As he looked up, the toddler still firm in his grasp, Catherine stepped aside so that he got a full view of Lily.
He paled and slowly let the child slide down his body until she found her own footing. He let her go, and she ran pell-mell across the room to where Catherine stood, shouting “Mama” the entire way.
“Lily?” he croaked. “My God, is it you?”
“Charles,” she said by way of acknowledgement.
“Dear God.”
Catherine tugged at the toddler and then looked to Charles. “I’ll leave you two to talk.”
With that, she walked out of the family room, leaving Lily and Charles staring at each other across several feet of distance.
“I came because there’s something I need to say,” Lily said evenly. She was proud that she hadn’t broken down even if her heart was breaking on the inside. How long had he waited to remarry and have other children? Had she and Rose meant so little? Had he grieved at all?
It hurt her to look at those children, images of Charles, when her own baby had been taken from her. A child she’d never get back. It wasn’t fair. He’d gone on as if nothing had happened. As if he’d lost nothing. He’d gained a new family. New kids. While she’d spent the last three years living in the agony of the fiercest pain a mother can ever know.
She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to call him a bastard. She wanted to slap him as hard as she could across the face. But she did none of those things.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m listening.”
“You were wrong. It wasn’t my fault what happened to Rose. You were wrong to say it. You were wrong to throw me out of our house when I was so destroyed by grief that I couldn’t even function. You turned your back on me at a time I needed you the most. You turned your back on your daughter when you refused any responsibility in her care.
“I was your wife. That should have meant something. I needed you desperately. Needed your help. I was so close to utterly breaking. I couldn’t hold it together for another minute. I went to sleep because I’d gone without for night after night.”
Her voice trembled, and it took every ounce of control she could muster not to allow the tears knotting her throat free.
“And she died.”
She sucked in breaths through her nose. Charles’ eyes glistened with tears, and his own face was ravaged with grief, and oddly, regret.
“But it wasn’t my fault,” she said fiercely. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. A terrible, terrible thing happened to us, and you should have been there when I needed you the most. You should have held me when I cried, not screamed at me that I’d killed our child.
“You were wrong.”
She turned, having said what was in her heart. She had no desire to stay and look at him a moment longer. She wanted out of this house before she completely lost her composure.
“Lily, wait. Please don’t go.”
Tears were thick in his voice. She hesitated, drawn by the heaviness and despair that was so evident in his tone.
She turned, surprised to see that tears were flowing openly down his cheeks. He took a step forward and then another.
“Please, stay. For just a moment. I have something I want to say too.”
She blinked in confusion. This she hadn’t expected, and she wasn’t sure how to handle it. He reached for her arm, his fingers curling gently as he guided her toward one of the couches.
“Sit here before you fall.”
Had she been unable to cover up the fact that she was utterly shattered?
He took a seat in the chair catty corner to the couch. He rubbed his hand over his face and through his hair, his eyes filled with raw, terrible pain.
“You have every right to hate me. Everything you said is true. Absolutely, one hundred percent true. I have no excuse. I didn’t support you like I should have. I worked too long. I made my job a priority. I left you at a time you needed me the most.
“When Rose died, I knew. I knew that I’d made terrible mistakes that I could never take back. I knew how tired you were. I could see your exhaustion. I knew you were running on empty. I knew all of this and I did nothing to help.
“I was so angry. Furious. I lashed out at you. I said terrible things, because God, the alternative was admitting the truth. That I killed our daughter. Not you. Me. And I couldn’t accept it. I denied it. I couldn’t bear to face you. I couldn’t look you in the eye, so I drove you away. I thought if I could just have you out of the picture that I could forget. That I could live in denial and pretend you and Rose never existed.”
Lily stared at his grief-ravaged face in shock. She’d never imagined. Never once.
“I wronged you, Lily,” he said raggedly. “After you walked out of the house after signing those papers, I kept expecting you to come back. Maybe a part of me wanted you to come back. But then months passed and I knew you were gone, that I’d driven you away.
“And then I began to worry. Guilt was eating me alive. Not only that I’d placed the blame for our daughter’s death on your shoulders when it was my blame to bear, but also guilt over the fact that I’d sent you away with nothing. You didn’t contest the divorce. You didn’t show up at the court date. You never asked for anything. Not a dime.”
“I wanted nothing,” she said quietly.
“Where did you go?” he asked. “I looked. I wanted to at least provide for you. I thought you deserved a settlement, at least. You gave up everything for me and Rose. Your art. I thought you could at least finish school if you wanted. But you’d disappeared.”
“I didn’t have a place to go, Charles,” she said honestly. Not to hurt him, but she wouldn’t lie either.
“Then where were you?”
She lifted her shoulder in a shrug. “Where is any homeless person? Sometimes they’re on one street. Others they’re in an alley.”
“Oh dear God.” Charles buried his face in his hands and his shoulders shook as quiet sobs spilled out, muffled by his palms.
“I was fine,” she said in low tones. “I survived. I didn’t come here to give you a guilt trip, Charles. I came because I needed to tell you that you were wrong so that I could move on and forgive myself. For three years I’ve lived with the knowledge that I killed my child and that my husband thought the worst of me. It was only recently that I was shown just how wrong I was. And how wrong you were.”
“Yes, I was wrong,” he said. “Not a day has gone by that I don’t think about you. The look on your face the day I told you to get out. I’ll go to my grave with that sin on my conscience, Lily.”
