“I do, too! I love you!”
“There’s a difference between love and care. There’s no way you can care about me if you can keep this kind of information from me.”
“There’s no information to share! At least not yet!”
“Would you have told me, Maggie?”
“Bryant—”
“I’m asking you a question, Maggie. Would you have told me?”
He asks the same question, but this time he pauses between every word so that it sounds more like an accusation than a question. I can’t breathe, but I push through just the same.
“Eventually,” I hedge.
“Eventually. Motherfucker!”
I jump as Bryant curses. He doesn’t curse a lot, and if the words are bad, that means he’s pissed. His anger always makes me defensive and fuels my own and that’s what happens here. I let it because it’s better to be angry than to wallow in hurt, fear, and self-loathing which have been my friends for too many years to count now.
“What? I didn’t want you to hate me, okay!?!” I snap.
“Well this is the wrong way to go about it, Maggie. ‘Cause I’ve got to tell you, darlin’, it’s having the opposite effect right now!”
“You’re the nice guy, Bryant. You always have been. How it worked that way with the vileness your parents can spew, I don’t know, but it’s true.”
“The nice guy? What the fuck does that mean?”
“If you knew I was sick, you would demand to be there. You would want to nurse me and take care of me!”
“So? Jesus Christ, Maggie. Of course I would want to do that. I love you! That’s what love does. You hold each other in the bad times and in the good times. You do it because you know without a shadow of a doubt that being with that person in the bad is better than your best fucking day without them.”
“Bryant stop!” I yell, unable to take his sweetness, his heart, his… love.
“Wouldn’t you, Maggie? Jesus, wouldn’t you drop every single thing to be there for me if the roles were reversed? Wouldn’t you take care of me and thank God for every single minute we had together?” he demands, walking toward me.
My body is shaking, and the tears have started again. I can’t stop them. I know it, so I don’t even try. I don’t want Bryant to touch me. If he touches me, I’ll grow weak and take the love he’s offering me. I’ve done it my whole life. I can’t let myself be weak now.
I just can’t.
“Of course, I would,” I reply, trying to yell the words out, but I’m crying too hard to manage that. My declaration just sounds broken… like me.
“Then why wouldn’t you come to me? Why wouldn’t you let me hold your hand and fight this together? What’s the difference in you being sick and me taking care of you compared to the opposite? Why would you cheat me of that?”
“The difference is you deserve it! You’re everything good. You deserve someone to love you and take care of you. I don’t, Bryant. I don’t!”
“Why the hell not? You’re the best person I know. Maggie—”
“I’m not! I’m not, and once you know the truth, I’ll disgust you. You’ll hate me as much if not more than I already hate myself.”
Bryant reaches up and scrubs his hand over his hair, rubbing the back of his neck, and finally just shakes his head.
“Fine, Maggie. Tell me your big secret and let’s get this over with. Let me prove to you that I’m not going anywhere.”
“I… uh…”
“Christ, just spit it out, Maggie,” he snaps when he decides I’m taking too long to respond. I didn’t mean to. I’m just having trouble forming the words. Finally, I just take a breath and let it out.
“I’m the reason we lost our daughter, Bryant. I killed Brylee.”
31
Bryant
I don’t know what I expected from Maggie. Maybe that she cheated on me while we were married, I mean, we were young, and I was on the road a lot. God knows my parents made her miserable. Hell, I was even prepared to hear her tell me that she was seeing someone else. Part of me expected her to tell me that she blamed me for the loss of our daughter. But never in a million years did I expect her to tell me that she killed Brylee. I don’t know what she has in her head, but right now, I’m kicking my ass that I didn’t see this sooner, that I let things coast for way too fucking long, happy enough to be in an easy relationship without much responsibility. Christ, Ida Sue is right. I do need to grow balls. I need to be a man that I apparently haven’t been.
“Honey, Brylee died in her crib, remember? She was examined. Doctors say it happens, especially in children at around four months old, which is what Brylee was. I know it’s hard, but you can’t blame yourself, Maggie.”
I stop just a few inches from her. Before I can reach out to take her into my arms, I see her knees buckle. I quickly grab her, pulling her into my body and picking her up. I take her back into the cabin and carry her to the couch, sitting down with her in my lap. She’s crying, limp in my arms. I hold her as she sobs, kissing the top of her head, my heart breaking for her.
Jesus, has she been carrying this with her this long? Did she never allow herself to grieve our baby?
“Fuck, Maggie, stop crying, honey. God, I’m so sorry. All this time, I thought you blamed me, and instead, you were putting yourself through hell. There’s nothing you could have done.”
“It’s my fault,” she cries. “You were away touring the college facilities,” she says, stopping every now and then to suck in a breath, her body still trembling with each heavy batch of tears. “ I was so tired. Her colic seemed to get worse, and I hadn’t slept but a couple of hours in days. She just kept crying. I did everything the doctor said to do for her colic but even those gas drops weren’t helping. I called the nurse. She said I should swaddle her in a blanket and hold her close. I did and walked back and forth. I swear, Bryant, I did everything they said.”
“I know you did, Maggie. I know you did,” I croon, holding her close.
“The nurse suggested I lay her down and see if she would cry it out. It felt wrong, but she said sometimes they pick up on your nervousness and it makes it worse. So, I tried…”
“What happened, Maggie?”
I’m not sure where this story is going, but I know that wherever it goes, it has been clawing Maggie up on the inside. I want her to get it out. The entire time I’m kicking my ass. I let her down in so many ways that I can’t even begin to put it together.
“I laid her on her back just like they showed me, Bryant.”
“I know, honey.”
“I swear I did,” she insists sounding panicked.
“I know, Maggie,” I tell her, feeling completely inadequate.
“I went to the living room and sat on the couch, but I think I cried harder than she did. When she quit, I couldn’t believe it,” she says the statement soft and drenched in guilt and misery.
“Maggie,” I whisper, holding her so close that I know my grip is too harsh, almost bruising in force, but I can’t help it. I feel like I’m holding onto her for dear life.