HELOISE HAD RETURNED home around two in the morning after the EMTs had driven away with Kaj Clevin’s body. Martin had been snoring away in the double bed when she silently let herself into the apartment.
She had taken a long, scalding hot shower, washed off the blood, and felt relief running through her body like fine-grained beach sand through her fingers.
The whole thing had resolved on its own. Even nature could tell she wasn’t cut out to be anyone’s mother.
After her shower she had felt as if life had given her a much-needed revitalizing saline drip. Her words had returned to her, her desire to work had welled up within her. She had spent the rest of the night writing the articles about the Lukas Bjerre case that she had been putting off for the last twenty-four hours and she was still sitting at the computer when Martin woke up.
She told him about Kaj Clevin and nonchalantly brushed off his concern for her. “People die, life stops. That’s the way it is! You don’t need to worry about me. I’m fine.”
Martin shook his head at her and went into the kitchen. When he returned to the living room ten minutes later, he brought a tray of breakfast items. Toasted rye bread, soft-boiled eggs, coffee, orange juice, and the day’s papers.
“You haven’t slept at all,” he said and started setting out the meal around Heloise. “Aren’t you dying from exhaustion?”
She smiled at his word choice and shook her head. “No, but I could definitely go for a cup of coffee.”
He sat down across from Heloise and poured her a cup of coffee. He handed her the cup.
“Are you sure you’re okay? That must have been quite a shock.”
“I’m fine.” She turned back to her computer again and continued writing. “And I wouldn’t exactly call it a shock when people who eat and drink their way through life keel over dead. It’s sort of in the cards, you could say.”
“Well, yeah, but … still,” he said. “What about everyone else at the paper? Have you talked to any of them?”
“I called Mikkelsen last night and he came in right away. He was completely devastated. They’ve worked together for thirty years or something, so …” Heloise shrugged. “He just sent me a text saying the funeral will be Saturday.”
“This Saturday? As in the day after tomorrow?”
Heloise nodded absentmindedly as her fingers danced on the keyboard.
“Where will it be?”
“At the Marble Church. A big circus followed by a reception with hors d’oeuvres and beer at AOC. Just what Kaj would have wanted,” she said. “Could you hand me my phone?” She pointed over at the coffee table, her eyes still on the computer screen.
“Sure,” he said and reached for it. “Here you go!”
Heloise looked up and saw that Martin was holding a little jewelry box out to her.
She looked at the box but didn’t reach for it.
He opened it and held the contents out to her. There was a ring inside. An understated circle of forged fine gold without stones or whimsical details, very simple and clean. Just as she would have wanted it. If she had wanted a ring.
Heloise met Martin’s gaze. His eyes were wide and full of anticipation.
“I couldn’t lure you to Barcelona, and now I can’t wait any longer, so …” He set the open jewelry box on the desk and pushed it closer to Heloise. “What do you say, Helo?”
Heloise closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, the look in his eyes was unchanged. Still just as hopeful.
“Martin,” she said, putting a hand on his cheek. “Listen, I … I’m not the person you’re looking for, the one who …” She nodded at the ring. “It’s never going to happen.”
“It is, Heloise.” He nodded insistently. “You’re the only one for me. I know it!”
“No, I … Maybe if we had met each other in another life, but …”
“In another life? What do you mean?’
“I mean—it’s been fun, and …”
“Fun?” A groove appeared above the bridge of his nose.
“Yeah, we’ve had fun together, and I wish we could continue like that, but … we don’t want the same thing, you and I. You want to get married and have children, and I don’t want that. In fact, I’ve known that all along, so it’s not fair for me to keep …”
“Wait …” He shook his head, not understanding. “You’ve never dreamt of raising a family?”
“There are lots of things I’ve dreamt of at some point that I no longer want.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The things that have happened in my life in the last few years … Everything is different now.”
“Why? Why is everything different now?”
“It just is. I’m different. I can’t be the things you’re looking for. The mother of your children—that’s not going to be me.”
Martin closed the jewelry box and leaned back.
“But you can still do your job.” His voice sounded hollow, hurt. “You can still be Gerda’s friend, and get drunk on white wine, and run large companies into the ground on the front page of the newspaper. But this … you can’t do this. You’re just not up to kids after what you’ve been through, is that what you’re telling me?”
Heloise nodded. “That’s what I’m telling you.”
He leaned forward and took her hand. “Heloise, you’re one of the strongest people I know. Of course you can figure out how to be a mother.”
She shook her head. “You’re misunderstanding me. I’m not saying that I’ve become weak or that what’s happened in my life has broken me. But …” She searched for the words. “It … it feels kinda like an internal 9/11.”
He furrowed his brow. “9/11?”
“Yes. When those airplanes hit the towers that morning, they changed something, irrevocably. New Yorkers rebuilt their city and what happened made them stronger—more resilient. But … it’s a different city now. It will always be marked by what happened that morning.”
Martin eyed her without saying anything. She could tell he was desperately searching for an angle to approach this from, a point that would yield to pressure, somewhere he could set his thumb and press.
