A Life Unlived

A sound wakes her.

Isabella opens her eyes halfway, sleep still weighing down her eyelids. Beyond the skylight, stars puncture the darkness. She rolls onto her side, searching for the comfortable position she has lost. With her forehead resting against the bare skin of her husband’s back, she exhales and settles beneath the covers.

“Mama?”

Her eyes fly open.

Isabella lies still, holding her breath. Sometimes the children next door wake in the middle of the night and scream for their mother, but this voice is different. It is quiet and close. It sounds as though it came from inside the apartment.

“Mommy…”

There it is again.

Isabella sits up. Nothing in the bedroom appears disturbed. The clock reads 3:17 a.m., its orange light falling across her water bottle, the book she was reading before bed, and her phone charging on the nightstand.

Everything is where she left it.

She waits for the fear to come. Instead, she feels something pulling her out of bed.

“Mommy... I can’t sleep.”

Isabella crosses the living room barefoot. Her foot sinks into the foam of a playmat where she expects the rug to be. A moment later, a plastic wheel bites into her heel.

She swallows a curse and kicks the toy aside. She and Matt will have to talk to Sofia about putting her things away.

Again.

She takes another step before the name catches up with her.

Sofia.

The irritation is familiar. The child is not.

A thin line of yellow light spills through the half-open study door. Except it no longer looks like the study door. A wooden sign hangs from it, painted with small white flowers and the name SOFIA. One corner has come loose. Isabella reaches out and presses it back into place.

A child giggles inside.

Isabella opens the door. A little girl in pink pajamas sits beside the bed while Cooper covers her cheek with enthusiastic kisses.

“There you are,” Sofia says.

“Hey, love. Bad dreams again?”

The girl’s lower lip folds into a pout as she nods.

Cooper races to Isabella and circles her legs as she walks toward the bed. When Isabella sits, Sofia climbs into her lap and presses her cheek against her chest. Cooper settles beside them with a sigh, placing the weight of his head across Isabella’s knee.

Sofia’s hair is damp at the temples. Isabella wraps her arms around her and begins rocking from side to side. Her body finds the rhythm without instruction.

The ease of it frightens her. So does the rush of tenderness that follows. She has never held this child before, yet some part of her has already learned the precise pressure of Sofia’s weight, the warmth of her through cotton pajamas, the place between her shoulder blades where Isabella’s palm belongs.

“I dreamed you weren’t here, Mommy,” Sofia says against her chest.

Isabella’s throat tightens.

“Oh, love. I’m sorry.” She runs one hand down the narrow ridge of Sofia’s back. “I’m here now.”

They sit that way for a while. Isabella rocks and murmurs until Sofia grows heavy against her.

“I know,” Sofia whispers. A sleepy smile touches her face. “You found me again.”

The words catch somewhere inside Isabella, but when she looks down, Sofia’s eyes are already closed.

While Sofia settles against her, Isabella looks around the room.

The desk should be beneath the window. She can almost see it there: the green reading lamp, the chipped cup full of pencils, the drawer that never closes properly. Instead, a dollhouse stands in its place.

For a moment, she misses something she cannot quite remember losing. The feeling opens inside her with such force that she tightens her arms around Sofia. It is not the sharp pain of something taken from her. It is stranger than that—the grief of recognizing a life she never lived.

Then Sofia shifts in her lap, and the thought is gone.

When Isabella breathes in, she smells strawberry toothpaste. Sofia absentmindedly draws circles on her forearm with one finger, passing over the same patch of skin again and again. At first, the motion is soothing. Then the repetition begins to sting.

“Soph, we need to go back to sleep. You and me.”

Sofia answers with a drowsy grumble.

Isabella carefully lifts the warm, slightly sweaty child from her lap and lays her down. She pulls the blanket over her, leaving one leg uncovered.

Of course, Isabella thinks. One leg out.

She cannot remember how she knows.

As she begins to stand, Sofia catches her hand.

“Not yet,” Sofia murmurs. Her eyes flutter open.

Isabella exhales and rolls the stiffness from her neck. Her body feels heavy with a deep, enduring exhaustion she does not remember carrying when she went to bed the night before.

“I’m here, Soph.” Her voice is barely audible. “I’ll stay until you fall asleep.”

Sofia keeps hold of her hand. With her other hand, she resumes tracing the same circle on Isabella’s forearm.

From the bedroom comes the low, even rhythm of Matt’s snoring.

Isabella listens to it while Sofia’s finger moves around and around her forearm. An old irritation rises in her, already worn smooth by repetition: he never hears her first.

The resentment feels older than just this night.

They remain that way until Sofia’s breathing slows. At some point, Cooper rises. Isabella registers the faint click of his claws on the hardwood as he slips out of the room.

She must have dozed off.

When she opens her eyes again, Sofia is asleep. Isabella eases her hand from the girl’s grip and brushes a strand of hair from her cheek. Beneath Sofia’s right eye is a freckle so pale it disappears when she turns away from the lamp.

Isabella waits for her to turn back.

She doesn’t.

For another minute, Isabella listens to her breathe. Then she stands.

At the door, something makes her stop. She rests one hand against the frame but does not turn around. If she looks back, she thinks, she might climb beneath the blanket and remain there until morning.

The longing frightens her.

Behind her, Sofia shifts beneath the blanket.

Isabella walks away before she can decide which feeling is stronger. Cooper is curled on the couch, snoring quietly. In the bedroom, Matt has not moved. She slips beneath the covers, presses herself against his back, and closes her eyes.

___________________

The smell of coffee wakes her.

Sunlight falls across Isabella’s cheek. Somewhere in the living room, soft instrumental music is playing. Otherwise, the apartment is quiet.

Not empty, she tells herself. Peaceful.

She stretches beneath the covers. A few seconds later, claws hurry across the floor, and Cooper jumps onto the bed. He rests his head on her knee.

“Hey, love.”

Matt is leaning against the doorframe with two cups. Isabella gives him a sleepy smile.

“Did you have trouble sleeping?” he asks. He crosses the room and offers her the tea. “I heard you get up.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I guess I did.”

She wraps both hands around the cup. The warmth begins to loosen her fingers.

Then she sees the patch of pink skin on her forearm. A faint pink circle marks the exact place where the little girl’s finger kept moving. She presses it with her thumb. The skin is tender.

Beyond Matt, the study door stands open. Her desk is beneath the window, exactly where it should be. The green lamp. The chipped cup filled with pencils. Even the drawer is slightly crooked in its frame.

Isabella releases a breath. Relief comes first, clean and immediate. The disappointment follows so closely that she cannot separate one from the other.

“What is it?” Matt asks.

She looks at the open door. For a moment, she searches the floor beside the desk for the edge of a playmat, a discarded toy, one small pink sleeve.

“Do you ever wonder?” she asks.

Matt follows her gaze toward the study. Something in his expression changes, but he smiles gently.

“Sometimes.”

Isabella looks down at the mark on her arm. “Me too.”

He sits beside her and takes her free hand. His thumb passes once over her wedding ring.

“But I’m glad I’m here,” he says earnestly.

Isabella rests her head against his shoulder. ““Do you think we chose wrong?”

They remain that way for a moment, skin to skin, holding their separate cups in the morning light, just breathing each other in before he replied.

“No, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to miss.”