The Patron by Tess Thompson

Author:Tess Thompson [Thompson, Tess]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: 4kids5cats Editions

13

Garth

In the middle of the night, I jerked awake from a sound sleep. Something wasn’t right. I reached across the bed for Crystal but found only cold sheet. I sat up, wincing from the dull ache in my ribs. A three-quarter moon hung low in the sky, lighting the room. Crystal, her head bowed and knees drawn to her chest, sat in the armchair next to the window. Long strands of her hair, almost silver in the moonlight, hung over her face as she silently sobbed.

“Crystal?”

She yanked her head upward and looked at me. “I’m all right. Go back to sleep.” Her voice sounded eerily normal, given her obvious emotional state.

“It’s cold. Come to bed.”

She hesitated for a moment before unfolding from the chair and padding across the floor to climb in next to me.

I couldn’t bring her to me because of the cast between us. Drawing her close must be done with my words, not my touch. I knew from past experience that I was better with touch. “What’s going on?” I asked gently.

She didn’t answer. I heard only the drawing in and out of her breath. After a few more seconds of this, she finally answered. “I couldn’t sleep. All the bad thoughts started coming. Chasing me—calling out to me to listen to them. To relive all the regrets. Do you know how that is? When it’s dark and the morning seems far away and that nothing will ever be all right ever again?”

“I do.”

“I had a miscarriage after Patrick died. It was my fault that I lost the baby.” She put a cold hand on my chest.

I lifted up a few inches to put my arm around her shoulders. “How was that your fault?”

“After Patrick died, I was in a very bad place. I didn’t know I was pregnant. I asked God to let me sleep and not wake up.”

I sucked in a breath as if someone had sucker punched me. Did she think God took the baby from her because of the wish of grieving widow? I thought about what my mother had said earlier about Christopher’s death. She’d said she felt it was her fault. Was this the plight of all women once they were mothers? All their thoughts led to and from their child? Every bad outcome was somehow their fault? I chose my words carefully. “I can understand how you arrived at that conclusion. But I don’t think God would punish you for a moment of darkness. Not when you were in so much pain. He understands that you were grieving for your husband.”

"How do you know?" she asked, not in accusatory way, but as if she truly wondered.

“I just do.”

“I should’ve been stronger for the baby. I gave in to the sadness, let it consume me. There are studies that show stress can cause women to miscarry.”

“You were grieving. Even if it did harm the baby, it’s not something you could control. The husband you adored died suddenly. There’s no other way through that but to feel sad.

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