ISFNE Chapter 16

Eric POV

I lost her. I don't have anything else to write truly. She escaped me and has evaded me for almost four months now and I feel no closer to finding her, even with the discovery of her pregnancy. Now I not only have her life at risk but also that of my heir, yet she refuses to yield. I don't know how to reach her, I've done everything I can and more than I wished to find her. If only things had gone differently, if I only had even a speck of her trust and hadn't betrayed her, maybe I wouldn't have lost her, maybe she would have never run. These thoughts plague me to no end. I will not surrender in this battle of wills though. She is mine and I, unfortunately, am completely hers. I have to hope I can still find her or give in to utter despair. I choose the former for now.

I finished off the sentence and leaned back in my chair, toying with the locket in my other hand. I put down my pen and carefully opened the locket to look at the picture of Faith nestled between her mother and father. What would I give to have that be our family? Family. I'd barely entertained the idea since I'd been so intent on finding my bride for so long and then busy with actually taking her as mine that until I'd discovered Faith's state I had hardly even thought of the prospect of starting a family with her. It had been something for years in the future when I could finally gain her affections. But now with the reality of a family so close, it was being snatched from me. I studied the picture more, wondering if a daughter would be lucky enough to inherit her mother's beauty. Or a son, would he take after his father? What would our children look like? I smiled grimly, here I was entertaining the idea of 'children' plural when my bride was intent on keeping herself and my unborn child forever separated from me, even by death. It looked doubtful I would even get my one child, let alone more. It was always a dream though.

I shook the train of thought away and grabbed the calendar once again, trying desperately to mark out a week or so where I knew the child had been conceived. I couldn't know if it was from our first or second coupling until she actually gave birth, Dhamphirs were historically very consistent. There was only a week or so in between our two nights though, it may not be truly evident which night it was. I obviously hoped for the second, the child would definitely have been conceived under slightly better circumstances then. I marked out the general half month and counted out six months from then. I had maybe two weeks to rescue her. If God was listening, he had to know I was working in her best interest now. "Keep her safe," I muttered, "If you are truly watching over her at all, keep her and my child safe."

Grams POV

The appointment at the clinic garnered no answers. Allison was perfectly healthy in theory. She was dehydrated and weak from her lack of nutrition in the past few days but they sent her back saying they could find nothing wrong and that she only needed rest. Simon was less than convinced but continued to help me care for her, bringing her soup, books, taking her temperature every so often, and recently helping her to the bathroom. I gave a grim smile at that memory. That had been a conversation I'd overheard loud and clear.

"I'll be fine! It's right down the hall!" I heard Allison pipe up as I was loading the dishwasher. I listened carefully, knowing she was arguing with Simon and interested to hear what about, who would win, and whether I would need to become a well-timed interruption.

"Allison, you can barely make it out of bed, what makes you think you can make it to the bathroom? Just let me help you there, it's not a big deal." I heard Simon reason back.

"Don't!" I heard Allison yelp accompanied by the sound of something hitting the bed.

"Woah, easy!" I heard Simon retort with a bit of rebuke. What had just happened?

I couldn't hear Allison's response but worried that I might have to intervene until I heard Simon's next response.

"Fine, prove me wrong. If you can make it out to the hall, I'll drop it." I smiled secretly from my spot downstairs; Simon always knew how to win an argument. I heard nothing for the next minute and then I heard stumbling and a small squeak of protest.

"No arguments," was the last I heard of it though there was obviously something being discussed upstairs at a lower volume. Simon came down later, exhaustion written in his face. No words were needed to know how much it was wearing on him to win Allison's trust.

"Don't give up," I said rubbing his back briefly. He nodded despondently and went down to the bookstore.

Simon POV

I sat at the counter for the bookstore lost in thought as I reevaluated my every move from the argument I'd just had with Allison. I just couldn't understand what I was doing that made her so wary. She was so opposed to me being anything more than an acquaintance and I had no idea why. I just wanted her trust, but I was getting tired of not getting answers.

"Why are you always so stubborn when it comes to accepting my help?" I'd asked rhetorically after I caught her mid-stumble.

She leaned on me to help her back to the bed, "Why are you always so insistent in offering it?" she snipped back weakly. I tried my best to keep my annoyance hidden as she quickly pushed me away when we neared the bed and stumbled in by herself. I stood quietly by the door as she settled with a bout of coughs.

"Accepting help isn't weakness you know."

She looked at me with surprise and confusion, "What?"

"Well you asked why I insist on offering you help. It's because you need it. The only reason I'm so insistent is because you act like others are the enemy. So you strike out and try to do everything yourself because, in your eyes, any shortcoming is a chance to be exploited. So you see need as weakness. Trust isn't always misplaced, Alice."

