Forgiveness, Trust & Forever

Hero

Emily wanted to clean the cot.
Not run from it.
Not shut the door.
Not tell me to take Eleanora back to my parents, or to a hotel, or to anywhere that wasn't the room she had built and abandoned and hated herself for keeping.
She wanted to clean it.
That should not have felt like hope.
But it did.
Dangerous, stupid, impossible hope.
I stood in the nursery with the burner phone powered off on the shelf, Ava's last message still sitting in the air like smoke.
Lockdown begins. No running now.
She had meant it as a threat.
Maybe it was.
But Emily was still holding Eleanora.
And the nursery door was open.
And for the first time since the judge placed my daughter in my arms, I wondered if maybe I had mistaken the ending of one fight for the ending of our family.
Emily shifted slightly, looking down at Eleanora asleep against her chest.
"She's getting heavy," she whispered.
I moved instantly. "I can take her."
Her eyes snapped up.
Not angry.
Afraid.
I stopped.
"I mean, only if you want," I added.
Her mouth parted like she was about to say yes.
Then she looked down again.
Eleanora's cheek was pressed into the grey jumper, her little mouth soft with sleep, one hand curled near Emily's collarbone. She looked completely unaware that the woman holding her was falling apart over every breath she took.
Emily swallowed.
"No," she said, so quietly I almost missed it. "Not yet."
My chest tightened.
Not yet.
Two words.
Small enough for her to survive.
Big enough to change the room.
"Okay."
Her eyes flicked to mine.
"You keep saying that."
"I'm trying not to scare you off."
"That makes me sound like a feral cat."
"If the shoe fits."
She glared at me.
God, I had missed that look.
It had been easier to miss the soft things. Her laugh. Her hands. The way she used to fall asleep with cold feet pressed against my legs like I existed purely as a source of heat.
But I had missed the sharpness too.
Emily had never been soft in the simple way people wanted her to be. She was edges and fire and heart locked behind too many doors. Loving her had always meant learning where to put my hands so I didn't bleed and where to let myself bleed anyway.
I looked around the nursery because looking at her holding our daughter for too long felt like staring at the sun.
The cot was still solid. White wood, curved edges. Dust sheet half dragged to the floor from when I pulled it away. The mattress was covered in photographs Ava had clearly meant as a weapon.
I forced myself to look at them again.
Emily pregnant.
Emily outside the hospital.
Me leaving court with Eleanora.
Eleanora at Mum and Dad's.
Emily in this room, hand on her stomach, expression caught between terror and tenderness.
That one was the worst.
Not because it was ugly.
Because it was beautiful.
Because it proved something neither of us had known what to do with.
Emily had wanted our daughter in moments.
Then fear had eaten the rest.
I crouched by the cot and began picking the photographs up one by one.
Emily watched me.
"Don't look at them."
"I have to."
"No, you don't."
"Yes, I do."
"Why?"
I lifted the photo of her in the nursery.
"Because I need to understand what I got wrong."
Her face tightened. "You didn't get that wrong."
"I did."
"No. I let everyone believe the easy version."
"The version where you were cold."
"The version where I was clear."
I looked up.
She shifted Eleanora higher, awkward but careful. Our daughter made a tiny sound and settled again.
Emily's eyes stayed on mine.
"I told them I was certain adoption was best. I said it calmly. I said I had considered it thoroughly. I said a lot of things that made me sound practical instead of terrified."
My throat tightened.
"I believed you."
"I know."
I placed the photographs in a pile on the floor.
"God, Emily."
She flinched.
I hated myself for the sound of my voice.
"I'm not angry," I said quickly.
"Yes, you are."
I looked at the photo in my hand.
"Yeah," I admitted. "But not how I was."
"How are you angry now?"
"At everyone."
"That's broad."
"I'm angry at Ava. At Jo. At my director. At the article. At the court. At myself." I swallowed. "At you, but not for the same reasons."
Her eyes shone.
