Jessica's Wish

by Marci Bolden

  Even though Annie was on the road to recovery, she’d never be the same. Nothing would ever be the same. That was terrifying. Mallory had never let the horror of what she felt really touch her. She attributed that trait to Annie. The woman was stronger than granite. But even granite cracked sometimes, and the way Phil was looking at her now made Mallory want to crumble. He apparently practiced the same emotional voodoo as his mother.

  Mallory took a deep breath to brace herself against his dark powers. “Mom’s probably handling her disabilities better than I am,” she confessed. “No. She’s definitely handling her disabilities better than I am. She was always the strongest person I knew, completely unshakable. Seeing her… God, I sound like an ass.”

  “No, you don’t,” Phil reassured her. “You sound like someone who is struggling with a drastically changed reality. Maybe I should be asking if you’re okay.”

  “I felt guilty not being here.” She stared at him hard. “And if you ever repeat that, I will deny it to my dying breath.”

  He crossed his heart. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

  “I stayed in California as long as I could. I wanted to come home so many times.”

  “What was the final push?”

  “Uncle Paul slipped. He said she was having a hard time coping with this brick wall she’s hit in her recovery. The therapist doesn’t think her speech will get any better, and regaining full use of her hands is taking longer than they thought. She’s struggling with that. I realized it was time. I need to be here. I need to help her, even if she doesn’t want me to.”

  “I don’t think that’s the issue, Mallory. Of course she wants you home and close. She talked about you so much at Jessica’s party. She’s incredibly proud of you. I think she just wants you to be happy and worries that taking time out of your life to care for her isn’t going to make you happy. My unsolicited advice would be that since you’ve made the decision to come home, make a point to have a life outside of looking after Annie. Or you’ll both regret your decision.”

  Phil gave her that damned comforting smile again. He had a little dimple in his left cheek that drew her attention until she forced her focus back to her coffee cup. She’d talked to her family and friends about this, but something about the understanding in Phil’s eyes made her feel that coming home simply because she needed to be closer to Annie didn’t make her a baby. She appreciated that more than he could ever know, and apparently more than she could say, since she couldn’t seem to find the words to thank him for being sympathetic. Or figure out why all of a sudden her eyes burned with unshed tears.

  “Sorry,” she whispered, snagging a napkin from the dispenser on the table.

  “Parents can be a handful, huh?” he asked softly.

  She laughed quietly as she dabbed her tears before they could fall. “Sometimes.”

  “Speaking of which”—he indicated the booth behind him with a jerk of his head—“I wasn’t flirting with her teacher. Just so you know.”

  “Yes, you were,” Jessica called.

  He rolled his eyes and shook his head. Mallory chuckled, but her amusement didn’t last. Annie and Marcus, both looking worried, approached the table.

  Mallory sarcastically cocked a brow at her mom and stepdad. “Finished already?”

  Annie frowned then looked at Phil. “Is Jess here?”

  Jessica peeked over the booth again. “Hey, Annie.”

  Annie’s face lit with a bright smile. She clearly had a genuine affection for the little girl. “Hi, honey. How are you?”

  “Mallory’s going to eat some of my pancakes,” she stated matter-of-factly, as if that answered the question.

  “Well, she won’t be disappointed.”

  “That’s what I told her. I also told her not to, but she feels sorry for you,” Jess offered.

  “All right, Punk.” Phil slid out of his booth and dug into his pocket. “Time to go.”

  “But—”

  He dropped some cash on the table. “But nothing. Let’s go. Nice to see you guys,” he said to Annie and Marcus before turning to Mallory. He mouthed sorry, and she shrugged in return.

  As Phil dragged Jessica away, despite her insistence that she wasn’t done with her pancakes, Annie slid into the booth next to Mallory.

  “It wasn’t working,” Mal said before her mother could ask. “That’s all. California wasn’t working.”

  Annie wrapped her arm around Mallory’s shoulders and tilted her face down, clearly analyzing her daughter. “How so?”

