by Jody Holford
“I helped you study for your Spanish test in eleventh grade. I hated Spanish in high school, but I learned it again for you. Sometimes, I still conjugate verbs and it irritates the hell out of me. I told your mother to let you go, that it was the only way you’d ever come back, every single time you had to travel abroad. You do not have my blood. But you do have my name, my love, and my heart. You tell me if that’s enough. Tell me if that makes me your dad.”
He was breathing heavily when he finished, and Lucy’s control shattered when a single tear rolled down his cheek. She launched herself at him, so utterly overwhelmed that she couldn’t speak. His arms came around her immediately, as they always had. Steady, sure, safe.
“You are my little girl. Nothing can change that,” he whispered in her ear. She nodded against him, her own tears streaming down her face. He hugged her harder.
They took a break. Her mother made all of them tea, and they took it into the living room. They sipped their tea and didn’t rush. Lucy dried her tears and excused herself to wash up. When she returned, her parents were sitting side by side on the couch. Lucy sat across from them on the loveseat. She pulled her knees up and hugged them to her chest, feeling like she’d need the anchor. The silence and secrets crept back, and Lucy was afraid to learn too much. Did she have the same capacity to forgive as her dad?
“I made one mistake. One night. I jeopardized everything that I had, and I don’t even have a good reason. That’s the worst of it, I think. That I didn’t even have a reason to throw it all away. As soon as it happened, I was sick. I told your father immediately,” Julie said in one long swell of words. Mark put his hand on Julie’s, covering it like a shield. She glanced at him before continuing.
“At first, I didn’t want him to forgive me. I hated myself so much. I told him to take Char, to leave me. That he deserved so much better,” Julie said, her voice cracking.
“I considered it. I left for a couple of weeks. I came to pick up Char, but I couldn’t talk to your mom. I couldn’t look at her. When Char told me that mommy cried all the time, I came back. I wasn’t coming back to her, but for your sister,” Mark said.
Lucy had to force herself to breathe as she watched the pain slowly etch itself over their features, pulling them back to that time.
“I thought I was truly heartsick. And I was. Your father was the only boyfriend I had ever had. He is and will always be the only man I have ever loved. But after three weeks of throwing up constantly, I went to the doctor.”
“You were pregnant with me,” Lucy whispered, not even meaning to. Her mom nodded. Lucy’s stomach tilted, causing a wave of dizziness even though she was sitting.
“Everything we do is a choice. Sometimes one choice defines us—shows us who we are or who we aren’t. Your mother is not a cheater, Lucy. She made a mistake. I had to make a choice, too. Move on without her or punish both of us for good. Every good thing in my life has come from being with your mom. Even the pain she caused me brought you,” Mark said.
“It’s not as cut and dried as that, honey. We went to therapy. I went to therapy. We fought. We cried and we healed,” Julie added.
“But how did you get past the fact that she was pregnant with another man’s child?” Lucy asked. She unfolded her legs and stretched them out, feeling pins and needles skitter along her skin.
“We didn’t know who the father was. Until that fight. We had no idea you heard us,” Julie told her. She picked up her tea, sipped at it, and placed it back down. Lucy wished she had something stronger than tea. Lucy remembered her parents worrying about Kate, taking her to the doctor, and Kate’s frequent fevers. Had any of the three of them realized the stress her parents had been under at the time? Probably not.
“Kate was really sick. They thought, briefly, while running tests, that she might need a liver transplant. It was suggested that we have you and Char tested to see if you were a match. Just in case. It turned out not to be her liver, but it also gave us results we hadn’t anticipated. We were so caught up in her being sick that we weren’t thinking what else would come from the blood tests and screening,” Mark said, his eyes cloudy like he was looking at that time in his life.
Lucy stood and stretched her legs by pacing the living room. If she had known all of the reasons—if she had never found out at all—would she have spent the last ten years losing herself? Escaping from the sting of not belonging? If she’d never found out, would they have ever told her?
