Chapter 45: The Multiplied Heartbeat

Chapter 45: The Multiplied Heartbeat

When I opened my eyes again, the white ceiling of the hospital cleared and the first thing I saw was Ethan's face. He was pale, and for the first time since I had known him, I saw a gleam of real fear in the depths of his blue eyes; The weight of her past pain, of the child that had been taken from her before she was born, hung in the air. I understood his terror in a second. Slowly, I reached out my hand, took hers firmly, and guided her directly over my belly, still flat, but inhabited by three miracles.

"We're a whole family now, Ethan," I whispered, tears streaming in my eyes.

Feeling the warmth of my skin through the fabric, Ethan broke completely. He collapsed on the stretcher and began to cry like a small child, an overflowing cry that cleaned years of mourning and injustice. He hid his face in my belly, putting his big arms around my waist, and repeated to us over and over again, his voice broken with emotion, that he loved us with all his soul. I froze for a second at the beauty of the moment.

"Do you love me, Ethan?" I asked, seeking to hear the words that would heal the last corner of my former humiliation.

He raised his head, his cheeks soaking wet and his gaze so pure and full of devotion that he erased my past with the stroke of a pen.

"You can't imagine how long, Astrid," he replied, cradling my face in his hands. From day one I loved you. From that very day you arrived at Vik beach, I saw in you something that captivated me, something that filled my chest and that made me fall in love completely... But neither of them was ready at that time. We had to heal from a distance. But now I tell you here, with our three children as witnesses: I love you as I never believed that anyone could be loved.

I hugged him with all the strength I had left in my body, sinking into his woody neck, and whispered in his ear a phrase in Gaelic that I had kept in my writer's heart for the man who would truly deserve my life:

"Mo ghrá thú ," I said, dictating the most real and sacred "I love you" of my existence.

The north had brought us together like two wrecked castaways on a shore of black sand, and now, under the clear sky of Iceland, life was giving us back everything that had been stolen from us, multiplied by three. The white paper was finally full, and the future was ours.