A/N: Thanks to Astro, for being so much more than a human spellcheck.
This year it begins earlier than usual. I walk home on December 19, smiling as I see the ice rink set up in the city. I'm almost home when I hear 'Daddy! Daddy, please!' and I turn to see a small girl giggling with her father ten feet away. She has dark eyes and hair with a nose similar to yours, and I have to get away. I almost run home, slamming the door of the house behind me. I rush into the hallway and trip on the rug, my knees buckling and then slapping against the tiled floor. I don't bother to get back up again. I call work to tell them I have a sudden flu and won't be in for the rest of the week, and then I press my face into the carpet and wonder how much more I can be punished.
**DB**
Dear Bella,
Those months following your release from hospital were full of tears and exhaustion. I tried so hard to reconnect and yet we seemed worlds apart, a pair that used to fit but were now bent out of shape too badly to do so. You were brutally honest about your feelings and I was filled with guilt and self-loathing, too caught up in my own condemnation to see what you needed. It wasn't the provider that I worked 14 hour days to be; not the overbearing babysitter that I became. Instead you just needed me, and I failed to give you that. I scolded you for not sharing more of yourself in the months before, never seeing the irony in how closed off I had become.
I tried so hard that it seemed that I wasn't trying at all. Not in the ways you ached for. You asked to spend more time together and we did so, and I'd ask about how you felt and whether you were better yet, and I'd pretend not to see the disappointment on your face. Having those words between us was better than having nothing at all. There was so much love but so little understanding; nights when you would cry yourself to sleep and I'd do nothing but hold you because I didn't know how to comfort anymore.
We lived in a strange kind of limbo, interacting without saying anything that mattered. You insisted there wasn't a weight on my shoulders but I felt it all the same anyway, sure that one wrong move would send everything toppling down. The words we were both too scared to say sat like a fault line between us, swallowing up anything we had left. I clung on to any ties I could. They were frayed and straining but I pulled anyway, trying to convince both of us that we could force our marriage to work.
When I got another hospital call on December 22, four months after the first one, I was sure you'd tried to take your own life for a second time. You'd been detached and apathetic thanks to the medication you were on, refusing to go back to the doctor seeking another despite how hard I pleaded for you to do so. That was how I ended up running down a hospital corridor for the second time, a sick sense of some form of inevitability turning my stomach.
What I found in your room will haunt me for the rest of my life. You were crying, if I can call it that – wailing almost, these deep mournful cries so unlike anything I'd seen since you returned from the hospital. I flitted my hands across your body before you smacked them away, and I was both relieved and scared by the lack of anything but an IV adorning your arm. You looked manic, all red-faced with snot and tears mingling around your mouth, and I'd never been more scared.
You kept hitting me over and over, and I didn't understand why until I'd grabbed your wrists and asked the doctor what was happening. She suggested we speak outside, but my patience was fraught enough. I insisted she tell me then and there, and that was just another way I failed you. As soon as the word 'miscarriage' passed her lips you let out this throaty, wounded noise that cut me in two. I tried to wipe your tears away even as my own began to drip onto your blanket.
You shouted and you screamed, and I realized you must have gotten pregnant the one time we'd tried to have sex after you'd come home. You were worried it wouldn't feel the same but I assured you it would, and I tried to prove it by loving you with my body and healing the places where my words had failed. It was just as awkward as you feared it would be, and the emotionless look on your face throughout forced me to look away. I'd barely finished coming before you were pushing me off you and cursing me for not using a condom, saying of course you hadn't bothered with birth control. You told me you couldn't be a mother at that time or maybe even ever, and I kissed your scrunched eyelids and told you everything would be okay.
It wasn't the first lie I told you, but the flat brown of your eyes told me it would be the last. You told me your father would come to the house and collect your things; that you needed time to heal away from the things that could hurt you. I didn't realize you meant me until you pulled your arms back from mine and turned your back to me, your body like a child's as you lay under the blanket and made whimpering noises that broke something inside me. I tried to run my hand across your back but you tensed until I had no choice but to remove it. Even when I walked around to the side you were facing to kiss your forehead and tell you I wouldn't let you go that easily, you simply closed your eyes and lay as still as stone. I vomited as soon as I left the hospital doors, but I held back on crying until I got into my car. I shut the door and laid my head on the steering wheel, and this time I didn't try to fight the anguish pooling inside me.
I told myself that you could forgive how inattentive I'd been to you over the years. I thought you'd see my love for you and realize you couldn't live without me. The truth was, you weren't living with me anyway – you were existing, some hollow interpretation of the person you used to be. I accepted Charlie's hug when he came to collect your things, and maybe that's when I knew you weren't coming back. He said that if I loved you I'd stay away and let you get better, and so I did.
I thought you'd come back, Bella.
When you sent the divorce papers was when I realized you never would. I thought what we had was unbreakable, but maybe the foundations had crumbled without me realizing. The last time I saw you was in that hospital bed, and then once more as we sat across a table discussing divorce proceedings you set in motion.
Mourning the loss of our child was difficult enough. It felt like I had picked up sand and held it in my hand, only for it to slip through my fingers before I could really register it was ever there at all. It felt wrong to miss something I hadn't ever had, but at the same time I felt our child wherever I went. I would feel a warm breeze and think of you with a baby bump, or see a sunset from my office window and imagine going home to you both.
I still think of the baby every day. I can't see a child without my stomach clenching, and I can't hear the word 'Daddy' without all the times I've missed out on choking me. I am the type of sad that you can't ever fix, only gloss over and try to forget. It sits inside me and worms its way into every happy moment I have, souring everything with the acidic overtone of 'what if'.
Knowing our child would never be was the type of pain that's so fierce and intense that it leaves you numb, your body succumbing to its natural urge to protect itself. Knowing that you were through with me and that this wouldn't be the only child we'd never have was a different type of hurt. It wasn't the type that turns from thick stem into spindly branches, ebbing away over time, but rather instead it rekindles itself every day until it's blinding. It brings you in and sucks the air out until you're trapped. The pain doesn't fade or falter, and each morning I wake up and feel as if I'm burning from the inside out. I pray that you don't feel the same.
Yours, always,
Edward
A/N: Please let me know what you think.
