I peer around the door’s edge to see him on his mother’s shoulder again. Even worse, I see Marina. She isn’t crying; she doesn’t even seem sad. With her delicate fingers looped together at her stomach, twisting her engagement ring, she looks strangely content as she stares up at Ashe and his mom, consoling each other. Her face hints at an almost wanton expression—I think. I don’t know this woman. Sure as hell don’t understand why she isn’t balling her eyes out or, at least, cursing, yelling, throwing shit across the room.

If this isn’t a life-is-shit-moment, I don’t know what it is.

But watching her watching them, I wonder if she feels left out of her own tragedy. She should be the one being consoled right now.

Not that I can offer her that. Or anything. I’m nothing but the man who did this to her.

Somehow, I find my legs and return to my father, nearly collapsing into his arms again. Wade and Christie are gone. Jim and his officer await their turn with Marina, dutifully holding the bag with her salvaged things—the shattered and torn remains of the devastation I caused.

Regret and guilt swirl in my head, making me dizzy. I don’t deserve to take comfort in my father while Marina lies there, no one holding her. Why is no one holding her?

Into Dad’s shoulder, I whisper, “She can’t have kids, Dad. She’ll recover, but she can’t have kids. Because of me.”

“It was an accident, son. Plain and simple,” he breathes against my head. “An accident.”

His words don’t ease my grief.

“There’s nothing more you can do here,” he says, an echoing reminder of last night’s stillborn colt—it seems like a lifetime ago. Nothing can be done.

“Let me take you home.”

The word sounds strange, like I don’t know where that is. “Not yet. I need… not yet.”

4. Marnie

CHAPTER FOUR

Marnie

The room is quiet, aside from Ashe’s sobs and the faint beeping of the monitors. My heart breaks for him and our lost plans. His plans. Our plans. We were so close to our dreams, so achingly close. Watching Ashe crumble against his mom solidifies the harsh reality of what’s happened and pulls my remaining hopes through my fingers, unraveling the strings that hold us together. No hope-reconstruction project can salvage them. Those hopes are gone. Forever.

Poof.

A dark side of me, the part that lives in my previous abandonment like an inescapable shadow, fears that’s not all I’ve lost.