Daire and Aspen

Chapter 9: Aspen

In the two weeks since Daire had forced me to go to the clubhouse, I'd barely said a word to him. We were back to a cold, uneasy war, at least on my part. He kept trying to talk to me, but I kept up the icy fortress around me. Strangely enough, he didn't push it, nor did he make any comments about my attitude.

Today, Daire had put Elly down for a nap after reading to her and he never came downstairs. Curious, I finally went upstairs to investigate and make sure everything was OK. Elly was out cold in the crib, and Daire was sitting in the rocking chair, her baby book in his lap. He wasn't supposed to find that. I made sure to always put it away on the top shelf of her closet near the back after I wrote in it, and I only wrote in it when Daire wasn't around. It was deeply personal, and I didn't want him seeing my thoughts.

"Everything OK?" I whispered, not wanting to wake Elly but wanting him away from that book. He seemed off somehow.

He looked at me with something I couldn't read in his eyes and got up, holding the baby journal in one hand and snagging my hand with the other.  Pulling me out of the room, he guided me to his room and shut the door.

Sitting on his bed, he pulled me down next to him. For once, I didn't argue and just waited to see where this was going. Wordlessly, he opened the baby book to the beginning and spent a few seconds on each page.

So, some background. I was living with Maggie, who was also single and knew I wasn't in a good place. As a baby doctor, Maggie had celebrated each week of my pregnancy with me and every week, she took a side-view picture of me with my belly exposed. The first one was when I came to her at three months pregnant, my belly still flat and hiding my secret. You could see my stomach expand and grow, and you could see my happiness as I cradled my rapidly-growing baby as the weeks progressed. Even though I was sick every morning, I still glowed with health, and my skin and hair were flawless. Pregnancy agreed with me and complete strangers would come up and mention my "glow."

Maggie had been kind enough to have a small shower for me with the few friends I'd made there and Mrs. Andrews even flew in for the party. It was a happy day, and I'd been moved by the kindness of relative strangers celebrating Elly's life.

And throughout all of this, I'd also journaled extensively in Elly's baby book, writing at least twice a week about how I was feeling, things I had bought for her. When she started moving, my entries had increased to four or five times a week, talking about how excited I was to meet her, how active she was, how her kicking felt, how I talked to her all the time about everything and nothing. In the last months, I journaled about my deep desire to be a mother, told her about growing up without parents in a foster home, and how I was so looking forward to making a little family with her. I told her about how much I already loved her and would do anything for her, protect her in any way necessary. In the days and weeks and months following her birth, I explored the overwhelming emotions I felt at having finally met her, how precious she was to me, how I'd felt holding her for the first time. I described counting each tiny finger and toe, how crazy her soft, fuzzy hair was, right down to the little noises she made while sleeping and eating.

Her first smile, her first laugh, her first bath, her first outing...everything Elly was detailed in that book. I still wrote in there in the hours Daire wasn't around, and I kept it tucked up on a shelf in her closet so she couldn't get to it when she became mobile. I had no clue how Daire had discovered it.

But he had and something was bothering him. The air around him was charged with an energy I couldn't read. He was silent until he flipped to the last page that had written entries. The book still had months to go since it went through her first birthday.

"This is amazing," he said after a few moments, his voice low and solemn. "And reading this is probably the hardest thing I've ever done."

I sat quietly, unsure of Daire's point.

Flipping back to the beginning of the book, he started going through the pages where I had pictures of myself mixed with Elly's ultrasound pictures. "You're so beautiful in every picture. You were facing all of this alone and still, the happiness on your face is obvious. She's going to look at this someday and understand how happy she made you even before she was born. She's going to read all of these words you wrote and know that you loved her from the very start."

He stopped again and looked me in the eye. "And someday she's going to wonder why there's no mention of me, no pictures of me and she's going to ask where I was while you were pregnant and giving birth. What am I going to tell her then, Aspen? That I didn't want her, that I threatened you and told you I would have nothing to do with her if you didn't get rid of her?"

People speak of crossroads they face. Where in a single moment you have two paths in front of you. The nasty part of me wanted to jeer at him and tell him he deserved every bit of guilt and pain he was facing and shove it in his face that he deserved to worry about this after what he'd done to Elly, to me.

But most of me just responded to the utter desolation in his face, his voice. He knew he'd messed up in a way that was tearing him apart. And in that moment, I found forgiveness. I let go of the bitterness his reaction to my pregnancy had poisoned me with. Forgiving him didn't mean what he did was OK; it just meant that I was releasing the anger inside of me and recognizing that, to the depths of his being, he regretted his actions.

With that shift inside of me, I touched the top of Daire's hand just long enough to get his attention, and he looked down at me, startled. Since he'd found me, I had done everything I could to avoid touching him and had taken great pains to avoid his touch. "I'll tell her this book was just about Elly and Mama. And starting at five months she'll see you in pictures and if she ever questions that, we'll tell her the truth. And the truth is, you and I had a fight, and I ran away and you couldn't find us until she was five months old, but you looked for her and didn't stop until you found her."

"And you, Aspen" he said low. "I need to be honest: it was you I was looking for as much, if not more, than I was looking for Elly. I still need to talk about that year I was trying to find you --"

I stopped him, knowing my forgiveness didn't go that far, not wanting to hear about the other women. Right now, all I could focus on was Daire and him stepping up to become her father, him admitting that he never wanted Elly to know what had gone down between us in the months before her birth.

"I don't want to hear about that," I told him. "For now, just know that we have to move forward as Elly's parents. That's all we need to focus on."

Before he could say another word, I took the book off his lap and returned it to its place in Elly's closet. If I stood in her room, breathing deeply and trying to process what had just occurred as she snuffled softly in her sleep, well, that was between Elly and me.