I laughed then, remembering being four years old and the goddess Amelia paying attention to me. That was all I had ever wanted.
“You got to the top of that tree, and I have never seen you so happy, Parker. It was the best feeling in the world. And I thought I would give that feeling to you again, but this time, I couldn’t get you to the top of the tree.”
I knew then that she wouldn’t try again; it wouldn’t be fair of me to ask her. This situation was so complicated; how much more complicated could it become if we had actually had the babies? I thought back to my file of surrogates. I wondered if, knowing what I knew now, any of them would ever be enough. The thought of one of those strangers carrying my baby made me feel so alone.
I took Amelia’s hand in mine and nudged her face with my finger so she was looking at me. “That day with the boards and that day you had the embryos implanted, I wasn’t happy because of the end result—or the potential end result.”
She looked confused. “You weren’t?”
I shook my head. “I was happy because the girl whose attention I had always wanted, the person I had always thought was the queen of the universe, would do something so huge for me.” I paused. “Amelia, then and now, you made me feel like the most important person in the world. That’s why I was so happy. And that’s why I’m still so happy.”
That wasn’t strictly true. I wasn’t happy. But that she would try to do this for me helped. I put the car in drive and made the way back to our house, hoping that I had satisfied her. I was afraid that she was going to leave, that this adventure was going to be over.
I thought of Greer again. I thought of her pain that last night, how rigid her body had been but how she relaxed into my arms when the nurse gave her a shot of morphine. She slept. I held her all night, didn’t move, wouldn’t have dreamed of getting up, wouldn’t have dared to fall asleep. In her last moments, I knew I should be feeling something like relief for her.
But I would never, ever get to a place where I could feel like my wife, my beautiful, perfect, vibrant wife, being gone was okay.
I felt her breathing get shallow and fast. I recognized that it had stopped. But still, I lay there quietly, knowing that this was the last time I would ever hold her in my arms. Who she was lying there was different from the woman she had been. I don’t know if it was because I had mourned for so long already, or if she was with me then, but I felt preternaturally calm.
I got up, kissed her on the forehead—the lips felt wrong—and said, “Goodbye, my girl. You are my only love, and I will spend the rest of my life honoring that.”
The only thing that gave me the courage to tell the nurse that she was gone, to leave her there in the bed we had shared, was the knowledge that the person lying there wasn’t my wife. That was just a shell.
As the paramedics started to arrive, I sat down in the hall and, just like that night almost eighteen months earlier in the shower, sobbed. Only, this time, Greer wasn’t there to tell me it would be okay. And that’s how I knew it never would be.
Every day since then, I had longed to hold her in my arms again. When I found out about those embryos, I really thought I had found a way. But as I watched Amelia pack her bags, I knew that Greer was, definitively, gone. I would never get her back. I would never hold her in my arms again. Not even half of her.
“Do you have to go, Amelia?” I finally asked.
Tears standing in her eyes, she said, “You’re trying to have your dead wife’s babies, Parker. How can I stay?”
She was right. I had been holding on to the past so hard that I couldn’t even imagine the future. But if I could, if I was ready, would she still walk away? I wanted to ask, but the words wouldn’t come.
Until she told me otherwise, a part of me could wonder—maybe even hope—that, by leaving, Amelia was opening a window for the possibility of us. Or, better yet, a door.
Amelia
CLEAN SLATE
AS I PACKED MY BAGS in my room at the octagon house, the view of the sun glinting off the water so bright that I had to squint, Parker watched me quietly, sitting in a chair in the corner.
I had let myself do the unthinkable: I had let myself feel something for Parker. Not just in a neighborly way, but in a loving, warm, maybe-we-could-be-together kind of way.
And now I had failed him. I was mortified. Oh, the way I had gone on and on about knowing that I was pregnant. What an idiot. This year had been nothing but one huge failure after another, and I just needed to go. I needed a clean slate.
Parker could never, ever know what I had been thinking, how I had envisioned a future for us. He was Greer’s and Greer’s alone, forever. Anyone could see that. I had thought for a moment that maybe we could open up to each other, that the love of a really good man could heal my heart. But now that I had crushed his dreams in the biggest possible way, I couldn’t stay here. I couldn’t face his pain and know that I had caused it.
One of my goals this year was to be bolder, braver, to take more chances. This was a big chance, but, really, what did I have to lose? Worst case, he wasn’t interested, and I could go home, nurse my wounds, and move on.
I wasn’t going to confess my undying love or anything. I just wanted to ask if he felt what I felt or if it had been the hormones. An hour earlier, right after we had gotten home from the doctor’s office, I walked quietly down the hall into his room, where I could see him standing, his back to me. When I saw what he was doing, I knew that there wasn’t a chance for us. In his hands was a picture of Greer. He had told me over and over that she was the only one for him, but I hadn’t quite believed it. But, of course, it was true. He had done all of this for her. I had been the one to crush his dreams.
She would never be just a memory, and I could never play second fiddle to a dead woman. If I ever let myself move forward, I wanted to be first in a man’s heart. I hadn’t gotten that with Thad.
Now, in my bedroom, folding the final few items to put into my suitcase, Parker looked at me expectantly, like maybe he was going to say something, like maybe there was something else to say. But even I knew there wasn’t. I was defeated, humiliated, and ready to go find my real life, whatever and wherever that was. I couldn’t believe that just a few hours ago I had been prancing around here declaring how pregnant I knew I was. Really, it had just been gas from too much produce. What kind of woman couldn’t tell the difference between gas and a baby?
The weight of it all hit me so hard that I sat down on the bed. I made the critical mistake of saying, “I’m so sorry, Parker,” which was all it took for the tears to start flowing down my cheeks.
He sat beside me, put his arm around me, and consoled me, like I knew he would. He pulled me close and said, “There is nothing to be sorry for, Liabelle. We took a chance; we rolled the dice. So we didn’t win this time. It’s okay. It isn’t your fault.”
He pulled away and looked at me expectantly, trying to discern whether he had mended my broken heart. He had not. Nothing could. But, on the bright side, I had an interview at Sea & Sky the next week that I would nail and get the job and all this would be a blinking light in my rearview mirror.
I made the mistake of looking into his eyes. I remembered those eyes when he was a child, how wild they had been, how blinking and shining and full. His face still looked young, like someone who could just as easily have been doing keg stands with his fraternity brothers as mourning the loss of his would-be children. But his eyes? His were eyes that had seen things, that had known things that eyes that age should not know.