Eduardo's Arc

Chapter 87 of 115

The next Friday, Kiersten read the ledger as always. But when she set it down, she did not reach for her tea. She sat still on the porch step of the weary house, hands folded in her lap. Eduardo saw the quiet in her was a different quiet. Not the pulled-back fear from before. This was something older, buried deeper. "There's one you never wrote down," she said. "Because you did it to me and called it a wish." Eduardo set his cup on the sagging rail. "Tell me." "The night you came back," she said. "I told you I couldn't trust you with my safety. So how could I trust you with a child's?" Her voice stayed level. "You said I couldn't have kids anyway. Then you said you wanted one. And if I couldn't give you that, you couldn't be with me." The old shame rose in Eduardo like a tide. He remembered the words. He remembered watching them land. "I wanted a child too," Kiersten said. "More than you knew. You took the one thing that already hurt me and used it to measure my worth. You shamed my body and called it love." Eduardo wanted to explain. To say he had been afraid. The old Eduardo would have turned her pain into a lesson about himself. He pressed his hand flat against his knee and let the urge pass. "You're right," he said. "I knew it cut you. That's why I said it. I made your body into something you failed at, so I'd have power over you." Kiersten's jaw tightened. "I told you then. If you loved me, we'd work through it together. You heard that like a door closing." "I did," Eduardo said. "Because needing you with me, broken parts and all, scared me more than losing you. So I made it your fault instead." For a long moment she said nothing. A cracked window behind them caught the last of the light. Eduardo did not fill the silence. He had learned that much. Kiersten looked at him. "Say the true thing. Out loud. Once." Eduardo met her auburn eyes. "Your body was never the problem. You were never less because of it. A child was never a price you owed me. I made it one to hide my own fear." Her shoulders dropped. The buried thing came loose. She did not cry. She wrapped her hand around the locket at her throat. "That one's been in me ten years," she said. "You just named it right." "If a child comes, it comes to both of us," Eduardo said. "If it doesn't, you're still whole. I'll never weigh you by it again." Kiersten opened the locket. It was still empty. She looked at the small space inside, then at the patched house that now held them both. "Then I want to start filling it," she said. "With what we build. Not what you take." She leaned her shoulder against his. The old wound had a name now, and the name no longer belonged to her alone.