Finding Our Reality (The Reality Duet #2)

Chapter 34

CRUTCH

Oh, shit.

I have a kid. I had a kid.

Lulu’s eyes are closed in this picture, as she’s kissing the top of our daughter’s head. It looks like she’s praying. Praying for our daughter to live? Praying for the pain to stop? Praying for me to be there? The sight of blood all over her makes my soul plummet to the depths of hell.

And that baby? Our baby? She’s the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen. Lulu was right, she’s beautiful. She was beautiful.

“She doesn’t look sick.”

“No. At first, I didn’t believe them when they told me how sick she was. She looked like a perfectly healthy baby to me. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Eyes that looked at me. But the lack of oxygen and blood flow damaged her organs. They called it fetal hypoxia and fetal respiratory acidosis. I promise they did everything they could. They just couldn’t get me out of the car quick enough.”

My throat feels raw and swollen, like I just guzzled a cocktail of screws and nails. I can’t even swallow. I reach for the glass of water and down the rest of it in one gulp. Unable to fight the despair growing in my heart, I throw the glass as hard as I can off the porch. It hits the side of a tree and shatters into a million pieces. The jagged shards shimmer underneath the moonlight. Tears stream down my face, burning me, scalding me.

I’m such a pussy. I should be comforting Lulu, but all I’ve done tonight is cry.

I should close my eyes, but I can’t stop looking at the picture of my baby girl. Every time the screen starts to grow dark, Lulu reaches around, tapping it and making it light up again.

Minutes. Hours. I’m not sure, but eventually, enough time passes that my tears dry and my body stops shaking.

Standing tall, I stretch my back and roll my shoulders, trying to ease the tension. I hand the phone back to Lulu. “She’s beautiful. And you’re beautiful. I should have been there. I fucking ruined our lives, and I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am, Lulu. I’m not even gonna ask for your forgiveness, I don’t deserve it. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but no matter how much I’ve always hated Hudson, I’m glad you didn’t have to go through all of that alone. I’m grateful that he was by your side.”

Lulu bites her lip, slowly walking back over to the swing. She sits down and tosses her phone back into her purse.

She’s not telling me something. “Lulu?”

She sighs, crossing her legs and lifting her chin. “I was alone. He wasn’t there.”

“Excuse me?”

“I was alone. Hudson wasn’t there.”

“What do you mean, he wasn’t there? He was your husband, wasn’t he?” I ask.

“He went on a ski trip with a bunch of friends over Thanksgiving break. He didn’t fly back in until Monday night.”

“And the wreck was on Saturday night?”

She nods. “Yes.”

That bastard. I rub my eyes so hard they nearly pop out of my eye sockets. “He shouldn’t have left his pregnant wife—his high-risk pregnant wife—home by herself to go on a ski trip with his buddies. And he should’ve been on the very first plane back.”

She shrugs. “Monday was his normal return flight.”

A murderous rage courses through my blood. “Are you kidding me right now? I’m gonna kill him.”

She raises her eyebrows, looking at me like I’m a child who’s throwing an unwarranted temper tantrum.

“Don’t look at me like that, Lulu. He was your husband. I don’t care if it was a marriage of necessity. He should’ve been there. I can’t believe he was a jackass for the entire time you were married. Beginning to end.”

“He tried in the beginning. Well, he tried the best he knew how. He was still a kid. He was nice, he tried to please me. In all fairness, I set the bar pretty high for him.” She pins me with a stare. “He wasn’t you. And I resented him because of that. He was my husband, and I wouldn’t even let him touch me. I told him that I couldn’t have sex with him while I was pregnant. I told him the doctor said it was too much of a risk.” She reaches around and rubs her scar in thought. “Not to be graphic, but I just couldn’t fathom the idea of him being inside me, pouring himself into me, into the same place where your baby was growing.”

She watches as a bug flies around the flickering front porch light. “Anyway, he tried in the beginning, but he stopped trying after the baby was born.”

I pace back and forth across the porch. “Why? Why did he stop trying? Was he grieving her loss? Was he angry?”

“He was angry, alright, but not because she didn’t make it.”

“Then why?”

She smiles weakly. “Because I refused to list his name on the birth certificate or death certificate. I put your name on everything.”

I stop pacing and stare at her. My heart beats against my ribcage. “She’s mine?” I shake my head, rewording my question, “I mean, legally, she’s mine? On the paperwork?”

“Yes. She’s yours.”

An unusual and unique sense of pride swells in my chest. I clear my throat, “So, why was that so upsetting to him?”

She chuckles on a dry laugh, “He was worried that if he ever ran for public office, someone would dig up the certificates and see that he wasn’t the father of his wife’s child.”

“And he’s not worried about the five-thousand affairs he’s had?”

She cocks her head. “Women can be paid off with no trace.”

I sit back down next to her. The porch swing creaks as we rock back and forth. I slide my hand across her smooth as silk thigh.

I need to be touching her.

“What happened after that? Between y’all? With you? How long were you in the hospital?”

“They did my hip replacement just a few hours after our daughter passed away. They waited as long as they could. Even though they stabilized me enough for the C-section, it was still an emergency. I wasn’t alone, though. Uncle Ray, Aunt Teresa, and Holt had just gotten to the hospital. I asked one of the responding paramedics to call them when I was trapped in the car. Holt said from the time they got the phone call until the time they hit the interstate, was only thirty-one minutes.” She giggles, “I guess that’s how Uncle Ray ended up with a suitcase full of T-shirts and shorts when it was already below freezing and snowing in Michigan.” She sighs, a serious memory overpowering her humor. “I wanted to see them before surgery in case I didn’t make it.”

