by Liz Crowe
He stomped out onto the large hallway landing, brain buzzing and ears burning. She followed him, tugging him into an empty room across the hall so they wouldn’t wake Ayden. He already regretted his words. But they were out there now, and he’d better own up to them.
“You are a pig, Metin Sevim. A judgmental, chauvinist, closed-minded asshole,” she hissed, leaving the light off in the guest bedroom. “You have no right to say that shit to me.”
He closed his eyes, trying to collect his thoughts into something resembling calm. “You asked me, Alicia. I answered. If you don’t want to know my opinion, do not insist I give it to you.” Gripping her arms, he tried to will the whole scene into rewind. He’d gone the wrong way. He did not want to hurt her. But by god, her sister was like the world’s sharpest thorn in the side of their marriage. He wanted it ripped out and fucking discarded.
Her next words tore a hole in his gut.
“You will never change. And you had better figure this out now—you can’t change me. I am this person. This is my family, and you can deal with it or get the fuck out of my life.”
He pressed her up against the wall, so frustrated he had no words. It felt right to kiss her, so he did. She gave, just enough, then bit his lip hard, making him curse and jump away.
“Goddamn. You are fucking crazy.” He held a hand over his mouth.
Her eyes filled with tears. She flipped on the light, grabbed a pillow from the closet and threw it right at his head.
“Sleep in here, you raging Turkish asshole. Don’t come near me.”
Metin moaned and sat, trying not to swallow blood. His eyes burned with shock at his own harsh words, and her fury at them. He couldn’t believe he’d used such language, talking about his wife’s family. Hearing Ayden cry out once then settle, Metin warred internally, his base traditionalist struggling with the man whose very life depended on the happiness of his wife and child.
“Hey.”
Something tickled his neck. He smacked it away.
“Metin.”
He mumbled and rolled over.
“Honey.”
Opening one eye, he stared at her, his wife, the woman who’d nearly bitten his goddamned lower lip off the night before, after he’d done what she wanted, offered his opinion of the situation with her sister.
“I’m sorry.” She crouched down, brushed his hair off his forehead. “Really. I’m… this place makes me crazy.” She smiled. Ayden appeared in his line of vision.
“Papa, Mama says we are going to Starbucks now. To get your fappachino. Your faaaaavorite.” Ayden drew out the vowel in the word, like his mother did when she was trying to bribe him into good behavior with ice cream. Another trick Metin did not approve of.
He touched the boy’s cheek. He needed more sleep if he wanted to resemble anything human. “Okay, son. Thanks.”
“Don’t be mad at Mama, Papa,” he entreated, his small arm latched around his mother’s neck.
Metin glared at her. There were too many words still butting heads between them. Too much they needed to talk about, and he wasn’t letting it go. Not this time.
“Don’t use our son as a mouthpiece, Alicia.” He rolled over. “I’ll be here, Ayden. Thanks for getting me the coffee drink.” He dropped back into sleep, still angry, but with a hopeful stirring in his chest. Only one more day. Then they could go home and deal with each other sans this crazy fucking house.
He woke to the sound of an ear-splitting scream. Sitting up, heart pounding, he scrambled out of the guest bed and stumbled down the steps. The screaming wouldn’t stop.
“What the fuck?” Panic dried out his mouth, slicked his palms with sweat as he gripped the banister. “Where’s Alicia? Zach!” He snagged the kid backing out of the kitchen slowly, his eyes wide and starting to tear up. “Where the hell is…?”
Zach shook his head, and ran past him. Metin stumbled again, barking his shin on a low table, making his way toward the scream that had morphed into a low, keening, almost animal-like sound.
Trevor stood at the island, nodding his head at whatever was being said to him on the phone. Mel sat in the corner, curled in a ball, rocking back and forth. His brain refused to take it in, to acknowledge what his eyes showed him. It was nearly ten a.m.—three hours after Alicia crept in to make Ayden apologize for her.
