Chapter Eight

After being back in Hillborough for three weeks, Edward had grown back into his old habits. Seeing old sights will make you do that, despite his attempts to reinvent himself once he got to Edmonton. He had mostly shaved off his beard and had reverted back to his old habit of taking a gratuitously long and overly hot shower before he did anything else in the morning.

He heard his mother waking up from the thumping of her heading down the stairs. She had developed some kind of nerve problem in her leg at some point while he was gone. Fay’s family had helped her out, but she refused most of that and was still having trouble walking, hence the loud thumping down the stairs. She had gotten defensive and a little angry when Edward had tried to help her, so he left her alone. He had hoped that his return would change that but it didn’t seem like it.

Once he had brushed his teeth, he went out the front door straight to Fay’s house. Usually, they’d make breakfast together in her kitchen or go get fast food somewhere. They did it for the first few days after Edward’s return to spend more time together and Fay seemed to be busy every day after that, but perhaps he’d be lucky. She was busy a lot. She never really told him what she was busy with, but he never inquired. She wasn’t a little girl anymore.

Outside, the sun was beating down and there wasn’t any remnant of a breeze to relieve it. The entire street felt like an oven. He saw her waiting by the doorstep, but she didn’t have her purse with her like she normally did. She was staring into the trunk of the tree next to their houses.

“Hey,” he said. “You feel like pancakes?”

When she looked up at him, she had tears in her eyes. He rushed up to her and hugged her as soon as he noticed. By that time, she was almost shaking too much for him to hold her.

“Fay, what’s wrong?” he asked.

She felt her knees giving out, and Edward helped her to sit down in the doorway. The metal frame felt like hot coal pressed against their skin through their clothes, and they slid onto the floor of the house to get away from it. Fay wiped a tear from her face with her sleeve and took a breath in. The temperature of the air made it feel like poison. “Ed, I’m so sorry.”

Edward tried to let go, but he couldn’t manage to take his hand off hers. That only made it worse. “What do you mean? What happened?”

She wanted to lean on him for support, but she was too afraid that he’d pull away once she told him. It had been eating at her for three years, and now she barely had the air to choke it out. He was waiting, so she got it over with. “Before you left three years ago, I didn’t tell you that I was pregnant.”

“You were on a pill.” Edward said. Saying that was like an instinct, like he instantly wanted to deflect the idea that he could have a child. Fay didn’t say anything, and Edward realized how much he scared her after what he knew was too long. He squeezed her hand just lightly enough to make her notice and tried again, “We made sure that you were on a pill.”

“The doctors said that there’s always a chance the pills don’t work.” Fay sighed. “I could have opted out, but I didn’t want to, and you always talked about having a kid, so I didn’t think you’d want me to. You were the first person I wanted to tell, but you were so distraught over your dad. You weren’t eating, you weren’t sleeping, you were hurting yourself�"I didn’t want to make you stay.”

Edward had to lean backwards against the doorway, the hot metal forcing his eyes shut. “So what happened?”

Fay wanted it all to be over. She said it so quickly that she wasn’t sure that he understood. “We had a delivery. The baby didn’t survive.”

“What?”

“Hypoxia. He died during labour.”

“He?” Edward asked. “It was a boy?”

Fay nodded. “I was going to name him Colton. That’s the name we agreed on, right?” She only looked up at Edward for a second, and he looked absolutely broken. Her heart didn’t drop completely until Edward took his hand off of hers and put it over his mouth.

“What did he look like?” he asked through his fingers.

Fay shook her head. Tears were coming back. “He was beautiful. He had my nose and your eyes. Ed�"”

“Don’t call me�"” Edward stopped himself as soon as he could, but Fay had heard enough to know what he meant. She pulled her arms to her chest and her legs such a tiny distance away from him that it could have been a twitch. He wanted to reach out to her, but he knew she wouldn’t like it. Edward’s arms dropped to his sides and he looked out onto the street. “Is that why you’ve been so distant lately?”

She didn’t answer.

He tried to take a deep breath in, but he just choked on the hot air. “I’ve been back for three weeks. Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

Again, no answer. Just a shake of her head that could have been a shiver if it wasn’t boiling outside.

“What were you afraid of?”

“I don’t know.” Fay’s voice was a whisper. She cleared her throat and tried again, “I don’t know. Ed, are you angry at me?”

“I don’t know,” he said so quickly that Fay winced. He brought a hand up to wipe the sweat off his forehead and sighed, “I just don’t know what to think.”

Edward began to stand up, the hot metal in the doorway nearly burning the palm of his hand when he used it to help himself up. Fay didn’t move. She just stared at the pavement in front of her while he started to leave. He froze when he heard her almost shouting.

“I didn’t tell you because I was afraid you were going to leave again.” Her voice trembled. She had leapt to her feet with her arms hanging by her sides. “I was scared that it wasn’t just about the school. I was scared that you left because you just couldn’t take being reminded of what happened every time you saw the house and your mother and me and that you might leave again if something else happened. I just got you back. I didn’t want to lose you again.”

Edward turned back around. “The day I left was the first time my mother had said a word to me in two years. My father, the man who raised me�"I spent half my life watching him die. I had just begun to become okay with that, and then I learned that I had a baby that I didn’t even know about that died and the only person in the world that still loves me kept it from me for three weeks.”

All the heat in Fay’s body left as a puff of air from her mouth and suddenly, she had started to become cold. “You’re mad at me?”

“I�"” Edward said. “I just need some time to think by myself.”