Forgiveness, Trust & Forever

Emily

Ava sent the second photograph at 10:17.
I knew the time because after the first one, every minute had become something sharp.
10:08 - Officer Grant took Hero's phone for evidence logging, then returned it because Jen threatened everyone into understanding that losing access to our phones was not practical while the building was under active threat.
10:11 - the security man found an old scratch near the rear studio lock that matched nothing useful yet.
10:13 - Titan stopped speaking for three full minutes, which somehow scared me more than his threats.
10:14 - Eleanora fell asleep again against my chest.
10:16 - Hero tried to stand and nearly folded in half.
10:17 - my phone lit up.
Unknown number.
Image attached.
For one second, no one moved.
Not me.
Not Hero.
Not Jen on the speaker.
Not Officer Grant, who had just stepped back into the living room with an evidence bag in one hand and the professional exhaustion of a man who had not expected his morning to involve actors, babies, hidden cameras, and lockdown rules.
Hero reached for the phone.
I got there first.
"Emily," he said.
"No."
My voice was calm.
Too calm.
The kind of calm that did not belong to peace.
The kind that belonged to someone standing barefoot on broken glass and choosing which piece to pull out first.
Jen's voice came through the speaker. "Do not open it without the officer present."
"He's present," I said.
"Emily."
"I'm not hiding from my own life."
Hero's face tightened.
"That's not what this is."
"Yes, it is."
"No, this is Ava trying to traumatise you in instalments."
I looked at him.
His bruised face was pale, his jaw clenched, his eyes bright with fear and fury and a love so obvious it felt indecent in front of police.
"She already has," I said softly.
The words landed.
Hero stopped.
Eleanora breathed against my chest, warm and heavy and unaware that another piece of our past had arrived wrapped in poison.
I turned to Officer Grant.
"Can I open it?"
He hesitated.
Jen answered for him. "Let him photograph the screen first if possible. Then open it. No replies. No deletion."
Officer Grant nodded.
He photographed the notification.
The camera click made my stomach twist.
Then he looked at me.
"Ready?"
No.
"Yes."
I opened it.
The second photograph filled the screen.
The nursery again.
Same angle.
The chair.
The cot.
The green walls.
Me.
Heavily pregnant, though not pregnant enough.
That was the cruelest part.
Not full term.
Not ready.
Thirty weeks.
Standing beside the cot with one hand braced on the rail and the other pressed low under my stomach, my face turned to the side, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open slightly.
Not crying.
Not smiling.
In pain.
I remembered that day instantly.
Not false labour.
Not a scare that stopped.
That was the day my body began forcing Eleanora into the world ten weeks before she should have come.
Thirty weeks.
Too early.
Too soon.
Too terrifying.
I had stood beside that cot, gripping the rail through a contraction, whispering to Boo that I was sorry.
Sorry she was coming into this.
Sorry I wasn't ready.
Sorry her father didn't know she was almost here.
Sorry I had made everything so impossible that even love looked like a threat.
Under the photograph, Ava had written one sentence.
Looks like a mother to me. Shame you stopped pretending once she arrived.
The room blurred.
Not because I was going to faint.
Because rage had tears in it too.
Hero swore.
Low.
Violent.
Titan said something through the phone that made Jen snap his name like a warning.
Officer Grant took another photograph of the screen.
I stared at the image.
At me.
At thirty weeks.
At the hand on my stomach.
At the pain on my face.
At the cot waiting for a baby who would not sleep in it for weeks because she would be born too early and taken to NICU before I could even touch her.
Ava wanted shame.
Again.
She wanted me to see myself caught in the act of wanting and feel exposed.
Dirty.
Hypocritical.
She wanted me to believe the photograph proved that I had failed twice.
Once by caring before birth.
Once by collapsing after.
My daughter slept against me.
Her cheek warm through my jumper.
Her little hand tucked near her mouth.
I looked at the photograph again.
Looks like a mother to me.
My throat tightened.
Because she was right.
Not in the way she wanted.
Not cruelly.
But right.
I had looked like a mother.
In pain.
Terrified.
Alone.
Trying.
