Heart in a Box

by Ally Sky

  "Yes."

  "You're wrong. If he's serious, he'll find a way, and it won't be your way. Sweetheart, I know it's a lousy situation, but you have to think. Hiding Vivian at home in hopes that this will resolve itself isn't the answer."

  "I hate him," I mutter angrily.

  "I know, and I truly hope you don't blurt it next to the girl and screw her up."

  "I'm not a monster." I never said one bad word about him to her.

  "Find out what his plans are."

  "I'll think about it," I reply as I get up from the swing, signifying the subject is closed. I just need a few more days, that's all. A few days to let him disappear. That's what he knows to do best—to decide that he's changed his mind, to pack his bags and evaporate. So I'll give him the chance to do just that, disappear back to the same place he spent the last five years. There, and only there, I want him to stay.

  My phone rings the next morning as I finish washing the dishes. I quickly wipe my hands on the small kitchen towel and answer the unfamiliar number.

  "Hello?" I glance into the living room where Vivian is playing on the carpet.

  "Elizabeth?" The deep, bass voice makes my heart skip a beat. I never changed my number, should I have expected this call?

  "You didn't go to work," he says quietly, keeping his cool as if expecting an attack.

  "I'm on vacation." I don't bother to explain and turn my back on the girl who isn't aware of what's going on. "Please don't call me again."

  "We need to talk."

  "I've told you," I open the door and sneak out, "we're not going to talk."

  "You can hate me all you want, but she's my daughter too."

  "And you'll keep away from her and me," I say firmly.

  "That's not going to happen." His answer makes my heart run wild.

  "Why are you doing this to me?" My voice cracks.

  "I don't want to do anything to you, I just want to see Vivian, please don't drag us into a war."

  Will he really take me to court? because if he does I’ll lose for sure. They might make him pay what he owes me, but they won't prevent him from seeing his child. No matter how hard I try, in the end, I'll lose to the son of a bitch. The one thing left for me to do is to try and delay the meeting as much as I can.

  "I took her out of daycare." The words roll out themselves. "After you came, I took her out of the daycare and stayed with her at home."

  "Elizabeth," he sighs, and for a moment the distance in his voice is gone.

  "So if you were thinking of looking for her there, you can forget about it."

  "Do you really think I would do that?" He sounds hurt.

  "Since when do I know what you plan on doing?"

  "I guess you're right." His voice changes again without warning and the coolness returns. "Take her back, she needs her routine."

  "Now you know what she needs?" I snort.

  "Children need their routines."

  "Are you talking from experience?" I don't know where this question comes from.

  "Am I what?"

  "Do you have other children?" The thought that somewhere in this world he has another child he was raising shrinks my heart in a painful way.

  "I have no other children than Vivian." His answer loosens the pressure that has accumulated in my chest.

  "I don't want you to approach her." I can't steady my voice and I hate the thought that my confidence is gone. Five years without him forced me to be as strong as I have ever been, and now that strength isn't there.

  "I won't approach her, I give you my word."

  "Your word is worth nothing, Colin," I clarify. "I need time, don't ask me how much, don't ask me when your meeting will take place and don't approach her."

  "Take her back."

  "You will fulfill your duties to us before you have any rights." This could be an excellent test. Maybe this will make him disappear again. Maybe he will run away, and all will be solved.

  "Just say what you need from me." He remains calm.

  "The Child Support I never got for a start," I murmur angrily. The struggle of the past years hasn't been easy and has taken its toll on all of us.

  "How much?" His question takes me out of balance for a moment.

  "What?"

  "How much money?" His voice remains steady.

  "Since when do you have money?" Even before he left, it wasn't easy. His high school grades were not enough to get a scholarship, and there was no way in hell he could pay for his studies at college. Instead, he moved from one job to another, never resting. He always hoped something better would come. We lived in our tiny house and saved every cent for the birth and dreamed of the day we could move.

  "I told you I had a business." He takes me back to the conversation.

  "You owe me alimony for the last five years." I want to make sure he understands what I'm talking about.

  "How much money, Elizabeth?" He doesn't fold. I wonder if he's lying and whether I want his money at all. Only God knows where he got it.

  "I don't know how much."

  "So sit down, think, and give me a number. I'll make sure it goes into your account."

  "It doesn't work that way," I grumble. "I don't know what your income is or what extra expenses you have."

  "It shouldn't interest you."

  "Maybe we’ll let a judge rule."

  "If that's what you want, though the courts work slowly and I'd rather you just tell me how much you need."

  "What are you doing?"

  "What do you mean?" He sounds confused.

  "Your business, is it legal?"

  "Yes, I'm a liquidator."

  "What's that?" Did he invent an occupation?

  "I buy stuff for cheap and sell it at a profit." So the guy found something to do with his life without a college degree. Amazing.

  "Well, I suppose that could be profitable. Thinking about it, you didn't have big expenses on, kids, for example."

  "I don't blame you, you have every right to be mad with me."

  "I'm not mad at you, Colin, I hate you. Do you know how many nights I cried myself to sleep? How many times I have cursed you?"