“It’s never changed for one second how I feel about you, Lucy,” Mark said, drawing her attention back to the two of them sitting stoically on the couch.
“I am…” Julie’s voice trailed off, and Lucy stopped pacing. “I am so sorry that you thought, for even one second, that having you home would bring me, us, anything but joy. I’m so sorry.”
Lucy wanted to say it wasn’t her fault, but that wasn’t entirely true. She felt anger toward her mother, but not as much as she’d expected.
She took a deep breath. “How did you forgive her? How do you look at her the way you do and not see what she did? How do you look at me and not see it?” Lucy whispered. Her dad stood and came to her. He tilted her chin up and brushed her hair back from her face like he had when he coached her Little League games. He’d taken her chin between his thumb and forefinger and told her to keep her eye on the ball and her heart in the game.
“When I look at you, I see your mother’s eyes. I hear your mother’s laugh, and see her amazing capacity to give in all of the things you do. I love her. It’s too much to live without her. To me, that’s harder than forgiveness. All I see when I look at you is my daughter,” he said quietly. Lucy wasn’t even sure if her mother could hear him. And regardless of what she knew, all she saw when she looked at him was her dad. It was the only truth she needed.
He pulled her in for a hug and whispered, “Don’t be mad at her. She’s punished herself enough.” He kissed her forehead, lingering for a moment. Then he picked up his teacup and Julie’s and took them to the kitchen, leaving her alone with her mom. Lucy felt awkward standing there, so she went to sit where her dad had been.
“I ask myself every day why he forgave me,” Julie said, looking down at her hands clasped in her lap. “Then I push the thought away and focus on being grateful he did. Your father is the best person I know. He makes me better, and he is part of you, regardless of DNA.”
Lucy nodded. She finally felt like this was enough.
“You need help, Mom,” Lucy said quietly. Might as well herd all of the elephants at once. This time, Julie nodded and took Lucy’s hand. “I know.”
Alex had finally caught a break. One of the security cameras they had installed had caught the back of a kid’s head. It wasn’t definitive, but it told them more than they had known. Their tagger was approximately five-feet-nine, right-handed, and blond. He had been wearing a non-descript nylon jacket that Alex hoped to inspect closer when he blew up some of the photos.
He poured cat food into a bowl like a zombie, wanting nothing more than to shower and sleep for ten hours. He felt like he’d aged a decade today. As usual, the best part of his day was curled up in his bed, snoring softly. She was on her side, her face so peaceful. Watching her made him physically ache for her. Will this intensity ever lessen? He didn’t want to think about his dad, his mother, or a punk-ass tagger. Not when he could fall into bed and into Lucy. He was grabbing some boxers to change into after his shower when her phone rang on his dresser. Casting a quick glance, not wanting the noise to wake her, he pressed accept and walked out of his bedroom into the hall.
“Hello?” he said quietly.
“Hello. This is Trina. I’m looking for Lucy,” a woman’s crisp voice said. Apparently, Trina didn’t care what time it was. “She’s sleeping. Can I take a message?”
Alex moved back into the kitchen to find a pen and a scrap of paper.
“Yes. I’m Kael Makhai’s assistant. I’m in charge of making the necessary travel arrangements for Lucy’s upcomin
g trip to New York. I have an itinerary I need to send to her, so I’ll need an email address. I also have a hotel booked and the list of apartments she requested Kael look in to,” Trina prattled.
Alex went perfectly still. All he heard was a heavy buzzing in his ear. He squeezed the phone so tight his fingertips almost touched his palms. He accidently pressed a button, making Trina’s voice come through the speaker.
“Hello? Sir, are you there?” she asked shrilly. He quickly pressed the speakerphone button to silence her back to the earpiece.
“Shit. Sorry. What?” Alex asked, his heart hammering and a bead of sweat weaving its way down his back. He heard a heavy, put-upon sigh from the phone.
