I glanced at Vadim holding Runa in the air, circling slowly on the spot.
“You would have been so loved, my son,” I whispered, kissing my fingertips before resting them on the edge of his headstone.
We stayed until Runa began to fuss. Vadim had his time beside Makari. I knew he’d visited before—not because anyone had told me, but because it was simply something I knew.
The visit was bittersweet.
The ride home was quiet, Runa asleep between us.
Vadim never let go of my hand.
They rested over Runa’s car seat together—his fingers moving slowly across the back of mine.
All he did was make the tears fall faster.
??????
It took a few days to pull myself back from the past. There was nothing I could do to change it—and Runa needed the best version of me. Then there was the new baby, growing in leaps and bounds inside my belly, making themselves known a little more each day.
Vadim was kissing it morning, noon and night. The warm press of his lips against my skin had become as routine as breathing—reverent in a way he would never be in any other context. He did it so often that Runa had begun to copy him, pressing her small open mouth to my stomach with tremendous seriousness. It was considerably cuter when she did it.
I wouldn’t put it past him to measure me while I slept. He kept circling his fingers around my belly—that slow, proprietary motion—and reporting back daily on any increase in size. As though I weren’t the one carrying it.
I loved our routine.
I fed and bathed Runa while he took nappy and lifting duty without complaint. It allowed me to rest through the tired spells that arrived without warning and flattened me. Growing a human wasn’t easy. But I was grateful for every symptom, every ache, every morning I woke heavy with it—because every time Runa learned something new or had a growth spurt my heart sank a little at how fast she was moving away from the beginning of her.
She would be almost a year and a half when the baby arrived. The new cycle would start and I wouldn’t grieve Runa’s independence quite so much. That was all life was—different phases to adapt to, one after another.
I sighed and kissed her warm cheek before her father swept her off to her cot with the efficiency of a man who had also clocked her tired eyes before I had.
There would be morning cuddle times soon enough.
I watched him walk back across the room. Regardless of weather or occasion he wore shorts that hung from his hips, and when he moved his way back toward me there was a rhythm to the bulge beneath that I had entirely given up pretending not to notice. I was still cataloguing his seductive moves when something landed on the bed beside me.
A cream and gold gift bag.
I really didn’t need any more jewellery.
“I missed your birthday,” he said.“Since you blew up my house and ran away.”
“Are you ever going to let that go?” I said, rolling my eyes, but I lifted the bag. He did have good taste.
It was heavy.
Too heavy for jewellery.
I glanced at him as he settled on the bed beside me.
“Go on.”
I opened the bag and drew out the cream tissue paper. Beneath it, solid and cool against my palms, was a thick block of glass.
The etched image registered before I read the name.
Makari’s scan picture—his small curled shape immortalised in the glass—and his name engraved below it in clean simple letters.
The weight of it in my hands. The cool smooth surface under my fingertips.
