Heart Breaths (21 page)

“No,” he responded. “Although I don’t understand what that has to do with anything.”

I winced. This was going to be a bit more complicated than I thought. “Do you believe in reincarnation? In ghosts?”

“Nope,” he repeated.

Oh, boy.

“Well, then this is going to be a little complicated,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I do,” I replied. “The reason Noie told you that I’m Devi’s mom is because I am.”

“I don’t want to sound callous or anything, but your Devi was killed three years ago, and Noie’s Devi is some imaginary friend.”

“Noie’s Devi is my Devi,” I said quietly.

There was silence as Gabe turned to stare at me, incredulous. “You can’t possibly believe that,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked. “Gabe, it doesn’t make sense. Noie knew songs Ravi wrote before I ever moved here. Without hearing about any part of my past, she was able to tell me things about Devi’s childhood. She’s able to pick out pictures of Devi, not knowing that she was my daughter.”

“It’s a coincidence,” he repeated. “And it’s only fueled if you tell her things like that.”

“Things like what?” I asked, starting to get frustrated.

“Things like believing that your daughter is haunting mine!” he exploded.

“She’s not haunting her,” I protested. “She’s just keeping her company.”

Gabe’s disbelieving gaze met mine. “You can’t possibly believe that,” he repeated.

“Why not?” I asked. “It’s not like Noie is the same as all other kids her age. The level of stranger anxiety she has is not healthy, Gabe. She’s extra sensitive. Why can’t you believe that she might have the ability to see things you don’t?”

“Because she’s my daughter!” he argued.

“So?”

He stood there for a minute, breathing hard.

“Is that what this all was?” he asked me hoarsely. “All of this was just so you could keep on riding on the delusion of speaking to your dead child through mine?”

“Gabe, what are you talking about?” I asked, scared and confused.

“All of this,” he said, coming closer to me, his lips hovering inches away from mine. “Was all of this a lie, Maddie?”

I could feel the tears start. Did he really think I didn’t care about him? Did he? “No,” I said, hearing my voice crack. “None of it is a lie, Gabe. None, I swear.”

He moved back, shoulders slumping. “I don’t know if I can trust you,” he said. “How am I supposed to know anymore?”

The rage started to boil inside me. “Do you really think that little of me?” I shot back. “Do you really think that I would ever do something like that?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know. And when you kept running… what am I supposed to think? What kind of conclusions am I supposed to come to about any of this?”

“I haven’t run out on you in weeks!” I protested. Why was he doing this?

“But you did,” he said. “You have. How am I supposed to know you won’t do it again?” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair. “What about Noie? I don’t know how I would handle it if you ran away again, but Noie? I can’t, Maddie. I can’t. I can’t have her love you like that, only for you to run away.”

“I’m not running, Gabe!” My eyes were burning. “I’m not! And it’s hard not to run, okay? It’s killing me.”

“Then go!”

“What?” I wrapped my hands around my waist, trying to keep myself standing.

“If it’s so hard for you, just go, Maddie. You keep leaving, and at a certain point, I don’t think you care enough. About either of us. I don’t need someone who doesn’t want to be here.”

His words had me stumbling back. He couldn’t mean that. He couldn’t. He knew that wasn’t true, didn’t he? He had to. He had to know that he and Noie were two of the most important people in my life. He had to. “Don’t do this, Gabe,” I whispered. “Don’t do this.”

Rubbing a hand over his face, he sighed. “I can’t have Noie being fed hallucinations. I can’t have you getting her hopes up. About anything,” he rasped. “Please stay away from my daughter.”

“No, don’t do this,” I pleaded, reaching out to try to stop him.

“I’m sorry, Maddie,” he whispered, the hurt showing in his eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

Turning, he walked away, shredding what was left of my heart.

Chapter · Twenty

I didn’t sleep that night. I could barely stop crying.

Gabe’s words were haunting me. Repeating themselves, over and over and over.
I can’t do this. Please stay away from my daughter.

Hands shaking, I got in the car and drove over to Fort Raleigh. It was late, I knew. But I didn’t know what else to do.

I stumbled to where the two little rocks lay. “Ravi?” I whispered, my voice caught on a sob.

Nothing.

I began to cry. “Ravi, he doesn’t believe me. He doesn’t believe his daughter. He told me to stay away from her.” My shoulders shook as I cried. “I know he’s scared, Ravi, but I don’t know what to do.”

I sat there, hunched over, crying. Crying for Ravi. Crying for Devi. For Gabe and Noie and everything I had done wrong. “What am I supposed to do?” I rocked back and forth, sobbing. There was no answer. There never was.

