by Abby Brooks
I clench my jaw. Rain drips down the windows behind my friend, blurring my view of the gray skies beyond. I watch the water bead and then trail down the glass. David left while I slept and I haven’t seen him since.
“Your tests came back.” Bailey smiles and I look away. “The baby is holding on.”
“The bleeding hasn’t stopped.” My mind goes to David, locked in his room after the death of his daughter, unable to function until his parents pulled him from the darkness. How is he handling this? Why isn’t he here?
“But it’s slowed.”
I nod. “Did David say when he would be back?”
Lexi clears her throat. “Tell you what, Claire-arina. You give your momma a kiss and I’ll wheel you back to your room. You can get that rest you need and I’ll grab you come ice cream from the cafeteria.”
Claire’s tiny hand on my arm feels heavy. “Did you hear that, Momma?”
I turn my head and look at my daughter for the first time today. “You got your hair cut.”
She blinks. “The fire burned it.” Tears well in her eyes. “Remember Aunt Lexi asked you if it was okay to cut it?”
I don’t but I nod anyway. “Oh, that’s right. I just forgot. You look extra beautiful.”
She smiles and swipes at her eyes. “You should have ice cream, too. She turns to Lexi. “Can you bring some ice cream to my mom?”
I don’t want ice cream but I won’t say that to my girl. “I love you, Bear.”
“Love you, too, Momma.” Lexi wheels her from the room, reminding her that she needs to sleep as much as she can to feel better.
When they’re gone, Bailey pulls a chair close to the bed and sits down. She leans her elbows on her knees and clasps her hands. “How are you feeling?”
I stare at the ceiling. Tears well in my eyes and roll past my temples. “I don’t know.” Someone passes in the hallway, a stream of conversation growing and then fading. “Fine. I feel fine.”
Bailey sighs. “You always say that and it’s always bullshit. You have to stop faking your way through life.”
“It’s been working just fine up to this point.”
“No. It hasn’t.” Bailey sits back, the plastic seat cover creaking beneath her weight.
I shake my head and close my eyes. I don’t want to have this conversation right now. I don’t want to have it ever. I want David to come through those doors, to run his hands through my hair and tell me everything’s okay. But he hasn’t. I don’t know how long it’s been since he left. All I know is that he’s gone and everything hurts and I’m so afraid he’s never coming back. I didn’t lose the baby, but what if the possibility is too much for him? What if the thought of losing another child broke him and he left?
Bailey leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “Do you realize all you had to do was tell me that you were struggling for money and I would have been there to help? I know what it means to struggle. I know what it means to not have what you need. And now? Liam has a small fortune and we would have made sure you were okay.”
“But I was okay.”
“You weren’t! Think back. When have ever, really, honestly been okay? When have you ever been happy? Because I’m starting to think you never really have been.”
“I’m happy with David.” And David’s not here.
Bailey nods her head. “Good. I’m glad.” She pauses. “But, I don’t know, Michelle. I respect the hell out of the way you fight through life, but I hate that you have to fight. It’s one thing to fake a smile through it all and it’s another thing altogether to actually smile through it all. Believe me. I know. And I didn’t start being happy until I stopped trying to do everything myself. I had to admit I needed someone.”
I let my gaze settle on hers.
Bailey folds her hands together. “Maybe, just maybe, you need to look at all the things that aren’t working so you can fix them instead of carrying them around with you all the time. Maybe, just maybe, once you acknowledge that you aren’t happy, you can start building a life that is.”
Tears well. My lips part. “All I ever do is survive.” I hate myself for saying it out loud. For admitting it. What good is acknowledging it if there isn’t any way to change things?
“That’s no way to live.”
“How can I do anything else?” I swallow and turn away.
“I can’t even begin to tell you that. You have to discover the answer on your own because you are the only one who knows what you want.”
“All I want is David.” I cover my stomach with my hands. “I want Claire and this baby. I want to build a life for the four of us.”
“And that’s exactly what you’re doing. Your daughter is fine. Your baby is holding on.”
“But David isn’t here.”
Bailey looks at her lap. “He’s not.”
“So how can I do anything but survive when time and time again I end up where I don’t want to be and it’s all out of my control?”
“I don’t know what David’s doing. I can’t speak for him and I sure as hell won’t stand up for him, but Michelle? You have to build your life around you. Around the things you want. You have to find happiness that comes from in here.” She thumps a fist to her chest. “You cannot live your life for anyone else and expect things to turn out the way you want. You are the captain of this ship. You have to take the wheel and drive.”
It’s more than I can handle. The truth of it is too heavy. David is gone and if he doesn’t show up sometime soon I’m going to have to face the fact that once again I get to rebuild my life from the ground up. This time, I’ll have the added burden of knowing what it means to be happy, of having had everything I wanted only to lose it. I close my eyes and don’t open them again. And after some time, Bailey leaves.
Michelle
“What do you mean I can’t see her?” The voice echoes through my dreams. David’s voice. A cruel twist of my sub-conscious.
“Dude. She’s been a wreck since you left and just now finally fell asleep.” Lexi? Bailey? Angry words. “She needs rest more than she needs to see you.”