I zoomed in before anyone could stop me.
Hero stepped closer. "Em."
"Wait."
My fingers spread over the screen.
The image enlarged.
There, tucked half under the cot sheet, was the tiny yellow blanket I had bought in Southampton on the same day as the mobile.
I had forgotten the blanket.
No.
That was a lie.
I had buried the blanket in myself so deeply that remembering it felt like digging into scar tissue.
It had little stitched bees on it.
Ridiculous.
Bright.
Soft.
I bought it because Brandon had once called me "queen bee" after I tried to organise everyone's hospital visiting rota like a military operation while he was the one dying.
Boo's blanket.
The one I thought would come home around her.
The one that never made it to NICU.
The one I could not find after she finally came home from the hospital.
The one I thought I had packed away and then convinced myself I had never bought at all.
"It's there," I whispered.
Hero looked at the screen.
"What?"
"The blanket."
His eyes searched the photograph.
Then found it.
His face changed.
"Is that the one from the box?"
The box in the garage.
FOR THE NURSERY.
The baby items police had taken.
My chest tightened.
"Yes."
Officer Grant leaned slightly closer.
"Ms Dean?"
"That blanket was in the nursery before Eleanora was born," I said. "I couldn't find it after she came home. I thought I'd misplaced it."
Hero's expression hardened.
"You didn't."
No.
I hadn't.
Someone had taken it.
Or moved it.
Or kept it.
Or photographed it and returned it and taken it later.
My home had been entered like a memory people could rearrange.
I handed the phone to Officer Grant before I threw it.
He bagged the image reference, logged the number, and spoke into his radio.
Jen's voice was quiet.
"Emily, are you with me?"
I looked down at Eleanora.
"Yes."
"What are you feeling?"
"That sounds like therapy."
"It's also evidence management. Answer."
I almost laughed.
Hero didn't.
His eyes stayed on me like he was afraid one wrong blink would be the thing that broke me.
"What am I feeling?" I repeated.
I looked at the screen in Officer Grant's hand.
At pregnant me.
At pain.
At the cot.
At the blanket.
Then I looked at Hero.
"At first? Sick."
He nodded once.
"And now?"
I swallowed.
"Angry."
Jen exhaled. "Good."
"But not ashamed."
The room shifted.
Hero's face broke open.
I hated that.
Loved it.
Didn't know what to do with it.
"She thinks that photo humiliates me," I said. "But I was in labour."
Hero's eyes widened slightly.
Realisation struck him all at once.
Not false alarm.
Not a bad day.
The day.
The beginning of the emergency.
The first step towards the operating theatre, the blue curtain, the silence, the NICU cot.
"You never told me," he said.
"I didn't tell you anything."
The old truth landed between us.
Not accusation.
Not apology.
Just fact.
"I nearly did," I said.
His throat moved.
"What?"
"That day. I wrote messages. To you."
Hero went still.
"What did they say?"
I looked away.
The television was still off, its black screen reflecting us in the living room like ghosts.
Me holding Eleanora.
Hero bruised beside me.
Officer Grant by the door.
A crime scene on the other side of the hallway.
Titan and Jen trapped in tiny speakers, listening to history crawl out from under floorboards.
"I don't remember exactly."
Liar.
I did.
Of course I did.
Hero waited.
So did everyone else.
I hated them all a little.
"I wrote, 'I think she's coming.'"
Hero closed his eyes.
The words hit him physically.
I saw it.
I kept going because stopping would be worse.
"Then I deleted it and wrote, 'I'm scared.' Then I deleted that too." My voice cracked. "Then I wrote, 'I hate you for not being here even though I made sure you weren't.'"
Hero's face twisted.
"Emily."
"I didn't send any of them."
"I know."
"I wanted you there and I didn't want you to have the right to be there. I wanted you to come anyway and I wanted to punish you for everything that would have made you come." I laughed once, hollow. "Very reasonable."
Hero's eyes were wet.
"It makes sense."
"No, it doesn't."
"It does to me."
That shut me up.
He looked down at Eleanora.
Then back at the photograph.
"You were in labour."
"Yes."
"At thirty weeks."
