by Carol Ross
Everything he and Josie had worked so hard to prevent seemed to be happening all at once and all under his watch. Levi was in trouble and Laney was pregnant. He never should have agreed to take them in. They had been much better off with Josie. With weak legs, he turned and sat on the edge of the tub willing himself to breathe. Beside him, Coastie let out a whimper.
At least he hadn’t screwed up the dog. But then again, she wasn’t technically his. He’d been dragging his feet about officially adopting her, a good thing, he could see now. He probably would have messed her up, too...
“Jay?” He slowly became aware of the fact that Mia was talking, saying his name.
“What?” he whispered.
“You need to go downstairs in case the girls come in. I don’t want them to know that we found out like this.”
He shook his head back and forth slowly, her words not registering. “Why?”
“Listen to me.” She stood before him and placed her hands on his shoulders. She gave him a light shake. “Because you need time to process this, to figure out what’s going on and what you’re going to do. You need to talk to...someone. Josie maybe? This needs to be dealt with very carefully. You can’t approach this with anger or just brush it off and hope it goes away.”
“Brush it off?” he snapped. “How do you brush off your little sister’s pregnancy? Believe me, I know that it’s impossible to brush off a baby.”
She opened her mouth to comment but snapped it shut instead. Calmly she pleaded, “Please, Jay, go downstairs and get your game face on. Your rescue face, the one you use when you’re on that helicopter and telling people everything will be okay. Because it will be. One way or another, it will be. This is your fifteen-year-old sister who may be pregnant. You have to handle this with care.”
He sat for a few more seconds, but the only thing he could truly process was his own failure, and how badly he’d let his family down.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MIA COULDN’T STAND not knowing what was going on. She had to give Jay credit, though, as he’d acted only slightly off when Laney and Elise walked through the door. Laney had asked him if he was okay and he’d told her he was tired. That was good.
That had been more than an hour ago. She hoped the old adage that no news was good news was working here.
She added sunflower seeds to the eggs and sautéed veggies in the pan and stirred. She looked at her phone hoping to see a text that she knew wasn’t there because she’d been checking it almost constantly. She carried the pan to the table where her mom was buttering toast for each of them. Mia sat and dished some eggs onto both plates. She shoved the food around with her fork as she thought about Laney.
“Your father would have hated this.” Nora smiled wistfully and took a bite of the egg mixture. “But I think it’s delicious.”
“Yeah well, Dad pretty much hated everything, didn’t he? Unless the Navy served it to him. Except you and Kyle.”
Mia’s bite turned to sand in her mouth as her mother stared back at her looking shocked and a little wounded. Ugh. She hated to upset her mom. Normally she avoided talking about her dad. But the words just slipped out. Or maybe not. She was brimming with nervous energy, and ever since she’d had that conversation with Jay on the beach she’d been thinking about what he’d said. Jay was right. She shouldn’t have had to spend her childhood walking on eggshells. She shouldn’t have to do it now. Three years of therapy had helped her accept the fact that nothing she could have done would have made her father love her or persuaded him to treat her differently. But she shouldn’t have had to try. He should have loved her, too. That’s what dads were supposed to do.
And she shouldn’t have to avoid the topic now to spare her mom’s feelings. Yes, her mom deserved Mia’s respect and love and admiration, but Mia had deserved some of that from her father, too.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” Nora muttered, wiping her mouth with a napkin. She didn’t meet Mia’s eyes, so she knew she’d hit a nerve.
Mia inhaled a sustaining breath and hoped she wasn’t making a huge mistake. “He was mean to me, Mom.”
“Mean? Mia, that’s harsh, don’t you think? He never laid a hand on you.”
“That’s true,” she returned. “Not in anger or in love. One of my earliest memories as a little girl is trying to hold his hand. He pulled it away like he’d been burned.” Tears welled up in her eyes. Why did this still hurt so much? she wondered. “He was worse than mean. His total lack of regard for me was cruel. I didn’t deserve it. I was a good kid.”
“Oh, Mia, I know you were. He didn’t mean to be. He didn’t know...”
“Didn’t know what, Mom? I’ve spent years trying to understand why he didn’t love me. I still don’t understand that part, but I’ve learned to accept that I can’t change the past. I’ve done my absolute best to be smart and good and productive, to do things that will make the world a better place so that I’ll feel valued. A lot of that is because I didn’t get any of that from him.”
“But I love you. I value you. More than anything in this world, Mia. More than your father even or I never would have agreed...”
George let out a woof from where he was lying beside Mia’s chair. A banging sounded on the porch. He lumbered to his feet and let out a real bark. Which he didn’t do often, but when he did it was impressive. Mia felt confident the deep sound reverberating through his barrel chest would scare off anyone with evil intentions.
She got up and walked toward the door. A loud knock followed before she could even get there. Standing on her tiptoes, she looked out the window that made up the top portion of the door and felt her heart leap into her throat.
She opened the door to a sobbing teenage girl. “Laney? Sweetheart, are you okay?”