They sat in bewildered silence, before Lily once again started to edge to her feet.
Charles held out his hand. “No, not yet, Lily. Tell me, please. Are you still living on the streets? You have to let me help you. It’s what I owe you. You should have gotten half of everything in the divorce settlement.”
Some of her anger eased, replaced by deep sadness. They’d both spent the last three years torturing themselves. Fraught with guilt and anger. And grief.
“I don’t anymore,” she said quietly. “I don’t live here in Denver. I merely came because in order for me to move on and to have a life, I had to confront my past. If it helps you, I forgive you. But I’ve learned in recent weeks that seeking forgiveness from others is meaningless unless you can forgive yourself.”
He stared bleakly at her, his eyes filled with so much regret that it hurt her to look at him. “I want you to be happy, Lily. You deserve better than I ever gave you. I like to think I’m a better man now. I don’t work as much. I’m here for Catherine and the kids. But I’ll never be able to change the past, and I can’t bring our daughter back.”
Tears crowded the corners of Lily’s eyes. “No, there’s nothing either of us can do to bring her back. Perhaps what is more important is that there was nothing that either of us could have done to save her.”
“Are you happy now, Lily? Are you going to be all right? Can you move on?”
For the first time since she’d arrived, a glimmer of a smile tingled at her lips. “Yes, I’m happy. It’s taken me three years, but I’m going to be okay. I have people who love me. Family.”
“I’m glad,” he said simply. “But promise me something. Promise me that if you ever need anything, anything at all, that you’ll call me or come to me. There’s nothing I won’t do to help you. Ever.”
Lily stood shakily to her feet. She stared at the man who’d once been her husband. It was odd, really. He felt like a stranger to her. Before she’d arrived, she’d worked all of the grief and guilt into rage and fury. But now it all settled down and all she felt was an abiding sadness for all the things that couldn’t be changed.
“I appreciate the offer. I do. And I appreciate you telling me everything you told me today. My hope is that we can both let go now and be happy.”
Charles nodded. “Take care, Lily.”
She turned and started toward the door, Charles trailing behind her. When they arrived in the kitchen, Catherine looked up anxiously from where she was feeding the two children.
Lily paused for just a moment as she stared at the two darling babies. “You have beautiful children,” she said huskily.
Catherine looked like she wanted to cry, but she gave a shaky smile and said, “Thank you.” Then she looked to the toddler, the daughter. “Her middle name is Rose. Charles insisted.”
For a moment Lily couldn’t speak around the knot in her throat. “It’s a beautiful name for a beautiful little girl,” she finally managed to get out.
Then she turned and hurried for the front door, desperate for air and desperate to get back to the comfort of people who loved her.
As soon as she hit the sidewalk, the tears started streaming down her cheeks. She walked faster, not yet wanting to get a cab. She needed to breathe, needed to free herself from the ache that swelled in her chest.
She’d done it. She’d faced him down, only it hadn’t given her quite the satisfaction that she’d imagined. He’d suffered too. Was still suffering. And she knew what that was like, the awful guilt, the knowledge that you’d made mistakes—irreparable ones.
But she’d said the words aloud. He was wrong. And it had vindicated her when he’d admitted that yes, he was wrong. But the victory was hollow because at the end of the day, two people had lost a precious child, and it had destroyed a piece of both of them in the process.
She gathered her arms and crossed them in front of her, tucking her hands into the bends of her elbows. And she walked further, just wanting to clear away the lingering anguish.
She was free now. She could embrace her life with the Colter brothers. She had faced her fears and come out whole. Or at least not as shattered as she’d been. Healing. She was healing. And it might not be tomorrow or the next day or even the next year, but one day, she’d be able to think about Rose without the searing agony and the unbearable weight of despair.
Maybe it was her subconscious at work, because she hadn’t set out to walk to the graveyard where Rose was buried. She hadn’t even known that she was going in that direction. But when she looked up, she saw the iron gates that guarded the children’s cemetery.
She stopped several feet in front of the opening and simply stared at a place she hadn’t seen since the awful day when they’d put her in the ground.
She closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath. Courage. Once she would have said she had none, but lately, she’d found it with increasing frequency. Life was about finding courage to live each day and to face obstacles head-on.
She walked slowly and nearly on tiptoe down the winding pathway. She searched her memory for where exactly Rose had been buried. So much of that time was a blur. She closed her eyes again and this time went back in time to the day. Rose had been buried in the shelter of a huge cottonwood tree, the branches sprawling over many graves as if gathering the little angels in its arms.
She looked up and saw the tree a short distance away. She swallowed and walked at a more determined pace until she searched out the headstone with Rose’s name.
“Rose Weston. Beloved daughter. You were mine, and now you’re His. May He take you on the wings of angels back home where you belong.”
She’d written the inscription herself and until now hadn’t allowed herself to even think it much less recite it aloud.
She raised her face to the sun. “I love you, baby,” she whispered. “I don’t regret a single moment I had with you. You’ll always be my angel girl.”
Peace descended and the area went quiet. Warmth enveloped her and wrapped her in its steady embrace. The sun’s rays streamed through the big tree branches that shielded the graves from the weather.
She looked down again and then knelt to touch the cool marble.
“Goodbye,” she whispered. “I never said it before. I couldn’t. But goodbye, my sweet baby girl.”