"Why me?"
I should have lied.
Not really lied.
Softened.
Made it survivable.
But Emily had asked, and for once I wanted to give her the truth before disaster forced it out of me.
"Because you let me think there was nothing," I said. "No room. No clothes. No moments. No maybe. You let me grieve a version of you that wasn't even true."
Her face folded inward.
"I couldn't let you know I had wanted her sometimes."
"Why?"
"Because then you would have asked why sometimes wasn't enough."
I had no answer.
Because I would have.
I would have taken this room and held it up in court like proof. I would have used it against her. I would have demanded that tiny green walls and a mobile with clouds meant she had no right to be afraid.
I had been so sure loving Eleanora made me right.
Maybe it did.
Maybe it didn't.
Maybe the truth was uglier.
I had loved our daughter and still hurt her mother.
Emily looked around the nursery, her eyes landing on the shelves where half my old life sat gathering dust.
"I packed most of your stuff three times," she said.
My eyes lifted.
"What?"
"When you left properly. After the hospital. After the hearings started." She gave a small, humourless laugh. "After every version of us ended, apparently."
My chest tightened.
"I didn't come back for it."
"No."
"Because I was angry."
"I know."
"I thought you'd throw it out."
"I tried."
Her gaze moved to the leather jacket on the chair.
"I put everything in bin bags once. Dragged them down to the studio. Stood by the bins for twenty minutes."
"And?"
"I brought them back up."
The room was too quiet.
Eleanora breathed softly against her.
I held the pile of photographs tighter.
"Why?"
Emily's mouth trembled.
"Because throwing them away felt too final."
My heart hurt.
Not broke.
Hurt.
Like it was bruised from beating against the same cage for too long.
I stood slowly and placed the photographs face down on the shelf beside the dead burner phone.
"Then we don't throw them out today."
Emily looked at me sharply.
"I said I wanted them gone."
"They'll be gone from the cot." I kept my voice careful. "But maybe we keep them for legal."
Her face paled.
"Right."
"And maybe..." I looked at the one of her in the nursery. "Maybe one day, when it doesn't hurt like this, you might want to decide what happens to that one."
She stared at the turned-down photograph.
For a second, I thought she would argue.
Instead, she nodded once.
"Not today."
"No. Not today."
Her shoulders loosened slightly.
Eleanora stirred again, face scrunching, tiny lips beginning to tremble.
Emily froze.
I stepped closer.
"She's okay."
"She's waking."
"Maybe."
"What do I do?"
"She might just want movement."
Emily swallowed, then began rocking gently.
Too stiff.
Too small.
But movement.
Eleanora settled.
Emily stared at her.
I stared at Emily.
Then she looked up and caught me.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Hero."
I smiled faintly. "I was thinking you're getting good at telling me when I'm thinking."
Her eyes narrowed.
"And what were you thinking?"
"That you're doing better than you think."
She looked away immediately.
"Don't."
"Okay."
"You still said it."
"I know."
"You are impossible."
"You used to like that."
"I used to like a lot of stupid things."
"Me?"
Her eyes came back to mine.
The air changed.
A small change.
A dangerous one.
Eleanora slept between us, held against Emily's chest like a warning and a blessing.
"Yes," Emily whispered. "You."
The word moved through me like a hand under my ribs.
I should have stepped back.
I did not.
Neither did she.
The nursery around us seemed to hold its breath.
The room had already seen too much of us. Pregnancy and fear. Abandoned clothes. My jacket. Her shame. A cot waiting for a baby who had never slept in it.
Now it saw this too.
Two people standing too close with a child between them and an entire ruined history pulling at the edges.
I reached for the photograph frame on the windowsill instead of reaching for her.
Safer.
Not safe.
But safer.
The frame held that old photo of us. Younger, laughing, her face tilted towards mine like I was her favourite thing in the world.
I stared at my own hand around her waist.
