Chloe woke up to the smell of coffee. It was a familiar scent and for a second she woke up with a smile. It must be Saturday. Nate was downstairs with the kids but slowly losing patience or control of the situation. They had such routine Saturday mornings. Chloe slept in a few precious minutes while the kids had Daddy time. She inhaled deeply looking for the aroma of bacon or sausage. He never actually woke her up with a kiss, shove or yell. It was always more subtle. The hint of food already prepared that she didn’t make or have to clean up after. The aromatic scent continued to permeate the room forcing her eyes open which also broke the fragile waking dream she was experiencing.

Bright sunlight was not shining in the room through the wispy white sheers Nate called rooster curtain because they made you rise with the sun. This room was dark with the curtain’s pulled tightly allowing only cracks of light to shine between the slit that closed them and the thin lines along the sides and top where the sun’s rays could leak out. Staring at her curtains Chloe was struck with the image of a prisoner in a cell. The only access to the outside world from their cell was the sliver of light from under the door reminding them there was someplace outside the hell they were living in.

“Nate,” she called out desperate to hear his voice reply. Clo bell, doll face, honey: She would take any response yet all she was given was the echo of her call. Biting her lip she pulled the blankets tighter around her. “Nah tate,” she tried again but the voice speaking Choe barely recognized. It was weak with a trembling quality. She was familiar with the tone and cadence working in the hospital. It was the voice that belonged to someone on the brink of collapse. Swallowing the lump that was building in her throat she blinked rapidly pushing the tears from her eyes. She needed her medication but getting out of bed to find it seemed too monumental of a task to complete.
“Nathan,” she fought out the sounds in his name as images flooded her mind. Bubbles. Bluish-green blackness. Ripples of water around her. Coldness struck her like the doors and windows had been thrown open on an icy winter day. Fisting the thick comforter she pulled it around her so that she felt bound and trapped. The pressure was oppressive bringing another image to her mind: dirt, blackness, a coffin, and the sensation of being buried alive. “Maddie,” she spoke out the one word the snapped her into reality. Every morning was the same, Chloe dreamt of experiencing what her daughter had in the last moments of her life. “Oh my god, I am sorry. I’m sorry,” she sobbed out into her pillow.

It had been three weeks since Nathan had left to return to work. Captain Carter had extended and pushed the amount of leave for his counselor until there was no recourse left but to return to the Loki. Carter moved heaven and Earth to make the situation as easy as he could offering personal transports, extra leave once on the ship, offering to let their extended family visit to help with the transition yet in the end, Chloe had refused it all which is why she was here and Nathan halfway across the galaxy. It had been three months since her daughter died. Time no longer meant anything to Chloe. It was always set now to that day in January.

“Chloe,” a soft voice called out as the bed dipped indicating someone was sitting next to her cocooned body under the covers. “I made you coffee,” it said. Finger caressed Chloe’s forehead as her hair was brushed off her brow. “I need you to get up okay. We have to talk.”

Delaney’s voice forced Chloe’s eyes to open. The click of the small light on the bedside table shined enough light in the room so that the people in it were not darkened faceless shadows. Tentatively, Chloe pushed herself up on the pillows taking the coffee that was being offered to her. One sip reminded her Nate hadn’t made it which proved he was gone and not just out. “Chloe, I love you. I am your sister and I would not lie to you,” Delaney took a deep breath glancing over at Meredith who had turned on the light. “This is going to be hard to hear but we are here for you,” she placed a hand on Chloe’s knee under the covers. “Nate left not because he was required to but to set up a place to take the kids.” The mention of Chloe’s remaining children instantly had her attention.

“What are you talking about,” Chloe felt her chest cave into her stomach and her head spin. What was her sister saying to her? Chloe heard that Nathan called last night and Logan was talking to him but it was too much effort to force a conversation with her husband. Instead, Chloe took a few pills, washed it down with some booze and went to bed. “Why are you saying Nathan is taking my kids,” her voice took on the edge of hysterics. Only the threat of vomiting and a migraine prevented Chloe from storming the bed and starting a comm call to Nathan.

