by Chloe Liese
She held her stomach, looking like she might be ill. “Loulou, I don’t know if I can do this.”
I grasped her hand and held it firm. “I know, darling. But remember you’re all right now, and what’s done is done.”
“I started running his way, not as fast as I should. I didn’t think that I should run as fast as possible and snatch him up…Adrien kept running, bearing down on the main road, and I finally started to run with all I had, frantic to catch up to him. He looked back and smiled at me, I think interpreting my speed as finally giving into the race. It just encouraged him, and he sprinted right out into the road. I shouted at him to get back inside the fence, but he just shook his head, his little hands perched on his bony hips. No, because then you’ll cheat and say you’ve won! he shouted.”
She choked on a cry, then breathed deeply, and pressed on.
“I swore I wouldn’t, but he just ignored me, stubborn little boy that he was. I kept running toward him, and as I called to him, begging him to come back, I caught sight of a car coming round the bend ahead. Adrien couldn’t see it from his vantage point, and I screamed at him, calling his name. He just stood there and then glanced my way when I called his name again, still running as fast as I could, but—”
Her cries came faster. I crawled over to her, took her tea away and pulled her onto my lap. She was shaking and covered her face again. “I saw it, Loulou. I saw him…” Air came fast and shallow, and she shook worse. Hyperventilation.
“Hush now, Elodie. Steady breaths. Shhhh.”
I rocked her in my arms for long minutes as gasps for air became steady sobs. Finally those sobs abated enough for her to talk.
“He died instantly. And it was all my fault,” she whispered. “After that, everything changed. We lost the life of our family. Maman grew sullen, Papa got quieter, and I lived in my treehouse, tortured with guilt. At first, I wouldn’t touch a ball after the accident, because I associated it with my own part in the accident—ignoring him in favor of my drills—but after a time, I decided I would play for Adrien, try to be the best for him. I even became a defender for him. Up to that point, I’d been interested in midfield, but defender was what Adrien wanted to be, so I changed my focus. We sold the house, moved into the city, and I was sent to boarding school. Then my parents divorced two years later.”
I sighed heavily, held her close to me even as I felt her resisting my comfort and reassurance.
“My brother died because of me.”
My hands froze in their path up her arm, and I looked down at her severely. “Elodie, you were a child. Your nanny was asleep on the job, and your little brother was somehow more of a stubborn imp than you are—just a sweet, hardheaded little boy who should have been better supervised by an adult who could keep him safe. It was a horrible, freak accident, darling, not your fault.”
Fresh tears spilled over and my heart ached, witnessing this much weeping from the woman I cherished most.
“But I could have saved him,” she insisted. “If I’d just paid closer attention, ran after him right away.”
I kissed her hair. “Darling, just because there’s something you could have possibly done, doesn’t make it your fault. You can’t walk this earth your whole life bearing responsibility for every wrong that happens around you, conjuring scenarios in which you could have fixed it. You’ll drive yourself mad.”
“It doesn’t change what happened, doesn’t erase my guilt. I’ll carry it my whole life. Perhaps I deserve to go mad.”
“Now that’s quite enough. You deserve no such thing.” I pressed another kiss to her hair, to her temple. After a moment’s silence, I peered down at her again. “Do you feel like your parents blamed and punished you?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. They didn’t really comfort me. I’m not sure what that says. Papa held me at the funeral, but Maman…well, she’s never been affectionate since. They sent me away—whether I was a reminder of how they thought I failed Adrien, or if it was just too painful to see one child and miss the other, I don’t know.”
“And then last week you put yourself in front of me, to protect me from being hit. Did it have anything to do with this?”
She wove her arms around my waist, hugging me tight. “Perhaps. It wasn’t a conscious choice, Loulou, I just knew I couldn’t lose you. I didn’t even get so far as to worry about the guilt I’d feel if I didn’t save you; I just knew I couldn’t lose you in the first place.”
