by Natalie Ann
Like the ringing of her phone right now and her wishing it wasn’t such poor timing once again.
“Are you going to answer that?” Erik asked her.
“Nope.”
“It’s your father, though.”
She looked over at him sharply. “How do you know that?”
“Because he called another time when I was here. You said he has his own ringtone. That’s the same one as last time.”
“Do you forget anything?”
“Not usually,” he said.
She slid the plate of pancakes in front of him, then went to get the syrup and sat next to him to eat. The ringing stopped and the beating of her heart slowed too. It always sped up when her father called.
“So what’s going on with your father?” he asked. “That’s twice now you’ve ignored his call. You changed the subject when I asked you if he still lived in Annapolis too.”
“I don’t have a good relationship with my father.” She laughed. “Or one at all.”
“Yet he’s trying to call you?”
“Too little too late in my eyes.”
“Tell me about it,” he said.
“Why?” she asked, picking up a bite of pancake and putting it in her mouth, trying to chew and push it down past the knot in her throat.
“Why not?” he asked, eating like nothing was going on. Like she wasn’t feeling any type of emotion that she was trying to block out. Like she didn’t want to scream at him to leave her alone. Whoa. Where did that thought come from? When was the last time she screamed at anyone? Other than last night in bed, but that didn’t count. That was a good kind of release.
“It’s very frustrating that you remember everything I say and do.”
“I’ve found it a good trait to have,” he said back, grinning at her and eating.
She finished her pancake in silence and he let her. But the silence was getting on her nerves.
When she picked up her plate to put it in the dishwasher, he brought his over too, helped her clean up and then turned her at the counter, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her gently on the lips. Gentle wasn’t something she’d experienced much in her life and now she knew why. Her eyes filled with tears and they started to pool down her cheeks.
He pulled her by the hand over to her couch and on his lap. “Talk to me, Sheldon. What’s going on?”
Why not? she thought. Just to prove she didn’t avoid everything in life. “It’s not much. I guess nothing more than you’ve probably heard before. My parents divorced when I was young. My father left and never really came back.”
“Left? Why?”
She told him about the one night he left. Relived it as if she were still that twelve-year-old sitting on her windowsill listening to her mother yell and cry and her father calmly walk away, then drive out of her life.
“I don’t ever remember them really getting along. He was right, my mother always nagged, always yelled. But he was just detached with her and me. Even if he didn’t love her anymore, even if he had a girlfriend, why did that have to affect the way he felt toward me? I was his daughter.”
“You said he married your mother because she was pregnant, right?” he asked, holding her tight. “That’s not the right reason to marry someone. Not if it’s going to ruin everyone’s life.”
“Yeah,” she said, putting her head on his shoulder. “It would have been better if they didn’t get married. Maybe then he would have wanted to be a part of my life rather than feeling like I was the reason for his miserable existence. That maybe if my mother didn’t make him so wretched, he would have tried to spend some time with me rather than avoiding the house altogether to get away from her.”
“You don’t know that, Sheldon.” He was running his hands up and down her back now. “Some people aren’t hardwired to feel. Aren’t hardwired to be a parent.”
“Is that how you felt with your ex? With Marjorie?”
“Yeah. I guess. But she wasn’t that cold. At least not in the beginning. She had moments of softness. Moments of caring. But her career came first over everything and everyone.”
“Even her husband?” she asked. He wasn’t looking as upset as she thought he might have been. As she’d be if she was put second or third or even last again.
“Especially her husband. In my case, she was kind enough to tell me. We figured it out and moved on. No ruining the other’s life.”
“But you said you were hurt.”
“I was. I loved her. We were married. It’d be unnatural for me not to feel hurt. I got over it once I realized it was her and not me. That maybe there was someone out there for her, but it wasn’t me. Staying with her would have sucked the life out of me. We would have both been miserable. You lived with that, you just told me. So it just makes me believe even more that it wasn’t meant for us back then. We all learn lessons in life.”
He was really too good to be true. “So that’s why you aren’t afraid to try again? To look or be in a relationship?”
***
“If I got burned sticking my hand in the oven and decided to never open the door again—to never reach in—then I’d miss out on a lot of good food in my life.”
“You’re referring to me as food,” she said, smiling now. He was glad he was able to lighten things a bit.
“You know what I’m saying. If you run from everything that goes wrong in your life, you’ll find yourself alone.”
And writing stories about life instead of living life. He didn’t say that though. Maybe he was wrong, but part of him didn’t think so...unfortunately.
“I guess. I don’t do that though.”
“You don’t? You’re letting your parents’ failed marriage dictate your opinion on something you can control yourself. On a future you can control. You couldn’t control their marriage or their life.”
“It wasn’t just that,” she said, turning her head and looking away from him. “I’ve had to listen to my mother bash relationships for more than half of my life. When all you hear is negativity, it’s hard to look beyond it. It’s hard to think of something else.”
