Guilt

Chapter 11

The rain made the sight even more devastating. The sky was dark with clouds and thick water droplets poured down their skins. The graveyard seemed abandoned. No one seemed to visit it ever, except for Emma and Hope, who went there as often as possible.

"Mom?" Hope made her way through the mud and frowned as she looked at the dirt that was covering her shoes. She appeared bigger already, and although she knew it was because she was carrying a child, she didn't like it at all.

"Yes, honey?"

"What do you think dad would have said if he found out I was pregnant?"

Both stopped walking because they'd arrived by the one grave that actually seemed maintained. The letters were deep engraved in the stone and every time again, Emma felt her heart sink in her chest as she looked at the name.

Emma looked at her daughter and saw that she kept her eyes fixated on the grave as well. The girl bent down to put down some flowers and eyed her mother.

"Do you want to hear my honest answer?"

"Yes."

"I think he wouldn't have been very happy. Well, I think it would've taken him time to be happy about the decision you made to keep it. Probably a bit like me."

Hope looked away from her mother again and after she'd touched the stone for a moment, she stood up again. "Do you think I've made the right decision?"

Emma and she had spend a lot of time talking about it already, but the topic came up at least once a day. They'd made plans already for when the baby would arrive, they'd had several doctor's appointments and they'd both read a lot of books - though Emma had raised a child already - but Hope still wasn't entirely convinced of her mother's happiness.

She still wondered whether her mother was truly happy about the fact that she was to have a grandchild. Often, she just found that her mother looked exhausted or stressed when the subject came up.

"Yes," Emma replied with a sincere smile.

"Okay.." Hope said softly, but still wasn't fully satisfied with the answer. She knew Emma only could've replied with yes or no, but she felt like there was something behind the yes of her mother. "Sometimes, I feel like you don't think so," Hope confessed with a soft tone and Emma's face immediately saddened. "You seem stressed and tired when we talk about it and I just wonder whether you think I did the right thing."

"Oh, honey.." Emma embraced her daughter and swallowed thickly. "I don't mean to come off that way. I just.. it brings back some memories for me, and I do feel some sort of pressure. I know that's not fair for me to say, because it's your child. But it did come all of the sudden and the baby's going to affect both of our lives in a way that we have to prepare for as much as we can, and that can be tiring at times. I admit that I was overwhelmed at the beginning, I didn't know what to think or how to react, but now that we're a bit further, I can't wait for the baby to be born."

Emma pulled away from her daughter to look at her, and felt like her daughter was crying, but because of the rain drenching both of them, she couldn't truly tell. Hope smiled weakly.

"Thank you, mom. Your support.. it means a lot to me.." Hope said and shivered. She looked at her father's grave and sighed softly, before she averted her eyes back to her mother. "It's getting quite cold. Do you think dad would mind if we left early, today?"

~~~~

Regina watched as her last class of the week took off. She always tried to keep her classes as interesting as possible, but the sigh of relief every time she dismissed them, didn't go unnoticed to her.