Forgiveness, Trust & Forever

Emily

The security man checked the outside of Clara-Bellas while my daughter slept in the living room.
That sentence should not have made sense.
None of the morning should have made sense.
Police moved through my studio downstairs. Officers spoke in low voices in the hallway. Someone photographed the rear access near the fire exit. Someone else had taken the camera from the nursery, the tiny black eye hidden behind the bookshelf, the thing that had watched a room I could barely survive looking at myself.
Hero sat on the sofa with an ice pack pressed to his ribs, pretending not to be in pain.
Badly.
Titan had finally stopped threatening to come over every forty-five seconds, mostly because Jen had threatened to report him for "aggressive brothering during a national lockdown."
Hero's mum had stayed on the phone until his dad physically took it from her and promised they would call back every hour.
Mimi was outside.
Not at the gate anymore. The police had moved her away from the property.
Jo too.
Two women standing at different edges of my life, both claiming they had not meant to hurt a baby.
As if intention mattered to a one-year-old.
As if Eleanora knew the difference between malice and carelessness.
I should have been thinking about them.
I should have been thinking about Ava.
The camera.
The back door.
The article.
Hayden.
The box in the garage.
The studio call.
The statement Jen was turning into something legally useful.
Instead, I was thinking about the cot.
Not the nursery cot.
The hospital one.
Clear plastic.
Too big and too small at the same time.
Eleanora had been tiny then.
Smaller than seemed possible.
Wires taped to her skin.
A little hat slipping over her forehead.
Her whole body surrounded by monitors and tubes and soft warning sounds that had lived under my skin ever since, even though I had barely been brave enough to hear them in person.
I had not thought about NICU properly in months.
I had trained myself not to.
The same way I trained myself not to think about the operating theatre.
The blue screen.
The white lights.
The smell of antiseptic.
People saying my name too brightly.
Hero not there at first.
Brandon not there.
Mimi crying somewhere beyond a door.
My body open.
My daughter taken out of me by hands I could not see.
My daughter not crying straight away.
That silence had teeth.
Even now.
Even here.
Even with her sleeping a few feet away in the travel cot, her little hand curled around the muslin, alive and warm and furious whenever the world dared inconvenience her.
I stared at her.
Hero noticed.
Of course he noticed.
He noticed everything now, which was inconvenient because I had spent years surviving by becoming unreadable.
"You okay?"
I didn't look at him.
"No."
His answer was immediate and quiet.
"Okay."
The word did not annoy me this time.
Maybe because he sounded as tired of it as I was.
Maybe because it was not pretending.
Just holding a space open.
Eleanora made a little sound in her sleep.
A tiny breathy squeak.
Nothing.
My whole body flinched anyway.
Hero saw that too.
"What is it?"
I rubbed my palm over my chest first, then lower, over the place where my scar sat hidden beneath my waistband. The scar no one could see unless I let them. The scar I barely looked at myself.
"She made that noise in the hospital," I said.
Hero went very still.
The ice pack lowered from his ribs.
"What noise?"
"That little..." I swallowed. "That squeaky sound. In NICU. When she was tiny."
His face changed.
The room changed.
The past walked in without knocking.
I hated it.
I hated that he was there for it now, because he had been there then.
Not at the birth.
Not in the operating theatre.
Not while I lay open and terrified.
But after.
Once he knew.
Every day after.
He had been beside the incubator while I stayed away.
Hero's voice was careful.
"NICU?"
I nodded.
The word sat between us.
Four letters.
A whole nightmare.
Eleanora Brandon Boo Dean Fiennes Tiffin slept through it, because she was a baby and babies were rude like that.
I sat back against the sofa, arms wrapped around myself.
Hero shifted like he wanted to move closer.
He didn't.
Good.
Bad.
I didn't know.
"She was so small," I said.
Hero looked at Eleanora.
"I know."
The words should have comforted me.
They didn't.
Because he did know.
He knew better than I did.
