She doesn’t hesitate. She sets her hammer aside and goes in the front door, picking her way around the missing boards on the porch.
“Thanks for taking so much time with her,” I tell Eli. I can’t express how much I appreciate them all.
He grins. “We’re actually having a lot of fun. She’s a smart girl.” He lifts one finger in a qualifying gesture. “I will admit that when I first met her I didn’t like her very much. She had a snarly attitude.”
“Tell me about it,” I mutter.
“But the more time I spend with her, the more she opens up.” He looks toward the door where she disappeared. “I like having her around, to be honest.”
I don’t know if I should be relieved or hurt. On one hand, I’m glad he likes my kid. On the other hand, it makes my heart hurt that he likes my kid, because when I’m gone my kid will be his kid.
“You gave Bess quite a scare this morning,” Eli says.
I scratch my stomach. “I gave myself quite a scare.”
“Did you get that sick the last time you did chemo?”
I nod. “Couple of times. But I wasn’t a single parent then.”
“Well…” He stops and looks toward the door again, and then he lowers his voice. “Sam knows you’re doing chemo again.”
“What? How?” I look toward the door to be sure she can’t hear us. I didn’t want Sam to know yet. I want her to be a twelve-year-old girl a little longer.
“She heard a message your doctor left on your voicemail. And she recognized the way you’re getting sick and put two and two together. She came up with four.” He gives me a pointed glance. “She’s a smart girl, that one.” He goes quiet for a second. “You’re going to have to tell her,” he finally says.
I nod. “I will.” I need to come up with a plan. I need a way to tell her that will do the least damage later in her life, and I don’t know what that is yet.
He stabs his finger in my direction. “And you need to tell Bess. If you don’t tell her, I’m going to.” He stares hard at me. “She’s finally acting like she doesn’t hate my guts. If she finds out I knew, she’ll go back to hating me.”
I glance toward the backyard. “So, you say she’s out in the shed?”
Sam walks out of the house and brings me a juice pouch she has already stuck the straw into. I take it and suck it down slowly, still a little unsure of how it will sit in my stomach. “Thanks,” I say. I reach out and grab her, bringing her in to where she leans against me. She stares up at me from beneath the brim of the pink hat that she’s been wearing ever since I gave it to her and she looks so much like Lynda that it almost hurts to look at her. “You look just like your mother when you smile.”
She beams. “My mom had a great smile.”
“She did.” My eyes start to sting with unshed tears, but I blink them back. “I’m going to go and bug Bess for a few minutes.”
“Finish your juice pouch!” Sam calls and I lift it to take another swallow where she can see as I walk toward the shed.
Bess is inside, and I know she has been developing film so I don’t go busting straight in there. Instead, I knock.
“Go away,” Bess calls back. “Unless you’re selling Girl Scout cookies, particularly the ones with the chocolate and mint, I don’t want to be bothered!”
“Hey, Bess,” I yell. “I don’t have any cookies! Can I come in anyway?”
The door opens and she sticks her head out. “Aaron? What are you doing out of bed?”
“I woke up.” I grin at her.
“Well, you look like shit,” she says. She makes a shooing motion with her hands. “So maybe you should go back to bed.”
I look beyond her into the little shack. “What are you doing?”
“I developed some film this morning, so I was just putting the shots on paper.”
“Can I come see?”
She steps back and motions for me to follow her into the small room. She has the lights turned on, and a fan is blowing in the corner. The smell is almost enough to knock me out, but I stay close to the door.
She has pictures strung on a line across the side of the room, drying. I walk over closer to them. “Hey, these are really good!” She has captured two of me with all three of my kids at the same time, and they’re amazing. Just the sight of them makes my eyes well up, and I fight hard to push back the tears. I knew that it would be hard to tell Bess, but I don’t even know how to start.
I walk down the line, studying each of the pictures in turn. “Hey, what’s this?” I point to one of the pictures. It’s of her and Eli, and her hair is different than she wears it now.
“There was some old film in the camera from a few years ago. About half a roll of undeveloped film, so I did those too.” She heaves out a sigh.
“These are good,” I say. “When are they from?”
“About five years ago,” she says. She walks over close to me, and her shoulder presses against my arm. “That was the last time I was pregnant.”
I look closely and I can see her slightly rounded belly. There’s barely a bump, but I can see it. “You were pregnant.” I look over at her. “Oh, Bess,” I say, as I realize that a tear has just trailed from the corner of her eye down her cheek.
“Sorry,” she says as she wipes it away. “There’s no evidence of any of the other babies. They all just kind of went away. But that one, that one was real.” She sucks in a breath. “That one got a casket.”
“Bess,” I croon, and I reach out to put my arm around her. “I never knew.”
She shakes her head. “Nobody knew. I’d had five miscarriages by then. I was terrified to tell anyone about the pregnancy, afraid to make it real, so I made Eli promise to keep it to himself. We didn’t even tell our parents. When things went wrong, I was glad we didn’t tell anybody. We buried that baby by ourselves, with no one the wiser.”
“Bess,” I say soothingly, but I quickly realize there are no adequate words. There are no sentiments I can share or words that will comfort her.
“None of the rest of them were real.” She reaches out to touch the photo. “But that one was real. I felt that one move. I felt that one dance in my belly. She was a girl. But she came way too early, and there was nothing they could do.” She draws in a ragged breath. “And then she was gone.”
I stare at the picture. The joy on her face in the photo is the old Bess, the one I used to know. It’s the one I’ve started seeing tiny glimpses of in the past few days.
“After that baby, Eli refused to try to get pregnant again. He said it was too hard on me.”
“Was it? Too hard on you?”
She shrugs and gives me a self-deprecating grin. “Maybe. I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “But I resented the hell out of him for making the choice for the both of us.”
“Didn’t you guys talk about it?” I stare at her. She has all my attention because Bess wears her heart on her sleeve and you can see every emotion on her face. Or you used to be able to. Now she’s more of a shell of her former self.