Page 86 of Promise Me This

“Ah, so she’s trained you as well?”

We laugh in unison before dissolving into a fit of sneezes.

After we’ve both regained our ability to breathe normally, she trudges into the thick of the boxes to my right, trailing a hand over each dusty surface she passes. I try to get back to searching, but I continue watching her out of the corner of my eye. Having her comb through these pieces of mine and my family’s history feels oddly intimate, like she’s walking through the caverns of my heart. She treads so lightly, and yet I can feel her there, filling up each space she enters.

“Killer lamp.” She points at a hand-carved lamp base made to look like two mermaids entwined to hold up the bulb.

“What can I say, good taste runs in the family.”

She finds a stack of photographs and holds one up. “Clearly.”

I walk over to her, careful to avoid the floorboard that caught my toe before, and peer down at the stack while bracing my hands on her shoulders.

“Well, in fairness, I had no say in that outfit. I was a toddler.”

“Uh-huh.” She giggles, tucking the picture of me in a sailor’s uniform into her back pocket. “Keeping that one for my own entertainment.”

“More like ammunition, but all right.”

She thumbs through a few more photos of my early years, including one where Granda is holding me in one of the wrought-iron bistro chairs in the garden. I pluck that one from the stack, revealing another, more faded image beneath it. In it, a young woman stands in front of our hydrangea bushes cradling her rounded belly while a proud smile shines on her face.

“Is this Siobhan?” Leo breathes.

“Mhm,” I hum, flipping it over to read the handwritten date. “June, nineteen seventy-nine.”

Our gazes meet as the realization dawns on both of us. The air grows noticeably thicker.

“Mam did say she was pregnant before me.” I rub a thumb over the image, my heart thudding rapidly in my chest.

A gentle smile forms on Leo’s face. Even in the low light, I can see the glistening moisture in her eyes. I don’t suspect it’s from the dust.

“We should bring it to the inn for her,” Leo says, reaching for the polaroid. “I think she might like to have it. I know I would.”

My gaze flickers instinctually to her stomach. “Are there any pictures?”

“There’s a couple of me in the hospital that Momma took, in case I ever wanted them. They’re in the memory box I have for Poppy with her sonograms and her urn.”

She sets the picture of Mam on a nearby wooden table and turns back to the array of boxes to resume her search, but the added weight doesn’t leave her slumped shoulders. I move on instinct, wrapping my arms around her middle from behind and tucking her against me. My hands trail over her stomach as I nuzzle her neck, the citrus scent of her shampoo clearing even the memory of dust from my senses. I’m so full of love for her and my daughter, both my daughters, that I can barely breathe.

One of her trembling hands settles over mine and draws it upward, till my palm rests against her chest. No, not just her chest. The amulet that contains our daughter.

“I love that you still carry her with you.”

“I’ll carry her forever.”

I press a kiss against her neck, her jaw, her temple. Everywhere I can reach without letting an inch of space come between us, even for the moment it would take to turn her around.

“People say grief gets easier as time passes. And maybe for them it does. But a mother isn’t supposed to bury her child, and that’s the kind of wound that never really heals.”

I rest my chin against the crown of her head and squeeze her tighter.

There have been so many days where I’m tempted to pick up the phone and ring Granda for advice, only to realize all over again that he’s gone. That I’ll never hear his voice again. As painful as those moments are, and as much as I ache for the child I never knew, I realize that none of it can compare to what Leo feels. Suddenly the very marrow in my bones wishes to absolve her of it. And it’s crushing to know that I can’t.

“There was a song my mother sent to me, back when I lost her,” Leo says, voice distant, “that talked about God taking the baby and showing her how time began. Holding her for the mother. But no one could care for my baby better than me. Not even God. It’s horrible to say, but it’s how I feel.”

As the raw ache in her voice reaches my ears, the desire to fix it goes into overdrive. I want to do anything, be anything, that can make it better. I have to.

Granda’s voice echoes in the back of my mind. She doesn’t need you to fix it. She just needs a soft place to land.

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