She lifted her face and met his eyes before shaking her head determinedly.
“No. Libby trusted me to be able to do this. I have to try.”
He smiled, feeling an overwhelming sense of love and pride at her determination.
Brave. So fucking brave. He’d always known it, but he’d never truly understood the extent of that bravery. Until now.
Chapter Thirteen
“Take your time,” he said. He felt brittle inside, completely shattered, but if Tina could be brave, so could he. So should he. “I’ll get some tea on.”
He hastily turned away, desperate to get out of the room and away from her. It physically hurt to be in her presence without touching her, and he needed to take a moment to find a way to cope with the devastating impact of the blow he had just been dealt. The double loss of Tina and their baby was massive and crippling, and Harris was amazed he could still stand beneath the weight of despair that threatened to crush him.
After a quick check on the peacefully sleeping infant in the living room, he dashed into the bathroom to rinse his face with ice-cold water. He braced his hands on the basin and stared at his reflection in the mirror blankly; his gaze turned inward as he flipped through the mental images of Tina with Fletcher.
He would have had a nine-year-old son if the baby had lived. He knew she would eventually have told him about the baby, and he wondered how he would have reacted to the news. Harris had really liked Tina, and he would have tried to do right by her. But he was honest enough to admit to himself that—because of his youth—he probably would have resented the burden of responsibility that impending fatherhood would have placed on him. Yet, despite that youthful resentment, he would have loved that kid. Harris knew that much. He would have adored him.
“What a fucking mess you’ve made,” he told his reflection, his voice colored black with bitterness. “What a colossal fucking mess.”
When she crept out of the room five minutes later, it was to find Clara asleep in the living room and Harris nowhere in sight. There was no sign of the promised tea. She knew he couldn’t have gone far, probably to the bathroom, or maybe next door for something that she didn’t have in her pantry.
Clara made a little sound, and Tina froze before tiptoeing over to the portable crib, where Harris must have laid the baby down before coming to check on Tina. She leaned over and sighed in quiet relief when she saw that Clara’s eyes were still closed.
Her eyes lovingly traced over the plump curve of the baby’s cheek, and she wished she could find the courage to run her finger over that sweet, soft skin. Clara’s lips made a cute sucking little motion, and Tina smiled. Fletcher had often done the same thing in his sleep. The baby’s plump fist crept into her mouth, and she suckled lazily.
Clara’s eyes opened unexpectedly, and she pinned Tina with her wide eyes. The dark blue—so very like her father’s—a startling contrast against her golden-brown skin. She frowned, then blinked, and her plump lower lip popped out in a sulky pout just moments before her face screwed up.
Tina looked around wildly for Harris, who had not miraculously reappeared while she’d been gazing at the baby. Clara gasped, making the tiny warning sounds that babies made to let you know that they were not happy and they were going to show you exactly how unhappy they were unless you did something about it fast.
“Oh no . . . ,” Tina pleaded. “No no no, sweetheart. Don’t cry.”
But Clara didn’t want words—she wanted action—and before Tina could overthink it, she reached down and carefully lifted the baby into her arms. She gently cradled Clara’s warm, comforting weight to her chest.
She rocked the baby soothingly and started singing, the words soft at first and the tune familiar. A song she had sung often to lull Fletcher to sleep.
“No One,” by Alicia Keys.
She dropped her cheek to the top of the baby’s soft head, still swaying slowly from side to side. Clara clutched at, and then caught, one of Tina’s curls in her fist, and Tina laughed through the tears that were clogging up her throat and sinuses.
The baby smelled warm and clean and powdery. The scent poignantly familiar. But instead of the unbearable loss she’d have felt before at the prospect of merely holding a baby, all she felt now was love. Love for this beautiful baby and love for the child she had lost. The recollection of holding his warm, sturdy little body had been buried beneath the other memories. Awful memories of picking him up and finding him cold and heavy and unmoving.
The other, more precious memories of holding him, loving him, inhaling his sweet baby scent, all of that came flooding back now, thanks to Clara.