Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“We’ve finished up most of the paperwork, and the baby’s due date is six months from today.” Conor positively beamed. His happiness reminded her of Landon’s the day they’d found out the baby stuck, how he’d opened all the windows and played music loud enough it spilled out of the house.
“I’m so happy for you two,” Poppy said. “Let’s toast right now.
We have to celebrate. Mimosas? Conor, please tell me you have ingredients for mimosas in that cooler.
” Rose knew she should say something. Something like “I’m so happy for you, too.
” But Rose could not speak. Because Cordelia wasn’t crying.
Poppy was standing, holding Rose’s daughter to her chest, as if calming babies were second nature—like Cordelia belonged there, snuggled into the soft fabric of her cashmere sweater.
Say it, Rose begged herself. Say, “I am so happy for you.” But then Bill was there, collecting the baby from Poppy’s arms like the most precious of parcels, cooing and oohing and rocking her as if loving babies was a personality trait he’d been born with.
“You’re a natural,” Landon said, standing behind Bill and clapping him on the shoulder.
“You’re going to be the most incredible parents. ”
“What’s wrong with me?” Rose thought, and she realized too late she had said that out loud, too.
Poppy looked at her, confused. “Do you need to go lie down?”
Rose shook her head. She was here, beside the sea, with the people she loved best in the world.
She should be grateful to be alive; grateful to have eyes to see how her cherished friends so clearly cherished her child.
Then Rose was struck by a terrible thought.
If she could not be happy here, was there anywhere she could be?
Say it, she demanded. Say, “I am so happy for you. I am so happy for you. I am so happy for you.” Then Landon was there, his hands on her shoulders. She clenched up and shrugged him off, harder than she should have. “Get off me!” she yelled.
“Hey, hey!” he said. “What’s gotten into you?”
Say, “I’m sorry,” she pleaded. Say, “I am so happy for you,” she begged, one more time.
But she couldn’t. So, Rose ran. Waves drumming in her ears, she pounded down the beach.
Landon’s voice carried on the wind, but she ran until her feet ached and her abdomen, still raw from what it had recently endured, cried in protest.
She stopped when she could no longer breathe.
Only then did she spare a look behind her.
And of course, Landon was there, maybe ninety yards back—far enough that she could see his face but not make out his expression.
She would have a few minutes, at least, of solitude.
Rose turned to the sea. It was rougher than it had been when they’d first arrived, churning and rolling with a restlessness that matched hers.
She opened her arms to invite it in. The salt spray stuck to her nose and cheeks.
She kicked off her shoes and stepped closer until she was in; until the water splashed up to her knees.
What’s wrong with me? she asked the sea.
Waves crashed, impervious to such inconsequential human suffering.
“Should I have left you alone?” Landon asked. He sounded as scared as Rose felt. She knew there were ghosts in his eyes even without looking at him.
When she did not answer, Landon exhaled sharply. “What do you need, Rose? What can I do?”
How many times had he asked? Hundreds? Thousands? She’d held it in so long already. She thought it was possible she could hold it in forever.
“I think you should talk to someone,” he said. The sea roared. “If you won’t talk to me, that’s fine, but you have to talk to someone.”
She turned around to look him full in the face. There they were—the ghosts she’d expected—lurking behind his bloodshot eyes, hovering above his sunken cheeks. “I don’t have to do anything.”
“You know what?” Landon said, darkening. “You actually do. You’re not a fucking teenager, Rose.”
The swearing was new. Rose had been losing her temper at him left and right, but he’d been taking it without complaint, and certainly without firing back. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
“It doesn’t matter how I talk to you!” he exploded. “Because you’re not listening to me! You haven’t heard a fucking word I’ve said to you since we got back from the hospital.”
“That’s enough.”
“No,” Landon said. “No, I’m not falling for this anymore.
I’m not doing it. You can’t keep pushing me away.
You’re not okay. You almost died, Rose. I watched you almost die.
” It was the first time he’d named it without a doctor present to mediate the experience.
It stopped Rose cold. “I’m going crazy here.
I can literally see you slipping away, and you won’t let me help you.
Please, Rose,” he said. “Please let me help you. Let me get you help.”
It was horrifying to know that he could see just how close to the edge she’d been standing all these weeks, that he had watched her teetering and had only now reached out a hand.
She found she couldn’t stand any longer and went limp, dropping down into the bracing Atlantic.
Landon was two beats behind her, bending to his knees with the trademark clumsiness she managed to find endearing even in this most dire of circumstance, soaking his shorts and T-shirt.
“You remember your nurse?” he asked. She didn’t, but she nodded anyway.
“She gave us both hospital pamphlets with resources. There are groups you could join. Or therapy. You might consider medication. I think you should try all three, but I am fucking desperate, so if you told me you would try just one, I would kiss your feet.”
The water lapped at her hair, and Rose thought of Cordelia, sleeping peacefully, she hoped, in the arms of anyone but her. “I should go feed her. She must be hungry by now; she must be—”
Landon reached for her hand. “If you won’t do it for me, then do it for her. You got a second chance to be her mom, and I feel like I have a front-row seat to watching you squander it.”
Rose shook her head. “Too far,” she said. The anger that had been lurking just below the surface exploded like a long-dormant volcano. “You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”
“Hey—”
She ripped her hand free. “You have no idea what this is like.”
“You won’t let me—”
“You have no idea what it feels like. I feel like a fucking ghost, Landon! I don’t even feel real, I feel…” She shook her head, too far gone to comfort.
“Help me understand, then,” he pleaded. “Jesus, Rose, just talk to me. You think you feel like a ghost? It’s like I’m not even here!”
“She doesn’t feel like mine!” Rose said.
And once she’d said it, she could never take it back.
“She was here and I was gone. Landon, I was gone.” Under those white lights, in that operating room, she’d been tired—so, so tired.
And then, all at once, she’d felt nothing.
Exquisite nothingness. A bright light. A warm embrace.
It hadn’t been just the absence of pain, but the promise that there was place where pain could not find her.
And she was almost there. She was slipping away.
Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she could still feel it.
“Rose…” His voice broke.
“It’s like we’re still living on different planes,” Rose said. “Even now. I don’t feel like I belong to her. I don’t feel like she belongs to me.” Before her mind could catch up with her body, she was crying, heaving sobs wracking a frame still soft with the remnants of pregnancy.
“I’m sorry,” Landon said. “I am so, so sorry.” They were words you say when you don’t know what to say.
They didn’t make Rose angry, or even sad.
Just tired. Landon wrapped his long arms around Rose and did his best to hold her together.
But you can’t keep a ghost from slipping through your fingers.