I groaned, emotion tightening my throat. “But I could have lost you, Elodie. Have you thought about that?” I whispered quietly against her hair. “Then where would I have been?”
“You could have found another love, Lucas.”
I pulled her away and stared fiercely down at her. “You are the only woman I’ll ever love, Elodie. It would be over for me.”
Tears streamed down her face. “That makes me very happy to hear, Loulou. Selfishly.” I kissed her tenderly and tucked a loose curl behind her ear. She smiled genuinely for the first time in days. “That’s how I love you too,” she said.
“I know.” I slid my thumb along her full lips, and kissed her gently once more. “Thank you for trusting me with this.”
She smiled faintly. “I’m glad you don’t despise me for it.”
“Despise you?” I sat back and cupped her face. “Elodie, your parents did you such a disservice in life that you thought I ever would. Little girls shouldn’t carry the guilt of their brother’s accidental death at the hands of adult negligence; they shouldn’t be tossed aside and emotionally neglected. They’re not supposed to grow up as hard on themselves as you are.
“You are good—you are truly good, darling, and dazzlingly intelligent. You see straight through problems to their solution; you’re fast to fix messes and generous toward those who make them. You are gorgeous and gloriously strong and lovely, soul and body. You love deeply and sacrificially. You are a breathtaking, wonderful person.”
Her next exhale sounded like a sigh of relief, and she nestled under my chin. Then she kissed the spot right over my heart. “Thank you, Loulou.”
“Now up to bed with you. I’ll clean up down here and be right there. Shall I read to you a little, help you sleep?”
Elodie stood gingerly, hands pressed against her stomach. “Umm, yes, I’d like that.”
“You all right?” I frowned up at her, then down to the plate of untouched toast and barely sipped tea. “You haven’t eaten. Have you eaten at all today?”
She shook her head slowly. “I’ve felt queasy. Like if I take a bite it will all come flying up, even though I haven’t anything in my stomach.”
“Do you think you’ve come down with something?”
Elodie bit her lip. “I don’t think so.”
Something passed between us, her hands held over her stomach, panic widening her eyes. An unsettling chill skittered across my skin. I used to be implicitly aware of Elodie’s cycles, but amid the madness of diving headlong into work, then the accident and her recovery, I realized I had no idea the last time I’d seen any sign of Elodie bleeding.
My heart was pounding in my ears, and Elodie was staring at me warily. A riot of different emotional directions ricocheted in my brain, but Elodie’s heartache she’d shared with me, her vulnerability, was first and foremost in my mind.
“Let’s get you to bed, then. Come on.” I swept her up once more, carried her upstairs, and tucked her in. When I kissed her cheek goodnight, she looked up at me uneasily, then turned back into the bed. “Be up soon,” I promised.
Her quiet sigh answered for her, and I shut the door.
Pacing the kitchen, I tried to think it through. If she was pregnant, I could well understand why she wouldn’t tell me. She couldn’t be too far along, not to mention terrified of what I’d think. I’d made it quite clear I didn’t want to pass this on.
And that of course led to the pressing question—how the hell could she be pregnant? My procedure should have prevented it, but something had to h
ave gone wrong. I wouldn’t even entertain that she’d gone behind my back, slept with some other man. It was impossible. Elodie was Sophie’s opposite in many respects, that included.
I had too many questions and not enough answers.
“Kai,” I said to myself. I searched the counter for my phone, swiped it open and hit his speed dial number.
It rang three times before his voice, not unlike mine, answered on the other end of the line.
“Luc, how are you?” he said, sounding far too chipper for my liking.
“No bloody good, and you?” I grumbled.
“Christ, mate, what’s the matter?”
Sighing, I dropped onto a stool at the breakfast island. “I think Elodie’s pregnant.”
“Lucas, that’s brilliant, I…Wait. Ohhh fuck me sideways.” Kai’s voice died off.
“Hard pass. You’re not really my type, lovie, but thanks anyway.”
Kai sighed into the phone. “Your capacity for poor jokes at the most serious of times will never cease to amaze me.”
