A/N: Long time no see, huh guys? Sorry about that. This chapter was probably the one that changed around the most, but I think it changed for the better.
Also, a special shout-out has to go to Yiseunggi (whose name I always feel like I'm spelling wrong) who mention how she would like to see this updated...which encouraged me to do just that. I suppose good things come to those who ask. :)
All that aside I really hope you guys enjoy and stay tuned for the next and final chapter!
She never wanted the child.
She had loved him – there was no doubt of that – but the child wasn't in her plan; in their plan. Of course he disagreed with her; disagreeing with her was what he was best at. He would spend hours holding her in his arms, whispering to her softly, and absentmindedly rubbing at her stomach.
"We're going to be parents."
Over and over and over again he would whisper that phrase to her, his voice low and awestruck.
Every time she heard it she wanted to scream.
Or run away.
Or cry.
Or puke.
She just wasn't ready! She wasn't good enough! She couldn't be a mother! She was only eighteen years old; she could barely take care of herself let alone another life growing inside her. She wanted desperately to tell him all that, to make him understand, but every time she brought up the child, his eyes would soften and he would smile to himself.
She could never go through with it; she loved his smile far too much. To be the one to tell him that she didn't want to, that she couldn't, take care of the child – she couldn't bring herself to do it.
So she grew up. She forced herself to grow up.
Time she would have spent with friends or studying for her college courses were instead spent reading books on parenting and pregnancy. She wanted to be strong; she wanted to be strong for him.
But with every word she read, she felt as if she was sinking deeper and deeper. Concepts such as "parenthood", "family time", "motherhood", and "parental responsibility" terrified her.
How was a child like herself expected to take care of another child?
The question haunted her with every new fact, every tidbit of advice, she read and absorbed in her childish mind.
She wasn't growing up nearly fast enough; the child was growing far faster than she ever could. The tiny life – the tiny parasite – that lived inside her was overtaking her at a frightening rate.
She wanted to run away, but the baby was a part of her. She had nowhere to run to.
There was only one solution she could think to do. No, it wasn't that she could only think of one solution; there was onlyone solution.
One of them had to die.
She could never kill the child. His smile when he spoke of the unborn life; if she got rid of the child, that smile would be gone forever. She would no longer be lover or fiancé. She would be a murderer in his eyes – the murderer of his child.
His son.
That left one option. She would have to be the one to die.
It began slowly at first. Situations where she would normally have laughed were suddenly silent. Events that would have made her smile were either looked at indifferently or ignored altogether. Slowly, ever so slowly, she was losing what defined her as an individual. Soon, she would be what she knew he wanted. She would be a warm body to serve as the container for his child.
That was when the arguing began.
He accused her of changing; she was becoming someone else. She wanted to laugh in his face. Of course she was someone else. One of them had to die and she would never forgive herself if killing the child also killed his smile.
So she was the one who had to go. Why couldn't he understand? She had no choice, just like a stone thrown into the air has to answer the call of gravity.
No, that was wrong. She could have talked to him. The two of them could have worked it out together.
Together? He wasn't the one with a child inside him; living off him! She had no love for the child, she only loved the fact that it made him smile. If she had stayed herself, the child would have had to die!
"Why can't you understand?"
The next morning, there was a note on the table. His handwriting was more neat than normal – she instantly recognized it as the handwriting he used for business transactions.
The handwriting he used when talking to strangers.
Her mother would always tell her that letters let you know what someone truly thought of you. If that were true, she knew exactly what he thought of her: they no longer knew one another. She had killed the woman he fell in love with and he no longer wanted to spend time with the stranger that had taken her place.
Even without reading the words on the page, she knew he was gone and he would never be coming back.
When she finished reading, she set the note down without a sound and walked away. The woman that had loved him would have cried. That woman was dead.
She went about her days like normal. She could feel her identity crumbling as the child's grew. Most of the time she was able to convince herself that the young woman she had been was dead, but some nights as she lay in bed – the bed that still smelled faintly like the shampoo he always used – she felt herself crying.
His ghost lingered everywhere about her; a specter that haunted her everywhere.
Her heartache encouraged her to keep the child. He had spoken so fondly, with such amazement, about the tiny life growing inside her. Did it have the power to resurrect both the girl and relationship that had been lost?