He had stood beside her incubator every day once he knew she existed. He had watched the monitors. Learned the nurses' names. Put his hand through the little opening and let Eleanora wrap her fist around his finger while I stayed in my hospital bed, then in my flat, telling everyone I couldn't go.
Couldn't.
Wouldn't.
The difference still made me sick.
I looked at him.
"I didn't go."
Hero's jaw tightened.
Not with surprise.
Memory.
"I know."
"Don't say it gently."
His eyes held mine.
"I know."
There it was.
Harder.
Truer.
"I refused to visit her in NICU."
The sentence came out plain.
Ugly.
Mine.
Hero closed his eyes for half a second.
When he opened them, there was no shock there.
No new wound.
Just the old one, finally being named in the room with both of us awake enough to bleed from it.
"I kept asking if she was stable," I said. "I asked Mimi. Nurses. Doctors. Anyone. But when they said they could take me to her, I said no. I said I was in too much pain. I said I felt sick. I said I couldn't sit up long enough. Some of that was true."
Hero's face softened in a way I hated.
"So was the rest," I forced out. "I was scared of seeing her."
He didn't speak.
Good.
"I was scared she'd look too fragile and I would break. I was scared she'd look like you. I was scared she'd look like me. I was scared I'd feel nothing." My voice cracked. "I was scared I'd feel everything and not survive it."
Hero looked down at his hands.
His fingers were tense against his knees.
"I was scared too," he said quietly.
"I know."
"No." He shook his head, still not looking at me. "You know I went. You know I was there. That's not the same as knowing I was scared."
Something in my chest pulled.
His eyes lifted to mine.
"There were days I stood beside that incubator and thought if I touched her wrong, she would break. There were days the beeping made me feel sick. There were days I wanted to run out because I didn't know what to do with loving someone that tiny through plastic."
My throat tightened.
"But you stayed."
His face changed.
"Yes."
The word was not cruel.
It did not need to be.
Someone had stayed.
And it had not been me.
"I hated you for it," he said.
My breath caught.
He swallowed.
"I hated walking into NICU and seeing your chair empty. I hated hearing nurses ask if Mum was coming today. I hated that she had wires on her and you were alive and still not there. I hated you so much in those moments I didn't know what to do with it."
Tears blurred my vision.
"Good," I whispered.
"No." His voice cracked. "Not good."
"Yes. It was honest."
He looked away.
His bruised jaw worked like he was biting down on all the old things he had never let himself say because saying them would have made him less noble and more human.
"I was nineteen different versions of angry," he said. "At you. At myself. At everyone. At the fact she was so small. At the nurses for being calm. At my mum for knowing what to do. At you for not coming. At myself for being relieved sometimes that you didn't, because I didn't know what I would say if you walked in."
I stared at him.
That hurt.
More than I expected.
Not because it was unfair.
Because it was not.
"You didn't want me there."
"I wanted you there more than anything." His voice roughened. "And I was afraid I would destroy you if you came."
My hands started shaking.
I folded them together in my lap.
The old memory rose again.
Not NICU this time.
The operating theatre.
Flat on my back.
Numb from the chest down, except not numb enough. Tugging. Pressure. Voices. Too many voices. Someone saying, "Stay with us, Emily." Someone saying, "Baby's coming now." Someone else saying something I couldn't understand because my teeth were chattering too hard.
I had thought birth would feel like pain.
It did.
But more than that, it felt like terror.
Not cinematic terror.
Not screaming with dignity and sweat on my forehead and someone telling me to push.
It was surgical.
Bright.
Cold.
My arms out slightly.
My lower body gone.
My chest too tight.
A blue curtain between me and the thing happening to me.
To us.
Then pressure so violent I thought I might split in half despite already being open.
Then emptiness.
Then silence.
No cry.
Just silence.
My eyes opened.
Hero was watching me like he knew better than to interrupt but hated every second of it.
"I thought she was dead," I whispered.
His face broke.
"Emily."
"I thought she was dead, and I couldn't move. I couldn't sit up. I couldn't see. I kept asking why she wasn't crying, but I don't know if I said it out loud or only thought it." My hands trembled harder. "Then someone said they were taking her. Someone said NICU. Someone said she needed help. And I was still open on the table."
