ECHOES OF THE PAST


"Are you leaving?" he asked. I nodded my head slightly. I saw him swallow a lump in his throat. My eyes started welling up, but I refrained from breaking down and continued packing my bag.

"You can stay here, I will leave. It's not a good idea to travel in this condition," he said, his voice rough from crying. Something about the vulnerability in his voice made me reach out to him. I hugged him and started bawling. He patted my head softly. That was when I realized I was hugging him, and I broke free from his embrace. I walked over to the bed and continued packing.

My hand fell on a small cardigan. It had the word "baby" written on it. I smiled as I touched its smooth, woolen surface.

"I knitted this, it has both of our favorite colors, look!" As soon as I said that, I broke down. I sat on the floor. He came and sat beside me.

"I'm sorry," he said, probably for the umpteenth time.

I felt too numb to understand what feeling to develop after his sorry. Should I say, it's okay? But, it definitely doesn't feel okay. It feels like someone's stabbing me all the time, but only, the knife is invisible and so is the blood oozing out from the stab. I turned towards him, my eyes burning from the repetitive episodes of crying.

"I don't know how to feel anymore. For once, I had wished these rooms would be filled with laughter, albeit not ours. A little one would walk with us one day, holding our fingers. Why did this happen? What did you do?" I shouted the last two sentences, shaking him by the collar. He didn't say anything. Only solitary tears kept rolling down his face.

I wiped my face and got up. I was about to walk away when he held my hand.

"Liz, I am sorry."

"Sorry wouldn't bring our little one back. Also didn't you hear the doctors? They said that I can never get pregnant again. I feel I can still hear the laughter, the cries of that stillborn, Ross. It feels like I am walking in a nightmare, and maybe one day-" I sniffled and continued, "all this would be over." After biting down my tears, I spoke again. "I need to go. The memories haunt me here."

Just then, the doorbell rang. I wiped my face and dragged myself towards the door. As I walked across the living room, I couldn't help but notice the scent of stale flowers, the ones all of our acquaintances gave for condolence. If only dead flowers could bring back the dead!
I opened the door and saw Kevin.

"Come in."

"I brought you flowers, Lizzie. I am sorry—"

The flowers crushed my heart and I interrupted, "I hear that quite often throughout the day. He's inside."

Kevin held me by my arms and said, "Liza, you are weak now. It's not good to—"

"Kevin, I don't know what's good and what's bad. I just know that after that night, I have lost my purpose to live," I said, and continued, "Kevin, you were my best friend! How could you do this to me? All this time, how could you never once tell me you were in love? And that too, with him. Remember, how we used to talk about taking our children to the beach house when we were teenagers? You were important to me, Kevin. I took you to shop baby clothes with me when I came to know about my pregnancy. Couldn't you have once told me this secret that you held for your dear life?"
Ross walked up to us.

"Kevin, can you please give us a moment?"

Kevin nodded and sat in the living room, on the floor, near a cot he had gifted the couple.

Ross spoke up. "Liza, I wish I could have done this earlier, but—" he sighed and continued, "I'm meeting a psychologist this week."

My eyes softened. I stared at him for a few moments. I saw his beautiful face, his dark eyes. "Thank you, Ross. Don't let the same thing happen to both of you," I said, glancing at Kevin.

Ross’s breath was shaky, but he continued speaking, guilt oozing out from every word he spoke. "I didn’t know how to tell you. I mean, how do you tell your wife that you’ve got feelings for her best friend? And then, you told me you were pregnant, and I was scared out of my mind. I had countless nights when I couldn't bat an eyelid because I was filled with guilt, remorse, anger, and whatnot."

"We were best friends before you confessed your feelings to me, remember? I thought we could survive anything if we held our hands together. I would have understood, Ross. But, I also don't hold you responsible for your feelings for Kevin. Your hands were slipping out of my hands and I was too busy adding a third hand on ours." My voice broke. "The only thing I can see everywhere now is the lifeless body of our stillborn in our arms, or your physical infidelity with Kevin that night, or the way you thrashed me that day, causing the fall that—" I couldn't finish that sentence. I took a moment to gather myself and continued, "Ross, you know the feeling of holding your child? 10 years, Ross. 10 years, is what it took for me to achieve that. And even after that, I held a motionless infant in my arms, who didn't breathe like a normal human because she died a premature death she wasn't supposed to. But she did, because her father killed her in her mother's womb." I wiped a tear and continued, "You remember, don't you? Her cold body?" I turned towards Kevin, addressing him, "Kevin, I hugged her so tight, I wanted to give her some of the heat from my body. I wanted her to cry once, that's all I wanted. You were there that night, when he was so drunk, weren't you? You guys were sharing intimate moments, when I was busy shopping for my child. Did you see the realization on my face, Kevin, when I fell from the stairs, as he pushed me down? I knew it was over. I knew I had to live with the blood of my unborn in my hands."

I collapsed under the weight of it all, the sobs tearing out of me in violent waves. My voice echoed through the room, raw and desperate. Kevin’s arms wrapped around me, and then Ross’s, but their warmth couldn’t touch the cold inside. The three of us sat there, trembling, our tears mingling with the grief we couldn't speak.
As I got up and walked toward the door, I didn’t look back. The weight of their gazes pressed against my shoulders, but I couldn’t face them anymore. I knew that whatever life waited outside, it would be different—emptier, perhaps—but it would be mine, not a ghost of the life we’d built and lost. The last thing I heard as I closed the door behind me was Kevin’s quiet sob, and for the first time in weeks, I let myself breathe.