“Yet you write about happily married couples and relationships so you must understand it can exist.”
“That’s books. That’s fiction and entertainment. Not real life.”
“You know that isn’t completely true. You said so yourself that your readers like more realistic storylines.”
She was hiding something more. He knew it, but he wouldn’t push.
She didn’t have daddy issues; he was sure of it. That wasn’t the sole reason for her reluctance. A woman with daddy issues tended to date older men. Tended to date men that would take care of her. Do everything for her.
Sheldon was one of the most independent women he knew. She didn’t need a man for anything and she wasn’t afraid to say it or for him to know.
He was fine with that. He was fine that he tried to help her fix a leaky pipe last week and she waved him off and said she could handle it, and then showed him she could.
Yeah. No daddy issues. But something more.
“Are you going to try to call him back?” he asked.
“You aren’t going to let this drop, are you?”
“Just talking, Sheldon,” he said, running his hands around her arms. Calming her. She had shivers right now and her heart was racing; he could feel her pulse.
“What difference does it make why he’s calling? He hasn’t left a message. He hasn’t left one with my mother either and he’s been trying to call her. It can’t be too important.”
“You’ll never have closure in your life if you don’t reach out. Find out what is going on. Tell him how you feel. Put an end to it if you need to. Take it from someone who needed to put closure on their failed marriage. Avoiding it isn’t going to change a thing. It might even result in an ulcer.”
She leaned back and wrinkled her nose at him and he guessed that maybe he’d been right all along, but doubted she’d admit that either.
Mo
ve On
Two days later, Sheldon closed the top on her laptop and looked out over the water, letting the warm breeze float around her face.
Was Erik right? Did her father cause her ulcer? Or more like her opinion of him? His influence on her life?
If she thought back, they were tied together.
Most of her life she got nervous being around her father. He never showed any affection at all. She always tried. She wanted it and needed it, and once he left back then, she tried harder.
And it hurt more. So much that she gave up trying. Then got annoyed the few times he reached out to her. Like he was this itch just between her shoulder blades that she’d never be able to reach.
But that didn’t stop her from trying to have her own relationship. Erik was wrong there. She had her own experiences that led to those opinions.
Her own hurt and failures. Ones that very few people knew about. Even her mother. Because that would have only made things worse.
Looking at the timeline of the past few months though, she realized that when her father had reached out to her again, she’d listened to him say he was sorry, then just said, “fine” and hung up. She never said what she really wanted. What she really felt.
Instead, she started to write and funneled all that frustration and all those hurt feelings into her book. She’d turned her hero into her father. And as much as she tried, she couldn’t turn him around.
The reason was easy enough. Her father could never be turned around. He’d always be the cold selfish asshole who ignored her and her mother her whole life. Who left them for a younger woman. Who put his own needs before his family’s.
There was no happy ending there in her eyes. No way for her to even write one because deep down she knew it’d never be happy.
For as much as she told everyone she could write her own endings in a book, she couldn’t do it for something that was so close to home. That was a part of her. Erik was wrong—she couldn’t always write it the way she wanted.
Between the crunch time of fixing her book, then the annoyance and frustration over the realization that she’d never have that happy ending, she’d stopped eating. She drank coffee and ate only when her stomach hurt. Anything to get to the end of the book she was writing and to get it off her computer. To get it out of her head and off her mind. Maybe even out of her life.
To stop reminding her that no matter how much she wanted a life like what she wrote about, it’d never happen.
It was fiction.
It didn’t exist.
It never would.
But she could do one thing. She could call her father and find out what was going on. She could take a step and take control and then she could move on.
Before she changed her mind, she picked her phone up and hit a few buttons, then listened to the ringing.
“Sheldon?” her father said on the second ring.
His voice didn’t seem as deep or strong as she remembered. “Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “You’ve been calling and not leaving a message. I figured it wasn’t important.” She stopped, not knowing what else to say.
“Can we meet?” he asked.
“Why?”
“There’s something I need to tell you and it’s best in person.”
“We haven’t seen each other in years. Have talked infrequently. Why can’t you just say it now?”
“I’d rather not. It’s complicated. Can we meet or not?” he asked. This time his voice was firmer and it set her off. She felt like a kid again and was listening to him berate her mother in his condescending tone.
Her stomach ached for a second and she got pissed, then agreed before she could stop herself. “Where?” she asked.
“Wherever you want,” he said. She couldn’t remember him ever being this agreeable before.
“I’ll send you my address,” she said.
“Does this Saturday morning work?” Again, being more agreeable than she remembered and what she was feeling in her stomach wasn’t pain as much as fluttering now. Nerves? She hoped. Better than acid.
“Fine.” Then she hung up. She’d never wanted her father to see where she lived before. See how her life turned out. But suddenly Erik’s words were in her head and she realized she needed closure.
She wanted her father to see how well she turned out without any help from him.