Hero's hand went over his mouth.
Not to stop words.
To hold himself together.
I looked down at Eleanora.
"She was born, and she left the room before I touched her."
Silence.
The living room was too quiet.
Even the police sounds downstairs felt far away now.
Hero's voice came out rough.
"I didn't know that part."
"No."
"I should have."
"You couldn't."
"I should have been there."
The words landed exactly where they always did.
On the old wound.
The one with both our fingerprints.
"You weren't told."
"I should have been."
"I didn't tell you."
"You shouldn't have had to."
I looked at him then.
That was new.
Not a defence.
Not accusation.
Not the old argument where he blamed me for hiding and I blamed him for leaving and the truth sat somewhere underneath us, suffocating.
"You would have come?" I asked.
His answer was immediate.
"Yes."
My throat tightened.
"Even then?"
"Yes."
"When we were awful?"
"Yes."
"When you hated me?"
"I never hated you."
I rolled my eyes because if I didn't, I would cry harder.
"Hero."
"I hated what happened. I hated what you did. I hated myself. I hated that I still loved you when loving you felt like walking into traffic." His voice cracked. "But I never hated you."
My eyes burned.
I looked away.
Eleanora shifted in the travel cot, little fingers flexing.
The scar under my waistband seemed to pulse.
"I didn't hold her until after," I said.
Hero stayed quiet.
"Not properly. Not the way people mean when they say a mother holds her baby." I swallowed. "They brought me photos. Mimi showed me one. Eleanora in the incubator. Tubes. Tape. Little hat. And I looked at it and thought..."
I stopped.
Hero waited.
God, I hated him for learning how.
"I thought, that cannot be mine."
The admission left the room colder.
I wrapped my arms tighter around myself.
"Not because I didn't care. Not because I hated her. But because my body had been cut open and emptied and everyone kept telling me I had a daughter, and all I had was pain and a photograph of a tiny stranger behind plastic."
Hero's face crumpled.
"Emily."
"No. Don't pity me."
"I'm not."
"You are."
"I'm grieving it."
That shut me up.
He leaned forward slightly, then winced because his ribs were apparently still attached to consequences.
"I'm grieving that you were in that much pain," he said. "And that she was in that incubator. And that I was there every day with her, furious at you, without knowing what the operating room had done to you."
I stared at him.
The honesty hurt more than comfort would have.
Good.
Maybe comfort was overrated.
"I didn't want to see her," I whispered.
Hero's eyes closed.
"I know."
"No." I leaned forward, needing him to understand the shape of it. "Not in the normal way people think. Not because I didn't care. Because caring would have killed me. I thought if I saw her like that, I would either feel nothing and prove I was broken, or feel everything and never get out of the room."
"You were traumatised."
"And I still did it."
He opened his eyes.
This time, he nodded.
"Yes. You did."
It hurt.
I needed it to.
"And you went every day," I said.
"Yes."
"You sat with her."
"Yes."
"You touched her."
"Through the incubator at first."
I pressed my fingers to my mouth.
"You knew the nurses."
"A few."
"You knew the machine sounds."
His face twisted.
"Yes."
I breathed out, shaking.
"She knew you first."
Hero's throat moved.
"She heard you first."
"Don't."
"It's true."
"No." I shook my head. "Not like that. I gave her a heartbeat and then abandoned her to machines."
His face broke.
"Emily."
"I did."
"You were hurt."
"I was her mother."
"Both."
The word struck me.
Both.
I almost hated it.
Almost loved it.
It made room where I had spent a year building a wall.
I was hurt.
I was her mother.
Both.
The silence after that was not soft.
It was necessary.
Then Hero spoke again.
"When she was stable enough for me to hold her, I nearly dropped her."
My head snapped up.
"What?"
"Not actually. But in my head, I did. About a hundred times." He looked at Eleanora with something so raw it cut straight through me. "A nurse put her on my chest, all wires and blanket and this ridiculous hat that kept slipping down. And she was so light I thought maybe there wasn't enough of her to stay."
