A/N - If you've ever felt kindly toward me, do not troll this chapter. It took me months to write, and it's a delicate thing to share. I can bear your tough love next time. Not this one, please.

Thank you, as always, for your patience in my absence. I'm always writing. I'm always with this story. Like so many beautiful things we're allowed to hold for a while, it comes to me in its own time.

~ Beth

Bella woke with the cloudy dawn on the day that should have been her son's first birthday. There was no moment of forgetting, no confusion. She recognized the day at once. She shifted in bed and pulled the blankets up higher. The room was cold.

"I'm here."

Edward's strained voice came from the other side of the room. It was only when he spoke that she realized he was missing from her bed. She craned her neck to see him sitting in an upholstered chair in the far corner of the bedroom. He was smiling the same calm, pleasant smile she was used to, but his shoulders were hunched, and his hands lay in hard fists on his thighs.

"What's wrong?"

He smiled and started to answer, no doubt something innocuous and soothing, but he stopped before any words came out. His plesant expression fell away with a sigh, and he looked only tired and worried.

Maybe even afraid?

"What is it?" she asked, more urgently, as she struggled to sit up. When he didn't rush to help her, a new thought occurred to her. "Is it... Are you... thirsty?" The word felt strange as she spoke it. "Do you need to go hunt?"

He looked away from her and swallowed hard. He nodded.

"That's fine," Bella said, feeling her heart begin to beat faster. "I'm fine. You didn't need to wait so long. I told you before."

"I didn't want you to wake to find me gone."

"I know. You can go now, though."

He stood and started toward the door but stopped before he was out of the room. His whole body froze, and he studied her with narrowed eyes, as if there were some confusing question there that he must answer. She told herself that what she saw in his eyes was only concern.

"I'm okay," she said. Her mouth was so dry. "I really am. You can go, Edward. I love you. Do you know that I love you?"

He blinked a few times. His strange expression cleared.

"Yes, of course," he said. He tried to smile. "I'll kiss you when I return. I don't trust myself for that just now. I'm... I'm very sorry."

"Don't be sorry. I'm just sexier than the deer, I guess." She laughed tightly, but stopped when he looked away from her, shamefaced. "Don't be sorry," she said again, seriously this time. "There's no better or worse, remember? Just us, as we are."

His eyes searched her face again, but this time there was only him, the part of him that she trusted would not destroy her.

"As we are," he repeated.

"Yes." She wanted to reassure him with her touch, but that wouldn't be wise, not now. Love was love, but the truth was that the only thing she could give him that would ease his discomfort now flowed hot and hidden in her veins. He needed to go. She'd soothe him later. "Go on. Go do vampire things. I'll do human things while you're gone. It'll be an adventure for both of us."

He nodded. She noticed then that his hands were shaking. He closed his eyes and stood still, not breathing. The silence grew large, teetering in the close space of the bedroom as he didn't leave. Then, without warning, he was gone. The front door opened and closed in much less time than the trip downstairs should have taken him. Silence fell again, but it was lighter now. She drew a deep breath and released it as her heartbeat gradually slowed to normal.

He knew I was afraid. He probably heard my heart beating.

She'd read about fear having a smell, and now she wondered if that was a real thing. She made a mental note to ask him about it later, but, as she did, she remembered the self-loathing she'd seen in his eyes as he'd battled his thirst. She decided she didn't really need to know.

This has to be why Alice is in such a hurry to Change me. This thing we're doing - it's dangerous.

It was with this sobering truth floating through her thoughts that she struggled from the bed and to the bathroom. Her morning routine took longer than it would have before her accident, but the tasks were coming easier now. She showered and dressed, noticing that Alice had brought more clothes in the last day or so. Some of them were from Bella's apartment in Seattle, but most of them were new, Second Sophia items. She grabbed a favorite old sweater and a long skirt, one of Alice's new additions. Bella wasn't much of a dress or skirt wearer, but she still needed to keep pressure off her stitches.