Oh my god. “They were afraid you wouldn’t make it?”

She just shrugs. “My body had gone through a lot of shock and trauma.”

I can’t believe I nearly lost her too.

She gives my hand a comforting squeeze. “I was in the hospital for five days. Uncle Ray had called Marcum from the car when they were driving up. He immediately caught a flight. After six days, Uncle Ray, Holt, and Marcum drove back home. Aunt Teresa took a six-week leave of absence from work to stay with me and help me. Hudson had class so he was gone a lot. She took me to physical therapy, held me when I cried, talked to me when I was so depressed, I thought I would die. I don’t know what I would’ve done without her. She even got an extension for me from my online professors so I could take all of my finals after the Christmas holiday.”

I kiss Lulu’s knuckles. “She’s an amazing woman. Just like you.” I brush a hair from her forehead. “Did you tell your parents?”

“When he got back to town, Uncle Ray went and saw Dad. He never told me what my dad said, and I never asked. He just told me that I was his now, that I belonged to him and Aunt Teresa and that it didn’t matter what anyone else thought or what anyone else said. I was their daughter.”

I knew I always liked Ray.

Shifting in my seat, I ask, “And what happened with Hudson?”

“You know what happened with Hudson. We stayed married for nine years. He had his life, and I had my life.”

“Why did you stay married to him for that long?”

“I know it doesn’t make sense, but we just grew complacent. Lazy. He had his freedom, and it’s not like I needed my freedom to date other people. Dating was the last thing on my mind.”

“So, what finally led to the divorce?”

She debates not telling me. She debates lying. I can see it in her eyes. “So, help me, Lulu, if you lie to me, I’m gonna flip my shit.”

She growls. “Fine. After the accident, Hudson wasn’t always the friendliest. He’d say mean things. Degrade me, try to make me feel worthless.”

“He what?!”

“Don’t worry; it didn’t work. In the beginning, I was too dead to feel anything at all. By the time I came back to life, I’d already had enough criminology classes to see through his facade. It was his veiled attempt at asserting his masculinity over me. I’d chosen someone else over him, and he wanted me to think that no one else would ever choose me . I just ignored him. He was like a peacock strutting around with his feathers splayed out. It got much easier once we moved to Mobile since we lived separately. We’d always been in separate bedrooms, but separate houses made things much better. Anyway, he came over one night to tell me that his office’s charity ball was the next weekend. I told him I wasn’t going. He didn’t like that answer. He tried to lunge at me.”

Anger clouds my vision. My jaw starts to twitch and my foot bounces against the floor in nervous energy. I. Am. Going. To. Kill. Him.

Lulu reaches over. Placing a hand on my knee, she urges my leg to stop moving. “He’d been drinking, he was slow. I jumped out of the way. He stumbled and fell into the coffee table.” She smirks. “Busted his lip. It bled all over his suit.”

Well, that makes things a little better.

“I told him it was time for a divorce. That was four years ago. Even though it was a simple divorce—no alimony, no child support, no assets or liabilities to split—it took him nearly a year to finalize it. He wanted to drag it out so he could play the shocked and grieving husband card.”

“You didn’t tell anyone what he did to you?”

She shakes her head. “His father had lined up some initial clients for me when I was starting my business. He still had a relationship with them. He threatened to ruin my reputation if I said anything negative against Hudson. As twisted as it sounds, I felt like I owed them some small portion of gratitude. I mean, they paid for my health insurance, paid off my hospital bills, paid for my college, financially supported me when my own parents disowned me. I did some due diligence, though, before agreeing to that. I knew several of his mistresses. I checked with them, and he had never been violent or mean with any of them. He treated them like princesses. All of the affairs ended amicably. It was only me. He only treated me that way because he knew I would always choose you over him. And he didn’t like that.”

I would always choose you over him.

And yet, I drove her into his arms.

We sit in silence for a while, listening to the summer noises of the cicadas and crickets and tree frogs. It’s a lot of information to absorb. A ton. Happy news, devastating news, unbelievably remarkable news.

Even though I had planned to reach out to Lulu someday, I never thought all of this would happen. A few short months ago, that first night in the bar, she was driving me bat-shit crazy, and now? Now, she’s still driving me bat-shit crazy. But for all the same wonderful reasons she drove me crazy twelve years ago.

Suddenly, a crushing pain chokes me, making me stutter over my words. “Did you… Is she… What happened to…” I struggle to take a breath. “What I mean is, is there a place I can visit her? Did you bury her in Michigan?”

Her whisper is low. I lean closer to hear her. “I asked that she be cremated. I spread her ashes.”

Oh. “Where?”

Lulu points behind her head, toward the darkened woods. “Here.”

“Huh?”

“I came here during Spring Break that following spring. Hiked through the woods, spread her ashes at the creek.”

Holy. Shit. “She’s here? She’s been here with me this whole time?”

“Yes.”

“That’s why you were so upset when we went to the creek with Laura,” I say, suddenly making sense of Lulu’s reaction that day.

“I wasn’t upset. I was in awe. All of those wildflowers? There were never that many flowers there before. When you told me you didn’t plant them, I knew it was her. She’s been telling you, year after year, that she’s okay.”

My daughter. My little baby. My angel.

I bite the inside of my cheek. I refuse to cry again tonight. I’ve had enough of that to last me for a lifetime. “What’s her name? Did you name her?”

“Of course, I named her. Our daughter’s name is Reality.”

Reality reminds you where you belong.

Hell yeah, it does.