Echoes and silence part.., p.45
Echoes & Silence Part 2, page 45
part #6 of Dark Secrets Series
I jerked my face away from his touch.
“I’m sorry.” He stood up. “But you may just need to accept that she’s dead.”
My nose stung with grief and my eyes filled up with hot liquid. I stayed kneeling on the ground by the basket until David went into the bathroom, then let the tears drip steadily from within my lashes and down my cheeks. And it felt good to cry—so good that I scooped the baby up and sat on the floor with my back to the bed, and sobbed into her blankets for a while. I wasn’t really sure why I was crying. Maybe because of Morg, maybe not. Maybe because of everything that happened, maybe not. But then, if I really thought about it, I didn’t feel all that taken apart by it. I felt confident in my abilities as a mother, and as a queen. I felt good about the fact that I’d had the strength to give birth on my own, and that same fact also made me feel powerful. So what, then, was wrong with me?
I hit my eye socket with the heel of my palm, telling myself to stop, holding my breath then as a thin strip of light moved across the sitting room toward the fireplace, the bathroom door opening again as a flushing sound concealed my sobs a little. But as much as I tried to stop them, to regain some dignity, I just couldn’t. A huge one beat down my lungs and came back out again all jagged and pathetic.
David stopped dead, dropping a sweater to the floor by his bare feet, and I turned my face away from him as a look of horror crossed his.
“Oh God, Ara.” He landed beside me, knocking me sideways a bit as his arm came down around me. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for that to sound so harsh.” He kissed my head firmly. “She’ll be okay—Morg. We’ll—”
“That’s not why I’m crying,” I said, spit and tears spraying from my lips.
He seemed to sink back a little, coming forth again into the embrace with a little more courage. “Then what’s wrong? Did I do something to—”
“No,” I sobbed, burying my face in the now-awake baby.
“My love, please,” he begged, brushing my hair back. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I wailed, thinking better of it, then crying, “And everything is!”
David’s body jolted in a breathy laugh, and he wrapped me up a bit tighter, sinking down into a more comfortable position. “Just cry then, my love. It’ll help.”
I leaned back and buried my face in his shoulder, saturating his black t-shirt as all the agony and fear and loneliness and heartache poured out of me. I could feel the previous day and all its events slipping away somehow, falling behind me into the blackness of moving on. And in that moment, even the fact that my immortality meant that my milk would never come in and I would never feed my baby didn’t seem like such a cruel ending to a long and soul-bending journey. The baby would be okay. She would drink from a bottle and there were positives to that, like more sleep for me and a chance for David to bond with her. And I would be okay, too. I could believe that a little more now, as everything I tried to hold onto—to leave inside and grow strong from—freed itself from my shattered little heart.
“Ara,” David whispered, his deep voice coming across softly in the dimness of early morning.
“Mm?”
“I love you, do you know that?”
I nodded. “Mm-hm.”
“And we’re gonna be okay, I promise.”
I wiped my cheek along his shirt sleeve and lifted my elbow onto his thigh, bringing the baby up to lay more between us. I wanted to thank David for being here to hold me while I sobbed, but I knew, even though I always would, I didn’t have to feel eternally grateful. We were married, and there was no other place in the world he would rather be than catching my tears when the world fell apart for me. It would always be something I could count on, which made the tears to come—all those nights ahead of me when the world would get too much, when the memory of everything would surface and overwhelm me—not so long and heavy. He’d be there, his arms around me, keeping the world out while I let my guard down for a while.
And I loved him for that, maybe even more than I did for being the father of my child.
* * *
We may not have been all that clued-in when we were shopping for paint, but when it came to baby products, I’d had months in front of a computer with too much time to dream.
In truth, I had the nursery planned out in my head the second I found out I was pregnant. So as I breezed around the baby store, tossing things in the cart without even checking the price, David just followed with the baby in his arms.
“I want one of those baby seats that strap into the stroller—straight from the car,” I mused.
“For all the trips out to the grocery store?” he asked with a little laugh, winking at me.
I stopped walking. “Oh my God, you’re right.” Motherhood had always been a given thing in the back of my mind. Even as a little girl I’d thought about and imagined juggling groceries with a hungry baby, or trying to cook during the ‘unsettled’ period of the day. But never, in my wildest fantasies, had I imagined I would live in a giant manor with maids and a chef, and no real need to go shopping or to cook. Or to clean. To do anything, really.
I looked back at my shopping cart, my shoulders sinking.
“Aw, sweetheart, I was joking.” David put his hand on my shoulder and leaned in to kiss my head. “You can have anything you want. I said that when we got here, and I meant it.”
“But you’re right, David.” I picked up a toy mirror that would strap onto the baby’s rear-facing seat so the driver could still see her. “I don’t really need any of this stuff. Not even a stroller.”
“Ara, the manor is huge. You need a stroller. And if you want that stroller with the car seat thingy, then get it.” He settled back on his heels a bit and looked down at me, his mouth resting in a playful pout. “But it’s not about the stroller, is it?”
I shook my head.
