The Best Years

29

"Bubba, please go to sleep for mommy." Holland whispered into the night as she stood, bouncing ever so slightly on her toes trying to lull her baby boy back to sleep as he cried.  If he didn't stop soon, she too would be in tears.

She had been up with him half the night, trying everything she could think of and yet her baby, usually an amazing sleeper, continued to fuss. It was like he could tell that something was wrong. That something, or better yet, someone, was missing.

"You alright, Holland?" Joy asked as she stepped into the nursery.

"Yeah, just trying to get Knox back to sleep. I'm so sorry if we woke you up."

"Don't apologize, love. Babies cry. Can I?" She asked, stepping forward and placing her hand on Holland's shoulder.

Holland nodded and shifted Knox until he rested safely in his grandmother's arms. Joy held the pacifier in his mouth and rocked him gently until his cries began to soften.

"A miracle worker." She pronounced and Joy laughed.

"Not at all. Just a mum who's been through this a time or two. Cal said he usually isn't a fussy baby."

"No, but I swear it's like he can tell that Chloe's missing and Calum and I are sad."

"Babies are perceptive, they can sense when things are off, when their parents aren't feeling right."

"After tonight I believe it." Holland said, moving to sit on the floor as Joy took a spot on the rocker.

" 'm I missing out on the party?" Mali asked softly as she stepped through the open door to join them in the dimly lit nursery.

"Fuck. I'm so sorry you got woken up too."

"No worries, just jet lag. Besides, Cal wanted me to talk to you." Mali shrugged and Holland raised an intrigued eyebrow.

"At three am?"

"Seems as good a time as any." Mali said, the sides of her mouth pulling up to a small smile. "He's worried about you, thinks you're blaming yourself for the situation with Chloe."

Holland bit back her lower lip and her eyes stung with the feeling of tears daring to spill.

"Oh, Holland. You have to know that's not your fault." Joy said definitively as she focused her attention on her daughter-in-law while steadily rocking her grandson.

"Isn't it though?" Holland asked after a moment of silence, her eyes darting around the room and focusing on anything else that wasn't Calum's mother or sister.

They could tell she had more to say still so they remained silent, waiting while she collected her thoughts and the courage needed to say them audibly.

"If I wouldn't have put her in that competition, if I had entered her with our last name, if I wouldn't have signed the media release. There are so many things I could have done differently that would have either resulted in her information not being publicly available or at least kept her real name out of the tabloids. If her real name wasn't printed this woman would have never known..." Holland's words drifted off and a choked sob fell past her lips without permission.

"You can't possibly know that she wouldn't have found out about Chloe another way or that it wasn't another way as it is." Mali offered, reaching out slowly and pressing the palm of her hand to Holland's forearm.

"Yeah, well, she didn't find her in the three and a half years before it so I'm thinking the article was a rather large contributing factor. That's not even the worst of it though. We know nothing about this woman. Yes, I get the state put her through background checks and all but tons of terrible people have passed those before and then gone on to commit heinous crimes. What if Chloe isn't safe? What if she's mean? What if the lady hurts her? I didn't give birth to her, but that's my baby." Holland said with a whimper, her bottom lip trembling as hot tears raced down her cheeks.

"Holland..." Joy said, the older woman studying her with kind eyes as she leaned forward and handed Knox back to his mother, "You can't allow yourself to think like that."

"How am I supposed to think anything else? She can't call me to tell me she's okay. I don't know who she's with or where she is. It's torture."

"I'm sorry you're going through this, Holls, but Mum is right. You have to trust that everything is going to work out, that this will only be for a few more days and then it'll just be a rough week in your memory. A blip in you guys perfect life with both your kids."

"And what if it's not? What if the judge decides to take her away from us?" Holland asked, her voice and eyes desperate.

Joy nor Mali had anything to say to that, what could they possibly say? They couldn't promise her that it wouldn't happen because it was a very real and very scary possibility. The silence was deafening as Mali and her mother exchanged worried glances. Mali felt defeated, her brother had asked her to talk to Holland in the hopes of making things better, of helping to relieve his troubled wife from some of the immense guilt she was harbouring but instead she feared their chat had the opposite effect and instead had only served to make things worse.

*

The rest of their week without Chloe trickled by, the hours and days felt as if they would never end. Their friends and family were supportive, doing their best to be understanding of both Caluma and Holland's short tempers and lack of desire to do anything apart from be with each other. Holland couldn't bear to be apart from her husband nor out of sight from Knox. It was as if her boys were the only things keeping her afloat and without them, she was drowning. Calum seemed to share the same needs, lingering in the same rooms as her and his eyes constantly searching for them.

Sleep was fitful and practically non existent. They tossed and turned and tended to Knox, more fussy at night than he had been in the entire month and a half since he had been born and the result was a desolate pair, faces full of nothing but exhaustion until the morning arrived when Chloe was set to return to them.

Holland was up at five am, feeding Knox in the front room with the front door open and the TV on though her eyes didn't stray from the driveway. Logically, she knew it was far too early in the morning for Chloe to be home yet but that did nothing to stop her from staring unmoving at the empty patch of concrete.

Calum joined her around seven, his parents and Mali venturing from their rooms about nine and falling into the routine they'd developed over the past week of forcing Calum and Holland to eat. Just after lunch Holland finally left her post on the sofa, a rushed walk towards the bathroom as she lost all the contents of her stomach as she had multiple times that week. Calum would have feared she were pregnant if not for the fact that they still hadn't even been cleared for sex following Knox's birth. At first he had also considered the fact that she might be doing it on purpose but Bulimia had never been her signature and he knew she hated vomiting. She'd simply worried herself sick.

Just after one there was a rumbling outside, the distinctive sound of Elise's aging minivan as it pulled into their drive that caused both Holland and Calum to stand to their feet and move quickly towards the door.

"Mommy! Daddy!" Came the excited squeal of their little girl and she freed herself from her booster seat and rushed forward into their waiting arms.

AN: Yay! Chloe's home!

Only one more chapter and the epilogue left! I'll be posting daily until this is up then back to every other day updates for the new book!

How will this turn out?

I posted the first chapter of my new book "Who do you love?" I hope you'll check it out! It'll begin updating when this wraps up!

Also, superbloom is amazing and I'm so proud of Ash 🥺

ILY
Sav 🖤