The girl threw her arms around Mia. “He didn’t even give me a chance to explain. He wouldn’t listen. He accused me of all this bad stuff and asked me what was wrong with me. He didn’t say it but I know what he was thinking. He’s afraid I’m like our mom. But I’m not and it’s not how he thinks... He’s totally being irrational. So I ran away.”
Like their mom? What did that mean? “Shh, it’s okay.” Mia held her and let her cry. “It will be okay.” And, Mia thought, it would be. Because she was about to do whatever it took to make sure of it.
* * *
AFTER GETTING LANEY into the house, they settled on the couch. Nora made a “calming” tea that didn’t taste half-bad. Mia let Laney cry, offered words of encouragement and didn’t ask questions.
“Can I stay here for a while?” Laney finally asked.
“Of course you can, but I need to call your brother and let him know you’re here and safe.”
“That’s fine, but I don’t want to see him right now. He just doesn’t get that Levi and I are capable of doing things, making decisions and helping.”
“I’m sorry.” Mia didn’t ask how having a baby accomplished any of these things. “How about a bath?”
“That would be nice. I need to think.”
“Come down when you’re done and we’ll have some ice cream. I have a container of the real stuff hidden in the freezer behind a bag of rice flour.”
“I think the occasion warrants the real stuff,” Nora said. “I’ll join you.”
Laney offered a weak smile and headed for the stairs. “Okay, thanks, you guys.”
Mia texted Jay: Laney is here.
He answered immediately: I suspected as much. I’m coming over.
Steeling herself, she tapped out a response: She doesn’t want to see you. I told her she could stay awhile.
That’s fine. I wouldn’t want to see me, either. I need to talk to you.
Minutes later he was pulling up outside her house. She stepped outside and joined him. “Hey, she’s really upset. Did she tell you anything?�
��
“No.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Probably because I did exactly what you advised me not to. I confronted her. In anger. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Well, I do. I’m afraid. I’m terrified... I feel like a total failure. And I’m not sure I can do this. I don’t want to do this again...”
Mia nodded, waiting, hoping he’d continue.
He backed away until he was leaning against the porch railing. Gazing out at the ocean to his left, he tapped his fingers on the railing for a long moment. A breeze set off the tinkling of her mom’s wind chimes and brought with it the scent of the ocean. A dog barked, the sound carrying from the beach below them.
“Our mom...” Mia noticed a tremble in his hand as he brushed it across his jaw. “Our mom is mentally ill. Over the years she’s been diagnosed with a variety of conditions—depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorder, narcissism... I don’t know if you’re familiar with mental illness, but my personal opinion is that she has a borderline personality disorder, which falls into what they call cluster B of personality disorders in the psychological world. She exhibits behavior from both the histrionic and narcissistic categories as well.
“She’s been hospitalized numerous times, committed a couple of times and been on and off more medications than anyone could ever keep track of—everything from antipsychotics to mood stabilizers to antidepressants to plain old sedatives. These prescriptions usually help for short periods of time. I say short because she won’t stay on them long enough to get stable. She doesn’t like the side effects. She’s... It makes life really difficult for her and for us.”
To another’s ear, the way he relayed this information might sound cold, but Mia knew better. She’d seen the depth of his kindness and compassion, his love for his siblings. Mia tried to imagine; she’d had a friend in college whose dad was schizophrenic. It was a constant balancing act between sympathy and compassion and self-preservation. And in Jay’s case, the well-being of his five younger siblings had been paramount. The implications sank into her, the reason for much of his behavior—the silence, the secrecy, the distance he maintained with people. How in the world was he so normal considering? And Levi and Laney, too?
“How did you...? I mean, how are you not...?” She didn’t even know what or how to ask the million questions swarming around in her mind.
“When Josie and I were little we had our grandma, our mom’s mom. We lived with her, and our mom was just this person who kind of came and went in our lives. She’s never been capable of motherhood in any meaningful way. The narcissism prevents her from putting anyone else’s needs above her own.
“She can be very cruel and she’s always erratic, but Gran managed to keep this distance between her and us. Our mom would be gone for weeks or months at a time. Now I realize that she was either hospitalized or living with a man. Like I said, part of her illness includes this constant need for attention and reassurance, which she gets from men, or tries to. When Gran died, she was living with one of her husbands, Lyle, and had just had Levi. They all moved in with us after that, into Gran’s house. Laney was born a year later and Lyle somehow managed to keep her on meds to the point that she was somewhat stable. But he was killed in a car accident and that’s when things got really bad. I think she loved him, as much as she is capable of that emotion, anyway.”
He went on to explain how in her grief, their mom didn’t get out of bed for weeks, barely came out of her room for months. He and Josie were already taking care of their siblings so in that respect things didn’t change much. But when she finally emerged from that fog, her behavior spiraled downward very quickly.
“She went off her meds and fixated on finding another husband to replace Lyle. At one point, she moved in with a guy who didn’t even know about us. She was with him for six months. She left Josie and me to take care of Levi and Laney. She would come home maybe once or twice a week to drop off a few groceries and pick up her mail.”
