Written in the Scars(56)

Her cries soften, her back not shaking as badly as before. I hold her as the moon becomes bright above and the fireflies begin to light up around us.

“The fireflies are out,” I say. “Do you remember the time Jiggs caught a bunch and took off the glow part and put it in his hair?” I ask. The memory makes me chuckle and it’s not long before I can feel her ease too. “The fucker glowed all night. Your brother is such a weirdo.”

She pulls away and looks up at me in the way someone only can that knows you and your memories inside out.

“I believe you did that too,” she grins, drying her cheeks.

“I don’t remember that.”

“I’m sure you don’t, either from choice or from the whiskey,” she says, all out laughing now.

Stroking her cheek, I nearly beam at her turn-around. “There’s my girl.”

Her head rests against my palm and I place my other on the other side. Tilting her to look straight at me, I bend so we’re at eye-level. She tries to look away, but I won’t let her. Holding her head in place, I plant a gentle kiss to the middle of her lips. When I pull back, I see her wheels turning.

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” she says, rubbing her eyes.

“Just open your mouth and say it and be done.”

When she pulls her hands away, the wateriness is back. Her gaze is heavy on mine, like she’s trying to tell me without words.

I can’t look away. Not that I want to, but if I did, I couldn’t.

“Ty,” she says before her voice breaks and the tears stream again. I don’t reach for her, not this time. I’m pinned in place, frozen to the spot on the ground just a foot or so in front of her. “I . . . I . . .” She presses her lips together, her face turning a warm shade of pink. “I was pregnant. And I lost the baby.”

Everything stops.

Everything except the steady flow of tears down her beautiful, pink cheeks and the drop of my stomach into an abyss that’s more bottomless than I ever imagined.

I’m sure I misheard her, something about her miscarrying a baby? Does she mean the one we lost a few years ago?

Looking into her tear-stained face, I know that’s not the case.

I think I’m going to be sick.

“What?” I ask, taking a short step back in case I spew my dinner at her feet. “What did you say?”

She doesn’t answer me, but she doesn’t have to. The pained look on her face, the sadness that is smeared across her features, the devastation I can see plain as day written all over her tells me all I have to know. My hand shakes as I draw it over my eyes, trying to break the numbness settling over me.

“I . . .” Words are on the tip of my tongue, yet evade me. “When? How did I not know this?”

“I’m sorry,” she says before a full-blown sob breaks the night air.

Her cries are muffled as I press her against me, unable to do anything but hold her. Her agony rips from her body and into mine, shredding the fibers of my soul. It’s a slow, agonizing torture listening to her grieve for a child I didn’t know existed, a life I can’t yet bring myself to believe was real.

“I called to tell you . . .” she says into my shirt. “So many times. You didn’t answer.”

My mind spins like a top, trying to grab something to work from. “When did you find out?”

“A few days after you left. I went to the doctor because I thought I was having a nervous breakdown and found out that I had been pregnant.”

Coughing back the vomit that creeps up my throat, I squeeze my eyes shut.

“I’m sorry,” she cries again, her word as broken as my heart. “I’m so sorry, Ty.”

“My God, Elin. Don’t apologize,” I scoff, fighting back the first set of tears I’ve felt since my father passed away.

Her hands twist in my shirt, her knuckles pressing into my back. They shake as she unfurls the suffering she’s been holding in.

Kissing the top of her head, I take a deep breath and try to calm my nerves. “I don’t know what to say.”

She places a single kiss to my sternum before letting me go. Her face is streaked with mascara, her lips swollen. “There’s nothing for you to say, nothing you can say. I lost the baby. I’m sorry.”

“Stop saying you’re sorry!” I say gruffly, my throat clenching shut. “Damn it, Elin. This is not your fault.” I pace a circle, my sneakers stomping against the brown grass. “I just . . . I should’ve fucking been there for you. Damn it!”

“I needed you.”

My mouth opens in an attempt to respond, but nothing comes out. They say the truth hurts. That’s not true. The truth blisters, and I feel it in every cell in my body.