She named our baby after me. After the man who wasn’t even there.
A broken sound escapes my throat before I can stop it and I shove the car door open so hard it slams against its hinges as I stumble out onto the dirt. My knees nearly buckle as I brace my hands against the hood, the metal hot under my palms, and my stomach lurches violently as my grief crashes through me in waves too big to contain.
I stagger around the back of the car just in time before everything in my stomach comes up onto the shoulder of theroad, humiliatingly loud. When it’s over, I stay bent forward, hands on my thighs, dragging in shaky breaths that feel like they’re scraping against my lungs.
Gabriella.
Her name loops in my head and an ugly sob tears out of me, swallowed by the wind off the sea. I squeeze my eyes shut against the burn and I try to picture her tiny fingers, dark hair, and Zalea’s eyes.
I don’t know what she looked like, and I don’t know how much she weighed, and I don’t know how long she lived. I don’t know anything, and the shame nearly knocks me back to my knees.
Footsteps grow closer and I hear Zale’s heavy sigh, as if he expected this. He doesn’t say anything at first as he steps up beside me and presses a cold bottle of water to my arm.
“Rinse,” he mutters.
I take it, my hands shaking, and twist the cap off. The water sloshes as I lift it to my mouth, swishing it around before spitting it onto the rocks below. Zale hops up onto the trunk and sits there, arms braced behind him, staring out at the ocean like this is just any other pit stop.
“You shouldn’t ask questions you’re not ready to hear the answers to,” he says after a minute.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, still bent forward. “I needed to know.”
“Did you?” he shoots back. “Because you look like you’re about to pass out now that you do.”
I straighten slowly, leaning back against the car instead of facing him. The sun feels too bright against my face, and the world feels too loud.
“How long was she alive?” I ask hoarsely.
Zale exhales through his nose. “Gabriel?—”
“How long?” I repeat, turning my head to look at him.
His jaw tightens as he holds my gaze, and after a minute he looks away.
“A few hours,” he finally says. “They realized pretty quickly that there was nothing they could do to save her.”
The words slice clean through me. “Zalea said she held her.” My voice barely works.
“Yeah,” he says, softer now. “She held her the whole time.”
“She mentioned that someone took pictures,” My voice breaks. “After she passed.”
He studies me carefully, like he’s trying to decide how much I can handle.
“There are pictures,” he says slowly. “Mom made sure to keep them. Zalea couldn’t look at them for a long time.”
My stomach twists again but there’s nothing left to lose. “Does she still have them?”
“Yeah.”
I nod, staring at the gravel. Of course she kept every piece of our daughter.
“What was she like?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I deserve to know.
He pauses for a long time, and I think he isn’t going to answer but with a shaky voice, he does.
“She looked a lot like how Zalea looks in all her baby pictures,” he says quietly. “Except she was tiny. Like…really tiny.” He swallows. “But she squeezed Zalea’s finger so tightly like the little warrior that she was.”
That’s what breaks me.
