Author's note: Thank you once again to everyone who reviewed – mandi, Tracey, CarbyLuv, Mana7, Taz Maniac, Brookestar and Helen w. You guys are great, and I love reading your feedback. It helps a lot :)
I've said it before, I know, but this time I mean it! This is the second last chapter. It was supposed to be the last and I was actually in the middle of writing the last chapter when I got this idea, so the last chapter remains half written and umm this is posted instead.
Starbuckmeggie – thank you so much for your words of encouragement, and for the unexpected shout-out. You are a fantastic writer, it was truly an honour.
Happy Halloween everyone!
~*~
Chapter 7 ~ In Memoriam
"I'm sorry."
He sits up suddenly, casting his gaze downwards.
"I shouldn't have said that."
I freeze momentarily. I thought we were finally understanding each other. For a split second I thought maybe we hadn't lost everything, that perhaps he still felt something other than pity for me. I recoil instantaneously, my feet drag themselves backwards, away from him, away from the room.
"You must be hungry. I'll boil the kettle," I find myself gushing, before I stumble blindly out of the room, so close to tears that I dare not even breathe. This is one time where I cannot cry. I pray that he won't follow, but I know he will, and sure enough though deafened by the blood pounding around in my head my ears soon hear the blankets sweeping back and his soft footsteps.
"Abby, I didn't mean – "
"Tea or coffee?" I cut him off, and purse my lips to look at him defiantly, but deliberately avoid his eyes. I've nothing more to say to him, nothing more to hear from him. Dammit Maggie, where do you keep the coffee? I slam the cupboard door. He reaches in to take my arm, but I shake him off and bend down to a lower press. My hands shake as I find two cups and though battling to control myself I cannot help but bang them down on the counter with unforeseen force. My skin is numb, and knowing that he is still in the room is so unbearable I can hardly bring myself to turn back around to face him.
"You're right," I tell him. "I'm better left alone."
His face becomes panicked "I didn't mean it like that. Just let me explain - "
"You don't have to invent some fancy excuse, Carter," I snap. "I've been making wrong decisions for as long as I can care to remember. Why should you be any different?"
This is too close, my words are too true. He can't even imagine how harsh they sound to me. It's one thing to think them, but another to say them aloud, and an entirely different thing to say them aloud in front of him. My head is spinning. I'm teetering precariously on the verge of losing whatever sanity I have left in the midst of this unstoppable mess of emotion. I push by him, but he doesn't pull me back, instead he follows, the tips of his toes nipping the backs of my heels. Finally he grabs my shoulder and swings me around to him.
I take his hand and throw it back against his body. I make to gaze up at him abhorrently, but in his eyes I see something which I have never seen before. It frightens me. They contain a passion, a fire. They shine but with anger, with unspeakable tension. And his voice. The words fall from his lips with serpentine quality, hisses calm but sinister from between clenched teeth, causing my body to seize as they hang, a shroud in the air.
"Don't you dare try and guilt-trip me." He steps back. "You can't beat yourself up about the past forever."
"And what would you know about it?"
"If this is about your mother, about the psych hold, get over it. You were right, okay. I think you made the right decision and I've told you as much."
"Yea, well Luka didn't think so."
As expected he stiffens visibly at the mention of Luka's name.
"Why do you always –" he begins, before thinking better of it. "You made a decision that was right for you and Maggie. You couldn't hope to look after her. And she wouldn't leave Minnesota anyway."
He stops, then shakes his head. "And there you go again. Playing the self–pity card."
"Excuse me?"
"It's what you do isn't it? Scream and shout, then bring it all back around to you, and how awful your life is, so that you're never the one in wrong."
"You haven't a clue," I spit back at him. "You don't know me at all."
"I think I do. You know what? Yeah. Maybe you haven't always made the best decisions, but everyone makes a wrong choice at some point. Big deal."
His voice is raw, but unyielding, as though he's been holding this in a long time, waiting to throw it back at me. "This isn't about your life, your decisions, your past. This is about you and me - "
I block out his words. His voice has reached fever pitch and it tears at my eardrums incessantly. He's inches from my face, shouting, yelling at me and I can't take it. I'm breaking. I'm ripping apart at the seams. My hands cover my ears but still his voice resonates through burning skin and muscle on its path. I beg him to stop. I plead with him to be quiet but his assault continues until finally I snap -
"I had an abortion," I yell as the chaos dissipates.
"I had an abortion," I mumble quietly, in the heat of the calm.
A pause. A stunned silence has fallen, and we both hold back, our heavy breaths colliding as we let my words sink in. I shut my eyes. My heart is cold as regret, starting small begins to consume me piece by broken piece. This wasn't meant to be a revelation. Maybe some part of me wanted him to know, but I never pictured telling him like this. Somehow I always thought he'd understand, but now I know I probably won't get the chance to explain.
