“Oliver,” I walked around the table and put my hand on the top of his hair, “I’m here, Sweetheart. Please don’t turn away from me. I need you.” He turned in the chair and buried his face into my belly. I cradled his head, “I am so sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t come to you so we could talk about her. And I’m sorry I lost her. I love her, too, but there was nothing I could do…”

“No, Sil, I don’t blame you,” His voice was muffled. He wrapped his arms around my waist and held me, “I don’t know who I blame. There’s nobody to blame. I’m just so angry!”

“It’s all right. It’s OK. It’s reasonable to be angry and sad about it. It wasn’t fair, was it?” I ran my fingers through his hair, “I’m sad. I’m sad all the time because she died. It just wasn’t fair. I say it over and over. Not to us, especially not to her…but there’s nothing we can do and that’s the hardest thing to sort out. It hurts. We had no say and there’s not a thing that can ever make it right. She’s just gone, almost like she was never even real…but she was,” My voice broke. “She really, really was…“ Oliver sobbed into my dress. He shook. I pulled him closer. We held each other and we cried for a long while. “Keep going,” I told him, “I’ve been doing it all week. It helps. But I’ll tell you one thing. I know in my heart that one day you and I will have children. Maybe loads even.”

He sniffled, “I know now wasn’t the best time. Still, it’s bloody unacceptable. I really would have liked to have had that baby. I’d have liked to have seen your belly swell and watched how your body changed. I’d have liked to watch our daughter be born and watched you hold her.” He drew a sharp breath, “I would have liked to have been her dad. I really would have.”

“One day, Oliver,” I promised, “When things are right and ready.” We were both quiet for a moment. “Please say something for me.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Tell me about the things you don’t do in life,” I whispered, “The things you said your grandfather told you and Alex so often when you were children. String them together for me.”

He was silent. Just when I thought he was not going to say a word, he stood up. “Things happen to you in your life that hurt. They kick you in the gut and knock you down. You get up. In this life you can never stop. You can never stop trying until you get it right. You can never quit praying in the middle of a miracle…” He stopped speaking. His eyes suddenly flashed with understanding, “You can never quit praying in the middle of a miracle and here in the wood you can never give up believing that something magic can happen at any second of the day.” He put his hands on my shoulders and rubbed my neck, tears were still in his eyes, but the look of him was different. “Because that’s what this place is about, believing that the impossible can happen. And that’s what life is about, too, having faith that there’s magic even if you can’t see it.”

“That’s it. You told me that I only believed in science and I didn’t have faith, but I do. I have faith in you, Oliver Dickinson. And I have faith that you and I can do anything as long as we are together. Life knocked us down and Death took our child. It makes no sense, but I have faith that one day we’ll get it right and we’ll have our batch of muffins and we’ll think…yeah, this is our miracle and our magic…and we’ll remember how we feel right now and we’ll say…well, we’ll say that we didn’t give up. We’ll say that we had faith, won’t we?”

“Oh, Sil,” He pulled me close kissed my hair, “What would I do without you?”

“You’d be horribly lost and lonely, I’m sure. And I’m certain that you would not have any eclairs to eat tonight.”

“You bought eclairs?”

“Yes, a dozen. I got them today when I went shopping.”

He pulled his head back and looked into my eyes. He was smiling, “Marry me?”

“Of course, Oliver!” I grinned for the first time in two weeks, “In the morning, though. We have pastries to devour tonight.”

“I love you! Let’s eat them all!”

“And I love you!” I couldn’t help but giggle. Oliver could be so childlike, getting all excited about junk food. His zest for life was unstoppable and contagious, “Yes, let’s eat all the eclairs and get sick on sugar and wish we hadn’t!”

“Let’s do that! It’ll be fun! I have a theory that sugar fixes most anything, yeah?”

“I know you do and you may well be right!”

That night Oliver ate eight eclairs and I had three. There was one left on the plate that neither of us had the constitution to touch.

“Breakfast,” Oliver mumbled. He lay back on the sofa and pulled the old, woollen blanket over the two of us.

“For you, maybe. I’m having toast.” I felt sick right down to my toes as I lie against him with my head on his chest. “If you’re going to vomit, please tell me so I can get out of the way.”

He laughed and stroked my back, “I promise I’ll say something if it comes to that.” We were both quiet. I was almost asleep when he spoke again. “We’re going to be fine, Sil. You know that, yeah?”

“I know, Oliver. I believe in us.”

“Me, too, Love. Me, too. You better get out of the way.” I jumped off of him and tumbled on to the floor. Oliver chuckled mercilessly, “I’m sorry! I couldn’t resist!”

“You’re a jackass!” I told him, laughing as well, “Let’s go to bed.”

“I have an idea.”

“Should I put on a helmet?”

He laughed again, “No. Let’s cancel tomorrow. I’ll skive off school and call off work. Let’s spend a day together, just you and me, Sil. We’ll just lie about and sleep and chat and watch the birds in the sky. It’s been too long since we have.”

“That sounds fantastic,” I told him as I helped him off the sofa.

We went to bed that night and slept wound around each other with the blankets on the floor. The next morning we left the cabin early and only long enough to drive to the spot where we could use his mobile phone to report him absent to work. After that we went home and ate bacon and toast and crawled back into bed where we laughed a lot and cried a little and talked for hours about our hopes and dreams for the family that we would make together one day. That evening, we drove to Colwyn Bay and Oliver and I fell in love with a tiny, solid black Scottish terrier I called Duncan. It became apparent after only a few hours that our Duncan was completely mental. Oliver and I watched him dash about the garden and we laughed until we ached as our new pet leaped into the air as high as his stubby legs would bring him and tried to snap fireflies out of the air. Later, when Duncan had exhausted himself clowning and we brought him inside, we waited until he had fallen asleep on the blanket we bought him. When his little ribs were pumping with deep breaths and his tiny paws were twitching, Ollie and I left him alone in the house.

The two of us lay in the garden with that woollen blanket across us. I nestled in his arms and stared at the moonlit sky, contemplating life and all the limitations and infinite possibilities that came with it. Later, when we saw Alfie glide over us and into the trees, we went inside where we climbed back into our bed.

There, sitting crossed legs in the dim flicker of an oil lamp, we split the last eclair between us and we began the long process of healing our broken hearts.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The following January, Alexander left Wales to finish his architecture degree stateside at the University of California in San Diego. He was supposed to be gone for ten months, but the twins began to miss each other bitterly after only three weeks. They had never been away from each other for more than a few days and I know both of them were lonely and lost without their brother to lean on. Oliver was busy finishing his own degree at Cardiff and working at his job, but neither kept him from calling his brother at six o’clock in the morning…noon stateside…to catch Alexander at lunch and have a chat. Or Alexander would ring him at midnight his time to reach him just before Oliver’s supper.