"Yes."
"With her."
"Yes."
"In the nursery."
"Yes."
"And Ava thinks that's shame."
I looked at him.
His voice had changed.
Less broken.
More dangerous.
I knew that look.
Not violence.
Purpose.
He looked at Officer Grant.
"That photo proves the camera was active before the birth."
Officer Grant nodded. "Yes."
"It proves unauthorised surveillance of a pregnant woman in a private residence."
"Yes."
"It proves whoever controlled that camera had access to her home before the child was born."
"Yes."
"It proves surveillance of the child's nursery before the child was even born."
The officer's expression hardened.
"Yes."
Emily Dean, I thought distantly.
Pregnant woman.
Private residence.
Child.
Words clean enough for paperwork.
Too clean for what it felt like.
But useful.
Maybe that was why Jen made everything into documents.
Documents could hold what bodies could not.
Jen's voice came through.
"And it proves the sender is distributing material obtained through unlawful surveillance. This is no longer just threats and harassment. This is much bigger."
Titan said, "Good. Bury her."
"Titan," Jen warned.
"What? Legally."
"Still don't say bury to a lawyer."
Hero's eyes stayed on mine.
"Emily."
"What?"
"Can Jen use this?"
My stomach tightened.
Use it.
The photograph of me thirty weeks pregnant, in labour, in pain, in the room where I had whispered apologies to a baby I later refused to visit in NICU.
Everything in me wanted to scream no.
No one gets it.
No one sees.
No one touches.
But Ava already had.
Ava had seen.
Ava had touched.
Ava had turned it into a weapon.
Maybe making it evidence was the only way to take it out of her hands.
I looked at Officer Grant.
"Who has to see it?"
"Investigating officers. Digital forensics. Potentially CPS if charges proceed."
"Public?"
"No."
"Court?"
"Possibly, if it becomes relevant."
My breath stuck.
Court.
Again.
Always court.
Hero moved closer.
"Not unless we have to."
I looked at him sharply.
"We?"
He held my gaze.
"Yes."
Our daughter slept on me.
His hand hovered near my elbow.
Not touching.
There if I wanted.
This time, I leaned into it.
Just enough for his fingers to settle against my sleeve.
"We," I said quietly.
Hero's breath left him.
Jen said nothing.
Titan, miraculously, said nothing.
Officer Grant pretended not to witness anything at all.
Professionalism had its uses.
"Yes," I said. "Use it. Legally. Privately. Whatever makes it stop."
Jen's voice softened.
"Okay."
I looked at the photograph one more time before Officer Grant locked the evidence note.
Pregnant me.
Thirty weeks.
Eyes shut.
Hand on Boo.
I forced myself not to look away.
"I was there," I whispered.
Hero's fingers tightened slightly on my sleeve.
"Yes."
"I keep forgetting that."
"I think everyone made you forget."
My throat burned.
"Including me."
"Yes."
The honesty didn't hurt as much this time.
Maybe I was getting used to bleeding in front of him.
That was probably unhealthy.
Or intimacy.
Hard to tell with us.
Officer Grant stepped aside to take another call.
Jen muted herself briefly to speak to someone else.
Titan stayed silent.
Suspiciously silent.
I looked at Hero's phone on the sofa.
"Tie?"
No answer.
"Titan?"
A pause.
Then his voice came, rougher than before.
"I'm here."
"You're quiet."
"I do that occasionally."
"No, you don't."
Hero almost smiled.
I sat slowly on the sofa, Eleanora still tucked against me. Hero eased himself down beside us with a badly disguised wince.
Titan breathed through the phone.
"I remember the day Brandon found out you were in labour."
My entire body went still.
Hero's head snapped up.
"What?"
Titan exhaled.
"He knew before Mimi called. Not properly. He just..." A pause. "He knew you."
My throat tightened.
Of course he did.
Brandon had always known when something was wrong with me before I did. It was one of the most annoying things about him, and I missed it so badly it felt like a physical organ had been removed.
Titan continued, voice low.
"He kept checking his phone. Wouldn't say why. I asked if it was you. He said no. Which meant yes."
