Anywhere But Here (33 page)

Shae

May 10

Present . . .

I swallowed and fixed my eyes on his. “I never went to New York.”

“What?”

“At least not until a couple years ago. But I didn’t go to Columbia. Not even for a semester. That was a lie. I didn’t go to college at all. By September, I was already sixteen weeks along and I was sick. Really, really sick. The day you thought I left for New York, I really left for Charlotte. My mom kicked me out when I told her I was pregnant and wouldn’t be going to Columbia in the fall. Didi offered for me to move in with her, but I couldn’t stay here, not after what I thought you’d done.”

“How does this answer my question?” he gritted.

“Because, you need to hear it all. Trin told me you went to New York once to see me. She told me about your brother too and what happened that night after I left.”

“She shouldn’t have.”

“She thought I should know, and she was right.” Even though it all only made this so much harder. “So now it’s time you know everything too. I went back to North Carolina. I picked Charlotte because it was familiar to me and not as far. I thought even after being gone so long, it might still feel like home, but like I said I was sick. Not normal pregnancy sick either, but I didn’t know something was seriously wrong until I went in for a check-up and I told my doctor about the constant vomiting and headaches. I could hardly eat or drink anything. I would get dizzy, and I was always tired. I just thought it was a combination of the pregnancy and depression, but it wasn’t. I was told it was an actual medical condition, Hyperemesis something or other. At first my doctor just recommended some medications and lots of bed rest, but instead of getting better, it got worse. I had to be hospitalized for the remainder of my pregnancy. I was hooked to an IV and fed through a tube, because it was the only way to get anything down.

“At my next ultrasound, the doctor detected signs of heart failure in the baby. That was the same day I found out I was carrying a boy. I was so happy and so scared. After that, they took blood samples and ran tests that determined he had fetal anemia, which is where there’s not enough red blood cells, usually because the baby has inherited different blood antigens from the father that the mother doesn’t have, so the mother’s antigens will attack the fetal cells. The baby’s heart tries to pump harder, and that’s what can lead to heart failure. They had to do a blood transfusion on the baby. It was successful, but they had to do it every few weeks up until the birth.

“But he made it to term, we both did. Then there were complications during the delivery and they told me he might not make it again. I was so scared until I heard his first cries.” I swiped at my leaky eyes with the back of my hand. “He was a miracle.” My miracle.

“I fought so hard for him. I fought so hard for our baby, to bring him into this world, only to lose him anyway.” The grief that was as fresh as the day I lost him, strangled my voice and constricted my chest. I saw whatever hope Kellen had been holding to dashed from his eyes as my grief became his.

“How?” he choked out.

“The car accident I told you about. It was just before his first birthday. We were driving back from Raleigh. It was January. Everything was slick with ice and snow, and I swear I was driving careful, but it was dark and a deer came out in the road. I knew better than to slam on my breaks, but swerving was a gut reaction. I fishtailed and went over an embankment. I was unconscious before the car made it to the bottom, but I can still hear Tommy’s cries in those last seconds.” I squeezed my eyes shut. For the rest of my life I would hear those cries in my head. I would give anything to hear him cry again in real life, hear his giggle, hold him in my arms. I opened my eyes again, not bothering to try and stop the tears. Kellen’s head was hanging between his shoulders. He was gripping the edge of the counter tightly, his knuckles white.

“When I woke up in the hospital they told me he was gone. Eleven days later was his first birthday, and that’s when I swallowed the pills so I could be with him again.”

He raised his head and his pain-stricken gaze.

It was like looking in a mirror.

“It wasn’t fair,” I whispered. “He survived so much. He was strong and healthy and still he didn’t make it to his first birthday. I only got him for a year. It wasn’t long enough. It’s not fair.”

He pushed himself up, straightening from the counter, his expression hardening over. “Not fair,” his tone was low and dangerous. “Not, fucking fair. You’re right, it isn’t fucking fair, just like it isn’t fucking fair that I didn’t get to know my son at all. You only got him for a year, but that was a year longer than I got.”

“I know,” I muttered hoarsely, choking back my emotions. “I know, and I’m so sorry.”

“How could you do that? How could you not tell me? How the fuck could you keep my son from me?” There was so much venom in his voice. It stung even though it was justified.

“I know, trust me, I know. I can’t ever change that or give you back what you lost. I didn’t know I wouldn’t have the time to make things right with you for him.”

“Not fucking good enough!” he thundered.

“I know it’s not, and I know it doesn’t change it, but I was going to tell you.”

“Right,” he scoffed.

