I nodded. “I remember.”
She shuffled uncomfortably. “Rob will be here in the morning. He’s arranged a leave of absence.”
“That’s good. Aiden is going to need him. He’ll need all of us.”
Sonya nodded and bit into her thumbnail. “Where is Aiden going to stay when he leaves the hospital?”
Surprised, I turned to face her. “He’ll be staying with me. I’m his mother.”
Sonya lifted a hand like she was trying to placate me. “Oh, I know, it’s just… Well, you don’t live in your parents’ home anymore. I wondered if maybe he’d want to stay somewhere he already knew, like the B&B.”
I let out a cold, hard laugh. “Absolutely not. Aiden is my son and he’s coming home with me.”
Her lips tightened into a thin line. “Okay. As long as that’s what’s best for Aiden. He’s all I care about now. All I’m thinking about.”
“And I’m not?” My chin lifted as I regarded her through the dim glow of the hospital windows around us.
“Now, Emma, I never said that. It’s just that I know you have the baby coming soon, and Aiden doesn’t know Jake at all, does he? He knows us though. He knows Rob. He knows the B&B.”
“But that wasn’t where he grew up,” I said. I hated that some of what she was saying made sense. I pushed that thought away. Aiden neededmemore than he needed Rob, Sonya, and Peter. “He grew up with me more than anyone else. I was his constant before he…” I struggled to compose myself. “I know I’m going through some changes at the moment, but I was the one to bring him up and it won’t matter where we live or who lives with me, I’m his mother and he’s coming home with me.” I paused to brush away a stray tear. “If that was Rob in there, would you let anyone else take him home?”
Sonya sighed. “No, I wouldn’t. You’re right.”
But there was a note of disagreement in her voice. She didn’t believe I was right at all, but I didn’t know why.
* * *
I fellasleep in the chair in Aiden’s hospital room that night. Managing that was a feat in itself, given the uncomfortable nature of the chair and the uncomfortable nature of my pregnancy. But the body takes what it wants, and I wanted sleep. It was Dr Schaffer who woke me after 11pm. Jake slipped my coat over my arms and they ushered me out. Aiden needed rest. It had been a long day for him. While I had slept, Aiden had sat up awake, either watching me or watching television.
I thought I would feel more human after a night in my own bed, a hot shower, and some real food—not hospital canteen food—but that Friday morning I woke still feeling half-conscious, like I was living in a dream world. It was only the occasional kick from Bump that reminded me everything was real. Aiden really was alive, and he really had been captured and kept like a performing bear. Every time I thought about it, the cereal churned in my stomach.
Jake took the day off school and drove me to the hospital. It was a day of x-rays and scans. I saw Aiden standing up for the first time, and my breath caught when I realised just how short he was. There was a stiffness to the way he walked, like he didn’t quite know what to do with his legs. I made a joke about how I walked funny because of the bump, but Aiden didn’t laugh. I even waddled as I walked, pretending I was far bigger than what I was.
“We’d like to take a better look at Aiden’s ankle today,” said Dr Schaffer. “We’d like to check some of his other bones, too, so we’ll be sending him off for some x-rays. Then we’ll draw a little blood, and afterwards a child psychologist is coming to spend some time with him.”
A prickling sensation worked its way over my skin. “I don’t want him to be a study. He’s not some feral child brought up by wolves. He’s my son, not a name in a paper.”
“I agree completely,” said Dr Schaffer, tilting his head down to show gravitas. “But I do think that the psychologist will help. Aiden is going to need some therapy.”
That I couldn’t argue with.
“Can I be with him during the x-rays?” I asked.
But before I could answer, the door to the room burst open and a small, surprised breath left my body. I was vaguely aware of Jake turning his head towards me with a frown on his face, but mostly, I stood staring at the man who’d entered. It’d been almost eight years since I’d last seen Rob. We’d spoken around the time Aiden was declared legally dead, but apart from that we rarely made contact with each other, though that didn’t stop Sonya giving me updates of his progression through the army. He had joined shortly after Aiden’s apparent drowning in the Ouse.
Rob stopped dead just inside the door. His gaze was focussed entirely on Aiden, and I saw a sheen of moisture over his eyes, turning them to glass. He knew, like I had, like Sonya had. He knew this was his son.
“Aiden,” he whispered.
I managed to control my breathing, but my heart raced. Rob was a large man, filling the doorway with his bulk. The army had beefed him up even more than the last time I saw him. He wore boots, jeans, and a black leather jacket, well-worn and frayed at the edges. His brown hair was shorter than ever, and his deep chestnut brown eyes were all Aiden.
“It’s him, Rob,” I said. “It’s really him.”
My ex-lover’s eyes finally moved from our son to me, and a shiver worked its way down my spine. In that moment, I knew he understood how I’d felt as I’d walked into this very same room and seen my son back from the dead, and the intensity of that experience seemed to hit us both. When Rob’s knees began to buckle, I rushed forward and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. It wasn’t anything I thought about. In that moment, I forgot all about Jake—who no doubt felt useless standing back watching his wife embrace another man. The problem was, Jake didn’t know what I was feeling as well as Rob did, and it was Rob’s arms I needed around me. Before I knew it, I was crying on Rob’s shoulder, and he was crying on mine, and for the most fleeting of instants, I almost felt as though I had a family again.
“Mum told me everything before I came,” he said as he pulled back.
I wiped the tears from my eyes and cleared my throat. “Everything?”
