Page 94 of Love, Lies, and Celtic Knots

Padding barefoot to the kitchen, I pull open a cabinet and grab an expensive bottle of wine—one of Celtic Knot’s newer blends. I pause for a moment, staring at the label. The irony isn’t lost on me, but today I don’t care. I grab a glass and pour, the deep crimson liquid swirling into the crystal.

Wine in hand, I head to the living room and open a small wooden chest that’s been with me for as long as I can remember. It’s nothing special—just a worn cask, the brass latch slightly tarnished—but inside is my entire past, condensed into a handful of objects.

I sink onto the couch, setting the wine on the coffee table, and start sifting through the memories. Old athletic awards. Academic letters. Diaries filled with pages of a girl I hardly recognize anymore.

I shuffle through it all until my fingers close around what I’m looking for: a plastic hospital bracelet, still connected like links in a chain. Beneath it is a folded form, yellowed with age but still painfully legible.

I pull them out and set them on my lap, my hands smoothing over the plastic band. I know their texture by heart—the slight ridges, the cool stiffness. I’ve handled them so many times over the years, but today, they feel heavier. Even the sunlight and the ocean breezes cannot lift their weight.

The form I received in the medical records I had sent to me is even worse. It’s clinical, detached, just a list of injuries from the crash. But my eyes zero in on one line, one phrase that has haunted me for years:‘Loss of fetus.’

She wasn’t a fetus. She was my baby. My daughter. Mine. The only family I would never have. They told me she was too undeveloped to tell, but I knew. I knew she was my daughter. I guess that’s what they mean by mother’s intuition.

My throat tightens, and I lift the glass of wine, sipping it slowly as I stare at the bracelet and the form. Memories flood back unbidden, sharp and vivid. The crash. The searing pain. Waking up in that sterile hospital room, all alone, my body broken, and the emptiness inside me an even deeper wound.

Ryan. His father. They were responsible for all of it.

Ryan gave her life—brief and beautiful—and then his father snuffed it out, sending me away so distraught I couldn’t see the road clearly. They both broke me in different ways, and now Ryan has the audacity to come back, acting like he has a right to stand in my way.

I take another sip of wine, the bitterness of it matching the ache in my chest. My fingers trace the names on the hospital bracelet, its cold plastic an anchor to the past I can’t seem to escape.

The memories are always there, always waiting. But today, they feel closer, sharper, cutting into the fragile composure I’ve spent years perfecting.

I drain the rest of the glass in one long sip and set it aside, closing my eyes as I lean back against the couch. The sound of the ocean outside is distant, muffled by the glass doors, but it’s steady, relentless.

I have to be just as relentless.

I tighten my grip on the bracelet, my resolve hardening with every breath. Ryan can’t win. Not this time. Not after everything he’s taken from me.

This isn’t just business anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time.

The storm outside feels like a mirror of the one raging inside me. Rain lashes against the windows, a relentless, unremitting drumbeat that matches the erratic pounding of my heart. The waves are crashing against the shore and the private dock, but all I see is the past, replaying in vivid, excruciating detail.

The accident.

The screech of tires, the crunch of metal, the glass raining down like jagged stars. My chest tightens as I remember the sharp, gut-wrenching pain—the way the world spun, blurred, then went black.

I squeeze my eyes shut, but the memories only come faster. Waking up in that sterile hospital room. The blinding overhead lights. The beeping machines. And then the doctor’s voice, cold and clinical, slicing through the fog of pain.

“You suffered significant trauma, Ms. Prescott. The baby didn’t survive… And the injuries to your uterus were too severe. I’m sorry, but it’s unlikely you’ll ever be able to carry a pregnancy to term.”

My baby. My daughter.

Gone before she even had a chance.

I open my eyes, staring unseeing at the rain streaking down the windows. I tell myself I’ve moved on, that I’ve made peace with it, but the ache in my chest proves me wrong every time. It’s always there, just beneath the surface, waiting for moments like this to remind me of everything I’ve lost.

And now Ryan is back, barging into my life, stirring up all the pain and anger I’ve worked so hard to bury. I don’t understand why he came home. We’ve both been gone for years. This was supposed to have been my triumphant return. He’d joined the Navy and become a decorated hero, leaving me to pick up the shattered pieces of my life while he was off god knows where saving the world. Maybe if he’d stayed, he could have saved our daughter. My daughter.

Why now?

He doesn’t get to waltz into my life and rewrite the story. I’ve spent too many years rebuilding myself, clawing my way out of the ashes, to let him destroy me again.

I set the hospital bracelet back in the chest and close the lid with a quiet snap. As I pour the rest of the wine into my glass, I make a vow to myself.

This time, I’ll be the one who walks away. And he’ll know exactly what it feels like to have to pick up the pieces of a shattered life and start again.

The weight of the day pulls at me, and before I know it, I’m sinking into the couch, the empty wine glass forgotten on the table. The storm outside lessens and the rain taps against the windows like a lullaby, soothing and rhythmic, even as the storm inside me continues to rage. My eyes grow heavy, and I don’t fight it. Sleep claims me.

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