The Last Heartbeat

by Katerina Simms

  He’d done his bit, more than his bit, and now she’d have to honor her end of the bargain. Her heart cracked at the agony of what would come next. Her story.

  The shame. The heartache. Every exhausting detail that had brought her to this point.

  She’d begged her client, Luke, to fuck her, all so she could delay what she’d have to endure now, a God-awful conversation she hadn’t touched in four years.

  He cupped her face and forced her to look at him, his gaze doing a panicked dance about her face. “Tell me.”

  For all her pain, he might as well have been twisting a cold knife into her heart; all that remained was to rip out the blade.

  “I…” She worked past a sob, allowing her proverbial blood to flow.

  Her hand rested on her diaphragm. God. She couldn’t breathe. She was about to spill everything and all she held sacred. “I have a daughter. Her name is Elsie.”

  19

  While Agathe struggled to breathe, the sex-induced flush on Luke’s cheeks drained to sheet-white. His gaze swept over her bare tummy, as if searching for evidence of her past motherhood; she’d been young, and her body had bounced back almost completely. Aside from a couple of faded stretchmarks on her breasts, there was no way to know she’d ever carried a child. Though in many ways, she wished Elsie had left behind more scars.

  She waited for him to make the next move, his silence unnerving. She crossed her arms over her chest, fearful he’d look there next. She’d endured many deep disappointments in life, but if this man shunned her over Elsie, much less what little carrying that child had done to her body, she’d quit Tiluma tomorrow and never speak to him again.

  “You have a daughter.” His hollow tone echoed a numb repetition of what she’d already said.

  A quick puff of air burst past his lips, and he turned his muscular back to her. He scruffed his dark waves with one hand and bent to collect his dove-gray sweatpants amongst the pile of clothes on the floor with the other.

  Her tummy clenched, while she awaited more of a reaction than his current vague silence. When he turned back to her, he was hitching up his pants, the deep creases on his forehead denoting something somber.

  “We really need that talk.” He reached out and handed her a powder-blue blanket gathered from the couch. “Sit.”

  She draped the blanket over her shoulders, then bowed her head, padding over to the sand-colored leather couch. An empty pause dragged out as she waited for him to join her. Though maybe he now saw the logic in the limits she’d set for their relationship.

  Perhaps he’d stop expecting more from her than just sex. Perhaps he’d see she was too much work. Too fragile. Terrible relationship material…

  She’d share the very real and ugly truth, the one beyond her simply being a mother, and his lofty hopes for her would shatter. Maybe he’d decide even sex with her was more than he could handle.

  He sat on the smaller couch to her left, knees spread, elbows leaned forward, his undivided attention burrowing into her. “Talk.”

  She hugged the blanket tighter and peered down at the thick, knitted fabric pooled in her lap. “I don’t know how to start.”

  “You have a daughter.” His brows pressed into a firm line. “Her name is Elsie. Where is she now?”

  Her stomach pitched. The very last thing she cared to think about was where Elsie lay right now.

  “You remember how I said my ex-husband and I were an odd match?” She pressed her eyes closed and shook her head. She could barely face this topic as it was, much less with Luke’s dire frown focused on her. “We met at university, toward the end of my degree. Henry was a business lecturer, and I studied art therapy. He was fifteen years my senior, but we dated on and off for over a year. His work kept him busy. We hardly ever saw each other and had no major plans to be together on a permanent basis. I was young, and he seemed so worldly and intelligent. You get the drift.”

  She opened her eyes but peered down again, not wanting to see disappointment in Luke’s expression. “It wasn’t until I was a year out of university and working a job I loved, that I fell unexpectedly pregnant, and we were forced to rethink the nature of our relationship.”

  She set her attention back to Luke, whose expression lifted. “So, you had a shotgun wedding?”