Then I look at him and I see hurt, I see pain. I see brown eyes that shine so brightly that I am overcome by an urge to kiss the tears away. I lean towards him, but he moves away. He's disgusted. I've disgusted him. He's looking at his hands, twisting his fingers round and round, unsure of where to place them, what to do with them. I wait for him to speak. Say something Carter. Just say what you think of me, how I never fail to disappoint you. His lips are quivering, his face white.
"Was.." His voice trails off into silence. "Was it mine?"
His body sags under the effort of asking, but he looks directly at me. He's tense, knuckles white and I sense his fear, cold and dominating like the beads of sweat that have appeared upon his brow. I close my eyes, horrified that he should even think such a thing.
"No. Oh god Carter, no. It was so long ago. I hadn't even met you."
I know I should continue, tell him more, reassure him but for some reason I stop there. This was my secret, the wrong decision I couldn't tell him, couldn't tell anyone. I thought it would go away. If nobody knew, well then nobody could ever think about it and I would be able to forget.
If only it were that simple.
Sometimes I wonder if I could have made a good mother. Sometimes it makes me sick to my stomach, guilt grinding slowly away at my insides, but then other times I know that I was in no state to bring up a child. I wanted to tell him. I've wanted to tell him for so long now that it hurts, but I couldn't face disappointing him. I couldn't let him see me for what I am… or what I was. I've changed since then and I thought maybe when he knew me long enough it wouldn't change a thing between us. I guess something like this changes everything. And if I wasn't good enough for him before, I'm certainly a lot less than good enough for him now.
My hands are cold. Blue veins stand erect against impossibly white skin as red and purple blotches begin to appear devouring the previous pallor. As I wait for him to turn and leave I am suddenly aware of the fact that I'm still wearing his dressing gown. Its fabric is warm with the heat of my body, it soothes my skin, but it smells of him, of his good character. My chest tightens with shame and air burns the back of my throat as panic sets in. I reach down, my hands trembling as I try to undo the knot holding it around my waist. I have got to take it off.
I jump as a warm hand is placed on top of mine, and the rasp of my breathing slows, if only for a few seconds. He pulls my fingers away from the knot and forces me to look at him.
"Was it Richards?"
I nod, finally defeated as the tears that have been threatening to fall spill over my eyelashes. I pull my hands to my face. I don't want him to see me cry.
~*~
The kitchen is as it always was, harshly blue with hard white tiles that never could be kept clean. He paces back and forth, while I sit motionless on a chair, my hands gripping the half-filled coffee cup furiously. It's black and strong, just the way he likes it, but then he was the one who made it. We don't talk. I don't know what to say, all my thoughts are marked by his footsteps drumming steadily in the background, each beat heightening my sense of insecurity.
"Oh why don't you just say it?" I murmur half-heartedly.
"Say what?" He stops pacing and turns to look at me.
"Whatever it is that you're thinking. You can say what you think of me, because it'll only be a fraction of what I already think of myself." I pause grimly, expecting a reply of some sort, but getting none.
"Or you don't have to say anything," I continue flatly, "You can just leave. Thank you for coming. I appreciated it."
My voice is bland, dry, all emotion squeezed out of it. My eyes are heavy, puffy and red. I'm so tired I can't concentrate, every bit of feeling seems to be seeping slowly out of me, out through the cracks and pores of my skin. I want so badly to cry, but I've used up all my tears long ago. I wish there was somewhere I could go. Someplace where I could crawl, hide away and not be able to hurt anyone, or disappoint anyone. Especially not him. He deserves better.
"What was it like being married to Richard?" he asks, finally.
"What?" I'm confused.
He blushes. "I just.. I mean I'm sure you had a reason.. You both must have put a lot of thought into doing it."
"Oh." I swirl the coffee around in the cup and bite my lip before correcting him. "Well, actually.." I study my hands carefully. The hot coffee has worked wonders in warming them.
"Yes," he prods gently..
"Richard didn't know about the baby. He still doesn't. It was me. All my doing. All my fault." I falter, my voice is barely a whisper. Hearing my thoughts only increases my self-disgust.
In a funny way I wonder if he thought that maybe it was Richard's idea. He doesn't respond to my answer, and that's the only reason why that I can think of. I place my mug on the table and stare blankly at my hands again. He's struggling with what to say. I can feel it and it makes me ill at ease – usually he knows exactly the right words.