“Aw, sweetheart, come here.” He wrapped his arm around my neck and pulled me in for a hug. “I know this isn’t the life you planned—this isn’t even the life you want. But it’s our life. And we’re happy, or at least we’re going to be. You’ll see. Raising a family will be different for us, but I promise you I am going to make sure that you love every minute of it.”
I nodded, my brow brushing against his stubbly chin. “I’m okay. I just needed a moment to let go of all the plans I made when I was young, you know—to realize that life isn’t ever how you think it will be.”
“And for us, even the simplest of things will be different.”
“Yes,” I said, tucking my finger into the baby’s curled fist. “No swing sets and play dates for this little one.”
“She’ll still have all of that, Ara. I promise.”
“How? Who can we invite over? And where will she even go to school? And—”
“Okay,” he cut in, moving a step back so he could face me. He readjusted the baby in his arms and took a deep breath. “Ignorant as I’d prefer to be, it’s just become clear to me that this isn’t going to work.”
“What’s not?”
“You were right—when you once said that we couldn’t raise our daughter as a…” he lowered his head and his voice, and said, “princess among vampires. I’m beginning to see that.”
“But. Then. So… what do we do?” I asked, rolling my hands out in a questioning gesture.
His lips arched with thought and then his brows pushed up. “We accept Vicki’s offer—move in with Gran.”
“What!” A few people turned and looked at us, going back to their own business when I glared at them. “You can’t be serious?”
“I am.” His grin stayed on his face the whole time. “I think we should raise her there—in your old house. Around family.”
“And what about Safia?”
“We’ll stay at the manor until both Safia and Walter are dead, and Jason is found, and then we’ll move. And then you can use your car-seat-stroller-thing every day if you like.”
“And what will you do?” I asked, inching closer to press my shoulder lovingly against his. “If we’re not King David and Queen Amara, we’ll need real jobs.”
He laughed loudly, tossing his head back a little, and the baby jumped, settling quickly again as he patted her. “We’ll still be King and Queen, my love. We’ll just run things from the outside world.”
“You mean the real world.” I started walking. “And in the real world, if a mom at school asks what my husband does, I don’t want to say he runs a monarchy from home.”
That comment was rewarded with another of his very human laughs. “Then I suppose you’ll just have to tell them I’m a bloodsucker.”
“So you’re going back to law then?” I asked, smiling when the laugh I was waiting for filled the aisle again.
“I suppose I could,” he said thoughtfully. “We don’t need money, and without the restrictions of the Set Council, I can pursue any career I desire.”
“That must be liberating.”
“It is, and…” He walked a step quicker and took my hand, balancing the baby carefully in the crook of his forearm. “I just realized that, for the first time since you and I met, we’re actually free to live together, no more restrictions and rules. Just… completely free.”
I squeezed his hand, grinning up at him like some lovesick puppy. “I love the way you just so neatly put things into perspective for me. You know, we’ve just been through so much hell lately: the breakup and everything before it, leaving Loslilian, winning it back, having the baby.” I nodded at her. “I hadn’t even stopped to think about all the things we’ve gained while we’ve been so busy thinking about what we’d lost.”
“And we’ve gained a lot.” He leaned over and kissed my head, then the baby’s. “Nothing else in the world matters but what I’ve got right here within my reach.”
I snuggled into him for a second. “And the car-seat-stroller.”
“And the car-seat-stroller,” he corrected, laughing.
“Oooooh, will you look at that!” A fluffy hen with a very frizzy perm rushed over to us, waving her hands about as if to rid the world of all its flies. “Ooh, a little baby. Look at that angel. Will you just look!”
David looked scared, but I’d been waiting for just this sort of moment all my life.
“Oh, he’s so tiny,” she clucked. “How old is he?”
“She,” I corrected politely, moving aside so she could paw over the sleeping child in my husband’s arms. “She’s one day old.”
“One day!” She gasped, her head spinning on her shoulders to gawk at me. Her bulging eyes went down my body then, and back up to my face, travelling along then to David’s. “Oh, she’s not yours. I thought for a moment that—”
“She is ours,” David said proudly. “She was born early yesterday morning.”
The woman looked taken aback. She touched her sweaty clavicle. “My, but you’re both so young. And you”—her sharp gaze turned on me—“you should be resting. Feet up. Not wandering about a store.”
I laughed. “I’m okay.”
“Well, I suppose that’s on account of how small this little angel is.” She leaned in to get a closer look. David kindly rolled the blanket to reveal the blossom-white skinny little arm, with all its folds. “She must be at least four months early. She should be in hospital—”
“She’s only about eight weeks early,” I corrected.
“But she’s so small.”
“She was small for dates,” I said, thinking quick. “And small babies run in my family. But she’s fully developed.”
“And so pretty,” the old hen remarked. “Look at that precious little face.”
“She takes after her mother,” David said sweetly.
The woman’s eyes went from David’s to mine, and she shook her head. “You’ve got your work cut out for you—both of you.”
“We know,” we both said, and smiled at each other.
“Well, that’s all it takes,” the woman said. “That love you obviously have between you. Don’t need nothing more than good love to raise a child.”