Trevor set the phone on the counter and looked up at him, his eyes hard, bright, and matter-of-fact. “Son, you need to sit down.”
Chapter Eighteen
The bright lights of the hospital seared his brain. The smells gagged him. The sounds deafened him. He could not do this. He refused. If he refused long enough, perhaps it would go away, and he could get his life back. The one where he told her he would not come to Michigan for any reason. Ever. Like he’d wanted to say when she’d brought it up in the first place, instead of convincing her it was the right thing to do.
Mel, dry-eyed now and in charge, handled whatever needed handling. He felt drugged, drunk, and needed to throw up. He’d done that already, once, maybe twice. Definitely after he’d looked down at the crushed, ruined, still face of his son to give a positive identification.
He had not wanted to leave the boy’s side, somehow convinced in the survival part of his brain that if he sat there long enough staring at him, Ayden would wake up with a headache and a smile. He’d sat, unmoving, frozen, until three large orderlies appeared and had to drag him away. Mel stayed with him, filling out forms, doing what he could not. Between them, she and her father kept him from falling to the floor as the doctor used words about Alicia like “serious concussion, chest trauma, broken hip, broken leg, and coma.”
“She’s pregnant,” Mel said, her voice so firm and strong it sounded strange to him, out of place somehow.
“Her pelvis was completely crushed.” The ER doctor broke eye contact, glancing down at his tablet computer, then straight back into Metin’s eyes. “She isn’t pregnant anymore.”
Metin nearly roared with fury. How dare this man check his fucking email while his wife, his life and beating heart, lay covered in bandages, on life support? And his son….
He lurched out of the room, deaf, blind and broken.
Metin stood at the foot of Alicia’s bed, as what passed for her, his wife, lay unmoving, unresponsive, for all intents and purposes, dead. The word seared through him, and he choked back a sob. Three days had passed since she’d pulled out of the Starbucks parking lot and been plowed down by a drunk driver in an SUV, some useless asshole on his way home after a Christmas night bender.
The boy, his boy, his only son, had taken the full brunt of the blow to his car-seated self. Alicia had been unscathed at that point, the cops said, had seen her son crushed to death, before her rental car spun and she’d been hit head-on by oncoming traffic unable to stop.
His parents were due any minute. He wanted and dreaded it in equal measure. He’d retreated into a sort of cocoon, a place where he heard nothing, knew nothing, wanted nothing but his wife to open her eyes and talk to him. He watched the nurse come in and fiddle with IV lines, check the breathing machine. Mel had not left his side although he hardly registered her presence. She handed him food and water on occasion, which he ignored.
Various people came at him, made talking noises, but he barely heard, until the sharp, bossy tones of his mother pierced his consciousness. She marched down the hall, her step firm, her mouth set as if she could fix this by her presence. He broke then. Crumpling to the floor at the foot of Alicia’s bed, he sobbed until his chest hurt, until his eyes burned. His mother collected him, drew him to his feet, and he clung to her for what felt like hours, while the beeping, pinging, dinging sounds kept up their vigil, his wife’s faint heartbeat the only thing he had to hold on to.
“Mr. Sevim.” The doctor approached him as he sat slumped in a waiting room chair. “We need to give you an update.”
Mel rose, keeping her hand on Metin’s shoulder. He’d refused to discuss “arrangements” for Ayden. If he ignored
it, then it couldn’t be true that he had to bury his toddler son. And now, a day after his parents’ arrival, he knew. There was no hope for Alicia. And he had to be the one to make the call to let his beloved go, to simply switch off the machines that breathed for her.
“Metin,” Mel said, her voice hoarse.
He got to his feet and squared his shoulders. His parents joined him, his mother sobbing quietly. They walked together down the hall. The hospital had beefed up security to keep the reporters and photographers at bay, but he had no sense of that. He didn’t care anymore.
“Go to her,” Mel whispered, pushing him inside.
He froze in the doorway, the pinging and dinging deafening him. His wife still lay there, unchanged, covered with the same bandages, the only thing visible her closed eyes and her bruised nose. He looked up at the monitors, then down at her, his heart walking around outside his body.