“I told her I was leaving…” The rest of his statement disappears, too quiet to hear. “…baby … had to go … arson…”
I realize I’m more conscious than asleep and open my eyes. “David?” I turn to find him in the doorway, blocked by Lexi, Bailey, and Liam.
He looks past them. “Michelle.” He tries to take a step but they stop him. “Damn it. Let me through.”
My friends make room for him to enter as I struggle into a seated position and reach for him with my bandaged hands. “I thought you left me.”
“No, darlin’. No.” He perches on the bed beside me. Cradles me as if I might break. “I didn’t trust the police to do a good enough job after the piss-poor way they handled the break in. I knew it was Russell and those damn cigarettes, just like we knew it was Russell who broke in your house.”
My eyes go wide. Russell. Of course it was him, creeping outside my window and dropping his cigarettes in the dry pine needles I should have done something about long ago.
Lexi comes into the room. “And you couldn’t tell her where you were going?” She shakes her head. “I’m not buying it.”
David’s eyes go wide. “I did tell her where I was going. I left last night, just before she fell asleep.” He turns to me. “I kissed you on the forehead and told you I’d be back. Don’t you remember?”
I shake my head and furrow my brow. The last day is a blur.
“If that’s true, then why didn’t you call?” Lexi raises her eyebrows and pushes her hands into her hips.
“Because her phone is a melted pile of plastic, thanks to the fire.” David glares at Lexi and gives his attention to me. “Did you really think I left you?”
I nod, battling tears. “All I knew was that you were gone. And all I could think about was losing the baby…” I don’t want to finish the thought, not in front of my friends. Maggie isn’t my story to tell and how can I
explain my fear without explaining her?
His eyes soften and I see he understands. “I’m here.” He touches his hand to my chest, right over my heart. “And you’re here.” He touches his own heart. “There’s no undo on that one. How could I be the kind of man you deserve if I ran away because we had to face something hard?” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry you were afraid.” His eyes fill with love and warmth. He puts a hand on my leg.
“I’m sorry I didn’t remember.”
David takes a breath. “I love you and you can trust me to stand by your side through the hard times. You’re not alone anymore.” He brushes my hair off my face. “Not with me here.”
I smile and glance at Lexi. She rolls her eyes while Bailey leans into Liam.
David stands and paces. Runs his hands through his hair as he talks. “I called Sarah. My sister,” he says, elaborating for my friends’ benefit. “She works for the fire department, remember? She brought some of her firefighter friends out to your house. It’s gone. The house is gone.” He steeples his fingers under his chin. “I showed them where we found the cigarettes. Explained it all.” He stops in his tracks. “They say it has to be the way the fire started. That it had to be because of him. But they don’t understand how things got out of hand so fast. The fire shouldn’t have blazed out of control like it did.” David’s mouth draws a thin line across his face. “They’re looking for accelerants or ignitable liquids.”
“What’s that mean?” Horror leaks into my stomach and the world goes gray. Sleep calls to me but I don’t want to close my eyes. Not now.
“That means they suspect the fire was intentional.”
The room goes quiet and an eternity exists between each second. Why would Russell do something like that? How could he hate me so much that he wants me dead? What about Claire? My brain rejects the idea of a father wishing harm to his child. It can’t be true. Even someone as broken as Russell can’t be that depraved.
“But we don’t have proof it was him.” David crouches beside me. “The fire burned up what little evidence we had and without a witness, we have nothing to tie Russell to the fire.”
“That’s okay.” I wish my hands weren’t bandaged so I could touch David. Even though he’s right beside me, we’re not close enough. “It’s not a big deal. It’s over now.”
Liam steps further into the room. “What’s going on?” Bailey follows him in.
David explains the cigarette butts we found under my window all those months ago. “And they were sitting in a pile of the driest pine needles underneath one giant fire hazard of an overgrown, mostly dead bush.”
“That’s seriously creepy.” Bailey shudders. “Isn’t he seeing someone? Why is he still spying on you?” She turns to David. “Do they really think he started the fire on purpose?”
David nods. “That’s the only way they can explain how quickly the fire spread.”
Lexi grips the back of a chair and leans forward. “I met that man once and that was enough to know he’s crazy.” She grimaces. “He’s not a good person.”
But murder? Arson? He’s not a good man, but is he really capable of evil? I have no love for Russell, but my mind still rejects the idea that he would do something like this. Our entire marriage consisted of me making his life easier at the expense of my own sanity. Right up until the day I left him and he pulled a gun on me…
Dear God, he pulled a gun on me.
In front of our daughter.
My hands start to tremble beneath the thick bandages. Maybe he is the kind of man who would do something like that…
Liam folds his arms across his chest and absently runs a finger along his tattoos. “You have to tell the police.”
My shoulders slump. “What good would that do? Without definitive proof?”
David looks at Liam and nods once. “He’s right. Proof or not, we have to tell them what we found. It’s their job to find the evidence, not ours.”
“But what if they never find the evidence?” The trembling in my hands works its way through my body. “What if they never catch him and he tries something else?”
David sets his jaw. “Time and money, darlin’. We’ve got a lot of both.”