“Yes, well.” I swiveled on the stool while rubbing my eyes. “If you can’t laugh, and all that.”
I could practically hear him nodding in understanding. He was a good fellow, Kai. Always ready to listen, and he’d been incredibly helpful as I figured out all this sight and genetic nonsense, even though neither were his specialty.
“Lucas, listen. I know you didn’t want kids, but focus on the good. Your children are safe. If the baby is a girl, she’ll be a carrier, but God willing, by the time she has children—which I’m sure will have you growling and threatening castration to whatever poor bloke pursues her—genetics will have us a cure by then. And if it’s a son, he won’t be affected. That’s a mercy.”
Right after I’d told Sarah, she’d had them all tested. Noah was blessedly negative. Amelia and Poppy were carriers but they were young, so I had to have Kai’s hope for their children.
“I know, Kai, hope for genetics and all but—” I stilled my chair. “Wait, what did you say?”
There was a long pause. “What part did you miss?”
I was undoubtedly hyperventilating. “You fucking imbecile, you told me my child could have it! Noah could have it from Sarah, my child could have it from me!”
“No,” he said patiently, taking the tone of clinician that made me want to reach through the line and shove my fist down his throat, “I said they would inherit it. Not that they would be symptomatic. An affected male passes on the gene to his daughter but not to his son. Only a mother can pass on the gene to her son who will be symptomatic.”
“For fuck’s sake, Kai. I’m a footballer with cotton between my ears and a flare for business, not a bloody geneticist! Some clarification would have come in handy, you twat!”
“Well, pardon me for trusting you were intelligent enough to speak with someone other than your brother, the general physician, rather than a bloody geneticist and your ophthalmologist! Don’t blame me for your impetuousness. You wanted a vasectomy, and I didn’t stop you because it wasn’t my fucking bollocks being hacked. I thought it was extreme, but that’s how you do things, Lucas—bullishly and without pause.”
We were both snarling into the phone as I realized what an absolute disaster I’d made of things, and also what hope might still exist. I could have children and not condemn them to this darkness that was inexorably my future. Elodie and I could have loads of babies, and they’d all be well. It struck me square in the solar plexus and reminded me that Elodie was sick to her stomach and heart, most likely, because of me.
With my child inside her? How could it be? None of this explained how Elodie could be pregnant by me. I had to understand that.
The sound of a door closing echoed in the background of the call. “I’m sorry, Lucas. I lost my temper. It’s just—”
“It’s I who should apologize, Kai. I’m a dreadful arse. You’re right. When I had the procedure, I was still shocked and very angry. I wanted some sense of cosmic control when in reality I have none.”
He sighed. “You’d every right to be angry. It’s terribly unfair.” There was a long pause before he spoke again. “I wish it were me every day, Luc.”
“Don’t. I’d never wish this on you, little brother. I’ll be all right.”
Kai cleared his throat of his own emotion enough to respond. “Listen, I’m over at Mum and Dad’s, and I don’t want them to catch wind of what I’m saying. I’m outside, but we know the reach of our neb of a mother to eavesdrop, so consider yourself warned.” He sighed, and I heard him scuffing his feet on the pavers. “God help us, that child’s going to be a menace. I thought you were a domineering pain in the arse, but then you had to go and find a woman who tamed you with a single crack of her whip—"
“So you think it’s mine too?” I interrupted. “I’m not deluding myself?”
“Well, who the bloody hell else’s would it be, you git?” he huffed.
Clearly I was missing something medically, again. “Kai, this is where I’m drowning. I had a vasectomy—you said they’re foolproof.”
“No, I said they’re as good as it gets without abstaining from ever dipping your wick again, and on top of that, it’s not been that long since the procedure—the little bastards can sneak out and go on stealth missions, you’d be surprised.”
“How?”
