28. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Who was that?” Brayden asked as Hope circled back to the bench by the cemetery where they’d been speaking. It was late, but the weight of darkness around them steadied Hope’s breath. Hard conversations felt less damning beneath the moon.
“Effie,” Hope replied, taking her seat beside Brayden. She had been happy for the interruption; so far it didn’t seem like this conversation would go the way she wanted it to. “Sorry. I didn’t recognize it and there are a few people at my publisher’s office that have New Hampshire numbers.”
“No worries. Are you nervous?”
“For the launch? No, not about that.”
Brayden’s brow furrowed, but he didn’t reach for her hand, invisible shackles keeping him from doing what he’d normally do. Hope’s heart ached at the realization. “What are you nervous about then?”
“You . . . us. The baby. I don’t want to do this without you,” Hope admitted, and she hated how much sorrow seeped into the words.
She didn’t want him coming back out of pity, but from the moment they’d arrived at their spot, she’d felt his guard up.
It took every ounce of compassion and understanding not to throw herself at him or yell or beg.
She wouldn’t be reduced to such antics, not if they’d be in vain.
“You’re not doing it without me, Hope,” he clipped.
“But I’m not doing it with you, am I?” She couldn’t help it, and she choked on the tears that snuck free.
Hope silently cursed the streetlights that illuminated her broken heart.
She wiped at her eyes, doing her best not to break any further.
Brayden’s silence was answer enough. “Is there anything I can do to change your mind? Name it and I’ll do it.
I love you. So much it scares me. Please, this can’t .
. . this can’t be all we are to each other. ”
She gestured to her stomach. She had once thought that intimacy peaked when you brought life into the world with someone—that it formed an unbreakable bond.
But she was learning that it existed all on its own.
The love, the partnership, the passion all had to live and breathe separately.
While a baby might be a happy circumstance of those things if they were already thriving, it wasn’t a guarantee that they’d continue to exist at all.
Everything felt far too familiar, far too like the sad loss of love her mother and aunt and cousins had experienced before her.
Hope squeezed her eyes shut, willing her tears to dry.
“This isn’t easy for me either,” Brayden whispered, and Hope desperately wanted to believe him, but the strong facade had her feeling otherwise. He seemed resolved, strict. A cinderblock wall where he’d always been a sheer curtain dancing in the breeze.
“This isn’t you,” Hope whispered, yearning for the truth of her words to break through whatever spell Brayden had succumbed to .
“Yeah, well being me keeps bringing me heartache.” He scratched at the nape of his neck, his history dragging his shoulders down with its burden.
“I’m not Chloe,” Hope blurted before she could think better of it. She wanted nothing from Brayden but his heart. She didn’t think she had truly done anything to join Chloe’s ranks.
“No, but it doesn’t change the fact that I can’t trust you.”
“Brayden . . .”
“No. I need you to hear this. I can’t trust that you won’t take an argument between us or a misunderstanding and use it as a reason to doubt my love for you.
A reason to take my kid from me. I can’t have a Chloe situation be the reason that you turn on a dime and walk out of my life. Keep me from my baby. Not again.”
“Where is this coming from? You just admitted you still love me—”
“That’s not the point.”
“Isn’t it? What other Chloe situation would possibly come up?“
“I don’t know. But I can’t risk it, not when being a good dad is so important to me. And I can’t do that if I’m always afraid of what might send you running.”
“Don’t you think I’ve learned my lesson?” Hope pleaded. Her grasp on her desperation was slackening. She wasn’t sure she was above groveling at this point. Everything out of Brayden’s mouth sounded rehearsed, stilted.
It wasn’t him.
This wasn’t them.
“And you’re willing to throw what we have away for someone you haven’t even met yet?”
“Bug is as real as we are,” Brayden said between gritted teeth, and if she wasn’t clawing for the salvation of their relationship she might have swooned at the protective edge that sharpened his voice.
“Yes, but Bug’s not here yet. We have time to fix this before that happens.
Let me fix this.” Hope thought she might have received a full pardon after everything they’d already discussed.
Perhaps it had been naive to think that his understanding of her actions and the fears that led to them meant that he would also forgive them.
But she thought he just needed space to clear his head.
She didn’t realize he’d taken that time to build a fortress to keep her out.
The irony that she had done the same mere weeks ago was not lost on her.
She let loose a dark laugh before burying her face in her hands.
“You once asked me if we could choose to be happy,” Brayden started tentatively. “I wanted to say yes, but it’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is,” Hope argued but she knew she lost this battle. She might as well be bleeding out with a sword through her heart.
“I can’t just choose happy. I can’t keep being blindsided. I need security right now, Hope. It’s the only way I know how to start off on the right foot with Bug. Please, let me do that. Let me focus on you and the baby as a dad. Not as Brayden. Not as us. Please.”
“Is that forever?”
His hesitation was healing magic for her battered soul. It was a tattered shred, but it was still hope. “It’s just what I need.”
He hung his head, a crack in the wall showing his weariness and words he wouldn’t dare say tonight. Hope pushed aside the goading inner voice that wanted to unravel his stoic facade, and merely said, “Okay.”
The next morning, Effie snuck into the house well before anyone would be awake.
There was no shame in her return, but she valued her sanity and her privacy, so she didn’t dare walk in on a group of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed meddlers.