A tiny laugh escaped me.
"Terrible liar."
"The worst," Titan said.
Hero leaned forward carefully, elbows on knees, eyes fixed on the phone.
Titan went on.
"He was at mine that day. Supposed to be resting. He was doing the opposite. Pacing. Coughing. Pretending he wasn't in pain. Being generally irritating."
"Brandon," I whispered.
"Yeah." Titan's voice softened around the name before he could stop it. "Then he sat down all of a sudden and said, 'Boo's coming.' Just like that."
My chest cracked.
Boo's coming.
Not the baby.
Not Emily's baby.
Boo.
Hero closed his eyes.
I looked down at Eleanora.
"She was," I whispered.
Titan went quiet.
"She was coming," I said again. "She came that day."
A sound came from Hero.
Broken.
Small.
Titan inhaled shakily.
"I know."
The words hurt.
Because that was the day everything began and ended at once.
The nursery photograph.
The messages I never sent.
The contractions I tried to argue with.
The emergency.
The birth at thirty weeks.
Eleanora being taken away before my arms learned her weight.
Hero finding out and going to NICU every day while I refused.
Titan continued.
"He wanted to call."
My eyes closed.
"He did call."
I looked up.
"What?"
Titan's silence told me I was not going to like the answer.
"He called you," he said.
My stomach dropped.
"No."
"He did."
"I would remember."
"You didn't answer."
The room stilled.
My phone had been on silent that day.
I remembered suddenly.
I had put it face down in the nursery because every contraction made me furious at the possibility of needing anyone.
Especially Hero.
Especially Brandon, who was sick and still would have tried to come if I sounded frightened.
"He left a voicemail," Titan said.
My hand tightened around Eleanora.
"No."
Hero looked at me.
"Emily?"
I shook my head.
"No, I... I never heard it."
Titan was quiet.
Then, "Mimi deleted it."
The room went ice cold.
"What?" I whispered.
Titan swore softly.
"She told me later. After everything. She said you were spiralling, and Brandon's voice would have broken you. He sounded ill. He was trying to be cheerful. She said she couldn't let you hear him like that while you were already scared."
My body went numb.
Mimi.
Again.
Another choice made for me.
Another soft thing taken because someone thought they knew what I could survive.
Hero's face hardened.
"Titan."
"I know."
I stared at the wall.
At nothing.
At everything.
"What did he say?" I asked.
Titan's breath shook.
"Tie," Hero said quietly.
"What did he say?" I repeated.
Titan was silent for so long I thought he would refuse.
Then his voice came through, barely steady.
"He said, 'Em, if this is what I think it is, you're going to pretend you're fine, so I'm going to pretend I believe you.'"
My eyes closed.
Brandon.
The room disappeared.
"He said, 'Tell Boo not to be dramatic. That's my job. Also Hero's, but don't tell him I said that.'"
Hero made a broken sound beside me.
Titan kept going.
"He said, 'You're allowed to be scared. You're allowed to want him. You're allowed to hate that you want him. Very on brand for you, honestly.'"
A sob caught in my throat.
Eleanora stirred against me.
I pressed my mouth to her head and tried to keep breathing.
Titan's voice cracked.
"And then he said, 'If she comes today, tell her Uncle Brandon already loves her, even if her mother is a nightmare and her father needs supervision.'"
Hero covered his face.
I broke.
Not loudly.
Not dramatically.
Just completely.
Tears fell onto Eleanora's hair.
My body folded carefully around her, not crushing, not shaking too hard, but holding on because she was the only solid thing in the room.
Mimi had deleted it.
Mimi had taken Brandon's message from the day my daughter was born and decided it was mercy.
I understood why.
I hated her for it anyway.
Hero's hand came to my back.
This time, I leaned fully into it.
No fraction.
No pretending.
Fully.
"He left her a message," I whispered.
Titan's voice was raw.
"Yes."
"And I never heard it."
"No."
Eleanora made a sleepy, irritated sound, as if grief was disturbing her nap.
It almost made me laugh.
Almost.
"Do you have it?" I asked.
Titan didn't answer.
My heart stopped.
"Tie."
