The Years Between Us

by Stephanie Vercier

  There are no words of farewell between my parents and Luke or Danielle as they walk out the front door. I should be stunned at this turn of events, but I’m not… not really. If anything, deep down, it’s what I’d always expected to eventually happen.

  “Come on, I’ll help you,” Danielle says.

  Luke has gone outside, out the French doors, and I don’t see him, and I hate that because all I really want to do is to run into his arms and tell him I’ll stay… but I can’t.

  “You will come back, won’t you?” Danielle asks once we’re upstairs and I’m putting the last of my things from the guest room into my suitcase. “I mean, your parents are seriously scary, but they’ll calm down at some point, right?”

  I smile and nod. The truth is that I don’t know, but I don’t want to say that out loud. It would make it too real.

  “You are an adult,” she reminds me, “and that stuff they said about going after my dad? Well, he won’t be afraid of them, and his parents, my grandparents, are kind of crazy, but they have tons of money, and they’ll help him if—”

  “My parents have literally destroyed people,” I break in. “And they’d probably go after your grandparents too if they thought they were helping your dad. I won’t put him or you through that, not when you’ve already been through so much.”

  “But he loves you,” she says with a line of anger. “This will hurt more than anything your parents could do to him.”

  “I’ll find a way,” I assure her, even if I have no idea what it will be. With my suitcase packed, I give her a giant hug. “I love you, Danielle. You’re an amazing friend.”

  “And we’ll see each other again,” she tells me with tear-stained cheeks.

  “I hope you and Carlos work out,” I offer once we pull from our hug.

  She nods. “We’ll see.”

  “I need to say goodbye to your dad,” I tell her as we leave the room and walk toward the elevator.

  We’re both quiet as we ride down, and it seems like forever ago that we first rode up together. I’d been surprised and amazed at this house and yet could have never guessed that the man who owned it would be the first man I would ever love, and even as the reality of me leaving now hits, I still have to hope and have faith he’ll be the last man that I ever love.

  He’s back inside now, sitting on one of the couches, the one he and I first kissed on. He looks up at Danielle and I, and once I’ve reached the door and set my suitcase down, he stands and walks over to me.

  “You have another suitcase in my room,” he tells me, his face so very sad, taking my hand and giving it a squeeze. “I should keep it here for when you come back.”

  I turn briefly to look at Danielle. She nods, seeming to know that I need to be alone with him, and then she disappears.

  “I’ll find a way, Luke, but right now…”

  “I know.” He holds tightly to my hips, his eyes red. “I need to hear from you every day, to know that you’re okay. I don’t care about their threats, and the only reason I’m going along with this is because of your brothers and because you’re asking me to.”

  “And I love you for that. But if they take my phone, then I can’t guarantee—”

  “If I don’t hear from you tonight, and tomorrow, and every day after, I’m coming for you. That’s non-negotiable. And I want to know if you change your mind about the baby, but I hope you won’t let them talk you into doing something you don’t want to do.”

  I lean into his chest. I’d wanted this baby as much as he did, but now it’s so very complicated. But I still won’t let them take that choice from me. “It’s your baby too,” I tell him. “You’ve earned a say in what happens”

  There is a sigh of momentary relief and then a kiss to my forehead, his hands tightening behind my back.

  “My engagement ring is in the top drawer of your nightstand,” I tell him, my cheek pressed against his chest. “I won’t risk taking it to Seattle, but will you keep it for me?”

  “You even have to ask that?” He allows a small, strangled laugh. “I’ll put it back on your finger when all of this blows over. And then I’m going to marry you with or without your parents’ blessing.”

  Mustering a weak smile, I say, “I’ll count on that, Luke.”

  Through eyes blurred with tears, I look into his, the pain of not knowing when I’ll see them again so very real. So when he kisses me, I put my entire heart into it, commit the feeling of his lips against mine to tactile memory. My heart is nearly beating out of my chest, warmth spreading between my legs and every nerve in my body thrilling at his touch.

  And then there is that last look as he walks me out, one of agony and misery, but ringed with hope that we’ll see one another again. And that’s what keeps me going as I slide into the back of my parents’ BMW. I close my eyes as they start the car, as we begin our journey back to a place that no longer feels like home. They say things to me about how this is the right decision, how we can make it so that this summer never really happened. But I don’t reply. They don’t deserve it. Instead, I keep my eyes closed, the perfect image of Luke’s face still at the forefront of my mind.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  LUKE

  I’d always intended to follow Danielle back to WSU to make sure she got there safely, even when it appeared Carlos was going to transfer and the two of them would be going together.

  “Are you doing okay?” I ask her after I’ve helped her settle into her dorm room, this one a single since she’s decided she doesn’t want a new roommate if she can’t live with either Claudia or Carlos.

  “I could ask the same of you.”

  We’re sitting together on her narrow bed, the dorm room looking sad and lonely without the personal touches yet that Danielle will make throughout the school year. It’s reflective of the way we both feel.

  “I’ll be okay,” I tell her, patting her on the knee. “Claudia has called or texted every day since she left last week, so there’s that. But she’s stubborn, insisting she’s working on her parents and that it’s going to take a while.”