Once she was dressed, she paused in the bedroom, considering how to spend these rare few minutes of solitude. She knew that Edward would hurry with his hunting. She wasn't sure how long it took to find and kill the appropriate animal (animals?), but she guessed that she had an hour at most before he returned.

She went to the dresser, where Edward had put David's box the day before. She grabbed it one-handed, holding it against her body as she returned to the rust-colored rug on the floor between the bed and the door to the room. The hazy morning sun cast a dull square of light onto the rug. Bella lowered herself cautiously to sit on the floor, crossing her legs beneath her. She found she had to lean a bit to the right in order to make the pain from her surgical wound bearable. Once she'd settled herself as comfortably as she could manage, she lifted the lid from the box and began the ritual that was more necessary and sacred to her than anything she'd every done in a church or temple. She began to remove the items, one at a time. Before setting each item down, she held it for unmeasured minutes, remembering.

None of the objects were David. David was gone. He existed now only as the memories of a few (far too few!) people. But the objects Bella took from the box held the power to reach those memories, stoke them like slumbering sparks in a fire, until the truth of her baby blazed in her mind.

Yes, he was real. Yes, he breathed, moved, cried. Yes, I touched him. I held him. He was real. He was.

The objects told his story in words and images that came clearly to her mind as she held each familiar thing.

An infant's cap, smaller than seemed possible. Had he really been so small? She slipped the cap over her fingers; just three of them filled it. It was clearly hand-knit, not bought in a store. Someone had made this and given it to the neonatal intensive care unit at Seattle Children's. Bella had learned during her time at the hospital that many of the people who donated the hats had themselves spent time in the NICU with babies of their own. She wondered if the baby who'd inspired this hat had lived or died. She wondered their name was, and which plastic crib had held them. She wished she could find out. Distant or not, it was a piece of David's story. Bella wanted all of the pieces. She needed them, in this box, safe and hers in a way David never could be.

She ran her finger over the soft ribbing of the hat. He'd been wearing the cap the first time she'd seen him clearly, when he'd been in the isolette in the NICU, all his parts mostly hidden beneath tubes and wires. The little white cap had touched her baby when she hadn't been allowed to. The folded edge of the cap had pushed the wrinkles of his forehead down, making him look like a dissatisfied old man. She'd ached to hold him then. Sitting apart from her child, staring at him through the transparent barrier of the plastic isolette, she'd felt a despair so pure and awful, she'd thought the world could never be right again. How could it, when a few millimeters of plastic had the power to break her?

Bella set aside the hat and picked up the next item, a curved strip of plastic a couple of inches long. Her name was printed on the white paper it contained, and beside that, someone had written in blue ink: "11/2/12 0027." The tiny bracelet had encircled David's ankle for nearly every moment of his life, from the hour of his birth until-

She touched the sharp, slanting line where the plastic's continuous circle had been snipped apart. She pushed the pointed tip of it against the pad of her finger - a small, comforting pain.

They cut it before they let us dress him.

She set the bracelet aside, placing it on the rug beside the white hat. Her hand fished in the box for the next object.

She lifted out a handful of white woven cloth, folded into a careful square. Bella unfolded the blanket, revealing the brown stains that spotted and smeared the fabric. She thought of the blood on it as David's, but understood that it was really her own. It was the blood she'd given delivering him, the blood they'd wiped from him moments after his birth.

He cried then, when they were wiping him off. I really heard him cry.

Her mind flashed the image of his hand, clenched and pink, waving where she could only just see him from the hospital bed. Her son's hand had come into view two, maybe three times, as it waived above the edge of the warmer where the doctors and nurses had begun their battle for his life.

She ran her hand over the texture of the fabric, wondering if it had hurt when they'd rubbed his skin, so soft and delicate and unused to rough things. The sound of his cry had been tiny, more question than rebuke. Oh, the heartbreaking indignance in that sound - "How could you?"

