EPILOGUE

Tina POV

I smile a little as I hear at the sound of something I learned to cherish a long time ago. I feel her moving, then asking "What?" in her sleepy voice. I lift my head and looking into her eyes my smile grows into a huge one.

"Nothing, I just love how your heart sounds"

One year before

"What's happening?" I said as I look at my child fighting to breathe. "Bette?!" I cried out to her and she quickly came closer.

"Shit, she's congested"

"What?"

"She had been out there for too long, it's freezing outside" she said as she touched Angelica's forehead "and she's burning up!"

I started panicking, "What are you doing?" I screaming as I watched her approaching the exit of the cave "Bette! Where are you going?"

No response.

A couple of minutes later she came back holding a piece of garment full of snow "We need to keep her temperature down"

I saw as she caressed and took care of our child as if the time we lived apart hadn't existed. The temperature had been kept a bay, but Angelica needed cures and we knew that. I could see it on her face: she was feeling helpless. Yet, she kept her eyes on her, her caring hands. Like a real mother would do and I was there, mesmerized. I couldn't even understand how we managed to destroy something so simple. Our love. A love that found its continuation in our daughter. But we couldn't see it when we had to and we failed.

"Mommy!" Angie cried, she was hurting. Her lungs must have felt like hell.

"Baby, mommy is here. Your mommies are here" you would think those words came out from my mouth, but it was her. Bette. She uttered those words with the sweetest voice ever. They were coming from the deep of her heart. "Mommy is here" she kept saying. "I'm here"

"Kit! Oh, thank God! We're fine. We found repair in a cave, but Angelica is really sick. Listen, we need you to call for help. We don't know exactly where we are…Kit? KIT?" the signal died again. She had been trying to make her phone work in the last hours but it was no help.

"She at least managed to listen to the last words?"

"I hope"

Silence was above us, once again. We waited for another hour, hoping for someone to come and take us home. We were starting to feel helpless. I looked at Bette, she was sitting in her previous position. Back to the wall of the cave, her stare into emptiness. I was holding Angelica.

"Bette" I called.

She didn't respond. She only moved her head and looked at me.

"It's not your fault" I said with a little voice. I knew what she was feeling right then. I knew her, she was probably kicking herself in the ass for the words she said in the cabin.

She laughed bitterly. "It's always my fault, T" her voice was trembling.

"What do you mean?" I haven't see her like that like in years. She looked so fragile. So human.

"Why do you think we're here? Why do you think the things that happened years ago had happened? It's all my fault. Everything"

Was she trying to excuse my behavior?

"No way, Bette" I promptly replied. "Don't you dare take the blame on yourself. It's my fault as it is yours. We both failed! Not only you, not only me. We both did"

She shook her head. Then her whole body started shaking. She was crying.

"T" she said.

"What?" I asked crawling up to her, still holding Angelica.

"What?" I repeated.

"It hurts" she said sobbing.

"I know, baby"

"No, it hurts… to feel… it hurts" she was holding her chest. "I tried to stop all the feelings, and going to NY helped, but every time I see you and Angelica. I kills me. I become someone who can't live by herself. I am not the strong one, T. You are. I couldn't live one minute looking at you and not having you. Knowing that Angelica couldn't be really mine. I had to stop feeling. I had to learn how or I would be dead"

"Baby, you look more alive now than how you looked back in the cabin"

The stream of tears grew.

"Then why do I feel as if I'm dying?"

"You're just coming back to life"

PRESENT TIME

When a child is leaving his mother's womb he immediately starts crying. Everything is new, he can already feel that nothing in this world is as secure as being inside her mother.

I can't say that everything had been easy from then on. The fights, the fears. They are still there. And it took a whole year for us to come back together. But just like Japanese that mend broken objects by filling the cracks with golds, we learned to fill the years of emptiness with the love and care we always had for each other. And with our biggest treasures: Angelica and our boy, Daniel who I'm currently meeting for the first time as he come into this world.