“There was no one to help you?”
“That was complicated. Over the years, we had a few social workers, our aunt, teachers, a neighbor. There were a few people who tried, but Josie and I quickly figured out that the kind of help these people wanted to give us meant foster care and we would be separated. We promised Gran that we’d all stay together no matter what. I started working whatever jobs I could find—mowing lawns, yard work, fixing things. I landed my first real job when I was fifteen. I cleaned a woodworking shop in the evenings. After school, I would do my homework, help Josie as much as I could and then head to work. I didn’t get home until two or three in the morning. But the owner was good to me, taught me stuff. We did what we had to do to survive and stay together. That’s what we’re doing still. It became a little easier when I graduated from high school and was able to join the Coast Guard.”
“What about your dad?”
“Dads, you mean? Plural. Six kids, three different fathers. Or at least that’s what she tells us. Genetics seem to hold true for me and my sister, Josie. And for Levi and Laney. I’m not so sure about Dean and Delilah. She was cheating on Dean’s dad with a guy who has red hair, and Delilah has red hair. But she thought it was clever to name us according to the first letter of our dad’s first names. Josie and I were fathered by a guy named Jacob, so we got J names. Levi and Laney’s dad was Lyle. And she was married to David when Dean and Delilah were born. She recently got married for the sixth time to a man named Neil. At least we can rest easy knowing that no Nancys or Neds will be born, because she had to have a hysterectomy after Delilah.” He paused. “She’s had a string of other boyfriends and fiancés. The only one who was worth anything and wanted anything to do with us was Lyle, and he died.
“Her latest husband has a criminal record that includes child abuse, so Josie decided to file a lawsuit to gain custody of our siblings. She’s keeping Dean and Delilah, but Levi and Laney decided they wanted to come and live with me. I wanted this to work so badly. For Josie’s sake especially. She’s the one who has been on the front lines, so to speak, for the last several years. Joining the Coast Guard was great in that I had a steady paycheck to give her, but it also took me away from them, leaving her to raise four kids including the two baby Ds.”
Mia felt hot tears burning in her eyes. This was so unbelievable. Yet she believed every word because she knew Jay. She had seen his love, his complete disregard for his own comfort and needs. She knew Levi and Laney and all the bits and pieces she’d heard from them were now flashing through her mind and snapping into place to form a picture. A picture of a brother and sister who had overcome dysfunction so severe she could barely comprehend it.
“I know how this must sound. Like we’re a bunch of freaks.”
His tone, his body language suggested that he expected her to recoil from the information, from him. She wasn’t about to do that, but she wasn’t quite sure what to do. “No, more like you and Josie are the most incredible brother-sister team ever. You give new meaning to the word family.”
He nodded. “You can see why this pregnancy has me so shaken up. How will we manage with another baby? Josie already has the little ones and I... It’s not that I don’t love my siblings. I do, more than anything. I want so much more for them. But my finances are strapped as it is with Josie in nursing school, living expenses, insurance, sports, day care, dance classes for Delilah...life. I wanted Laney to go to college and have a chance at a normal life. I want that for all of them.”
It explained so much. Everything. She wanted to throw her arms around him and tell him all of that was still possible. But she knew it was too soon for that. Instead, she stood rooted to the spot because she wasn’t sure what to do. She knew he wouldn’t want her pity. If he wanted that, he’d shout his story from rooftops because everyone would listen. He could write a book and it would undoubtedly be a bestseller. Instead, he took great pains to keep it to himself. They all did. Mia couldn’t h
elp but think that silence, that avoidance, came at a cost.
Finally, she went with, “Thank you for telling me.”
He smiled sadly, catching her gaze with his own. “I’ve never told anyone our story. As you know very well, I don’t talk about it. But I wanted you to know now because I think—I hope—maybe it will show you how much I care about you. I haven’t allowed myself to get close to anyone. My family has always come first. I hope you can see how it has to.” He paused to look out at the ocean before turning toward her again. “The second I let my guard down this is what happens. And there’s a problem with Levi, too. He might be in trouble...” He folded his arms across his chest. “This is my fault. I never should have let myself get close to you. I knew it wasn’t a good idea, but I just... I couldn’t seem to stop myself. And even when you broke it off, I kept wondering whether we’d still find a way. But that was part of the problem, too. It was distracting me from my purpose.”
Mia felt her already-aching heart take another hit. “Wait a minute. Are you saying you believe this happened because you weren’t vigilant enough? Because you took a little bit of time for yourself and for me?”
Forcing her own feelings aside, she said, “Jay, none of this is your fault. No matter what’s happened, or what you think has happened, I know Levi and Laney. They are good, wonderful kids—smart, kind, thoughtful. They are amazing human beings because of you and Josie.”
“But...you were right. I should have paid closer attention. I should have... I don’t even know.”
“What did Laney say exactly?”
He shook his head. “Like I said, I didn’t really give her a chance to explain.”
