When You Were Mine (Stone Lake 2)

In the box are two photo albums. One I remember as if it were yesterday. It’s faded, not as bright as it was all those years ago, but it’s the same photo album I gave Luna as a gift years ago. I take it out first leaving the remaining one in the box. I put the box on the bed with the lid and move my hand over the outside of the photo album.

There are so many memories coming back at me. Memories of that time, memories of when Luna was mine and our future was set, memories of us together.

“You kept it,” I whisper reverently, my hand still on top of the album, wondering what exactly this means.

“You gave it to me,” she says simply.

“In your place…I just…I would have figured you’d get rid of everything to do with me.”

“There were days I wanted to. I’m not going to lie to you, but something made me do this. Maybe I hoped that someday you would change your mind.”

I open up the book and on the first page are pictures. The pictures are protected by a sheet of white plastic holding them secure. All of the pictures are pictures of Luna.

The Luna I remember from my past.

The Luna that has haunted me over and over for the last thirteen years. She’s smiling in most of them, a few she’s thoughtful or staring away from the camera. But, in all of them, every last one of them, her stomach is swollen.

She’s pregnant.

I don’t think she’s far along, but you can definitely see the gentle swell of her stomach.

A wave of emotion moves through me, so strong that if I were standing it would bring me to my knees. My hand trembles as I turn the page.

The next page is again pictures of Luna pregnant. This time she’s further along in her pregnancy, her stomach heavier with child—our child. She’s smiling, but it would take an idiot not to see the sadness hiding behind her eyes.

One picture catches my eye, and I can’t stop staring at it. Luna’s wearing a sky-blue sundress. Her hair is longer than I’ve ever seen it and falls way down to the small of her back. It’s cascading over her shoulders, the strands flowing softly to rest against her swollen breasts. She’s beautiful, so beautiful that I ache wishing I had made a different decision all those years ago. Her hand is under her stomach cradling the roundness that is our child.

God… I should’ve been there.

I should’ve been there with my family. Tears sting my eyes, but I let them fall unashamed.

“You’re beautiful pregnant,” I tell her, my voice thick with tears and strained from the emotion clogging my throat.

“Keep looking, Gavin, I promise it gets better.”

It might be my imagination, I don’t know, because I can’t tear my eyes away from the album, but I think I hear tears in Luna’s voice, as if she’s struggling with this as much as I am. Whatever else has gone on through the years, when Luna and I are together, it’s like we connect and feel what one another are experiencing. It was like that thirteen years ago, and it’s still like that today.

That just doesn’t happen. It can’t. It has to mean something…

I turn the page, and at first, I’m not sure what I’m looking at. These photos are different, black and white printed out on paper and of an object that I can’t really make out. Then, it hits me like a ton of bricks. I pull back the plastic taking one of the photos out and holding it up close. It’s an ultrasound, a picture of Joshua when he was still inside Luna. There’s a white arrow pointing to one part of the photo which is little more than a white blob. There are words out from the arrow.

It’s a boy.

The tears fall harder now, and I hurry and put the picture back up, not wanting to get it wet. Pages after pages of pictures assault me. With each new one I see, another wound deep inside of me slashed open.

There are so many pictures. Pictures of the day Joshua was born, his first bath, pictures of him eating, pictures of his first Christmas, Easter, Halloween—they’re all there. All significant, and all days I will grieve forever, because I didn’t get to experience them.

“How…” I stop talking because my chest is so tight, the pain so intense, my breath completely ragged, that I can’t finish the question. I fight it down and try again. “How far do the pictures go?” I ask, alternately hating the fact that this is the only way I can experience these moments of my child and being so fucking thankful, because I get to see them. I’m feeling so much that I just don’t know how to express it.