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Her vision blurred and the telegram fluttered to the floor.
***
Days passed, and Meghad no memory of what happened over their course. She lay on her bed staring at the ceiling, or rocked in the veranda seat, or found herself sitting on the bench in the park with no memory of walking there. The only constant was reliving each precious hour she’d spent with Seamus at the River. Try as she may, she wasn’t certain of the exact shade of blue in his eyes, or the precise inflection in his voice as he told her he loved her. Loss stalked her dreams, and sadness filled her days. Seamus was slipping from her mind as surely as he’d slipped away from life and nothing—nothing could hold him to her.
She stroked her swollen belly. Tucked safe inside her body, her baby was quiet. Did he already sense he would be born fatherless?
Bats swooped on the mango fruit in the backyard, screeching as the almost-summer heat lay thick and heavy in the early evening. Meg knew it was hot because the mercury had been sitting in the high nineties all afternoon, but she couldn’t get warm. She hitched the blanket up around her shoulders and shivered. The swing creaked, a soft little squeak each time it began its forward journey. Seamus’s book of poems slid from her lap onto the seat. She left it where it fell, the book, with its pencilled poem from Seamus tucked between the back pages. His promise that he would be, so long as she was.
Well, she was here, and Seamus was—nowhere. He was gone, never to return.
Emptiness swelled inside her, taking over the space where her heart should have beaten with love for him. He’d promised to come back to her. To them.
Such sweet promises.
He’d broken them all.
Illogical though she knew it to be, she was angry with Seamus. Her head tipped, resting against the chain holding the swing seat. Logic told her that, by choice, he wouldn’t have left them. Still, she couldn’t help feeling he’d deserted her when she needed him most.
She was angry. Empty. Alone.
Her gaze fell on the abandoned sewing on the table.
Vera had kept her busy sewing lightweight swaddling cloths from an old bed sheet, soft from many washings. She’d hemmed the edges in tiny slip stitches that sat straight as lines of little soldiers.
‘It’s good to give your hands something to do, my dear. Think of your little one and try to find comfort that soon he’ll bring joy to your world again.’
‘Will he, Vera? Will he be enough?’
‘He will. Because he has to be. You can choose to mourn Seamus for the rest of your life or you can, after time dulls the worst of your pain, choose to live again. There is a choice, my dear. Not an easy one, I grant you, but a choice nonetheless.’ Vera patted her shoulder, her gaze compassionate and determined in equal measure. ‘I hope one day in the months or years to come you will choose life.’
Meg tipped her head back and half closed her eyes. Seeing the park through a blurry fringe of wet eyelashes, she swung gently and cradled her baby through her belly that connected yet separated them. She stroked her belly and whispered to the tiny being, ‘Together, we will be enough, my darling.’
Her baby kicked, hard enough that her upper hand felt the shape of a tiny foot. Hard enough and in perfect answer to the question she had asked of Vera a lifetime ago.
No. She wasn’t alone. Not with Vera looking out for her.
##
Hours later, Meg laywide awake in bed. While she listened as the wind picked up and waves slapped against the riverbank, brief niggling pains started, reminding her she was alive and distracting her from the fog of grief she’d been wallowing in. Rolling onto her side, she sought a more comfortable position.
False labour, she told herself. It’s too early for my baby to be born.
The pains grew more insistent, more like—contractions? Struggling to get out of bed, she stood. Water gushed down her legs and she gasped.
‘Vera.’ Meg lurched forward and planted a hand on the doorframe. She pulled the door open and called before the next contraction hit. ‘Vera!’
The hallway light flicked on, and Vera hurried from her bedroom, pulling on her dressing gown.
‘What’s the matter? I thought—’ He gaze caught on Meg’s saturated nightclothes. ‘Ah, he’s decided you need company now, not in a couple of weeks. How much time between contractions?’
Panic fizzed through her veins like electricity. ‘I don’t know, but he’s too early.’
‘Maybe by a couple of weeks. Perfectly normal, Meg. Babies decide when they are ready to join us, and yours clearly knows you need to hold him in your arms.’ She guided Meg back to her bed and helped her to change out of her wet clothes. The practicality of Vera’s actions and her calm voice eased Meg’s worry enough that she did as she was told, half-reclining against the two pillows at her back.
‘Now, you stay there while I set a pot of water to boil. I’ll call the midwife and ask her advice then I’ll be back soon. You know you’re not alone. I’m here for you.’
Meg rolled her lips together and nodded. ‘Thanks, Vera.’ Slowing her breathing, she concentrated on counting the time between contractions.
