Life and Other Inconveniences

by Kristan Higgins

  Riley’s eyes widened. “Wow. She’s got balls, asking you that.”

  “Yes, she does.” I paused. “Do you want to go?”

  Her look of surprise was almost comical. “Are you serious?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “You really want to take care of that old hag? She booted you when you were pregnant, Mom.”

  “I don’t want to take care of her. But . . . I do want her to meet you. See what she missed out on.” I took a slow breath. “It’s your choice, though. Totally up to you.”

  “Then, yes.” For the first time in days, my daughter smiled. “Let’s get outta here, Mom!”

  “Okay, but forewarned is forearmed. She’s not the nicest person.”

  “So you’ve said before.”

  “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up. That she’ll . . . approve of you.”

  “Because I’m your bastard child?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So we’re not in the will, then?”

  “We’re not,” I lied. Better to have Riley surprised than disappointed. Pop was right. I didn’t trust Genevieve one bit.

  “Will I get to see my dad, too?”

  I hadn’t talked to Jason about this yet, but it was more than time that Riley meet her half brothers. Four times, a trip had been scheduled, and four times, it had been canceled; three because his boys were sick, once because a snowstorm had locked Chicago down. “Sure,” I said.

  “This is kind of fabulous,” she said.

  “You think?”

  “Yeah! I mean, sure, she’s a nasty dinosaur, but does she still live in that house with the name?”

  “Sheerwater, and yes, as far as I know.” I sat down on her bed.

  She grabbed her laptop and Googled it. “Holy crap, it’s beautiful! There’s a pool, and the ocean is right there! Dude. It’s amazing.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sheerwater. Do we get to live at Sheerwater? I could get used to living in a house with a name.”

  “It would just be for the summer, honey. And I don’t know, but I think so.”

  My daughter looked at me, her extraordinary blue eyes so expressive. “I’m sorry she’s sick,” she said gently. “Are you sad?”

  She took my hand, and a lump formed in my throat. In fifteen months, my daughter wouldn’t be living here anymore, and everything would change. These little moments, these small but huge gestures of love, would be rarities.

  “No, not really,” I said. “She wasn’t . . . we weren’t close, you know? She did her duty and made sure I knew I was a burden.”

  “Will your father be around?”

  “I doubt it.” Riley had met my father—once, when she was three. He’d been in Chicago for a Bruce Springsteen concert and decided to come see us. He’d been shocked when I answered the door with a toddler in my arms. I honestly think he forgot I had a baby.

  Riley lay back on the bed. “So she wants us to come. That’s kind of cool. I’ll finally see the famous Genevieve London up close and stay in a house with a zillion rooms that overlooks the ocean.”

  “You sure you want to?”

  “Heck, yeah, Mom! It’ll be fun!”

  I pretended to ponder that one. “Fun. I’m not seeing the fun here.”

  “Oh, come on. You can rub my wonderfulness in her face.” She grinned.

  I smiled back, the knot in my heart loosening a bit. “That’s the only reason I want to go.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Genevieve

  It always infuriated me when people said Garrison died of a broken heart. As if, had I also loved our son Sheppard, I, too, would’ve done the right thing and died when we lost him.

  I did not.

  I wanted to, however.

  But someone had to raise Clark—the other son, as I started to think of him. Clark, whom, truth be told, I had never loved quite as much. A mother isn’t supposed to admit that, but in my case, it was true.

  Clark, never as charming or intelligent or handsome, remained alive, growing pudgy, pale and sullen after Sheppard . . . went away. We couldn’t say he had died, because no body was ever found. We couldn’t say kidnapped, because there had been no evidence of that. He just vanished.

  Clark remained. He became an adolescent with all its sticky horrors, then a college student who would only serve to disappoint . . . first in his education (one must work exceptionally hard to be expelled from Dartmouth), then in his marriage to that tragic woman. I worried for my granddaughter after she died. Emma—such a common name—was too much like April, her mother, always wanting approval, too moody, too reliant. Not enough like a true London. Not her fault, really, with Clark as her father, but still. One hoped the superior genes would win out.