She held the blanket to her cheek, new tears mixing with old blood. Long minutes passed before she laid it aside, moving as if in a trance. She moved on to David's crib card, the rosary Renée had hung over his isolette, a stuffed bear given to her by a work friend, a dozen other odds and ends that had been made holy by touching her son's short life.

An hour passed, and David's things surrounded her, spread in a wide arc over the rug where she could take them in both individually and as a whole.

She'd reached the photographs. These were among the last things the box held, and she kept them arranged in perfect chronological order, always. The first one was of Jacob and her at a friend's wedding in early spring of that year. In the photo, they're smiling and holding glasses of champagne; she hadn't known yet that she was pregnant. She turned to the next image and the next, watching her own belly in the photographs grow. The beach with Sue and Charlie. Renée's arm around her at the baby shower. On the leaf-strewn street in front of Jacob and Bella's Seattle apartment building.

I don't look worried. Tired, maybe, but still, so happy.

She reached the last photograph that showed her pregnant. In the picture, she stood inside their apartment, at the front door, wearing the brown wool coat that didn't close anymore and an idiotic smile. Jacob had snapped it just before they'd left for the hospital.

There'd been no photos in the delivery room. Everything had moved too quickly. There were IV lines to be placed, heart tones to be tracked, and the same health questions to be answered, again and again. No sooner had the nurses and doctors finished their most urgent business with her than the pain from the contractions had begun to build in earnest.

It'd been nothing like she'd expected. The books had described labor contractions as waves, but they hadn't prepared her for the feeling of being torn apart, drowned in confusion and pain, struck blind and senseless by this thing, this power. It had been merciless. It had demanded everything she had, and that still hadn't been enough. She remembered thinking that there'd been some terrible mistake, because no human being could survive such a thing. This just couldn't be how babies came into the world. There was no way.

And then, what felt like days later, it had been over. And then, the baby... A touch, a glimpse, and-

"We're just making sure he's okay."

"He needs a little help getting started. Some babies do."

Jacob had stroked her hair, weeping, laughing. Overcome.

"Listen to that! That's our boy, Bella! He's wonderful. Did you see him? Did you see him? He looks like you, I swear he looks like you-"

"We need to get your baby to the NICU now, Isabella."

"Can I hold him first?"

She hadn't understood, not then.

"Not yet. Someone will bring you to see him soon, when he's doing better..."

The first picture in the hospital was of David, not in her arms, but in the clear plastic box that had warmed him, protected him, and kept him from her for so much of those brief and endless days. Bella held the photograph and remembered the feel of the plastic wall of the isolette beneath her hungry palm. She swallowed and flipped to the next photo, and the next. There were dozens like that, almost identical to the first. She studied each one silently, feeling the same worship in her heart that she had on that first day. She hadn't been able to get enough with him, not with the camera, not with her fingertips, not with her eyes.

I begged you to grow, to stay strong, to get well. I begged you, as if it were up to you. I begged God, as if it were up to him. All I did that day was stare at you and beg for your life.

The next photo, the first without the isolette. The first time-

"This was the first time I held him," she said without looking up.

Since his return, Edward hadn't moved from his silent spot in the hallway. He came closer now and crouched down beside her.

"How did that feel?"

"Miraculous."

Bella stared jealously at her past self. David almost wasn't visible in the photograph, hidden beneath warming blankets and snaking wires. What stood out was Bella's wide, disbelieving eyes and ecstatic smile.

"I was so happy... I remember I felt dizzy, just from being happy. I didn't know it was possible to feel that happy. They- the doctors, I mean - they'd already started preparing us, about what might happen, what probably would happen... But I didn't believe them. Look, you can tell I didn't. That smile. What they told us, it was like when you hear about how the sun is going to burn up the earth in a billion years. You can't really imagine it. Certainly not enough to feel correctly about it." Bella ran her thumb across the part of the photograph where David's fist rested against the bare skin of his mother's neck.

