“Why would you do this?”I gasped.“Why would you take the last things that felt like… likemeand rearrange them?Is there anything in my life that gets to stay what I knew it as?”
“You’re not listening,” Eli said, stepping closer.“Please, breathe with me.We didn't get rid of anything.I want to show you something.”
“Don’t you dare,” I whispered, pointing at him with a trembling hand.“Don’t you dare talk ...”
I was gasping for air with tears blurring my vision when Eli closed the last bit of distance, hands hovering like he wanted to reach for me but was waiting for permission.
“Tessa,” he said quietly.“Look at me.”
My breath hitched.
Someone touched my arm, Maggie, I think, but my knees gave out at the same time.Eli caught me before I hit the floor, lifting me like I weighed nothing, even though I felt like a hundred pounds of wet sand.
“Let me go,” I sobbed, shoving weakly at his chest.“Put me down, Eli, I don’t want to see any more, I don’t want...”
“I know,” he murmured, voice rough.“I know you don’t.But you have to.Just this once.Just trust me.Please, Tess.”
He started up the stairs.
I clawed at his shoulder, at his shirt, nails digging in.
“Eli...”
“I’ve got you,” he said.“I’m not letting go.”
My tears dripped hot and steady onto his neck.The baby shifted against his ribs, where my belly pressed into him.
At the top of the stairs, he turned right, not left, in the opposite direction from my bedroom.My pulse spiked.
“Eli, where are we going?”My voice was small.Terrified.
He nudged a door open with his foot.
And carried me into the nursery I had been avoiding putting together.
It smelled like fresh paint and baby powder and something else, something clean and soft and heartbreakingly new.
Eli set me gently into a chair, his hands lingering on my arms as if making sure I wouldn’t bolt.
It wasn’t just any chair.
It was my dad’s recliner.
The same worn fabric.There was a little scuff on the right arm where his wedding ring used to rub when he was thinking.
Same deep seat that had once swallowed me whole when I was five and curled into his chest to watch movies.
It felt… smaller now.
Or maybe I was just bigger.
The room around it blurred as my eyes filled, then slowly came into focus.
The walls were painted a soft, warm cream with hand-painted wildflowers climbing up from the baseboards, lupins and daisies, the same flowers that grew along the fence line of the farm.Between them, someone had painted small horses in motion, running, rearing, grazing.I could tell by the detail that whoever did it loved them.
A crib sat against the far wall, smooth and sturdy, clearly handmade.A mobile hung above it with little horses and stars turning slowly in the light breeze from the open window.
On one wall, a jersey hung in a simple frame.
