Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
F ollowing Grace’s burial, those first few weeks at home were an alcoholic blur; my mom, my brother, and the house staff having taken over because I had all but ceased to function. Three weeks in, my mom and Dorian had taken up residence at my place, banned alcohol deliveries to my home, and their sometimes worried but mostly stony faces watched every move I made.
Naturally they were sad and concerned, and frankly I’d given them due cause, because everything in life had taken a back seat as I wallowed in pity somewhere between grief and denial.
Hygiene, eating, even Layla, became someone else’s responsibility as I got lost in an alcoholic haze as I tried to drown my thoughts by getting lost in an abyss. Mom overrode her grief and fears with practicality, and with Layla needing twenty-four-hour care; she had interviewed and hired a local, highly qualified nanny for her.
It had been almost four weeks after Grace died, by the time Grace’s parents finally found the courage to leave. Sad eyes still swollen with tears gazed into mine when I made a rare appearance downstairs as Stuart prepared their ride.
“Promise us you’ll get yourself straight and cherish Layla,” Angus hugged me and pleaded, with a voice that broke when he mentioned Layla’s name.
“Make Grace proud and bring her up in the way she would have wanted,” Dinah stated, sniffing back her tears.
“Of course, I just need some time,” I agreed, too wounded by the way they looked at me, and by then I’d have promised them anything to get them to leave.
Their way of dealing with the loss of their daughter was by highlighting constant reminders and sharing memories of her. It may have comforted them, but their comments had felt like jagged knives gutting me.
Those early days were a blur as Mom, Dorian, Matty and the others took responsibility for everything because I had ceased to function, and as January slid into February my life was still on hold.
When a month and a day had passed, my mom lost patience with me when I had declined an invite for the fourth day running to take a short walk around the grounds with my daughter in her stroller.
“The fresh air will do you good,” she advised, as she walked closer to my bed. Sitting down, she laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. “There are no words to describe what your heart feels like right now. I can vouch for that. Your life ahead will be very different to the one you envisioned with Grace, but have faith. With the love of your daughter, in time you’ll learn to live again.”
Angrily I sat bolt upright, baring my teeth to my mother, fury at my situation oozing from every pore. “No words?” I scoffed. “Mom, I have plenty of words and this faith that you talk about… it... it’s bullshit. How am I supposed to believe in anything when life threw a curve ball so hard in my face, it not only knocked me on my ass, but it’s paralyzed my mind, heart, and my soul, huh?”
“I know it’s—”
“No, Mom. You may know a lot, but you don’t know this . You and Dad had a whole life together before he was taken. Ours was just beginning. God barely gave Grace the time to bond, to smile down at her tiny daughter with a lifetime of love that had to be crammed into five short days. And what about our baby? What about Layla? Helpless, motherless, defenseless from a lifetime of questions that begin with ‘what if’ and answers that disappoint as they begin with ‘if only’? What of the tears our daughter will shed over the years in the future for the woman who gave her life and she’ll never know?”
My mom sat passive and silent during my rant with her hands neatly folded in her lap, her sad eyes brimming with tears at my words, then she shrugged. She had no reply to the injustice of the circumstance I had found myself in because nothing she could say could change this.
“Layla was left motherless… before she could even focus to look back at her mother’s face. God gave them no time, us no time, before he killed our ties that bound each of us together as a family.”
For the first time, I saw the look on Mom’s face change. Adopting a stern, you’ve-pushed-me-too-far look, she stood, straightened her back, and crossed her arms across her chest.
“Get out of that bed right now and get washed. You stink. This bedroom smells like a distillery. Now, I know you’re grieving, but you still have a baby daughter to take care of. Grace would have gone peacefully in the knowledge you’d protect her child with your life.” When I didn’t move she threw her hands up in the air.
“Fine, have it your way. I’m leaving. It’s time, Cole. Time you got your grieving head out of your self-absorbed ass and started to care for that precious bundle lying two doors down being cared for by a stranger. Don’t shame yourself by sullying Grace’s memory.”
Hearing my mom’s comment about ruining Grace’s memory halted my current thoughts and I stared pointedly up at her. I thought her words were the lowest of blows at a time when I was already guilt-ridden about how Grace had died.
A part of me even thought I had killed her, because I figured if I hadn’t gotten her pregnant she’d still have been with us.
Personally, I’m ashamed to say I didn’t connect with Layla at all because of the horrible circumstances surrounding her birth. I supposed blaming myself for knocking Grace up was partly the reason for that.
In the early days, there wasn’t that instant ‘fall in love’ moment from me for Layla. I’d heard this mentioned so many times when I watched other new fathers on YouTube, and I wondered how different this would have been if I hadn’t known Grace was dying.
