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To my surprise, Pol shakes her head. “Soothe her,” she suggests, as if it’s that simple. “She’s your daughter and she needs you right now.”
“She’s miserable.”
“Find a way to distract her. It’s time for you to make up for all those months you missed.”
Nina cries harder, reaching for someone, anyone who isn’t me.Everyone around me knows my daughter better than I do.
I turn to Kira. “You take her, then.”
Kira backs away from me just like Polina did, stroking her baby bump. “Laila had to be a single parent for three entire months, Arsen. It’s your turn.”
They leave me for the procession of black cars along the curb.
Gritting my teeth, I focus on my wailing daughter. Her face is red, her little fists swatting at my chest. “What do you need, little girl?”
She can’t answer. Turns out, I’m as useless at comforting her as I am at comforting her mother.
So I do all I know how to do. I hold her close, rocking her back and forth, whispering soft promises against her auburn curls until the crying eventually slows and quiets. When I dare to look down, my shirt is wet with tears, but her round cheek is pillowed on my chest. She’s fast asleep.
Laila did this on her own for months.
I didn’t give her a choice.
Nina will forget, but Laila? The damage has been done.
Marie told me I could make things right, but as I stare down at the fresh dirt on her grave, I think it might be too late.
Some things are too broken to ever be made whole again.
13
LAILA
“Hey there, princess.”
The soft rumble of his voice doesn’t startle me awake. Not anymore.
It’s been days of Arsen coming in at night and plucking Nina from her crib. Sometimes, she’s awake. Other times, he just rocks her in the corner, holding her while she snoozes in his arms.
I’m so exhausted that I don’t fight him on it. It’s easier to lie here in the dark and pretend to be asleep.
My milk supply dried up shortly after returning home. Grief screwed me on that one. On the upside, Arsen’s covert nighttime feedings mean this is the most sleep I’ve gotten in months.
Which is annoying in its own way. Gratitude towards Arsen is the last thing I want to feel right now.
Nina babbles. I peek one eye open and see her chubby hand reaching for him. He picks her up and cradles her, running a fingertip down her cheek.
“You look more and more like your mother every day, little one.”
As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he glances towards the bed. I snap my eyes closed.
By the time I open them again, he’s turned away from me. His voice is muffled as he whispers to our daughter. “I’m sorry I sent you away,” he murmurs. “I should have found another way to keep you safe. I was just…”
The rest of his words are lost to the hum of Nina’s sound machine.
It’s a miracle I don’t roll out of bed the way I’m straining towards them, desperate for every syllable.
As if he can sense that, he rotates back, still whispering. “I know I have a lot to make up for. You deserve better than me, but I want to be there for you,malyshka. It’s just sometimes…”
