And Ledger was sleeping through it all.
The fact he’d done this all before, with another woman, feels like a knife in the heart. It kills me to think that the magic we felt over the newness when the twins were born wasn’t the same experience for him that I thought it was.
None of it was new for him.
Eva.
A little girl he never once mentioned.
How can a man not mention his daughter? Not explain her death and the way it shaped him, made him the man he is today?
I hold Tiny in my arms, her sweaty body so sweet, and I kiss her hair, not understanding her father. The man I gave everything to — the man who’d done it all before. If he’s alive, and is truly on his way to wife number three, will he mention this sweet girl? The daughter who calls him Papa and shares his pine-green eyes? Or will she be as dismissed as Eva? Forgotten. Or long buried. Either way, it breaks my heart.
When I married Ledger, I knew my life was no longer my own. I was pregnant and well aware of the weight of being a mother. My own mom struggled for most of my childhood, not quite reconciling the life she had with the one she wanted.
I don’t feel like that, or at least I didn’t before I heard about Ledger’s accident. I’d put to rest the idea of a carefree life — and I found that motherhood and marriage suited me. It grounded me in a world that had always felt unstable. Ledger and I worked too hard for the life we had to throw it all away.
Didn’t we?
Those plans we made, when the twins finally learned to sleep through the night and he finally got well, were so beautiful. Crazy maybe, considering we were more strapped for cash than ever, and we knew they wouldn’t happen for a long time, but they were ours all the same. Dreams carved from the travel books I checked out from the library. Rick Steves’ guides on walking across Ireland and backpacking Spain. Ledger lit up when I talked about exploring the world together, a trusty Moleskine journal in my hand, taking notes of our grand adventures. Finally being able to write stories that were bigger than my limited experiences.
“I love it when you get like this,” he said one night, the two of us in our bed, the twins tucked in down the hall. The lamp light low, the room fading to black. The two of us finally connecting in the ways I longed for when the twins were smaller.
“Like what?” I’d asked, closing the book that had laid open in my lap. Setting it on the bedside table, rolling over with my hands on his chest.
“Full of hope.” He kissed me, hand on my cheek. “Are you happy now though, Pen? Is this life enough for you?”
The question hurt him to ask, I know it did. It hurt to answer. But I looked into my husband’s eyes and there was no doubt, no faking it, when I answered.
“I love this life we’ve made. Our twins are literally the cutest things to ever exist. And we’re pretty damn cute ourselves.”
He smiled, pulling me closer, our legs hooked as tightly as our hearts. Joined together, swearing that nothing would tear us apart.
I close my eyes now, wanting to go back to sleep, the memories as confusing as they are comforting. Rolling over, I hold my little ones as I try to find the solace of sleep. Wanting to dream. Finally, my body listens and I drift off.
Ledger and I lie on lounge chairs on a white beach, Tiny and Benny laughing in the distance, gentle waves curling at their toes. It’s somewhere exotic. Greece? Tahiti? Mazatlán? It’s hot. We’re sun-drenched and sipping cocktails. Margaritas. Yes. It’s Mexico and it’s the vacation we never had but always wanted and the kids run up to us, laughing, dragging us into the water, and we all run into the salty waves.
It’s wet, water all around my legs, and I wake again, Benny crying. He had an accident and I help him from the bed. Clementine’s still asleep and I run a bath for my little boy, kneeling on the floor, stripping him from his pajamas. I smell coffee, bacon, eggs as I do.
I wash his hair, and he apologizes. “I’m sorry I’m such a baby,” he says and I tell him he’s not. That he is my big boy and that I love him so much — so much it hurts.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says and I say no.
“Not that kind of hurt. The kind of hurt that means I’d do anything for you, Benny. The kind of love that is so deep in my belly that it’s a part of me. In my skin. My blood. My soul.”
Benny looks up at me with those pine-green eyes that match his father’s and it hurts even more. He is Ledger and Ledger is him and where is my husband?
He knows what I’m thinking. “Is Papa coming home today?”
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” I say, helping him out of the bath and wrapping him in a towel. Then I pick my little boy up off the floor and carry him like a baby burrito past his sleeping sister and into his bedroom. He pulls on underwear. “I’ll be a big boy, I promise. No more accidents.”
And I blow a raspberry on his belly and tell him I don’t care about accidents. I care about him being happy and being safe, and I hug my son. So tight it pushes away the pain of losing Ledger — or who I thought was Ledger— and I hold him.
This little boy who made me a mother was born four minutes before his sister and when I held him for the first time, I cried. Ledger did too. He was part one of the best thing that ever happened to me and Clementine was part two, and tears fill my eyes now as I hold Benjamin close. Praying that Ledger comes home, that this was all a mistake.
But what kind of mistake could it be when Emma had come to my front porch and Officer Parrish called with news of the accident that wasn’t really an accident?
Clementine comes into Benny’s room, the one that is painted blue, and she rubs her eyes. “You left me,” she says.
“I gave Benny a bath is all.” I stand, giving her a morning kiss as Benny pulls on his shorts. And then we follow the scent of bacon into the kitchen and find Emma there, talking with Bethany, who is making breakfast.
“I let Emma in,” Bethany says, walking toward me. “She was sitting outside the house in her car, all alone.”
“Hope you don’t mind,” Emma says, reaching for a mug of coffee. Filling it and handing it to me. She is in my house like it’s her home, and I want her gone as much as I want her to stay. Everything inside of me is conflicted.
“Hope you don’t mind, I needed to do something for you, Pen.” Bethany gives me a hug, spatula in hand. “I won’t stay long — just let me finish these up and then I’ll get out of your hair.”
“Where’s Thomas?” Benny asks, wondering about Bethany’s little boy.
Bethany ruffles his hair. “He’s at home with his papa and baby sister.”
“My papa is gone,” he tells her. “We don’t know when he’s coming back.”
Emma perks up. “Hey, you two, want to watch a cartoon?”
They smile, looking up at me for permission. Grateful that Emma is occupying them, I tell them sure. “Then we’ll have breakfast, okay?”
Once the three of them head to the living room, Bethany turns to me. “So, not to be intense, but is there an update? Leo and I are worried sick. The news stopped covering the story.”
“Right, because they think it was a suicide,” I tell her, unable to meet her gaze.
“What?” Bethany’s mouth falls open. “Oh, honey, what in the world?”