With reluctance, she set the photograph aside and picked up the next one. It was from the same day, just a few minutes later. Jacob had gotten closer with the camera; this shot was just the baby's face. White plastic tubing snaked from his opened mouth.

"Charlie was right," Edward said. "He favors you."

Bella smiled and didn't answer.

Jacob was in the next picture, standing behind Bella's rocker and leaning close. He looked down at the baby, and he smiled, but...

"He understood better than I did. You can see, here. He knew. Carlisle saw that, when it came time to let David go. I wouldn't listen, but Jacob did. He was... He was stronger than me."

She set the photograph aside and picked up the next one, and the next. Soon they came to the later ones, the ones where no one smiled.

"He got an infection. That's what killed him, technically. But Carlisle said that, even if that hadn't happened, it was very unlikely that they could have saved him. There were too many things wrong. Too many surgeries that he'd need. Too many ways he'd have to be lucky. But I still thought... I thought he'd be okay. And when he wasn't, I thought that maybe it was my fault, like I hadn't washed my hands well enough one time, I'd brought in something dirty and made my baby sick..."

"You didn't," Edward said, laying his hand on her arm. "You know that, don't you?"

"I do now. I mean, I accept it. Knowing it is something different, and I'm not expecting I'll ever have that. But, Edward, I almost wish it had been something I did. You know, something I ate while I was pregnant, something I was supposed to do and didn't. It would be awful if it were my fault, but it being for no reason is worse somehow. The whole world is wrong because of that. Your baby can die because nothing."

She picked up the next photograph and stopped. The tightness in her throat grew.

The picture was much like the others, David in the isolette, sprawled on his back, tape and tubes over his face. But this photo was special. It was the last one they'd taken before...

"Carlisle wasn't there when he was born," Bella said. "He came later that day, and then every day after. He was there more and more, as David got worse. By the end, he almost never left. That should have seemed weird to me, but it didn't.

"Carlisle's the one who told us when it was time to let go."

She turned the photograph over and laid it facedown on the pile of the ones she'd already looked at.

In the next picture, there were no tubes, no tape, no wires. David was wrapped in a blue blanket, now in an open crib rather than the plastic box of the isolette. Bella kept her eyes on the image of his face as she reached into the nearly-empty box and found the blue blanket from the photo, the one they'd wrapped him in after the machines and medicines had been taken away. She held a thick fistful it in her hand for a moment, then let it go.

"I didn't know what to say to him," she said. "We were supposed to say goodbye, but I couldn't. I physically couldn't say the words. They-the nurses-they turned off the monitors, and they took everything off him. So many tubes and machines-" Her voice broke. "He'd been through so much. And then, when all that was taken off, it was just him, just a baby. My baby. I almost didn't recognize him like that. I had to watch closely to see that he was still breathing. It was so quiet without the machines.

"We had a rocking chair... Jacob held him first, because I didn't know what to say. I thought it would come to me. I thought there would be time. Jacob cried while he talked to him. He held him, and we both touched his face, his hands... Jacob told him that he'd done good, so good... but he didn't have to fight anymore. He told him that we loved him, and that he could go now. I just touched him... I felt so strange, like I was watching myself from outside my body. Jacob rocked him. Just that, seeing him rock my baby, it opened up this need in me... I needed it to be forever. This was what should happen, and it was only barely going to happen. We'd only barely get to treat him how a baby should be treated. And, I couldn't handle that. I needed- I needed it not to be over." She shook her head. "It was over so fast. I didn't realize it would be so fast. I never did say anything to him before he was gone." A tear dripped from her chin. She was careful not to let it fall on the photograph.

Edward moved closer until her back rested against his chest. He watched over her shoulder as she went through the rest of the photos. All the rest had been taken after David's death.

"The bruises..." she murmured, touching a spot on a photo where David's skin showed discolored. "It was from the damn IVs. God, if we'd known, we'd never have put him through that. I think I regret that more than anything. We should have just let him go."

