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‘He married you...’ it’s barely audible ‘...to be my baby’s father?’
‘I know how it sounds,’ she rushes out. ‘Believe me, I know! But I was so confused, so emotional, so heartbroken and abandoned. And the idea of doing it alone...’ She shakes her head. ‘He was my best friend. He understood. He had no interest in relationships at the time. He was married to his job and that suited me. It suited us both.’
I say nothing. I can’t.
‘I loved him, Cain, but not in the way I love you.’
‘Love?’ I repeat on autopilot, catching the present tense and not knowing how to feel.
I’m too many things in that second. Confused. Devastated. Bereaved... Fucking betrayed. Lied to.
‘Sit down, Cain.’
I stare at her, my eyes widening. ‘Sit down?’
&nbs
p; ‘You look like you might fall down.’
She takes a hesitant step towards me and I spin away. And that’s when I see it. The empty desk. Liam’s desk. His equipment is in a box on the floor next to it, ready to be packed up. I grip the kitchen counter, heave in a breath, and another, my eyes seeing, my heart disbelieving.
‘I wanted to tell you I was pregnant. Of course I did. But you were gone. We had no way of reaching you. Not even Marie had any way of contacting you, not for that first year, and by then...’
Her hand is gentle on my shoulder, the warmth of her touch at odds with the chill beneath.
‘By then there was nothing to tell.’
‘What happened?’
Silence. I look at her, ignoring the devastation in her haunted gaze.
‘What happened, Alexa?’
Her lashes flutter and I know she’s reliving it, but I can’t care. I won’t care. I need to know. Christ, I should know. I should have been there.
‘I was eight months pregnant when Rose stopped moving...’
Rose? My child was called Rose?
I drag in a breath, but I can’t seem to fill my lungs. I feel like my vision is tunnelling, the world closing in, my chest suffocating.
‘I tried to tell myself it was okay, that she was just getting too big, too snug to kick out. Liam was so supportive. He told me not to worry—that the midwife would check and all would be okay...’
Her hand falls away from me to clutch at her stomach and then I understand it—the gesture I’ve become so used to. I understand it and it crushes me.
‘But it wasn’t okay. There was no heartbeat, no sound other than my own body. She was lifeless, gone... My body killed her.’
Her cry of anguish is like a slap to the face and I spin to pull her against me, burying her head beneath my chin and holding her against my rigid body. I ignore the swelling sickness in my throat.
‘I should have known,’ she stresses. ‘I should have known something was wrong and told them sooner, so they could get her out, make her better... I had to give birth to her. I had to go through labour knowing I was bringing her into the world just to say goodbye.’
She’s shaking in my arms, her whole body racked with sobs, her tears soaking through my T-shirt. But I feel dead. Frozen solid. Unmoving.
‘Do they know what happened?’
She shakes her head. ‘Not with any certainty. A problem with the placenta that stopped her...stopped her getting what she needed.’
I clear my throat and ask the question that burns through me. ‘What did you...? What did you do with the body?
