When the Lights Go Out(89)

That, to him, I was irreplaceable and beyond compare as I’d always been.

That, in all these months apart, that hadn’t changed for him.

His lips felt warm as he pressed them to mine, and there was nothing rushed about it, nothing presumptuous or brusque. “I want you back,” he whispered into my ear.

“I need you back.

“I miss you, Eden.

“I am nothing,” he said, “without you.”

I am nothing.

Was it just my imagination, or did the baby inside me kick?

I stepped back from Aaron, tugging on the ends of my sweater to make sure that tiny bulge was concealed. Inside me the baby—not Aaron’s baby, but the baby of some man I would never know—knew how to squint its eyes and to suck its thumb. Each day it grew bigger, arms and legs lengthening, organs and cells unfolding in my womb. It would come to be a person one day, a person perhaps with cavernous dimples and sparkling blue eyes, but never would I resent this child for the choices that I made.

Be careful what you wish for, the saying goes, but never would I harbor a grudge for all that I lost to have this baby. All that I will lose.

It might just come true.

I would have done anything for a baby. This I know without a shred of doubt.

The lump in my throat was nearly impossible to speak past. Something inside my larynx had swollen to two times its size and my eyes burned with tears. As they began to fall, Aaron wiped them from my cheeks with the pad of a thumb and again pressed his lips to mine, saying that everything was okay, that everything would be fine. He held me close, stroking my hair, pressing my hands between his to keep them warm.

“Can I come home?” he asked.

And I thought what it would do to him if I told him about the baby.

It would take those broken pieces of Aaron that remained and sliver them completely. It would pulverize them so that all that was left of Aaron would be ashes and dust.

“Yes,” I said, feigning a smile, forcing the word past that knot. “Yes.”

Aaron’s knees nearly collapsed from the relief of it. He kissed me again, this time with passion and zest, then reached his hand toward the doorknob to let us both inside.

But I stopped him.

“Not yet,” I said. “The house is a mess,” I said. “Complete bedlam. Let me clean it first,” I told him, and though Aaron tried to shoo it off, to tell me it didn’t matter, that we’d clean it together, I said no.

That I wanted it to be just right.

That I wanted it to be perfect for him.

That I wanted to be perfect for him.

And at this he relented, and an agreement was made.

The following morning he would return with all of his belongings, and we’d start over with a clean slate. We’d be Aaron and Eden again. Just us. Just Aaron and Eden.

He kissed me goodbye—lips lingering on mine for what only I knew would be the last time—and then he was gone, his car pulling out backward down the long, winding drive, disappearing through dark tree bark. The leaves of the trees were gone, as soon I would be.

Life is full of regrets and this is only one of them.

It didn’t take long to pack a bag.

By the time it was dark outside, I was heading south, south of Sturgeon Bay, south of Sheboygan, south of Milwaukee. Soon I would be living far away from here. My baby and me.

Dear Aaron,

I had a dream last night. In it, I was being chased. I ran in slapdash circles all night long, sweating and panicked as people tend to do in dreams, and for the longest time I couldn’t see the angry face of the man who was chasing me. It wasn’t until later, when I finally awoke, delirious and frightened, that I realized it was you, which puzzled me a great deal because after all of the grief and the heartbreak I’ve put you through, you have never been anything but selfless toward me. Compassionate and kind.

You, of all people, would never hurt me.

I remembered the way it is with dreams sometimes, how they have a habit of being less literal and more metaphoric, and I thought that sometimes with dreams like this, it’s not about who’s chasing you, but what you’re running from.

I’ve spent the last twenty years running from the past, Aaron, from all the horrible things I put you through. And now I’m dying of cancer. I’m going to die. But I can’t stand the idea of leaving this world without explaining things to you first so that you’ll understand. It’s only right that you have the closure you deserve. Every single day for the past twenty years I thought about calling you, asking you to meet. But I knew I’d never be able to verbalize all that I was feeling, that I could never put it into intelligible words, nor could I bear the thought of looking you in the eye and admitting what I’d done. And so for now, my journal will have to suffice.

I have a child, Aaron, a daughter, named Jessie, who means everything to me—and more. A mistake is what some might call it, but to me, she’s perfection. Jessie has spent her entire life searching for her father. It should have been you.

With love,

Eden

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