She stared at me somewhat dumbstruck and was about to respond but I cut her off before she got a word out. "I'll be sleeping out on the landing, if you need anything, you are going to ask for it, understood?" Her mouth snapped shut and, with a little bit of fear in her eyes, she nodded cautiously before laying down again.

Allison POV

I laid there with Simon's accusation still running through my head. Was he right? Did I truly see any shortcoming as a chance to be exploited? And if I did, why? For the first time I laid there and evaluated my own psyche, trying to reason out why I was doing what I was doing. As I did so, I realized that Simon was completely right. I feared putting any trust in him because I'd had my trust betrayed before by so many different people, most recently by Max, by Marissa, and most of all by Eric. And as I evaluated further though, I realized what I was doing to Simon. I was treating him like Eric, and that was completely unfair of me. I was acting as though he had already betrayed me when, in reality, he'd shown me so much kindness. Yes, I made him lose his temper, and, yes, he hadn't trusted me at the start but now…Now I didn't know why I was pushing him away so much. I shied away from that road and tucked the rest of my near revelations away for later. Whatever my reasoning, it was unfair. Hadn't I always been one to give the benefit of the doubt? Hadn't I always believed in the good in people? Yes, I'd been proven wrong but even in the people who had wronged me most I saw good. Didn't Simon deserve that?

"Lord, take away my distrust. Help me see a clean slate," I prayed quietly. It was going to take a lot of work; of that I was certain.

Simon POV

"Man, you've been so weird since you broke up with Carly, are you okay?" Kyle asked when I arrived back at the apartment the next afternoon, having left Allison with Grams.

"Yeah, Si, we've been kinda worried about you," Chloe piped up as well.

"Guys I'm fine. Maybe a little stressed but fine," I said as I flopped into on of the chairs by the TV.

I saw them exchange a glance and turn their attention to me again. "Come on, level with us," Chloe pleaded sitting next to me.

"Chloe, please, I'm fine," I said.

"Fine. If you say so," she said with a shrug that told me she didn't believe me. She stood and then addressed me over her shoulder. "By the way, I can set you up again if you'd like. The four of us were going to go to the Halloween fair this weekend and you're welcome to come with or without a date."

"Sounds fine," I said distractedly.

"Fine?" she repeated.

"Fine," I said grabbing the remote.

"Fine," she replied somewhat indignant. "You're impossible."

"I try," I said looking over and smiling cheekily. She rolled her eyes in response but smiled a little.

"We're getting takeout; you want anything?" Kyle finally spoke up again as he grabbed the keys by the door.

"No thanks I'm-"

"Fine?" he interrupted with a small laugh. "Whatever man. Whenever you're ready to talk about it."

Maxwell POV

"Nothing. Still nothing," I stated sadly as I scrolled away at the computer, Marissa and Eric sitting behind me completely silent. I'd had the brilliant idea of looking through hospital records since Faith was bound to be hospitalized but first I had to narrow down the field of search, something I was finding troublesome. We'd started by trying to figure out Faith's waking hours from Eric's tap and had narrowed time zones but though we found small clues, it always came down to pure speculation. We'd never put a ton of stock into the idea but it was all we had to go on right now we just didn't have many markers in Faith unconscious to glean from. Until she experienced anything fairly intensely we knew nothing. But from what Eric could tell she was just ill, and maybe not even enough to be in the hospital.

"Too bad we can't…" I muttered to myself.

"Can't what?" Eric surprised me by answering my self-ponderings.

"Well, let's do a little bit of supposition," I said matter-of-factly, trying to piece together my own thoughts and explain them at the same time. "Suppose this was a regular pregnancy and that she had complete survivability. What I'm supposing is that you are going to be very aware of when Faith is in labor, and you're probably going to know when she delivers. So, supposing we nail down a time zone, that whittles down our possibilities unimaginably. There's only so many babies that can be delivered at that time in those time zones. We'd easily be able to systematically eliminate the possible candidates."

"Brilliant," he sighed, "Now we can find her right after she dies."

It went silent again. I started working on an algorithm just in case.

"What if we're looking at this wrong," Marissa suddenly spoke.

"How so?" I said cautiously. "What angle could we have possibly not approached?"

"The one where we work on her survival rather than her location." I shot her a confused look, she was making no sense.

"But the two are one and the same at this point," Eric said in exasperation.

"That's where you're wrong," she shot back and suddenly turned to Eric, grabbing my arm with a smile of triumph, "Eric! I think you might still be able to save her."