I mourned my mother while pregnant with a child I'd never get to keep. And no one thought to tell me I was grieving alone.
Two days after her breakdown, Elara emerged from her room with hollow eyes and a voice like gravel. She found Kairos in his study, working on his laptop, Leo coloring on the floor beside him.
"I need to see the records," she said without preamble.
Kairos looked up, taking in her appearance with careful assessment. Pajamas unchanged. Hair tangled. The look of someone who'd spent forty-eight hours crying.
"What records?"
"My mother's. The death certificate. Funeral arrangements. Burial location. All of it." Her voice was flat, emotionless. Past grief into numbness. "I need proof. I need to know it's real."
He didn't argue. Didn't suggest she wasn't ready. Just nodded and stood, moving to his file cabinet.
"I kept everything," he said quietly, pulling out a folder. "In case you ever asked. In case your memory came back."
He handed her the folder. Their fingers touched briefly—she didn't pull away this time, just took the papers and sank into the chair across from his desk.
DEATH CERTIFICATEName: Catherine Marie HartDate of Death: [date six months into her pregnancy]Cause: Metastatic pancreatic cancerPlace: St. Mary's Hospital, Hospice Care
Elara's hands shook as she read. Her mother had died in hospice. In pain. Slowly.
While Elara had been living in this mansion, carrying someone else's child, bound by contract not to cause stress or complications.
Had she been there? Had she held her mother's hand? Or had she been too busy following Kairos's rules to be a proper daughter?
She read the funeral records next. Small service. Few attendees. Her name listed as surviving daughter. No mention of pregnancy. No mention of surrogacy. Just... normal.
As if her life hadn't been completely upended by desperation and contract law.
The burial location was listed at the bottom. Riverside Cemetery. Plot 247, Section C.
Elara closed the folder carefully. "I want to go."
"Okay." Kairos was already pulling out his phone. "I'll arrange—"
"Today. Now. I want to go now."
He studied her face, then nodded. "I'll call the nanny for Leo."
"You don't have to come with me."
"I know." He was already texting. "But I'm coming anyway."
RIVERSIDE CEMETERY
The cemetery was peaceful in that manufactured way cemeteries always were. Manicured lawns. Tasteful headstones. Trees placed at precisely calculated intervals to provide shade and aesthetic appeal.
Elara hated it on sight.
Her mother hadn't been peaceful. Hadn't been manicured or tasteful or aesthetically pleasing. She'd been vibrant and messy and alive. And reducing her to a marble slab in a field of identical marble slabs felt like erasing her all over again.
Kairos drove in silence, following the cemetery map to Section C. Parked near Plot 247. Turned off the engine but made no move to exit the car.
"Take your time," he said quietly. "I'll be here."
Elara nodded, not trusting her voice, and got out.
The grave was easy to find. Her feet seemed to know the path even though her mind didn't remember walking it.
CATHERINE MARIE HARTBeloved Mother1959-2021"Love is stronger than death"
The irony of that epitaph made Elara's throat close. Love hadn't been stronger than death. Love had lost to cancer and failed treatments and desperation that made daughters sell themselves.
Love had lost to everything.
She stood there staring at the headstone, trying to summon memories of her mother that remained frustratingly out of reach. Fragments only. A laugh. Hands in her hair. The smell of lilac perfume.
Not enough. Never enough.
"I did this for you," Elara whispered to the marble. To the ground. To the woman six feet below who couldn't hear. "I signed that contract for you. Became a surrogate for you. Sold my body and my future and my child for you."
The words came faster now, tumbling out like a confession.
"And you died anyway. The treatment didn't work. All that sacrifice and you died anyway." Her voice broke. "I lost everything. Lost you. Lost my son. Lost myself. And for what? For nothing. For a treatment that failed and a mother who's gone and a life I can't get back."
She sank to her knees in the grass, not caring about the damp or the dirt.
"I'm so angry at you," she sobbed. "So angry that you got sick. That you needed something I couldn't give you. That you left me alone with this choice. This impossible, terrible choice."
Behind her, she heard a car door. Footsteps on grass. But she couldn't turn, couldn't acknowledge, could only kneel in front of her mother's grave and break.
"I tried so hard to save you. Did everything they asked. Followed every rule. Let them poke and prod and examine me like I was cattle. Carried a child I'd never get to keep. And you died anyway. While I was pregnant. While I was too busy being his surrogate to be your daughter properly."
"That's not true."
Kairos's voice, quiet but firm, somewhere behind her.
"You don't know—"
"I do know." He moved closer but didn't touch. "You were with her constantly those last weeks. Every day. Sometimes twice a day. You'd come back to the mansion exhausted, your eyes red from crying, and you'd tell me about your conversations with her. About the stories she told. About her regrets and her hopes and her pride in you."
Elara turned to look at him, tears streaming down her face. "I don't remember."
"I know. But I do." He knelt beside her, not touching but close. "You were an extraordinary daughter. You held her hand. You read to her. You stayed with her until the end. And she died knowing you loved her. Knowing you'd tried everything to save her."
"But I failed."
"We all fail eventually. Death wins. It always wins." His voice was gentle. "But that doesn't mean the fight was meaningless. You gave her hope. You gave her the knowledge that her daughter would move heaven and earth to save her. That's not nothing."
"It feels like nothing." Elara pressed her hands to her face. "It feels like I traded everything for nothing. Like I made this terrible bargain and got nothing in return."
