Tristan’s POV
I closed the door to my old study room behind me with a soft click, the weight of the old oak groaning in its hinges, as though it too mourned with me. The study room smelled of aged books. Dust clung to the corners of the room, but I didn’t care.
The chair creaked as I sank into it, leather cracked at the edges, worn from long nights I used to spend here with Estelle, her legs curled under her on the recliner, a journal in her lap, her eyes lighting up when she caught me watching her instead of working.
I reached slowly toward the drawer on my right. My hand trembled with the weight of what I knew waited inside. A fragment of a life we were supposed to have.
My fingers brushed the edge of the picture. A black and white blur that once held our entire future in its grainy outline. I held the ultrasound picture of our baby in front of me. Estelle had gripped my hand so tightly during that ultrasound, her laugh echoing in the tiny hospital room when we saw the flicker of a heartbeat. Our baby. I had cried quietly that day. A silent joy that I experienced when we found out that Estelle was pregnant with Cris.
I stared at the image, the way the curved shape of the fetus floated in shadow, so small, and yet already everything to me. I held it closer to my chest, shutting my eyes, and letting the memory crush me for a moment. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, the word tasting like regret as it passed my lips.
The image blurred as tears welled up in my eyes. I hadn’t meant to cry today. I had promised myself I wouldn’t, but grief never cared about promises. I traced the outline of the tiny being that had once existed inside Estelle, full of possibility. Full of life. And now… Now there was another.
Another child who would never breathe, who would never laugh, who would never know my voice, or Elona’s warmth, or the way I would have loved them more than anything. Except, unlike Estelle… Elona never even got to know. With an aching reluctance, I placed the photo gently in the drawer. There was no comfort in holding it anymore. Only the reminder of what I would never get back.
I slammed the drawer shut and leaned forward, pressing my palms into my eyes as if I could force the tears back inside. But it was no use. They came anyway, hot, stinging, and broken. “I’m sorry,” I said again, but this time, the words weren’t for the baby in the photo. They were for the one I never got to see. “I never even… I never even saw you,” I said out loud. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know. If I had-if I had known-I would’ve done everything differently. I swear to you,” the study room swallowed my voice, but I kept talking, needing the silence to hear me. My fists curled into the edge of the desk.
“Elona...your mother didn’t even know she was pregnant with you,” I whispered. “Not until it was too late. She went through it all by herself...grieving you. I should’ve been there, but I wasn’t,” a sob tore from my throat, and I sank lower into the chair. “How can I grieve you when I never got to meet you?” I whispered, barely able to speak through the tightness in my chest. “How can I mourn someone who never had a name, never had a heartbeat I got to hear, never had a future to dream about?”
I looked around the room, dark oak walls, lined bookshelves, a crystal decanter in the corner I hadn’t touched in the past three years. But it was the covered canvases leaning against the wall that pulled me from the spiral. The paintings. Elona’s mother’s art. I stood up, my legs shaky beneath me, and I crossed the room. One by one, I unwrapped them. Canvas after canvas, each one more breathtaking than the last. Bold strokes, deep colors, emotions carved into every layer of oil and canvas. I recognized the sadness in them now. The ache that lived beneath the beauty.
I remembered the day I had bought them all for Elona that night at the Gallery. Not because I needed more art for my walls, but because I needed her to have a piece of her mother. Even if she didn’t know it yet. I leaned the largest painting against the wall in the lounge outside my old study room. The space was wide and echoing, sunlight pouring in through the windows would catch the paintings better. I imagined Elona walking in, seeing them up for the first time. Her eyes softening, that guarded look on her face slipping just for a moment. Would she smile? Cry? Would she even want them here?
“I wanted to tell you,” I said, as if she were in the room. “I wanted you to see them before the world broke again,” I stared at the painting. “But I can’t stop hurting, and I don’t know how to breathe through this kind of pain,” my voice was cracking again.
I turned away from the painting and walked all the way back to the smaller part of the house and into the study room I have been using since Estelle passed away. I sat down behind my desk. I just couldn’t be in that part of the house anymore. I dragged my hand down my face. It was too much. Too many losses. I wanted to bury myself in work. In numbers. In boardrooms. In meetings that meant nothing just so I didn’t have to feel anything. I wanted distraction, not healing. I needed control, not closure. But all I had were ghosts. Two babies who would never grow up.
I needed to feel coldness. I needed to bury myself in spreadsheets and figures and relentless hours that kept my mind too full to remember my grief and loss.
I opened the drawer. I took my journal out that no one knows I keep. The leather cover was rough beneath my fingertips. I flipped to a blank page, picked up my pen, and wrote what I felt. Once I was done, I dropped the pen, and I closed the book with finality. I have to let work consume me tomorrow. Because if I stayed here...if I let myself truly feel everything, I would drown. I didn’t want to head in that direction.