The Light of Hidden Flowers

by Jennifer Handford

  And I chattered mostly about Dad, how we built the business and what it was like to help our clients solve their problems, but mostly I talked about my trips to Italy, then India, and what it was like to feel true elation for once.

  Through the hotel lobby, past a pianist playing a shiny grand piano, amid the glow of golden table lights and the muffled sounds of conversation and low laughter, we walked toward the elevator. Joe pressed “Up,” and when he released his hand, it brushed against mine. I reached for it, squeezed it tight.

  In the hotel room, Joe and I sat on the edge of the bed, our knees bumping against each other. He reached for my face, kissed me deeply. After years of researching myself in and out of every decision, listing the pros and the cons via spreadsheet, weighing the risk against the reward, I was now reckless and careless and fully willing to walk down this dark alley without my mace or safety whistle. I didn’t care whether it worked out or if I was clobbered in pain from the rejection afterward, I just wanted Joe.

  I lay back on the bed, pulled him onto me. We kissed and kissed, and then I reached for his belt buckle. My only goal was to touch every inch of his body, to have him entirely. Any thought of holding to a schedule of appropriateness had evaporated.

  He moved my hand, though. “Just let me kiss you tonight,” he said, and we lay there, staring at each other—two mirages from the past.

  “I want to be with you,” I whispered.

  “I want to be with you, too,” he said, kissing me again. “But let’s wait, at least until tomorrow.”

  “You’re turning down a sure thing,” I joked.

  “It’s taking every ounce of strength,” he admitted.

  I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, because Joe was still as good a man as he was fifteen years ago and the fact that he put the brakes on made me want him all the more. I loved that he was being respectful, offering me boundaries, because he didn’t need to. I was already his. He could have me as soon as he wanted. I would follow him anywhere.

  Or perhaps he was self-conscious about his leg. And then I questioned my motives, whether my wanting him was true desire, or my way of proving to him that I loved him completely, leg or not.

  An hour later, Joe and I resembled teenagers who had staggered from the backseat of a car after a marathon make-out session. Our mouths and faces were red and swollen, our hair tousled and tossed, our clothes wrinkled and askew.

  “I should go,” Joe said. When we stood at the door saying good night, I—Missy Fletcher, the brave girl on a weekend trip to see her high school sweetheart, the cartographer treading into new territory—decided to stake my flag. “I love you, Joe,” I said. “I’ve always loved you.”

  “I’ve always loved you, too,” Joe said, and it wasn’t until later, after he left, that I turned that phrase over and over, until I had examined it from every side. That Joe “had always loved me” wasn’t exactly the same as his saying that he loved me now.

  In the morning, I showered and dressed, and then waited in the lobby for Joe to pick me up for coffee. When I saw him from across the room, my heart thumped. “Does he do it for you?” I remembered Dad asking about Lucas.

  We drove for a few blocks until we were at Rise N Shine. “I’m here every morning,” Joe said as we approached the door. “Wait’ll you try their butterscotch scones.”

  His face turned glum when we saw a sign hanging from the door: CLOSED FOR A ONE-DAY RENOVATION.

  “Closed?” Joe said. “I can’t believe it.”

  “I’ll die without a butterscotch scone,” I joked.

  “There’s another good shop, just down the road.”

  We drove a mile farther and parked in the lot of Earthly Paradise. We pushed through the glass doors. The aroma of dark-roast beans and sausage-biscuit sandwiches filled the air. We stood in line, then put in our order and lingered off to the side, commenting on the good smells, the artsy décor. Joe held my hand. I stared into his eyes and grinned crazily. The knowledge that I was here with Joe was a reality; I knew that. But still. This was Joe, the guy I had dreamed about for the past fifteen years.

  Maybe Dad had been right all along, that I had been putting a ceiling on my happiness because I didn’t think I deserved to have it all. Somehow I’d relegated myself to the back of the room, pushed against the wall, the girl with the glasses and the laptop who spoke only when spoken to, and who never offered an idea of her own. Why? And why did I think I didn’t deserve Joe? There was no reason to think that this couldn’t be the start of a brand-new future.