  "I can imagine." He doesn't apologize for what he did.

  "I have to go check on my daughter."

  He doesn't correct me, doesn't insist on noting that after all she is his daughter too. "Call me when you have the numbers."

  "It'll take some time, I'll have to consult someone."

  "Okay," he says, "just call me if there's anything you need."

  "I need a time machine, do you have a time machine Colin?" My voice is but a whisper, "Because I'd be really glad to go back to the moment you stood in our bedroom and kissed me. The moment after we made love and you promised to see me in a few hours. I would be so very happy to look you in the eye and see where I was wrong."

  I hang up the call, leaving him hanging in the air. Let him taste some of his own dish. God knows I've been choking on it for the last five years.

  At nine in the evening a knock on the door makes me jump of the couch. I open it and stand silent in front of my father's anger. His hair is graying, his face is wrinkled, tired. He isn't young, and the long hours at work come with a heavy price. He knows it. And we all know why he does it. He pushes himself so as not to think, to overcome the pain that never leaves him.

  "Hello, Elizabeth, how nice of you to call and inform me on all that's been going on!" Damn my mother and her big mouth.

  "Don't shout. Vivian is sleeping." And she isn't aware of the drama, and that's how I want to keep it.

  "Tell me you're not seriously considering letting him see her."

  "At the moment the only thing I'm considering is how many zeros to add to the number I'm going to give him," I mumble, as an annoying headache begins to bother me.

  "What number?"

  "Come in," I gesture toward the living room. "You wanna beer?"

  "What do you think?" He walks into the house, closes the door, and sits down on the sofa. I head to
the fridge thinking of how I'm going to tell him my life has changed directions in no time.

  Fifteen minutes later I pat myself on the back, mentally. I managed not to cry, an impressive achievement by all accounts. My father, on the other hand, looks like someone is going to die.

  "You listen to me," he takes a sip of the second beer I've served him. The first he finished in five minutes. "You are not to talk to him, he is not to come anywhere near you."

  "I can't really stop him."

  "You need a lawyer," he states decisively. "That boy is a lot of trouble."

  "He isn't a boy anymore." When thinking about it, Colin really isn't a boy. He's a muscular, tattooed man, and if his arms look like they do, God only knows what his abs or thighs look like . . .

  These thoughts have to stop! What does it matter what his abs look like?

  "I don't want you to talk to him. I know how he'll crawl straight back into your life. You never could resist him."

  "It's not that simple."

  "It will be simple if you don’t complicate it. He has to leave, he's dangerous."

  "Colin isn't dangerous." I don't know why I insist on defending him. An old habit I guess. I've always defended him, always stood by him, especially in regards to my father.

  "You're blind," Dad reprimands me. "You had a bright future before you met him. We told you to stay away from the football team."

  "Colin wasn’t 'the football team.' He was just the captain, he never abused anybody." No matter how many times I said it in the past, my father refused to listen and he is refusing to listen now.

  "If you'd kept away from him, maybe you would’ve achieved what you wanted."

  "You never gave him a chance."

  "I saw him for who he really is, forgive me for trying to protect you!"

  "You saw those boys and what they did." I almost regret my words, but I can't ignore the fact that I'm right.

  "You don't know what you're talking about," he tries to stop me in vain. He knows where I'm going.

  "I know all too well. It shouldn't have happened, but there was nothing you could have done, Dad. Morgan didn't tell you."

  There is a tense silence as that name is mentioned. Morgan is no secret, he's just someone who isn't talked about, and I just brushed the dust of those memories, knowing how much pain I'm inflicting and how delicately I should approach the subject.

  "I'm warning you, Elizabeth." Dad clenches his teeth and his jaw tightens.

  "Dad, you couldn't do anything."

  I put a comforting hand on his knee, but I can't really help. He is the father who walked into the garage one afternoon and found his son, only fourteen years old, hanged. The father who put together the pieces of information that were revealed in the weeks after Morgan's death. The father who heard what the football team had done for months, day after day, hour after hour, until Morgan's only solution was to kill himself. No matter how many years have passed since, it doesn't matter that we relocated when I was only four years old. The pain is there, burning and destroying.

  "I was supposed to look after him and I failed," the fury echoes in his voice. "There's no way in hell I'll let something happen to you. All the time you spent in school went down the drain when that boy come into the picture and destroyed your future."

  "He will pay for what he did to me, but I won't blame him for what other boys did, in another city, when I was a child."

  "You don't know who he is."

  "And you do?" I sigh and lean back in preparation for a lecture I've heard a thousand times or more.

  "They are all the same. Thugs, violent, ticking bombs waiting to explode, we lost one child, we are not going to lose you, you chose—"

  "You're right," I interrupt. "I chose him despite your warnings, I fell in love with him, got pregnant, but you blame him for something that has nothing to do with him."

  "Colin and his ilk are people who see only themselves. They don't think about the future or about those who might be hurt by their actions."

  "You can't protect me anymore, you've done that my whole life."