  “I…I missed being here. I wanted to come home. I thought you’d be thrilled.”

  “I am. But are you?”

  Mallory looked at Marcus as he took the seat Phil had vacated. His face had the same questions as Annie’s mixed with the sympathy that Phil had shown her. Clearly she wasn’t covering her motives for coming home as well as she thought.

  “I missed you guys, okay?” she asked. “I know that makes me sound pathetic, but I wanted to be closer to you. All of you. Uncles, aunts, cousins. Even my overbearing mother.” She hoped her teasing jab would break the tension at the table, but her joke fell flat. Annie didn’t smile or take the bait or offer up her own dry retort. She just stared with that same air of concern. “Mom, I hated being away from my family. I thought I would love the independence, but I didn’t. I wanted to come home.”

  Annie and Marcus cast doubtful glances, but it was Annie who spoke. “Because of me?”

  “Because I missed you.”

  Marcus put his hands on Mallory’s. “How long are you home for?”

  “Permanently,” she said, hating the sound of that word. “I quit my job and paid out my lease.”

  “Why?” Marcus knitted his brows together, but she couldn’t determine if it was frustration, concern, confusion, or all of the above. He’d been the one who had helped her negotiate the terms of her lease. Next to Annie, Marcus was the best real estate agent Mallory knew. He’d fought tooth and nail to get a sweet deal that she’d blown.

  “I wanted to come home,” she stated. “End of story.”

  Annie lowered her face for a moment before looking at Mallory again. There was something in her eyes—pain, maybe even a hint of embarrassment. “So it is because of me.”

  Guilt settled in Mallory’s stomach. She had hoped coming home would make her parents happy. Suddenly her decision seemed to pile on to their mountain of problems. She wasn’t lying, though. Sure, part of it was because she felt as if she were ducking out on her responsibilities—driving her mom to appointments and helping with her therapy shouldn’t fall solely on Marcus—but she truly had missed her family. “No, Mom,” she said with determination. “I came home because I want be here. San Diego is great. I really liked living there, but my family is here.”

  Marcus gave Mallory a smile that didn’t look the least bit sincere. He was visibly trying to hide his concerns in front of Annie. Mallory suspected the first time he could get her alone, he’d have one of those fatherly conversations he’d mastered while Annie had been in a coma after the shooting. He really had become a dad to Mallory—but this was one instance when she’d rather he hadn’t. He was going to push and push until he got the answers he wanted from her.

  “Hey,” he said through that fake smile, “it’ll be great to have you home. We’ve missed you, too. Haven’t we, honey?”

  Annie frowned but nodded. “Yeah. We have.”

  Jenna slid a plate of pancakes in front of Mallory, eyeing her brother as she did. The plate skidded to a stop, and the pile of half-melted whipped cream oozed off the colorful stack as sprinkles melted into puddles of various hues.

  Mallory sank back as disappointment settled in her stomach. Nothing about her surprise homecoming had turned out the way she’d planned.

  Phil handed Harry a purple, unicorn-shaped overnight bag as his daughter ran through his parents’ house, straight for the kitchen, where Kara was preparing dinner. “Are you sure about this?”

  Despite the frow
n on his face and the dark circles under his eyes, Harry nodded and accepted the offering. “Kara is worried she’s not getting enough attention.”

  “Well. She does have a doting father.”

  Dropping the bag at the foot of the stairs, Harry didn’t seem to have the strength to be apologetic for the offense Phil took at the statement. “From her grandparents. Mira is taking up a lot of our time these days.”

  “You don’t say.”

  Harry leaned against the railing as if he couldn’t stand on his own much longer. “Kara can’t put her down long enough to rest when she’s here, and she can’t stop worrying long enough to rest when she’s gone.”

  Phil’s concern spiked. He’d noticed his parents were spread thin with the infant, but this was the first time Harry had expressed frustration. “Dad, this is too much.”

