Page 32 of Finding the Pieces

I shift, leaning against the wall, causing the contents of the box I’m holding to shift. The rustle catches Ellie’s attention, and she smiles softly at me.

Fuck, this could be a disaster. But I have to do something. I have to try.

“Hey, handsome,” she says, putting her e-reader on the arm of the couch.

“Hey, momma,” I say. “How you feeling?”

She curls into her side, facing me and laying her cheek against the back couch cushion, tucking her chin in the neck of the sweatshirt. “I’m okay.”

I wait, giving her space to say more. Her smile fades a bit when she realizes I’m not going to accept her answer. That I’m begging her for more. That I’m starving for her to fill the space between us with honesty and to finally let me help her carry the burden on her shoulders.

“Really, Dom. I’m okay, now. Last night was…an outlier. Things have been better and that came out of nowhere.”

I join her on the couch, placing the box on the coffee table and keeping my eyes down so she can react to my words without the scrutiny of my stare. I want to be able to talk to her without her shutting down, getting defensive, or dismissing my idea altogether.

“Ellie, I love you. You know I want to help. Was there anything that happened yesterday that might have, I don’t know, thrown you a bit?”

She’s quiet, but her thoughts are loud.

“I guess there was this one thing…Carissa mentioned in passing that one of her coworkers recently had a baby. We only talked about it briefly, and I shouldn’t have asked any more about it, but I couldn’t help myself. I guess she had this beautiful birth story, and I…felteverything. I felt jealous because why did this stranger get to have the moment I’d been dreaming about for nine months—for my entire life—while we went through what we did. Then I felt equal parts guilty and relieved because I never want anyone to experience what happened to us. Then I felt suffocated by heart-stopping, gut-wrenching grief because I wantedthat, and we’ll never have it. We’ll never get that moment back. We’ll always be the parents who started this chapter of our life likethis. I began my journey into motherhood hurt and confused and scared, and I want to know why. Why did this happen to us?”

I take her hand and rub small circles across her thumb with my own. “I don’t know if there’s an answer, Ellie. We might never know.”

“Why does that break my heart?” she says, voice cracking and silent tears rolling down her rosy cheeks, wetting the strands of her hair that have fallen loose from the knot on top of her head.

“Honey, it’s normal to want answers, but maybe there aren’t any this time. Maybe we’re just normal people who went through something awful. It’s not fair, but there’s nothing we could have done to avoid it. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Her face falls and a small sob escapes. She covers her mouth with one hand while the other wipes at her tears. I’m immediately moving, pulling her to my chest. She leans against me and we stay like that for a few minutes.

God, this was so stupid.She needs more than what I can give her. More than some stupid fucking game. But she won’t agree to finding a professional right now, so here goes nothing.

“Do you still love me?” she asks through shuddered breaths.

That catches me off guard and I take her by the shoulders and lower my face to hers, waiting for her to lock eyes with me. “Ellie, I couldneverstop loving you.”

“But I’m a mess. I can’t let this go. Crippling fear is controlling my every thought all day long. It’s not fair for you to have to deal with things like last night.”

“Last night wasn’t your fault either.” I keep my voice gentle, but hearing her break like this, because she’s worried aboutme, makes me want to scream. “Can’t you see that none of this is your fault? Let me try to help,” I say, picking up the solid brown box, void of any decoration.

She eyes the box, then me, skeptically. “What’s this?”

“I need you to keep an open mind while I show you. Can you do that for me, love?”

A small smile pulls at the corner of her lips. She’s so beautiful.

“That’s a dangerous question coming from a man like you, Dominic Moretti. Last time you asked me to keep an open mind, we were in contract on a house twenty-four hours later.”

She’s not wrong. I saw this house for sale and immediately pictured my wife in the front bay window reading her smutty books, on the porch watering her plants, and in the garage getting our bikes ready for the local trails.

You could say I’m impulsive, but I’m not. I’m decisive.

I saw this house and all I could see were my wife’s smiles. All I could feel were her arms around me as we danced in the kitchen. All I could hear was our laughter filling the space between the walls. When it feels like that, you buy the fucking house.

“And that was great, right? But this is a little different.” I lift the lid off the box.

“Seriously, another puzzle? Dom, there are five on our dining table as we speak. What is this?”

“This isyourpuzzle.”

---