Most of the time since I’d arrived at the hospital with her, until we left without her, was a blur; yet there were agonizing memories of our stay, which felt as if I were experiencing them in slow motion at the time.
I had vivid memories of staring helplessly down at Grace as she lay unconscious, and in another I was being ushered robotically into the NICU staring into a bassinet where a newborn baby lay.
Forcing a smile toward me, the nurse glanced down at my baby. I followed her gaze and saw a tiny naked baby girl lying peacefully on her back. I expected to feel something, anything , for her, but I didn’t.
Denial swept through me and I begged God to tell me this was all a bad dream. Any second I’ll wake up and Grace will be in the shower singing like she does every morning when I open my eyes.
Still focusing my gaze on our child, I was ashamed at how disconnected I felt. I silently asked for her forgiveness, because the shock and pain of what was happening to my wife overrode everything with such excruciating pain, I had no capacity for anything else.
The last emotion I could feel was love, and I swore no one would get under my skin again if this were the outcome. It was a decimating once-in-a-lifetime deal.
My unstable emotional state was a constant swirl of conflicting or free-falling feelings brought on by dark thoughts full of anger. Those periodically culminated in bitter words of vengeance against anyone who looked at me in a way I perceived to be wrong.
Mom wasn’t kidding. She left within the hour and her dressing down of me had the desired effect. I dragged my ass out of bed because she was right; none of this was my baby daughter, Layla’s fault. The poor little soul hadn’t asked to be born, and as much as I wanted to, I knew I couldn’t spend the next eighteen years of her life in bed wallowing in self-pity, denial, and grief.
Fighting against the dark thoughts within myself, I had no other option but to live the rest of my journey on earth missing the love of my life. There was nothing I could do about missing Grace, and I knew I had to somehow find a way to respect her memory and myself.
Dealing with grief taught me I wasn’t a brave man, but I had to push back my selfish temptations and try to live up to the person Grace would have expected me to be. Like her name, I couldn’t afford the luxury of falling from Grace.
Padding through to the bathroom, I stared at the gaunt figure in the mirror and considered how my hurt, tormented appearance may have made my mom and brother feel when they looked at me. It was the first time I considered anything other than dying in the previous month.
My normally short, dark-brown hair was overgrown on the top; my hazel eyes, which Grace always told me sparkled with mischief, looked lifeless, and my facial hair was no longer an attractive closely groomed beard, but a fully-fledged bush any mountain man would have been proud of. I sighed deeply and went through the motion of splashing water on my face to wake myself up before I stepped into the shower.
Ten minutes later, I dragged my weary ass into some clean jeans and shuffled barefooted along the hall past the first door—the one Grace had used as a dressing room for all her shit—and opened the second. The calming, pale pink decor with the dreamy cloud murals, hand-painted by Grace, was yet another reminder of what I’d lost.
For a second, I squeezed my eyes shut when a vision of my wife looking sexy in an old button-down shirt of mine with paint in her hair flashed through my mind. I hesitated as a pang of hurt crushed my chest and stood clutching tightly to the polished glass handle. The smooth cool glass in my palm soothed me as I fought against my anger.
“You’re just in time, Cole. Layla is about ready for dinner. Are you going to feed her?” My eyes sprang open, and I glanced at the tall dark-haired girl with a golden tan and a sunny smile, looking intently back at me.
“Maybe I’ll just sit here for a while.” For a moment I saw the hesitation in her thought, but she quickly moved out of the nursing chair and moved over to the self-contained kitchen area specifically designed in the nursery and began mixing a bottle for my daughter. “Harper,” she informed me by way of introduction. It was the first time I’d actually paid any attention to her.
Without responding, I sat quietly observing how Grace had thought of everything necessary for taking care of Layla’s needs as Harper busied herself until Layla began fussing; then became more vigorous in her protest of having to wait for attention.
Turning to face me, she tipped her chin at the cradle. “Could you please pick your daughter up and hold her for a few moments while I finish preparing her formula?” Harper’s voice was even, and the way she prompted me was matter-of-fact, but she didn’t fool me for a second. I knew she was prompting me to have contact with my daughter.
Too tired to argue, and irritated by Layla’s lusty yelling, I slid my large hand gently beneath her and lifted her carefully out of her crib. The smell of baby poop instantly filled my nostrils. “Jeez, she stinks,” I muttered and carried her over to the changing table equipped with clean clothing, diapers, wipes—the works.
“Can you stop doing that and come over here to clean her up, please?” I asked in a tone that had a hint of frustration and horror at the prospect of having to do it. My baby was a month old, and apart from the black newborn tar stuff and the French mustard looking poops she’d had in the first few days, I hadn’t cleaned her butt.
“I can’t mix her food and clean poop at the same time. It isn’t hygienic. You’re going to have to do it because you don’t know how to make her formula.” Gesturing her head at Layla, she grabbed a bottle brush and some sterilizer before adding, “Look at her, poor little soul, she can’t wait. The poop will burn her delicate skin.”