Hero lowered his hand from his face.
"Do you have it?"
Titan exhaled.
"Mimi sent it to me after she deleted it from your phone. She said she couldn't keep it."
The air left my lungs.
"You have it?"
"Yes."
I stared at Hero.
Hero stared back.
Everything in his face said the same thing I felt.
A door.
Another one.
But this one wasn't Ava's.
This one was Brandon's.
Mine.
Boo's.
Titan's.
"Send it," I whispered.
Titan said nothing.
"Please."
His voice came out strangled.
"Emily, he sounds bad."
"I know."
"No. You don't."
"Then let me."
Hero's hand on my back went still.
Titan breathed once.
Twice.
Then he said, "Okay."
A few seconds later, my phone lit.
Not unknown.
Titan.
Audio file.
My hand shook so hard I almost dropped it.
Hero reached, then stopped.
"Do you want me to-"
"No."
I looked down at Eleanora.
She slept again, one hand pressed between us, safe inside a grief she was too young to know carried her name.
"I want her here," I said.
Hero understood.
He shifted closer.
Not touching the phone.
Just me.
I pressed play.
Static.
A rustle.
Then Brandon's voice.
Thinner than I remembered.
Cheerful in the way people were when they were trying not to sound like they were dying.
"Em."
One word.
I folded instantly.
Hero's hand pressed firmer against my back.
Brandon coughed, muffled it badly, then laughed under his breath.
"Sorry. Very glamorous. Don't tell anyone."
A sob broke out of me.
He continued.
"If this is what I think it is, you're going to pretend you're fine, so I'm going to pretend I believe you."
Hero bowed his head.
I held Eleanora tighter.
"Tell Boo not to be dramatic. That's my job. Also Hero's, but don't tell him I said that."
A wet laugh tore through me.
Hero laughed too, broken and quiet.
Brandon's voice softened.
"You're allowed to be scared, Em. You're allowed to want him. You're allowed to hate that you want him. Very on brand for you, honestly."
The room blurred.
I could see him.
Not dying.
Not sick.
Brandon.
Smirking from a hospital bed like death was an inconvenience he planned to mock until it got bored.
Then his voice changed.
Lost some of the joke.
"If she comes today, tell her Uncle Brandon already loves her, even if her mother is a nightmare and her father needs supervision."
Hero made another broken sound.
Brandon inhaled shakily.
"And tell her..."
A pause.
Long enough that I heard the pain.
The effort.
Titan's faint voice in the background saying, "That's enough."
Brandon ignoring him, obviously.
"Tell her our Boo better be stubborn."
My hand flew to my mouth.
Hero's eyes shut.
The audio crackled.
Brandon whispered then, not to me maybe.
Maybe to Titan.
Maybe to God.
Maybe to the baby beneath my ribs he never got to meet in daylight, because she came too soon and he was already too ill.
"Love you."
The message ended.
No music.
No dramatic final note.
Just silence.
I stared at the phone.
Eleanora slept against me.
Hero cried beside me.
Actually cried.
Silent tears slipping down bruised cheeks, his split mouth pressed tight like he was ashamed of every one.
I reached for him without thinking.
My fingers touched his jaw.
Careful of the bruise.
He opened his eyes.
"I'm sorry," he whispered.
"For what?"
"I don't know."
That broke a laugh out of me.
Wet.
Ruined.
Real.
"Me too."
Titan was silent on the line.
I picked up the phone.
"Tie?"
A breath.
"I'm here."
"Thank you."
He said nothing.
"Titan."
"What?"
"I mean it."
Another silence.
Then, roughly, "He wanted you to have it."
I closed my eyes.
"I know."
"He loved her."
"Yes."
"He loved you."
"Yes."
A pause.
Then, so low I almost missed it, "He loved me."
My chest cracked open again.
Hero looked at the phone.
Emily Dean, I thought.
Do not run from this.
Not this.
Not him.
"Yes," I said.
Titan breathed out.
"He did."
"He loved you," I repeated.
The words were not mine to give him.
But maybe they were mine to confirm.
Because I had seen it.
In the hand dropped too quickly.
In the phone smiles.