“Right, well, there are a few things. One, vasectomies do just go wrong sometimes for a number of reasons, and because of that comes number two, you get your swimmer count checked around six to eight weeks or after ten-odd shot loads and see where they’re at. You did that, right?” Kai stomped around, and I heard shuffling as he most likely pulled out his work phone. “If you did, I can log in and check your numbers right now.”
“I don’t remember doing that. I was supposed to schedule it, but I was rather forlorn and the uh…desire to rub one out, let alone ten, wasn’t very prevalent at the time. I had all these pathetic ideas in my head about becoming a monk, then enter Elodie, and well, you can imagine that went tits up.”
Kai laughed heartily. “There’s your answer. Even if you’re sterile now, you weren’t when you first slept with her. If you didn’t empty the tank that still had live ones, you were completely virile when you were first with her.”
“Bloody hell,” I muttered. I’d botched this. I’d not done my research. I’d acted in anger. I’d misled Elodie and accidentally impregnated her.
“Okay,” Kai said. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll meet you at the office first thing tomorrow. You’re going to give me a sample, which I’ll send off for rush analysis, and then you’re going to go crawling on your knees to beg her forgiveness for inadvertently getting her up the duff and making her scared stiff to tell you.”
A crashing noise upstairs interrupted us, and my head snapped to the ceiling above me. “Kai, I’ll call you back.”
Eighteen
Elodie
Lucas left the room and in my half-asleep, low-blood sugar state, I realized he must know what I’d been so afraid to tell him, what I’d known since my discharge examination at the hospital.
“Elodie.” The doctor had a kind, motherly face. Not that I really knew in practice what those were. “How are you feeling?”
I sighed, and it hurt. Grimacing, I shifted myself up a bit in the bed. “I’ve felt better.”
She nodded understandingly, then gestured to the foot of the bed. “May I?”
“Of course.”
She perched softly on the edge of the mattress while her eyes searched mine.
“What’s the matter, doctor? You look worried.”
“When do you remember your last menstrual cycle being, my dear?”
I reared in surprise. But then I tried to count back. “Erm, it was…Now, let me think.” I glanced up at her, blushing. “Here’s the thing, I have polycystic ovary syndrome, and somewhat irregular periods, so they’re no indication. I was off the pill but my partner, he’s…he can’t—”
&n
bsp; “Don’t take offense, dear, but nothing’s foolproof except abstinence, so please just answer my question.”
I cleared my throat, trying to think back. “I’m not exactly sure. But I’ve felt crampy and my breasts hurt. I’d expect it any day.”
Nodding, she patted my hand again. “Yes, well, if I were you, I wouldn’t expect it.”
My jaw dropped. “What are you saying?”
“Elodie, I’m saying you’re pregnant. It’s very, very early, obviously, but frankly, that’s the only thing that saved your baby—that it’s so tiny. Any bigger and the impact of your collision would have certainly caused miscarriage. I’m shocked it didn’t as it is.”
My hands flew protectively to my stomach. Another life whose death would have been on my conscience.
“You’ve got a little miracle in there.”
A little miracle. I hadn’t told Lucas, because I just couldn’t figure out a single way in which he’d see our child as a miracle at all. More like a curse. And that would break his heart. He didn’t want a child who’d inherit his blindness. Where did that leave me? Ending the life of my own baby was unthinkable to me, and I believed Lucas wouldn’t want that either.
Beyond knowing in my heart that Lucas could never reject his own flesh and blood, I had no clue what to expect from him. I was confused as to how it had happened in the first place, terrified he’d be doubly grieved—first his own blindness, then his child’s. It was too much to ask him to bear. So I bore it for us the past week, and tried to figure out what to say and when.
How was I pregnant? I’d been on the pill for years for the hormone balance, to minimize my PCOS symptoms, up until I fled my parents and came here. I’d had no insurance to refill my prescription when I first got to the UK, then Lucas confessing his vasectomy made birth control a moot point, while giving me the opportunity to see how I did free of birth control. Bang! Here we were, pregnant. Whoever had done Lucas’s vasectomy had some answering to do.