My tears spilled over.
Hero's eyes went distant.
"She made that squeak, and I panicked. The nurse said, 'She's okay, Dad.' And I..." He swallowed hard. "I wasn't ready for the word."
Dad.
The first time someone had called him that.
In NICU.
While I refused to go.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
He closed his eyes.
"I know."
"I don't want you to make it smaller."
"I'm not."
"I don't want you to say I was ill and that explains it all."
"It explains some," he said. "Not all."
The tears came harder.
"Thank you."
His face twisted.
"For what?"
"For not rescuing me from what I did."
He looked at me like the words hurt him.
Maybe they should.
Maybe they hurt us both because they were true.
Eleanora stirred.
A small whimper.
Not fully awake.
Both of us looked.
My body moved before my fear did.
I stood.
Too fast.
My scar pulled with the movement, a dull reminder beneath fabric. Not pain like then. Never like then. But a memory with teeth.
I walked to the travel cot and crouched beside it.
Eleanora's face was scrunched, eyes still closed, one hand searching blindly against the sheet.
I slipped my finger into her palm.
She gripped it.
Firm.
Warm.
Alive.
My knees nearly gave.
Hero's voice came from behind me.
"She used to do that in NICU."
I closed my eyes.
"Don't."
"Emily-"
"No." My voice cracked. "Don't make me picture you there with her."
The room stilled.
I looked down at our daughter.
"I know it happened. I know you were there. I know she needed you. I know I should be grateful."
"You don't have to be grateful."
I laughed without humour.
"I do. That's the horrible part. I am grateful. I'm grateful you went. I'm grateful she wasn't alone. I'm grateful you loved her when I couldn't even walk into the room." My voice broke. "And I hate that I'm grateful because it means you did the thing I couldn't."
Hero was quiet.
Good.
No argument.
No rescue.
I bent lower, my forehead almost touching the edge of the travel cot.
Eleanora's little fingers tightened around mine.
"I'm sorry," I whispered to her.
She slept.
Of course she did.
One-year-olds did not accept apologies on schedule.
"I'm sorry, Boo."
Hero made a sound behind me.
I didn't turn.
The name belonged in the room now.
It had survived Ava's mouth.
It had survived the camera.
It had survived my shame.
It was hers before it was anyone else's.
My tiny Boo.
The baby I had named before I knew whether I could love her out loud.
My free hand moved to my scar.
Held there.
Not hiding.
Holding.
"My body brought her here," I whispered.
Hero's breath caught.
I looked down at Eleanora.
"I hated it for how it happened."
The baby slept on, her hand around my finger.
"But it brought her here."
Hero stood slowly behind me.
I could hear it.
The effort.
The pain.
The stupid determination.
He came beside me but did not crouch. His ribs probably wouldn't let him.
"Yes," he whispered.
I looked up at him.
"She came home to the flat first."
His eyes filled.
I swallowed hard.
"Not to me. Not properly. I was there, but I wasn't. You were the one she knew from NICU. You were the one she had already learned."
Hero's face crumpled.
"And still," he said quietly, "you were the one whose body brought her here."
My hand pressed harder over my scar.
My body.
The one I had hated.
The one that had failed and survived and opened.
The one that had brought Eleanora into a world I was too frightened to face afterwards.
"I hated what it did to me," I whispered.
"I know."
"I hated what she needed from me."
"I know."
"I hated that you could give it."
Hero's eyes shone.
"I know."
"But she came home."
His voice broke.
"Yes."
I looked back down at Eleanora.
Not to a perfect mother.
Not to a healed one.
Not even to a willing one.
But home.
And maybe that was another beginning I had been too ashamed to count.
A traumatic birth.
A NICU cot.
Six days of monitors.
Hero's hand through the incubator.
My empty chair.
A drive home.
A flat above Clara-Bellas.
Me in the back seat watching a baby breathe, terrified she would stop, terrified she wouldn't need me, terrified she would.
"She came home," I said again.
