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She stopped. Her red curls bounced around her head. “Who are you?” she asked as she put her thumb in her mouth and stared at Grace, smudges of tears evident on her cheeks.
“I’m Grace. I’m here to pick up a few things,” she said, unable to keep the smile off her face. With her bright blue eyes, Emma was a charming little girl.
“Do you live here?” Emma said.
“I…have, yes.” Grace couldn’t help but smile at the way Emma pursed her lips and scowled.
“What things do you want?” Emma asked, speaking around the thumb in her mouth.
“I make quilts and I need some fabric and stuff from upstairs. Would you like to go up with me and help me find what I’m looking for?”
Stepping away from Aidan, Emma held her hand out and looked into Grace’s eyes. The sudden sense of connection charged through Grace like an electric current.
“Yes.” Emma tugged on Grace’s hand. “Let’s go.”
Aidan let out a long sigh. “This is great. Please let Emma help you get your materials while I try to get the ringing in my ears to stop,” he said, a wry smile on his face as he led the way to the stairs.
Grace exchanged a quick look with Aidan. “That bad?” she asked.
Aidan rubbed his jaw. “Emma isn’t happy with me or Lisa right now. She hasn’t eaten anything since we got home.”
“Emma, I haven’t eaten, either. Maybe once you help me get my fabrics you and I could have a peanut butter sandwich together. What do you think?”
Emma smiled as she headed up the stairs, her pudgy hands gripping the handrail as she took the steps one at a time with Grace following.
“We need to go in here,” Grace said when they reached the top.
A big smile spread over Emma’s face. “Next to my room,” she said excitedly as she hopped up and down. “Want to see my room?”
Grace hesitated. It had been the room that held all her hopes and dreams for a child of her own. And now another child—her husband’s child—occupied the space Grace had imagined spending time in, rocking her baby, watching her child fall asleep after reading her or him a story.
Could she go in there and not break down in tears? Aidan and Lisa would not appreciate another round of crying from anyone at this point. But she had a little girl waiting for her answer… “Show me your room.”
Emma grabbed Grace’s hand and pulled her to the door, her fingers warm against Grace’s skin. “See. These are all my teddy bears. I love bears. Do you?”
Grace’s eyes moved around the room she’d so lovingly decorated as she waited for the news that she was pregnant. The one thing she had prayed for had been denied her.
Her heart sank at the changes in the room. The crib was gone and in its place a single bed stood between two dressers. The bed had been hastily made up. The mobile that had hung over her baby’s crib was dangling off the end of the bookshelf. The wallpaper looked decidedly infantile as a backdrop for the toddler and little-girl objects. Her throat ached with loss and regret.
“Are you crying?” Emma asked, her voice gentle and oddly quiet as she tugged on Grace’s hand. “Mommy says that tears are needed sometimes.” She slipped her thumb into her mouth, then pressed her face into Grace’s leg. “I want Mommy,” she said, her voice breaking.
Grace scooped Emma into her arms and sat on the edge of her bed, rocking her back and forth to ease the little girl’s distress. “Your mommy was right. Tears are very needed sometimes, aren’t they?” she asked, still holding the child, feeling the warmth of her little body.
She held Emma as emotions long kept in check flooded over her. The powerful connection created by soothing and caring for such a precious little girl left her suspended in a place where only she and the child existed. This was what she’d waited for all her life—the touch of a child. Her child.
