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When I open my eyes again, Bee’s looking at me sympathetically. “The last few years before she died… she got more and more erratic,” I admit softly. “More and more desperate.”
Bee nods. “So you do have doubt?”
A little sob bursts from my lips against my will. “Three rounds of IVF, Bee. She kept three whole rounds of IVF from me. All those miscarriages she had… they weren’t natural pregnancies like I thought. She was getting treatment, and she was using dirty Irish mob money to pay for them!” I wipe my tears away and run a hand over my face. “I remember sitting up with her one night after one of those miscarriages…”
“I can’t keep doing this, Wren… I can’t keep losing babies… Every new loss feels like my chest is being wrenched apart.”
“Then stop. Take a break. Stop trying,” I told her. It was the first time I’d made the suggestion out loud, after over a year of trying to sheathe my tongue.
Her face was blotchy with tears. I remember she looked so much like our mother at that moment. Not the way Mom had been when Dad was around, but the way she looked after he left; after the cancer ravaged her body, stolen her youth and most of her beauty.
“I can’t stop. I can’t give up. I owe it to my future self, to Jared, to keep trying no matter what. I’d do anything, anything, to become a mother.”
Those were charged words even then. But now, viewed through a different lens, they strike differently. It makes me shiver to think just how much of her morality she compromised along the way.
In the end, it was the very thing that ended her life.
“I keep turning over everything in my head,” I tell Bee. “I keep searching for clues in my memory, something that will help make things clearer about how much she knew. But I…”
Bee leans forward and puts her hand on mine. “My advice?” she asks gently. “Stop thinking. Stop searching. She’s gone, Wren. There’s no point dragging up her corpse and demanding answers from it. The dead don’t speak.”
I look down at Bee’s hand on mine. I want so badly to let it comfort me. But in the end, I pull away. “No, but you do. Or at least, you could have. But you chose to keep silent to protect Dmitri.”
She sighs. “You’ve seen my back; you know the lengths Dmitri went to save me from that monster I call a father. What would you have done in my place?” I hate how obvious the answer seems when she puts it that way. “That is not to say that I wouldn’t do the exact same thing for you.”
“I would never need you to.”
She accepts that with a small nod. “Because you’re a better person than either Dmitri or me, Wren. Maybe you’re a better person than even your sister and brother-in-law were.”
I stop the trembling in my jaw by biting down on my bottom lip. “It’s so weird. I feel like I’ve lost her all over again. It feels like?—”
“You’ve lost the person you thought she was.”
My jaw goes slack when I realize that’s exactly what I’m feeling. I believed that Rose shared everything with me—but clearly, there were large chunks of her life that she deliberately kept hidden.
Probably because she knew what I would have told her: if you have to work that hard for something, maybe it’s not meant for you.
Even when I remember her now, I remember mostly the good stuff. The way she carved our initials into the swing Dad built for us just before he left. I remember the way she stroked my hair at night when I had a nightmare.
I actively avoid thinking about the last few years. The desperate attempts at conceiving, the hours she spent in churches because she thought finding God would help her get pregnant. The endless tears, the fits of anger and frustration. The time I watched her press her hand against a hot skillet just to “feel something other than heartbreak.”
“Wren.” Bee’s voice cracks through my fractured thoughts. I glance towards her; she’s looking at me with kohl-rimmed eyes, bright with sincerity. And I can’t help thinking, Can I really afford to be an island? “I know I’ve hurt you and I’m sorry for that. The only thing I can do now is promise to be as honest as I can from here on out.”
I peer towards Aleksandr, who’s still doing his best to pretend like he’s not eavesdropping. Somewhere deep in my chest, my anger is butting heads with my loneliness.
“Is this about me?” I ask bluntly. “Or is this about the baby I’m carrying?”
Her brow drops. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, is that little speech you just gave sincere? Or are you just trying to manipulate me now because you know that, in order for us to raise this baby together, you need my cooperation?”
Her mouth twists downwards and hurt flickers across her eyes. I’ve never seen her quite this raw before. I want to believe it’s not an act, but the cynical part of me just can’t handle being lied to yet again. “I don’t blame you for wondering—and I’ll admit, it would make things simpler. But that’s not why I’m here. That’s not why I’m trying to make peace with you.” She sighs deeply. “I’m here because you’re my friend and I care about you.”
I take it all in. I can’t deny that beyond my suspicion, I am touched. I’m also desperate not to be alone in this. Especially since it seems clear that Dmitri isn’t going to make the effort Bee is willing to.
“Okay,” I say at last. It comes out in a breathy sigh.
She gasps, her jaw dropping and her eyes going wide with relief. “Okay?”
