Teddy

Chapter One: Please dont hang up

Those first words in three months were simple ones...

"Hello"

"Teddy" I say a little breathlessly and there's a silence for a moment.

"Harper" she says in the same vain and it's like the world stops, for us both.

"Please don't hang up" I beg.

Three months of silence, of thinking she had abandoned me, and I, her, and then we were here, connecting, both on the end of the same line.

I fumbled for words, not knowing what to say next or how to begin, her line starts to crackle, the service is poor and all I can hear is "Harper I can't hear you" so faint that it's barely audible "Harper if it's important call again later. I'm in the countryside playing away" and then the line goes dead.

I slowly lower the phone down my cheek, letting it sit there a moment, warm against my skin, my eyes on the familiar skyline of St George.

"I have to get home" I say and my dad nods and starts the car as I hand him back the cell phone.

***
The flight back to Manchester is long. I hadn't expected over twenty hours of travel in two days, just so I could shake the truth from Ethan but I would quite honestly have gone further to hear it, to know what he had said and done to make her think I would ever, ever, not accept her offer, of a life together.

I couldn't understand how Teddy could have thought I would ever say those words, in response to hers, words I had wanted to hear for so long, but then I remember how horrific those weeks were and Teddy was already flagging mentally with the strain before she had ever got those messages, before she thought I had rejected her.

It made sense, because Ethan unknowingly caught her at her lowest ebb and if it had been any other time, his plans would have fallen flat on there face, because Teddy would have hunted me down and made me tell her to her face, so that she could understand.

I felt a little guilty about the call, when Teddy had tried to talk to me about Europe and I had basically shut her down. I literally started the doubt she had in me, and Ethan only had to walk in and send a text to cement them. It was infuriating though, that Teddy had believed him, and beyond anything else I was disappointed in her, for abandoning Wren.

Leaving Wren was something I never foresaw Teddy ever doing, they were as close as if Teddy was her second parent. I honestly thought of Teddy as that person in her life, the one she could always depend and who never went a day without loving on her.

***
"Harper what is going on?" Mama said as I finally walked back in the front door that evening. She looked worried, beyond worried, perhaps as if she had been fretting all day.

"Is Wren okay" I ask and she nods as Willa appears coming down the last step from upstairs.

"I've just put her down" Willa says and she frowns and walks over "Harper we are a little concerned... what is going on?" she asks "you take off and leave without even explaining what you needed to do in Utah. I'm lost, we both are" she says glancing to Mama beside her and I start crying, the tears just come in so heavily I feel like I'm going to suffocate.

"Oh baby" mama says wrapping me in her arms "is this about Teddy" she asks softly.

I nod "I didn't want to say anything until I knew for sure what happened mama" I confess through sobs and she rubs my back "Ethan... he" I try and speak but the sobs are intense and the sucking in and out of my chest is making it impossible.