Sitting, he took her hand, needing her to know one simple thing, wishing he’d said it before she’d left that morning. “I forgive you, my beloved. I will never love another as I did you.” He touched her lips, her shoulder, her hip, her thigh, pressed his palm to her stomach. “Wake up.” He gritted his teeth, ridiculous fury sweeping through him. “Please.” But she refused to obey him.
He lowered his head, nodded, and the rest of the family filed into the room. His mother remained at his side, holding him close. Someone handed him a piece of paper that he signed. Then he held out his other hand. Mel slid her freezing palm into it. The room darkened, wavered, wobbled, shifted off center, never to be righted.
A doctor, accompanied by two nurses came in and touched a single button on one machine. Metin dropped into a chair and buried his nose in Alicia’s neck. The pinging slowed… and stopped. Mel choked out a sob and crumpled to the floor. Then, brushing away all the sets of hands that tried to touch him, Metin stood, kissed his wife’s cheek, and walked out of the room without a word to anyone.
He kept walking, numb to anything but the urge to get away from here, not even recognizing his own movement until he found himself outside the hospital. He climbed into a taxi, told the driver to take him to the airport, then stumbled into the terminal, handed over his credit card and demanded a first class ticket to Istanbul. Home. He had to get home. The fact that part of his family remained with his dead wife and son did not register. Nothing registered, other than the urge to get as far from this place as he could.
After passing out on the plane from drinking five straight bourbons, he got a taxi to his parents’ home, was met by his brothers, ignored them, and climbed the steps to his room, their room. He buried his face in the pillow, sucking in huge breaths, capturing the slight scent of her that remained there. Then he rose, stumbled down to the first floor, and pulled every bottle of alcohol his parents had out of the cabinet. Starting with bourbon, he drank and drank until he couldn’t hear her voice, see her face, or feel his son’s arms around his neck anymore.
Part Two
Chapter One
Melanie rested the bag of ice on her still sore nose, then leaned back in the leather recliner, trying to relax. Her head pounded. Her chest ached. And she was so mad she could spit nails. The nerve of him, showing up stink-ass drunk. The mere memory of it, three days gone now, brought furious tears to her eyes. She hoped he rotted while he dried out in jail, after getting gang-raped by a bunch of bikers.
“Ow, shit.” She shifted in the chair, nose throbbing and tears flowing. “Alicia,” she whispered, touching the photo her father kept by his chair, of the two of them on a beach somewhere.
Her sister’s sun-reddened face beamed with a huge smile, as always. Mel had her usual somewhat tight expression on, but she remembered that day—about six years ago—like it happened yesterday. If she closed her eyes, the smells of sunscreen and sweat hit her nose and she heard her sister’s teasing laughter about the cabana boy Mel had been flirting with that week.
Only two weeks since the accident and the house echoed with memories, silence, and tears, even though Alicia had not lived there for the last several years while she pranced around, being arm candy for that asshole soccer player.
Mel must have fallen asleep because she jerked awake to a touch on the arm and found the room fully dark, as only the dark can be in Michigan during January. Her father stood over her, gripping his phone as he flipped on a lamp.
“Honey,” he said, “I want to talk to you about something.”
She touched her sore nose after he pulled her to her feet. “I must be quite the vision.”
Trevor grimaced then shook his head, unwilling to even discuss the horror that had been his younger daughter’s and grandson’s funeral. “It will fade.”
“Fucker,” she muttered, wanting her dad to jump to her defense and join her in the Metin Haters Club. But in typical fashion, he remained neutral and led her into the kitchen, fussed over some cups of tea, then sat. His dark blue eyes were somber. She sipped the tea and stayed silent.
He held out his hand and she laid hers in it while he gathered his thoughts. “Melanie, you are an amazing woman. You are… were… are….” He sucked in a breath, looked away from her, then back into her eyes. “You are a great sister to Alicia. When your mother died, I dumped Alicia in your lap, and I knew it. I couldn’t cope. I didn’t even want to live without Cathy. And….” He swallowed hard.
