Forever Right Now

by Emma Scott

  I waited until they were upstairs, then knocked on Elena’s door.

  “You’re early today,” she said with a smile. It faded at once. “But you’re so pale, my dear. Is everything okay?”

  Everything is going to be okay…

  I nodded. “I got finished early.”

  Elena’s mouth turned down in concern. “Come in. I’ll just get her bag.”

  I stepped inside Elena’s place. Olivia was on the floor in the living room with Laura, Elena’s two-year-old, playing blocks. Olivia looked up and her little face broke into a smile.

  “Daddy!”

  Oh Christ…

  My chest constricted and goddamn tears stung my eyes. With trembling arms, I picked her up and held her tightly, my hand behind her little head. Her arms went around my neck. I closed my eyes and fought to contain the maelstrom of emotions, to push them down, lock them up. If there was a battle to be fought, I needed to be strong.

  Elena’s hand on my arm and her voice gentle. “Sawyer.”

  I sucked in deep breaths, still holding Olivia tight to me. When my exhales were no longer shaky and I opened my eyes.

  “Thanks for watching her,” I said, shouldering the bag Elena handed me. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Bye-bye,” Olivia said to Elena. “Bye bye bye bye…”

  I took Olivia upstairs on leaden legs.

  In my place, the Abbotts were seated at the small kitchen table with Jackson, glasses of water before them. Mr. Holloway was standing with his hands clasped behind his back in front of the wall near my desk, eyeing my degree from UCSF with Honors; my Valedictorian certificate; my award for a full scholarship at Hastings that had been like winning the lottery.

  He turned and all conversations ceased as I stepped inside and set my daughter down at my feet.

  “This is Olivia.”

  Alice’s hand flew to her heart, and Gerald’s jaw clenched as if fighting back some strong emotion.

  “Oh my heavens, she’s beautiful.” Alice rose slowly and approached Olivia who stood clinging to my pant leg. “Hi, sweetheart. I’m your Grandma Alice.”

  “Hey, there, angel,” Gerald said gruffly, joining his wife. “I’m your Grandpa Gerry.”

  My own jaw tightened. I want this for her. I felt like I was in a dream and I didn’t know if it was going to turn out to be everything I wanted or a nightmare.

  Olivia pressed herself closer to my pants.

  “She likes blocks,” I said, indicating the pile on the floor. “Can’t get enough of them.”

  Alice clapped her hands on her thighs. “Would you like to show us your blocks, Olivia?”

  Alice and Gerald sat down on the floor with no aching or complaining about joints or bad knees. They were fit, strong, good people, with a lot of money, and their DNA in Olivia’s veins. My little girl babbled in a baby talk/English hybrid, and plopped down beside them.

  I moved to the kitchen for a glass of water and Jackson joined me.

  “Not so bad, right?” he said in a low voice.

  I poured a tall glass with a shaking hand. “I’m going to puke.”

  Jackson chuckled. “Be cool. I have a good feeling about this.”

  Jackson and I joined the others in the living room, sitting on my small couch while Holloway took the chair. The Abbotts stayed on the floor with Livvie, playing and chatting and making her smile.

  “She looks just like Molly, doesn’t she?” Alice said, and her smile wavered. I reached for the tissue box beside me and handed it over. “I’m sorry,” she said, dabbing her eyes. “It’s still so new, losing her.”

  “What happened?” I asked in a low voice.

  Alice smiled sadly.

  “Molly was always the rebellious girl but when she turned eighteen, she began to drink pretty heavily. It was like she’d been stricken with a disease. That’s what they say it is, don’t they? A disease.”

  I shifted in my seat, blue and red lights dancing across my vision.

  “She had a happy childhood, or so we thought,” Gerald said.

  Alice smiled weakly. She handed Olivia a block and Olivia stacked it on top of another. “Did she mention us at all?”

  I shook my head slowly. “I did not know Molly very well.”

  She and Gerald nodded in silent understanding.

