He didn’t know whether to stay or turn and run.
Adam had entered Faith’s studio determinedly, shutting the door firmly in Christine’s face. She hadn’t seen him leave, hadn’t noticed his smart suit and anxious manner earlier, so had been alarmed by his sudden reappearance, as if dressed for a funeral. Unnerved, confused, she had interrogated him. But Adam had no desire to rehash the details of his morning’s disgrace with her – she would learn soon enough that he would never practise psychology in Chicago again.
Fleeing to the studio, Adam had hoped to find some peace, a moment of calm to gather his thoughts. But as he looked around the large, lifeless room, he was suddenly assailed by an overpowering wave of grief. The studio was Faith’s space, this room more than any other had her imprint on it, and being in here underlined just how much he had lost. Her spirit seemed to fill the room – her artwork on the wall, her painting smock hanging on the peg, even a half-drunk coffee, nestling in a cheesy tourist mug she had bought on their trip to Niagara Falls. For some reason that mug had always made her smile.
Choking with love, Adam suddenly wanted to turn and flee, but that would mean he’d have to face his mother-in-law’s questioning once more, so he remained where he was. And, as each second passed, the pain, though still intense, lessened slightly. There was a great sense of loss in this room, but there was also an element of familiarity that was oddly comforting. Faith was gone, but she had lit up his life for many years and the evidence of this was all around him. In the friends and colleagues she’d painted, in her distinctive, deep-brushstroke style, in the squiggly signature that always adorned the bottom right-hand corner of her paintings.
Summoning his courage, he made his way across the room and sat down on her stool. He had seldom done so when she was alive – it was very much her stool, and he felt ill-equipped to sit on it, given his complete lack of artistic talent. He’d often thought during their time together that this was why they were so compatible – both of them sincerely respected the other’s calling, but could not hope to understand or practise it. Love had always been fused with admiration.
This thought had often warmed him in the past, but it had the opposite effect today. Evidence of Faith’s talent was right in front of him – an almost finished sketch of Kassie – but what evidence was there of his? He had not spotted the warning signs, had not provided the necessary support to his wife, even though he knew she was depressed and struggling. Perhaps the Board was right. Perhaps Christine was right. What kind of doctor, of professional, was he, if he couldn’t even tend to his nearest and dearest?
‘There is no hope.’ The words sprang into his mind once more. Four wretched words, scrawled on a scrap of paper and left in the nursery beneath her feet. Faith had been in complete despair, unable to see a way forward, and he had not been there to comfort her. This certainty ripped him in two, but also troubled him, convincing him that she must have become delusional. Why was there no hope? They were grieving, suffering terribly, but they still had each other. Communication was fractured for sure, but they had still held each other silently in the half-light of morning, an intimate and tender moment that Adam clung to in his darkest hours.
Faith had shown moments of strength – when she had kicked him out of the house to go in search of Kassie. ‘I’m not a fucking china doll.’ And there had been odd moments of forward thinking, a will to repair the damage, when she’d asked him if he ever thought they’d be ready to try again.
Unforgivably, he had missed that opportunity to bolster her sense of optimism, but it was she who had ventured it, which was interesting. Faith had found their numerous failed rounds of IVF emotionally crippling, and had struggled to be around friends who had children, but her determination, her strength of character, had never wavered. Obviously, the stillbirth would have rocked her confidence, but none the less why should she despair? She had conceived once and could do so again. Surely all hope was not lost, unless she knew for certain that she wouldn’t have a baby, which was hardly likely, given that the hospital staff had been at pains to point out that one stillbirth did not mean the next pregnancy would go the same way. So where had this desolation, this despair, suddenly come from?
Adam rose from the stool – there was no point sitting here, torturing himself – but, as he did so, his gaze fell on the sketch in front of him. Kassie stared back at him, her head and neck expertly rendered in pencil. Or rather she didn’t – her eyes were in fact dropped towards the floor. It was a brilliant evocation of the troubled but beguiling teenager and yet something about it worried him, as he took it in properly for the first time. He had at first assumed Kassie was being bashful, the classic down-turned expression of a teenage girl uncomfortable at being the centre of attention. But now, as he stared at the picture, he was taken back to their early sessions, when Kassie had talked about her self-isolation, about how she deliberately avoided company and kept her gaze permanently lowered so as not to have to look anyone in the eye …
And now, as he continued to peer at her face, he began to see it differently. Her averted eyes appeared not innocent or bashful, but guilty and haunted, as if she couldn’t bear to look at Faith, as if she knew something.
Adam sat heavily back down on the stool, suddenly overwhelmed by the thought. Was it possible that Kassie had foreseen Faith’s fate? Had even communicated it to her? It seemed a ridiculous, preposterous notion, and yet what other explanation could there be for Faith’s sudden certainty that all was lost, that she would never be a mother?
Despite all the love he had given Faith, despite all their hopes and plans for the future, was this how it was always destined to end?