"You got Leo," Kairos said quietly.
She looked up at him, shocked. "Don't—"
"I'm not justifying what I did. What we did. The arrangement was exploitative and wrong and I took advantage of your desperation." He met her eyes. "But out of all that wrong came something right. A child. Your child, no matter what the contract said. He's yours, Elara. He always was."
"I signed away—"
"Fuck what you signed." The vehemence in his voice surprised her. "The moment you carried him, he became yours. The moment you felt him move, he became yours. That bond doesn't disappear because of legal language. It's written in biology. In instinct. In love."
Elara looked back at her mother's grave, trying to reconcile the loss with the gain. The sacrifice with the reward.
"She never met him," she whispered. "My mother died before Leo was born. She never got to see what I gave up for her. Never got to know her grandson."
"I'm sorry." And Kairos sounded genuinely devastated. "I'm so sorry you had to grieve alone. That I wasn't there for you properly. That I kept you at a distance when you needed someone most."
"You should have loved me," Elara said, the words spilling out without permission. "When I needed you most, when I was losing everything, you should have loved me."
"I did love you."
"No." She shook her head violently. "You wanted me. You desired me. You might have even cared about me in some abstract way. But you didn't love me. Love would have fought for me. Love would have held me while I grieved instead of maintaining professional distance. Love would have chosen me."
"I was afraid—"
"Everyone's afraid!" Her voice rose, raw and ragged. "You think I wasn't afraid? I was terrified! Pregnant with a baby I'd have to give away, watching my mother die, trapped in a contract that was strangling me—and I had to do it all alone because you were too afraid to be what I needed!"
Kairos was crying now, openly, tears streaming down his face without shame. "You're right. I was a coward. I loved you and I was too much of a coward to show it. I let you grieve alone. I let you suffer alone. I chose my fear over your pain."
"And now she's gone." Elara looked back at the grave. "And I can't tell her I'm sorry. Can't tell her that I tried. Can't tell her that I love her and I miss her and I'm so fucking angry she left me."
"Tell her anyway."
Elara looked at him, confused.
"Tell her," Kairos repeated gently. "She might not be able to answer. But maybe—maybe some part of her can hear. Maybe it matters anyway."
It was the kind of gentle, impossible hope that shouldn't have made sense. But Elara found herself turning back to the grave, her voice breaking as she spoke to marble and grass and air.
"I'm sorry, Mom. Sorry I wasn't enough to save you. Sorry the treatment failed. Sorry I spent those last months so wrapped up in my own survival that I didn't—" Her voice cracked completely. "I love you. I miss you. And I'm so angry you're gone. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
The words dissolved into sobs.
And then Kairos's arms were around her.
She should have pushed him away. Should have maintained the distance. Should have stayed angry.
Instead, she collapsed into him.
Let him hold her while she broke completely. Let herself take comfort from the man who'd caused so much of her pain. Let his arms be the safety she needed even though part of her knew they shouldn't be.
"I'm sorry," he whispered into her hair, rocking her gently. "I'm so sorry. For all of it. For not being there. For not loving you properly. For choosing wrong when you needed me to choose right."
"I hate you," she sobbed into his chest. But her arms were around him, holding tight, contradicting her words.
"I know."
"I hate that I need you right now."
"I know."
"I hate that your arms feel safe when they shouldn't."
"I know." His hand stroked her hair with devastating gentleness. "I know. And I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."
They stayed like that for a long time—her broken, him holding her, both of them crying over losses that couldn't be undone and choices that couldn't be unmade.
When Elara finally pulled back, her face was blotchy and swollen, her eyes red. Kairos looked no better. Both of them devastated. Both of them somehow still standing.
"I don't forgive you," she said, her voice hoarse.
"I know."
"But—" She took a shaking breath. "But I think I'm starting to understand you. Why you chose wrong. Why you were afraid. It doesn't excuse it. But I understand it."
"That's more than I deserve."
"Probably." She looked back at her mother's grave one last time. "But maybe that's the point. None of us get what we deserve. We just get what we get. And we figure out how to live with it."
"What do you want, Elara?" Kairos asked quietly. "Not what you think you should want. Not what makes logical sense. What do you actually want?"
She was quiet for a long moment, searching for honesty in the wreckage of her grief.
"I want to go home," she said finally. "I want to see Leo. I want to—" She stopped, the admission almost too painful to voice. "I want to stop being so angry all the time. I want to figure out how to forgive. Not just you. Myself too. For the choices I made. For the sacrifices that didn't save anything."
"We can do that." He stood, offering her his hand. "Together. If you'll let me."
She looked at his outstretched hand. Considered all the reasons she should refuse. All the ways he'd failed her. All the pain still between them.
And took his hand anyway.
Not forgiveness. Not reconciliation. Just... a tentative step toward something that might someday be healing.
They walked back to the car together, her hand in his, the weight of grief slightly lighter for having been shared.
In the rearview mirror as they drove away, Elara watched her mother's grave disappear. And whispered one final goodbye to the woman who'd needed her and the life she'd sacrificed and the daughter she'd been before everything changed.
I love you. I'm sorry. Thank you for teaching me that love means fighting for people even when you're terrified of failing.
And maybe—just maybe—that lesson would be enough to help her figure out how to love Kairos properly this time.
Or how to let him go if she couldn't.
Either way, her mother would understand.