“I would suggest your first stop be the hospital,” Chave said, pulling out a small pad of paper and writing on it. He tore off the note and handed it to me. “This is a referral for an MRI. We want to rule out anything physical before we go any further. Once she gets a clean bill of health, then we can move on to treatment if she’s willing.”

I folded the piece of paper over and placed it in my coat pocket. Standing, I held out my hand. Chave rose as well and shook, giving my palm a reassuring squeeze.

“Everything will work out for you both, I’m sure. You need anything, day or night, don’t hesitate to call me.”

I told him I would and left the dim office, giving the receptionist a quick tip of my head before stepping outside.

So there it was. An adversary neither of us ever dreamed of facing. An enemy from within that couldn’t be stabbed, shot, or overpowered physically. But we could still fight it. There was hope. Always hope.

I climbed into the truck as the first drops of rain cascaded down from the burgeoning clouds that had expanded from horizon to horizon. A small tree branch clattered across the pickup’s hood and skittered away down the sidewalk as several people caught in the gale hurried with hands held above their heads or tugging at coat collars.

I drew out my phone and pulled up the clinic’s number before putting the truck in gear, windshield wipers sliding swaths of rain aside as I steered into the lane leading out of town. A voice answered after two rings and I asked for Megan Teller’s extension. The line was silent while I was transferred and I leaned forward, turning on the defrost to dispel the fog obscuring the windshield. I made a right turn and then I was on Route One heading north away from the city.

“This is Megan.”

I was planning on leaving a message telling Megan to see if she could schedule an MRI that day or as soon as possible, so when she answered I was surprised and delighted.

“Megan, it’s Jason Kingsley.”

“Jason, hi! How are you?”

“Good, good. Say, I was wondering if you’d be able to talk to Del’s doctor and see if you could schedule her for an MRI. She’s been having some…issues lately and we’re a little worried to be honest. I’ve got a referral too if you need one.”

“Oh, sorry to hear that. I was actually going to call her this week to see how the pregnancy was going.”

A cold pick of ice slid slowly through my stomach at the tone of her voice.

“Well, the pregnancy’s going fine. I mean, you were there at the ultrasound she had, right?”

The resounding silence on the line made the tightening fist in my chest clench harder. Please, God, no, no, no.

“Jason, I don’t know what to say. I thought Del was going to another hospital. She hasn’t had an appointment here since last year.”

~

I’d never covered the miles between town and our home as fast as I did that day. Not even when I was seventeen, racing my best friend Benny through the curves at night. Given the fact that I was calling our house and Del’s cell phone in succession the entire trip; it’s an absolute miracle that I didn’t kill anyone on that twisty road.

A low hum thrummed below the straining of the truck’s engine, and I realized I was making the noise myself, deep down in my chest where I hadn’t known it was possible for a person to create sound. I took the last turn off the main road too fast and the rear end of the pickup slewed to the side, raking gravel in a fan that flew off into the ditch and rattled against a lone mailbox at the end of the road. Then our drive was on my right, its path splitting when the view opened to the sea. To the left was Harold’s house, dark and quiet in the rain, and on the right was ours, bright and shining.

The frenzied animal in my chest calmed only a fraction at seeing the lights. They might mean Del was okay, maybe even up making a late breakfast for herself, but they did nothing to explain the fact that she’d lied to me about both of her checkups at Megan’s clinic. Why? But that was the question of the hour, wasn’t it? Why was any of this happening to us?

I slid the truck to a stop a couple feet from our walk and didn’t bother to shut it off. The rain hammered my back and head, its cold touch like dead, probing fingers. I yanked the door open and was yelling her name before I cleared the entry.

No reply.

I spun through the house in a fury, spending only enough time in each room to be sure Del wasn’t anywhere within before moving on. I half slid, half ran down the stairs from our room, the last vestiges of hope evaporating with the knowledge that she wasn’t in the house.

I stopped in the kitchen, trying to think through the whirlwind my mind had become. Where? Where would she go? Immediately I ran for the door, rushing through the rain to the edge of our yard. I leapt onto the highest rock I could see, nearly slipping from its wet top.

The sea tossed itself against the beach below in utter abandon. It was as if it shared in my despair and wished to dash itself apart on the rocks. Or maybe it was reaching for me after all my time spent upon it. Perhaps it wanted revenge for harvesting its waters without recompense. Maybe it had already taken something back from me as payment.

I scanned the roiling water but there was nothing. Its surface was so bleak and cold, I knew that if Del had entered the ocean even since I had pulled up in front of the house, she would be lost. With that thought, my head snapped around to Harold’s darkened house. I almost jumped from the rock and sprinted to the old man’s home, but thought better of it at once. Harold wouldn’t be of any help searching for her in the rain, and if he had seen her wander off he would have already called me or been waiting at our door when I came home.

I was about to leap down from my perch when something caught my eye, trailing off to the south down the beach. My stomach fell as if a trapdoor had been opened beneath it and my legs nearly collapsed.

Because it was at that moment I realized where Del had gone.

~

I climbed the last few steps up the hill bordering the cove. Our cove, we used to call it, laying claim to something so large and free as a border between sea and land being only within the reaches of two people young and so in love. The wind had risen even more since I had pelted down to the beach, following the ghostly impressions of where she’d walked, their indentations already being muted and washed away by the rain, as if the weather didn’t want me to find her. Even now I think it might have been better if I hadn’t known, if I hadn’t seen.

But I did. I did.

I spotted her as soon as I crested the rise. She was a deeper shadow among the swirling water within the cove. She wore the thin, cotton pants and t-shirt I’d dressed her in the night before and she stood with her back to me, the water reaching nearly to her hips.

“Del!” I screamed her name as I ran down the path that stretched to the beach, her form disappearing behind a tall rock that the trail wound around. When I stepped onto the soft sand she was even further out, the rolling waves washing against her bulging stomach. “Del!” I didn’t break stride, the sand giving way beneath my feet, the rain and wind shoving me back. She didn’t seem to hear me as she took another step. But that was wrong. She hadn’t stepped, she had glided deeper into the water.

Even though there was something elementally wrong about how she moved, I didn’t stop. I couldn’t have stopped as much as I could have forced the sea away from her, away from us. It was only when my feet touched the water that she finally looked back.

She was so pale it looked as if she had lost all the blood in her body. She was translucent, shimmering there in the shadowed waves, blue veins and vessels teeming in her white skin. And her eyes. They were full of something that scared me more than anything had since the beginning of our dual descent.