Sarah had no walls or shields when she loved.
And that was when Abe knew he was wrong. The baby had known Sarah’s love—she would’ve loved him from the day she first learned of his existence.
“Ah, sweetheart.” He didn’t release her, couldn’t release her when she was so very hurt. He just held her as the sun inched lower in the sky, and at some point, she began to talk about her baby, about her boy.
“I named him Aaron,” she said in a voice husky with withheld tears. “I always liked that name, but originally I planned to call him Luther, one of my other favorite names.” She stared out at the water, her cheek against his chest and her arms folded up between them. “But he looked like an Aaron when he came out.”
She swallowed. “When I talked to him, I called him Baby Boots because of how he’d kick inside me… But it was important he have a proper grown-up name too, so officially I named him Aaron.”
Speaking through her sobs, she described her baby boy with his perfect little nose and his tiny hands and his round belly. “Why didn’t he breathe, Abe?” It was difficult to understand her now, she was crying so much. “Why couldn’t I keep him alive? I tried so hard. I did everything the doctors said. I ate the right foods—”
And then there were no more words, only Sarah breaking in his arms.
Lost, helpless, Abe just held her and he wished to God that he could take her pain. He knew what it was to lose a young life, what it was to watch small hands go still and a small face stop smiling. But unlike Abe with his sister, Sarah didn’t have any living memories of her baby, no echoes of joy to balance out the agony of loss.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’m so goddamned sorry.” He rocked her in his arms, and when he saw a security guard heading toward them as if to say it was closing time, he gave the man a look that said his life was forfeit if he came any closer.
The guard went in another direction.
And Sarah, she just cried until he didn’t think he could bear it… but he did, because no way in hell was he leaving her alone. Not this time. Not even if her tears tore him in two.
SARAH FELT WRUNG OUT, WORN AWAY. She didn’t know how this had happened, how she came to be sitting in Abe’s car, driving to the cemetery where she’d laid her baby to rest. “I hate seeing him there,” she whispered, arms wrapped around her middle over the shawl Abe had picked up and put back around her shoulders. “I made sure he had the most beautiful white casket all lined in blue, but he shouldn’t be there. My baby shouldn’t be in the ground.”
Abe said nothing, but he was listening. She could tell. When he was sober, Abe had always been good at listening, and today she couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out. She needed to speak about Aaron; Jeremy, when they’d been together, hadn’t had the patience to understand her grief.
No, that wasn’t totally fair. He’d been excited to greet his son, in that she wasn’t mistaken—he’d been determined to name their child Jeremy Vance Junior for one, a fact on which they’d still been in discussion—and he’d grieved when that son was born without life. But he’d also shut that part of their life away behind an iron door, refusing to talk about Aaron when Sarah wanted so much to talk about their little boy.
Maybe it had been his way of dealing with the loss, but later, when her own grief continued to haunt her, he’d told her they could always have another one. As if Aaron was replaceable, like a broken washer or car.
Aaron was Aaron. Her firstborn. Sarah would always remember the tiny, perfect body the nurse had put into her arms. She’d been a kind woman, that nurse, had treated Sarah’s baby with respect, touching him as gently as if he were a living, breathing child. “I sat with Aaron in my arms for hours, memorized every inch of him.”
And Jeremy, for all his faults, had made sure no one interrupted her precious time with her son.
“He was so beautiful, Abe.” The grief that never seemed to grow any softer thickened her voice again. “I wish you could’ve seen him.” What a foolish thing to say to the man who’d once been her husband but who had never voluntarily wanted to give her a child. She’d asked so many times after the miscarriage, but Abe had always said no.
“Did you take any photos?”
Surprised by the question, she nonetheless scrambled for her purse, wiping away her tears at the same time. No one aside from Lola ever asked to see pictures of her baby—as if he hadn’t existed. But he had. He’d been a gorgeous, perfect little boy with honey-brown skin and long, long lashes. “Yes, there was a volunteer photographer,” she said, pulling out the photos she kept always in her wallet.