My sobs grew louder. “Why aren’t you helping me?” I cried, almost yelling. “Why aren’t you helping me when I need you the most?” I picked up one of the rocks and clutched it against my chest. “Why aren’t you answering me, Ravi? I know you’re here, I know you are…”

The wind started blowing softly. “I miss you, Ravi,” I sobbed. “It still hurts, and it’s not going away… Make it stop, Ravi, make it stop…”

I don’t know how long I lay there, letting my heart bleed.

I lay curled up on my side, stroking the rock. “Was it my fault?” I asked, hearing my voice crack. “What did I do wrong?”

You were scared, Maddie.

So was he.

The moon was shining above the trees, bathing the clearing with a soft light. My tears slowed down as I drew a hiccupping breath.

Was this all about being scared? Was this what it all boiled down to?

Memories of me leaving, over and over and over flashed through my mind. I was still scared. I probably always would be.

Letting yourself open up to someone else would always be terrifying.

Maybe he was scared, too.

I had no way of knowing for sure. But something inside me was saying differently.

Of course he’s scared.

Of course he is.

I put the little white rock back in its place and brushed off the dirt there. I stood up slowly, watching the two rocks, hoping desperately that someone, something would come and help me.

But all I had left was myself.

I climbed back into my car, drained. I was going to have to try to fight for him. For us.

Even if it scared me.

But fighting for us would mean talking to him. And even though Gabe had been coming in regularly since I had started working there, ever since that horrible night, I hadn’t seen him once. The next few days were a blur of working at the café before returning to the apartment to cry. I knew Grandma was worried—but I did my best to brush it off, telling her that I was a little under the weather.

What was I supposed to say? The man who I was falling in love with told me that he never wanted to see me again, because his daughter was seeing the ghost of my daughter?

No.

Not that.

Anything but that.

I thought I was putting on a brave face, and that I was doing a perfectly good job of pretending that everything was okay.

“Maddie, we need to talk,” Sam said as I was walking around the back of the café toward my apartment at the end of the day, ready to shed the tears I had spent all day fighting.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” I protested, trying to walk around her toward the café. “Everything’s fine, Sam.”

“Bullshit,” she snapped, grabbing my arm and whirling me toward her. “Maddie, what happened?”

“Nothing happened!” I lied, trying to keep the tears from flowing. “Nothing happened, Sam, okay?”

“Why don’t I believe you?” she said, not letting go of my arm.

I shrugged. I would not cry in front of Sam, I would not cry in front of Sam, I would not cry in front of…

“Noie’s been asking me about you,” she said, and the dam burst.

Dropping my head, I let the tears flow down my cheeks, not caring anymore. God, I missed them both so much it hurt.

“Maddie, what happened?” she asked, her voice filled with worry.

I shook my head, unable to stop crying, not willing to tell her.

“Honey, I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong,” she said, stroking my back gently as I cried.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled my tattered self together as best as I could. “Ask your brother,” I said, wrenching away from her and heading toward the staircase up to the apartment.

Fumbling with my key, I finally unlocked my apartment and stumbled in.

“Well, I would ask Gabe, but I haven’t seen him since the night before we went out with Mary Liz and Jeannie,” she said, following me into the apartment. “I swear, he’s pretty much locked himself into his office when Noie isn’t awake. He takes her to work most days, and he won’t talk to anyone.”

I felt a pang in my chest, and tried my best to push it away. So he was hurting. But he was the idiot who started everything in the first place.

“Well, if you corner him, I’m sure he’d love to tell you about what’s going on,” I retorted.

“Okay, stop it!” Sam snapped, coming to sit next to me on my bed. “You’re both being stupid, and exactly who do you think this is helping?”

“Well, maybe if your brother wasn’t such a jerk, than we wouldn’t be in this situation!” I snapped back, frustrated, confused and more heartbroken than I cared to admit. “If he’s not interested in a relationship with me, okay, fine, I can deal with that.” No, not okay, I couldn’t. “But he didn’t have to basically get a fucking restraining order against me for Noie!”

Sam’s eyes went wide. “What the hell are you talking about, Maddie?” she asked.

I slumped down on my bed, too exhausted to fight anymore. “He basically accused me of feeding Noie lies about Devi, and told me that the only reason I was with him was to talk to my dead daughter through his.”

“I swear to God, that boy has the brains of a watermelon,” she muttered.

I shrugged, and buried my head in a pillow as my tears continued to flow. “I can’t do it anymore, Sam,” I whispered. “It hurts too much.”

Toeing off her shoes, she curled up next to me. “I never told you about the conversation I had with Noie the first day we saw you in the café, did I?”

I shook my head, comforted by her body curled up next to mine. “We walked into the café, she looked at you and said, ‘Look, Auntie Sam, that’s Devi’s mommy’.”

I lay there silently, trying to digest the bomb she just casually dropped. “So, I couldn’t really say I was that surprised when she was so friendly with you,” she continued.

“Didn’t you think she was just being a kid?” I asked, still shaking.

