He grabs my hands and holds them, clutching them to his chest, pulling the rest of me there as well.
“Shh,” he whispers into my hair. It is now that I realize that I am crying yet again. I fall limply against him and allow him to hold me. The hormones from this pregnancy are wreaking havoc with my emotions. I hate that I feel so weak and weepy.
“Let me take care of it,” Luca says. “I’ll set up everything up and you won’t have to even think about it. I’ll do it.”
I pull away and stare at him incredulously as I realize that he is speaking of our child.
“I won’t have to even think about it? You think I can abort my child,
your child
, and not even think about it? Are you insane?”
I get up and stalk backward, my heart frozen as I stare at his expression. He is quite convinced that we will be aborting our baby. And suddenly, I feel as though I need to get away from him. I don’t know why, I only know that the maternal instincts inside of me are telling me to run.
Luca follows me as I back away from him, watching me carefully.
“Eva, that’s not what I meant. But I’m trying to be frank with you. We can’t have this baby. Trust me, no child would want to live the life that I’ve lived. I would never wish that on anyone. There’s no way that you can understand. But
I
understand. I’ve lived it. I’m still living it. And I would never put a child through it.”
His voice hardens toward the end, growing even more determined.
I stare at him again in disbelief. “You are telling me that you would rather be
dead
than the person that you are?”
Luca says nothing, but his silence says everything. And suddenly, I can’t take it anymore. I have to listen to my instincts. They are screaming at me and I can no longer tune them out.
Run.
I whirl and race from the cottage, down the paths leading to the beach. The trail is uneven, filled with rocks and pebbles and roots. I stumble, then right myself. I don’t know where I’m going, but I can’t stay there with him. I hear him behind me, calling for me, but I don’t stop. I reach the rocky incline that slopes steeply to the shore before Luca catches up with me and grabs my arm.
“Eva! What are you trying to do? Get yourself killed?”
The sea is crashing below us and I turn, staring Luca in the eye.
He is desperate and anxious, two things that I have never seen on his face before. I don’t know his motives. Is he scared that I will hurt myself or scared that I will get away and he can’t force me to abort our baby? The wind whips my hair around my face and I impatiently push it out of the way.
“No,” I answer. “But that almost sounds more appealing than the alternative at this point. Now let go of me!”
I wrench my arm out of his grip, but as I do, as I yank backward, my foot slips free of my tenuous foothold. The rocks and dirt give way and there is nothing holding me up anymore. I scream as I skid downward at an unnatural angle. I flail and struggle to regain my balance, but I can’t. Everything is happening too quickly. Luca grabs for me, but it’s too late.
I tumble down the rocks, down the steep incline, flipping over several times before I finally land with my cheek resting in the watery sand below. The jarring blow knocks the wind out of me and I struggle to breathe as I gather my wits. It happened so quickly that it seems like a blur.
Luca is beside me in an instant.
“Eva! Can you hear me!”
I nod without lifting my head. I can’t seem to breathe well yet. I don’t have enough air to move or speak. Long seconds pass before I can urge any sound from my lips.
“Go away, Luca,” I finally rasp. “Just go away.”
“Not a chance,” he says. He bends and picks me up from the shallow water and rocks. As he lifts me from the water, my scraped feet sting in the breeze. I have no idea if I am injured. I feel completely numb. I am dirty and muddy and wet as he wordlessly carries me back to my cottage.
He carries me into my bathroom where he runs a bath and strips off my wet clothes. He holds my hand as he settles me into the tub, then kneels next to me, washing my arms and legs carefully. I’m scraped all over and it burns as the hot water seeps into the cuts. But I don’t care. I draw my knees up to my chest and lean my cheek against them, closing my eyes.
I’m too numb to cry.
“It will all be okay,” Luca says carefully as he washes my muddy face. “I promise, Eva. You will be okay, no matter what. I will make sure of it.”
I don’t answer, but I allow him to help me back out of the tub and wrap me in a towel. I feel so empty and alone, even though he is right here. Because I know what he wants and it is very different from what I want.
I feel utterly alone.
I pull a t-shirt over my head and then collapse back onto the couch.
Luca settles me in with a blanket and a pillow and sits at my feet, stroking my legs soothingly.
“Rest, Eva,” he tells me. “I know you are exhausted. You aren’t taking care of yourself. I can see it. Please sleep. I’ll be right here.”
I stare at him wordlessly for a moment, then grasp his hand and close my eyes. He might be against what I want, but I still love him. I can’t help it. And his presence comforts me. I sleep more quickly and deeply than I have in weeks because even in sleep, my body knows that he is here.
I wake several hours later in horrible pain, my body wrenching and twisting as my abdominal muscles contract. I double over, clutching my stomach, trying to breathe. The pain takes my breath away. As I look up, Luca is watching me in horror, in pain. And I see something in his eyes that I don’t wish to see.
“What is happening?” I ask him limply. “Luca.”
He turns away, but not before I see the terrible answer in his eyes.
And I know, even while I am asking him, what is wrong. I am miscarrying.
It isn’t long before the sticky wetness between my legs lets me know that I am correct. I cry as I clean the blood from my legs. I use washcloth after washcloth to wipe my unborn child’s remains from my skin. With each ragged breath, with each cloth filled with tissue and blood, I cry a little more.
“Don’t touch me!” I screech at Luca as he tries to help me. “This was our child. If you hadn’t tried to grab me, I wouldn’t have fallen. This is your fault.
Your fault!
You did this to me on purpose. You wanted the baby gone and now it is. I hate you for this, Luca.”
And at this moment, I do.
Luca stops moving and stares at me sadly, quietly.
“I know you do,” he answers finally. “But that’s the way it should be. It will make it easier on you.”
