Random Acts of Hope (32 page)

Sirens
tickled the distant air, growing louder and I stood there, primed for action and feeling like an ass. She was screaming and all I could do was reach for her, hold her in my arms, and do absolutely nothing to stop whatever was happening with the baby, draining away.
 

“It will be fine,” I said, lying. The amount of blood was so much. Too much. A bolt of fear filled me. Too much blood. Charlotte could be in danger, too.

The sirens grew mercifully louder. Thank fucking God. What was taking so long? Charlotte’s scream died down like it, too, was on a sound cycle, warning people to get out of the way, warning people that this was a life-or-death situat
i
on.

And then she just stopped making noise. Stopped moving.

“Charlotte?” She was breathing, but as I moved her to l
ie
down another big clot of blood came,
so big and round and evil,
and then—

Pound pound pound.

Hope arrived.

Charlotte

Hope died the second I opened my eyes and found myself attached to tu
b
es, a bright rectangle of fluorescent light above me and the murmurs of medical professionals holding charts telling me exactly where I was.

My hand flew to my belly. Not that it had ever been anything but flat, the gesture kind of stupid.
I
t w
a
s symbolic.

Warm skin pressed into the soft flesh on my forearm. “Charlotte,” said a deep, comforting voice.

“Liam?” My eyes tried to focus, turning toward the sound of him. His eyes were red-rimmed and lined with worry. With the super-short hair he looked to mature, so…old.

So tired.

“Are you okay?” I asked him. He made a snorting sound, and then my ears picked up another familiar voice.

“You’re awake!” my mom exclaimed.
People had told us over the years that we looked alike, but I never saw it. With her wall of wavy grey-and-pepper hair jettisoning down her back, out from the usual bun, her wide eyes glistening with tears and concern, I got it. I saw it.
 

“Mom?”

“Liam called
me
. Oh,
Charlotte
, you should have told
me
about the baby.” She gave Liam a teary half-smile. “
I
would have been so happy for you.”

“
Would have?” My heart started to sputter. “
The baby, is it…” My eyes moved to the monitors that beeped, my finger encased in an oxygen monitor. Nothing was on my belly—no elastic band to check the baby’s heart rate.
No second fetal heart rate, like in the movies.
 

I went numb.

“It’s gone, isn’t it?”

A
big, fat teardrop dropped from Mom’s eye onto my wrist.
Mom rarely cried.
She looked at Liam, deferential in a way that made me stop breathing.

Grown up, indeed.

“Yes,” he said with a hoarse voice. “
Y
es. The baby’s…gone.”

A low, whirring sound filled the air, like the distant hum of a machine starting up, a big HVAC or a bo
il
er, a crane moving large steel girders. It got louder and louder, the vibration
s
o strong my chest shook, Liam’s hands on my shoulders, then my head, then just on me, the heat of him so strong it melted into the vibration.

Then I realized that sound was
me
.

Mom flew to my bedside, too, crying and soothing, but all I could register was the rumble of that noise, that cacophony that filled my ears on a frequency no one else se
e
med to hear. Like something I shared with no one, or maybe only with two little spirits that filled the air with their presence in the only way they had left.

I never wanted that sound to end, because when it blasted through my mind, my heart, my pulse, my everything, it took me out of myself and away from my thoughts to a place where I was not
h
ing but movement and flow, grief and pain, where I didn’t have to react to anyone else’s reactions, smooth over their sorrow, try to be the one who could pull it together and pretend to be okay.

When that vibration consumed me it consumed everything, and that was the only place I could stand to be right now.

“
What’s wrong with me?” I ground out through the dull hum that poured out of my throat. “What’s wrong with me, that I keep making these babies by accident and then they fly out of me?”
 

“Charlotte,” Liam said, his voice cracking. “Charlotte, honey, no. No. It’s not you. It’s me, it’s…we don’t know.”

“It’s not you! You can make babies! Now you know! Now you know I didn’t cheat on you all those years ago when I was pregnant and you left and—”

The words came to halt as if someone had snipped my vocal cords, because Mom was right there.

And I’d never told her.