  The frost around her heart thawed a little, and a small laugh broke loose. His satiric choice of words signaled curiosity over judgment. “If I had my time again, I’d do things differently, of course. But yes, Henry was from a well-known publishing dynasty, and he was on the verge of taking over for his elderly father. His family had a reputation to uphold and endless rivals who would have taken our story and torn us to shreds. He had to do all he could to pass as a reliable and responsible businessman, and he knew they’d be extra nasty to me as a young woman of color. He meant well. We both did.”

  Luke frowned. “You don’t mean Henry Roth, from Paper Planes Publishing?”

  She nodded.

  He slumped back with a sigh and scrubbed a hand over his face. “Shit.”

  “You know him?” She took her turn to frown.

  “We’ve met in passing a few times.” He raised one shoulder, a not-so-casual shrug. “Tiluma advertises through Paper Planes all the time.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Unless you’re about to tell me Henry did something heinous, it won’t affect how I deal with him in the future.”

  “It’s nothing like that.” She nodded to herself and vowed to press on with the story. “Henry was abroad for work when Elsie was born. He worked overseas a lot by that point, but he flew back as soon as he could. The Roths saw to it that I had all the professional help I needed, but after a month of nannies and midwives prying and intervening, I dismissed everyone.”

  Luke’s dark expression widened, so she set her mind to helping him see. “Being a parent is scary. You spend years carving out an identity as an individual, and then suddenly this tiny person enters your life, and everything you once knew burns down. Your entire future revolves around the whims of an unwieldy, loud, and helpless child. But they’re utterly vulnerable, the most vulnerable they’ll ever be, and they need you. So, you vow to love them as much as you possibly can, to the very last heartbeat—” Her voice caught, and she paused to rein in her pain. “Yours, not theirs. And you never go back to who you were before. No matter what happens next.”

  Her existence with Elsie had been exhausting, but even now, having regained a life of unbroken nights’ sleep and time to herself, she’d give anything to turn back the clock to what she’d had with her little girl.

  A lump swelled in her throat, but she pressed on. “Elsie was by no means an easy baby. Henry was gone much of the time, and I dealt with every tantrum, tear, tooth, and cold on my own. She gave the best hugs and never wanted anything more than to be with me. She was my entire universe, and I was hers. I lived for squeals of laughter, her sleepy face at nap time, complete with droopy eyelids and pouted lips, and her sandy-blonde curls wrapped around my fingers. To the outside world, I was just a mum, but I’d never worked harder or felt more important in my whole life.”

  Luke shuffled forward again, his expression soft but eyes narrowed. “Agathe. Tell me what happened to Elsie.”

  She swallowed and looked down at her hands, lungs burning against her already tight ribcage. The mere fact he asked meant he knew something wasn’t right.

  “Elsie was two. I was twenty-three.” She sucked in a breath, one that hurt as it went down. “We were enjoying the sunshine and searching for rainbows after a burst of heavy rain, out on a quiet back street in South Yarra, when…” She blinked, and new tears she hadn’t felt form, spilled down her cheek. “When I heard the sound every parent dreads.”

  She peered up to see Luke’s jaw tense and his hands wringing together. Her own jaw trembled with the effort of getting out her words. “My baby was picking dandelions on the nature strip, when I saw her freeze and cry out, ‘Mummy!’. I turned to see the quic
k flash of a white delivery van hydroplaning on the wet road toward her. It jumped the curb, but I couldn’t get to her in time. I saw my baby go under.”

  She doubled over, and a loud wail tore through her chest; she couldn’t go on with this story. Not with the memory of that sickening thud. The sound of her baby’s shrieking cry. How, seconds later, Elsie lay in her arms, limp and drenched in blood.

  Rustling sounds pierced through her despair, and strong arms enfolded her. Luke squeezed her to him, the pressure almost pain, but that pain being what she needed to pull herself out of her thoughts.

  “My baby cried in my arms. She cried in my arms.” A violent shake rocketed through her body, one that seemed to emanate from her bones, her voice cutting loose with another soul-wrenching sob. “She cried, ‘Mummy, ouch’. Just one long, loud cry. All she wanted was for me to fix the pain, but I was completely useless. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t fix anything.”

