Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
CURRENT DAY
Gliwice, Poland
“I should have been the one protecting you. I tried, my love. I tried so hard,” Noah says, lowering his cheek to my shoulder. He nuzzles his face against my neck, and his hand rests on my stomach. “I tried to protect both of you. I failed you.”
I’m not sure what his mind is recollecting, or not—if all his memories have returned, or just some.
“Noah…” His name doesn’t sound right when I speak.
His lashes flutter against my neck.
“Where—where’s our baby?” His fingers sweep against my stomach as if he wants to feel something that can’t be there. Like time stopped when he was sent away.
But he remembers, and only knows we were supposed to have a baby—and now he believes he failed us. Elias steps away, urging Avi to the other side of the room with the bag of cans.
“You didn’t fail,” I tell him. “It wasn’t her time yet.” I repeat Avi’s word that has stuck with me.
“Her?” Noah whispers against my collarbone.
“She didn’t suffer.”
“Are you sure?” he asks, a whimper in his throat.
“It happened so fast. I felt her kick. Hours later, she was gone. For me, though, it was like losing you all over again. I thought the two of you were together.” The pressure in my head swells as I try to breathe through the thoughts I keep surviving.
The memory of the excruciating quiet after.
The wonder of what a newborn’s cry should sound like.
Hearing my own heart beating in my head as I sat alone, questioning what I had done wrong.
A heavy breath catches in Noah’s throat as his tears trickle down my neck. He pulls me in closer to him, squeezing me until the pain subsides.
“Eve,” he speaks her name against my skin.
I remember the day we decided on her name. I wish it felt like it was just yesterday, but it feels like a lifetime ago.
“One who gives life,” I say.
He sniffles and his body shivers against mine. “A miracle,” he follows. “Our miracle.” Gerda’s words about miracles being the purpose in life make more sense now.
“She had a purpose.”
Noah slides his free arm beneath me. “But I promised her everything in life, Celina. I was still counting the weeks after they threw me in a truck and sent me to the Westerbork ghetto to sweep streets. A checkmark in my head every seventh day. I tried to imagine how big she was getting, telling myself you were safe, and that I would come back before she ever knew I was missing. Before she ever learned how cruel the world could be.”
“No one should have to know that truth,” I tell him.
He lifts his head up for a moment, searching for my eyes. “After I was transported from Westerbork to Auschwitz, I learned what happens to pregnant women, and mothers with young babies. There was no hope for them. None. I knew if you ended up there too, you wouldn’t have survived either—”
“I know,” I utter.
“She did give us life.”
“So now…” I try to get the words out, but it hurts too much.
“We live for her.” The words float between us, not as a promise, or statement of grief, but as a way of life.
“Sometimes, I press my hand where she was and swear, I feel her.” I don’t know if it’s a memory, or something broken inside of me. I don’t care.
“She will always be a part of us,” Noah says quietly.
The fire crackles outside the window, and Noah’s breaths fall into a steady rhythm against my collarbone.
His hand never moves from my stomach.