“Mom, oh, Mom!” I said, my voice hoarse as Liam just kept stroking my arms and legs as if he thought any touch would somehow help.

Silence. Her face was frozen with wide, brimming eyes full of compassion.

“
I am so sorry
,” I babbled, and she
patted my hand
.

“I knew, dear. I knew.”

Liam looked like he was about to fly through the ceiling.

“You knew? How? I hid it! I thought I hid it!”

She patted my hand, tears mottling the front of her crisp white shirt. She ironed everything. Even my socks as a kid. The flat, even edges of the darted lines of her buttoned top became an instant anchor as madness filled me.

“I only knew after the fact. You wouldn’t tell me why you went to the emergency room, and you were over eighteen, so I had no right to details from the medical insurance company
when the statement came in the mail while you were away at college
. And then there were rumors in town, whispered at community events, and the way Sybil McCarthy looked at me the handful of times we ran into each other over the years made me wonder…”

Liam’s eyes blazed with anger. “That was…oh, Caitlyn, let me apologize for my mother. She shouldn’t have done that.”

Caitlyn reached out to him and grip
p
ed his hand, hard. “I assumed there was an explanation, and that some day, when Charlotte was ready, she would tell me.”

“You knew?” was all I could say, over and over.

Mom hugged me, her scent so embedded in me, the smell of fresh cotton and lavender-steeped wool, with a touch of spiced tea for flavor. “I know how hard miscarriages are, and I wasn’t sure if you’d aborted.”

“No! No!” I cried viciously. I turned to Liam, my hair whipping after me in waves. “I swear, I never—”

“I know. I know,” he soothed. “But even if you had, it’s fine.”

“But I didn’t! I wanted both of these babies!” My voice went shrill and hysterical. “That’s the sick irony here, don’t you see? I never planned this, but once it happened it’s all I wanted!”

“Miscarriages have a way of making you see that you really cannot plan a thing, my dear,” Mom said in a tone of voice that made me turn slowly, locking eyes with her.

“You too?” Liam asked in a rever
e
ntial, hushed tone.

“Yes.”

“Before me? Did Daddy…” I wasn’t even sure what I was about to ask as my throat closed up in sorrow.

“Daddy knew, and yes, all of them before you. All eight.”

“Eight!” Liam and I gasped in unison.

“Yes,” Mom said, the tiniest of lisps at the end of the word. “When you just kept growing in me we thought you were a miracle. I’d been told not to grow too attached to you, as I had with the others.” More tears from her. “But I couldn’t help it. You become attached.” She sought out Liam’s eyes. “You just do.”

His eyes filled, too, and she squeezed his hand harder.

“I carried you thirty-three weeks and five days, Charlotte, and had you at forty-one. Your father was the love of my life, but you are our sun. We revolve
d
around you.” She stopped trying to wipe away her tears, the effortless pull of gravity making the ocean halt at her bosom.

“Mommy, I’m sorry I never told you! I’m so—”

Mom tried to shush me but Liam stopped her, just rocking me in rhythm with that sound,
the sound that returned in my throat
. The noise made me hollow, more em
p
ty than I already was, and as his flesh warmed mine and we just moved in time to a beat we shared with that tiny little being who floated on the curve of melody and symphony, of music made from dissonance, I slipped into a conscious oblivion that was just Liam.

Just Liam.

Liam

They were so quiet I didn’t realize they’d come unti
l
I went to get a cup of coffee and happened to glance into the waiting room. All five of them, somber and serious, just lounging there, sitting without urgency.

Darla saw me first and jumped to her fee
t
, her arms outstretched for a hug. My throat tightened as her arms went around me.
Not gonna cry. Not gonna cry.
 

I failed at that, too.
You spend most of your life being told guys don’t cry, and then you learn that sometimes there’s a reason why it’s okay.
 

“Liam, I’m so sorry. Your text broke our hearts.” I’d sent them all a quick text about Charlotte being raced here, then a second one. Two words.

Baby gone.

“How long have you been here?” I rasped. Amy hugged me next, while Trevor, Joe, and Sam hung back.

