But I wouldn’t have Ella and there is nothing in the world I would trade for her. She and the baby still growing inside me are my world.
“It’s a complicated answer,” I explain, hoping she will let it go.
“What if they could come back now?”
I peer down into her face, her eyes. Emotions a cyclone of pain.
“They can’t, baby. They’re gone.”
“They don’t have to be.”
I open my mouth to press her, to demand she explain herself. But she yawns wide and nestles against me. Within seconds, she’s breathing soft and steady.
For several minutes, maybe an hour, I lie with her folded in my arms. Her words ring in my head, disrupting everything I know about everything.
The dead cannot be brought back.
Not only can’t but shouldn’t. Even I am sane enough to firmly believe that. The dead stay dead and no one should play God. And they wouldn’t want me to.
But … what if?
What if I could bring them back? What if it could be done?
I wouldn’t, of course.
Even if I could.
I would be too ashamed to face them after what I’ve done. The blood I’ve shed. Perhaps they might forgive me my grief, but I murdered an entire family — with the exception of Adela Duval and her two children.
I meant to.
Adela married a monster and stood by his side through it all.
After Ella was born, Veyn took me to see Adela. I stood unseen in her extravagant bedroom with the iron-framed bed and gold accent. The house had been dark, still as she sat alone on her bed and stared out at nothing.
I understood that stare. That endless stream of thought that pinned your eyes to a spot as if glued there while your brain ran a million miles away. The suitcases she was packing sat abandoned behind her, half filled with clothes.
She had jolted when the phone rang. I caught the flesh of dread before she reached for the device with trembling fingers.
“Hello?”
There was a pause where I could tell she was holding her breath, but it wasn’t the rigid tension of a woman desperate for news of her missing husband. Even before she shut her eyes and exhaled, I knew she was relieved.
“Hey, Ma, yeah, I was just packing.” She pushed to her feet like she needed to prove it. “No, haven’t heard anything. I don’t think we will. I know, Ma.”
Carefully, she pulled the phone away from her ear and put it on speaker. It was dropped on the mattress as she resumed her folding and tucking.
“Bad news,”an older voice rasped from the other end.“From the start.”
“I know,” Adela sighed and stuffed a pair of socks into the case. “But he was still the father of my children. I couldn’t just leave.”
“So, you’re still coming here?”
Adela paused in her task and stared at her life pressed and tucked into luggage.
“I think it’s for the best. Noah’s just a baby still. I know he’s eighteen, but…” she broke off and rubbed four fingers into the crease forming across her brow. “He’s still just a kid. Julen keeps pushing to have him join the family business and I just … I can’t do it. He’s not like August and Berny. He’s a good kid. He wants to be an entomologist for crying out loud. He’s not a … a … what Julen wants him to be.”
“Well, I have the spare room made. It’ll be a change, but the kids will be better for it.”
