Page 21 of Carver
She smells exactly the same. Straw and clover, vanilla and honey, summer skies, dirt and rain, peonies and strawberries.
When I was trapped under that stone, lying there until I slowly dug my way out, shimmying in the dirt, I felt like I was watching myself from above as I dug my own grave. I understand the out of body experience. Like something is happening to you, but it’s not.
I’ve never been so in my body before. Bronte feels so familiar and so new. For a minute, we cling to each other. There’s no need for words. She clings to me like the world is going to forcefully pry us apart, but there’s no way she’s letting go.
“You can tell me,” I say as I drag my hand over her back, trying to soothe her. “We’re safe, Bronte. You’re safe. Always. Always, always, always.” I give her that mantra, reinforcing it. I forgot it. I might as well be apologizing to her over and over again.Always, always, always. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
Her breathing evens out. She sniffles, and then she lifts her head, her eyes brimming over, and sends a bulldozer straight through the fragile pieces of my life.
“We have a daughter, Dominic. She’s eleven months old. She’s beautiful. She’s perfect. She looks so much like you.”
Chapter 6
Bronte
I’m so afraid that this is it. It’s all over. That I’ve finally found the thing that shatters Dominic. Breaking down barriers is one thing, but I don’t want to layer up the lacerations, slipping a knife of betrayal so deep into his flesh that he bleeds out.
It’s all there. Wounded pride, shock, hurt, disbelief.
He doesn’t eject me out of his arms or force distance between us. I’m still in his arms. His calloused hand moves down my arm, the rough skin rasping against mine. They’re rough from sculpting, and so wondrously familiar. The second I crawled into his arms, it was a homecoming and an awakening, but the serenity is marred by the truth I’ve just dropped.
“How?” Dominic struggles to get even that much out.
I have to figure out a way to quantify this. I can give facts, but how can I explain myself in a way that doesn’t make me sound like nightmare fodder, or at the very least, insensitive beyond comprehension?
“We were always careful. I was really stressed. I wasn’t eating much or sleeping properly. I wasn’t thinking about myself, so I missed those signs, but there was nothing else. Nothing. No sickness. No soreness. I thought I was tired from not sleeping. Nothing else existed apart from you in hospital and me wondering if you’d ever come out of the dark place you’d entered. I didn’t know until Ifelt her move. I was so scared. Assoon as I felt it, Iknewthen. I went for an ultrasound, and I wasn’t wrong. I was four months along.”
“And there was me, utterly useless,” he sneers, but not at me.
I don’t want him to go back to those ghosts. Not when he was just ready to put them all to rest. I don’t want to bury him again. I want this to be the moment we go back to living.
“I wanted to tell you.” I twist around and catch his hand in both of mine, squeezing hard. “I was inagony. Half of me thought that it might be the spark that you needed, but then the other half knew that pregnancy can be risky in some ways. If anything happened, you might not have survived it.”
“And then she was born, and you didn’t know how to tell me?” He’s not abrasive. He’s really just asking.
“Not exactly. It was hard and maybe it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but when she was born I held her, looked at her, and fed her for the first time. There’s so much of you in her and I’d do anything to protect you both. I know that people might disagree, but I don’t think that having a child or using a child to fix a relationship isn’t the right thing to do. I needed to wait for you to find yourself. I needed to be there, but I knew I couldn’t do it for you. By then, things weren’t so bleak, but if they had been, I would have told you. I would have doneanythingto help you.”
“But you wanted our daughter to be loved on her own merit, for who she is, not as a tool.”
I exhale for so long that my chest starts to cave in around my deflated lungs.
He gets it. He understands. This isn’t a wound or a betrayal or me getting out a shovel to dig him a grave. It’s notanother scar, deepest for being put there by someone who was supposed to adore him, shelter him, and love him.
And be honest. Above all, be honest with him.
“I’ve never given you any hope that I’d be a decent father,” he says, shaking his head. “All I mentioned were my doubts.”
The edges of my ribs collapse in on my heart. “No, Dom. I never thought that you wouldn’t have wanted her.Ever. That’s not why I stayed silent. I could see how much you were hurting over everything that happened. I knew a child might be the thing that healed you, but I also knew it might destroy you. I couldn’t risk the latter, so I wanted to wait until things got better to tell you. But they never did…”
His eyes are so wide, so deep, so blue. He studies me plaintively. I’m still clutching his hand. I brush my fingers over the palm, over his fingertips, caressing the rough edges. “How do you know I’d be any good at this? Being a father? I have no idea how to do it.”
The only example he had was of how to be completely unloved and unwanted.
“You learn. I can show you. My parents can help.” I wrap my hands around his neck, pressing my fingers into the base, underneath his hair. “Youfeelthat love and that bond. For me, it happened the second I knew she was there inside of me, but when I gave birth and held her for the first time, I would have done anything for her. I have never felt a love like that before. It’s hormonal and biological.”
“Biological. I… feel that. I do. I want to meet her. I want to hold her. My god, she’d be…”
“Eleven months old.”