That he really didn’t influence her life as much as everyone thought.
That he got no credit for how her life was. Now she could be done with him. She could push him from her life once and for all.
***
Erik wouldn’t be anywhere else other than sitting in Sheldon’s kitchen waiting for her father to show up. He’d suggested it and she said she’d like that. It was a step in the right direction for them in his eyes. That deep down she wanted his support, even if she wouldn’t admit that directly.
He’d been shocked when Sheldon told him a few days ago that she’d called her father and what the results of that conversation were.
“You have no clue what he’s going to say?” he asked.
“Nope. Nothing. Haven’t seen him in years. That was probably the longest call we’ve had in longer than I can remember.”
“Does your mother know he’s coming here?”
“Absolutely not. I want to know what he has to say before I even consider getting her involved. No use upsetting her. Sometimes she’s like Humpty Dumpty sitting on a twenty-foot wall with cracks all around her. Just the wind is enough to knock her off and shatter her.”
“And you’d be the one left to pick up the pieces?” he asked, not surprised in the least.
“Exactly. Hello, remember. Healed ulcer here. Not ready to have it flare up.”
He laughed at her disgruntled look. He kind of expected her to be more nervous. To be more upset.
To be more anything.
Instead, she was calmly sitting there drinking a bottle of water. “You’re not nervous?”
“Nope. It felt good to tell him to come here. I can’t wait to see his face when he sees I turned out just fine without him in my life. That I never needed him as much as I thought. That I’m ready for closure. No more ruined books.”
“What? What does that have to do with anything?”
“I’ll tell you later. I’ve done some soul searching and had an epiphany. I’m ready to close this chapter in my life.”
Did that mean she was ready to consider something more with him? He didn’t ask, because he still felt there was more than a rocky relationship with her father causing her to hold back.
There wasn’t much time to do more though, when her doorbell rang.
She got up and walked to the front door, then led the older man into the kitchen. “This is Erik McMann. Erik, Rich Case.”
It wasn’t lost on him that she only used their names. Never said “her father” or “her friend,” let alone “boyfriend”.
“Nice to meet you,” Erik said, reaching his hand out. The guy looked ill. Too thin, almost frail. His coloring was pasty and his eyes were yellow.
“Are you her boyfriend?”
He’d give Rich points for asking, but wasn’t surprised when Sheldon replied with, “Does it matter?”
“I guess not,” he said, sitting down at the counter.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Sheldon asked.
“Water would be good. I won’t take up much of your time.”
Sheldon grabbed a bottle and a glass and set them both down in front of him. “So what is so important that you needed to see me in person?” she asked. It wasn’t unexpected that they seemed like strangers at the moment. Aside from the lack of any informal greeting, it was the tone of their voices. Cool and distant.
Rich looked around the house. “This is a nice location. A nice house. Very peaceful here.”
“It is,” she said. Erik could see she was fighting to cross her arms in impatience, but she didn’t. He’d give her credit for that.
“I wasn’t going to
come. I’ve tried to reach out and was just going to stop, but Linda told me to keep trying.”
“Linda?” she asked.
“My wife,” he said.
“Is that the woman you left Mom for?”
“No,” he said. “I met Linda a year later. It doesn’t matter. That isn’t what I’m here to talk about.”
Talk about cold, Erik thought. He was getting a better understanding of things now. That Sheldon didn’t even know who her father was married to. “Then let’s cut to the chase. What did you want to talk about?”
Rich had come in carrying a manila folder and set it on the counter. He pushed it toward Sheldon now, who was still standing on the other side of the counter. “I’m dying. I’ve got a rare form of blood cancer. It’s genetic. There’s all the paperwork and the results of my genetic testing.”
Sheldon didn’t say a word, but Erik reached forward and picked it up, then looked at Sheldon and got her nod.
“Do you mind?” Rich said. “That’s personal and confidential.”
“Erik’s a doctor. And it’s not confidential if you’re giving it to me. I’m letting him look at it. So your second wife had to tell you to inform me. You couldn’t figure this out yourself?”
“I tried to do it months ago. I tried to make peace and you were short with me. Just like your mother was.”
Sheldon narrowed her eyes. “I’ve got a right to be short with you. I don’t even know you. You don’t know me. You’ve never made an attempt to.”
Rich sighed. “I’m sorry, Sheldon. I’m not much of a paternal person. I’ve never felt a connection to you. It’s not you, personally. It’s me. It was just better that I stayed out of your life for everyone’s sake.”
“No. For your sake. Because you’re selfish,” she said, shaking now, Erik could see. “It’s always been all about you and what you wanted, what you didn’t have. You’ve never cared about anyone else before.”
Erik was scanning over the papers and letting the two of them talk. Rich didn’t have much time left right now. The diagnosis was given at stage four less than six months ago. It didn’t look like he was even undergoing any type of chemo. Just some experimental therapies.