“I was. We were in Raleigh that night picking up some antiques Didi had ordered because we were planning our first trip back to Conway the next day. I was bringing him home. I was bringing him to you. When I was pregnant I was so scared and sick and angry at you. I blamed you and wanted to hate you for leaving me to go through that alone. Even after Tommy was born, there was still so much anger and hurt. My heart was still broken, but I started to realize I could never hate you. You’d given me our son. He was so perfect. He had your eyes. I looked into them every single day and saw your face.

“For a long time, it still hurt and I never wanted Tommy to know that kind of hurt, to feel unwanted or rejected, but eventually I realized you deserved a chance. A chance to do the right thing for your son. For him, I had to give you that chance. But then he was gone, and I didn’t see the point in telling you about him. I didn’t see the point of anything after that, but I knew it would be cruel to tell you about him only to have to tell you that you would never get to meet him. So I didn’t. I met Liz in treatment and when we were both better, we wanted a fresh start. New York seemed as good a place as any to try and start over.”

The lines marring his brow, his cold eyes, the hard line of his mouth, the tightness in his jaw, it all said one thing. It still wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. No apology or amount of guilt and regret would ever be enough to make up for what I took from him.

His head moved side to side as if he was still having trouble comprehending how I’d done what I did, and then with one final look of contempt he turned his back on me and walked out.

And I knew what neither one of us had been able to admit or wanted to accept up until that point.

It was really over. We couldn’t come back from this.

And my heart broke all over again like it had seven years ago and then again when Tommy died. How many times could a heart break before it was too much?

Liz, wrapped in a towel–I hadn’t even realized when she’d finished her shower–came to stand beside me, draping her arm over my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, babe, but it will be okay. He just needs time to grieve.”

I leaned my head on her shoulder, knowing that she meant well, but also knowing better. This time he wouldn’t be coming back.

Every choice we make, wrong or right, leads to another choice, and these choices sometimes start us down a road it’s nearly impossible to come back from. Kellen and I had been on this road for seven years. We’d each made the only choices we thought we had at the time. It’d taken me until recently to forgive his and understand why he made them. Seeing the look on his face when he walked out of here, I didn’t think he’d be able to forgive mine even if I gave him another seven years.

I shuffled, in a trancelike state of despair to my room and dropped onto my bed with my phone in hand. I stared at it blankly before pulling up a phone number. I didn’t know why I did and I really didn’t know why I hit send, but I did.

“Hello,” she answered hesitantly.

I didn’t say anything. I’d lost my voice and the silence stretched out on the line.

“Shae?” Her quiet murmur reached me, breaking something open and I found my voice again.

“Mom . . .” I cried softly. “I don’t know what to do. I lost him for good. Now they’re both gone and I won’t get them back.”

There was nothing from her side except the quiet of her breathing for what felt like an eternity and then she spoke again, the tremble in her voice audible. “It will be okay, Shae. I’m on my way. It will be okay, I promise.”

Shae

May 12

Present . . .

I shut off my car in the parking lot and stared ahead at the tall iron gates. Two minutes later I was still sitting in my car. It’d only been three months since the last time I was here. I came to Charlotte several times a year and it was always so hard to make myself get out of the car. I glanced at the flowers in my passenger seat, separated into two bunches. Yellow daisies and blue forget-me-nots. The same kind I always brought.

My father’s headstone was easy to find. It stood out. Tall, grand, dignified, everything that Thomas William Bradford was. I knelt and laid the blue flowers in front of it.

“I miss you so much, Daddy . . . and so does Mom.” I think maybe I was finally beginning to understand her, how she became the woman she was. It felt strange, but some of the anger and resentment was gone. What she’d done, they way she’d turned her back on me when I told her I was pregnant, and then again when Tommy died, would never be okay, but I got it now. Or at least I was trying to. She’d walled herself off with her own grief. It had consumed her, the way it had me after Tommy’s death. Only she never snapped out of it, or at least she hadn’t until she’d almost lost me too. “I’m going to try to forgive her Daddy. I am. I know you’d want that.” And I wanted it too. I wanted to get to know the woman that had sat at my side, trying to comfort me two days ago. I didn’t know her, but maybe one day I would and I’d be able to look at her without any of the old bitterness and contempt. We’d probably never have a normal mother daughter relationship, but maybe we could have some kind of relationship.

“I love you, Daddy. Take care of my baby until I see him again.” I touched my fingers to my lips and then pressed them over the engraving of his name. I rose and made my way to the other end of the cemetery to the familiar spot shaded by a big oak tree. I hadn’t been able to afford one of the massive headstones like my father’s, just a simple, flat stone, but the spot beneath the oak tree was perfect. As I drew closer, I realized the man with his back to me, was standing at Tommy’s grave.

It was Kellen.

I stopped a few yards away. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t expect to run in to him here. I doubted he was ready to see me. God, had it really only been two days? It was two of the longest days of my life and I imagined for him as well. He should have this time in peace without me intruding. I could just go back to my car and wait for him to leave. Before I could slink away, he must have felt eyes on him, because he turned and our gazes collided.