Liam wraps his arm around Bailey and steps forward. “So do we. And you’ve got us.”
Bailey smiles at her fiancé and squeezes my foot through the blanket.
“What I don’t have in money, I make up for through sheer badassery and my ability to get shit done.” Lexi purses her lips. “That asshole has to get through us to get to you.” The corner of her lips twists into a wry smile. “You don’t have anything to worry about.”
I spend the next couple days resting and David never leaves my side. My mom brings us food and takes Claire to stay with her when she’s given a clean bill of health before the doctors are ready to release me. Lexi and Bailey pop in and out. If they’re not working a shift, they make the drive in to visit. Anabelle, Dean, Colton, and even Sarah check in on me. Anabelle presents me with a plate full of cookies as if they were stronger than any medicine, and I swear I feel better after I eat a few. Dean and Colton look uncomfortable, hats in hand as we chat. Sarah offers me a Carmichael-sized hug and a promise of reconnecting when I feel up to it.
The police take my statement. I tell them everything. From the night Russell pulled a gun on me, to the day he trapped me in the closet at the theater. I tell them about the one time he took Claire and the way she begged never to go back. They listen and nod through the whole thing, sitting like priests in a confessional while I unload my burdens. My soul feels lighter as they scratch my words into their notebooks.
I stop bleeding. The doctors warn me to take it easy, to rest more than I think I should for longer than I want to, but we’re out of the woods. They say I’m going to keep the baby. A few days later, they send me home.
Today, David and I are sitting on the porch, watching Claire play with Pogo. He takes my hand. “She looks cute with the short hair.”
I watch her throw a ball for the dog and then chase after him as he sprints to grab it. “She does.”
“I’ve been thinking.” David shifts in his seat, turning to face me.
“Uh-oh. That sounds serious.” I catch myself picking at my hands. They’re healing and the itching is enough to drive me crazy.
“It is serious.” David nods gravely. “I don’t think you should go back to work.”
I press my hands together to keep from fidgeting. “The doctors want me to wait at least another week before I go back to teaching.”
David nods. “Yeah. But I don’t think you should ever go back.”
“You don’t?” I bite the inside of my bottom lip in order to keep my expression neutral.
“I don’t.” David drapes his arm over the back of his chair. “It’s too strenuous and I already think you’re up and moving too much. Besides, you don’t even like it and your mom can’t afford to pay you. Give me one reason why you should stay.”
“My mom needs me.” I run a hand up into my hair. “Who is she going to get to cover all my classes?”
“She could teach them.” David shrugs. “And maybe she’d have enough money to support herself if she didn’t have your paycheck to worry about.”
“Wow.” I blink. “I don’t know what to say about that.”
“What’s your gut say?”
“My instant reaction is joy. The thought of never having to teach again is like freedom wrapped in sunshine. But reality is what it is. I don’t have any skills outside the dance world. And I can’t just come home and do nothing.”
“You’re about to bring a life into this world. Do you really have time to worry about a job?”
“Sure. In a perfect world I wouldn’t have to worry about working, but…” I blow air past my lips. “If I don’t have a job, I don’t have a way to support myself. To provide for Claire. Not that I’ve been doing a great job of that with the job I have, but at least I’m trying.”
David leans in, smili
ng as Claire giggles in the distance. “Let me support you. Or hell. Support yourself. There’s more than enough work around the farm. As soon as you’re strong enough, you can start finding things around here that you like to do. Most Carmichaels are happiest when they’re working on the family business, anyway.”
I furrow my brow. “But I’m not a Carmichael.”
Claire and Pogo bound up the steps and stop in front of us, panting. “Did you see how fast I’m getting?” She rises up on tip-toe and then rocks back on her heels, her hands balled into fists and pushed against her hips, chest thrust out.
“I missed it.” I try to smile as my mind whirls around David’s odd statement.
“I’m glad you’re here.” David smiles at Claire and then shifts in his seat to fish in his pocket. “I wanted to ask you something.” He gestures for Claire to lean forward so he can whisper in her ear.
A smile breaks across her face and she’s nodding her head before he finishes talking. When he’s done, she pulls back, still nodding and smiling.
“So what do you think?” he asks her. “Are you cool with that?”
“Yep.” Claire scrunches up her nose and beams at me.
David shifts to the end of his seat. “I planned to do this the day of the fire, but got so caught up trying to make it special that I wasn’t there for you when you needed me most.” He smiles. “I want to marry you, Michelle. And I can’t think of anything more special than the three of us…” He trails off as his eyes drop to my belly. “…the four of us here on this farm together.” He opens his hand to show me two rings nestled in his palm. “Will you marry me?”
“Are you serious?”
“Of course he’s serious, Momma. It’s David. He only says it if he means it.”
David smiles at Claire. “You got that right, little monster.” He turns back to me. “I want to take care of you. I want to give you a life that you want, not one that you fell into trying to please everyone else. If that means you keep your job, then good. If that means you stay home and raise an army of babies, good. If that means you discover you love making pies with my mom and you open a bakery, great. But damn it, you’re going to do it as a Carmichael. Marry me.”