  She pressed the heel of her hand to her chest and rubbed hard. Her heartache wouldn’t ease, so she rocked back and forth, struggling against Luke’s hold as he kissed the top of her head. “Her lips were a deep blue by the time the ambulance came to get her, and they seemed to take hours, though I know it must have been more like minutes. Then there was the pandemonium of the ER, followed by five, slow, fucking, hours to wait for my baby to die.”

  She scrunched her face, welcoming the spill of more tears. “I watched her die, Luke, all the while wanting time to hurry so she’d no longer hurt. All the while wishing I could hear one more laugh or feel one more squeeze of her tiny fingers around mine. And all I’m left with now are photos and a few personal items.” She peered across to Luke but registered little beyond the deluge of water spilling from her eyes.

  “So, you want to know where Elsie is?” The tension in her throat made it impossible to control the rise of high-pitched desperation in her voice. “She’s in the ground. She’s in the ground. And I couldn’t stop it.”

  20

  Luke waited for the heaving in Agathe’s shoulders to subside, her face swollen and marked from more tears than he’d witnessed from anyone in a long time. Not since the war zones. Not since the aftermath of rebel bombings. Not since fathers digging graves and mothers crying over the limp bodies of their babies. He’d seen it all. The consequences of war etched on his brain. But even those scenes differed from this. They didn’t involve someone he was quite possibly falling in love with.

  His heart twisted, and his soul ached for Agathe, for what she’d endured. Holy shit! Of course, she’d avoided him. Of course, she’d flipped out when Claire had fallen over. He couldn’t erase her devastation. Couldn’t fix the agony she lived through now. The best he could do was offer his support and be with her through her pain; pain he knew for certain she’d carry forever.

  She sagged back onto the couch, and a cold stillness washed over her face. “So now you know. Elsie is dead, but she wasn’t supposed to die, and I wasn’t supposed to outlive her.”

  He wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed. “Agathe, there’s nothing I can say except I’m sorry.”

  She nodded, slow and steady. “At least you’re not trying to find some sort of silver lining. There is none. Not for this. Not even that it meant the end of my sham marriage or that Henry gifted me the house in the hopes of making our ending easier. And certainly not when the van driver killed himself out of sheer guilt, just prior to his culpable driving charges going to court.” She turned to him, her eyes red-rimmed and her cheeks sunken. A woman spent from grief. “And I’ve tried to find that silver lining. I’ve tried everything. But nothing makes it better. Nothing.”

  New tears welled in her eyes. He wanted to help but, like she’d said, there was no helping this.

  He pressed her open palm to his lips, the scent of sunflowers floating off her delicate wrist like dawn after a gloomy night. He kept his voice low, hopeful his presence alone made some difference. “No. I don’t expect anything would.”

  She peered down at her hand cradled in his, her thick row of eyelashes fluttering. “Months after Elsie died and Henry left, people invited me to socialize. My old job heard about what had happened from the news, and they invited me to return as an art therapist at the children’s hospital. I even had offers to date again.”

  She huffed out an incredulous laugh, and her gaze met his, head tilted slightly in a look of apology, though for what, he didn’t know. “As if the world expected I’d go on like my former life never occurred. Like I was supposed to return to all the things I’d let go of before Elsie came along. To the mundanities of being social, to falling in love, to making other people’s children happy, to watching those children flourish and grow like mine never would.” She shook her head, and her chest heaved with a wayward sob. “I couldn’t do it.”

  Her downcast stare, along with her minuscule rocking and the tension around her mouth, said something more. Something like, I still can’t do it.

  A bitter taste coated his tongue, and he swallowed back a swell of his own burning bile. That bit about not being able to fall in love… Did it still apply? Had her words been surreptitiously meant for him?

  Can I ever dare to compete with the memory of a dead child?