  I thought of my old life on a spreadsheet: work, Rosetta Stone, Jeopardy!, Italian gelato, lurking on Facebook. Now my new life: jet-setting to Italy, setting up a school for girls in India, “gambling” with a portion of my investable assets, reuniting with Joe—the man I had loved for two decades.

  A smile poured through my entire body. I was allowed to be this happy. The sky was not going to fall on top of me because my happy meter was smacking against the rails.

  Suddenly, Joe dropped my hand and took an awkward step back. When I looked up at him, I followed his eyes to the front door. In the entryway was a woman and three children. I didn’t need a translator. The warmth that had infiltrated me turned to nausea, as if the knowledge that I’d chugged sour milk had just hit my stomach.

  Lucy, Katherine, Olivia, and Jake. Joe’s family, only feet away.

  I looked up at Joe, who—to his credit—was remarkably calm, but clearly uneasy. When the kids saw their father, a unified chorus of “Daddy!” sang from the mouths of the younger two. The older daughter appeared to eye her father and me somewhat skeptically, but joined her little brother and sister in encircling Joe in hugs. If I could have melted into the earth, I would have. I was cornered, and felt utterly exposed. If only I had a drop of my father’s DNA to get me through this.

  “Hi, Joe,” Lucy said.

  She was gorgeous. Of course she was. A thick mane of auburn waves, glowing and fresh-scrubbed skin, thick eyebrows, and mile-long lashes. The type of girl who hated me in high school because I was smart and she was pretty and we didn’t mix well.

  “Guys,” Joe said to the kids. “Lucy. This is my friend Missy. She and I went to high school together, if you can believe that.”

  “You went to high school?” Jake said to his father.

  “Back when the dinosaurs roamed,” Joe said.

  “High school in Alexandria?” Lucy clarified, speaking to me.

  I nodded.

  “And you live in New Jersey now?” she asked.

  “No, I’m still in Alexandria.”

  “What brings you to our neck of the woods?”

  Our neck of the woods. Like she and Joe alone owned New Jersey.

  “Just visiting,” I said lightly, smiling, but for all I knew I had the squiggly-lined mouth of nervous Charlie Brown. Lucy—ha! Lucy—would pull the football from me at any minute, landing me flat on my back.

  “Visiting family, friends?” she asked.

  “Geez, Mom,” the older daughter, Katherine, said. “It’s like you’re interrogating her.”

  Lucy glared at Katherine.

  “Me,” Joe answered. “She’s visiting me.”

  “Oh!” Lucy responded, slapping her own forehead. “My bad!”

  “Joe,” the barista called, signaling that our order was ready.

  “Kids,” Lucy said. “Can you say hello to Daddy’s friend?”

  A jangle of hellos escaped from them.

  “Hi, guys!” I said. My falsetto was crazy, the voice of a strung-out druggie.

  “We should go,” Joe said. “Bye, kids! I miss you!”

  “Where are you going?” Jake asked.

  Joe halted, looked at me uneasily. “I thought I’d show Missy some of the sights.”

  “Take her to Emille’s,” the little guy said.

  “Why
would he take her there?” Olivia wanted to know.

  “Because Mom loves that place and she’s a girl, too.”

  “That’d be dumb,” Olivia said. “Dad’s not going to—”

  Katherine took her little brother by the sleeve. “Jake, come with me.” She steered him toward the pastry display, looking back at me with what I perceived to be a look of pity.

  “But why?” Jake whined.

  “Do you mind if I say you’re a total dork?” Katherine said.

  “Kids will say the darndest things!” Lucy piped in.

  “We’ll be going,” Joe said.

  We took our coffees from the counter and exited the shop. Joe drove us away, and neither of us said a word the entire trip back to the hotel. Inside the lobby, the same oxygen that left me euphoric only an hour before was now under pressure, and damaging my lungs. If I didn’t get back into the atmosphere soon, I might die. Finally, I spoke. “That was a lot.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was horrible and you must have felt ambushed.”