  His frown deepened. “We know. Trust me, we know. She showed up here drunk last night, insisting on taking the baby. She said she is moving in with some guy we’ve never even heard of. Apparently they want to be a family. Kara took her sweet time getting Mira’s things together until Lynn passed out on the couch. She was gone when we woke up this morning, but damned if either of us slept a wink. We were too terrified she’d sneak out with the baby and wrap them both around a telephone pole.”

  “You have to turn her in, Dad.”

  “We talked to someone this morning. But she’s the kid’s mother. Until she actually does put Mira in danger—”

  “Or gets her killed,” Phil snapped.

  “Or gets her killed,” Harry said with defeat, “there isn’t anything we can do but try to protect her as much as Lynn will allow.”

  Phil swallowed, guilt filling his gut like a bag of wet cement. He’d been giving his mom such a hard time for putting her heart on the line for Mira when clearly they were doing more than just babysitting—they were trying to protect her from real harm. “I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

  “Your mom—”

  “Didn’t want me to worry,” Phil finished.

  Harry let the topic fall when Kara walked into the room, her long hair in that same haphazard bun as she expertly wrapped Mira against her chest with the long strip of cloth she used to keep the infant secure against her but which allowed her hands to be free.

  “Are you hungry? I just put a chicken pot pie in the oven.” Though she looked exhausted, she offered him a smile that he thought he’d probably been taking for granted most of his life.

  When he was a kid, moving from place to place on her whim, he’d always thought she was too self-centered to care that he wanted to plant roots and have a real home where he could belong. He’d deliberately been a brat to her most of his life. Only after Harry found Kara in Seattle, quite by accident, did Phil learn the truth about his mother’s lifelong heartache and the real reason she found it so hard to stay in one place too long. Whenever she stopped moving, the pain she felt at the rejection of being turned out when she’d gotten pregnant as a teen would catch up to her. Constantly starting over was her way of never having to face the hurt.

  He’d never even seen what she was going through. She’d hidden it so well. Or he’d been so focused on himself that he’d never bothered to see. Either way, he saw it now. He saw through the fake smile and exhausted eyes. The situation with Mira was more than just some young girl taking advantage of two kind people. Kara and Harry were the only ones preventing something truly terrible from happening to the baby, and that was taking a toll on his mother.

  As he held her bloodshot gaze, he thought of Mallory and the haunted look he’d seen in her eyes earlier in the day. She’d come so close to losing Annie that the fear still seemed to have a grip on her. Looking at the woman whom he had only recently come to really know and understand, fear touched his own heart. He couldn’t imagine what he and Jess would do without his mother. If something happened to her like what had happened to Annie, he would probably look as scared and unsettled as Mallory had when she spoke of her mom’s slow recovery.

  Kara had cared for him all his life and had stepped in to care for Jessica just as easily and wholeheartedly as she was stepping in to take care of Mira. Yeah, he’d definitely taken that smile of hers for granted.

  “Dinner would be great,” he said. “Thanks, Mom.”

  Her smile widened. She seemed genuinely pleased that he was sticking around instead of just dropping Jessica off and running.

  “Why don’t you guys sit for a while,” he said. “Jess and I can finish up dinner.”

  “I’d love to,” Kara said, “but if I stop moving, she starts screaming.”

  “I’ll take her.”

  She started to argue, but Phil crossed the entryway and pulled Mira away. Kara seemed to hold her breath waiting, but when Mira didn’t start wailing, she helped Phil wrap the baby against his chest. Though he hadn’t held an infant for some time, he wasn’t exactly out of practice. Kara was a midwife, and plenty of babies had come in and out of their lives. He was more on the “fun uncle” level of practice these days, but that would be enough to give his parents a break.

  With Mira content against him, he headed into the kitchen. “Nice job, Punk,” he said, regarding the table Jessica was setting. “Make a spot for me.”

  She jumped up and down then stopped and stared at the lump against him. “Mira let you hold her?”

  He cupped his fingers around his lips and whispered like he was relaying some great secret. “I don’t think she knows yet.”