"You made the right choices with the information you had," Edward said. "Carlisle thought about it a lot, and up until the end, it made sense to keep fighting. You made the right choice."

The last photo was a black-and-white image of David's feet cupped in her palm.

"My son's life was ten days long," she said, and laid the photo on the stack with the rest. "I went to a support group, and that's one of the things we practiced saying. We'd say how long our baby had lived, how long their lives were. It was supposed to help."

"I'm not sure I understand," Edward said.

"It actually does make sense," she said. "We grieve a child so painfully because we perceive their live as incomplete, broken. We have an awareness of all these years they won't be here. The exercise is meant to reframe what happened. It's meant to help you see their life as complete, just shorter than usual. My son's life was ten days long."

"Does it help?"

She shrugged.

"I don't think it helps me the way it's supposed to. I still can't accept the idea of ten days being a complete anything. I do like that it puts the focus on the time he was alive. I like saying the words my son's life. I had a son, and he lived. My son's life was ten days long."

She took out a few more items from the bottom of the box, the plaster disks that held the imprints of David's hands and feet, the outfit that had been meant to be his going-home clothes, the ones they'd dressed him in after he was finally at peace. These items had stories, too, but she couldn't tell them all, not today. She went backwards, instead, and showed him the items he'd missed. The faded pregnancy test, the baby shower invitation, the ultrasound photos.

Edward picked up a curved piece of metal at the bottom of the box. It was a silver crescent about half an inch long with a round metal bead at each end.

"What's this?"

She laughed and covered her face with her hand.

"It was my belly-button ring. I had to take it out when I got to seven months."

She started to laugh again, and instead burst into tears.

As Edward pulled her closer, her mind filled with all the words she hadn't said in the room with the rocking chair. The words had come too late, and now they'd never leave her.

While Bella sat with Edward, weeping and remembering, on the bedroom rug, Esme cooked breakfast downstairs. After the tears had passed, while Bella washed her face in the bathroom sink, Edward warned Bella that his mother was frying bacon in Charlie's kitchen.

"She'll leave anytime if you prefer it. I can tell her right now. She only wanted to make sure you were fed."

"No, it's actually okay," Bella said, taking the towel he offered her. "I'm glad she's here."

Downstairs in the kitchen, Esme left the pancakes she'd been about to flip when Bella came into the room. Without speaking, Esme enfolded her in a long embrace. When she drew back, her eyes met Bella's. The two women regarded each other as any two people who'd fought in the same battle, one they'd never had any hope of winning. Esme gave a small nod and squeezed Bella's hands once before going back to the stove.

It wasn't until Bella was eating that she remembered to ask about Carlisle.

"Oh, he's fine," Esme said as she washed dishes. "In a bit of a mood, like he always is after he's been with the Volturi."

"They didn't hurt him?"

"Not at all. He's just not one to bow down. It's difficult for him."

"What did they say?" Bella asked. "What do they want from us?"

Edward made a derisive noise. "They want us to play their game, as they always do."

Esme sighed.

"That's true, more or less," she said. "To answer your question, Bella, they said all of the expected things, how this was a grave transgression, a flagrant violation of the rules that ensure the eternal glory of our magnificent species." She lowered her voice in mock seriousness. Edward laughed, which made Esme smile.

"Isn't that bad news?" Bella asked, glancing between them, brow furrowed.

"We knew they'd start that way," Edward said. "Aro had to pretend that we'd done something unforgivable."

"Yes, well, that he did," Esme said. "He really belabored it, too. Carlisle had to do his bit, grovel and apologize and praise the wisdom and mercy of the high court." She shook her head. "Aro really dragged out that part, thus Carlisle's mood today. But, when it was all done, the three ruling members of the court agreed that mercy may be granted for a family who has been such a friend to the court for these good many years."