Hero nodded.
"She came home."
The truth settled over me.
Not clean.
Not easy.
But mine.
For all the things I had failed at afterwards, for all the ways fear had warped me, for all the documents and courtrooms and people who had turned my worst moments into definitions - there had been a beginning no one could rewrite.
Eleanora had come home.
I had been broken.
Hero had been scared.
She had lived.
I bent slowly and pressed a kiss to the tiny hand holding my finger.
Not her head this time.
Not accidental.
A choice.
"Hi, Boo," I whispered.
Hero's hand found the small of my back.
I let it stay.
For a few seconds, the living room was quiet.
Then Hero's phone crackled.
I had forgotten Titan was still there.
Of course he was.
Titan never left a crisis until everyone was either safe or too afraid to disobey him.
His voice came through rough and low.
"Brandon knew about NICU."
My whole body stilled.
Hero's hand on my back stopped moving.
"What?" I whispered.
Titan was silent for a beat.
Then, "Mimi called him from the hospital."
My throat closed.
Brandon.
The name entered the room like a ghost who had every right to sit down.
Titan continued, voice rougher than I had ever heard it.
"He called me. He was panicking. Trying not to let you hear it over the phone, I think. He said Boo was in NICU. Said you'd had surgery. Said you were alive but frightened. He wanted to come."
I closed my eyes.
Of course he had.
Of course Brandon, already sick, already fading, had wanted to come to the hospital for me, for Boo, for everyone.
"He couldn't," Titan said.
His voice cracked on the edge.
"I told him he couldn't. He was too ill. He hated me for it."
Tears slipped down my cheeks again.
"He didn't hate you," I whispered.
Titan laughed once.
No humour.
"No. But he tried."
Hero looked at the phone.
"Tie..."
Titan cut him off.
"He made me promise something."
The room stilled.
Even the police sounds outside seemed to fall away.
Titan's voice dropped.
"He made me promise that if anything happened to him before things were right, I would keep an eye on Boo."
My breath left me.
Hero's grip tightened against my back.
Boo.
Not Eleanora.
Not the baby.
Boo.
Brandon's name for her because it had been mine first, because he had held every fragile thing I gave him like it was sacred.
Titan kept going.
"I thought that meant from a distance. I thought it meant making sure you didn't all destroy each other beyond repair. Then court happened. Then Hero had her. Mum and Dad had her. I told myself she was safe."
His voice cracked.
"But Brandon asked me. And I didn't check enough."
"No," I said immediately.
Titan went silent.
"No," I said again, stronger.
Hero looked at me.
I didn't stop.
I stared at the phone like Titan could feel the force of it.
"You do not get to take this too."
Silence.
I wiped at my face with the heel of my hand, but the tears kept coming.
"You loved him. You were grieving him. You were protecting Hero after his accident and all the other disasters we dragged you into. You do not get to turn Ava and Mimi and me and Hero and court and a hidden camera into your failure because Brandon asked you to love a baby you were already grieving through him."
Titan said nothing.
For a long time, nothing.
Then his voice came back, quieter than I had ever heard it.
"He called her our Boo once."
My chest broke.
"What?"
"Brandon." Titan inhaled shakily. "He was half asleep. Morphine. Fever. He said, 'Our Boo better be stubborn.' Then he looked at me like he'd said too much."
Hero's face crumpled.
Mine did too.
Our Boo.
Brandon and Titan.
There it was.
The secret underneath the secret.
Titan had loved Brandon.
Not in the easy, brotherly way people assumed because it was more comfortable.
He had loved him quietly.
Fiercely.
In shadows.
In kitchens.
In hospital rooms.
In the spaces between our chaos where no one had looked closely enough until it was too late to ask how long they had been holding hands under tables and calling it nothing.
I had known.
Not at first.
Then all at once.
A look.
A silence.
Brandon smiling at his phone with his whole face and lying badly when I asked who it was.
Titan going still every time Brandon coughed, like the sound had put a gun to his chest.
They had been together.
Secretly.
Beautifully.
Briefly.
