Heart Breaths (26 page)

Chapter · Twenty-Four

“Maddie!” I wrapped my arms around her and held Noie, breathing her in. “You came!”

“I did,” I agreed, smiling down at her, my eyes watery.

God, I had missed her so much.

“Daddy said you were coming to play with me!” she said, clinging to me and beaming, delighted.

Gabe was standing a bit away from the door. “Hi, Gabe,” I said, hearing the stiffness in my voice.

“Hey, Maddie.” His expression was unreadable.

“Can we go to the beach, Maddie?” Noie asked, bouncing in my arms.

The apartment felt like all the air had been sucked out of it. It wasn’t just the North Carolina summer—there was a profound feeling of discomfort that was bouncing off the walls, off of us, and off of the giant white elephant in the room.

“If your Daddy says we can,” I said, shifting my hold on her.

“The beach is fine, but only for a little bit,” he said. “It’s going to be supper time soon.”

I looked at the piles of work he had laid out on the table. “I can take her myself if you want,” I said, hoping that he wasn’t still working on Jen’s stupid fantasy beach house.

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said, sounding overly formal.

“Really, it’s okay. I can do it,” I said, sounding equally as formal.

How did we not know how to talk to each other again?

The beach was loud and noisy—summer had really started, and there were people everywhere. “Go to the sand mountains,” Noie said, tugging my hand toward the sand dunes.

I let her drag me over to the sand dunes, away from the beach crowds.

Settling into my usual spot, I watched Noie plunk herself down and start digging a hole in the sand.

“Where are you digging a hole to, Noie?” I asked, watching her lift handful after handful of sand and putting it into the growing pile next to her.

“Daddy says if I dig deep enough, I’ll get to the water,” she said, taking another handful of sand and patting it down next to her.

“Do you want help?”

“No, wanna do it myself,” she said stubbornly.

“Okay.” I leaned back to watch her.

My thoughts raced as I watched her dig, one little handful at a time.

Should I try to ask her about her nightmares? I shouldn’t. There was no reason to bring back the memories, especially ones that painful. Painful for her, and painful for me.

“No, Devi, you can’t help,” Noie said, her eyebrows pulling together in a scowl. “Doing it by myself.”

Hi, baby girl, I thought to the rustling in the wind. Mommy loves you, darling.

“Devi says hi,” Noie said, not looking up from her piles of sand.

A wide smile split across my face. The sun was shining, and I was on the beach with my two favorite girls.

“When did Devi start coming to visit you?” I asked.

“When I was still a baby,” Noie replied. “So long ago.”

She’s three, Maddie. She wouldn’t know.

“She taught me the song that scares away bad dreams,” she continued matter-of-factly. “Sunshine song. It keeps all the bad dreams away, ’cuz I didn’t have a catcher.”

“A what?” I asked, confused.

“It’s by my bed,” Noie said, taking another pile of sand and patting it down next to her.

I thought for a minute. The dreamcatcher.

“I used to have one in my other house,” she said conversationally, as though she hadn’t just dropped a relative bomb.

She had never lived anywhere else.

“What did your other house look like, honey?” I asked hesitantly. Don’t push this! I yelled at myself. What are you doing?

“It was a little room all by myself,” she said. “There were pretty blankets on the walls.” Looking down at her little hole, she scowled. “Where’s the water, Maddie?”

“Very far down,” I replied, trying to make sense of what she had just told me. Was I only jumping into conclusions because of what Sam said? Was it a coincidence that Devi’s bedroom had saris decorating the walls, and there was a dreamcatcher hanging over her bed? Was I trying to make this all into something that it couldn’t possibly be?

My breath caught, and suddenly I understood the terror Gabe had in believing in Devi.

If we were right about Devi, then maybe Sam’s story was right too.

Reaching over, I gathered Noie into my arms and held her, rocking her. Poor, poor baby. My poor baby.

“Why are you crying, Maddie?” Noie asked, touching a tear with a finger. “Are you sad?”

I nodded, holding her tighter.

“I’m so sorry, baby,” I said, cradling her little body in the safety of my arms. Something I hadn’t been able to do with Devi when she took her last breaths on Earth. “I’m sorry…”

Noie rested her head on my shoulder as I rocked her back and forth, trying somehow to apologize for what happened. “It’s okay, Mama,” she said. “It’s okay.”

Burying my face in her curls, I cried for my girls—the one I had lost and the one I had found.

I don’t know how long I sat there by the ocean, watching the waves with Noie curled up into my arms. I didn’t know what to do anymore. Nothing and everything made sense.

Noie patted my arm gently. “No more crying, right?”

“Noie,” I leaned back and looked at her carefully. “Before you lived with Daddy… where were you?”

“Somewhere else.”

I had to know. “Were you happy there, baby girl?”

She nodded. “So happy.”

Gabe was waiting for us at the apartment door. His gaze flew back and forth from my tear-stained face to Noie’s calm and happy one. “Everything okay?” he asked.

