Page 79 of Between Brothers

Chapter 34

Hayley

Three days after Duracell’s wake, two days after we’d buried him, and still no Blue. My father had forbidden me to work, Melody was picking up my day shifts and the girl that’d been on days with her while I’d worked nights had gone to night shift.

I’d been through every single bit of origami hanging from my ceiling and had lain among the drifts of scraps of paper for over a day, hugging that damn stuffed unicorn from the Harvest Festival that Duracell had won me; wallowing in my misery until my morning sickness had forced me from my bed and down my loft’s ladder.

I was trying to force myself to eat, but wasn’t hungry. I wanted to do everything right by the baby but I felt frozen. Scared to death of telling anyone. I hadn’t even told my father.

It was late and I was sitting in front of my latest project. An abstract, classic Victorian stained glass round window that was meant for no one in particular. I typically sold pieces like these on consignment at a local antique and gift shop but the joy in my work had left me.

I was oscillating wildly between bouts of tears, rage, and pain and I hated it, but I didn’t dare start taking the anti-depressants again. I’d started forgetting to take them when I’d been with Cell and Blue… hadn’t taken them at all since before Christmas and now… now I couldn’t take them. Now, I had to be strong on my own and you know? I could do that.

I closed my eyes and tried to take a deep breath around the crushing weight of grief that’d taken residence on my chest and the rage bubbled to the surface. The helplessness, the powerlessness rising hot and fierce with it and I snapped. I swept the window off my worktable and let it crash to the floor, screaming wordlessly into the dim light of my studio in the only way I had left to just let it out.

It was cold comfort. All of it. It also left a giant mess for me to clean up.

I got up from the stool I was sitting on and stepped right on a piece of glass, screaming “Dammit!” to the high ceiling.

“Stupid, Hayley!” I berated myself. “How could you be so stupid!?”

I didn’t know if I meant the glass, or if I meant falling in love with them… I guess it could mean either or both at this point.

I sat back up on the stool and carefully pulled the broken shard out of my foot, staring at the red coated glass as blood pattered to the cement. So red, like heart’s blood…

I closed my eyes and looked at all of the broken shards as another thick drop landed on another shard of glass and took a deep breath and let it out.

I knew, not what I wanted to do, but what I needed to do…

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