Arabella listened intently as Logan talked about the pregnancy on the way to the grave. About how they’d been irresponsible and careless. How they’d been caught out a couple of times without condoms but risked it anyway. How they’d been shocked at the unexpected news despite the risks they’d taken. But then happy and excited even through a couple of months of heinous morning sickness.
He told her about her father’s visit. About how he’d counselled Arabella to have a termination, to come home, but she’d told her father to go back to Melbourne and get used to the idea of being a grandfather.
She smiled at that.
He told her about the day he came home from work to find her worried that she hadn’t felt the baby move since the night before. How they’d gone to the hospital and they’d done an ultrasound and there was no heartbeat. How they’d induced her the next day.
He didn’t have to say how devastated they were. She could hear it vibrating in his voice; see it in the clench of his knuckles around the steering wheel.
The sun was warm on Arabella’s shoulders as Logan walked her through to their daughter’s final resting place. The memorial gardens were surrounded by native trees, the low twitter of birds and drone of insects added to the peaceful ambience.
“Do you come here often?”
“Every now and then. I bring flowers and keep everything neat. Duncan looked after it for me when I was away.”
It hadn’t occurred to Arabella that others knew about the baby. Just her and Logan and her parents. But, of course, they would have. His family. Her brother and sister. Maybe even some of her work colleagues. Who knew how many others?
None of whom had said anything.
He stopped at a plot, edged with a low decorative hedge. Tiny purple flowers pushed through the foliage and it was neatly trimmed. Arabella stared down at the small, low granite gravestone which sat in the middle flanked on either side by two sleeping angels carved from stone. They’d aged and weathered during their vigil. The inscription was simple.
Faith Tucker Knight. Born sleeping.
The words were like a sledgehammer to Arabella’s heart and she leaned against Logan. His arm slipped around her shoulders as he tucked her into his side.
Born sleeping.
“She didn’t even take one breath?” He’d already told her that their daughter hadn’t but to see it in writing...
To see the tiny, little stone and the angels... To know the baby girl in the ground had once lived inside her.
He squeezed her arm. “No.”
She pulled away from him and sank to her knees. The lawn prickled her skin and her hip twinged as she reached out and traced the letters on the headstone with an index finger.
Faith Tucker Knight.
“Why Faith?”
It was such an old-fashioned name and no one in her family – as far as she could remember – was called Faith.
He sank down beside her, his soft jeans pulling taut over his thighs. “Because we had to have faith that her death had happened for a reason. That she’d come into our lives for a reason. That it wasn’t all for nothing.”
And yet, it seemed, to Arabella, that it had all been for nothing. Especially now when it was only Logan who remembered.
Guilt swamped her chest like a tsunami. “Was it me? Did I do something?” She turned slightly to face him. “Did I drink alcohol? Did I... take drugs? Did I...” She searched around for another reason. “Stand too close to a petrol pump?”
“No.” His hands slid onto her upper arms, holding tight. Tears shone in his eyes. “No. Nothing. You did everything right and she was perfect, she was absolutely perfect.”
The pain in his gaze was killing her. Up this close, she could see his anguish, see the march of memories playing across his mind’s eye as he relived it all over again. Memories he carried alone now. The weight obviously heavy on his shoulders as his gaze desperately searched hers.
She knew that look. He was willing her to remember. Willing some spark, a glimmer of something that told him he wasn’t alone in his misery. Maybe he’d thought bringing her here would be just the emotional jolt she needed. A catalyst that finally opened the vault in her head.
His hands squeezed her upper arms harder as if he was trying to physically transfer his memories. Wanting her to share his burden. Needing her to.
“I don’t remember,” she whispered, her heart thudding painfully in her chest. “I’m sorry but I don’t remember. I’ve been racking my brain, trying to but... it’s just a blank.”
Her voice cracked and it broke the spell that seemed to have descended upon Logan.
“I’m sorry.” He relaxed his hands and pulled her into a hug then, hard and long and they clung to each other for what seemed an age, the dull ache in her hip ignored.
He pulled back eventually, his eyes no longer shiny, but his mouth set in a grim line. “The doctors don’t know why it happened,” he said, picking up where he’d left off. “It just... does sometimes, that’s all.”
Logically, Arabella knew that but what if it had been something she’d done? “Could they have performed an autopsy?”
Thinking clinically, thinking like a lawyer, helped keep the guilt at bay.
“Yes.” He nodded. “But... we couldn’t bear the thought of her... being cut open.”