“Lucy is scheduled to be here next week for a job she accepted with my boss. Can you just have her phone me please?” Trina snapped. She then hung up, leaving Alex with nothing more than a phone in one hand, a pair of boxers in the other, and his heart in shreds on his kitchen floor.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When Lucy woke, she had that moment of foggy sadness but couldn’t remember why. When her eyes landed on Alex, sitting on his window seat, watching her, she forgot everything but him.
“Hi,” she said, smiling sleepily and stretching. “Why are you way over there?”
He said nothing. Just continued to watch her, his face blank. He looked like he needed to shave, his hair was messy, and his clothes were rumpled. She felt a little spurt of unease as she sat herself up.
“Are you okay? Did you just get home?”
Still nothing. Her heart beat faster, making all of her senses come alert. She was no longer sleepy, no longer sad—just scared.
“Alex? What’s wrong?” She threw the covers off and moved to the side of the bed, ignoring the wave of nausea. She urged her stomach to settle down.
Everything is fine.
“You are so fucking beautiful,” he said in a voice she barely recognized. Why did it sound like more of an accusation than a compliment? She felt the urge to pull the blanket back over her.
“Alex?”
“Part of the draw has always been how gorgeous you are. The thing is, you’re every bit as beautiful on the inside as you are out. So when you get pulled in, you get all the way sucked in. Or at least I did. But you’ve never pretended to be anything you weren’t, so I don’t know why I let myself fall so far.”
He was talking like he wasn’t actually talking to her. It was making her physically ill. She held her stomach. “You’re scaring me. What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You told me upfront that you weren’t a forever kind of girl. It’s my own fault, really,” he said more casually, standing. “You told me you wouldn’t stay. You also told me you loved me. I guess I wanted to believe that more than the truth.”
The fog cleared from Lucy’s brain. She clenched her hands and stood. “What are you talking about? I do love you.”
“Really?” He asked in such a caustic tone that it felt like he’d knocked the wind out of her.
“Yes, really,” she whispered. “I’ve never said that to anyone outside of my family and closest friends. I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“What’s going on is our time is done. I thought I could handle you picking up and leaving, but I can’t. As your family pointed out, I am, pathetically, a forever kind of guy and you’re … for now.”
Lucy’s stomach twisted and heaved. She covered her mouth and ran for the washroom. Too angry to be embarrassed, she dry-heaved until her stomach ached. Splashing water on her face, she tried to cool both her skin and her temper.
Alex regarded her carefully from the doorway to his bedroom. He had a glass of water in his hand, which he passed to her. She accepted it only because her mouth felt like sandpaper.
“So to recap, I lied about loving you, we’re over, and I’m leaving?”
Alex winced but said nothing. She sipped, resisting the urge to toss the water in his face.
“You’ll excuse me if I ask for just one detail. Where is this coming from?” she said, hoping that the anger in her voice covered the soul-searing pain. “Trina called,” Alex said. He looked at her as if he’d just summed everything up perfectly.
“Who the hell is Trina?”
She saw his face blanch slightly, but he recovered and switched back to a sarcastic sneer.
“That would be Kael’s assistant. Did you forget? She has all of your travel arrangements. She just needs your email,” he said, yanking at the buttons on his shirt.
He wadded the shirt into a ball and hurled it toward his laundry hamper, then whirled back to face her. “And good ol’ Trina, she also got together that list of apartments you wanted.” His hands were on his hips, and his chest was heaving with each breath.
Everything unraveled. Like those rolls of stickers she used to get as a kid. She would unroll it, just a little, to get to the one she wanted, but then the whole thing would come undone. She couldn’t catch it and in seconds, she’d be standing with a pile of stickers at her feet, and she had to wind it all back up again.
“You’re an idiot,” she whispered through clenched teeth. Her feet were rooted to their spot. He stood straighter. “Excuse me?”
“You believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. When the people who knew me best didn’t believe in me, you did,” she said softly, her fingers tight on the half-empty glass.
“A lot of good it did me,” he said, but the earlier venom he’d had in his tone was gone.