  “We did our best,” Gerald said, “but whatever was driving her away from us got worse. She called and texted us occasionally, but we didn’t see her for two years. She never said anything about a baby or even being pregnant.”

  “A friend of hers got in touch with us,” Alice said. “She told us about Olivia and gave us your name. I guess Molly had told her about you.”

  My cold silence created another look between them, and then Gerald continued.

  “We’re renting a condo by the Marina. We’ve talked about retiring to the Bay Area.”

  “We’ve always loved San Francisco,” Alice said, “and when we found out you were here it seems like the right thing to do.”

  I swallowed hard. “What was the right thing to do?” My voice sounded cold and hard but I couldn’t help it. The fear had tightened me up inside so I could hardly breathe.

  “To be a part of Olivia’s life. An important part.”

  There was pity in Alice’s eyes, which scared me more than anything else.

  “We want to make sure she’s provided for,” Gerald said. “And ensure she has everything she needs for a happy and healthy life.”

  “Well, she does,” I snapped. “I’m giving her that.”

  Jackson put a hand on my arm. I fought for calm, and tried to see these people as something other than the enemy. “I’m sorry, but I’ve been raising Olivia on my own for the last ten months and I’d begun to believe it was always going to be just her and me.”

  “But it’s not,” Gerald said, in a low voice. He stood up and put his hands in his pocket and looked at Holloway. “We have rights. And some information…”

  My gaze jumped to Holloway who was making a negating motion with his hand.

  “What kind of information?” Jackson asked.

  Holloway reached into his jacket and pulled out an envelope. Now we were all on our feet but Alice who clapped hands with Olivia, tears in her eyes.

  The Abbotts attorney handed Jackson the envelope. “Now, I really must insist we depart,” he said to his clients. “Everything will be elucidated at the Family Court in two days’ time.”

  Gerald helped Alice to her feet.

  “Bye-bye, sweetheart,” Alice said to Olivia. “We’ll see you again.”

  “Bye-bye,” Olivia said and babbled in a sing-song voice. “Bye-bye-bye-bye...”

  “She’s darling,” Alice said to me, and that pitying look was there again. She opened her mouth to say something more, and her husband gently took her by the shoulders and guided her toward the door.

  I shut it after them while Jackson opened the envelope.

  “What is it?” I asked. I could hardly hear my own words for the blood rushing in my ears.

  “A hearing notice. For Friday.” He raised his eyes to mine. “They’ve filed an Order to Show Cause for custody of Olivia.”

  “Based on what?” I asked. “What cause?”

  But of course, I already knew. The Abbotts had plenty of cause and if they didn’t know it yet, soon they would.

  I turned the letter over and over in my hand, the Sensaya Genetic Lab address disappearing then reappearing with every rotation. Beside me, Olivia slept in the middle of my bed. I had barricaded the three-month-old in a ring of pillows to keep her safe but I was still paranoid she’d roll off. I sat beside her, watched her sleep. Watched the shallow rise and fall of her chest, and her rapid pulse beat in her neck.

  Was it my blood that flowed in her veins?

  Slowly, so as not to wake her, I tore the envelope open. Inside were the test results that would tell me probabilities. The probability that my life would change forever, or that I would turn this baby over to the prope
r authorities and my life would continue on, as planned. But a whisper in the back of my mind told me my life was already changed— probability 100%—no matter what the test said.

  I unfolded the paper with shaking hands, and scanned the columns of numbers; they meant nothing to me. It was the conclusion at the end that mattered.

  0% probability.

  A burden had just been lifted. Eighteen years and more. My life could carry on as it had. On track. Law school, clerkship, federal prosecutor, District Attorney…

  I waited for the relief to hit me.

  It never did.

  I shook myself from the memory. It felt like a bad dream that had been on hold for ten months, and now was picking up where it left off.

  Jackson was shaking his head, and his gaze dropped to Olivia. Mine followed. To my little girl, because why did I need a piece of paper to tell me what I felt in my heart? In my goddamn soul?

