Rock Wedding (Rock Kiss #4) - Nalini Singh Page 0,13
WORN AWAY. She didn’t know how this had happened, how she came to be sitting in Abe’s car, driving to the cemetery where she’d laid her baby to rest. “I hate seeing him there,” she whispered, arms wrapped around her middle over the shawl Abe had picked up and put back around her shoulders. “I made sure he had the most beautiful white casket all lined in blue, but he shouldn’t be there. My baby shouldn’t be in the ground.”
Abe said nothing, but he was listening. She could tell. When he was sober, Abe had always been good at listening, and today she couldn’t stop the words from tumbling out. She needed to speak about Aaron; Jeremy, when they’d been together, hadn’t had the patience to understand her grief.
No, that wasn’t totally fair. He’d been excited to greet his son, in that she wasn’t mistaken—he’d been determined to name their child Jeremy Vance Junior for one, a fact on which they’d still been in discussion—and he’d grieved when that son was born without life. But he’d also shut that part of their life away behind an iron door, refusing to talk about Aaron when Sarah wanted so much to talk about their little boy.
Maybe it had been his way of dealing with the loss, but later, when her own grief continued to haunt her, he’d told her they could always have another one. As if Aaron was replaceable, like a broken washer or car.
Aaron was Aaron. Her firstborn. Sarah would always remember the tiny, perfect body the nurse had put into her arms. She’d been a kind woman, that nurse, had treated Sarah’s baby with respect, touching him as gently as if he were a living, breathing child. “I sat with Aaron in my arms for hours, memorized every inch of him.”
And Jeremy, for all his faults, had made sure no one interrupted her precious time with her son.
“He was so beautiful, Abe.” The grief that never seemed to grow any softer thickened her voice again. “I wish you could’ve seen him.” What a foolish thing to say to the man who’d once been her husband but who had never voluntarily wanted to give her a child. She’d asked so many times after the miscarriage, but Abe had always said no.
“Did you take any photos?”
Surprised by the question, she nonetheless scrambled for her purse, wiping away her tears at the same time. No one aside from Lola ever asked to see pictures of her baby—as if he hadn’t existed. But he had. He’d been a gorgeous, perfect little boy with honey-brown skin and long, long lashes. “Yes, there was a volunteer photographer,” she said, pulling out the photos she kept always in her wallet.
“The nurse called him after asking me.” The elderly man was retired, but he came in whenever a parent or parents lost a baby to stillbirth or neonatal complications and wanted a tangible memory of their child; in his faded blue eyes, Sarah had seen a father who’d once held his own silent baby. “Here.”
Abe brought the car to a stop near a grassy shoulder, and it was only then that she realized they’d entered the peaceful green of the cemetery. “Let me see,” he said, holding out his hand before she could become angry again at the fact her baby was here, under the cold earth.
She passed over the photos of her baby, her own gaze greedy on the images that were all she had of the son for whom she’d decorated a nursery, a son she’d dreamed of taking to school and playing with in the park. “He looks like he’s sleeping, doesn’t he?” Such a sweet, peaceful face.
“Yes.” Abe touched his finger to the image as if stroking her baby’s cheek. “How did you even carry him? He looks like a linebacker.”
Sarah laughed through her tears. “God, he used to kick so hard.” It was why she still found it so difficult to understand why he hadn’t made it. “They said he had defects in his organs, that he never formed right… but he looks perfect to me.” Would always be her strong Baby Boots.
“Definitely an Aaron,” Abe said, his hands careful with the prints and his eyes taking in the details she pointed out. “Playing football and getting all the girls. And maybe even being a little preppy. Just enough to have that bad-boy-pretending-to-be-good vibe that girls love.”
Sarah laughed again, so happy to hear her son’s name on someone else’s lips, hear an