I collapse into my bed, crying once again even though I didn’t think I had any tears left. I am empty inside; completely, soul-shatteringly empty.
“You did this,” I whimper. “You killed our child.”
Luca takes a shuddering breath and kneels next to me, his forehead pressed against my arm. I move away from him. I can’t bear his touch. He takes another ragged breath as he pulls the blanket up around me.
“Eva, I wanted to terminate this pregnancy for the good of the child, because I know what it is to be a monster. I would never purposely hurt you. I didn’t grab you hoping that you would fall. I grabbed you so that you
wouldn’t.
I promise you that. I would never knowingly hurt you. Even I am not that much of a monster.”
I cry. Tears fall onto my nose and drip onto the sheets and Luca wipes them away. I look up at him and the sadness in his eyes convinces me that he is telling the truth. He didn’t want me to fall. How could I have thought that? Why did I run?
I did this.
I know that much is true.
Luca didn’t run,
I did.
I whimper with that knowledge and Luca stares down at me in concern. I don’t object when he folds in behind me and wraps his arms around me. Deep down, I long for him even now.
“I’m so sorry, Eva,” he whispers into my ear with his husky voice. “I am so sorry.”
And I know that he is which is why I can’t truly hate him for this. I close my eyes and sink into sleep. I am awakened several times in the night by pinching cramps in my abdomen. Luca finds a heating pad and drapes it over me. He gives me painkillers and wipes me clean as I continue to bleed.
At one point, I stare up at him. “I love you, Luca,” I whisper.
“I know,” he sighs. “I love you, too.”
When I wake in the morning, he is gone.
Chapter Thirty Two
Luca
I have never hated myself more than I do at this moment.
As I walk back toward Chessarae, the sun peeks over the horizon and I know that I don’t deserve to stand in it. I should never see light of day again.
I may not have physically caused Eva to fall, but deep down, I know that I am relieved that she miscarried. It is a terrible, heinous thought, but it is true.
If I were normal, I would welcome a child with Eva with open arms. I would welcome a
life
with her with open arms. But I’m not normal. And no child of mine could ever possibly be normal. My own mother has told me many times that she wished she had never carried me to term, that she wished I hadn’t been born. If my own mother feels so strongly about me, if I am that much of a monster, then why would I ever want to bring a child just like me into the world?
It is for the best that Eva miscarried. But the fact that I even think that, especially after seeing her pain throughout the night, only cements my knowledge that I am a monster. Who else would think such a thing? My mother is right about me.
I am damaged in unfixable ways.
I am tempted to wade into the sea, to walk into the deep depths and refuse to swim, but I know that my body’s subconscious need to survive would propel me to the surface and nothing will have changed. I would still be what I am.
I continue walking, knowing that the person who I love most in the world has been utterly crushed by an event that I am almost thankful for.
She is the only thing I love.
And she is in pain right now and I can’t fix it.
It is a knowledge that I can hardly bear.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Eva
I have no purpose here now, no reason to stay in Malta.
So, I make preparations to return home, to defend my dissertation and begin my life in Portland. Or perhaps I will move to somewhere sunnier, like Phoenix or Santa Fe or maybe even Honolulu. Somewhere like Malta. I gulp. I can’t be reminded of this place, of Luca. It would be my undoing.
I’ll probably just stay in Portland.
I want to hate Luca for what happened and I try very hard because it would be easier than blaming myself. But I can’t. I know that he didn’t mean for me to fall. He was out there trying to keep me from harm and if I hadn’t run, then we would never have been out there on those rocks at all.
Luca sent a doctor to look at me. The doctor thinks that I miscarried partly due to stress, in addition to the fall. He said, and I know that it is true, that a woman’s body is more durable than one would think. That normally a fall wouldn’t cause a woman to miscarry by itself. So, truly, I’m even more to blame for not managing my stress better.
It’s a thought that does nothing to ease my guilt.
I feel like a failure as a strong woman. All my life, I’ve been the strong one in any given situation. And now, I feel like I’ve allowed myself to get sucked so far into emotional situations that I handled them weakly. And I hate that thought more than I can even admit. I am not
that girl
, the one who falls to pieces. But here lately, that’s exactly who I am. I make a concentrated effort to pull myself together, to focus on moving forward.
I am packing when a knock raps on my door and as always, I turn towards it with a sharp pang of hope. Is it Luca? But I know that it isn’t and when I answer the door, I find that it is not. I try not to feel disappointment as I greet Marianne.
Her face is grave however.
“What’s wrong?” I ask her.
“Melina Minaldi died in the night,” she tells me solemnly. “I thought you would want to know.”
“She died?” I am stunned. “But she was in perfect health. How did it happen?”
Marianne shakes her head. “I don’t know. But I thought you would want to know, that maybe you would want to go to Luca. I know he will be devastated.”
I’m not sure that he is devastated, but I do want to go to him.
However, I restrain that urge.
“When is the funeral?” I ask her. Again, she shakes her head.
“I don’t know, bella. Probably in a couple of days.”
“Thank you for telling me,” I murmur.
“Of course, sweet one,” she says.
After she leaves, I pick up the phone and dial Luca’s cell phone. He answers on the first ring.
“Eva,” he says. He is surprised that I have called. “I thought that I would never hear your voice again.”
My heart breaks with his words. I can imagine that is what he thought.
“I’m still angry,” I tell him. “I’ll probably never get over the fact that you wanted to abort our baby. But I know it wasn’t your fault that I fell. I said some terrible things to you in anger. And I’m sorry for them. But that’s not why I’m calling. I want to give you my condolences. I’m so sorry about your mother. What happened?”
Luca is silent for a moment.
“Thank you,” he says. “It has been difficult. The official cause of death is listed as a heart attack. But I know you probably know better. My mother overdosed on her own sedatives. She did it herself.”