17
I swing in the shade of the great plane tree, rocking back and forth with the cool, coarse sand dragging across my bare feet. The sunshine flickers through the lush leaves, splashing green gems of light across my eyelids. The flicking of the leaves makes a soft, mellow hum that rolls soothingly through the late-morning air.
The wooden tree swing is cool beneath my bare legs. I grip the worn hemp rope as it gently swings from the swaying tree limb, my shadow skittering across the leaf-dappled sand.
The little beach with its shade trees, cool yellow sand, and cold blue water is nearly empty this early in the morning. In June the lake still has a chill that bites your toes and jolts you awake. Daniel and Mila splash in the shallows. I smile as he lifts Mila in the air, water dripping from her bright pink cozzie. He launches her through the air and into the water. She shrieks with delight as she flies and then hits it with a splash. She bursts to the surface a second later and shouts, “Again! Again!” darting back to Daniel. He turns toward me, a lopsided smile on his face, and I wave at them both.
The wind kicks up and I notice the loss of salt and seaweed and spicy tropical flowers. Here it’s fresh water, cool grass, cement, and city mixing with clean mountain air. It’s the scent I know. That tropical scent? The heat and the turquoise ocean?
I look to Daniel. He raises his hand, waving back.
I haven’t been back to an island with a turquoise sea in nine years.
Daniel, Dad, and I were sailing the Greek isles. Sailing was one of Dad’s favorite things, and every year we all went for a family sailing trip that ended at Santorini. I didn’t know it at the time, but this was the last trip we’d all take together. My dad would be dead in a few weeks.
But the last night we were on the island, I left the villa and walked along the pebbled beach with its rust-red volcanic formations and towering cliffs. The waves crashed and beat at the pebbles and stormed up on the shore.
I stood there in the moonless night contemplating walking into the sea and not coming back out. The water wrapped around my ankles and tugged me toward the black depths, and I thought, for a moment, that the cool depths would be better than staying alive in the dark and the cold.
The pebbles shifted and I heard footsteps before I saw Daniel. He’d been at university—I hadn’t seen him since Christmas. Somehow my little brother had grown up in the past few months and I hadn’t been there to see it happen.
He stood next to me, a foot between us, and faced the ocean crashing toward us. The roar of it nearly drowned out his words when he asked, “What is it?”
I hadn’t told anyone. Not my friends, not my mum, not anyone. But this was Daniel. And my whole life, whenever I told him something, he always knew exactly what I was talking about without me having to explain. He always understood.
So without looking at him I said, “I’m pregnant.”
He looked at me quickly, but I didn’t turn toward him.
“Does Joel know?”
“Yes.”
And in that one word, in the rawness, in the way it scraped and tore my throat when I said it, he understood.
Joel was my fiancé, if that’s what you’d call it. We’d been dating for two years. He was ten years older. He wore custom suits, drove a red Ferrari, and traveled between Singapore and Geneva for his consulting business. He was the type of person who made you feel wildly sophisticated, who made you feel as if you were someone when you were with him—as if you mattered. I loved him with the desperation of a man dying of thirst in the desert begging for a drop of cool water.
He was that drop, and he would give it or withhold it at will.
“He told me to get rid of it.”
My voice came out monotone and quiet, as if I was speaking from a great distance.
Daniel studied my face. “Is that what you want?”
Yes. No. No.
“He’s married,” I said instead.
“What?”
“For ten years. He has three kids, a wife. They live in Singapore.”
“Hell. Fi, what—?” He cut himself off with a vicious swear, but then, seeing my expression, he stopped, lifted his hand, and then let it drop.
“How?” he asked, and I don’t know if he meant how did I find out, how could Joel have done something like this, or how could I have been so trustingly stupid to fall for it.
In that moment I hated Joel and I hated myself, and even for a millisecond, I hated my pregnancy, because if it hadn’t happened then I’d still be blind and happy and loved.
I dropped my head, shame making me shake. “I told him we’d have to get married earlier than we planned. I didn’t want to be showing at the wedding, and he . . . he told me to get rid of it, and when I said I didn’t want to, he . . . he said I was . . .” I stopped at the rigid line and the restrained rage on Daniel’s face. “It doesn’t matter. In the end he told me he has a family already, our engagement was a sham, and I wasn’t ever meant to be anything but the other woman.”
“Fi,” he said, and I could hear the helpless rage in his voice, cresting over the crashing waves.
“I don’t know what to do. It hurts and I don’t know what to do.” I wrapped my arms around my middle, conscious there was someone there, a baby growing inside me.
I was bewildered, full of stunned disbelief, that someone I had loved so well and for so long could drop me, discard me, so easily, so quickly. It was as if I’d plunged from the sheer red cliffs behind me and smacked to the rocks, cracking open. It hurt so much I could barely breathe, and the pain wasn’t fading.
I thought maybe if I did get rid of the pregnancy, if I did wipe it all away, then this pain would be easier to forget. Maybe I could forget I’d been discarded, not once but twice, in my life by the people I loved most.
But then I knew that wasn’t the answer. Deep inside, I knew this baby, she or he, would be someone I’d love. I’d love them very much, and even if it hurt, it wouldn’t always hurt. Not this much.
And when I looked at them I wouldn’t see my pain or my shame or how dirty I felt for being used, but instead I’d see . . .
I pictured the cool waters of the lake, the calm, mirrorlike surface with silver mist rising in the morning. Not these turbulent waves, but a restful, peaceful lake.
. . .I’d see someone I loved.
“I want her,” I whispered then, my hand clenched and my voice raw. “Or him. I do. But I don’t . . .I don’t know how. I don’t know if I can do it. I’m scared. I don’t think I can do it on my own.”
I was filled with so much bewildered pain and overwhelming grief, and yes, even rage. And fear. I didn’t know if I could manage it on my own.
“I don’t think I can raise a baby on my own.”
Daniel looked at me then, and I saw him as that chubby toddler the first day we met. Then he reached over, took my hand, and said, “Then we’ll do it together.”
“All right. Together.”
And then I wept. And Daniel held me.
I think of all the brothers in the world, I was given the best.
I look out now, over Lake Geneva, to Daniel tossing Mila in the air, with her shrieking happily on her way down to the water.
God, I love them so much.
Daniel sees me watching and waves his hand. “Come on, Fi! The water’s great!” He grins. “You’ll get used to it!”
I wouldn’t dive in. Not usually.
But I think maybe that island dream has helped me. Because for the first time in years I want to jump in. I want to join them in the cold water.
I stand and pull off my cotton beach dress, revealing a black bikini to the gentle summer sun and the cool lake breeze dragging across my skin.
“Mummy!” Mila shouts, her voice filled with delight as I stick a toe in the icy water.
Is the island exorcising my demons? Is Robert helping me finally banish the specter of Joel? Or was it that kiss with McCormick in the soft, salty sea that has me wanting to dive into the cool, fresh water?
I don’t know.
“Come on!” Mila calls, splashing cold water in a rainbow arch.
So I do.
I jump in and join my family in the bright, cold water.