Chapter 95 95
POV Kate
Lucía practically carried me home without letting me think too much. She walked out of the hospital with me, grabbed one of the bags without asking a single question, and spoke to the taxi driver with that authority she only brings out when something really worries her.
I was holding Caleb in my arms, so tiny inside the carrier that sometimes it felt impossible he had been inside me until so recently. The ride felt strange, like I was returning to a life I still didn’t fully recognize. The city was the same—the streets, the traffic lights, people walking as if nothing had changed—and yet everything felt placed at a different distance from my body. It wasn’t just the pain from labor, or the accumulated exhaustion, or that ridiculous sensitivity that made me want to cry over anything.
It was something else.
It was that Elliot was gone.
I hadn’t seen him since he said goodbye with that look that left my chest tight. No matter how much I tried to convince myself that it was for the best, that this was how things were supposed to end, that each of us would finally go back to our proper place, I couldn’t feel relief. All I felt was a stubborn, almost physical emptiness—like someone had ripped something out of my hands that I hadn’t even realized I was holding until it was gone.
When we arrived, Lucía opened the door with my keys and went in first, as if she were afraid of finding chaos. There wasn’t any. Everything was more or less as we had left it—too clean, too tidy, too quiet. She guided me in slowly, led me to the sofa, and slipped the bag off my shoulder with a gentleness I appreciated more than I could say. Then she started moving around the house with the restless energy of someone who needs to stay busy to avoid getting emotional. She went down the hallway, brought the portable crib into the bedroom, arranged the blankets, opened one window, closed another, put water on to boil without even asking if I wanted tea.
“Sit down and don’t get up,” she ordered from the kitchen. “You’ve already done more than enough.”
I watched her disappear through the doorway while I stared at Caleb sleeping. His mouth was slightly open, his face calm in that way only newborns have, as if he still hadn’t realized anything at all. I brushed his cheek with the back of my finger and, for a moment, felt completely alone.
Lucía came back into the living room with a pillow under her arm and tucked it behind my back. Then she looked around with the expression I already knew: that mix of irritation and anger she gets when she thinks someone isn’t stepping up.
“And where the hell is Andrew?”
The question hit me in a ridiculous way. Not because the answer hurt, not because it pained me that he wasn’t there. The truth was uglier than that. Andrew wasn’t here, yes, but his absence wasn’t what was breaking me inside. What really hurt was something else entirely.
It was the sudden realization, with Lucía standing in front of me and Caleb asleep in my arms, that I would probably never see Elliot again.
Weeks had gone by before he appeared in front of me, and the only reason he did was because I called him. Because I was scared. Because Andrew didn’t answer. Because, in the middle of everything, I thought of him.
And now there was no reason for him to come back. He already knew the baby wasn’t his. There was no longer any doubt keeping him tied to me. Sooner or later he would have to accept reality and move on with his life. That was exactly what I had always wanted him to do. The right thing. The sensible thing. What a woman like me was supposed to wish for him. And yet, the moment that idea became solid inside my head, my eyes filled with tears.
Lucía looked at me with alarm.
“Hey, no, no. Don’t cry like that.”
But it was too late. The crying came all at once, without grace, without control, squeezing my throat and soaking my face in seconds. She sat beside me and awkwardly held my shoulder, trying not to crush the baby.
“I thought it was Andrew affecting me,” I murmured between sobs, “but it’s not that.”
I didn’t want to go on. I couldn’t confess my sins. It would have been too shameful to say it out loud, to admit that what hurt wasn’t my husband, or my marriage, or the birth, or the exhaustion—but the possibility that Elliot would finally do exactly what I had always asked of him: walk away and live. How miserable. How selfish. Wanting him to leave because it was the right thing, and suffering like a madwoman at the thought that this time he actually would.
Lucía didn’t push. She carefully took Caleb from me and placed him in the portable crib while I covered my face with my hands. Then she helped me up, led me to the bedroom, and sat me down on the bed with patience, as if I were another newborn who couldn’t understand anything.
“Sleep for a while,” she said. “I’ll take care of everything.”
I shook my head out of pure habit.
“Lucía, you don’t have to—”
“Shut up. Sleep.”
And I obeyed because I had no strength left to argue. I lay on my side, feeling my body still foreign, heavy, aching, and sleep overtook me almost immediately.