“Long enough to run into your mom and dad,” Joe added. “Sorry, man.”

“They’re here, too?”

They all nodded. “They tried to go see you but the doctor was in there. Said they’d come back,”
T
revor said. Darla slipped back between her guys, sad eyes on me.

Sad eyes everywhere.

“You d
i
dn’t tell us…” Amy said without accusation. The words were tempered with something I couldn’t name.

“It was mine.” I looked at Darla and Amy. I could
n
’t name what I was feeling, either. “You guys were right.”

“This isn’t a time for ‘I told you so,’” Darla said, clasping Joe’s hand, hard.

“But it’s good you’re not shooting blanks,” Joe added, like that was supposed to help. Darla kicked him and he just frowned, pinning that stupid mouth shut.

He was right, but now wasn’t the time for me to care.

“
And this is why you quit stripping and went to work for your dad?” Trevor asked in a voice so soft it sounded like a hiss.
 

I nodded.

He nodded back, blinking fast.

“You need anything?” Amy asked.

“Coffee.”

Sam practically sprinted to the doorway. “I’ll go get some for everyone.”

Trevor and Joe joined him. “Six, or eight? Think your parents will want somethi
n
g?”

“Thanks,” I said, nodding. “Mom drinks it black and Dad drinks it like me.”

“The color of caramel,” Amy said with a soft smile.

The guys took off and left me with the women.

“
Your baby, Liam. I’m so sorry,” Amy said, reaching for my hand as we sat down.
 

“Both of them.”

She just nodded. The dots didn’t need to be connected here.

“I was so stupid.”

“You did what made sense at the time.”

“And now she lost another one. I guess I can’t make babies after all,” I mumbled. That made zero sense, but right now I needed something, even self-pity, to overshadow the gaping, sucking chest wound that was my heart. Smashing something would help, too, but this wasn’t exactly the place for that.

“You make babies just fine. And you’ll make more some day,” Darla insisted.

“Liam!” Mom practically shouted, interrupting us. Her hair was crazy, like she’d just gotten up, even though it was what—noon?—now. Her hug felt like
a warm blanket of love even though I was so angry with her for what I’d just learned.
 

More tears, most of them from me. I couldn’t break down in front of Charlotte or her
mom
. The doctors wouldn’t tell me anything because I wasn’t next of kin. The nurses were mostly nice and let me stay, but I wasn’t anyone here.
I had no role.
 

With the baby gone I wasn’t even the father.

I was just…no one.

Mom’s hug told me otherwise.

Dad fished one of his cloth handkerchiefs from his suit jacket. Ever since I was a kid, he’d been like that, carrying a carefully ironed handkerchief in his back jeans pocket or in his suit jacket. He even ironed them himself. My mind kept doing this—straying to tiny details that were so insignificant I felt like a moron for thinking about them.

“There’s no hope?” Mom asked, her makeup smeared everywhere, the raccoon eyes from mascara gone wrong making my gut clench even harder.

“No. No heartbeat, and they had to do something to Charlotte to stop the bleeding. There was a lot of blood. A lot.”

Mom looked me over. It was in my cuticles, on the edge of my shirt, and seared into my brain. “I can see. So she just started bleeding…?”

“She s
ta
yed over at my new place last night.” I looked at Dad. “After the concert.” He gave me a weak smile. “And then I woke up this morning and there was blood in the bed.”

“You called 9-1-1?” Dad asked gruffly, nodding with approval.

“She was so out of it, and the blood was everywhere.”

Mom’s face crumpled. “That can happen.” Dad put his arm around Mom, jolting me. I hadn’t seen them touch each other in what—ten?
f
ift
e
en?—years. They’d been divorced for so long.

And then it hit me.

“You had one, too? You guys?”

Dad nodded while Mom just stared at the hem of my t-shirt. “
Twic
e. Before you were born.”

“Jesus.”

“It’s more common than you think,” Mom said in a robotic voice, still staring dumbly at my shirt. Like she was reciting something someone told her. “Most women will have at least two or three miscarriages they don’t even know about.”

“The ones you do know about are pretty fucking awful,” I said.