  Olivia looked up at me from her pile of blocks on the floor and smiled. “Bye-bye!”

  Forever (adv.): for all future time

  Now (adv.): at present time

  Darlene

  I wiped a rivulet of sweat off my brow, and then planted my hands on my hips to catch my breath. Ryan, my partner, was bellowing beside me, and I fought a wave of irritation. He had mistimed three cues during the run-through—nearly head-butting me, again—and with the show a week away, his clumsiness wasn’t just annoying, it was going to make the rest of us look bad.

  We already look bad.

  I hated to even think it, but the show completely lacked inspiration and in my humble opinion, Anne-Marie, the lead dancer, was wooden and mechanical. Worse, she was the kind of person who thought she no longer had anything left to learn in dance, or life in general. The kind of person who began almost every sentence with “I know.”

  Greg and Paula had watched from foldout chairs at the head of the practice room at the Dance Academy. They shifted in their seats like they were sitting on splinters. There should have been a palpable air of excitement this close to opening night. Instead, the six of us dancers were like humming electrical posts, filling the room with nervous tension.

  The director and stage manager put their heads together for a moment. Anne-Marie tossed her blonde ponytail over her shoulder.

  “Well?” she demanded. “Are you going to give us notes, or what?”

  Greg and Paula murmured and nodded, having come to some sort of agreement.

  “It’s…good,” the director said. “It’s coming together well. But it’s short, even for a showcase.”

  “We timed it at twenty-seven minutes,” Paula said. “Thirty would be better.”

  “We need one more act to fill out the time,” Greg said. “Darlene.”

  My head shot up. “What?”

  “We’d like you to perform your audition piece. As a solo.”

  My glance immediately shot to Anne-Marie who audibly gasped.

  “We’re a week out,” she said. “You can’t just change the whole show.”

  “We’re not changing the whole show,” Greg said. “We need one more act. A time filler, really.”

  Oh, is that what I am? I wanted to say. Truthfully, between the menace that was my partner, and the cold shoulders from the rest of the troupe, the words I quit, were teetering from my lips. But I was trying to be professional and not quit something just because it wasn’t what I’d hoped. And I wasn’t about to leave them in a lurch so close to opening night.

  “Darlene?” Greg asked. “Can you?”

  “Umm,” I glanced at Anne-Marie who was glaring poison-tipped daggers at me. “Are you sure?”

  “We’ll put it between Entendre and Autumn Leaves.”

  “Okay, I guess I could do that.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Anne-Marie said. “Who cares if we’re three minutes short?”

  Greg pretended not to have heard her. “Take your positions for the finale of Entendre, and then Darlene—”

  “Rehearsal is over,” Anne-Marie said. “I have somewhere else to be.”

  She flounced to the wall to grab her stuff and headed out. The other dancers shuffled their feet until Greg dismissed them too.

  “Right, time’s up. We’ll have the music cues set up for tomorrow’s rehearsal then,” Greg said stiffly, trying to hold on to his authority. “Will you be ready?” he asked me, and I saw the spark of nerves dancing behind his eyes.

  “Sure, no problem,” I said. “I’ll just stay here for a little bit and put in some extra time.”

  And try to turn my improv into a routine.

  Greg eased a sigh. “Good. That’s fine then.”

  He left and Paula sidled up to me. “Anne-Marie really wanted to be the only soloist.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Thank you for stepping up.”

  I smiled. “Doesn’t suck to have a solo on a résumé.”

  “Yeah, well, we need it. The show needs it. A spark. Having just watched the whole run-through.” She bit off her words with a sigh. “Anyway, thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  After everyone had gone, I stood in the center of the room, and stared at the girl in the wall of mirrors.

  “Persistence,” I murmured.

  I didn’t quit, and I got a solo out of it.

  If I told Sawyer the truth.

  What would I get out of that? I wondered. Recriminations or acceptance?

