Prologue
Celia
I never pictured a life like this for myself. And no, I don’t mean finding everlasting love and happiness with my husband, Jonah. I knew I’d want to take a break from travelling and exploring the world to settle down one day with the right man that gives me enough adventure and excitement on a daily basis to live for. I mean being a mom. Clearly, the universe didn’t picture that for me either as they literally ripped our little girl out of my arms and took her away.
From a young age, I loved to see new sights and learn the history behind things, which is why I planned to explore and travel the whole world. I postponed this for far too long, until I reunited with Jonah and he got me back into my travelling spirits. It may have been for a lost cause, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy every second of it because we got to see every part of Antarctica and every part of each other as we got to know each other better, more than just verbally, and we began to truly see how strong our love was and still is for each other as it’s impossible to live without each other as we won’t be complete. We may have considered moving to Florida but it wasn’t the same without our friends, it wasn’t home. We knew that without even going, stayed with P.J and Zeke for a little while until we bought a two floor house with three bedrooms, that happened to be across the street from Alana and Nico which is nice company. We wanted our little one to live in Hamilton, where we grew up and have our friends in her life.
I always pictured travelling the world, before a man whisks me away and we start a life and family together. A family that starts out as just the two of us, which is incredible enough, until it grows and somehow manages to get better. But with being pressured to have a baby my whole life, that growing family became a more distant thought of mine. Love did too after my parents only pretended to love me when they needed me. Then there was Austin, who contributed to this distant thought just as much. I was almost forced to marry him for my sister’s sake, well technically Jonah’s half sister but we don’t speak of him.
I spent nine years attempting to mentally distance myself from the past, and when Jonah and I reconnected, it was like the powerful spark that we had between us never left. As hard as it was for me to admit, it was true that Jonah was different from the people who had betrayed me with their twisted sense of love. I couldn’t help but feel something for him. Something magnetic-like that I couldn’t be apart from again, which led to our marriage and our little girl, Beatrice, who I never believed would even exist after everything I went through that scarred me from ever wanting children.
Having Jonah’s child and being his baby mama is something I wanted. That’s why I lied about having a tubal ligation at first because I was scared. I didn’t want to get his hopes up about something he wanted for so long since I wasn’t 100 percent sure about it at first and I wanted to see if unlike my mom and Austin, he loved me for more than just making a baby, which couldn’t be more than the beautiful truth.
Today was supposed to be a special day for us, a day we’d remember for the rest of our lives, right up there with our wedding. But it wasn’t, because of something we couldn’t control or know about as Jonah’s dad lied about something he told us so long ago, to protect his personal life out of pure selfishness.
Our little surprise that we didn’t plan on knowing the gender of until she was born, decided that she wanted to come into the world a week early since my water broke today. We already had her room furnished which we painted a light yellow and had bought some little yellow and grey clothes already and even put some of Jonah’s dove stuffed animals he grew up with that meant a lot to him as his deceased adopted mother would call him her little dove as a nickname for him since the name Jonah means peace.
We were as excited as ever to find out we’d be holding our little one in our arms a week earlier than expected as this is all the both of us have ever wanted yet so much more. We were beyond overjoyed that there’d be three of us in this house as soon as we return home.
It is a well-known fact that giving birth comes along with the most physical pain a woman will most likely experience in a lifetime but that is nowhere near true. I laid down in a hospital bed for about six hours with my husband holding my hand for comfort as I experienced many painful contractions that can be compared to your stomach getting struck by lightning if that’s even a thing. It wasn’t until six hours passed that I was told that it was time to push which wasn’t any better than the pain of the contractions and had lasted for about an hour. It would’ve been way better than the contractions if I got a chance to hold our baby for more than two seconds and look into her greenish blue eyes which she got from me, before she wailed ever so sweetly and helplessly but then was gone.
I’m lying in a hospital bed without our daughter right now as it’s only been about ten-minutes since we both saw her for the first and most likely last time, so we’re both in tears and Jonah is sitting along the edge of the hospital bed with his arms wrapped around me.
Despite the fact that it only happened about ten-minutes ago, I know that I’ll always remember those magical words that brought tears of happiness down my cheeks when the doctor announced that we had a daughter.
Jonah and I discussed names when I was still getting close to the end of my first trimester as we were overjoyed and excited with everything. It was difficult to agree on any names but he liked either Blake or Wendel for a boy which I don’t mind too much as they aren’t your everyday names and have a nice ring to them. I liked the name Beatrice for a girl because the name is simple, elegant and classic, she could even be called Bea for short.
We made a deal that if our baby was a boy, he’d be named one of the boy names Jonah likes and if our baby was a girl, she’d be named Beatrice. Clearly, I won the deal as we named our daughter Beatrice Anne Walters before the worst imaginable for any parent happened.
I thought I passed the many mountains life threw my way, life threw our way, but they were far from over and it will be a tough journey ahead as we make our way uphill to one of the tallest mountains we’ve ever faced before together.
I don’t see a point in life for mountains unless they help you grow. I don’t know how this will help us grow besides realize how mighty our love for each other and our daughter is, which we already know. But if God did give us a mountain like this to overcome, it has a purpose which the climb will teach us. A mountain we’ll overcome together because our daughter may have been taken away from us, but our love for her and each other hasn’t and we’ll use that to make this steep climb all the more bearable until we reach the mountain top.
If only things weren’t so complicated though because although every mountain top is within reach, some are more difficult to even come to comprehend, understand, let alone overcome. After all, our daughter is alive, but nowhere to be found, so mourning her properly isn’t an option, but staying in Hamilton is, in hopes she’ll return to us one day if we don’t find her first.