“I had lunch last week with Siri Perkins. She mentioned that Captain Carter had been making a lot of calls to command about Nathan about his duty station. Siri mentioned that the paperwork for Nathan to be assigned a family suite instead of single officers quarters was approved. Wouldn’t you have to have had a family suite on the Loki if he wanted you there,” Meredith asked, already knowing the answer. The subtle context was being laid. Nathan had to be lying about something and keeping Chloe in the dark about his plans.

“Yes but,” Chloe’s head throbbed making it hard to think. For the weeks before he left, Nathan all but refused any answer except that she and the kids were going with him to the Loki. Not having family quarters on the ship was not a detail he would let slip. None of this made any sense.

“But then why would he be doing that unless it was to move the kids or were you planning on moving to Loki?” Delaney’s rhetorical question hung in the air like a noose. There was only one response and it was not the latter.

“If I was leaving with him I would have left with him,” Chloe felt her sadness morphing into something else. Pure fury was consuming her grief like kerosene to a fire. The endless well of sadness and regret acted like a spigot directing every emotion with pinpoint accuracy to another target. Delaney looked at Meredith as if to confirm what she should do next. The subtle nod between them was lost on Chloe as irrational thoughts filled her mind. “Nate would not take our kids. He would not do that to me,” she shot back angrily slamming the ceramic mug on the table next to her. Coffee sloshed over the edge splattering brown drops around it like a muddy rain.

“According to Siri he is and she is the cousin of Dexter Perkins who is Admiral Perkins, nephew,” Meredith gently spoke watching her sister throw the covers back and start to pace the room. “Admiral Perkins is on the Starfleet council. She knows what is going on.”

“And Siri Perkins is a gossipmonger who thinks she knows everything. I have never liked her. She finds a bit of truth and twists it,” Chloe began to toss articles of clothing around the room haphazardly looking for her communicator. She didn’t believe Nathan was capable of this act but things were not right between them before Maddie’s death. Chloe’s affair with Ben had been placed on a back burner in the past weeks. There was just too much else that took precedent but what if Nate had left the pot on a slow boil. What if he did blame her for the death of their daughter. What if he was going to do what her sisters were suggesting. “Nathan always had the family suite. He has since Mah…he enlisted. It was one of his conditions to re-enlisting. That we would be a family on a stable ship only I was still getting things together to move there. Ugh where is that fracking communicator,” Chloe yelled throwing a shoe across the room. The floors and dressers were covered in clothes, shoes, half-drunk coffee cups that had long started to grow a thick layer of mold from the coagulated cream and sugar they contained.

“Chloe,” Meredith said firmly. “If Nathan had really wanted you to come would you still be here? I know that he had set up things on the Loki but what if he changed his plans when you refused to follow them?” Meredith began to pick up items around the room. It was just a show of helping. Before waking her they had taken her communicator downstairs. It was a necessary move to protect their sister. Delaney and Meredith knew the first thing Chloe would do was call her husband. Nathan had a power over her they never understood. Chloe moved halfway across the galaxy for him. She gave up her career for him. Their bond was far stronger than either sister had in their own marriage so the concept that Nate and Chloe tackled life as a team was a forgien as staying married for more than five years. Why their sister could not see it was time to move puzzled them. This was why they needed to make sure Chloe had all the facts and a straight head before making that call. “We both know that when Nathan Harland sets his mind to something he does not stop until he accomplishes it. He is also prone to snap decisions. Quitting Starfleet to get married, getting a new degree,” Meredith began to list the irrational snap choices her brother-in-law had made over the years.