“There’s no water, Daddy,” Noie said. “I digged so far, and there was no waters.”

“Well, next time you can take a bigger shovel,” he said as she bounced off toward her room.

“I’m sorry, Gabe,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?” he asked, confused.

“Noie was talking today about her old house,” I said. “And I nearly lost it, just thinking about it. I’m so sorry, Gabe.”

“So am I,” he said, sounding exhausted.

“Are you okay?” I asked, sitting down next to him on the couch.

He shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said. “How am I supposed to be?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“It all feels too coincidental… like, at this point, nobody has a choice about what happens anymore.”

I thought back to the past few years, and the past few months. About how different I was now from who I once was. And if there was anything I had learned since the day a semi-truck crashed into the side of the car, it was that you always had a choice. A choice to give up and let go, to let yourself sink into a pit of misery that was nearly impossible to claw your way out of.

But somewhere hiding in the rubble of what once was, there was always the choice to start over. To take what once was, to take the splintered pieces of who you were and make something new.

Sometimes it wouldn’t work out the way you wanted it to—sometimes crashing and burning was the inevitable end. But even then, there was always that glimmer of possibility hiding. As long as your heart was breathing, there was always a chance. There was always the choice to keep going.

“You always have a choice, Gabe,” I said softly. “Always.”

“How can you be so sure?”

I breathed in, and felt as though the Earth re-tilted itself and was finally spinning on its axis again. “Life wouldn’t be what it is without being able to choose.”

I walked toward the door.

“Leaving? Again?” Gabe was standing by the couch, an expression close to fury on his face. “How many times do I have to watch you walk away?”

I flew to him, wrapping my arms around him. “I’m not leaving, Gabe. I’m not.”

“How do I know that?” he asked, banding his arms around me and pulling me even closer.

“Trust me,” I said, my words muffled into his shoulder. “I need you to trust me.”

“And I don’t need you to trust me?” he asked, still angry.

I tilted my head and looked up at him. Taking a deep breath, I ripped myself open until he could see straight to where my heart was breathing. “I do trust you. Swear, Gabe. I trust you with everything.”

His grip on my arms loosened a little.

“I was going to go back to my apartment and get my photo album,” I said. “I wanted to show you who I was.”

There was silence as he slowly let me go. “I’ll leave the door unlocked,” he said.

My eyes burned. “I’ll be back soon.”

For the first time since that conversation at the beach, I watched his lips turn up at the corners. “I know.”

“This was the first time I went to one of Ravi’s family things,” I said, pointing to a picture of Ravi and I, dressed in traditional Indian garb.

Noie sat on my lap, looking at the picture with fascination. “Look, Daddy!” she exclaimed, pointing to my hands. “Someone colored on Maddie!”

Gabe chuckled. “That was on purpose, Noie. It’s called a henna.”

She glanced at him suspiciously. “But you can only color on papers, Daddy. Even you said so.”

“Sometimes, for special occasions, people decorate their skin,” he said, looking at the picture thoughtfully.

“Like when Auntie Sam colors on her face?”

I burst into laughter. “No, honey, that’s makeup.”

Gabe shrugged. “I’m okay with that as an explanation.” He looked down at the picture. “How old were you here?”

“Fifteen. I had just found out I was pregnant.”

“You look so happy.”

I smiled down at the picture, at that little slice of memory preserved on photo paper. “We were.”

Noie yawned, drooping against my shoulder. “Tired,” she mumbled.

I made a move to get up. “Stay.” Gabe got up to turn off the main light in the room. The room was cloaked in darkness, one very different than what I had gotten used to. This one was a blanket of comfort, draping itself over us.

I closed the photo album and put it on the side table. Leaning back into the couch, I cradled Noie in my arms. “Go to sleep here, baby,” I whispered to her. “You’ll be okay.”

She nodded sleepily and burrowed in. “Story?” she asked.

Gabe slid next to me on the couch. “Only if you want to.”

I looked down at Noie and breathed in the smell of little girl. Sitting here on the couch next to a man who I could trust with my heart, with his daughter on my lap, it was like coming around in a full circle in the oddest of ways. I looked over at Gabe and started to speak. “Once upon a time, there was a girl who lost all the people she loved the best. She tried to live happily ever after without them, but she didn’t do a good job.”

“Why not?” Noie asked.

“Because she forgot something very important.”

“She forgot?”

I nodded. “She forgot that she could still love them even if they weren’t with her. She forgot that she could love other people too.” I could feel Gabe watching me, warm and wonderful and there. “She forgot that if she hid her heart away from other people, she would never live happily ever after.”

“So what did she do?”

I looked at the shadows of the pictures hung up on the walls—the ones Noie drew of Devi. The ones of Gabe and Noie, of Sam and the Mendezes. Of family. Of friends. Of possibility.

“She went on a quest to find a way to let people see her heart.”