Thomas watched out the window of his tiny cottage. Becoming a father so unexpectedly had changed him in ways he couldn't have anticipated at the tender age of twenty-five. Of course there had been the whispers that spread through the village. Aquaville was a small place and the people had equally small minds. In those first days he had been glad for the distance that separated their home from the rest of them, but he had been on his own and with no idea how to handle the delicate bundle that had been thrust upon him it wasn't long before he had headed into the town in desperate need of help.
His own parents had died only two years before and his sister had long since moved on to better pastures. Everyone he tried to talk to turned him away. He was an unmarried man with an illegitimate child and he had long since been obsessed with the sea. He was different and any sort of difference was bad, at least to them. At the end of a long night, he had only managed to scrounge together a few meagre supplies from the few people who would still trade with him.
He remembered how it felt, sitting under a tree in a damp drizzle of rain with Amelia clutched to his chest. He had felt so alone, so horribly overwhelmed. It had been the first and last time he considered just going back to the sea and pitching them both overboard.
"Thom?" A silken voice asked, snapping him out of his reverie.
He smiled, turning towards the beacon of light that had snapped him out of that bleak place. Jessica had found him under that tree. She had never been someone he noticed all that much, quiet, shy, soft-spoken. Under that tree she proved that she was also something else. Kind. She took his hand and leaned into him, never saying a word as she freed one of Amelia's arms from the thick blanket and stroked her tender skin, quieting the fussing sounds she had been making.
"She's alright you know." Jessica said now, wrapping her arms around his waist. "No-one knows the coast like she does."
Thom nodded and melted into her touch. "I know." He sighed. "I just wish I knew what was happening to her."
"She's growing up. Give her some space, when she's ready she will come back and tell you everything." Jessica planted a kiss on his cheek and turned back to the fire and the pot that was simmering over it. Thomas shook his head at the out-dated method of cooking, but he didn't argue. It might have seemed like a lot of unnecessary work, but the meals were always delicious.
Jessica had been a god-send. She had collected together everything a growing baby needed to thrive; muttering under her breath the entire time. When he had finally gotten close enough to hear her rant over "the gall of people who go around fucking left and right to turn away from a baby who needed help" and how she "hoped they choked on their jumped-up, self-righteous hypocrisy" he couldn't help but laugh, the first sound of merriment he had uttered in close to six months.
When she came to live with him, he didn't question it. He was just so grateful for her help. And when the relationship became romantic it just seemed natural. Over the days and years she helped him raise his daughter and chased away the echoes of a foggy night out at sea. Slowly he began to forget the obsession that had dragged him day after day out onto the sea and for the first time in his life, his fishing trips seemed more like work than an escape.
She refused to marry him, not for lack of trying. His eyes slid over her body, bent over the cooking pot, and came to rest on the slight swell of her belly. Their child was still months away from arriving, but he couldn't wait. He missed the early days, spent around the fire and cheering on Amelia's first tentative steps. Things had been so simple then. Everything that happened to Amelia happened to all of them, they were all essential to each other, one whole. Now though...
When had she started lying to him? When had his little girl started sneaking off with boys from the village? Didn't she know that they were the same people that talked about them all behind their backs? The same people who would have left her to die as a baby? He shook his head, watching her slowly make her way up the cliff-side. He had seen her on the beach with, who was it? Robert? Roger? He watched her as she swam to the very rock that he had forbidden her to go to and, squinting, he had watched her tiny figure disappear into the hidden cavern.