More tears formed, and she opened her mouth to cut him off, but he held up his other palm, as if entreating her.
“No, I need to say this. You took over; you took care of her in every way, and I have never thanked you for it. I know how strongly you felt… feel… about her husband, but now isn’t the time to hate the man. He is completely crushed. He loved her. As did we. And we know how badly we feel now without her. Let it go, Mel. This anger is only going to hurt you.”
She jumped up, nearly blind with fury, but far from speechless. “He is out of our lives now, and I’m glad,” she said, putting a hand to her aching nose. “He was bad news. I knew it and now he’s… just gone.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Sit down, Melanie. I’m not done.”
She sat, interpreting his tone loud and clear. Her father rarely raised his voice. He didn’t have to. He was a tall, imposing, and quietly-in-charge man, and always had been. But she leaned back, trying to show with her body language that she would not engage in any civil discussion related to Metin Sevim ever again.
Trevor took a long breath. “I have a project for you.”
She blinked, thinking she had misunderstood him.
“It’s something I think you should take on for a lot of reasons.” He pulled a file from his briefcase. “I bought a piece of property in Ann Arbor.” He pointed to what seemed to be a contract. “Near the corner of State and Liberty streets. Used to be a tattoo parlor, but I think it will be a great spot for a café.”
Glancing up at him, speechless, she pressed a freezing-cold palm to her throat. She’d always said she wanted to have her own breakfast and lunch place, somewhere near the campus of the University of Michigan. Small, with a liquor license so she could serve Bloody Marys on football Saturdays, and a simple, elegant menu of relatively inexpensive dishes, open at five a.m. and closed at three p.m.
“Dad, you don’t have to….”
“Melanie Catherine Matthews, will you be quiet and listen to me a second?”
At the firm tension in his voice, she nodded, but her legs shook under the table, and she couldn’t get her head around what he proposed, much less how she felt about it. The excuses already formed in her brain, but she listened as he laid out his concept. Ayden’s Café would be exactly as she had envisioned it and described to him more than once, but only half-seriously after she’d moved home with her boys.
She had some homework to do first. He’d procured the property, hired a construction company to begin renovations. But she needed to come up with a viable business plan beyond that. It had to incorporate everything from staffing to food purchases, marketing
, liquor-licensing, and dealing with the health department. She had eight weeks. As the sole stakeholder, he would give final approval of her plan, then name her president of Ayden’s Café, LLC and, after giving her the seed money, the rest would be totally up to her. And there was another thing.
“I bought this house, on the west side of town, close to one of the high schools.” He slid a contract over with a photo of a small, tidy, bungalow clipped to it. She sucked in a breath.
“You want me t-t-t-to leave?” Terror engulfed her, dropping an even darker cloud over her consciousness.
Trevor grabbed her hands. “No, honey. I don’t want you to. But you have to. It’s for the best. You need to separate from all this.” He jerked his chin at the large kitchen she’d been in charge of from the moment her mother died. “I want you to have something that’s yours. Something you’ve dreamed about. It won’t be easy, but….”
She stared down at their joined hands. Her father’s had large knuckles, a little swollen from early arthritis. They’d held her, pushed her on swings, taught her to ride a bike, drive a car, held her when she’d come back into his life and house, her soul crushed by a horrible man. Confusing thoughts roiled like thunderclouds. Fear, and a twinge of excitement at the concept of the project mixed around with a nice dose of anger—her usual emotion.
“I love you,” she whispered, biting her lip. “I don’t think I can do this though.”
“Of course you can.” He let her go, closed the file and pushed it across the table. “I’ll help you. But this,” he tapped the folder, “this will be one hundred percent yours.”
“You’re trying to distract me, to keep me from feeling sad about my sister and Ayden. Like you did when Mom died and you gave me responsibility for Alicia.”