  “This might be more than I bargained for,” I confessed.

  “Don’t say that,” Joe said.

  “I think I need some time alone,” I said. I knew myself well enough to know that the clock was already counting down: 10-9-8-7 . . . and by the time it reached one, any confidence I had would have withered to nothing.

  “I want to spend the day with you,” Joe said, but if I was detecting his tone correctly, he was as freaked out as I was.

  “Maybe later,” I said. “I think I’d better go up now.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Call me later?”

  Joe nodded and I made a beeline for the elevator, stepping in and watching the doors close just in time. The tidal wave of childhood insecurity hit before I even reached the third floor.

  Flopped onto my bed, the bed where Joe and I had just made out the night before, I cried silently as though all the bad news of my life were brand-new: We’re sorry to tell you your mother was hit by a giant truck! You’ll spend your entire childhood motherless. We’re sorry to inform you of your father’s Alzheimer’s! Oh, by the way, he won’t last long. The dementia will clobber him like a cartoon anvil. And then he’ll have a stroke and the nurse you were too afraid to dismiss will let him die.

  Oh, and Joe? We’ll bring him back to you with such tenderness that you’ll feel as though nothing in the world could keep you apart. Except for his wife and three children, the four human beings who will matter more to him than you ever could. Every time you see them, you’ll know where you stand: against the wall, because there are only five seats at their table.

  I had put on a good face, had acted brave traveling through Italy and then India, had made a good showing of being Frank Fletcher’s daughter. But dating Joe, my high school sweetheart who had an ex-wife and children and one leg—who was I joking? I just wanted to be home in my town house, burrowed into the down comforter on my bed, my pint of pistachio gelato nearby. I wanted to recite my Italian phrases. I wanted to chart stocks. I wanted my father. I even wanted Lucas, because loving him was risk-free. I knew what he was—a tax-free municipal bond with a good yield. It would never make me rich, but it was steady and predictable and, under no circumstance, would it spike or plummet. There would be no conditions where I would feel like this.

  Who the hell do you think you are, Missy Fletcher? You’re no one’s daughter or wife or mother or sister. You belong to no one, and no one belongs to you.

  I lay quietly and stared numbly and watched movies and ate room service. At noon, Joe knocked on my door. We sat on the bed and held hands. “Promise me you won’t make any decisions?”

  I agreed, which was a lie, because I had already made up my mind: I had strayed too far off course. Charting new territory was one thing, but opening my heart so that it could feel like this was something entirely different. Living an adult life was still brand-new to me. Book-smart, I needed to work my way through some classes and tests before I was ready to be out in the field.

  “I think I’ll head home,” I said. “There’s a train leaving at 1:40.”

  “We barely spent any time together.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry. It just made it so real. That you have a family: three kids, a wife. I can’t possibly imagine how I would fit into that.”

  “That’s because you don’t know everything.”

  “What?”

  Joe brushed my hand. “Straight-A-student Missy Fletcher doesn’t know everything. Your IQ might put you at genius, but none of us knows what’s planned for us. When it comes down to it, we need to trust in the grand plan.”

  “Do you?” I asked, though clearly he did, whether this plan was divine—driven by the God he had always believed so fiercely in—or just a knowledge he’d attained after seeing as much as he had.

  “I have faith,” he said.

  “After everything you’ve been through,” I said, “how could you have any faith left?”

  “Faith is a choice, Miss. I choose it.” He smiled. “It’s not a coincidence that our paths have crossed again. There are no mistakes when it comes to me and you.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  The weeks that followed fell into a predictable pattern, one I clung to. In the daytime I did the work of the orphanage—filing paperwork, soliciting NGOs for support. With the lawyer’s help, we created our entity: Global Education Initiative, and were able to piggyback off our Fletcher Financial 501(c)(3) organization. Our firm had already proved a long history of giving to worthy organizations. From there, we created a new entity, funded not only with my personal money but also with some of the Fletcher Financial “Give Back” program’s money.

