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“It’s not just that,” I said, uncomfortable with my admission.
Holly was quiet for a few seconds while I busied myself with the lights, hoping she wouldn’t ask any more questions.
I felt Holly’s gaze on the side of my face. “Are the holidays bad for you because of the baby?”
“You were due at Christmas,” I said, unable to filter the pain from my voice. It was a fact I’d never said out loud to anyone. My family didn’t even know about the baby, much less that the loss was my greatest source of pain. But Holly asked me not to tell anyone, and I never betrayed her trust.
When I looked down at her, she was blinking away tears. I quickly got off the ladder and hopped the steps in one leap to get to her. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Holly was gulping air as if she couldn’t breathe deeply.
I pulled her into my arms. “I’m sorry.”
She rested her cheek against my chest and burrowed into me. “It was just a surprise. No one talks about it. I told my mom, but we don’t mention it anymore. I think she’s afraid to upset me.”
I lifted her chin with a finger underneath. “I don’t want to make you cry.”
“I need to move through it. I can’t keep avoiding it. It’s hard for me, too, and no one else understands how much.”
I suspected she hadn’t asked for help. “This is why I wanted to be there for you back then. We were the only ones who could have possibly understood what that was like.”
Holly swallowed. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes.”
“I wouldn’t call your actions a mistake. You wanted to protect yourself.”
Holly pulled away from me slightly so that my hand fell away. “I was trying to protect you.”
My forehead creased. “How was pushing me away protecting me?”
“I felt this all-consuming shame. I blamed myself for what happened. I couldn’t stop listing all the things that could have led to us losing the baby.”
“You know it wasn’t your fault. The doctor said—”
“I know what the doctor said, but I wasn’t listening.”
“You realize now that it wasn’t viable?” I’d read everything I could on the topic and realized it wasn’t anything we did.
Holly let out a breath. “I know that now.”
It helped me understand why she pushed me away. She was drowning in guilt and didn’t want me to suffer the same fate. I would have tried to talk her out of thinking that way, and maybe she didn’t want that. She wasn’t ready for it then. “Thank you for telling me what you were thinking. It helps me understand what happened.”
Holly sighed, and when she looked up at me, her eyes glimmered with unshed tears. “I’m sorry for pushing you away. It wasn’t the right thing to do. Every time I thought about apologizing to you, I thought it was too late. That you hated me for it, and it would be pointless to try.”
“I would have welcomed what you had to say. I couldn’t hate you. No matter what happened.”
Holly nodded shakily, and I couldn’t help easing her into my arms again. She curled into my chest, and I breathed her in, enjoying the feel of her body against mine.
It might take her a while to process what I’d said, and even longer to believe me, but I hoped she would.
We stood that way for a while, and I felt the tightness from the last ten years easing in my chest.
When Holly finally pulled back, she said, “I feel better now that we talked about it.”
“Me, too,” I said carefully, wondering if she was ready to admit that things had changed between us. We were no longer repelling each other like the opposite ends of a magnet. There was nothing blocking us from taking a step toward each other and seeing where it led.
Instead, Holly moved toward the railing where the end of the garland hung down. “We should probably get these lights up before we get too tired to finish.”
She busied herself wrapping the garland around the railing, and I resumed adding the string of white lights.
