Page 41 of The Locksmith's Promise

I wanted to do this.

Inside me, the hunger to see Corwin grow up, raged.

The first few pages showed a mostly unsmiling Maggie with an ever-increasing bump.

I traced the sweet roundness of her belly with my finger, sickened at the knowledge of what I was doing while she’d been busy growing our baby.

The next page elicited a bark of laughter. Maggie’s tummy, round as a basketball, done up like a pumpkin for Hallowe’en with her mom and dad on either side of her in an apartment I didn’t recognize.

Why didn’t she come home when she found out she was pregnant? Wouldn’t she have been better off with her mom and dad than out on her own?

What could my father have done?

The next page showed a triumphant Maggie, face flushed, sweat dotting the perimeter of her hairline. Corwin lay on her chest, his tiny face red and disgruntled.

I swallowed audibly, forcing the lump in my throat to go down so I could go on.

Page after page told the story of that first year.

Maggie lying on the couch, Corwin sleeping on her chest, a plate of dinner I imagine had long gone cold on the end table beside her.

Standing in the church with him swaddled in white in her arms, her stomach still distended and swollen from childbirth.

She shouldn’t have been on her feet.

She definitely shouldn’t have been standing there alone.

Page after page documented the weeks that passed with Maggie appearing less and less often. Then a few pictures showed Maggie’s sweet face grown sallow and thin followed by a gap in time.

The dates on the pages leapt six weeks forward.

Grandma and grandpa were back on the scene.

Maggie’s face slowly filled out, her eyes coming back to life, a slow reawakening.

A small smile.

Then another.

Until she was back to the Maggie I remembered.

I was hungry to see more of her, but not disappointed as Corwin took centre stage.

A gummy grin. Two small teeth. Followed by two more.

Corwin’s first steps, Maggie clapping with excitement, her parents’ pride evident in their wide smiles.

Corwin’s nursery, decorated with music notes and guitar cut-outs.

God help me.

His first birthday marked by his first cinnamon bun, cream cheese icing smeared over his round, pudgy cheeks.

The tears in her pretty, kaleidoscope eyes.

Corwin Xavier Raynor.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

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