A baby rattle.
Everything happened because she found that stupid baby rattle in the waiting room. All because some careless mother had been in too much of a rush to realise she lost her child's toy.
Just the thought of that damn rattle evoked a wave of emotion so strong, so unmanageable, it almost made her knees buckle. Eric had begged her to tell him what had upset her so much but even she couldn't put a name to the emotion.
Sure, the emotion she felt rip through could be considered a form of emptiness, but Theresa knew emptiness. She'd felt so much emptiness within herself for so long, the pure ache the emotion rose within her was so acute, it was almost mocking of the feeling of emptiness that she had begun to know so well.
But the emptiness Theresa felt spoke of so much more than of a lack of something.
The ache was so great, that a lack of something couldn't touch the feeling. It was almost like … a loss. A loss that was so all consuming it banded tight around her chest constricting her heart and stealing her breath.
Theresa knew it was ridiculous, yes she complained about her father's lack of presence throughout her childhood and adult life. And she'd often felt like her lack of a father was almost like a loss but she'd never been truly abandoned. Even though she'd yearned for her father in her life, her mother had cushioned that feeling of loss. But this emotion, this acute feeling of emptiness and loss was overwhelming her and there was nothing she could do about it.
She was almost desperate for someone, anyone to fill that gaping hole within herself. For God's sake, she'd practically thrown herself at that baseball player Paul, who was soo obviously not into her, in fact she was pretty sure he was gay. But that desperation to fill that hole was only worsening with every run-in with Brady.
She always sworn to herself that she'd never give any man the power to hurt her, the way her father had. But she'd foolishly allowed herself to care for Brady and maybe if things hadn't of went soo wrong that night with John, she could have loved Brady. It was almost ironic, and she couldn't help the whaling laugh that bubble free from her tight throat, the one person she'd let herself truly come to care about, maybe even love, had accused her of not knowing how to love. Brady was relieved that she hadn't been pregnant.
Just the thought of the baby that she thought she'd carried inside herself made the tears she'd kept blinking back, spill free. God knows, she'd never seen herself as a mother, but just the thought of that baby, her baby, was like a knife through her heart. She had been soo sure. She practically felt it in every part of her being that she was pregnant. Even now she didn't know how she could've been soo wrong.
She let herself believe it, make plans for herself and the baby, have dreams for her child. God, how much she wanted that baby. Brady had said that they couldn't handle a baby, what he'd really meant was that she couldn't handle a baby. And maybe Brady had a point, maybe she couldn't have handled a baby, and God knows he wouldn't have wanted anything to do with her while she was pregnant and maybe not even after she'd given birth.
But she would have handled it, whether or not she was speaking to her father, the rest of her family were the type that came together when they were need. And boy would she have needed them. But she hadn't been pregnant, Aunt Kayla had done the test herself and it was extremely unlikely that she had been wrong.
But, that emptiness, the feeling of loss which only grew with each passing day almost convinced her that maybe Kayla had be wrong. Yes she wasn't pregnant now, but maybe she had been. It would explain the overwhelming grief and gaping hole that she could never fill, never quite bury.
Theresa kept thinking that maybe if she could just feel a bit more alive, that hole would fill. Maybe, just maybe if she pushed those feelings down, just that bit further, she could bury the grief. But then something would happen. She'd pass a pregnant woman in Horton square or see a woman out for a walk with her baby in a pram in the park and those feelings would surge to the surface once again.
Damn that Baby rattle.