"Amy!" Georgie jumped from the kitchen chair when her aunt entered the house, kicking off her boots, her smile wide as she hugged her, Amy returning the gesture and pushing a soft smile to her face.
"Shh, Georgie." Lou frowned at her daughter, turning away from the counter where she was preparing stew to simmer in the slow cooker for dinner.
"Sorry. Katie's taking a nap," Georgie explained when Amy looked confused for a moment. The young teen removed her arms from Amy and slipped back into her chair where she was working on homework.
"Oh, well that's where I was just headed. Maybe I'll go lay with her." The thought of napping with her young niece made Amy's previously forced smile more genuine. Before Amy could fully leave the kitchen, however, Lou was stopping her.
"Amy, wait. What are you doing here? Shou-"
"I don't want to be home, Lou," Amy interrupted, feeling déjà vu wash over her. How many times was she going to have to explain this to people?
"But, Ty-"
"Ty is at work. He won't be home for another few hours." It was hard to keep the frustration out of her voice. "Lou, please. I just came in lie down for a while."
"You can lie down at home. Where you should be." Lou countered, leaning against the counter and wiping her hands on a paper towel. She was glad to see her little sister again, but Amy being at Heartland wasn't just because she was dropping by for a visit. They all knew better than that.
"Why? So I can sit and suffocate in that box. No thanks." Amy snapped, almost angrily, finally turning and going down the hall to Katie's room. She'd calmed down by the time she was pushing the door open to the dimly lit room. The curtains were drawn on all of the windows, but it was still light enough to see the toddler curled up in her bed, the stuffed horse she'd had since she was born falling out of her arm that hung over the edge. The simper once again softened Amy's face as she let herself into the room and went over to the bed, kneeling down beside it to carefully pick up the stuffed animal and get it more secured in the girl's arm. That made her stir, her brown eyes opening to look at Amy. "Hey, sweetie. How are you?"
"Sleepy," the girl answered, her voice conveying as much. She rubbed her eyes with her tiny fist and yawned.
"Me too. Do you mind if Auntie Amy takes a nap with you?" When Katie slowly shook her head, Amy stood and carefully crawled over the child to the other side of the bed that was flush with the wall. It was a small twin bed, not much room for two people to lay on, but it was good enough for Amy who rested her back against the wall as she lay on her side, watching her little niece shift and start to fall back asleep.
Amy was tired, but sleep again eluded her. Instead, her eyes focused on little Katie back to sleeping soundly now, so content in her little world. Amy wished she could go back to those days. When her biggest concern was when she could go back outside and see the horses and when her mother would get finished working so she'd take her for a ride. She missed that, being carefree and looking at the world with such hope and amazement. As an adult it was harder to look at things that way when you knew the truth and what sort of darkness lived in the world. Amy lost all hope and wonder when she stepped outside now – when she stepped onto this ranch. Heartland had always been a place of hope and miracles. Maybe it still was, but being stuck in such a dark place made it difficult for Amy to believe in any of that anymore. She saw the world in such a negative light now, looking at Katie only made Amy sad for the day the child grew up and learned that nightmares weren't always just dreams.
"Is Amy okay?" Georgie asked, looking toward her mother who was staring down the hall where Amy disappeared a minute ago. Lou wanted to go down the hall and try to talk to her sister, but maybe leaving her to rest with Katie was the better option for the time being.
"I'm not sure, honey." Lou sighed, going back to preparing dinner. From the sound of it, Amy was far from okay and Lou would venture a guess that she still had yet to talk things through with Ty, too. All of that pent up hurt and anger was simmering there inside of her sister, Lou could sense it.
"Do you think she and Ty will have another baby?" The girl's voice was hopeful. She really wanted to have a little cousin and had been looking forward to taking over the role of family babysitter now that Mallory was gone. It was how she planned on making money over the summers.
"I'm sure they will. It's just going to take some time for them to heal from losing this one." She hoped, anyway. Lou just couldn't see Amy and Ty making that decision right now. They'd been through a serious tragedy and it was understandable that the thought of trying again just seemed like too much to bear at the moment. If they were asked, Lou was almost certain Amy's answer wouldn't be in favor of it, not after going through what she just had, but Lou was among the first to know how deeply Ty and Amy wanted children. That desire wasn't only skin deep and she knew her sister. It was just going to take time.
"I hope so. Doesn't seem fair to just give up like that." Georgie said, picking up her pencil and going back to her homework.
"I hope so, too."
"Ride around. Ride around real slow. Well the fiery and the snuffy are raring to go. Well when I die, take my saddle from the wall, put it on my pony and lead him from his stall. Tie my bones to his back, turn our faces to the west and we'll ride the prairie that we like the best." Amy sang the old cowboy song to the sleeping Katie, reaching out to stroke her fingers through the girl's light brown hair as tears silently rolled down her face. This is what she wanted to be. She wanted to be a mom that crawled into bed with her child and sang them to sleep, read them stories and eased their fears of monsters in the closet or beneath the bed. For a long time Amy had shied from such responsibilities, but finding out she was pregnant made her realize how terribly she did want it. The excitement she felt for those few weeks had been nothing like anything she felt before. Even the negativity her father held toward her pregnancy couldn't completely trounce her and Ty's happiness. That happiness was gone now, though. Amy couldn't seem to feel anything anymore except emptiness and a heavy heart.
Finishing the last couple lines of the song, Amy's hand fell away from Katie to wipe the tears from her eyes. She finally snuggled up beside her niece and let her eyes close, sleep pulling her in after a few minutes.
Ty slipped his hand behind Amy's waist as she leaned against the back wall. "It looks like me already, what do you think?"
Amy studied the picture carefully before pulling it away from Ty's hand to step back and hold it up next to his head. "Well… he's definitely a lot cuter than you are," she laughed softly.
