Fairytale Lost (14 page)

His grief overcame him with the force of a tractor trailer. Lukas folded over and cried until there wasn’t a tear left in his body. His head ached terribly, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave the room.

Jaxon, Pop, and Delma watched quietly from outside the room. Each was lost in thought, though all of those thoughts centered around Lukas, Emmalyn, and Ava.

Jaxon wanted to go to his brother and offer support, though he had no idea what to say. It wasn’t going to be okay. Nothing was going to be all right about this situation. He turned and walked back to the waiting room, unable to deal with the pain that was storming in that hospital room.

Delma had stopped to check on Ava on the way to say goodbye to her daughter. The baby looked just like Emmalyn, same dark hair, same perfect brown skin, same wise, knowing eyes. Delma’s chest felt like she’d been kicked. She wanted to help Lukas, but the weight of her own grief was draining her. She turned to leave as well, not able to face her daughter’s body, nor that of her dead granddaughter. Before she walked away, she turned to Pop.

With malice and hatred vibrating in her voice she said, “If you say a single thing against my daughter to that boy in there or to my granddaughter, you won’t live to regret the choice. Count on that.”

P
op entered the room
, intent on nothing but ushering his son to the nursery. He couldn’t stop himself from creeping deeper into the room and peering in at Gia, the second twin. She looked so beautiful and peaceful lying there. Emmalyn’s face was pale and gaunt, likely from the loss of blood. He quickly turned to Lukas, who’d risen from his seat and was prepared to fight.

“Going to tell me that you told me so,” Lukas challenged.

“No, son. I was going to take you to visit your daughter. She needs you.” Pop took a step back, frightened by the violence and grief in his son’s eyes.

Lukas’s shoulders slumped, all the fight gone from him. “I…I can’t, not yet.” Lukas unwillingly looked down at Em’s body. His shoulders shook, but he didn’t make a sound.

Pop reached up and pulled Lukas’s face toward him. “Yes, you can. And you have to. Ava is completely innocent in all this, and she needs the love of her father. The bond may not happen right away, but a day will come when Ava will be everything in the world to you. And it will be enough. I swear it.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I had that moment with you and your brother after your mother killed herself. I refused to accept it because I missed that woman so much it burned in my skin. In that refusal, I turned into a hard bitter old man, who wouldn’t know good luck or fortune if it bit me on the nose. I can’t let that happen to you. You’re right—Emmalyn was not like your mother. Em would never have left you, no matter what you’d done.

“I know it won’t happen now, but you’ll be given a chance to open your heart to that little girl, and when it happens, you have to take it, for both of your sakes.”

“She’s gone, Pop. She’s gone.”

“I know. And you’re going to grieve more than you think you’re capable of. But right now, you need to go hold your daughter.”

Lukas nodded and followed his father out of the room, unable to turn for one last look at the only light in his life.

L
ittle Ava had
her mother’s eyes. Two years later and Lukas still had the hardest time looking into his baby girl’s chocolate-brown eyes. He and Emmalyn were supposed to have the happy ending, but life had a funny way of getting in the way of the fairy tale. He missed his Emmy endlessly. After her death, Lukas honestly believed he would never recover. He didn’t want to eat, sleep, or even to live without Emmy on this earth.

The pain was more than he thought he’d ever be able to live through despite putting one foot in front of the other each day. Yet every night he saw Emmalyn’s face that day in the hospital, begging him to save the baby, even if it meant losing her. Every morning, he’d lie in bed with his eyes closed for an extra second and pray that it was all a mistake and Emmy would be there holding Ava and Gia. Every morning he turned over, her side of the bed was empty, and the grieving process would begin again.

Because he was so lost in his grief, Lukas’s mother-in-law had moved back east to look after Ava for a while. However, the grief Delma felt seeing her lost daughter in her granddaughter’s eyes became too much. She railed at him to get it together and care for his child, the child his wife—her daughter—had sacrificed her life for.

Then his father and brother stepped in for several months to help. Jaxon put off his next assignment to stay with his brother and try to help Lukas with his grief. Eventually, Jaxon talked Lukas into going back to Charleston to clean out the apartment he and Emmalyn had shared. At their apartment, he went through every piece of paper Emmalyn had saved.

Right after the funeral, he’d reached out to Em’s doctors to get the truth of what she’d been hiding from him. The pregnancy had been difficult from the start, and it had been recommended that Em terminate the pregnancy or at the very least stop working and focus on her health. The doctor went through it all—the gestational diabetes, the endless fatigue, her inability to eat and gain weight, the pre-eclampsia. She told him that at thirty weeks she had recommended a C-section to Emmalyn, and to let the girls try to survive outside the womb. She’d told Emmalyn that her body couldn’t survive another ten weeks of carrying the twins.

She’d known. She’d known all along, and she never said anything to him. It was his fault for not being there at the appointments. Lukas could see Em wasn’t well, but he too easily wrote it off as normal pregnancy woes. But he couldn’t quite understand why she would risk all that she was, her life, to carry those babies. He would have given her anything in the world she ever wanted. It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it, but she didn’t trust him enough to ask for help. He’d live with that guilt for the rest of his life.

While packing, he found the box Emmy had with every letter he’d written her, every trinket he’d ever bought her, even every ticket stub for every movie they’d seen together. It was all he could do to close the box and put it back in the closet. He was tired of crying and couldn’t take the memories those items evoked. He would ask Zavia and Isabel to hold on to those things until Ava was ready to know about her parents’ courtship.

In time, the physical pain in his chest and his broken hand faded. The pain of the memories would take a lot longer to fade, but he was determined that Ava would know what an amazing woman her mother was. Lukas would eventually look back at the man he was and appreciate the man he had become. He knew things had happened as they were meant to, but he couldn’t help but be sad about the family that could have been and the life he’d always dreamed of with the woman he loved by his side.

T
hen the day
his father had sworn would come had finally come. Lukas finally looked at Ava and understood what Emmy had fought for, this beautiful little girl with a quick laugh and endless energy, just like her mother. And he knew his love for his lost love would be supplemented by the boundless love he had for his daughter. He watched Ava playing in her room. She smiled up at him brightly, and for the first time in a long time, he found his smile.

His daughter’s shining smile was a constant reminder to Lukas of his Emmy, and he couldn’t stop himself from falling a little more in love with Ava every day.

L
ori Hendricks
is an IT project manager by day and novelist by night. A longtime lover of words, she reads science fiction, fantasy and paranormal romance novels regularly (when there is time). When not reading, writing or working, Lori can most often be found watching football or basketball with her adorable cat, Mona.

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