“But all this stuff does make it easier,” I quipped, tapping my overloaded shopping cart.
The woman gave a small laugh and wished us well, then moved along.
David was clearly relieved to have her out of his face, but I’d enjoyed the attention. Being locked away from the world throughout my pregnancy, and having such a tiny belly, I never got to enjoy all the clucking and fussing that came with that stage of life, so it was nice to show off my amazingly cute and sweet little baby, even if it did earn me a few snide remarks or stares because I looked fifteen, not nineteen-going-on-twenty.
“If we’re to remain in the real world,” David said, “We need to phone Age Assist.”
“Phone what?”
“It’s a company that helps vampires to look older.”
“Oh.” My mind went back to an old man hobbling down the street with his bowler hat—in what seemed a lifetime ago. “Is that where you got your old man look?”
He nodded, his eyes lost in thought on something else.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Call Falcon and have him bring the truck around for all this stuff. And take the baby.” He handed her over to me. “I haven’t seen Drake in a while. I’m gonna go take a look around.”
“O…kay,” I started, but he was gone before I finished, leaving me with an arm full of baby and a shopping cart full of stuff. I looked up and down the aisle, chewing on an eerie feeling. But the old lady at one end, with long grey hair, and the portly lady at the other end with a toddler climbing the shelves, put my gut at ease.
I slipped my phone from the back pocket of my pre-pregnancy jeans, glowing inside when I realized I was actually wearing my pre-pregnancy jeans, and dialed Falcon’s number.
“You finished already?” he said, before I even realized he picked up.
“Done. And David’s just run off to find Drake. We haven’t seen him in a bit.”
“Oh, he’s with me,” he said. “We went to get burritos.”
“Burritos?”
“Mm. Why?” He chewed the words out around whatever he was eating. “Were you worried?”
“No. It’s fine. David was worried,” I said. “I just want a burrito. That’s all.”
“Consider it done. I’ll order now.”
“Okay, and hurry up. I can’t push this cart with one hand. It’s too full.”
“Okay, little queen. Be there soon.”
I pressed the end call button with my thumb and put the phone back in my pocket, readjusting my hold on the baby then, and pretended to look carefully at the packet of diapers in front of me, so I didn’t have to look like a new mom that was just abandoned on the spot by her husband.
When the little bundle started wriggling, moving her head from side to side in search of milk she’d never find, I turned her over and held her slightly out from me to get a better look, her little head in the palm of my hand, her body along my forearm.
“What’s the matter?” I said in a probably rather pathetic ‘mommy’ voice. “Are you getting hungry, my little fusspot?”
At the sound of my voice, she stopped wriggling and stared up at me, her wide, inquisitive eyes taking me in like a new experience. I couldn’t help but to smile at her.
“What are we going to call you?” I asked her. “We can’t keep calling you Baby.”
I looked around then for ideas, as if the packets of diapers might give me a clue, and laughed when I saw the word ‘Baby’.
“What do you think?” I asked, drawing her upward so our noses touched. “Does plain old Baby suit you? We certainly can’t call you ‘Pudding’, like we used to call…” And my voice trailed off with the memory of a round little face. So much time had passed now that I couldn’t remember what color Harry’s eyes were. I couldn’t remember the way his voice sounded when he said “Bub”, or the way his hand felt in mine.
I cradled the baby close to my white mink sweater and let the sudden emergence of grief eat me up for a moment. It would do no good to ignore it. I knew that. But it did make me feel incredibly blessed to be holding my little girl against my chest today, and I was glad my biggest problem with her now was that she didn’t have a name.
“Ara?” Falcon said softly, leaning around one of the shelves to look at me. He stepped into the aisle fully when I looked at him. “Are you okay?”
I nodded, swallowing down the griefy lump in my throat. “I was just trying to remember Harry.”
He walked forward and put one arm around me, filling me up with a nice warm feeling as he hugged me tight. “It’s natural to think of him at this time—”
“I know,” I said softly, wiping my cheek along the baby’s fluffy hair. “It’d just been so long since I thought about him.”
“Maybe you’ll see him again,” he suggested, leaning out a little. “You have the power to see spirits, right? Have you ever thought about looking for him?”
My head moved in a gentle no. “He’d be long gone now—crossed over.”
“Well, that must bring you some peace?” He kissed the top of my head. “To not just wonder, but to now know that he’s living again—happy?”
I smiled. I never really did think of it that way, but to think of him out there, playing and happy, it did make me feel a bit warmer in my chest. “Thanks, Falcon.”
“Hey, what are personal guards for?” He elbowed me playfully in the arm, turning to take the shopping cart.
I laughed and followed him down the aisle.
“I’ll take care of all this if you wanna head outside. Drake’s waiting with your burrito at the store across the road.”
My tired toes curled over and I stretched them straight, lifting the increasingly weighty premature baby onto my shoulder. “I think I will. I really need to sit.”
“Yes,” he said simply. “You do. I know you’ve had magic vampire blood to help you recover, but it will still take time before you’re at full strength—both physically and emotionally,” he added.
