“Of course, you can get a goldfish,” I tell him. I laugh and tilt my face up to meet his lips.
“I love you.”
Maybe I worried for nothing. “I love you, too.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
James
NOW
I’m not a morning person.My mom would never dispute this fact after spending much of my teen years practically dragging me out of bed every morning before school. And after nine years together, Kendall knows this as well. It’s a genetic trait Sophia has inherited, so the both of us can be found sleeping in any chance we get. I’ve grown out of it a little since hitting thirty, but Sophia has a long way to go. A high school career to suffer through. Kendall doesn’t have as big of an aversion to mornings like Sophia and I do, so most weekend mornings when we don’t have the early rush of school and work, I can usually find Kendall already downstairs in the kitchen nursing a cup of coffee. Sophia’s raucous exit follows not long after, but it gives us a little reprieve before our day begins.
Today, on a typical Sunday like any other, it’s no surprise when I wake up and Kendall isn’t in bed. Her side is neatly made. I assume Sophia is still asleep, since it’s just after nine, so I take advantage of a quiet morning by slipping out of bed and go looking for Kendall. But I don’t catch the drifting scent of coffee like I usually do when I walk out of our bedroom. Instead, I hear Kendall in the kitchen. I hear her talking to someone on the phone the second I walk into the hallway at the top of the stairs.
I start to head down when I notice the strain in Kendall’s voice. She doesn’t sound angry or frustrated. Just…despondent and sad. I worry I may be walking in on a private conversation between Kendall and whoever she’s talking to. So, I wait there, at the bottom step, sitting with my elbows braced on my knees where Kendall can’t see me.
“Yeah, Mom,” she says. “I have a few more weeks left of school, and I’ll be on break.”
She’s talking to her mom. I run my fingers over my jawline and listen, focusing on her wavery words.
“I don’t know,” she answers a question I don’t hear. After a pause, she asks, “Hey, Mom. Can I ask you something?” I lean into her next words, so intent on knowing what her question is. “Did you ever…regret being a mom?”
I inadvertently tilt my ear closer as if I can hear Kathy’s answer. I can tell Kendall’s listening to her mom, and I hear her sniffle echo through the kitchen.
“Yeah, I know,” she whimpers. “I’m trying.”
Doessheregret being a mom? Does she want to take all of this back? Me, her, our life together? Like it never even happened?
I rake my fingers through my hair, and I focus on my bare feet, admiring the comfort of walking around in my pajamas this early in the morning in a home Kendall and I built. Only for all of it to be something my wife would snap away with her fingers if she could. I don’t understand what would cause her to feel this way. And why won’t she talk to me about these things? She talks to her therapist, her mom, why not me?
“It would’ve been today, and I think that’s why I’m having such a hard time,” she says. “I keep thinking about all the what-ifs, and it’s…it’s hard.”
Today. I start to sift through all the notable dates in my head. Birthdays, anniversaries, milestones. And one pops into myhead. It was at the end of May. When we put our brains together to do some calculations and the doctor told us when our due date was. A date we marked on our calendars as we counted down the days and weeks. I hadn’t realized it was today. How many times has this day passed, and I didn’t even notice. All while Kendall used it as a day of mourning and remembrance without me.
“I just wish I could move on,” I hear her cry through her own tears. “I don’t know why I can’t move on, Mom. I have everything I could want. I have Sophia, andstillI can’t move on.” She sounds so pained. Everything about her, her voice, her words, is so heartbroken and inconsolable, and I wish I could walk in there and comfort her.
I don’t know when it happens, but I start to cry with her. The tears drop and land on my flannel pajama pants, creating wet spots on the dark material. I feel myself connecting with her through our grief, and I wish I could cross the bridge over to her. Hold her in my arms and tell her I’m not over it either. That when I watched her lose a part of herself, I lost a part of me too. Not because I didn’t have the choice to walk away and act as if none of it mattered to me, but because I didn’t know how to move on either. We’re connected through our past and our grief, and I don’t know if I ever want to lose that. Regardless of the heartbreak it causes us, it’s a part of us. All the interwoven parts of us include the good and the bad, reminding us of what we’ve suffered through. But those little details, like the small intricacies in a large-scale painting, include all the parts that make us happy. They’re there, within the abstract strokes and elaborate color schematics. Those memories we hold on to like a photo album filled with snapshots of our life together. I’ve learned to live with it all, the goodandthe bad. And up until now, I thought Kendall has too. But I was wrong.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Kendall
THEN
It’seight a.m. Monday morning, and I’m still in bed without a snooze button in sight. It isn’t dark and hazy like most weekday mornings when I wake up for work. Instead, it’s bright and sunny without a single cloud in the sky as I gently stir from a well-rested slumber. I didn’t draw my shades last night for this exact reason. So I can be woken up by the morning sun instead of harsh blaring alarms.
One of the perks of my job is long holiday breaks most don’t get to indulge in, especially those working a typical nine-to-five corporate job. It gives me a chance to be away from my usually hectic workdays, including my students. As much as I love them, there have been some trying days since the school year started. And with the addition of sporadic bouts of morning sickness during my first trimester and pregnancy hormones making me more tired than normal, I’m looking forward to this much-needed winter break.
I feel a warm, gentle hand brush over my bare stomach. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” I croak. More soft strokes dip low toward my pubic bone, but they stop halfway. James’s way of a greeting while checking over the round parts of my stomach to see iftoday’s the day we’ll finally feel our baby kick. After a pause, he gives up. Another time, I suppose.
I turn over and see James. His eyes are still closed, and his hair is a mussed-up mess of bed head. His wandering hands seem to have woken before he did.
“You have to get up.”
“I have time,” he mumbles through closed eyes.
