Page 72 of Promise Me This

She pouts so adorably I almost relent.

But then my eye catches over her shoulder, through the window, on the silhouette in the garden. She’s reclining in a chair, curled up under a thick blanket to combat the chill in the air. With the sun low on the horizon, her hair glows more chocolate than midnight sky.

“I’ll be right back,” I tell my daughter, returning the bowl to her.

Mam’s gaze tracks me to the back door; I can feel it burning between my shoulder blades. Just as I tug it open, she says, “Remember what I told you.”

“I remember,” I murmur, slipping out into the evening.

Leo hears my voice or my footsteps, one, because she turns to the side the moment my feet hit the grass. She doesn’t address me though, and I can’t say I’m surprised. Disappointed, maybe, but not surprised.

I make it all the way to her side before she finally looks up at me, locking her gaze with mine. In the depths of her eyes, which reflect the golden sunlight like the surface of the ocean, I see none of the agony that was present last I saw her. Instead I find acceptance, like she’s stared down her fate and made peace with it.

The desire to get down on my knees and grovel is overwhelming.

I remain standing, just barely, but the words spill over my lips in a rush. “Leo, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. The things I said…I’ll understand if you can never forgive me for them. But I wanted you to know that—”

“Did you know,” she interjects, tilting her head to the side, “that poppies are a symbol of remembrance?”

I’m confused for a moment, tipped off-center, until my gaze falls to her lap. There, in the palm of her hand, a small, metallic poppy flower winks up at me.

Chapter Thirty-One

Leona

Even though I know he’s a mere foot away from me, I see Callum as if through a kaleidoscope. At once far away and incredibly close. Full of color and light. I can’t help but cling to the image for another heartbeat, knowing what darkness is on the horizon.

I wonder if this is how the doctor felt the moment he had to break the news to me. Did he look down at the young woman with a thin paper sheet laid over her lap for modesty and see a person whose life he was about to ruin? Because right now, looking at Callum, that’s all I can see.

I pat the chair to my right. “Would you sit?”

He doesn’t sit. Instead he drops to his knees on the grass. It brings him closer. Closer than he’ll want to be when this is all over.

The sharp edge of the metallic flower stem digs into my palm as I squeeze it shut. When I opened my door and saw yet another of Callum’s gifts on the floor outside, I wanted to dig a giant hole and crawl into it. When I saw what was inside, I wanted that hole to take me straight to hell.

“When I found out the baby was…dying—” I choke on the word. With a deep breath, I push past it. “I read a lot of blogs. Some said not to name her. That it would make things easier.” My lower lip quivers. I have to take three measured breaths before I feel I can go on. “But I couldn’t leave her nameless. When I pictured her, I never pictured her sick. In my mind she was beautiful and healthy and full of light.” A soft smile pulls at the corners of my mouth. “I imagined her running through that field of poppies we found that summer. The meaning just solidified my choice, because I knew I’d remember her for my whole life.”

Callum watches me with devastation mottling his features. He places a hand over mine, and I savor the warmth. I memorize the feeling of his rough calluses against my knuckles, the way his hand makes mine look tiny in comparison. There was a time when I thought I would’ve liked to know it was the last time he would touch me, all those years ago. Now that I do, now that I’m faced with saying goodbye and knowing its permanence, I realize how much better it was to remain in the dark.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that, Leo.” His thumb scrapes over my skin, back and forth. “I can’t begin to fathom how it felt.”

A piece of my heart falls away like land from a cliffside. I’m permanently altered by the breaking.

“Is that why you and your ex got divorced?” Heat flares in his eyes, burning off the fog of concern. I can see the battle for control rippling just under his skin. Anger—at Nick, perhaps, or the universe in its entirety—flushes his cheeks red. But he grapples with it. He overcomes. “Did he leave you to deal with this alone?”

He’s kneeling next to me, and all around him is grass as green as his irises and the beautiful inn I’ve come to think of as home and beyond that, the sea. I think for a moment I can smell the brine in the air. I wonder if it can wash me clean.

I shake my head, answering both of us.

“Callum,” I whimper. I want it to sound braver, but it just doesn’t. Removing my hand from beneath his, I settle it over the milky white amulet that rests against my heartbeat. “I found out I was pregnant three months after I got home from Ireland.”

It’s the stuff of myths, the way he turns to stone. An otherworldly stillness settles over his body. The only thing giving away his humanity is the clenching and unclenching of his jaw.

Instead of waiting for him to speak or to scream or to walk away, I do what I came here to do. I give him the pieces of our daughter that I’ve clung to all these years. I plant her in his heart and hope she’ll bloom.

“I was in shock. I was knee-deep in junior year, missing you terribly, and then I realized my period wasn’t coming. I’d been blaming it on stress, but it had been months at that point. The test showed two lines right away. I made an appointment with our campus clinic immediately. When I left that day, it was with a referral to an OB-GYN and the suggestion that something wasn’t right.”

I tear my gaze away from him because I can’t keep going when he looks at me that way. Like I’m some stranger sitting in front of him. The world is spinning around me so badly I have to focus on my knees to avoid getting sick.

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