  Sheppard, on the other hand, would stay forever perfect. My true son. As much as I wanted to love Clark the way I loved my older son, it never happened. The Missing—it was a dark, powerful creature and thus deserved its capital letter, let me assure you—the Missing wouldn’t let me.

  It’s been fifty-five years since I’ve seen my beautiful boy, but I can picture his face so clearly—his clear, shining eyes with their long blond lashes, the dimple in his right cheek, his hair so lightened by the summer sun that it was nearly white. Seven had been a magical age, though the same was true for each year of Sheppard’s brief time with us. At seven, he still curled against my side at night as I read to him, while Clark, two years younger, played on the floor, making all sorts of irritating mechanical noises as he pushed his trucks around. The week before Sheppard went away, the teacher took me aside to tell me how polite he was, how kind and bright.

  She was right. He was. He was the loveliest boy in the world.

  He had the makings of a fine athlete even then, and clumsy Clark would try to keep up. Sheppard would wait for his little brother, reaching out a hand, boosting him into a tree, steadying the bike. So kind. One of the things I loved most about Sheppard was his generosity. Clark worshipped him, and everyone agreed Clark was a very lucky little boy to have such a fine big brother.

  The day Sheppard went away, he’d had a loose tooth—his first, the bottom right. Central incisor (I’d looked it up later, to help the police identify him). I’d never see that tooth gone, never see the sweet gap in his smile, or the bigger tooth that would grow in its place. Sheppard would never need orthodontic work. He would never have acne, never become a sullen teen who sat in front of the television and grunted out replies.

  Or maybe he had. I hope he had, God yes. What was the term again? Forced adoption, yes. Of all the scenarios, that was the only one that was even remotely acceptable. These days, when I’m feeling weakest and most afraid, I’m tempted to do what I swore I never would . . . picture our reunion.

  I can’t do that now. Therein lies despair, as the saying goes.

  At any rate, some thought I betrayed my older son by not doing the romantic thing and dying of a broken heart. My husband took the easy route and simply died—just stopped—while sitting in the Adirondack chair by the stone wall, our favorite place. He left me just three years after Sheppard went away. I’d found my husband there at the edge of the yard, his feet propped up on the stone wall that divided Sheerwater from the stone-hewn beach. He’d been smiling.

  That had been our spot, before, where we used to sit together, the boys tucked in bed, sleeping. Garrison and I would sip our drinks, holding hands, knowing how lucky we were, feeling rather smug, really. We were successful and happy. Wealthy and grateful. Blessed by two fine sons, one better than the other, but perhaps Clark would change and become more like his brother. Garrison would kiss my hand, and we’d watch the sunset, our voices rich with love and satisfaction.

  So the fact that my husband would die in our special place, abandoning me, leaving me alone with this mountain of grief and giving me another that would be impossible to climb . .
. it was so brutally unfair. Even as the pain ripped me in half, the anger surged harder. How dare you, Garrison? How can you do this to me?

  But he had, and Clark and I were left alone.

  I knew I wasn’t a good mother to my other son, but I was all he had. And he was all I had, too; my parents were long gone, and my sister and brother were unable to understand my grief. I hated them, anyway, with their living children whom they gathered closer to them, because thank God it hadn’t been them. Thank God tragedy struck me instead.

  A year after I buried my husband, I started my company, and people were stunned. How does she DO it? How can she even get out of bed in the morning? First her son, then her husband . . . Or worse—She must have ice in her veins, leaving that poor little boy with a nanny all day.

  Frankly, it made me want to kill them. Violently. I’d smile and murmur graciously while they exclaimed their surprise that I was working, that I could manage to go on, that they thought of me and dear Sheppard so often, and I was in their thoughts, their prayers. Yes, I imagined myself stabbing them repeatedly. Driving a stick through their eyes and into their brains as they clucked and cooed at my iron lady resolve. Die, I imagined saying as I twisted the stick in their eye socket, their blood spattering my Chanel suit.

