Four, relatively uneventful, years have passed since Tom and Megan's wedding. Together they have settled and built a family, and their children - Mars and Mika now formally adopted - are thriving. Tom has made a couple of exciting announcements recently, but we will learn more of that soon enough. Ruth, meanwhile, is still in York. Little has changed there, except that she has just announced her "retirement", feeling that at 70 it is time to step aside and make way for the next generation. So she's busy figuring out what to do next.
But now, as book 2 ended with a wedding, book 3 begins with a funeral...
This story is dedicated to the babies who never grew up, and to those who mourn them.
C/W: Baby loss
*****
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race. Grace Carter. She was supposed to have a middle name,
why had they put off deciding? Why hadn’t they done it while it was still worth
doing? While they could still talk about it?
A little person needed a big name. Something to make up for
it, for that little white shoebox that they called a coffin. A big name, to
fill the silence. A long name, in place of a lifetime. Just one thing that
wasn’t small, that wasn’t measured in centimetres or weeks. Something that
would last.
Like a name could make up for all of that.
There were six of them there besides the priest, a crowd. Of
the family, only Liza - Mars and Mika left at school, because whatever
arguments there might be for including them, there were more for being alone.
Mars sixteen and Mika eight, old enough to know but not to really know.
Parenthood took many forms, and maybe this was one, one incompatible with
children, silence wrapped beneath a blanket of lead. Liza got it, and the other
three, friends from church, didn’t matter.
Though of course over the weeks to come they would matter,
if just for the food brought to the door, for the school runs and babysitting
and sympathy. There with Megan when Tom got in the car to go back to work.
It had piled up. It always piled up, every holiday, every
day off. Email, after email, after email… how easy to delete the lot, start
again… but then what? An empty inbox, an empty heart, an empty life? If
faculties could fill the empty space…
And the move, drawing closer. The consecration, drawing
closer. Life, still ticking on after his heart had stopped.
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