Arabella’s gut clenched tight and a hot rush of tears brimmed in her eyes. Guilt was replaced by a swift jab of reality. She hadn’t thought about what an autopsy meant and she suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of it either. The threatening tears spilled down her cheeks.
He stroked them away with his thumb. “We’re a fine pair, aren’t we?” he murmured, his smile achingly sad as he tried to lighten the mood.
She returned it with a lopsided one of her own. “How can I be so sad about a baby I don’t even remember?”
“Because you’re human. You feel things. You don’t have to have a personal connection with death or tragedy to be sad or sorry it happened.” He smiled and it reached his eyes this time. “It’s called empathy.”
Arabella nodded. “But...” And this was the real question. The one she’d seen in each of their gazes more than once. The one she still didn’t know the answer to. “How can I not remember? A baby. Our baby. Of all things?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
There wasn’t any judgment in his statement, but just like the guilt, Arabella felt it anyway.
“I have a few more photos at home if you’d like to see them.”
Part of her shied from the brutal honesty of the photograph she’d already seen. Not sure if she was strong enough to look at others. But there was a much bigger part of her that yearned to see them. And it would not be denied.
“Thank you,” she said and slipped her hand into his.
Flash was ecstatic to see her, practically wriggling himself into a knot. Arabella laughed as she cuddled his shimmying body, some of the dread and tension that had been building on their way to Logan’s eased.
“Hey, Bella,” Duncan said from the kitchen, looking uneasily from Arabella to his brother back to Arabella again. “Good to see you around here again.”
“I’m just coming to see some photos.”
“Oh... right.” He glanced at Logan again with concerned eyes. “That’s cool.”
Damn right it was cool. Her resentment against Logan stirred again and Duncan by association. “You knew about the baby.”
He swallowed. “Yes.”
“You knew he hadn’t said anything to me about her.”
Another quick glance at Logan. “Yes. For what it’s worth I did tell him he was dumber than a box of rocks for agreeing to your father’s request, even dumber than when he let you go in the first place.”
Logan shifted uncomfortably but Arabella was touched by Duncan’s words and gave a watery smile despite how mad she was at the situation. She appreciated Duncan for trying to lighten the mood.
“Yeah, well... Like I said, I’m just here to look at some photos.”
“They’re on my computer,” Logan said, shooting his brother a brief look before his hand hovered in the small of her back and he herded her towards his bedroom.
He offered her the computer chair and she sat, her heart beating loud in anticipation as he powered up the PC and navigated around the screen. Arabella was rooted to the spot, torn between wanting to run far away and wanting to stay, to see more of her baby.
“This is them,” he said quietly as he clicked on a folder titled August.
There were only four in total, including the one she’d already seen. Two with her holding the baby – holding Faith – two with Logan holding her. Neither of them was looking at the camera, they only had eyes for their daughter, locked inside a heinous tunnel of grief.
Arabella’s hand lifted to the screen and she traced the tiny hand, translucent in its prematurity. Her eyes were closed and she did just look... asleep. “Who took them?”
“The midwife did.”
“I can’t believe we had the wherewithal to request pictures,” she murmured. They looked utterly sucker-punched.
“We didn’t. She took them anyway. On Duncan’s phone. He was outside the entire time, refusing to leave. She knew we’d want them at some stage, that we’d appreciate them. I don’t think this was her first stillbirth.”
A thickening in Arabella’s throat threatened to cut off her air supply. Both at Duncan posting vigil at the hospital and the forethought of a nurse – a total stranger – who’d known what they were going to need even when they hadn’t because her job was to care for everyone, whether their babies lived or not.
God. Arabella’s eyes watered. What a terrible thing to ask of another human being.
“Did we?” She half turned in the chair. He was standing behind her, his eyes glued to the screen, his hands shoved in his pockets. “Appreciate it?”
He nodded. “We looked at them often.”
“Do you still look at them?”
“I did a lot after you–” He took a deep breath. “When you went back to Melbourne. But only occasionally these last few years.”
Arabella turned back, staring at the screen again. She clicked from photo to photo, enlarging each one so she could see the details. She was vaguely aware that Logan had moved away but it was another twenty minutes before she’d looked her fill and could drag her attention back to the here and now and not the cloying misery of a hospital room nine years ago.
She turned to find him sitting on the end of his bed, watching and waiting patiently, Flash stretched out on his feet. His face was still a mask, his chin dimple nowhere in sight.
