Blood Ties

Chapter 4

Eda exhaled. So much love she held in her heart, deep burried somewhere swelled in her chest.

She hadn't expected it. She has forgotten Serkan. Let her resecentement and bitterness eat away how deeply she had loved this man. Or was it heartbreak and hurt ? Disloyality, he left her. Midway. He left her even as she needed him the most. She had always been there for him. And when she was oh so very vulnerable, emotionally, physically, he left her.

Left her to watch Kiraz's first sonograms scared and thrilled at the same time. Left her to hear her aunt's taunts and insults all day long calling their child things it didn't deserve. Left her to carry heavy bags of grocery, buckets of paints and furniture preparing alone for Kiraz's arrival with a heavily pregnant baby bump. He left her to lonely nights and a constantly crying Kiraz and she helpless to know what to do. He left her when Kiraz opened her head, just over one, and she was scared out of her mind. He left her as she enrolled her in school and worried all day. As the first financial problems hit her, Eda furiously wiped her tears. As she begged for left over breads to feed her hungry little girl.

She held a lot of love for Serkan in her heart. But 6 long years of abandonnement. The sheer hurt of the pushing away, the discarding her and their baby in one blink. It had frozen her heart.

Even more since Kiraz was sick. He acted so smugly, Eda thought with bitterness. It was a two clicks matter for him, he didn't knew how helpless she felt the day she received Kiraz's diagnosis. Eda had made her baby her entire world. She had erased the love she held for Serkan to pour it towards Kiraz. The day she learned, her whole world crumbled on her. Her sky falling apart. He hadn't been there to hear her heavy sobs as she collapsed on the wooden parquet of her Italian appartement, Kiraz at a friend's and she only met with the walls oppressing silence, they felt just like the day her parents died that day. Closing in on her.

She couldn't tell him. He had no right on Kiraz. He would just reject her and if the lover in her had taken a hundred humiliations, the mother in her couldn't bear one wrong word towards Kiraz. She looked in the rearview mirror at a sleeping Kiraz. She deserved so much. Health first of all.

She carried an asleep Kiraz upstairs and led her in her bed, she laid beside her, stroking her hair and kissing her temple. "I promise bebeğim, when you're healed, I'll give you everything in the world. Everything will be fine. You just need to not give up on me, keep fighting like the warrior you are." Eda kissed her hands.

"Anne?" Kiraz called, Eda looked at her.

"I thought you were sleeping.." Eda said gently.

"Where do you think we go when we die Anne ?" Kiraz asked and Eda froze, her heart cracking in her chest.

"I like to think we become stars." Eda said softly, still stroking her hair.

"So I'll be a star then ? I'll be near Baba." Kiraz smiled a bit and Eda shut her eyes painfully.

She had told Kiraz that her father was an astronaut. She hadn't brought it up in a while.

"You won't die Annecim, don't say that. You're so young and beautiful, you're so brave, you won't die." She promised, kissing her little forehead.

"You'd miss me if I go to space ?" Kiraz looked at her.

"So so much. I won't be able to get up in the morning." Eda's voice broke as she poured truthfully.

"Don't you miss Baba since he went to space Anne ?" Kiraz searched her eyes.

Eda froze, she closed her eyes. "At the begining, I did. A lot. But then I had you. And you became my everything." Eda poured truthfully, stroking her cheek. "Sen çok seviyorum." She added.