"I just couldn't have the baby, Carter, I couldn't. I'm not a mother. I was too afraid. We were breaking up and I didn't want to be left alone with a child. And for the first time I thought I'd left Maggie – everything – behind and I couldn't face the possibility of going back to that.. not by myself."
It was the timing. It was everything, but still no matter what excuses I make for myself I still know I'll never feel any better. There's always a hole, a gap where this little person should have fitted in my life, a slot now occupied by a bitterness that cannot be plastered over, a wound that even time cannot heal.
He pulls a chair close to me and sits down, taking my two hands in his and rubbing smooth circles in them. I catch his eye and he nods.
"I do think of her. All the time… She could have been the one thing that could have made my life worth living, if I'd have kept her."
I shoot him a wry smile.
"You know how children have this innate view that their parents are wonderful. Maybe she would have thought that I was someone special, maybe she wouldn't have seen what everyone else could see… that I was crumbling.. Maybe – I pause – maybe she might even have loved me."
My eyes glaze over with tears and he squeezes my hands.
"Sometimes now I wonder why I did it. It was an awful time for me, but I should have been able to work through it.. if I'd been stronger.. She'd be here.."
He brushes my hair back, away from my bruised forehead. There's a brand of empathy that I associate with that gesture – unexplainable, though powerful. It's as if he's saying, telling me that he understands. And in some way I believe him. That he'll realise that split second feeling of emptiness inside of me when I see a group of children playing on a damp street corner. That he'll know that when I momentarily shut my eyes I see her jump rope, smiling and laughing along with the rest of them.
"It's okay," he stutters "It was a mistake, a difficult decision. You felt you had no other option."
"It was a life, Carter," I remind him.
"It was," he admits "But don't stop living yours because of it. It's okay to think of her, imagine her, but don't put your life on hold. Not because of the disease, not because of this."
His words break easy upon my ears, his sincerity quietens me and not for the first time I wish I had have told him sooner. There is something calming, soothing in knowing that he understands, and an even better feeling in seeing him offer me some support by listening. We both lean in and our foreheads touch gently. He resumes his grip on my hands and I inhale sharply.
"Thank you," I whisper.
He smiles and leans back before letting go of my hands and standing up.
"Just for the record – I'm not another wrong decision. I just thought you might need some space, you know what with being here, and Maggie.."
He shrugs. I grab his hand and pull him back down to a sitting position, chuckling silently at his chivalry. Our eyes collide, a set of stormy pools breaking waves on long anticipated shoreline as the haunting rays of light bounce patterns off hair and skin. Desire holds us captive once more and this time we allow it to take hold. Our lips brush, slow at first gently as a butterfly touching down on a flower until urgency takes over and the kiss deepens to tornado ferocity.
In one swift movement he has me on my feet so that he can wrap his arm around my body and I can run my fingers through his silky hair. I'm on tiptoe, leaning against him for support, but he doesn't seem to mind. In fact I think he's pulling me closer. I don't want to let go, and when we eventually part it is with heaving chests and tearing eyes, both breathless sucking in the air, ravenously inhaling scent of memories past, but not forgotten.
He still leaves me speechless, begging for more. He still has that look that he once claimed is reserved for me, that tender look of love or compassion, that makes me want to run to him and hug him so tightly that I get pins and needles shooting down my arms.
And if he wants me, I'm his.
The look in his eyes tells me he's mine.
"Come on," he whispers, his breath tickling my ear, "Let's leave here, and go home."
I nod. He's right. It's time to leave. I've said goodbye. Things will be different when we return to Chicago, but I'm not going to give up on us. Not now. I don't know if I'll ever be back to set foot in this house again, yet for the first time I'm not worried or nostalgic. It's empty now, a shell of a house where I spent my childhood. These walls hold many memories, dreams and nightmares. It's time to lay them to rest, to leave them behind. I can never forget this place. It'll be forever engrained in my memory along with the tears and laughter that were my life here. But I'm moving on. What doesn't break us makes us stronger. And I am stronger for knowing this house and the people that lived here – my family. They made me who I am, and now I'm ready to start over.
A new life, a new beginning. I'm not scared of what's gone before. It's time to face the past and learn from it.
I take his hands and smile. "Give me an hour. There's just somewhere I have to visit."
"No problem," he winks, gazing round the room. "I'll do a spot of clearing up."
His hand squeezes my shoulder as I set off down the road.
~*~
Comments: Thank you for reading, please leave a review to tell me what you think – good bad or indifferent.
Just to mention – I decided to give the baby a gender, hence the whole 'she' business. I just thought that if Abby were to think of the baby a lot she may have imagined it as a person… I don't know, but that's the reason behind it anyway :)
And finally – I don't know how Carter likes his coffee so I invented it, but if anyone does know I'll always edit!