Cussing under my breath, I sighed heavily and lifted my daughter over my shoulder while I dug into one of the small compartments for a clean diaper and some wipes. As I stood up straight, the hand resting over her butt suddenly felt warm.
Swapping my hands over, I checked it out and wrinkled my nose in disgust because Layla had shit all the way through her onesie. “Damn,” I cussed again, laying her flat on her back on the changing mat. Grabbing a few wet wipes from the packet, I cleaned the offending gift off of my hand .
Harper turned to look at me and smirked. “Your child has a hidden talent for doing that,” she commented deadpan and placed the newly made bottle into a bowl before running the water in it to cool the newly made formula.
“There’s nothing hidden about it. It’s splattered all over my fucking hand, and through her clothes I might add. Is it normal for shit to ooze from a diaper and spread out like this? I mean judging by the amount in that bottle it’s multiplied tenfold in her gut,” I commented dryly, as I began to pop the fasteners and peel Layla’s clothing away. Harper kept her back to me and didn’t comment, but I heard the soft chuckle she made.
It took me a good three minutes to wipe the shit from her back, between her legs, and halfway up her ass, and all the while she was stubborn and uncooperative, kicking her legs, clenching her fists, and baring the back of her throat at me with some belly busting yells.
By the time I was finished making her clean and decent again, she was a purple hot mess; her normally pale skin tinted by how pissed she was by my interruption of her glory at sitting in her own pile of manure. Gently, I picked her up and calmed her the fuck down before I even attempted to put a new diaper back on her.
Lifting Layla gingerly from the changing mat, I did what they taught me in the hospital and pulled her body close, chest to chest with mine. Splaying my huge rough hand across her tiny, silky back I took a deep, deep breath at how warm and perfect she felt skin to skin.
A lump of emotion swelled in my throat as the fragrant smell of her baby hair hit my nostrils. I cleared my clogged throat when the tiny little person I’d helped to create wriggled and nuzzled closer. When her hissy fit finally ebbed she became a quiet, contented, and innocent little bundle in my arms. When she started to coo I felt my hard, frozen heart melt.
Layla was half Grace, half me, and my mom was spot on. If I had anything to be thankful for in this whole fucked-up, devastating situation, it had to be the beautiful child Grace had left behind. A tear ran down my face, but I only knew I was crying when I felt Layla’s wet little head nuzzle into my neck. Then she cooed louder.
“I… I think I will feed her, if you don’t mind,” I heard myself say. A ca mera click drew my attention to Harper, and she stood holding her phone high in the air. I immediately frowned.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to sell it. It’s for you and Layla to keep as a memory of the first time you visited her here in the nursery.” My heart squeezed tight and my small smile was immediate, if a little guilty. Layla was a month old, and this was the first time I’d braved the few steps from my bedroom to where she slept. Shame on me.
I was also embarrassed for thinking the worst of Harper’s motive, but for the previous six years of my fame, the people who had taken candid pictures of me usually sold them to the highest bidder.
“Thanks, that’s really thoughtful of you,” I mumbled, a little concerned at how shitty my appearance had been when I looked in the mirror earlier. I placed Layla back on the changing mat and fought her fresh protests as I wrestled her into a badly positioned diaper.
When I had secured the tabs as best I could, I picked her up again and slowly lowered myself into the nursing chair. It rocked back and forth as I repositioned my baby into the crook of my arm. Harper’s smile was encouraging as she walked toward me with my daughter’s bottle. Crouching beside me, she gently placed a small bib under Layla’s chin.
Immediately, my feisty little daughter protested at being disturbed again and her lungs delivered a twenty-decibel yell in my direction. Taking the bottle from Harper, I quickly shoved the nipple into Layla’s mouth and silence reigned. Harper and I both shared a small smile, then she turned and went back to what she was doing at the sink.
Greedily, Layla slurped the formula like she’d been starved for weeks. Sometimes she’d suck until she had no more breath left in her lungs and then she’d release, causing bubbles of air to fill the bottle before she’d have at it again.
After Layla grunted like she was going to produce another mess, ungraciously farted, and burped her way through her lunch, Harper offered to dress her again.
“It’s okay, I’ll do it. My mom wanted to take her for a walk in the fresh air, but she read me the riot act and left,” I shared with no hint of humor. “I’ll take her. Go take a couple of hours for yourself and I’ll let you know when we get back.” A warm smile lit up Harper’s face and she nodded.
“Sounds like a plan. Thanks, I have some laundry to take care of so that would be great,” she replied. The smile she gave me was big and bright and not the kind anyone with laundry would give. It was a smile of approval for me finally waking up to my responsibilities as Layla’s father.