“Slightly,” I admit. “Getting off my feet did help.”
She nods. “I know this is all difficult, Jessa. But trust me, I’ve got you.”
Her smile is so sincere that it makes me mad to think that Chris would put all these doubts about Freya into my head.
She’s a good person.
But then… I thought the same thing about Dane.
And Salma.
And Anton.
“Do I need to get you some more of Marge’s miracle tonic?” she asks.
“No, that’s okay. I don’t think I can eat or drink anything right now.”
We sit in silence. The urge to study Freya, to try to get inside her head and figure out what she’s thinking, is strong. But I don’t want to stare at her too much and give myself away.
Though it might be too late for that. Something in the way she holds herself tells me she knows I’m observing her.
“You seem distracted, Jessa,” she remarks. “Are you sure nothing is wrong?”
My stomach twitches uncomfortably, but I bite down my discomfort. “I’m sure. I just feel a bit weird, is all. It’s just the pregnancy hormones.”
“I miss being pregnant,” Freya says softly.
I feel the urge to wrap my arm around her and comfort her, but I don’t. Chris’s warning is still echoing in my head. I feel insane, ping-ponging back and forth between two irreconcilable options like a little girl plucking petals from a daisy.
He loves me, he loves me not.
I trust her, I trust her not.
“It’ll happen for you one day,” I tell her. “Not everyone is meant to have babies in their twenties. Some people find motherhood later in life.”
“But it’s not really a question of having a baby. It’s more like… I want that baby. My baby. The one I lost.” She glances at me. “Do I sound crazy?”
“Not at all,” I say gently. “You sound human. You sound like a mother who has lost a child. I can’t even imagine what you must have gone through.”
She nods. “I’m still going through it. Not sure it’ll ever end, really.”
“Of course, I didn’t mean to imply—”
“It’s okay, Jessa. I know you didn’t mean it that way.”
Her voice is soft. Melancholy. Like she’s thinking of an alternate reality. One where she was happy with her ex. Where they had a baby they could raise together. Where the bruises never came in the first place.
Looking at Freya feels a little bit like looking at a mirror. She looks the way I feel inside, trying to bat away my own alternative reality.
One that includes Anton. A shared home. A family.
“We’re both strong women,” I say, mostly for myself. “We can get through this.”
But even as I say it, another bout of dizziness has me gripping the edges of the bench so hard that they leave indentations in my skin.
“Jessa…?”
I open my mouth to speak, but white spots appear in front of my eyes instead. The garden disappears for a moment underneath a haze of chalky hallucinations like television static.