Page 73 of Promise Me This

“Then it was confirmed. Our daughter had something called Trisomy 18. Her heart, her body, her brain…none of it would develop as it should. She was terminal.” Tears pool in my eyes, blurring my vision. Good. Good riddance. I’m so tired of seeing a world without her in it. “I don’t have any excuses, Callum. I should’ve called you. I should’ve explained. You would’ve come; I know you would’ve. But all I could think about was saving my baby. My baby. So selfish, I know. There was no part of me that could fathom how the universe could give her to me just to take her away. There was no room for anything else in my world.”

“Not even me.”

His voice is paper thin, so fragile the evening breeze could slice it in two. I blink the tears away until he comes into focus. He’s removed his glasses and folded them. They give his fist something to wrap around. With his face bare, for a moment he’s twenty-two again. I imagine we’ve stepped back in time and we’re crying over ultrasound pictures, together in our grief, rather than separated by everything I kept from him all these years.

I shake my head gently. “No, not even you.”

His head bobs once and then he tucks his chin, staring down at the blades of grass between us. “When did she pass?”

“Sometime in the middle of the night the week I entered my third trimester.” I gulp down the knot in my throat. I force myself to keep going. “Just like that. She was here and then she was gone, and I couldn’t fathom why she didn’t take me with her. I delivered her on the seventh of March.”

His eyes go round despite himself. “The day before your birthday?”

“The day before my birthday.” My lips press into a grim line, wet with the stickiness of tears. The memory of my mother sleeping on the couch beneath the hospital window as dawn came on my twenty-first birthday fills my mind. I laid in that bed and prayed for time to turn back. For the sun to sink below the horizon and the clock to rewind and my daughter to be with me again. It’s the last birthday wish I ever made.

“She’d be, what, eleven now?” He studies his hands as he counts up the years. He peers up at me. “Niamh would have a big sister.”

It’s in that moment that he comes unraveled. His face crumples like fisted paper. Tears stream down his cheeks and fall to the grass below. He braces himself on me, not because he wants to touch me, but because he can barely remain upright. I hesitate with my hand outstretched over him, desperately wanting to comfort him while not feeling I have any right to witness him processing the cumulative grief I’ve been shouldering for years, all at once.

It’s too much. It’s all my fault.

“I’m so sorry, Callum,” I whisper. It’s the most my voice can do. “I understand if you hate me. I hate myself.”

His fingers dig into my bicep. “Why?” he chokes. His gaze travels upward, landing on the place where he’s grabbing me, and suddenly he lets go.

“I told you, I was selfish. I was angry.” I suck in the biting winter air and let it burn my lungs. “I was consumed by grief.”

He jolts to his feet, towering over me. His hand moves to rake through his hair, and the vein on his forehead pulses. The sudden movement makes me recoil, and in that moment the back door of the inn flies open and I’m reminded that we aren’t alone in the world.

“Now, Callum,” I hear Siobhan say. With a glance spared in her direction, I see she’s bracing herself against the doorframe. Behind her, Padraig scoops Niamh up and disappears into the hall.

“Relax, Mam,” he growls. He staggers away from me but never breaks eye contact. “I’m not asking why you didn’t tell me,” he says, lowering his voice so it can remain just between us.

I swallow thickly, wiping my face with the sleeve of my sweater. “What are you asking?”

“Why do you hate yourself, Leo?”

The world tilts on its axis and nearly spills me over its side. I imagine him not as he is but as a priest on the other side of a confessional. Only he can see me; he has always been able to see me. And he wants to know the truth.

The truth that I’ve buried away, out of sight even from myself. Because the fact is, I don’t hate myself for being selfish or ignorant; I don’t hate myself for making the wrong decisions at twenty years old. I don’t even hate myself for never returning to Ireland or for marrying Nick or for breaking my own heart to fit into the life I received as a consolation when the one I wanted could no longer be had.

He stares down at me, unmoving. Unrelenting. There’s no place to go, to hide. There’s only the two of us. There’s only ever been the two of us.

“My body failed our daughter,” I say at last. “I can never forgive myself for that.”

He winces like he’s taken a blow. For a moment I don’t think he’ll respond at all. But he glances over at his mother, communicating silently, and then his gaze returns to mine and he nods. “Well, I don’t hate you, Leo.” His voice is gentle, solemn. Full of more grace than I’ve ever deserved. “I’m in shock. I’m devastated. But I don’t hate you.” He takes one step toward the door and then another, never once looking away from me. “I just…need some time. I need some time.”

With that, he turns and brushes past his mother into the inn.

And every knot holding me together comes unraveled.

The sound of Siobhan’s footfall on the grass barely makes it past the roaring in my ears. Soon I’m being yanked from my chair and her arms are encircling me, holding me up. She presses my face into the curve of her neck and she sways back and forth, as if she’s rocking a baby. I cry until nothing comes out. I cry until my throat goes raw.

Even after the tears have subsided, she strokes my hair and shushes me softly. We continue our gentle sway, like a slow dance in the garden, until even the hiccups have stopped shaking my body.

“What do you want me to do?” she asks, using her soft, weathered hands to cup my cheeks and face me head-on. Her tone is unrelenting, but her gaze is kind. “How can I help?”

I bite down hard on my lower lip, nibbling away at the tender flesh. My gaze lifts to the darkening sky and the birds that fly overhead and this feeling that I haven’t felt in years bubbles to the top of my heart.

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