be Aiden’s little brother or sister.” His voice was choked. “I’m so angry with myself. I should have been grateful from the second you told me.” He scraped his sleeve across his eyes.

  “Are you crying?”

  “Yes. I’m devastated.”

  “I want to cry, but I don’t know how.” Her shaking was becoming a terrible shudder, though. Her whole being was flooded with deep grief. As she looked into his tormented eyes, she realized that the hot tickle on her cheek was a tear overflowing from the corner of her own eye. She felt the drop fall from her chin, and caught it only to stare at her trembling fingers. “I haven’t cried since I was a child.”

  “Come here.” He gathered her into his front, inside his open jacket.

  She was tall. Her forehead went into the crook of his neck while the size and heat and strength in him shook apart the last of her defenses. As waves of anguish broke over her, through her, she wrapped her arms around his waist and huddled inside the shelter of his jacket, holding on tight.

  “I really wanted our baby,” she admitted, and it was like opening a gate. Like she unlatched a door to all the pain she had ever felt in her lifetime. It poured through her afresh, demanding she feel it and acknowledge it and live it.

  It was too much, too much. She clung hard as anguish wracked her, making her sob at the massive wrench of it. She had never let go like this and would have come apart at the seams if he hadn’t held her together with strong arms and firm hands.

  He only let her go long enough to reach one arm to hit the light, then he stood there in the dark, holding her while she shuddered and keened and muffled her wail against his throat.

  He shook just as hard, breaths choked and labored, saying, “Me too. I wanted it, too.”

  The intimacy would have been more than she could bear if not for the fact he shared her pain so exactly. Which made this hurt even worse because she had failed him.

  But he held her anyway and that meant everything.

  *

  Her room was gloomy when she woke. There was light beyond the curtains but they were still closed. She wore her clothes from yesterday and had a dull headache. Her eyes felt gritty as sandpaper.

  Nate had tucked her in after a long while, when the tears had run their course and leveled into jagged breaths and sniffles. They’d both needed to retreat after the storm. She’d felt terribly exposed and half relieved when he had cupped her face and kissed her forehead, then told her to get some rest.

  “Text me when you wake up. I want to know you’re okay,” he said before walking out.

  She rolled to look at the other pillow, telling herself this would only be awkward if he’d slept here. Alone was easier. Better.

  She closed her eyes, trying not to think, dimly aware that she would have to make some decisions now, but it all seemed really overwhelming. Those memes about adulting always made her roll her eyes at Millennials, but she had to turn back into a grown-up now.

  She didn’t know how in hell to manage it.

  Chapter Nine

  “Dude,” Trigg said Monday morning when he caught up to Nate over breakfast. “What happened? Why’d you leave? Where you been?”

  Leave it to Trigg to put him on the spot in a packed dining room.

  “Family matter.” Nate made the split-second decision to take a grab-and-go breakfast sandwich. The coffeemaker at the base wasn’t as good as the espresso bar, but he wasn’t as fussy as some people.

  “Get one of those for me,” Rolf said, nodding at Nate’s sandwich as he came in and cut the line to set his Thermos cup on the counter.

  Rolf was the only person who could get away with that and even so, Lina was quick to remind him, “Punch your card or Glory will—”

  “I need a new one. I’ll come back for it.” He left his used card on the counter and followed Nate out the back.

  Nate had remote-started his truck and it hadn’t snowed overnight so he only had to unplug the block heater.

  “I have to take this,” Rolf said of a call that buzzed his phone as they climbed into the cab. He spoke German all the way to the base, mixing in enough technical language that Nate knew it had something to do with the quad lift they were installing this summer.

  “Everything okay?” Nate asked when Rolf hung up.

  They were in the three-room trailer by then. Nate finished the last bite of his sandwich and pushed the button on the coffeemaker.

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you.” Rolf stood in the door of his office, stretching one arm against the top of the doorjamb.

  Nate had texted Glory from Kalispell. Rolf knew Ilke had lost the baby. He could see it in the watchful way he was behaving.

  “I saw you answered a bunch of emails yesterday. You didn’t have to,” Rolf added.

  Nate shrugged. He’d been alone in his room, trying to keep himself from brooding or going to Ilk
e. They’d cried and it had been cathartic, but now what? She had said it was a blessing. He presumed she would go back to her regular programming.

  “How is she?” Rolf unwrapped his sandwich.

  “Wrecked.” Nate had been astonished by the depth of her pain. It had transcended his own, which was bone fucking deep.

  “Take a few days if you need to.”

  “I’d rather stay busy. I’m taking Friday and Monday. Grandad’s birthday,” he reminded Rolf. He was trying to decide if he should invite Ilke to come with him.

  “If you’re sure.”

  “Hundred percent.”

  “Good, because…” And another demanding day started.

  *

  Meet me for lunch? Nate texted.

  Resting, Ilke sent back.

  Dinner? he invited a while later.

  Had a late lunch. It was a lie. She just wanted to be left alone.

  He sent her another string of texts before bed, explaining how he was trying to get ahead at the base because he was taking off with his son this coming weekend, to see his family for his grandfather’s eightieth birthday.

  Text me if you need anything. Let me know how you’re doing.

  K. I’m fine, she lied, because she needed to put her life back on its rails, but that wasn’t anything he could do for her. She didn’t know how to do it.

  Or rather, she did, but couldn’t find the energy to start. Or even leave, which she really wanted to do because people here were incredibly intrusive and annoying. Vivien came by with soup and sympathy. “Don’t worry about the desk. Just look after yourself right now.”

  “I will,” Ilke lied.

  Glory brought her a stack of romance novels and a bottle of wine.

  Romance is a lie, Ilke wanted to yell at her. Not everyone found love. It didn’t matter how hard you tried to reach your heart’s desire. Sometimes life handed you a basket of lemons and they rotted into a blue, furry mess. The end.

  “Thanks,” she mumbled, and got rid of her.