  “I hope she doesn’t get sucked in, Daddy. Her parents are scary, like the kind of people who fuck lives up.”

  “I won’t let them.” I put an arm around her. “Just like I won’t let anyone hurt you. Have you heard from Carlos at all?”

  She sighs. “Not really, but I’m not sure I can blame him. He kind of went ballistic when I told him I wanted our marriage annulled.”

  “And you’re sure that’s what you still want?” While I think it’s the right decision for her, I don’t want to be responsible for pushing her in a direction she hadn’t wanted to go in any more than I’d want for Claudia to be coerced into something she doesn’t want.

  “Most days I’m sure. I still love him, but I don’t want to be married. I think I knew that the day after we eloped. We’re just not prepared for it.”

  “But that doesn’t mean you can’t be together,” I assure her. “You can keep working on things.”

  “We’ll see. I think I have a hold on it, but I’m still just more worried about you. Can I do anything? I mean, other than keeping in touch with Claudia.”

  “I’m the parent here,” I remind her. “You shouldn’t have to be worrying about me.” But how can I blame her? I’ve been a wreck even if I’ve tried not to be, and I’ve lost weight, weight I didn’t need or want to lose because it’s difficult to have much of an appetite when the person you love more than life itself has been taken from you.

  She doesn’t answer right away, as if collecting thoughts or maybe just taking my advice to heart. I want her to enjoy her sophomore year, to put what happened with Carlos behind her if she can or work on her relationship with him if she can’t. I want her to focus on school and her studies and being with friends and having fun. I want my daughter to laugh and have joy and not pulled into my pain.

  “It’s still kind of weird in a way,” she finally says in a quiet voice, “you and Claudia. You know how
mad I was when I first found out, but she really is perfect for you, Daddy. She’s never been like the other girls here.”

  “No?” I feel myself smiling at whatever insight my daughter is about to give me about Claudia.

  She laughs. “It’s like she knew there was the perfect guy out there for her. I mean, of course she met guys, went on some dates, but they never went anywhere. I pretty much just told her to hook up with someone because I thought that’s what you’re supposed to do in college, but she said she didn’t want to waste anyone’s time and wasn’t going to waste hers with a guy she couldn’t see being with for the long haul. I actually kind of thought maybe she liked girls and just hadn’t come out yet, but I guess I’ve been proven wrong on that count.”

  My smile grows wider. She’d been stronger than I had when I’d gone through a string of women knowing full well it was only for sex and companionship.

  “I hate to think she waited for me and now has to go through all of this.” Pregnant and at odds with her parents isn’t the place I’d had wanted her to have to end up.

  “But she loves you, Daddy, and I don’t think Claudia would have liked anyone that her parents might have hand picked for her. I’m not really sure there’s any winning with them.”

  “No, I don’t think there is either, and maybe Claudia’s just deluding herself in thinking they’ll soften on this. I wake up every morning and imagine this is the day she’ll tell me they’ve gotten to her, that they’ve pushed for the abortion…” I let out a sigh. “I just thought I… that all of us would get a second chance.”

  Danielle puts her arm around me. “I miss Brandon too… every day. And you trying to rescue Isabelle—”

  “I should have told you she’d relapsed,” I say.

  “Like I didn’t figure it out? Saving her life won’t make Brandon’s death okay or make that loss any less painful.”

  I shake my head, a mix of anger and tears brewing within me. I’d always tried to do the right thing, but now I’m not sure what that even means anymore.

  “She’s not worth it,” Danielle presses. “She and Gabe live in their own world. She’ll never be the mother you want her to be for me, just like he’ll never, ever be my father. You… you’re the one who has always loved me and cared for me, who made me believe I wasn’t just some throwaway kid. And Brandon felt that too. He knew that—he always knew that.”

  And that’s what it takes to put me over the edge, to make me crumble. “I should have been there to protect him,” I get out, burying my face in my hands, my grief for my son something that will never go away. “He must have been so afraid that day with her, knowing something wasn’t right, and then when the car went off the road… I just can’t.” I’m the father, the one who is always supposed to be stronger, and yet I allow Danielle to pull me to her, to be the nurturer, the one who tries to ease my pain.

  “We all thought she was healthy,” she tells me softly. “I remember the weeks before the accident, thinking I finally had a mother, like we’d all come out of a fog like you see in the movies and life was finally what it was supposed to be. Daddy, it was like a real family. Brandon felt it too. He probably even felt it when he climbed into the car. You couldn’t have known Gabe called her and turned her head inside out.”

  “But I should have.” I pull my hands away from my face and straighten. “I shouldn’t have ever trusted her.”

  “Daddy, you have to stop. You have to stop blaming yourself.”

  I offer a half smile. “That’s a hard thing to do when you’re a parent.”

  “Then do it for me? Stop this nonsense with Isabelle. Ignore her the next time she breaks and live your life for me and Claudia and that baby that is coming… that will come. Claudia is strong. She won’t let anything happen to it.”

  Turning to hug her, I tell her, “I’m not sure what I’d do without you. I love you, you know that?”