She didn't think so, but as the days stretched on and the child grew, she couldn't help but hope. When she hoped, she couldn't help but give a self-deprecating laugh; she had killed herself, dead people weren't allowed to have hopes.
But she did hope, no matter how many times she laughed at herself.
She hoped and she was wrong.
When the child was born (a healthy baby boy they proudly informed her), he wasn't there. When they handed the child to her for the first time, he wasn't there. When she began to cry, her tears falling on the soft skin of the newborn, he wasn't there.
He wasn't there.
But he was. Every time she looked at the child; every time she held it in her arms; every time she fed it; every interaction it was as if he was standing there speaking in that awestruck voice he used whenever her spoke of the child – their child.
"We're going to be parents"
He had left.
"We're going to be parents."
No, you're going to leave and I'm going to be left with a child that does nothing but remind me of you.
"We're going to be parents."
She wept the first night she took the child home with her. She thought she had killed off the eighteen year old who loved him, but as she looked down at that child, it all came rushing back down upon her. She was scared and lost as she knelt at the cradle side and wept bitterly.
For two years she managed to raise the child, but it became more and more difficult to look at it. It looked so much like the man she had once loved. She could tell that her long dead feelings were beginning to surface once more.
His ghost was haunting her. There was no escape.
If she were resurrected, what would happen to the child? If the woman who never wanted the child, the woman who was terrified of the child, returned, what would happen then?
She didn't want to find out. She had to get away. She had to get away to make it safe for both of them.
At least that's what she told herself.
Lying made it easier to accept the truth.
She was abandoning the child because it hurt to look at him.
Every action reminded her of a man she had once loved.
On the child's third birthday she showed up on her parent's doorstep with a letter in hand; a letter lets you know what someone truly thinks of you. She had written down everything – now she only had to wait and see if her mother accepted.
Once she finished reading the letter, her mother raised her head, met her eyes and then gave the slightest nod before taking the child from her and gently closing the door. She stared at that closed door for several minutes before she gained the energy to take the first step away.
She had killed herself to give birth to the child and now she had given up the child; there was nothing left for her. As her singular set of footsteps echo hollowly, one question kept ringing over and over in her head:
What was going to happen to her now?
The answer was a young boy with a baby face.
She had just moved to a new house (far away from her parents' house) when he suddenly showed up on her doorstep. It was almost like looking at a mirror into the past. She could tell instantly that he was doing exactly what she had been doing – he was killing himself in order to let others in his life live.
The realization made her want to scream.
Or run away.
Or cry.
Or puke.
Instead, she simply said the first thing that came to mind; anything to prevent him from walking down the same path as her.
"Stop pretending to be older than you are. Enjoy the age you are. You have the right to be a child for a little longer; you should take advantage of it."
She watched as he instantly threw up every defense at his disposal and he began to laugh bitterly.
A self-deprecating laugh.
He was asking her why she was giving this advice to someone that was already dead.
But she knew that to be wrong.
He had just started down the path. There was still time for him to turn back.
So she repeated what she had just said.
This time, he began to cry and she felt relief flood her system. Maybe it was only a small form of atonement; maybe she was doing it simply to make herself feel better; but she felt honestly glad for the first time in years.
To her surprise, the boy came back the next day. He told her that he was there to keep her company because she was new to the community and didn't know anyone. She wanted to laugh – he was choosing to spend his free time with a dead woman? – but instead she politely accepted his invitation and the two of them entered the house together.
The days when he would visit fell into a routine and she slowly grew to realize that he had fallen in love with her. She wanted to scold him; she wanted to tell him that she was long dead and no good would come from associating with her, but every time she looked at him she couldn't bring herself to do it.
He reminded her too much of him. When she looked into his eyes, she saw the ghost of her previous love.
Instead of telling him to go away like she should have, she allowed him to keep visiting. When she thought of the past, inevitably her mind settled onto the child; he was the one part of her past that was still available to her if she chose to reach out to it. She never did.
That past belonged to a foolish girl who believed that love could overcome anything: a foolish girl who had killed herself in order to let others around her live.
Instead of reaching for her life in the past, she chose to be dead in the present.
At least, that was what she succeeded to do for five years.