“No,” she said. “I didn’t. You’ve never seen her the way I did, before you came, Maddie. Around strangers. God, I don’t know how Gabe did it before we moved.”

“I saw her at Grandma Evelyn’s party,” I said, remembering the terror in her eyes.

Sam shook her head. “That was nothing. She’s literally fainted from terror.”

My eyes widened. “Fainted?” I repeated.

“Gabe never told you, did he?”

“Told me what?” I asked, heart in my throat.

“About her nightmares,” Sam said, reaching over and curling her hand into mine, a gesture so familiar and sisterly I ached.

“I was there when she had one,” I said. “All he said was that she has them pretty often.”

“He never told you what they were about, did he?”

“No. But God, Sam…” I shuddered, remembering. “It was awful.”

Sam’s fingers tightened around mine. “Noie has been having recurring nightmares since she was around six months old,” she began. “At first we thought they were night terrors, because she was so little, and the doctors told Gabe that there was no way it could have been an actual nightmare. Something about cognitive ability or something like that.”

She sighed. “But it’s the same dream, every time. She doesn’t like to talk about it, but she will, on occasion.” I could hear her take a shuddering breath. “In her dream, she’s in a car going somewhere with her mom and dad.” She swallowed hard. “She’s wearing a pink dress, and she’s excited because they’re going to go somewhere fun.”

I grew dizzy as the blood drained out of my face.

“They’re driving, and her daddy is singing her a song—her favorite song. And then the truck comes out of nowhere.”

There was no air left in the room. “No,” I choked. “No. No.”

“The last thing she hears before she wakes up is her mommy crying for her. Saying she’s sorry, and then saying something in a different language.”

Maiṁ tumasē pyāra karatā hūm. I love you.

“At least three nights a week,” Sam replied, her voice still scratchy from unshed tears. “God, it was horrible, Maddie. Gabe was at his wit’s end—he probably took her to see every pediatric neurologist and psychologist in North Carolina and Virginia. Nothing. They all said it was night terrors. That it couldn’t possibly be anything else. That she’d probably grow out of it eventually, but they couldn’t give him a timeline.”

My heart ached, thinking of what Gabe went through. It had been hard enough for me to watch Noie have one nightmare, but having them so frequently with no end in sight? I didn’t know how he did it. “And then one week, around a year ago, she didn’t have any nightmares,” Sam continued. “She started to talk about her new friend, Devi. And that her friend Devi would come in her dreams with her mama, and save her. She slept normally for an entire week, and so did Gabe. We had just moved here. Noie kept on having nightmares—but not nearly as often. She started singing the sunshine song before she went to bed—none of us had heard it before, and we figured she picked it up somewhere. She told us that Devi and her daddy sang it to her one night before she went to sleep. Bedtime had been hell for Gabe before then—Noie never wanted to go to bed—she knew what was waiting for her when she fell asleep. But slowly, she would start letting Gabe put her to bed, but only if he sang her the sunshine song, because that was the song that Devi told her would keep her safe.”

She paused and looked at me. “Nobody knows exactly why Noie keeps on having these dreams. None of us. But Devi was one of the best things that ever happened to her,” Sam said. “She still had nightmares, but not as often. She started talking to me, and to my parents. Before then, she wouldn’t go near anyone but Gabe. She would panic if he left. She was a shadow before Devi, Maddie. A tiny, little, haunted shadow. And slowly, she began to do little girl things, and she stopped having panic attacks when she went out in public. She would tell me stories that Devi would tell her—stories about her mama with purple eyes who used to sing with her, and her daddy, who called her Priya and painted. And so when we walked into the café and she told me you were Devi’s mama, I was the last one who was going to say you weren’t.”

I leaned over, trying to catch my breath, and I was suddenly reliving that day.

“Birthday picnic, Mama!” Devi shouted as she ran around the room, clad in nothing but a diaper. “Going on a birthday picnic!”

“We are,” I agreed, searching through my closet, looking for something to wear.

“Mama gonna look pretty,” she said matter-of-factly, plunking herself down at the edge of my bed.

“Everyone’s going to look so pretty, Dev,” I said, dropping a kiss on her forehead. “And we have to change your diaper and put on some clothing so you’ll be all ready when Daddy comes home.”

“Daddy gonna look pretty?” Devi giggled.

“Daddy’s going to look handsome,” I said, carrying her to the little alcove that was her bedroom. “Daddy always looks handsome.”

“Daddy’s hot,” she said.

I burst into laughter. “Who told you that?”

“Daddy did, when he gets home from work.”

I giggled. So, not that kind of hot then. Although Ravi would get a kick out of it. “Okay, Princess Devi, what are you going to wear today?”

“Pink!” She grabbed a pink tunic from her drawer and dropped it into my lap. “Pink!”

Always pink.