Chapter Forty #2
“We did,” I say, pressing my lips to her hair. “And we’re not letting go. Not this time. Not for anything.”
She shifts slightly and looks up at me, her eyes full of hope and desire. “Promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“Promise me you won’t let anyone take me from you again. No matter what happens. No matter who comes.”
“I promise,” I say, and I mean it with everything I am. “Nothing will ever separate us again. I swear it on my honor and the memory of my long-lost mother.”
She smiles, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. She settles back against me, her fingers tracing patterns on my chest, and we fall into a comfortable silence.
This is it. This is my bliss. Just her. Just us. Just this.
We lie in the darkness, her head on my chest, my hand stroking her back. For the first time in this lifetime and most of the last one, too, I am at peace—or as close as I can ever remember coming. This moment is perfect in its simplicity.
But maybe happiness isn’t for me. Perhaps a quiet life is a dream I’ve romanticized in my mind. I don’t seem capable of receiving and sitting inside of this peace. I can’t leave well enough alone and ask a question that threatens to shatter the hard-fought and intensely fragile calm we’ve found.
“Why?” I ask quietly, my fingers tracing patterns on her spine.
The momentary silence that follows gives me a window to change course.
I can take her silence as the desire to leave that path untaken, but I do not.
I tread deeper and ask again, “Why did you choose The Bliss in the first place, dove? You remembered everything about us. Your love for me. Our time together. Why would you choose to forget all of that?”
Silence stretches now, but there is no going back. My curiosity won out, and I must live with whatever truths her answer contains. Her hand tightens on my chest.
“I did not choose The Bliss because of you, Tommy,” she finally says. “Trust me, our story, our love—though it ended prematurely and tragically—those moments are precious to me. They always were.”
“Then why?” My persistence, which served me so well in The Catacombs, will now be my undoing.
She shifts, propping herself up on her elbow so she can look at me. In the soft light, I can see pain evident on her face.
“Maddy,” I whisper, “baby, what happened?”
“You do not want to know.”
“If it is a part of your story, then I must know.”
Her renewed silence begins to terrify me. “And if I wish to keep this story to myself? What if I don’t want to tell you, Tommy? What if I can’t?”
“Then I will not push. It’s your story to share when and how you see fit. But please know, there is nothing you could tell me that would turn me away from you. Nothing about you I do not want to know.”
I run my hand through her sunflower curls and place a kiss in her hair. Before long, she whispers, “I was with child.”
The words don’t make sense. I stare at her, waiting for clarification that doesn’t come.
“You were … what?”
“I was pregnant.” Her voice is small yet strong. “After you, I never …”
“What?”
“There was no one else, Thomas. Only you. It’s only ever been you.”
“But how?”
I pause, searching for words I cannot find. I’m not sure what I want to ask. I am lost inside her story. Confusion and a sea of differing emotions warring within. Her next sentence levels me. Her next words change everything.
“I gave birth to your child, Thomas.”
The words sound like they’re spoken in an ancient language foreign to my ears.
Questions race through my brain, but only one finds voice right now. “Mine?”
“Yours, Tommy. Ours.” There are tears in her eyes, and a hurt in her voice that remind me that this story does not end well. It cannot.
I’ve just been given impossible knowledge. One of life’s greatest joys learned after the fact, when I can’t do a single thing about it. The need to know more spurs me on, and the questions pour forth.
“W-what happened? Was it a boy or a girl? What kind of child were they like? What did you name them?”
Her voice breaks on a sob.
“Oh, Tommy.” She sits up, wrapping her arms around herself. “In my heart, I named the boy after you.”
“A boy,” I whisper reverently.
“Thomas. I named him Thomas. But I didn’t. I failed. I never got a chance to voice that name aloud.”
“What do you mean?”
“There wasn’t time for me to name our son.”
“Why not?” I ask gravely, the pieces of this story beginning to click into place in my mind. I squeeze Maddy’s hand tight, tighter than comfort dictates.
