Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
Icould get used to boat life.
For a week, Alfie glued himself to my side. We were quiet. As if we were both trying to regain our equilibrium. My family, his family, the accident, the baby that never was. Eventually, the bleeding stopped but my strange sense of loss didn’t.
I sat on deck, curled up in a chair, a wool knit cardigan shielding me from the breeze whistling over the Atlantic ocean.
Sometimes the cliffs and beaches of the Scottish coast came into view, mostly we stayed far enough away from land that it felt like we were on another planet.
We hadn’t gone far from home and I was fine with that.
Alfie wanted me close enough to a hospital in case something happened but I was out of the woods now.
My ribs and face still ached something fierce, but each day it got easier to walk, to eat.
For the first time in days, Alfie had finally left me alone.
He had delayed almost everything but work couldn’t wait any longer.
Somewhere on the Isabella, he was talking with his board about finally leaving his father’s company.
I didn’t know how to feel about it. I didn’t know him without the company.
What would he do with his time? Who could he become?
My abdomen tightened. The bleeding had stopped mostly but every once in a while, I felt a cramp, an ache, something to remind me of what Alfie and I hadn’t dared talk about yet.
“Lola, do you need anything?” Ada’s gentle voice interrupted my thoughts. I smiled to myself. Alfie might have agreed to leave my side but that didn’t mean he was going to let me be alone.
“I’m fine, Ada. How’re you enjoying boat life?”
“Oh, I’ve been cursed with sea sickness,” she said with a wave of her hand as she took a seat beside me. “It always takes me a few days to adjust.”
“You shouldn’t have come if it was going to make you unwell.”
“I wanted to be here for you.” She sat quietly for a moment, her greying hair loose for once, it fluttered around her face as it caught in the breeze.
“How are you processing all of it? The loss?” I flinched, it was the first time anyone had mentioned it to me.
“Tell me to mind my business if you like.”
“I don’t have anything good to say.”
“Good?”
“Good. Helpful. Productive. Or anything that makes sense.” I bit my lip, absently stirring my honey and chamomile tea. “I haven’t cried. Not since I first found out and I was in shock. That's bad, right?”
“No, sweetheart. That’s not bad, it’s self preservation.
” She poured a cup of tea for herself from the tea tray, adding honey to her own chamomile.
“You know, Elliot and I tried for a long time to have a child. Eight miscarriages. I have an inhospitable uterus apparently. Fucking doctors. You can always count on them to use the most heartless language.”
‘These things happen.’
‘It.’
‘Pass everything.’
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not telling you this to guilt you. I’m saying whatever emotion you feel is valid and you aren’t answerable to anybody. It’s not your job to make anyone else comfortable right now.”
I looked out across the great expanse of the ocean. Was I ready to say what had truly been on my mind all this time? “I’m relieved the decision was made for me.”
Ada nodded but didn’t speak. It felt wrong to say this to a woman that had desperately wanted children but she had opened this door, I had to trust she was okay with hearing what I had to say.
“I wasn’t ready. Alfie’s ready. Or at least he thinks he is. Maybe he is.”
“Alfie has lived more life than you.” That was true.
“It’s selfish, isn’t it? I ought to want it.”
“Why ought you? Who says so?” The world, I thought. Society. Everywhere I looked I was told so. “Maybe you will be ready. In your own time.”
“But what if I never am? What about Alfie? He wants a family.”
“He wants you more and you have to love yourself enough to believe you’re worthy of that love even without a child thrown in.
It took me a while to get there. I must have ended things with Elliot a dozen times.
Every time I lost another one I told him to go.
I felt like I didn’t have enough to offer. But I do. And so do you.”
I leaned into her, tears on my cheeks.
“Have I made you feel worse?” She wrapped an arm around me.
“No, you’ve made me feel like my mum is here.”
Later, I found Alfie up on deck. I’d asked the chef to make smoothies for us and carried them up myself. I found him in shorts and a shirt, frowning at the sea as if it owed him a debt.
“How was the meeting?” I asked after he helped me to sit down.
“Unproductive. They don’t want me to leave. So much of the company's success rides on someone with the Tell name running it. They’ll figure it out.” He turned his head, studying me. “You look better.”
“I look the same.” He’d only seen me two hours ago, I definitely hadn’t gotten my whimsy back in that time.
“You look better,” he repeated. “What happened?”
“I talked to Ada.”
“That will do it.” He took my hand and I leaned into him as much as my ribs would allow. We’d spent the week waiting for the right time to have this conversation. But there was never going to be a right time.
“We talked about the miscarriage. I didn’t know she’d had so many.”
“Neither did I. Elliot and I had a similar conversation. Separately. I guess they tag teamed us.”
I smiled, of course they did.
“I’ll tell you what I told him if you’ll tell me what you told her.”
“Deal.”
“I told him that I’d never felt more helpless because I didn’t know how to make you feel better. I told him I felt guilty, like I’d done something to you that you didn’t ask for.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said, though of course it didn’t matter. We both knew how irrational emotions could be.
“I told Ada I was relieved not to be pregnant.” There it was. The elephant in the room. The monster under the bed. “I know that you want children more than I do. You must be so disappointed.”
“Lola, do you seriously think I would want you to be pregnant if you weren’t ready?
” I wanted to remind him that he’d stolen my birth control once but I kept my mouth shut.
He must have seen the memories on my face though because his own features twisted into a scowl.
“Don’t look at me like that. You know that I was a fucked up individual when I did that to you and you know how relieved I was when that test was negative even though it meant losing you.
” I held his hand tighter as he relived those dark memories.
“I would love to have children with you. I think I could be a good father. But only when you’re ready. ”
“And if I never am?”
He took a breath. “If you never are, you will always be enough. You’re my heart, O’Connell. I will love you more than any other dream.”