  Because what was I supposed to do? I’d tried to curl up and die the day the police told me they could no longer allocate resources to search for my son. I wanted to die the day my husband’s heart stopped beating as he listened to the waves lapping at the shore, thinking, no doubt, of our firstborn. I’d tried to die the day the most promising lead—a small boy matching Sheppard’s description found in Boston—had turned out to be someone else’s child. The day I got that news, I left the police station without a word, went back to my car and clutched the steering wheel and screamed like an animal. Oh, yes, I would have loved to die that day, when the Missing gnawed at my heart and lungs, taking all the breath from me, laughing as it did.

  But I lived. It came almost as a shock, living. Should I have committed suicide? I might not have loved my second son as much, but I wasn’t about to saddle him with that legacy. Should I have become a drug addict, swallowing pills to numb the pain? An alcoholic? Should I have moved away from the town my family had helped found, the home where Sheppard had lived? Really, tell me, I wanted to say to the well-meaning, wonderstruck idiots. What else should I have done?

  “Thank you,” I’d say. “Clark and I must keep going, after all.” A reminder to them that I had another son . . . and to pinch my own soul, because at times I forgot about Clark, frankly. I just didn’t care as much. Let him get Cs. Let him skip practice. Let him stay out late. It didn’t matter. The Missing and I would wait for him, me dry-eyed and irritable, the Missing waiting for that chink in my armor so it could devour me.

  To make up for it, I gave Clark a car on his seventeenth birthday. College was a given; Dartmouth had a building with his grandfather’s name on it. I was not concerned about his future. I wanted to be, but Sheppard had taken my mother’s heart with him that day.

  So . . . I lived. As one does when one is not given a choice, when one’s heart refuses to stop beating, when God doesn’t listen as you beg him to bring back your son who is probably dead, to bring back your husband who definitely is, to end all the pain of your barren, useless heart. Very few people understood. Miller Finlay, whose family owned a construction business and who’d overseen the repairs and renovations on Sheerwater, did. He’d lost his wife. He knew the Missing, though we never spoke of it, except at his wife’s wake. The first time he’d come to Sheerwater after her death, our eyes locked, and the bond formed. His cousin was Jason, who had ruined Emma’s future, but Miller was a different sort. Decent. Ruined, like me.

  I had no choice but to stay alive. All those years, I worked. I ate. I dressed. I spoke. I waited for old age or accident to take me.

  Now, however, knowing what I know, my perspective has shifted. I want to leave while life is still tolerable. Yes, of course I’m talking about suicide. Don’t be naive.

  The only problem is, I can’t quite bring myself to do it alone.

  CHAPTER 5

  Miller

  Miller Finlay hated being a single father.

  He hated being a father, period. He was fairly sure he hated his daughter 95 percent of the time. She was three, but it wasn’t her age. He’d pretty much hated her since the moment of her birth. Six minutes before, to be precise.

  Tess was not adorably naughty or energetic or challenging. She was horrible. Malevolent. Not the usual word used to describe a toddler, but Miller could think of nothing else to describe her screaming in the supermarket, a grating edge in her voice as she announced she was hungry (because she’d thrown her breakfast plate to the floor and demanded sugar in place of the eggs). Or when she screamed, “Daddy, no hurt me!” when he insisted she stay buckled in the cart. “Daddy, please, I hungry!”

  The other parents would side-eye him and give him a wide berth. Sometimes they’d offer to buy her a muffin, not noticing she’d shredded and discarded the muffin Miller had already given her. Still, she’d take the stranger up on their offer, making him look like a monster who didn’t feed his child. Once, after Tess had announced to a shoe store that he gave her boo-boos, someone had called the police, and he’d had to explain to his former classmate, now chief of Stoningham police, that Tess’s black eye was from her banging herself while jumping on his iron-framed bed after she had locked him out of the room.

  She was exhausting and never ran out of energy. She was always angry, always crying, often lying on the floor kicking her legs and contorting her body. When she cried and he tried to hug and comfort her, she only screamed louder and arched her back as if in pain until she literally broke free of his arms.

