Rafe looked at the pictures of Chloe on the cover of her funeral program–it looked like a picture he would have taken of her when they went away together. She looked so vivacious and full of life.
The body that he viewed looked beautiful but lacked her life and vivaciousness. Eliza held his hand while they stood together at her coffin.
“You caused her death!” Sally screamed suddenly, and Rafe turned around to look at her. Oscar was sitting next to Sally, and held her close to him but she continued to scream. “She was talking about you before she died! Her head was all filled with you! You!”
Rafe looked down at Chloe once more, and then with Eliza they walked to her pew.
“I am sorry for your loss,” Rafe stated simply.
“You killed my daughter!!!” Sally pummeled her fists against his chest, and all Rafe could do was take it. Oscar pulled Sally away from him, and Eliza said,
“Stop it Sally, this not the way to say goodbye to your daughter.”
Sally stopped punching Rafe to stare coldly at Eliza.
“Both of you get out of here.” Eliza looked at Rafe and nodded.
The walked down the hall in the chapel. Others from a nearby funeral looked at them.
Rafe still felt Sally pounding his chest when he and Eliza got into their car. Eliza held his hand, and he closed his eyes. Lifeless Chloe stayed with him. He remembered her scampering away like a bunny after they skinny dipped. Her bright eyes filled with what he now knew was love.
He squeezed Eliza’s hand as they sat in the car. He wanted her away from Sally for sure. Sally would have lost her mind if she had seen Eliza—really seen Eliza–who was not really showing yet but there was a slight curve about her stomach. Their baby was barely visible but there, and he did not want Sally to injure the mother of his unborn child.
***
Oscar sat next to Sally. They were reunited in grief, but it was still such a hard time being with her post Chloe when all he thought in his head like a mantra was Bunny, Bunny, Bunny. He used to call Chloe Bunny as a pet name, and now she was lying in the coffin that he and Sally stared at long after the funeral director closed it.
Death was so final, the opposite of birth.
Birth, he swallowed hard as he thought it. Eliza looked so different, even if she had not told him she was pregnant he would have been able to guess there was something new about her. He knew her that intimately. It was not his baby, she assured him why she told him right away and calmly so there was no confusion.
“Besides, I am Rafe’s wife and he said any baby I have is his baby.”
Oscar swallowed hard again.
He lost Chloe and the chance to be a father within a week, he felt like a walking void. This swap of partners with Eliza had been a black hole.
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