  I hit ‘play’ on my music app and Marian Hill asked her question. But I couldn’t answer. I wasn’t down or up. I was in limbo, unable to move. My body suddenly stiffened by all the words I needed to say, and I began to see why I’d quit dancing when the drugs started; when I’d begun to lie to my family and friends about what I was doing and where I was going. Dancing was my honest self. My body speaking the truth of the music, and I couldn’t be that while stuffed with lies.

  I was probably just as stiff and mechanical in the run-through as Anne-Marie.

  I took the Muni home, showered, made dinner. Always doing something, never letting myself stop and think. While doing the dinner dishes, a text came in on my phone from Max.

  Well?

  I bit my lip and typed, Not yet.

  When?

  Tonight. After his daughter goes to bed.

  Shit. There it was, in black and white.

  There was a short pause and then Max wrote back, “Don’t ever regret being honest. Period.” –Taylor Swift

  I laughed, and it was like a sigh of relief.

  You can’t argue with T-Swift, I typed.

  No you cannot. Max wrote back. Call me any time if you need to.

  I smiled at my friend, who was going to move to Seattle any minute and leave me alone. I will. <3 you

  Love you, D.

  I held the phone to my chest. It wasn’t a hug, but it was the next best thing.

  At eleven-thirty, dressed in soft shorts and a white T-shirt, I headed down to Sawyer’s. I was going to bring some food for him and Livvie, but changed my mind. I wanted no pretense; there was no other reason for me being there than to tell him the truth.

  My pulse was jittery as I tapped lightly on his door. It opened after an agonizing thirty seconds in which I almost ran away. Twice.

  Sawyer was there in what I called his jammies—V-necked T-shirt and plaid flannel pants—though it didn’t look as if he’d done any sleeping in them. Dark circles ringed his eyes that were bloodshot. For a split second, the dark pools of them lit up to see me, then faded again.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey. Is this a bad time?”

  “You can come in.” He shoved the door open and then turned his back to walk inside. “You want anything? Something to drink?”

  “No, I’m fine.” I shut the door behind me. “I came here to tell you what I should have told you the other night.” I heaved a calming breath and started with the easy part. “I’m not seeing anyone else, I promise. Max is only a friend.”

  “Okay,” he said. Sawyer moved slo
wly to his desk. He slumped in the chair, and covered his eyes with his hand.

  Is he this torn up about our failed date?

  A selfish part of me would like to think he cared that much about me, but no, it had to be something big, like he failed a final or that judge picked someone else for the clerkship he needed. It suddenly seemed horribly out of place to talk about myself when he was so obviously upset.

  Not just upset. Devastated.

  My fear for myself reshaped itself into fear for him.

  “Sawyer, are you okay?” I moved to stand on the other side of his desk. “What happened?”

  Sawyer dropped his hand from his eyes like it was too heavy, then reached over his desk to take a folded piece of paper. He tossed it closer to my side of the desk and slumped back in his chair.

  I snatched it up and read it, my heart clanging harder with every word, then stared at him, incredulous.

  “A hearing? For custody of Livvie?” The paper trembled like a leaf in my hands. “Who…who are these people?”

  “Olivia’s grandparents.” Each sentence came out dull and staccato. “They were here with their lawyer. They have money. Lots of it. They met Olivia and they want custody.”

  I let the notice of the hearing fall back to the desk. “But they can’t do that,” I said. “You’re her father. They can’t just…take her from you.”

  Sawyer covered his eyes again and I rushed to him, behind his chair and wrapped my arms around him. He didn’t move but let me hold him and I fought not to burst into tears.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I whispered. “It has to be. You’re so good for her.”

  I straightened and without thinking—my body charged with panic I needed to channel—I rubbed his back, talking and kneading his muscles that felt like rocks under my hands. “There has to be a law, right? They can’t just barge in here and take her away from you.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Sawyer said, his voice gruff.

  “But it doesn’t make any sense—”

  “There are circumstances, Darlene.”

  “What kind of circumstances let the grandparents take a baby away from her father?”