Lucy laughed without humor and the motion made her chest ache. Not him too. Unclenching her jaw, she shook her head. “They had their reasons not to believe in me. But I’ve never given you one. I expected more from you. A lot of good that did me. You’re so wrapped up in being right, you can’t see how wrong you are.”
To his credit, he looked stricken by her words. His voice was hoarse. “I was wrong to let myself fall so hard for a woman I knew, on some level, would never be satisfied with me and this nothing town.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way. About yourself, the town. And mostly about us.” She couldn’t defend herself to anyone else right now. Especially to Alex. The one person she never thought would doubt her. She put the water down, as gently as possible for fear of revealing how badly her hands were shaking. She grabbed her T-shirt to yank over her tank top. Her yoga pants were on his window seat. She pulled them on over her boy-short underwear, her movements jerky.
“Running away?” he taunted. It surprised her how much she wanted to slap him.
She embraced the anger. It felt better than the sickening hurt spreading through her. “No. I’m going home. I’ve clearly overstayed my welcome here,” she replied.
“Be sure to say good-bye before you head for New York,” he said. Tears welled in her eyes. The empty sickness in her stomach was returning. She would not break down in front of him.
“That won’t be necessary. I can say good-bye right now,” Lucy said, standing quickly. Alex blurred in her vision, the sickness winding its way up her throat. She stepped toward him, but it was dark and she couldn’t see. She didn’t know why he was yelling her name or why she felt like she was falling. She didn’t know why everything hurt so badly, and then, when her eyes drifted shut, when her face hit the soft carpet and she let them close, she didn’t know anything at all.
Alex paced the corridor of the hospital. He wanted to punch something. He’d already flashed his badge unprofessionally and scared more than one nurse in his attempt to get some goddamn answers. What is taking so long? She’d collapsed in front of him. All that fury that she tried to keep hidden with her precise movements and clipped words had gone out like a light when she’d stood, blinked several times, and crumpled. He didn’t even catch her, his shock was so great. He’d called her name when he realized what was happening. He’d grabbed his phone immediately, calling 9-1-1 and then her parents.
Mark had come raging through the door and picked up his daughter like she weighed nothing, even though Alex had advised him t
o leave her where she was. Mark had silenced him with a look and held her in his arms as she’d come to. Her speech was slightly slurred, but she was mumbling when the EMT arrived. Mark had ridden with her to the hospital. Alex should have been the one beside her, holding her hand, telling her everything was okay. Instead, he was the one who had made her collapse.
Char came barreling through the automatic doors.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” she demanded, grabbing his arms.
“She collapsed. I don’t know anything yet. Your dad and Kate are in the waiting room,” Alex answered. His throat felt like he’d swallowed nails. Anger flashed in Char’s eyes. “Not my mother,” Char said, shaking her head.
“No.”
“She just collapsed?” Char repeated.
“We were arguing. She got up and then she just … went down.”
His hands were shaking. He shoved them into his pockets. Mark cleared his throat, catching Char and Alex’s attention.
“She’s okay. We’re going in to see her. We can only go in two at a time, and Kate’s already in there,” Mark said. Alex clenched his fists in his pockets. “We’ll go in next,” Alex said. Mark nodded and walked away.
Alex sat with Char for the next ten, agonizing minutes. Kate came out first and walked straight to Alex. She sat down in the chair next to him. Char stood, expecting him to stand as well, but Kate stopped him with her hand.
“She doesn’t want to see you,” Kate said, not looking at him. He closed his eyes. He hadn’t cried since he was eight, but at that moment, he had to bite his tongue to refocus his emotions.
“What are you talking about?” Char asked impatiently. She looked back and forth between Kate and Alex. Alex stared at his feet.
“He broke up with her,” Kate said. Rather than anger, he heard utter devastation in her voice. He didn’t think he could be more broken. “You what?” Char yelled, earning looks from the nurses and others waiting on the cold, plastic chairs.