His expression was stony and my legs became rooted to the ground. I couldn’t move. The neutral mask I was trying to maintain crumbled. I swallowed back the lump in my throat and diverted my eyes. I wondered if this was how he felt when he believed I hated him. If so, it was just one more thing I was sorry for, because this feeling was awful, knowing you caused someone this much pain. I couldn’t bear to stand there pinned by his stare any longer.

I turned to walk away like I should have as soon as I spotted him.

I made it two steps.

“Shae, wait.”

I stopped and turned and waited for him to say something else. He didn’t seem to be able to. He just kept staring at me like there were a million things he wanted to say, but couldn’t get out. I was afraid of what they might be. I could only imagine the anger and blame he was harboring. I knew all about that.

After a minute, his unreadable mask slipped and his expression broke wide open, exposing all of the pain and grief. I only saw a flash of it before he dropped his head and then turned his back to me again.

Did he want me to go or not?

I was being torn in half. I just wanted to get out of there. It hurt. So much. Seeing him like this, knowing what he was feeling because I’d been feeling it for so long now, and he didn’t even have a memory of our son to hold onto in the darkest, most agonizing moments. But I also knew running away just for me, because I was uncomfortable, was cowardly. I’d done enough of that. This was about him and what he needed. And maybe what he needed right now was for me to stay so he had someone to share in his grief.

I took a few hesitant steps in his direction, sucking in a calming breath, and then quietly went to stand at his side where he stared down at the stone that marked our son’s life and death.

Thomas Kellen Nash

Yes, even in my pain and anger I still gave him his father’s name. I guess that was a pretty good indicator that my hatred had never been anything but a cover. Only three men in my life had ever really held significant places in my heart. Two of them shared my blood and they were both buried here. The love I had for them was whole and pure and unlike any other. The love of a daughter for her father and the love of a mother for her son.

The third was standing beside me.

Birth brought me together with the first two. That love came natural, as easy as breathing.

But Kellen, it was something else that brought me to him, and loving him didn’t come so easy. It was a choice. It was messy and complicated and imperfect and terrifying, but it wasn’t any less real for me. And it wasn’t any less forever. That was the part I’d tried to deny, but when I gave him me, I gave him all of me. That’s not something you can just take back.

I bent and laid the yellow daisies down and then straightened. I wanted to reach my hand and take his in mine, but I wasn’t brave enough, and I doubted it would be welcome.

“Yellow daisies,” he muttered more to himself I think.

“I guess just like with the tattoo, I couldn’t let go,” I admitted quietly. The yellow flowers were all over in the field that wasn’t just our place, but the place where we’d conceived our son.

Silence settled between us again and I wondered if those would be the only words spoken, but then I felt Kellen turn his head and his eyes to me. I shifted my own to him.

“Will you tell me about him?”

Relief and joy warred with sorrow inside of me.

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

There was so much. I could close my eyes and there he was again. “He had your eyes,” I breathed, “and a grin that was impossible to resist. Oh and he hated bananas too. I couldn’t ever get him to eat one.” A smile touched both of our lips. Kellen hated bananas.

“He wasn’t a fussy baby, at least not overly so. He was happy and easy going. When he was born I gave him a t-shirt of yours that I had kept, to snuggle with. He attached to it right away. The only times he was truly unbearable were when I had to take it away and wash it. He started crawling at just four months. He was ready for this world. His first steps were at eight months and I swear from there he started running. He loved music too. God, he loved to dance. He was only a year but he already had this big, bright personality . . .” Kellen listened intently, enraptured, hanging on every single word I spoke. I talked for over an hour, telling him everything I could remember. When the tears started falling, I didn’t stop. I even saw him brush away a few of his own. It was painful, but at the same time it was a relief to talk about him. I hadn’t let myself talk about Tommy in so long. And sharing him with Kellen just felt right.

Without even realizing it, a sense of peace settled over me. We sat there in the grass in front of our son’s grave, me talking, him asking questions. We even laughed through our tears when I shared my favorite memories of Tommy, and even some of the ones I’d thought at the time–when I was struggling on my own, feeling in way over my head, trying to figure out the whole baby and parenting thing–were the worst. But that’s the thing about life, even when the darkness settles over you, even when you’re drowning in it and don’t think you’ll ever see the light again, you will. Bad times come and go with the seasons, and those moments where you don’t think you can make it, you can if you just hold on. Nothing bad lasts forever, but the good, it stays with you always.

And I knew when Kellen reached over and entwined our fingers together, that I would find the good again. What’s meant to be will always find a way, through storms and fires. Through tragedy and loss. Even through the lies and whatever life throws at it. It withstands. It keeps fighting. It’s never over.