A nurse had offered to take her earlier. Sabine said no. She wasn’t letting go just yet. Adair hadn’t said a word since kneeling beside her. He’d moved to the chair now, bent forward, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. Every now and then, his body shook but she couldn’t comfort him. Not right now.
“Mrs. Dayne,” the nurse finally said, voice low, respectful. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Sabine nodded slowly but didn’t move. Her arms tightened slightly around the bundle, the weight of her daughter like an anchor across her chest. She looked down again, touching her baby’s cheek with the back of one trembling finger. It was already cooling.
“I wanted her name to mean something,” she said, not looking at the nurse. “I wanted it to be strong. Wanted it to sound like light.”
Adair looked up, eyes wet. “What was it?”
Sabine swallowed hard. “Ariyah.”
He choked on the name. “Ariyah,” he repeated.
She nodded, rocking just slightly. “She would’ve been loud,” she said through a teary laugh. “Bold. The kind of girl who’d talk back but can still win spelling bees. My girl wouldn’t have given a damn. I just know she was an extrovert like Narri.”
Sabine finally looked at him.There was no venom in her gaze this time.Just loss. Mutual and endless.
The nurse stepped forward again.
Sabine hesitated, then leaned down, placing a kiss on the soft patch of forehead just beneath the bow they’d given her. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
The nurse took her gently, like she was something holy and just like that, Ariyah was gone.
The room felt colder. Quieter. Like something sacred had been stolen.Adair reached for Sabine’s hand and let him hold it but she didn’t hold back.She wept until she had nothing left.
SABINE
Grief didn't come all at once.It came in pieces. In routines. In the little things.
The empty crib she refused to move. The unopened diaper packs stacked beside it. The soft pink blanket still draped over the glider Adair had built two months before she was due. Everything in the nursery smelled faintly like lavender and dust now. Forgotten time.
Sabine stood in the doorway sometimes, just watching it.Not entering. Not moving anything.Just…watching.
It had been a few weeks since the hospital. Since they said goodbye. Since Adair carried her down the front steps of the hospital because her legs buckled on the way out. Since the condolence flowers arrived by the dozen, filling the apartment with more color than it had ever held and none of it meant a thing.
People meant well. They always did.
They texted, “Thinking of you,” with prayer hands and hearts. They said her name with pity in their throats and offered to take Ade for a few hours “just in case she needed to rest,” but rest didn’t come. Not really. Not the kind that let her forget. Not the kind that made mornings easier.
Most mornings, Sabine stared at the ceiling until Ade called out for her.
“Mama?”
She answered every time. That was the one part of her identity she clung to. Even on the days she didn’t feel like anything at all. She could still be his mother.
And she was.
She got him dressed. She fed him. She tied his little shoes and listened to his baby babble with a soft smile she had to forcefully stretch across her face. He didn’t know. Not fully but he knew enough. He knew the baby didn’t come home. Knew Mama cried more than usual. Knew Daddy was around more now, hovering like Casper.
Adair didn’t go back to school or work right away.He was there. Present. Trying but the thing about presence was that it couldn’t reverse absence and no matter how many breakfasts he cooked or diapers he changed, Sabine couldn’t unfeel what she felt in that room alone. Couldn’t un-cry those hours of by herself.
She didn’t know how to talk to him anymore.
Didn’t know how to sit across from him and not picture that night. That voicemail. The echo of her own voice, breaking, begging, calling his name.
So she stayed quiet.
Until the quiet became its own language.