Edward raised his eyebrows. "That seems... excessively stated. It's well-known that we've no love for the court. And for their part, they barely deign to leave us alive. If they called the Cullens 'friends'... Well, that worries me about the price they'll name."

"Price?" Bella asked.

"Yes, of course a price," Esme said. "That's what all the fussing and back-and-forth was for. So the Volturi could ask something of us. Vampires aren't so different from humans in that regard. Morals and rules don't stand up well against a tempting quid-pro-quo."

"But they didn't ask for anything," Edward said, frowning.

"They didn't?" Bella asked.

"No. They told Carlisle that they needed time to consider the issue." Esme said unhappily as she dried dishes and put them into the kitchen cupboards.

"What game does Carlisle think they're playing?" Edward asked.

Esme shrugged. "He hasn't said much. I think he's worried, though. He's quiet, but I suspect he's making plans. You know, in case..." She glanced at Bella and didn't finish her thought.

"What? In case what?" Bella looked from Esme to Edward. His mouth was set in a hard line, and he didn't meet her eyes. "Please tell me."

Edward hesitated before speaking.

"In case we have to run, or even fight."

"Alice said they wouldn't kill us," Bella said. The words felt limp.

"Alice is often wrong."

There was a knock at the door. Edward started toward it, but Bella stopped him.

"I'll get it," she said, adjusting her right arm in its sling. It might be Sue or Malina, or even Renée, god forbid. Better she see them before Edward did.

It wasn't the Quileutes visiting today, though.

"Zelda?"

The nurse stood on Charlie's porch, dressed in jeans and boots and a heavy coat. She held a white cardboard box and smiled at Bella nervously.

"Hi. I'm sorry if I'm bothering you. I know today is..." She paused and glanced around. "I wanted to bring you this." She held out the box in both hands.

Bella glanced down at her injured arm, trying to decide if she could carry the box one-handed without dropping it. She decided not to chance it.

"Why don't you bring it inside?" She stepped back from the doorway.

"Oh, right. Sorry." Zelda's face reddened as she followed Bella into the house. When she saw Esme and Edward, she froze and glanced at Bella with something close to alarm.

"Is something wrong?" Bella asked. A nagging uneasiness began to grow inside her.

"No," Zelda said, forcing a smile. "Everything's fine."

"Let me take that." Esme said warmly as she reached for the box. As she took it, her fingers brushed Zelda's hands. Zelda flinched; Esme pretended not to notice as she busied herself with opening the box. Bella leaned close to watch. Zelda stepped back, keeping well away from Esme and Edward.

"Oh," Bella said when she saw what was inside. "Oh my. Oh." The tears she thought she'd finished with started to flow again, and she wiped at them impatiently.

Inside the box, sitting on a circle of cardboard, was a cake. It was decorated with fluffy waves of blue and green and white icing. The words "Happy 1st Birthday, David" were written in neat cursive icing on top.

"I hope I didn't overstep," Zelda said from the corner of the room, looking down at her hands. "I was thinking of you and David, and I wanted to do something."

Bella rushed to her and clutched her in a rough one-armed embrace.

"It's wonderful," she said. "It's perfect. Thank you. Thank you for remembering my child."

When Bella pulled back, there were tears in Zelda's eyes, too. She looked very young for a moment. She blinked repeatedly as she turned to dig something out of the purse that hung from her shoulder.

"I brought a candle, too. I wasn't sure if you'd want it, but we always sang 'Happy Birthday' for Jeremy." She handed Bella the blue wax '1,' still in its plastic package.

Bella looked at the candle in her hand, thinking. Despite all her recent musing, she hadn't made any real plans for today. Nothing she'd considered had seemed right. But a desire struck her now, irresistible and urgent.

"I would like to light it," she said. "But not here." She glanced at Edward.

