I staggered back into my house. The drapes remained pulled, the rooms darkened as I stumbled through the kitchen and into the family room. On the stairs, I held myself up on the railing, pulling myself forward, or maybe I was drawn.
I’d never been able to look before, even though I knew it was there. Before she went back to Virginia, Claire had kissed my forehead and told me it was there for me whenever I was ready. And I didn’t know if I was ready. I didn’t know if I ever would be. Four months had passed, and I knew one day I had to face this.
I will try.
I came to a standstill outside my bedroom door. Tears streamed, and I just stared. I still didn’t know if I was brave enough to handle what was inside.
Brave.
The hoarse laughter that shook me was almost bitter. None of it was directed at Claire, even though she was the one who had proclaimed it.
There was no bravery found in me.
After they’d ripped her from my arms, I didn’t even have the courage to open my eyes. I just wanted to seep away, bleed into the nothingness that my spirit called me into.
I will try.
With a trembling hand, I reached out and pushed on the door. It swung open to the room that served as my refuge yet haunted me at the same time. In it was Christian’s presence, both the warmest light and the harshest freeze. It was here I’d loved him and here where I’d let him go. These walls still crawled with that anger, something that had boiled between us before it’d finally blown.
Part of me still hated him for it.
Sucking in a pained breath, I took a step inside. The loneliness I was met with every time I walked through this door encroached, wrapped me in a cloak of isolation, amplifying the void at the center of me that was getting harder and harder to bear.
I swallowed deeply as I shuffled across the floor. I came to stand at the entrance to my walk-in closet. A frenzy of nerves sped through my veins. I pushed them down and slowly opened the door. A dark, vacant hole stared back at me.
I fumbled for the light switch. Harsh light flooded the tiny space. I squinted, holding my hand up to shield it. Once my sight adjusted, I edged forward then dropped to my knees.
The box was on the top shelf, shoved back and hidden behind a stack of blankets in the far corner.
Discarded.
Like waste.
Agony twisted my heart, so tight I didn’t know how it was possible for it to keep beating.
She would never be that way to me. Forgotten. Unwanted.
Rejected.
A shot of anger rumbled beneath the surface of my skin, resentment I was sure I would never shake.
I tugged on the box and pulled it down, got onto my knees in the middle of the closet floor. It was a large keepsake box, pink and floral and accented in ribbons. The kind designed to keep someone’s most cherished memories.
I sat there for the longest time, staring at it through bleary eyes, searching inside myself for the courage I knew didn’t exist.
I fisted my hands on my thighs. I blinked, and tears slipped down my cheeks and dripped from my chin. I sniffled and wiped them away.
I owed her this. Owed her this respect, owed her this act of adoration when my body hadn’t been strong enough to protect hers. And maybe I owed it to myself, because it was her memory I clung to so desperately, and her memory that caused me my greatest pain.
Maybe I needed to see.
Something pushed me forward, and I lifted the lid from the box. For a moment, I froze, stricken by the items waiting inside. My chest quaked. I slowly set the lid aside.
Little remained of her, just the few things that had touched her life.
My jaw quivered, and I sank my teeth into my lower lip to try to stop it.
She hadn’t even been given that. Life.
But to me, she had. She had lived because she lived in my heart.
The tiny identification bracelet that had been cut from her ankle lie on top. It was so small, so small it could have been a ring. A shudder trembled through my being. Did I forget how small she had really been? I picked it up and gently twisted the plastic band that had marked her stilled leg around my finger.
Tears resurfaced. I tried to bite them back, but they bled free. And I knew they would fall endless, ceaseless, even when my eyes were dry. Never would I stop grieving her. This love was eternal. My name was there, just under hers, and numbers were printed below that I knew somehow categorized her death. I let it curl around two fingers, held onto it as I dipped my other hand into the box. I pulled out the preemie Onesie my mother had bought from the hospital gift store for me to dress her in. It was the one she’d worn as Mom snapped three pictures of her in my arms. They were there too, the pictures, tucked inside a card, a merciless reminder of her face that was forever frozen in time.
Stifled air pressed down. I felt strangled, as if the life were slowly being squeezed out of me.
Seeing her this way, so clear, removed from the fog of that day, gutted me.
Stripped me bare.
How could I face this? When would it ever be okay?
It wouldn’t.
Still, I held the pictures at my chest as I lifted my face toward the ceiling. The single bare bulb glared down, streaks of light glinting against my eyes that were squeezed closed. Tears continued to fall, and my anguished cries bounced around the confines of the tiny space.
I could barely suck in a ragged breath. It hurt as it expanded in my lungs.
By the time I set the pictures down on the floor and pulled the blanket Claire had given her from the box, I could barely see. I frantically pressed it to my nose, desperate to catch a suggestion of her. I held it close and inhaled the fabric, because it felt like the most tangible thing I had of her.
But that void…it just throbbed.
She’d taken a piece of me with her and left this hollowed out place that I didn’t know how to fill.
And it ached and stabbed and cut.
She was real. Didn’t they understand that?
But I knew no one really could. No one could really understand the impact she’d made on my life. How she’d changed me inside.
Because she’d been real and my child and now she was gone.
Gone.
And it hurt. Oh my God, it hurt so badly, stretched me thin and compressed me tight, and I didn’t know if I’d ever see through it.
My fingers curled in the blanket as I wept, as I cried out for the child I would do anything to hold in my arms again.
One token remained at the bottom of the box.
I still didn’t know if I could bear to look at it.
No amount of time could heal it. No passage of days or months or years could erase the fact that she had never been given the chance to live.
Memories surfaced, ones that I had blocked through the shocked haze that held me under. Ones I still didn’t want to remember. Somehow, I knew Christian had picked it out. Vague impressions slipped through my mind, the way he’d tried to hold me as he’d asked questions at my ear I didn’t want to hear. I remembered this was what he’d wanted and somehow I’d agreed.
It was a small pewter cube.
It was different from anything I’d seen, different from anything I’d expected when Claire had told me it was there, but I knew it was her urn.
A delicate script was inscribed across the top.
Lillie Ann Davison
Forever In Our Hearts
There was no date.
He’d simply stated her time as forever.
And for a moment, all I could feel was Christian’s grief. It broke over me in a crashing wave. I gasped as it knocked me forward, and I held myself up with one hand as I struggled to breathe.
Had I been unable to recognize it then? Or was I just imagining it now?
But it was strong. Overpowering. As overwhelming as the confusion he spun up in me.
I fought against the oppressive weight that suddenly crushed my shoulders.
I couldn’t bear his so
rrow, too.
I became frantic, picking up her things, pressing them to my face, to my nose, before I rushed to put her pictures and small things back into the box.
I thought…
I thought I could do this. I thought I was ready, but I realized then, I was not. I didn’t know if I ever would be. I couldn’t look at them because I didn’t want to let her go, and somehow holding all of her things made me feel as if I was trying to. It was just so much easier to hold it all inside, to box it up with all these things that I wanted to treasure, even when they just seemed to cause me more pain.
Sobs racked through me as I folded her blanket and hurried to place it on top of everything else.
But I couldn’t.
I couldn’t let her go.
My pulse stuttered as everything slowed. My fingers curled into the fabric, and I cautiously drew the blanket back out. My eyes dropped closed as I held the satin trim at my cheek.
Chapter Fourteen
Elizabeth
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 o
ur 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.
The Regret Series Complete Collection Box Set: Lost to You, Take This Regret, and if Forever Comes Page 55