  He rubbed a thumb over the back of her hand, bringing her focus back to him. Back to helping her get this story out. Because right now, helping her was more important than what he wanted. God knew, she’d probably sat in her misery for years, keeping her feelings to herself until they eroded every last scrap of joy.

  “Tell me what you did next.”

  The tension around her eyes dropped, like she sensed he’d heeded her rules on life and was happy to move on. He was far from happy. More like crestfallen on her behalf and hopeless on his own account.

  “Despite many people thinking I was crazy, I kept the house. I couldn’t imagine a new family moving in. I couldn’t let go. Elsie’s sad ending was a brief part of the years of joy we’d shared together.” She gave a rueful smile, head shaking almost sheepishly. “For a long time, I lived in a sort of mental darkness. I refused to leave the house. Refused to even eat most days. And when the van driver hung himself, I only sank deeper. So many thought my life would improve because of his death, but all I saw was another life ruined, that I wasn’t the only one scarred with guilt. I never wanted anyone else to die. Not Elsie. Not even him.”

  “You felt guilty?” Despite the added tale of tragedy regarding the driver, his thoughts latched onto her self-confession. “Don’t tell me you think you could have prevented her death?”

  Puffy bags rimmed her eyes, purple bruises visible under her skin. Even though she maintained the conversation, she looked exhausted. “I should have protected Elsie. I should have never let her get ahead of me. No matter how many times we’d done that walk, I should never have assumed she’d be safe enough.”

  He shook his head, firming his tone for what he had to say next. “No. What happened to Elsie could have happened a million other ways. Heck, when I was in primary school, a speeding car veered off the road and smashed through our classroom wall, right over where a bunch of us would have been sitting, had it not been school holidays. Elsie might still be here if the road hadn’t been wet, if that deliveryman had been in less of a hurry. I know you feel bad about his death, and devastated about Elsie’s, but you can’t outrun, control, or predict every misfortune. No one can. I’ve seen enough go wrong to know.”

  Her brows pressed together. “What do you mean?”

  He patted her hand and kept his words soft, wanting to bring focus back to her. “That’s a story for later, but what I want to know is how you eventually got yourself out of that house?”

  She kept her attention on him for a long moment, as if trying to read his mind since he hadn’t answered her question, or perhaps because she still very much lived in that house, only she put on a decent impression of being okay to the outside world.

  “I had no choice.” She spoke slowly, carefully. “Bills ne
eded to be paid, and my health was suffering from not getting out enough. One day, I woke to realize Elsie would have wanted me to find a way to go on.” She peered down and interlaced her fingers through his, the action sending immediate comfort up his arm and through his body. “So, I picked a job I thought I could be good at, one that gave me distraction and purpose, something competitive and challenging. Something that kept me far away from children and reminders of Elsie.”

  His brain felt heavy in his head, and the significance of Claire’s fall hit him again.

  There’d been blood and tears, and a child who needed help. He couldn’t imagine what that torment had dredged for Agathe. “Until today.”

  A sharp laugh erupted from her before she gave a sorrowful smile. “Yeah. Until today.”

  “For what it’s worth.” He swallowed back the emotion clogging his throat. “You were amazing. Even as Claire’s dad carried her away, I could see the awe in her eyes. She kept looking back at you.”

  Agathe’s ribcage jerked, her sobs still lingering at the surface. He’d meant well, but his compliment seemed to highlight only what lacked in her life. Someone to care for. Someone to love. Someone like Elsie.

  Someone not him.

  He clasped his hand tighter around hers, feeling like a complete idiot for even entertaining the thought he might still have a chance.

  “You’ve got that look again. The same one you had today when you noticed everyone watching. Like you’re…” He pressed his jaw shut, unsure if his next words would make things worse. “Like you’re falling apart on the inside.”

  “I think that describes how I feel ninety percent of the time.” She released another sardonic laugh. “I just usually hide it a whole lot better than I have today.”

  He reached up and cupped his spare hand to her cheek. She tensed, her entire body firming, endorsing a theory he’d long held about her. “You also have problems accepting acts of warmth, don’t you?”