Back then, touching her had been thoughtless. Easy. Mine in the way teenagers thought things belonged to them just because they loved them enough.
I wished I could hate that boy.
Mostly, I envied him.
"He didn't know," Emily said quietly.
I looked at her.
"That version of you," she said, eyes on the photo. "He didn't know what was coming."
"No."
"Would he have stayed?"
The question hit harder than I expected.
I looked at the boy in the photo.
Then at the woman holding my daughter.
"I don't know," I said.
Emily's face flickered.
Not hurt.
Respect, maybe.
For the honesty.
"I used to tell myself he would," she said.
My throat tightened.
"And then?"
"Then I told myself he wouldn't, because it hurt less than wondering."
I set the frame down carefully.
"I should have answered the phone."
She closed her eyes.
"Hero-"
"No. I should have." My voice went rough. "When you called. When you texted. When I was tired and filming and overwhelmed and pretending that not picking up wasn't a choice. I should have answered."
Her eyes opened, wet and sharp.
"I should have told you I was pregnant."
The words sat between us.
Balanced.
Both true.
Neither cancelling the other out.
Eleanora made a soft sigh against her shoulder.
Emily looked down, almost grateful for the interruption.
"I need to put her down," she whispered. "My arms hurt."
"Cot or travel cot?"
Her eyes went to the old cot.
Dusty.
Violated by photographs.
The centre of the room and all its ghosts.
"Not yet."
"Okay."
I reached for Eleanora.
Emily didn't give her to me immediately.
For a second, she held on.
Not possessive.
Not natural.
But reluctant.
Then she passed her over, and the absence on Emily's chest looked like a wound.
Eleanora stirred as I settled her against me.
"Hey, baby," I murmured. "I know."
She relaxed quickly.
Emily watched.
There was that expression again.
Relief.
Grief.
Guilt.
I wanted to tell her it wouldn't always feel that way.
But I didn't know if that was true.
So I kept my mouth shut.
I carried Eleanora back to the bedroom and laid her carefully in the travel cot. She fussed for a second, then curled towards the rabbit and slept.
When I turned, Emily stood in the doorway behind me.
Arms empty.
Face pale.
"Tea?" she asked.
The question was so ordinary I almost laughed.
"Yes."
"Good. Because I need to do something with my hands that isn't hold a baby or a breakdown."
I followed her to the kitchen.
The flat felt different now that Anna and Jen were gone.
Too large and too small all at once.
The television still played quietly in the living room, the government announcement replaying on a news channel while commentators used words like unprecedented and essential and household mixing.
Household.
Emily filled the kettle without looking at me.
I sat at the kitchen table because standing too close to her felt like a bad idea.
She opened a cupboard, took down two mugs, then froze.
One was mine.
Old.
Chipped on the handle.
A ridiculous mug with a faded joke on it that I had bought from a train station because Emily had been grumpy and I wanted to make her laugh.
She stared at it.
I did too.
"You kept that as well?" I asked.
She placed it on the counter too hard.
"It's a mug."
"It's my mug."
"It was in the cupboard."
"In your cupboard."
She turned on me. "Would you prefer I smashed it?"
"No."
"Then stop looking at me like every object in this flat is a confession."
I leaned back.
"Isn't it?"
Her cheeks flushed.
"I hate you."
"No, you don't."
She froze.
The kettle clicked off.
The silence after was immediate.
I had said it too softly.
Too surely.
Too much like the old days.
Emily turned away, busying herself with tea bags.
"Don't start."
"I'm not starting."
"You are always starting."
I smiled despite myself.
She poured water into the mugs, added milk to mine without asking, then seemed to realise what she had done.
Her hand went still on the carton.
I said nothing.
She looked over her shoulder.
"Don't."
"I didn't."
"You're smiling."
"I'm not."
"You are."
"I'm emotionally smiling."
"That's worse."
She brought the mugs over and placed mine in front of me.
Milk.
No sugar.
Still remembered.
The knowledge sat between us like a touch.