“I lived a life before that was good,” she continued to get him to understand. “Not a perfect life, but a good one. And it was shattered to smithereens when I lost my dad. I’ve found a place to moor again that I’m happy with, and …” She shrugged. “I don’t want to rock the boat. And I do not want to pass down his genes.”
“But you can’t let what happened to your father color the rest of your life. He was sick, Heloise. But it’s not contagious. It’s not heritable.”
Heloise didn’t say anything. Martin’s words bounced off her like projectiles off bulletproof glass.
He put his hand on hers again. “I saw how you were with Lulu last night, how much you care about her. If you had your own children to—”
“We live in a fucked-up world,” Heloise snapped. She felt suddenly annoyed to have to spell it all out. She stood up and started clearing off the desk even though they hadn’t eaten yet. Plates and glasses clinked loudly against each other. “People out there are sick in the head. Why the hell do you want to bring children into this world?”
“Oh, for crying out loud, because they’re the whole point to everything!?” Martin raised his voice, following her into the kitchen.
Heloise set the plates down on the kitchen island and shook her head.
“For you, maybe. But not for me.”
“So you don’t want to have kids because the world is shit, and you’re—what?—afraid of dying?” He flung up his arms, upset.
“No.” She shook her head. He didn’t understand anything. “I don’t want to have kids because I’m not afraid of dying, not now, not the way my life is set up. I don’t depend on anyone, and no one depends on me. And the thought of someone …”
“What, needing you?”
Heloise stared at him blankly. “That’s not a responsibility I want in my life. I’m not even sure I would be able to feel what you’re supposed to feel. It’s like there’s something broken inside me. When I found Kaj yesterday—it seriously didn’t affect me. The EMTs put him in a body bag and rolled him out of the building and I felt nothing. Nothing! Do you understand what I’m telling you? My alarm system went off, but I didn’t feel anything. I don’t think I even have it in me anymore.”
“You say that now, but I know you would feel differently if you got pregnant.” Martin’s voice was thick with emotion. “The second you knew that there was a life, that it was a baby—our baby!—you would love it right away. It would change your whole—”
“It wouldn’t change a thing.”
“Yes, I know it would, Heloise. If you just gave it a chance. If you opened your heart to …”
“I went to the doctor the other day for an abortion.”
The words tumbled coldly from her lips. There was no compassion in her voice, no desire to meet him halfway.
Martin looked as if she had just informed him she was terminally ill.
“You did what?” he whispered.
“Monday.” Heloise nodded. “I went to the doctor on Monday, because I wanted to get an abortion.”
Martin took a step away from her. He sized her up, his eyes coming to rest on her belly.
“You’re pregnant?”
She considered her words for a split second and then shook her head. “Not anymore. But I was and my point is that it didn’t change anything. I didn’t want it.”
Martin’s shoulders sank and his face slumped forward. Then he directed his gaze at Heloise without lifting his head.
“You went to the doctor for an abortion without talking to me first?”
“Yes.”
Heloise felt the back of her head hit the doorframe before it dawned on her what had happened.
She collapsed on the floor while her left eye started closing all on its own. Every nerve quivered, like one big bundle of pain.
Martin stood over her, his hands clenched into fists. His face was cold, his eyes black with rage.
“You murdered our baby?” he yelled. Tears welled up in his eyes. “How could you do that?”
Heloise tried to get up, and he pushed her back down onto the floor again. She raised one arm and held it defensively over her face.
Martin grabbed it tightly, his fingers digging into her skin.
“How could you be so fucking cold, Heloise?”
“Martin, let go of me!” Heloise’s voice trembled with rage and shock. “Let me go!”
She felt dizzy, her vision blurred as if she were looking through a fogged-up windowpane.
Martin, suddenly frozen, stared down at her for a long moment without letting go of her arm. The black, glazed look suddenly disappeared from his eyes again.
He let go of her.
“Get out of here!” Heloise yelled, pushing herself away from him with her feet.
Her left eye throbbed violently and felt like it was exploding in her skull. She could taste blood in her mouth.
“Go away!”
“I’m sor—sorry.” Martin dropped to his knees in front of her. “I’m sorry, Heloise. I’m sorry, I …” His tongue ran over his lips as he fumbled for the words and tried to make sense of what had happened. “I don’t know what got into me. I didn’t mean to …”
“If you don’t get out of here right now, I’m calling the police,” Heloise said, unsteadily getting to her feet.
Martin took a step toward her, and she reached for her phone.
“Heloise, wait. I …”
“Hello? Is this the police?” Heloise’s voice shook as she spoke, angry tears pouring down her cheeks.
Martin’s arms dropped to his sides. The light in his eyes went out.
“Heloise,” he whispered.
She shook her head. The dispatcher asked the nature of her emergency.
“Last fucking warning,” Heloise said, gesturing to the front door with her chin.
Martin nodded, crestfallen, and turned around.
The ring was still sitting on the dining table when the door shut behind him.