  When I was young, I often asked myself whether my role in the world was to be a compensation for a loss, a role I played with great success. I was protected and safe, barely allowed to move. I was the good girl my parents wanted. I believed they had suffered enough and I didn't want to add more.

  "We don't choose who to fall in love with" Colin whispered on the phone one night, after I'd cried endlessly. I knew I was going to hurt them. Colin wanted to console me and failed miserably. I didn't choose to fall in love with him and I was not willing to give him up and, for the first time, I wasn't their good girl anymore. I was being me.

  "If that boy comes anywhere near you, I won't be responsible for my actions." My father's voice brings me back to my tangled present.

  "I'm asking you not to do anything. I don't need any more problems." I don't want people to start talking again, especially now that Vivian might hear. I don't want to run away from the looks of anyone who knows us.

  They whispered as my belly grew, and when Viv was born, and when I pushed her stroller down the street. I didn't want that for her. I didn't want her to grow up being the girl who's father ran away.

  "You need a lawyer, I have a friend who owes me a favor."

  "You're not helping me," I sigh. "You all seem to know exactly what to do. Mom wants me to find a solution, you want to kill him and I just want to make ends meet."

  "Who do you want to kill, Grandpa?" Viv's sleepy voice alarms us both. Great, just great.

  "Mom was joking, Grandpa doesn't want to kill anyone." I get up slowly, ready to put her back in bed.

  "That's why you cried?" She surprises me.

  "When did I cry?"

  "A few days ago." She yawns.

  "It's nothing, sweetie." I pick her up, walk into the bedroom and put her in her bed. Leaning over, I cover her with a blanket and kiss her.

  "Go to sleep."

  "Please don't cry," she mumbles as she slips into her sleep. If only I could assure her that it would be so. When I go out to the living room, my father is gone. On the dining table is a note with the phone number of his lawyer friend. I fold it up and put it in my purse, turn off the lights and lock the house. Everything will wait for tomorrow.

  Chapter 4

  "I'm seeing someone." My hand begins to tremble, and I pull it off the table and hide it, hoping my voice will remain steady enough not to betray my panic.

  "You have a boyfriend?" My mother is quick to show interest.

  "Something like that," I deliberately diminish the relationship Colin and I have been engaged in for months.

  Yes, I'm going out with someone.

  Yes, he's my boyfriend.

  No, I don't think it will go smoothly.

  "What's his name?" My father asks between one bite and another.

  "Colin Young." I don't think his name will tell my father anything, and I really don't think the investigation is over.

  "And what does Colin Young do in his life?" My father proves me right.

  "He's studying with me," I move uneasily in the chair, "we study together."

  "When will we meet him?" My father looks up over the plate.

  "He's very busy," I evade for another second and let him enjoy his final moments of peace.

  "Busy with school?"

  "Among other things," I take a deep breath and prepare for the storm that is about to break out. "With school and trainings."

  My father freezes. His fork stays in his hand, hanging in the air, a piece of steak stuck on it and refusing to enter his mouth.

  "Training?" My mother's voice is much calmer than the look on Father's face.

  "He's . . . the captain . . . of the…football team."

  My father's fork drops. He shoves his chair back and when he rises, the chair crashes to the floor.

  He glares at me.

  He doesn't say a word.

  He leaves the house slamming the door and sh
aking the windows, my heart and my fragile world.

  My mother is silent.

  I have nothing to say either.

  I hope he can see that Colin is different, that Colin loves me and I love him, that he's not like them.

  He really isn't like them.

  He's sensitive, goodhearted and funny, and if my father could only see it, beyond the intense hatred that strikes him, we have a chance.

  A week has passed since my phone call with Colin, since my father gave me the lawyer's phone number who asked me dozens of questions that I didn't know how to answer. Couldn't he just throw me a number?

  The silence on Colin's part drives me crazy. Not that I want him to call, but not knowing where he is or what he is doing bothers me. I wonder if he is giving me some much needed breathing space or leaving again.

  He said he was staying.

  But he has said many things, and I stopped believing them at all.

  My phone rings at five in the afternoon, I answer while Vivian sits in the plastic little tub I set on the shower floor, playing with soap and water.

  "Hello?" I put the phone to my ear, careful not to take my eyes off my child.

  "Tell your father and his friends they failed their mission." The indignation in Colin's voice makes my heart start beating wildly.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "If they think some bruises and a shiner will scare me out of town, they underestimate me and my seriousness."

  "They what?" I shout, and the phone falls from my shoulder to the floor. I hurry to pick it up with trembling hands. "Colin, I swear, I didn't have anything to do with that, I'll kill him."

  "Mama, you said you were joking." Vivian stops playing and looks at me. God, give me a break!

  "I'm still joking, sweetie, go back to your game."

  "Was that her?" Colin's voice joins in, sounding as if a lump has been lodged in his throat.

  "Don't change the subject."

  "Elizabeth, please," he clears his throat.

  For the first time since his return, I realize that he isn't calling me any of the nicknames he used to in the past. I'm not Lizzie or Liz and certainly not his love. I'm Elizabeth, and this formality no longer evades me.