"Hey now, he's got half of my genes in him remember," Ty joked with Amy as they exited the elevator to head back to the truck.
"Yeah, but the cuter half comes from me," Amy shot over the truck as she climbed in beside Ty. "Isn't it amazing that this is our baby? I mean, it's really happening. This is the start of our family."
"I'll be right back." Ty mouthed to Amy.
" Lou?" There was a crackling as Amy stopped to wait for Ty, hearing Lou's voice come in and out but even when it was in it wasn't understandable over the static. "Lou I can't hear you…hello?"
"Hell-? Am- Are- there?"
"Amy!"
"Ty?!" Amy jerked awake, sitting bolt upright and blinking hard against the bright light and dull throbbing in her head.
"It's Lou." Lou said, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Amy looked around in confusion for a moment, trying to get her bearings. This was Katie's room. Her hand ran over the empty space beside her. "Where's Katie?" Her voice sounded scared, like she somehow thought something had happened to the little girl.
"She's out in the kitchen with Georgie." Lou answered quickly, studying her sister with concern and reaching out to place her hand over Amy's on the bed. "She said you woke her up. That you were making weird noises. Are you alright?"
Amy took slow breaths and shifted on the bed to sit up and lean against the wall. She felt more tired now than she did when she laid down. Rubbing her head, Amy shut her eyes against the painful throbbing. "I'm sorry. Is she okay?" Amy felt bad for disturbing the sweet little girl. She should have known those dreams would come back to continue haunting her like they did at night.
Lou studied her sister for a moment before answering. "She's fine. She felt bad you were having bad dreams so she wanted you to have Pogie." She smiled softly, handing Katie's stuffed pony, which was renamed after her real one, to Amy who opened her eyes and took it into her lap with a faint smile of her own.
"That's sweet of her." It would be nice if bad dreams could be scared away by such innocence.
"You didn't answer me, though. Are you okay?"
Again Amy didn't answer her sister right away, pointing her attention down to the toy in her lap, smoothing the horse's fuzzy mane down one side of its neck to make it appear more realistic. "I'm okay, Lou. I've just been having trouble sleeping lately. Every time I close my eyes I see…" Amy stopped abruptly, clamping her jaw shut when her head began to pound from a new threat of tears. The room was quiet for several long moments, Lou waiting for Amy to pull herself together.
This was what Amy wanted to avoid, but she had to admit that it felt better to be here in the company of family than it did all alone in the trailer. She'd always gone to Lou in the past for advice, mostly with relationships, but her sister never failed to listen and offer any guidance she could. "I'm afraid to sleep at night. It all comes back and Ty he… he wants me to just open up and talk about it. But how can I talk about it when I can't even think about it. Any time I try, I get scared and divert my attention to something else." Amy voice was so strained it hurt her throat to talk. She couldn't even say, or hear, the word 'baby' without shutting her ears and getting upset.
"Amy, talking about it is exactly what you need to do. And you need to do it with Ty. I know it's hard and it's going to be even harder to voice all of your heartache, but you'll never find the strength to move on if you just keep it all locked up inside of you. Ty was there too. He never left your side and was the first to hear about the baby."
"Lou…" The word sent an ache shooting through Amy's chest.
"You need to hear it, Amy. You need to find the courage to face it. Think about Ty in all of this. You weren't the only one who lost a child."
"I am! I am thinking about Ty. That's what makes this so hard." Tears sprang to Amy's eyes before she could fight them away. "It was my fault, Lou. I lost our baby, his baby. I can hardly look at him anymore without feeling so guilty for being so careless."
Lou's face fell seeing her sister start to break down. It was coming. There was no way she'd be able to hold out forever, but even now it was obvious that Amy was trying to hold what was left behind those tears back still, fighting it and only making herself suffer further. "Is that why you've been avoiding talking to him? Are you afraid he's going to blame you? That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, Amy." Lou shook her head, dumbfounded to even think of Amy thinking something like that.
"You don't understand, Lou. That night we told everyone at dinner. Afterward Ty and I had an argument and he thought that I was reconsidering. That I might have been thinking about aborting it." Amy felt so guilty for leading Ty to think that she wouldn't want their child and was so afraid that maybe he thought she'd be glad that accident happened because now it was out of the picture and no longer an issue that created tension among their family.
"Were you?"
"No! No! I would never do that." Amy exclaimed, wiping at the tears that began to make her face itch. "It was just Dad saying all of that stuff it just-"
"Dad? You really bought into what he said about having more to do with your life and wasting your potential?" Lou was appalled and now irritated with her father for creating such chaos because he didn't know when to keep his damn mouth shut.
"No. I… well, maybe. I skipped out on college to continue working with problem horses and expanding my clinics and seeing what else was out there for me. It just got me to thinking that having a b- a baby would keep me from continuing down that path and I didn't realize until I heard that little fluttering heart that I was ready for that change. And now it's gone, Lou. It's all gone and I can't…" Sobs shook her again. "I can't breathe it hurts so much."
Lou reached out to pull Amy into her arms, bringing her head down to rest against her as she placed a gentle hand in her sister's blonde hair. "It's not gone. Not completely. You still have Ty and I know for a fact he doesn't blame you for anything that happened. But you need to talk to him, Amy. You can't just keep putting it off and hoping it'll get better on its own. You two need to decide what the next step is for you."
Amy knew Lou was right. She'd known it from the very beginning that Ty was the person she needed to talk to, but she just couldn't bring herself to face up to him. To look in his eyes and see that sadness at losing his child. The child she'd been carrying and was responsible for taking care of. For keeping safe. She hadn't been able to do that and was afraid that if they had any more children in the future that she wouldn't be able to keep them safe either.