  Jess put her hand to her mouth and giggled. “Just wait till she figures it out. She’s gonna blow a basket.”

  “Gasket,” he corrected as he grabbed a washrag to clean the flour and little balls of homemade dough from the counter. “I have a plan to surprise Grandma and Grandpa. Think you can help me?”

  There was nothing Jessica liked more than being included in secrets and surprises. “What’s your plan?”

  “Grandma and Grandpa are trying so hard to help Mira that I think we should help them. Can you go get all the dirty laundry and bring it downstairs so we can wash it?”

  “Grandma doesn’t like how you do laundry, Daddy,” she said, her tone dire and full of warning.

  “Grandma doesn’t like how I do anything, but since we’re helping her, she’ll be happy.” He offered her a wink. “Trust me.”

  “Okay.” She drew out the word as she pushed herself from the counter. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  He watched her dart from the room and then went to work on cleaning up the kitchen. He didn’t stop with wiping the counter and loading the dishwasher like he usually did when he stayed for dinner at his parents’ house. This time, however, he hummed and bounced to soothe the baby as he gathered the trash from various cans downstairs, took the overflowing bag to the bin outside, and filled the mop bucket. Mira remained content enough through the process, even babbling a few times, as if to tell him she approved.

  With the laundry gathered, Phil showed Jessica how to sort into piles and then gave the floors a quick cleaning. By the time he finished, Jessica had put a load in, and he did a quick glance before offering her a high five. While he added detergent, she took the glass cleaner to give the bathroom a quick scrub. When the timer on the oven dinged, Phil rushed to save his mother’s dinner. Convinced the pie needed a few more minutes, he headed to the living room to tell his parents to wash up. A kind of childish excitement made him smile, eager to see the happiness and surprise on his mom’s face when she saw the much-improved state of her home.

  “Hey…” His words trailed off and his smile fell when he stepped into the room.

  Harry was on the sofa, his head back as he inhaled a deep, vibrating breath. Kara’s head was on his lap, one of his hands buried in her hair, the other resting on her stomach as she lay with her mouth open, sleeping just as deeply but not nearly as loudly.

  The image tugged at something Phil couldn’t quite pin down. A chord, one he hadn’t known was tied to his heart, was struck, and he fel
t something akin to…loneliness.

  He’d had a few casual relationships since his wife left, but his focus had always been on his daughter. Some women were hesitant to get close to him, knowing Jessica’s special needs might require more of his attention than most kids would otherwise need. Some women seemed so in awe of him for being a single dad to a child with Down syndrome that he felt more like a pet project than a boyfriend. He had yet to find someone he felt confident would be there for him and Jess for the right reasons and for the long haul. He’d been fine with casual, though. Casual meant nobody got hurt.

  Even after he was an adult and a father, he always felt that he had his hands full with his mom. Besides raising Jessica, he had a hell of a time keeping Kara on the right track—she had been like a wayward teen most of his life. He hadn’t been able to focus solely on himself and his daughter until Harry came back into their lives and filled the void Kara had seemed unable to fill in his life. Now, Jess was growing up and testing out her independence as much as any eleven-year-old could. She needed more than Phil and Kara and Harry could give her, and for some reason he couldn’t explain, Phil suddenly felt like he might need more too.

  He wanted his parents to be happy. He was thrilled they were happy, but seeing them so tightly bonded made him feel alone in a way that adult children shouldn’t feel left out by their parents’ closeness.

  “Daddy,” Jess called.

  He turned and put his finger to his lips, warning her to quiet down.

  “I’m done in the bathroom,” she whispered. “Want me to do the bathroom upstairs?”

  “That’d be great, Punk. Thanks. Then wash up and come right back down. I’ll serve us some dinner.”

  She rushed off, clearly happy to have a chore to do. He looked back at his sleeping parents, patted the baby’s back, and headed to the kitchen, determined to shake the hollow feeling that had suddenly found its way low in his gut.