She sat opposite me and wrapped both hands around her mug.
For a while, neither of us spoke.
The rain tapped lightly against the kitchen window. Distantly, through the floor, I could hear something outside the gates. A voice maybe. A car. The world still waiting.
Inside, tea steamed between us.
Emily looked exhausted.
Not glamorous opening-night exhausted. Not angry exhausted. Actually exhausted. Hollowed out by the day, by the baby, by the room, by Jo and Ava and Hayden and me.
I wanted to tell her to sleep.
I knew better.
"Do you think Ava planted the phone herself?" she asked.
I shook my head. "No."
"Why?"
"Ava doesn't like getting her hands dirty."
Emily looked at me over the rim of her mug.
"She was always better at making other people do the dirty work for her."
I looked down at my tea.
There was no jealousy in her voice.
Not anymore.
Once, there had been. Once, Ava's name had been enough to turn Emily's face cold and my stomach inside out. Once, Ava had nearly ended us before we had even properly begun.
But that was old damage.
Known damage.
A wound we had already screamed through, bled through, and stitched back together badly but together.
Emily knew about Ava.
She knew Ava had come before her, when Emily had been with someone else and I had been too young and too selfish to know what to do with wanting a girl who wasn't available.
She knew Ava hadn't disappeared quickly enough when Emily and I finally became us.
She knew that in those early days, when I should have been all in, I had still gone back and forth with Ava like a coward keeping one foot near an exit.
And, somehow, Emily had forgiven me.
Not quickly.
Not easily.
Not prettily.
But she had.
We had moved on from that before Eleanora. Before court. Before the kind of hurt that made an old affair look simple.
"She still blames you," I said quietly.
Emily gave a dry little laugh. "Of course she does."
"She thinks you took me."
"No, Hero. She thinks you gave yourself to me after letting her believe she mattered more than she did." Emily's eyes met mine. "That's different."
I swallowed.
She was right.
She usually was when it came to the ugliest parts of me.
"I hurt her."
"You did."
No softness.
No comfort.
Just truth.
"And you hurt me," she added.
"I know."
"But we dealt with that."
I looked up.
Emily's fingers tightened around her mug.
"Don't look so surprised. I'm not rewriting history just because everything is awful now." Her voice lowered. "Ava was not what broke us."
No.
She wasn't.
Ava had cracked us early.
Pregnancy shattered us later.
Eleanora remade us into opposing sides of a courtroom.
Emily looked towards the hallway, where the nursery door remained open.
"Ava wants to believe she was the original sin," Emily said. "She wasn't. She was a symptom."
I let out a quiet breath.
"That's generous."
"It's not. It's accurate." Her mouth twisted. "You used her because you wanted me and couldn't have me. Then you kept using her because once you had me, you didn't know how to believe I would stay."
I looked down.
"I was young."
"So was I."
"I was selfish."
"Yes."
"I loved you."
Her eyes flicked to mine.
"I know."
The words landed softly.
Not romantically.
Not with forgiveness wrapped around them like a bow.
But with history.
She knew.
That was the thing about Ava. Emily had always known the truth beneath the affair. That didn't excuse it. It didn't erase the betrayal. But she knew Ava had never been the love story.
Ava had been avoidance.
Emily had been the thing I was too scared to lose before I had even properly won her.
"Does it still hurt?" I asked.
Emily stared into her mug for a while.
Then she shrugged.
"Not like it did."
That answer hurt more than yes would have.
Because it meant time had done its job. It meant we had survived that chapter. It meant Ava was reaching back into an old grave and trying to make us mourn something we had already buried.
"She wants to reopen it," Emily said. "That's why she's doing this."
"She wants you to run."
"She wants you to remember the version of me who did." Emily's voice tightened. "But Ava doesn't know this version of us."
I looked at her.
"What version is this?"
Her mouth opened.
Then closed.
For a second, she looked towards the bedroom where Eleanora slept.