And then Brandon had died, and Titan had grieved him like a brother because that was the only grief he was allowed to show.
"Titan," I whispered.
"I'm not doing a feelings circle," he said immediately.
A laugh burst out of me through tears.
Hero lowered his head, shoulders shaking once.
Titan cleared his throat roughly.
"I just thought you should know. Brandon loved her. Before she was born. Before court. Before any of this."
I looked down at Eleanora.
She slept with one hand open now, my finger released.
Stubborn.
Alive.
Here.
"She is," I whispered.
Titan made a sound that might have been a laugh if it had survived.
"What?"
"Stubborn."
"Good."
Hero's hand stayed at my back.
Warm.
Careful.
I let myself lean into it by a fraction.
Then I looked at the phone.
"Did Ava know?"
The question changed the room.
Hero went rigid.
Titan went silent.
Then, "About me and Brandon?"
"Yes."
"No."
The answer came fast.
Too fast maybe.
Then he said, quieter, "I don't think so."
Hero's jaw tightened.
"If she finds out-"
"She won't," Titan said.
But his voice was wrong.
Because Ava had found Boo.
Ava had found the nursery.
Ava had found the camera.
Ava had found every soft thing we thought was buried.
Why not this?
Why not Brandon's last secret too?
I looked at Hero.
He was already there.
Already thinking it.
"She asked Mimi about Brandon," I said.
Hero nodded slowly.
"And the agency had old connections," he said.
Titan swore under his breath.
Not loudly.
Not theatrically.
Like something cold had moved through him.
"Ava doesn't get him," Titan said.
His voice was no longer rough.
It was steel.
"She doesn't get to use him."
I thought of the statement sitting with Jen.
No private family grief.
No Brandon.
No middle names.
Protected.
For now.
"We won't let her," Hero said.
Titan laughed once, bitter. "You're concussed half the time you make promises."
"I'm not concussed now."
"You're bleeding and possibly cracked."
"Still promising."
Titan went quiet.
Then, softer, "Yeah."
Eleanora stirred again.
This time, her eyes opened briefly.
Heavy.
Confused.
She looked up at me.
At Hero.
At nothing.
Then she made a tiny sound and reached blindly, not for the mobile, not for the rabbit.
For my hand.
I gave it to her.
No hesitation.
Her fingers wrapped around mine.
Hero's breath caught beside me.
Titan was silent on the phone.
I looked down at my daughter.
Our Boo.
Mine.
Hero's.
Brandon's in name.
Titan's in promise.
A child born through blood and fear and lights and silence.
A child who had lived in NICU before she ever came home to the flat above Clara-Bellas.
A child who had known her father's hand through plastic before she knew mine properly.
A child who had survived her first week better than any of us survived the aftermath.
My scar pulled as I bent.
I placed my free hand over it again.
Not hiding.
Holding.
Hero noticed.
His eyes softened.
I didn't look away this time.
"My body brought her here," I whispered.
His breath caught.
"I hated it for how it happened."
Eleanora blinked slowly up at me.
"But it brought her here."
Hero nodded, eyes wet.
"Yes."
"And you stayed with her when I couldn't."
His face tightened.
"Yes."
I swallowed.
"I'm still angry that it was you."
"I know."
"I'm grateful too."
"I know."
"I hate that both are true."
His mouth curved sadly.
"Both."
There was that word again.
Both.
Hurt and mother.
Grateful and angry.
Absent and here.
Broken and trying.
I bent slowly and kissed Eleanora's hand again.
She made a sleepy little sound.
Not a word.
An answer anyway.
"Hi, Boo," I whispered.
This time, when Hero's hand slid from my back to my waist, I let it stay.
Titan's voice came through the phone, rough and quiet.
"Brandon would have loved that."
I closed my eyes.
For once, the grief did not knock me over.
It stood beside me.
With Hero.
With Titan.
With the baby.
With the scar.
With the empty chair in NICU.
With the hand through the incubator.
With the room that had been violated and would one day be reclaimed.
"Yes," I whispered.
"He would."