“The birth was … complicated. There was so much blood, Tommy. They tried, but the midwife couldn’t stop the bleeding. It never stopped.”
“Maddy—”
“I had him,” she says, and the words come faster now, desperate.
“I held our boy. He was perfect, Tommy. He cried so loud. He was so small, but his voice was so powerful. I just knew he was going to use that voice for good. I could tell the tenor of his heart straight away. He was such a good boy, Tommy.” The memory awakens fresh pain in Maddy, and what starts as a soft laugh quickly dissolves into tears.
I don’t tell her to stop. I don’t tell her it will be okay. I keep squeezing her hand, silently begging for answers that don’t exist.
When her crying softens slightly, she looks at me with a sad smile. “You should have felt his little iron grip.”
“Hands made to hold a hammer,” I say with a pride I’ve never felt before, a pride I cannot name.
“You would have loved him,” Maddy says the simplest and truest thing.
“I know I would have,” I respond with surety.
“I would have loved him,” Maddy says, her voice shattering on the first word.
This time, I try to pull her back from the brink.
“You do love him, Maddy. As do I. With all our hearts.”
“What use is that love if it has no source, Thomas? There was so much blood. I felt myself getting dizzier. I assumed it was just because of the birth, but the midwife’s expression told me otherwise.
I looked from my child’s eyes down my body.
All the sheets were crimson, and couldn’t be replenished fast enough.
There was screaming and commotion until there just … wasn’t.”
“Maddy, you don’t have to keep telling me this. You don’t have to go on.”
“Yes.” Her response is firm. “I do.” Her voice takes on an edge now, determination pushing through the pain.
“I had him, Tommy. Our sweet baby, so fragile and yet so strong in my arms. The midwife couldn’t stop the bleeding.
Something ruptured, she said. And I knew.
I felt the life draining from me, and I poured a lifetime of love into those few moments with our child.
‘You’re safe. Mummy loves you. Mummy loves you. Mummy … ’ ”
Maddy’s voice trails off as the memory fades into something more manageable for this moment.
After another pause, she finishes her retelling.
“That’s it. That’s the last thing that I can recall.
No more crying. No more joy. No more pain.
No more feeling. Everything just went dark, and I was gone. My sweet baby boy was gone.”
“You did everything you could, Maddy. I know you did. He knew. He knew how much you loved him.”
“Did he? How could he? It was all taken from me. The scraped knees, and learning how to read, and the nightmares, and the mistakes, and the laughter, and the lessons, and the things I couldn’t even imagine missing because I wouldn’t know them unless I lived them.
All of it, gone. He was gone. My baby was gone. ”
She falls against me, and I catch her, holding her as she breaks apart in my arms. Taking in all of Maddy’s words wrecks me.
I hurt for her, and I hurt for myself too.
I missed all those moments as well. I never even knew I was a father until now, centuries too late.
My son never knew me. And I haven’t begun to process what that means or how it feels.
“I couldn’t take it, Thomas. I couldn’t face that loss.
I couldn’t hold on to that pain. The next thing I knew, I was being asked by some clerk if I wanted to work or if I wanted to forget.
And that was all I wanted, Tommy. I just wanted to forget.
I needed to. I couldn’t imagine holding on to that pain.
I don’t think I can carry it, even now.”
“You can, and you will, Maddy. And you won’t have to do it alone. I’m here. We’ll carry it together.”
“But how?”
“No idea. But we’ll figure it out.”
I hold her tighter, my own throat closing up. Silence fills the room, and we wear it like a blanket.
“I wonder what kind of life he led,” I whisper.
“I just hope he was happy.”
“That’s all any of us can hope for.”
I pull her closer, and she clings to me like I’m the only solid thing in a world with nothing else to hold on to.
She rests against my chest, and I cradle her through it—through the loss of a son she never got to raise; through the cruelty of The Bliss that took that pain away, only to bring it crashing back; through the unbearable weight of time and distance and all the moments she missed.
And I grieve with her. For the son I never knew. For the life he lived without us. For the family we could have been.