In the way Brandon said Titan's name differently when he thought no one listened.
"He really did, Tie."
Titan made a sound that was almost nothing.
Then he hung up.
The line went dead.
For a second, none of us moved.
Then Hero looked at his phone.
"He'll hate that he did that."
"Yes."
"He'll pretend the signal dropped."
"Yes."
"He'll be unbearable later."
"Absolutely."
Hero laughed softly.
Then winced.
I wiped my face, then looked at Eleanora.
She was still asleep.
Through Ava's messages.
Through police.
Through Brandon's voice.
Through us breaking open around her.
Still asleep.
Stubborn.
"Our Boo better be stubborn," I whispered.
Hero's eyes moved to her.
"She is."
I looked at him.
Properly.
His face was ruined.
Not just by Hayden.
By the day.
By the past.
By the message from a dead best friend telling our daughter she was loved on the day she came too early into a world none of us were ready for.
"I wish I'd heard it then," I said.
"I know."
"I think it would have broken me."
"Maybe."
"I hate that Mimi chose for me."
"I know."
"I hate that part of me understands why."
Hero nodded.
"Both."
Both.
That word again.
I was beginning to think it was the only honest word in the English language.
The phone in my hand buzzed again.
I flinched so hard Eleanora stirred.
Hero's eyes went instantly cold.
Unknown number.
Another image.
No.
Not now.
Not after Brandon.
Not with his voice still in the air.
I didn't open it.
I couldn't.
Officer Grant stepped forward from the doorway, where I hadn't realised he had returned.
"I'll take it."
I handed him the phone like it was burning me.
He photographed the notification.
Then opened it himself.
His face changed.
Not horror this time.
Confusion.
"What?" Hero asked.
Officer Grant looked at me.
Then at Hero.
"It's not a photograph from the nursery."
"What is it?" I asked.
He turned the screen carefully.
A screenshot.
A message thread.
Between Ava and someone saved only as M.
Mimi.
My stomach dropped.
The visible message from Mimi read:
Don't use Brandon. I mean it. Emily won't survive that.
Ava's reply:
Then she should have thought of that before she took Hero from me.
Another message from Mimi:
This was never about you and Hero. There's a baby. Stop.
Ava:
There was my baby too. Nobody stopped for me.
I stared.
Mimi had warned her.
Too late.
After giving too much.
But she had tried.
The anger did not leave.
It shifted.
Complicated itself.
I was tired of complicated.
I wanted clean hatred.
Apparently, my life had no interest in offering that.
A new message came through beneath the screenshot.
Unknown number.
Ask your sister how long she kept defending you before she realised you were indefensible.
I laughed.
Out loud.
Everyone looked at me.
Hero stared.
"Emily?"
I laughed again.
Not because it was funny.
Because Ava had miscalculated.
Finally.
Completely.
She thought showing me Mimi defending me would break me.
But all it did was remind me that my sister had been stupid and angry and reckless and still, somewhere in the wreckage, mine.
Not forgiven.
Not inside the flat.
Not safe yet.
But mine.
I looked at Officer Grant.
"Send that to Jen too."
He nodded.
Hero watched me.
"What?"
I wiped my cheeks.
"She wants me alone."
His face softened.
"Yes."
"I'm not."
"No."
I looked down at Eleanora.
At the baby asleep against me.
At the child with Brandon's message now returned to her world.
At Hero beside me.
At Titan somewhere in Winchester pretending he hadn't just cracked open.
At Mimi outside, guilty and soaked and not forgiven but not erased.
At Jen, probably already sharpening legal knives.
At Clara-Bellas, invaded but still standing.
"I'm not alone," I said again.
This time, I believed it.
Ava sent one more message.
No image.
Just words.
You will be.
I looked at it.
Then blocked the number.
No shaking.
No hesitation.
Hero's hand found mine.
Eleanora slept between us.
And somewhere in the room, Brandon's voice still seemed to linger, amused and stubborn and impossible to kill.
Tell her our Boo better be stubborn.
I kissed the top of my daughter's head.
"She is," I whispered.
Then I looked at Hero.
"So am I."