Then one day he came at his usual time, only this time he held a letter.
She wanted to laugh, but instead it came out as tears. When she read that letter she realized that she wasn't nearly as dead as she had liked herself to believe. The baby faced boy's presence had slowly brought the dead, hollow places back to life. She was no longer a lost eighteen year old, but she was also no longer a walking corpse.
The second thing she realized was that she was in love with him.
She wanted to tell him everything – about her past, about the child, about how much he meant to her – but the words always stopped before they actually left her mouth. Before she had time to work out the problem, he had been torn away from her by the power of war.
She wrote to him constantly. Every message she sent him was light and happy. Her intention was to give him the strength to make it back to her safely.
However, one day she woke up and realized that it was the child's birthday.
That was the day she sent the letter explaining everything.
"If I bring him home, will you accept him and love him as your own? Do you…think that we can take care of him together? Do you think that you can accept me – a woman who selfishly abandons her own child and then just as selfishly wants him back?"
His response came quickly and as she held that letter in her hands, her heart pounded in her ears. His handwriting was small and scribbled; it was almost as if he was trying to cram all his words, all his emotions, onto that one page.
It was so different from his…
She let the thought trail off into oblivion. It didn't matter anymore what his letter had said or what handwriting he had used; the only handwriting she wanted to remember was the handwriting of her husband.
It took her two weeks of making herself sick with worry before she worked up the nerve to drive to her parents' house. As she stood at that door, it took a lifetime to raise her shaking hand and knock twice upon the door.
Compared to the incredible amount of time it took her to knock, the door opened surprisingly quick. When she saw who was standing there, she felt her breath hitch in her throat. It just wasn't fair. She had worked so hard to forget him – to move on – and now the child had those same startling eyes.
Time froze as the two of them stood staring at one another. The two of them examined each other's faces warily, like two opponents studying their enemy before battle. When she looked into his eyes, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of pain rip through her body.
But just as quickly, she saw the face of her husband, remembered the words he had written to her, and she knew it was going to be alright. As she knelt down so she was on eye level with the child, she felt the corners of her mouth tweaking into a sad grin.
"Hey, it's mom. You probably don't remember me and I'm sorry I took so long. I know I don't deserve it, but can you ever forgive me?"
The child's eyes went wide as he realized who he was talking to. He stared at her a few minutes before he turned away and scampered off into the house. To her surprise, when he turned around a corner and disappeared, she felt her entire chest constrict as the hot burning of tears pricked the back of her eyes.
So that's it then...Of course it makes sense; I've abandoned him for so long. I…I…there's nothing I can do to make this right…just like his father, he's moved on without me.
As the thought crossed her mind, she felt all the strength rush from her legs and she collapsed to the porch in a wreck of sobs. She knew it was selfish; after all, when the child had been growing inside her, she had never wanted it. But despite her best efforts to rationalize the situation, the tears would not be stopped.
There was a gentle tugging on her sleeve.
She looked up to find him staring at her. The child – her child – had come back.
In his hands, he held a handful of folded up pieces of paper. As he pushed a specific one forward and she took it into her hands, she realized that it was a letter. She stared at it a moment before, with shaking hands, unfolded the paper and read its context.
A letter lets you know what someone truly thinks of you.
"Dear Mama, grandma says that you're somewhere far away and you won't be coming back for a while. But if letters can reach Santa all the way at the North Pole, I'm sure this can reach you wherever you are. I'm gonna write you a letter every day so you're not sad and you don't miss me too much. I love you mama, so please hurry and come see me soon! P.S. Grandma baked me cookies today; do you think when I see you again you could bake me some cookies too?"
It was as if a dam was released. All the pent up anger, all the pent up tears, all the pent of sadness, was released as she wept onto the letter, smudging the words. When she looked up at the child once more, he was digging through his pile of letters looking for another one to give her.
She didn't give him the chance as she flung her arms around him and pulled him into a tight hug that caused the letters to scatter onto the front porch.
"Thank you…thank you…thank you…I…I love you…"
The two of them sat together as they embraced to erase away all the years that had separated them. She knew that she would no longer be able to reclaim the young woman who had died all those years ago, but that didn't seem to matter.
Surrounded by the letters that he had written to her, she knew she could move forward and create a new identity.