40. Chapter Forty

Chapter Fort y

Indy — Then

N olan believed I could do anything.

Believed, if I chose, I could jump off waterfalls and chase sunsets. Learn a foreign language or perhaps fly to a different part of the world and immerse myself in a new culture. I could cut my hair, even change my name. Start college, only to switch my major four times before dropping out to join a band.

He believed I could do anything I wanted.

He was wrong.

Because I’d never hear my baby’s heartbeat. Never experience what it was like to learn I was pregnant for the first time, to realize there was another life within me. Because I hadn’t known I was pregnant. Didn’t realize there was something precious and sacred inside me, a piece of Nolan and me, until they were already gone.

And I felt their absence everywhere.

It had been two weeks since I miscarried. Fourteen days since Nolan had been pulled over for a broken taillight, only to be charged with an underage DUI. He hadn’t been over Arizona’s legal limit, but it didn’t matter—he was eighteen. I should be grateful the police officer hadn’t immediately taken him in and instead escorted us to the hospital in his cruiser. Thankful Nolan had been beside me as a nurse explained I wasn’t on my period. I was miscarrying, and there was nothing they could do. Relieved I wasn’t far enough along to need medical intervention. I should be grateful the police officer was sympathetic and drove me home, offering me his condolences before taking Nolan to the station.

But I wasn’t grateful.

I wasn’t anything.

My phone rang, Mom flashing across the screen before I tossed it to the foot of the mattress. I didn’t want to talk to her. I hadn’t told her I miscarried and I never would. She wasn’t calling for me. She was calling for the same reason everyone in Wallowpine had been blowing up my phone all morning.

Nolan had been officially cut from the Arizona Rattlesnakes. His baseball career was over.

I hadn’t listened to their voicemails. I’d done my best not to read their texts, but I already knew what they were saying. I was sure it didn’t vary much from what I was telling myself.

You should’ve told someone and gotten him help.

How could you let him get behind the wheel?

You cost him everything.

The bathroom door opened, and Nolan stepped out just as my phone rang again. His gaze met mine, but he didn’t ask me if I was going to answer it. The phone rang and rang, and he only watched me, like he was waiting for me to guide us out of this.

But I was lost. I could breathe, but every breath hurt and was coated in shame. My body no longer felt like my own. I was trapped, engulfed in endless darkness. I could see Nolan, but I didn’t know how to reach for him. I didn’t know how to ask him to reach for me. I didn’t know how to tell him what I was feeling—I didn’t understand it myself. And the longer we silently watched one another, the more I wondered if he could even see me.

Had he ever seen me at all?

Later, with Nolan asleep beside me, I lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling. It was dark, no sign of the stars he’d once hung for me. I’d torn them down. I knew now why my husband drank. Why he was so desperate to numb the world. Because this misery was enough to kill me, and it would be amazing to feel nothing at all.

But after all I’d done and failed to do, maybe I deserved to hurt.