"I don't know yet," she whispered.
Neither did I.
But for the first time all day, I wanted to find out more than I feared the answer.
My phone buzzed on the table.
Both of us looked down.
Unknown number.
I didn't recognise it.
Emily went still.
I answered, putting it on speaker without thinking.
"Hello?"
At first, there was silence.
Then a male voice.
Distorted slightly, like the phone was covered.
"Check your garage."
Emily's face drained.
I stood so fast the chair scraped back.
"Who is this?"
The call ended.
For one second, neither of us moved.
Then a crash sounded from downstairs.
Not loud.
But wrong.
Metal against concrete.
Emily was already on her feet.
"No."
I moved towards the hallway.
"Stay here."
She grabbed my arm. "Don't tell me to stay in my own home."
"Eleanora is asleep."
That stopped her.
Her face twisted.
I hated using our daughter as the reason.
I also needed it to work.
"Lock the bedroom door," I said.
Her eyes flashed.
"Hero-"
"Please."
That word did what commands never could.
Her grip loosened.
"Call the police."
"I will."
"No. Now."
I pulled my phone out and dialled, keeping my eyes on her.
"Go to Eleanora."
She hesitated.
Another sound came from below.
This time, the garage alarm chirped once and died.
Emily's eyes widened.
"My car."
Of course.
The garage.
Her car.
Her studio.
The building.
The place she had built to feel safe.
Someone was taking it apart piece by piece.
Rage moved through me.
Calm.
Cold.
I put the phone to my ear and started down the stairs.
Behind me, Emily ran to the bedroom.
Good.
One lock clicked upstairs.
Then another.
I took the stairs quietly while the emergency operator answered.
"Police, please," I said, voice low. "There's an intruder in the building."
The studio level was dark except for the weak grey light through the front windows and the emergency glow from the alarm panel near reception.
I moved through the studio slowly, phone pressed to my ear, the operator asking questions I answered in clipped whispers.
Address.
Situation.
Intruder.
Threats.
Child upstairs.
Lockdown made response times uncertain, she said.
Of course it did.
I reached the internal garage door.
It was ajar.
It should not have been.
My pulse slowed.
That frightened me more than if it had raced.
I pushed it open.
The garage was dim, the overhead light flickering.
Emily's car sat where it had been earlier.
At first, nothing looked wrong.
Then I saw the driver's door hanging open.
A cardboard box sat on the bonnet.
Not there before.
I scanned the garage.
No movement.
No person.
Just the car.
The box.
The smell of petrol.
My stomach turned.
I whispered to the operator, "There's a smell of petrol."
She told me to leave immediately.
I should have.
I didn't.
Because on the top of the box was another photograph.
Me and Emily.
Last night.
Hotel room hallway.
Not the press photo.
Closer.
Private.
Taken from inside the hotel.
Someone had been closer than the photographers.
Someone we knew.
I stepped closer, careful not to touch the car.
The box had writing on it.
Black marker.
FOR THE NURSERY.
My blood turned to ice.
The operator kept talking.
I barely heard.
I looked inside the open car door.
The glovebox was emptied.
Papers scattered.
Registration.
Insurance.
A spare set of studio keys.
My heart stopped.
Keys.
Not stolen.
Copied?
Used?
I backed away.
Then the overhead light flickered again.
Something moved in the reflection of the car window.
I turned.
Too late.
A shape rushed from behind the storage shelves and slammed into me.
The phone flew from my hand.
I hit the concrete hard, pain bursting through my shoulder.
A knee drove into my ribs.
A hand grabbed my shirt.
Not Ava.
Not Jo.
Not a journalist.
Hayden.
His face was wild.
Eyes red.
Rain in his hair.
"You should have stayed away from her," he snarled.
For one stunned second, I could only stare at him.
Then he swung.
Pain exploded across my jaw.
Upstairs, muffled through the ceiling, Eleanora began to cry.
And somewhere above us, Emily screamed my name.