“Re-enlisting and not talking to you about it, moving you to Martha’s Vineyard and out of Danbury, his affair with Dr. Keller,” Delaney supported Meredith’s stance. “There is also his temper. It’s no secret that he threw Ben off a balcony.” The silence in the room was palpable. “He wants to claim you are unstable but what did his actions say about him? Sure he was mad but normal people don’t try to kill someone simply because they are mad at them.” The two sisters knew this was going to be an uphill battle but that is what sisters did when one was in trouble. They pulled the bandaid off when it was needed. “When has Nathan ever not gotten when he wanted or did what he thought wasn’t best for him. Chloe, we love you. We love him but Nate always said nothing would come between him and his family. Does it make any sense that he would abandon you to this,” she waved a hand around the squalor of the room, “instead of forcing you to go with him?” Delaney looked at Meredith before driving the nail into the coffin. “What if he was busy with Keller like you were with Ben? Space is a big place. Any chance he uses the Loki to close the gap between him and wherever Keller is in the galaxy?”

The mention of Keller caused a flash of anger in Chloe’s eyes as she held a wadded up sweatshirt in her hands. Nathan swore there was nothing between them just work. Chloe doubted this of course because why wouldn’t someone want what she had. Nate might have been innocent. Women were never innocent. She was a walking talking example of that with Ben. What if that was the reason he never put his foot down, forcing her to join him. She was his wife. It was his right as a husband to want his wife to be with him yet Nathan never pushed her moving to the Loki past the fights about it. Sinking into her chair, Chloe stared at her sisters. “Nate would never do that to me but if he is really planning to do this what course do I have to stop him,” she asked feeling her hands starting to shake.

Moving across the room, Meredith handed Chloe her bottle of medication. She could tell when her sister needed one. Opening up the bottle, Chloe swallowed two of the small capsules washing them down with a half-empty bottle of water sitting on her dresser. “We strike first. Get the upper hand,” she suggested, “and show him that you are not incapable of taking care of your kids.”

“Is that what he said,” Chloe felt her world collapsing around her for the first time today.

“Not exactly but he told several people in his old practice that he was worried you were depressed and might need to be hospitalized if things did not get better,” Delaney said, sitting on the arm of the chair rubbing Chloe’s back with her palm soothingly. Nate had never said those words. He had mentioned to some he was worried about his wife which was understandable. The rumor mill had run with the rest adding bits and pieces to submerge the truth into a murky pit of drama and innuendo, shared during lunches and outings as they talked about the tragedy hitting the Harland family. That was the way it worked in Connecticut. Only forty-nine percent of any story was true. The other fifty-one percent was built to add drama, outs, innuendos, and gossip to make things more interesting resulting in a story so sensational it rarely resembled the actual event that had taken place.

“Hospitalized?” Her knees felt watery and bile rose in the back of her throat. “I lost my daughter. What does he expect? Me bobbing around like nothing ever happened?” The crack in her voice signaled. Chloe was bordering on the verge of hysterics and the inability to speak. Gripping the edge of the dresser, Chloe steadied herself.

“I don’t know what he expects,” Delaney embraced Chloe, holding her tight. “She was only my niece and there are days I can’t stop crying. You are her mommy. I can’t even pretend to know what that is like and doing it alone like you have been.” Maddie’s loss cut through the family like any death but more so because it was a child.

Chloe felt numb inside, not because of the conversation but because it was her natural state now. Did Nathan think she was incapable of taking care of her kids? She had been in the field long enough to know that while proving someone was unfit was hard, redeeming yourself after that label was next to impossible and how would she prove she was capable of taking care of the kids.. He had the job. He had been the one functioning in society. He knew her well enough to point out each flaw and mistake. “Give me my phone,” she demanded holding out her hand. Chloe knew either Delaney or Meredith had it.

Meredith gave Delaney a side glance before pulling it from her pocket. Divorce was always hard. She knew. She had been through three of them already. The only grace was once her sister made this call, Chloe could start her life again.

Entering the code, she stared at the small swirling symbol indicating the comm call was traveling across space to the Loki. Just before it was accepted half a galaxy away, Chloe blocked the camera from transmitting her image. She had no desire to see him anyway.

Chloe Harland