Panic flashed in his expression. He opened his mouth to speak, but Esme laid a hand on his arm and fixed her eyes on his. He stilled, and his gaze went unfocused. A moment later he drew a deep breath and let it go. He turned to Esme, a question in his eyes; she nodded and smiled. Then, with visible effort, he turned to Bella and nodded.

The fear in his eyes sent a pang of guilt through her, but she couldn't heed it, not now. She smiled at him with both gratitude and apology, and mouthed thank you.

She turned back to Zelda, who'd watched the silent exchange with puzzlement.

"Are you busy right now?" Bella asked the nurse. "Do you have a little time?"

"Sure," Zelda said. "Libby's at daycare, and I'm off today. What do you need?"

"I need a ride."

Bella didn't remember what the weather had been like on the day of David's birth. She'd spent it inside, in the hospital, where small things like weather and time had stopped existing. Today, though, a year later, Bella shivered as she crossed the field to David's monument. Esme and Edward had fussed over her for twenty minutes before they'd let her out of the house, insisting she add warm layers of soft tights, wool socks, a cotton undershirt, and heavy coat before leaving. The wind wasn't impressed, though, and it cut wetly through her layers almost at once. She didn't mind, though. It was good to be outside today; it was good to be here. It was right.

Zelda followed after her carrying the cake box. At the pillar, Bella lowered herself to kneel in the grass. She nodded at the grass in front of the pillar, and Zelda opened the cake box, lifted out the cake, and set it where Bella had indicated.

She'd half expected to find gifts or balloons here when she arrived, but there were none, just the memorial stone jutting from the winter-dead grass, its solitary shape framed by the dull gray sky. Maybe Jacob and the others would come later, or maybe they'd already come, but hadn't left anything.

He probably doesn't know how to do this any better than I do.

"Got the candle?" Bella asked.

"Right here." Zelda said, kneeling down and reaching into her coat pocket.

She tore the wrapping from the candle and handed the candle to Bella. Bella put the candle in the center of the cake, just above David's name. She paused and glanced up at Zelda.

"I don't have matches. Do you?"

Zelda's face fell. "Shit, no."

The two women stayed as they were for a moment, silent and unsure. The wind blew freezing around them, keening faintly as it whistled through the trees.

"It probably wouldn't have stayed lit anyway," Bella said, the words feeble in her ears.

"We can sing anyway," Zelda suggested.

Bella shook her head. She didn't trust her voice anymore. Zelda reached across the space between them and squeezed her hand. The ground against Bella's knees was frosted and hard. It drew her heat and made her bones ache. Zelda's hand was cold, too, but Bella held onto it.

"I was never up to being his mother," she said, staring down at the cake. "We tried to be ready, but we weren't. I've never been up to this."

"Most of us aren't," Zelda said. "I know I wasn't. But kids, they don't care. They just love us anyway, the idiots. Your baby loved you, Bella. You were enough for him. Your baby loved you."

Bella closed her eyes, wishing desperately she could feel more than the faint almost-presence of her son. She wished for the rocking chair, the little room, and the ticking clock. There was so much yet to say.

You were enough for me, too. You were perfect. You were everything. I'm so proud of you. I'll always, always be so proud of you, sweet boy.

She let go of Zelda's hand and lowered herself to the lay on the ground, reaching with her finger tips to touch the monument's rough surface. Wet grass crushed flat under her warm cheek.

I'm holding you, baby. Can you feel it now? I'll always hold you. Always always always always.

As she silently spoke the words to him, she felt the familiar sting of the lie in it and pushed it away. She knew she'd never hold him again - there was no "him" to hold anymore. But, still, she'd never let him go.

I'll always hold you, David William. Always always.

The truest thing inside of her was also a lie, and a year wasn't long enough to learn how to carry such a thing.

She was truly cold now. Shivers came in waves she couldn't stop.

Bella rolled to her back, her living arm thrown above her head, her fingertips on the stone. She opened her eyes and stared into the dull and painful brightness of the cloud-covered sky.

My son's life was ten days long.