“Thank you,” she said, pushing to her feet with what felt like great effort. Her whole body felt heavy, weighted down by grief.
“Of course.” He dismissed it as if it was no big deal.
She shook her head. She didn’t want him to dismiss it as nothing. He’d taken her to their daughter’s grave, spoken about her, told Arabella all the things she should already know.
It must have been hell on him.
“No, I mean it. I know this hasn’t been easy on you today. That none of this has been easy on you. I think maybe it would have been better if we’d never met up again.”
Maybe her father was right? What good had it done for her to know what she knew now? To be weighed down by secondhand grief?
“No.” He crossed the short distance between them. “No, Bella.” His grey eyes were shining as his hands slid onto her upper arms and she wondered if he was fighting back tears. “I will always be grateful for whatever fates brought us back together again.”
“Really?” She wasn’t so sure, an unbearable sadness sinking into her bones. “Even the way it is now? The way it... ended up?”
These last few months had been some of the happiest of her life but all she could feel now was the heavy ache in her heart.
Despair prowled in his gaze as he searched hers for long wrenching moments. “I know you’re still mad at me and you have every right to be but it doesn’t have to end, Bella. Couldn’t we start again? Wipe the slate clean?”
His request was like a dagger to her soul. She wanted nothing more than to be with him but she wasn’t sure after today that Logan could ever come to terms with her memory loss and that would be the death of them.
She couldn’t be in a relationship with him, knowing who she was now would never be enough for him. Knowing he would always be looking for the old Bella.
“I’m not mad at you. Not anymore.” How could she be after today? “I know my father put you between a rock and a hard place and you were just trying to do the right thing.”
He didn’t say anything, just watched her with solemn eyes, waiting.
“But...” She shook his hands off her arms and they slid away. “I don’t think we can start again, either.”
Even the words wounded her. Her heart was breaking wide open but she knew with absolute certainty she was right.
“We can,” he insisted. “If we love each other enough, we can do whatever we want.”
Arabella swallowed the lump in her throat. If only that were so. “I do love you, Logan. I do. But... I’m not the woman I was. And I don’t think this new me is going to be enough for you.”
His mouth tightened to a grim line. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”
“Logan.” Her voice cracked. “I’m never going to remember what we had. I’m never going to remember carrying your baby. I’m never going to remember what that felt like. But you look at me like that...”
She shook her head and the lump doubled in her throat threatening to choke her. “And I feel that you’re reliving our baby’s death over and over again and it kills me because I can’t remember and I know you want me to. You keep looking at me like if I just applied myself a little better or a little longer, it’ll all come back.”
“That’s not true,” he denied.
But Arabella could hear the uncertainty in his voice. “I can’t live under that kind of pressure, Logan. Like I’m somehow defective, like it’s my fault, like I’m not trying hard enough. You want to love me then you have to love me and accept me for who I am now. Not who I was nine years ago. I’m not that person. She’s gone, Logan. And she’s never coming back.”
He looked helpless for a moment, like he wanted to deny everything but he couldn’t. “Bella.”
His voice was a rough whisper, which clawed at her heart. If one word could contain all his grief and loss and longing it was that. The slow tear that slid from his eye, hammered straight into the middle of her chest.
She blinked back her own grief. If she cracked, even a little, she’d spend the rest of her life in the shadow of a ghost. “I have to go.”
She backed away from him and he let her, watching her with misery weighing his shoulders down. She turned and headed for his door.
“Will you go back to Melbourne?”
His question pulled her up just as she stood in the doorway. “I don’t know...” she said, not turning to address him. She hadn’t thought that far. Her plans had been to stay on here but she couldn’t do that now. Going home didn’t appeal either.
Maybe she’d head to Fiji or Bali for a while. Somewhere she could be herself with absolutely no expectations from anyone.
Get a suntan while she was at it.
“The case has another two weeks to run so... I’ll make up my mind then.”
“Can I see you before you go?”
Arabella shook her head. Why? What purpose would it serve other than shredding their hearts just a little bit more? “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think we need a clean break.”
Bracing her shoulders, she walked out of his room. But there was still Duncan to contend with. Duncan who had refused to leave the hospital.
“Bella?” His expression was neutral but she could see the worry in his eyes. Duncan was fond of her, but she had no doubt he was team Logan all the way.
She took a deep, shaky breath so her voice wouldn’t wobble. “Take care of him, will you?”
He looked like he was going to say something then thought better of it and just nodded.
It made it easier to leave. A little.