I could call every specialist. I could research every study. I could try every drug, treatment, and experiment, hoping, always hoping, praying, threatening, bribing, selling my soul for a chance…one chance…but eventually…
Eventually, Della would be on her own.
And I’d be screaming in the void, yelling in perpetuity, pounding on the veil of this world and the next, desperate for Della to hear me. For her to know I might have gone, but I would never leave her. I would haunt her. I would be beside her when she slept and next to her when she moved on.
I would be there always because I couldn’t accept anything less.
John looked over Della’s head, his arms tight around her.
He followed where my thoughts had spiralled and gave me the saddest smile. A smile that said he understood. That he’d hold my wife when I was gone. That he would protect her when I couldn’t.
He nodded. He vowed. He made me grateful as well as furious.
Then John’s face slipped from understanding into the authoritative I-don’t-take-any-shit farmer I knew. His voice was harsh and hard and almost cold in its delivery. “You will accept this, Ren. You will be happy about this.”
I didn’t know if he spoke about his oath to protect what was mine, the inevitability of my death, or the land he tried to stuff into my hands.
“This is merely a gift from one man to his son and daughter.” John’s temper simmered. “I’m not stepping on your toes or doubting that you can make a fortune for yourself. I’m not stopping you from living the life you want. If you don’t want it? Fine, sell it. I don’t care. Because it’s yours. You earned it fair and square every day you broke sweat toiling in those meadows. You earned it the day you proved what a great kid you are. So don’t you dare argue with me on this. Don’t you motherfucking dare.”
His voice broke again before he let Della go and grabbed another piece of paper. With a huff, he threw the document across the table to me. “Oh, and before you say anything, this is also for you.”
I caught the fluttering piece of paper mid-air. My hands shook as I scanned the form and the rage, despair, and absolute dread at facing a future I didn’t want disappeared.
My temper exploded in a bomb of gratitude.
Gratitude I didn’t know how to stop, show, or share.
“Fuck,” I grunted as I stroked the headline from the local building authority, approving a residential dwelling to be erected on the newly subdivided land of Cherry River Farm.
A home with planning permission on the two sections belonging to Mr. and Mrs Wild.
I could hate John.
I could hate myself.
But I couldn’t hate true goodness and generosity.
Lurching around the table, I stood before his large bulk.
A cough fell from my lips.
A cough followed by another, thanks to the stress in my blood and the harsh breathing in my lungs.
And John let me cough.
He didn’t flinch or look away as if I were a walking corpse already.
He merely waited.
Father Time himself, giving me every second I needed.
And once I finished coughing, his eyes widened in surprise as I pulled him into a hug. A hug full of violence and fists and curses. But a hug, nevertheless. “Goddamn you, John,” I muttered into his ear. “Goddamn you for everything.”
He merely patted my back and said, “You’re welcome.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
DELLA
* * * * * *
2022
THE NIGHT REN told me he was sick, my world fell apart.
But…I also fell into something else too.
They said love had the power to make you become someone better than you were, but adversity and hardship revealed the truth about who you were at heart.
Nothing was truer than that.
I learned I had the power to say no to my tears whenever Ren coughed. I had the ability to laugh and stay light, even knowing my husband was on borrowed time.
Sadness was a part of everything we did, but we didn’t let it consume us.
We lived life like we had before—throwing ourselves into work and play and tackling everything we could.
And…there was something else.
Something I’d tripped into, thanks to Ren.
Something I didn’t figure out for an embarrassingly long time. Something that could be classed as unbelievable or just pure coincidental.
I liked to think it was the first one.
A marvel, a wonder, a phenomenon.
The fact that before Ren destroyed me, he’d made love to me, growling at the gods to impregnate me if they felt a shred of guilt for what they’d done to him.
I’d been off the pill for a week.
We’d had sex once before the forest and then multiple times afterward—thanks to getting married and ensuring we consummated the hell out of our union.
But…it didn’t change facts.
My world had fallen apart…
And, I’d fallen pregnant.
I was pregnant.
And for months, I didn’t know.