Instead, she crept up the stairs past the many school portraits and family photos that lined the wall and let herself into Hope’s room.
Effie’s heart dropped as she read the room.
Used tissues littered the floor and the comforter.
Hope still had one in the viselike grip of her hand as she slept, mouth agape, her red-rimmed nose probably stuffed beyond breathing.
Whatever joy Effie had come to share stalled out before it left her lips, and she charged for Hope’s side instead.
Her eyes were puffy as they fluttered open.
Hope leaned into Effie’s embrace as the tears threatened an encore. “It’s too late. I lost him.”
“Then he’s an absolute idiot,” Effie asserted, her high opinion of Brayden be damned. If he couldn’t come to welcome Hope’s love, he didn’t deserve it.
“He’s not though.” Hope sniffled. She pulled back and rubbed her weary eyes. “He made a lot of sense. It just wasn’t what I wanted.”
“But you two love each other,” Effie said incredulously. How it wasn’t enough to draw them back together was puzzling, upsetting, fear-inducing.
“Bug is more important. That’s what he wants to focus on. Whatever he felt for me pales in comparison to his sense of responsibility.”
Effie nearly popped a blood vessel trying to refrain from rolling her eyes. “How romantic,” she scoffed, but she had to admit that it was admirable to put the baby first, even if it left Hope weeping all night.
“Don’t hate him, Effie,” Hope pleaded and Effie startled. “ He doesn’t deserve it and it isn’t worth your energy to be mad at him. We’re moving forward with what’s important.”
Effie nodded, but it was no small change for Hope to be so open.
Love had done that. Brayden had done that.
Where Hope had clung to her rage or her hurt in the past to prove a point or to protect herself, she was now surrendering it for something greater.
If only she and Brayden could see how much they’d done for each other because Effie clearly remembered the man who laid his heart bare to her over candle wax and charcuterie. And this didn’t sound like him.
Effie kept all that to herself, not presuming to know how babies and parenthood changed things, but she decided to carry the torch of faith for the both of them that they’d be reunited.
She owed it to them as her own newfound happiness had sparked with their hearts daring to love in the first place.
Later that afternoon, Effie wandered to the hobby room. Aunt Bea sat behind her drawing desk studying her extensive portfolio of watercolors. Effie dipped into the chair opposite the desk and peered over at the pile of perfect paintings.
“Whatcha doin’?” Effie asked, her voice singsongy with the joy she’d suppressed in Hope’s presence.
“Trying to decide if I’m finished.”
“Finished?” Effie was startled. She didn’t think Beatrice had an end goal in mind, not when she’d had Effie and everyone else sit for multiple portraits over the years.
“Yes. I want to share them, I think.”
“At a gallery? Or would you make a book or something?” There were all kinds of options for the portraits from a live show to a coffee table book of faces to postcards of Issa the parrot.
“I think a gallery might be fun, but I’d have to rent it out myself of course. They wouldn’t be accepted into an existing show.”
“Pish posh.” Effie huffed. “They’d be accepted.”
Aunt Bea waved her off. She pulled her bifocals from her nose and rubbed the bridge like she was warding off a headache. Her face turned pensive as she scoured the pile once more. “I was too afraid to be seen for so long. I missed out I think.”
“What do you mean?”
“With my work, with friends. You know Neil’s family—that man I told you about—lives near here. I used to be quite close with his sister, but over the years . . . it became too taxing to hold myself authentically in a world that disdains otherness.”
“I know what you mean,” Effie muttered, and did she ever.
It was a challenge to brave the world in the vivid truth of your identity.
But Effie always thought Aunt Bea had emulated that to perfection, never daring to be anyone but who she was.
“Though I don’t think you give yourself enough credit. As you’ve told me before.”
“That is the risk we old ladies run in doling out advice. Sometimes it comes back to bite us.”
Effie shrugged innocently but it was true.
She wouldn’t let Aunt Beatrice off the hook, because if the roles were reversed she would do anything to help Effie get out of her own way.
“It’s not too late. To showcase your artwork or reach out to old friends.
You’d tell me to get my butt out there, so you should too. I’ll help if you’d like.”
“Yes, you’re right. Maybe you could start by helping me find a place? ”
“I’d be happy to!”
“But let’s wait until after the ball to say anything. Wouldn’t want Louisa thinking I’m trying to steal focus from her event.”
Effie had to laugh at that. Louisa was all kinds of wound up over this year’s ball. So much so that she’d accused Hope of planning her book launch exactly two weeks before the ball just to torture Louisa.
“Why do you think she’s so nutty about it this year?”
“I think she’s hoping for a little magic and forcing it into existence,” Aunt Bea proclaimed.
Issa flitted to Effie’s extended arm, perching lightly on her wrist. Effie nuzzled her before looking back to Aunt Bea. “You could reach out to Neil’s family in the meantime,” Effie suggested. “It’s nice to find new friends that make you leave these four walls.”
“You would know,” Aunt Bea teased. “Maybe.”
“Good,” Effie encouraged with a decisive nod. She turned her gaze back to Issa who tilted her head with an appraising look before lifting off Effie’s arm and swooping to her perch by the window.
Effie always wondered if Issa yearned to feel freedom beyond the Thatcher walls too, or if she was content in the place that nurtured her.