  “I do,” she tells me, her expression when we pull away from one another reflecting that she means it. “You are the best father I could have ever asked for.”

  “And you’d tell me if you weren’t okay with me being with Claudia, right?”

  “Daddy!” She rolls her eyes in exasperation. “You deserve some happiness! Have you not been listening to me at all?”

  “I have,” I tell her, allowing myself to laugh. “I’m just making sure I’m worthy of being the best father you could have ever asked for.”

  “Come on.” She nearly catapults off her bed and reaches her hand out to mine. “Let’s get out of here and go have an early dinner, and let’s talk about happy things, like how great this school year is going to be and how I’m going to be a sister again come March.”

  I take a deep breath, then stand to join her. “Sounds like a deal.”

  We don’t say one word about Carlos or Claudia or Isabelle or even Brandon over dinner or during the time we go shopping for some things for Danielle’s dorm room. It’s difficult not to bring any of those people up, for both of us, but it’s a necessary reprieve.

  On my way back home now, after hugging my girl and wishing her well and making her promise she wouldn’t get herself too busy to visit her father, my mind goes back to Claudia. When the exit comes up for Echo Ridge, I consider driving right past it and instead pushing onward and into Seattle, right to Claudia. The cave man in me wants to barge into her family’s house and demand that she come with me, her parents be damned. But the only problem with that is it takes Claudia’s choice away. If she hadn’t been the one to ask me to back off and let her try to handle her parents, I never would have let her get into that car with them.

  Even so, when I do take the exit onto the highway that will be fairly lonely this late, the highway that leads to an empty home, it feels like a cop-out, like I’m just sitting here letting a woman I desperately love get taken further away from me for every day we aren’t together. But it’s the only choice I have… for now.

  I won’t be able to accept that excuse forever, though. It’s only a matter of time.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  CLAUDIA

  I had resisted a number of things that my parents, with red, angry faces, had demanded since I’d returned to the house in Seattle. First, they’d wanted my phone or to at least check it every night to be sure I wasn’t talking to Luke. I’d told them no, but that if they insisted I’d just get another phone or find another way to contact Luke. And unwilling to keep me locked up in my room all day, they’d begrudgingly accepted this.

  And then, only two weeks after me returning, they’d brought Douglas Anders around for an impromptu dinner. He was the son of one of their business associates, refined, highly educated and already a rising star in the banking industry. He was handsome enough, but he had that look about him, the kind that reflected going out with him might make you the center of his universe, might even get you a marriage proposal and a couple of children, but he’d tire of you eventually and start having secret affairs before your fifth wedding anniversary.

  I’d been very polite with him, but I’d also made it clear nothing would ever happen between he and I.

  “He would have been perfect for you,” Mom had snarled at me.

  “And you think he would have been okay with me being pregnant?” I’d asked, knowing a guy like Douglas Anders was only interested in passing along his own DNA.

  “We’ll get that taken care of soon enough,” Mom insisted.

  I’d resisted that too, the abortion that my parents were desperate for me to get before time ran out, before the growing life inside of me was too far along to be legally removed from my body. And in a way, having a child with so much upheaval surrounding it didn’t feel right, but then they were the ones creating the turmoil. And sometimes, I felt like the only way I’d ever get back to Luke was to have this child, to force my parents to either see me as a single mother or to allow me to marry the man that I loved, the man who I knew would be a loving father.

  But besides that, I wanted it. I want
ed a part of Luke.

  Walking through campus at The University of Washington, I’m reminded of the one thing demanded of my parents that I haven’t resisted. They greased whatever wheels they had to in order to get me in at UW last minute, the one school in all of Washington State that they likely would have found acceptable as long as I continued to refuse Harvard and Yale. And in a way, I’m glad. I love this campus, love the cool, sea air coming off of Lake Washington, the turning color of the leaves as summer bends into fall, love seeing students from all over the world criss-crossing their way to and from class as well as the beautiful old buildings and all of the history that comes along with them.

  “Hey, Claudia!” The voice is coming from behind me, a man’s voice, friendly and recognizable.

  I turn, smile and gently wave at Bernard Olsen who sits next to me in Classroom Management. He’s from Wisconsin, tall and Nordic looking with the cutest accent, not quite as strong as the ones in that movie, Fargo, but pretty damn close.

  “How’s it going,” he asks me, a little breathless, his messenger bag slung over his shoulder.

  “Not bad… you? Good weekend?”

  He lets out a breath. “A crazy weekend. My folks flew in from Madison. I had to do the whole city tour thing for them along with finishing that bio-chem paper.”

  “Sounds eventful,” I say with a quick laugh as we walk toward class together, his steps falling in line with mine.

  “They wanted to meet you,” he tells me, the sound of his voice dipping. “I kind of talk about you non-stop.”

  “Me?” I blush at that. Bernard is sweet, one of those guys from a relatively small city who is immune to the raucous social life so many of our classmates dive head first into. It’s probably why I like him so much.

  “Yes, you,” he says, nudging me with his shoulder. “Of course I’d talk about the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met in real life and one of the few girls I know who isn’t hung over and drunk all weekend.”