  And Joe. He and I talked every night. Our conversations were as familiar and warming to me as my childhood bedroom. He was exactly the same, and entirely different. He maintained a bubbling enthusiasm for life, organic gratitude toward mankind, a genuine desire to help others—that was the same as eighteen-year-old Joe. He was deeply thoughtful, contemplative, reflective—that was thirty-six-year-old Joe. There was nothing simple, dogmatic, easily definable about him. If I thought for a second that I would find in him a blind acquiescence to a creed or code, I would have been wrong. He hated the war he fought in, he believed passionately in each of his men, he valued all human life. Nothing was simple. Everything was difficult. Everything was gray. He was nuanced and pained and laden. He was mature. He carried his adulthood like a pro. He was a veteran, in every sense.

  And with his children, he tried so hard, cared so much. He coached Jake’s soccer team. He built sets for Olivia’s school play. But Katherine he worried about the most. She continued to struggle with her self-esteem. A clique of popular alpha girls had decided they couldn’t bear the fact that Katherine, with her straight As and passion for reading and writing, couldn’t name a Justin Bieber song and chose to wear the wrong brand of skinny jeans. Joe didn’t need to describe for me the hundred different ways they chose to punish her for these failings. I knew their work all too well. Joe shared his worries with me, and then, as if catching himself, would pull himself together with a tidy, “She’ll be fine! Girls like her are the ones who do the best, later in life. Look at you,” he always said, as if I were a shining example of the tortured girl in middle school eventually rising to the top.

  I would agree, because I knew he needed me to agree, to affirm his belief that his daughter would be okay—eventually, but these stories of Katherine hit me in the gut. Later, after Joe and I had said good-bye, I’d lie in bed and think of her, because she and I were the same. Along with so many others. And not all of them were “fine.” Not all of them made it out of middle school.

  “When can I see you again?” he asked one night.

  “Anytime you want,” I answered without reservation because I ached for him, wanted my hands on him as badly
as my heart wanted to pump blood. The resolve I’d felt in New Jersey, the certainty about not being part of his life, had faded almost immediately once I left. “But you have to come here.” I couldn’t stand the thought of running into his family again. I wanted him, but it had to be here.

  A few weeks later, Joe called. “Guess what?”

  As it turned out, Katherine had been chosen as a finalist in a Library of Congress writing contest. She would be honored in DC, at the Library of Congress itself. “We’re coming to your territory,” Joe said. “Are you up for meeting Kate again?”

  I had thought about Katherine so often, I felt I already knew her. But who was I kidding? She was bound to hate me, because for her, I was no one worth knowing. Her parents had just divorced, and I was Dad’s “new friend.” She would have no choice but to hate me out of maternal deference, out of spite for her father, because she was simply a teenager, and she wasn’t supposed to like the things and people her parents liked. But I still remembered that day at the coffee shop, how she stepped in when her mother was asking me so many questions, when she’d tried to defuse the situation by steering her little brother away, by stopping Olivia from saying more. At the time, I’d thought she looked at me with pity, but now, as I considered it, maybe it was empathy.

  “I’ll try.”

  The following weekend, Joe and Katherine arrived. We had decided that they would get settled—take the Metro to their hotel, rest a bit—and then meet me for dinner. When I’d asked what Katherine liked to eat and Joe said, “Believe it or not, she loves seafood,” I knew just where to recommend.

  When I pushed through the doors of Pier 6, Joe and Katherine were already at the bar. Joe was drinking a frosty ale, and Katherine appeared to be sipping from a soda. When Joe saw me, he signaled to his daughter, and they both smiled. Joe walked to me, leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, and then led me back to the bar.

  “A formal introduction,” Joe said. “Kate, this is Melissa.”

  “Congratulations on your writing contest,” I said. “I read your essay. It was great!”