  He wanted to love her and just . . . didn’t.

  The pediatrician said she was normal and had above-average intelligence. A therapist had said the same thing, mentioning that when she could truly verbalize her feelings, things would improve.

  Which did nothing for the here and now.

  Every night he lay awake, sweating as he tried to “sleep train” Tess, steeling himself to her screams of rage, the hours upon hours during which she never seemed to “cry herself out” as Dr. Spock had promised. Instead, she shook the bars of her crib—which had one of those protective tents secured over it. Or, he’d lay awake waiting for those things to start happening, because Tess had never slept more than three consecutive hours in her short life. Every night since her birth had been punctuated by her screams. Colic. Teething. Rage. He didn’t blame her. He’d scream, too, in her place.

  When she finally did fall asleep in a sweaty heap, Miller would listen to the quiet. Even though he knew he should fall asleep instantly, though he really needed to be asleep, Miller would remember life before Tess. The day the damn two lines had finally appeared, and Ashley sobbed with joy, and they hugged and cried and laughed. After thirteen years of marriage and seven of actively trying, after four years of being screened for adoption and filling out paperwork, and one heartbreaking “almost” adoption, they would finally, finally have a baby.

  He remembered the day of the ultrasound, and when the tech told them it was a girl, he realized how much he’d hoped it would be a girl (though he probably would’ve felt the same way if it had been a boy). He put his face against Ashley’s beautiful, taut belly and thanked God for being so generous. He was not a praying man, but he had thought those words. Thank you, God, for my daughter.

  He remembered going into the hospital when, four days after her due date, Ashley went into labor. He’d been proud, concerned, excited—his beautiful wife, so ripe, so brave. Oh, the fucking hubris, such excitement, such complete and utter stupidity. In a day and a half, his life would be over, his wife would be dead, and he’d be the father of a screaming, rage-filled baby.

  That was three years ago. Three years, one mon
th, one week and four days.

  He glanced at the clock. Four fifty-one a.m. Maybe he could get a little sleep. Closing his eyes, he felt his thoughts skip and slide, and for a moment, he was sleeping, floating, resting.

  The wail came, ripping the quiet of the gray morning.

  It might be time to call an exorcist, if the only problem were as simple as demonic possession.

  The night, such as it was, was over, not that he’d slept for more than ten consecutive minutes.

  With a sigh, his eyes gritty from lack of sleep, his legs heavy, neck stiff, he got out of bed, pulled on a T-shirt and entered the chamber of doom. Tess stood there, blondish hair snarled, her lower lip out in a pout and her face wet with tears and crusted with snot. He unfastened the safety net (a straitjacket was probably the next option) and lifted her out, bracing for another day of fatherhood.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” he said.

  “No!”

  At least she hadn’t taken off her diaper and smeared shit on the wall, as she had yesterday. Last night, he’d dressed her in pajamas that zipped up the back, and so far, Tess hadn’t figured it out. But she would. He knew his daughter, and she would.

  “How are you today, Tess?”

  “No!” she yelled, arching her back away from him.

  “Easy, honey,” he said as she writhed in his arms and pierced his eardrums with her cries. “Daddy’s got you. Let’s change that diaper, okay?”

  “I hate you,” she said. Unfortunately, she was quite advanced with language.

  “Well, I love you,” he lied. A hundred and eighty-four minutes till he could drop her off at Ashley’s mom’s and go to work.

  Dressing her was like wrestling a Tasmanian devil.

  As Tess kicked, wriggled and flailed, he held her down as firmly as he could without breaking her. No changing table, as she could writhe off it, even with him right there. Live and learn. Now there was just a mat on the floor. As he pulled off her pajamas and pulled the tabs of her diaper, she reached down, grabbed the sodden diaper, and swung it, hitting him in the face. It exploded, little pee-soaked beads going everywhere—his hair, his nose, his mouth, the wall, the carpet, Tess’s hair and face.