“Everyone except Colette’s baby.”
“Yes.” He’s stopped pretending now. He’s given up trying to smooth over the ugliness of his words. “I will sacrifice the one for the many. I do this for you. For all of them.” A hand waves in front of him, I can hear the shush of the air. “You know this better than anyone.”
I press my palms against my knees, wanting to push away the hurt welling up behind my eyes. I need something I don’t know how to ask for. I need him to reach out and touch me, soothe the scraping thoughts racking at my skin, but he might as well be a hundred yards away from me. I can hear the distance in his voice.
“It’s still out there,” he continues. “Beyond our valley. You can hear the trees separating, can’t you? The wood peeling away. It will kill anyone who tries to leave.”
I know he can see the answer in my face—I have heard the trees. In the deepest hours of night, they crack themselves apart, trying to rid themselves of disease. The sound echoes over the valley and it keeps me up, unable to sleep.
“It isn’t safe, Bee.” He reaches out now, for the first time, and touches my hand gently, like he’s afraid I might pull away. I close my eyes and absorb the warmth from his touch. We sit like this for a while, in the quiet of our own thoughts, until he says, “I feel like I’m losing control.” There it is, the idea always nagging at him: the one that never leaves him alone, a ticking inside his rib cage like a beetle looking for a way out. He fears the community doesn’t trust him like they trusted Cooper. He fears his role as our leader won’t last, that in time they will see that he was never as good as Cooper—the man who they followed into these mountains. The man they trusted with their lives.
I worry his paranoia will be the thing to finally tear him wide open for all to see—a festering wound he’s been carrying all this time.
He releases my hand and pushes up from the couch, and my heart breaks a little.
“You’re not losing control,” I offer. I feel the urge to stand as well, to press my lips to his, to comfort him in that way. But I resist. Not yet. “They just want to believe the child could be saved somehow. They’re afraid.”
He paces to the fireplace and back, footsteps heavy against the floor. “They should be afraid.” I imagine him shaking his head, his gaze sinking to the floor, his mouth turned down. I imagine a darkness in his eyes and an uncertainty leveled across his brow. “They should fear what’s out there, they should know fucking death is waiting for us in those trees, waiting for someone stupid enough to cross the perimeter and bring back an illness that would destroy us all. And still, they talk of leaving, of going in search of a doctor, as if they’ve forgotten.” He stops pacing and I can hear his heart banging irregularly against his ribs. He’s looking at me. “Still,” he says, the breath tight against his teeth, “they want to defy our rules.”
“It’s not defiance,” I answer. “It’s hope. Because next time it might be one of them who needs a doctor. And they would want us to risk everything to save them.”
“It’s just a child,” he says coolly. “Just one life.”
I stand up from the couch—the stone I’ve kept stuffed inside me is too heavy, the burden unbearable. I need to tell him the truth. I hope my gaze is centered on him, spearing him straight through, but my fingers tremble at my side and I grab the loose fabric of my dress to quiet them. I need to force the words out. I can’t keep them locked in the cage of my chest any longer; it hurts too bad. Especially now, hearing him talk of a child. Of just one life. My heartbeat pounds against my ears. “I’m pregnant.”
The room feels like it swells outward, and I listen for the sound of Levi moving closer, reaching out to touch me. But he stays where he is. “You’re certain?” he asks. I can’t read anything in his voice, but his heart betrays him, rising in cadence, hammering from the inside out.
My legs quiver, and I wish he would cross the space between us and pull me to him. Tell me that he loves me. Really loves me. Not just when our flesh is bared and we’re pressed to each other, but that he loves me in a way that makes him feel sick when we’re apart, that he would do anything for me. But when he doesn’t, I swallow and say, “I can hear its heart beating inside me.” I smile a little, a warmth in my chest. “I’ve felt so many heartbeats inside the bellies of other women, and still… I wasn’t expecting how it would feel to hear a second heartbeat inside my own body. The pulse like a tiny fluttering fish.” I touch my stomach lightly, feeling for the sensation beneath the fabric of my dress. The roundness of my belly is still slight, barely there, but I press my fingers against it, hoping to feel something. “It’s our baby,” I say at last.
Levi remains perfectly, sickeningly still. This isn’t how I wanted it to happen. I wanted him to kneel down and press a palm over mine to feel the life tucked inside the hollow of my belly, I wanted to hear his words against my skin as he promised to keep me safe, to do whatever it takes. But this is the opposite. This is me breaking.
“Levi?” I say. But he doesn’t reply, and it feels as if I’m suddenly all alone in the cavern of his house. Just me and his baby. I can feel all the words he wants to say but won’t, hanging in the air. He wants this to all go away, to disappear like dew on prairie grass when the sun first rises. Evaporating into nothing. He wants me to become air and dissolve before his eyes.
And right now, I want it too.
“We’re going to have a baby,” I try, blinking, holding back the tears. “You always say how important new life is, that it assures the community will continue. This baby is ours, it—” I swallow down the hurt pooling inside me. “I thought you would want this,” I say. “To have a child of your own.”