Claiming Serenity

by Eden Butler

  Donovan didn’t bother to dry his face when the shock of Layla’s departure and the memory of his daughter’s image on that machine became too much. He thought he’d ignore the buzzing of his phone. If Layla didn’t want him, didn’t want their life together anymore, then he wouldn’t run after her. He wouldn’t make an ass out of himself in some pathetic attempt to change her mind. But his phone kept ringing, then chirping over and over and he sighed, brushed his arm against his wet face before he dug his phone out of his pocket.

  He didn’t realize that Coach Mullens had his number. He’d never texted Donovan before and the fact that he’d been MIA from their practice and his attitude toward Donovan had lessened to a reserved calm, should have warned Donovan. It should have at least clued him in on why his coach had been missing that afternoon and who had helped Layla pack up her life with Donovan and walk out the door.

  Mullens: She’s here. In case you wanted to stop being an asshole and have a conversation.

  She’d been listening to the same song for nearly an hour. On repeat, cruelly letting the music drift into her ears, trying to tell herself that her hormones, the news that Sayo had been called to the hospital to tell Rhea goodbye, was the only reason Layla was crying at all. It was not Donovan that had her eyes swollen and her nose clogged so that she could only breathe through her open mouth.

  Layla was starting to hate Nancy Sinatra, but she still pulled her headphones closer into her ears, she still snuggled into her pillow, hiccupping because the tears had jarred her breathing, upset the baby so much that it kicked and moved and constantly reminded Layla why she had to get away from Donovan in the first place.

  He didn’t want what Layla wanted and he’d probably never would.

  The song started again, low, sultry and Layla closed her eyes, mouthing the words under her breath and those infernal tears came heavier, harder.

  Seasons came and changed the time

  When I grew up I called him mine

  He would always laugh and say

  Remember when we used to play

  Bang bang, I shot you down

  Bang bang, you hit the ground

  Bang bang, that awful sound

  Bang bang, I used to shoot you down

  “My baby shot me down,” she said to her empty room. But hadn’t she done the shooting? Hadn’t Layla been the one to walk away? She tried telling herself it was for the best. It was necessary. I don’t make promises. Donovan had meant that when he said it. He’d meant it every day after that and even though she’d always known that, even though the past few months that they’d lived together had been the happiest of Layla’s life, it hadn’t changed what they’d agree to.

  No promises. No emotions.

  Their time together, the baby, the nights cloistered together on his bed making plans they’d never intended to follow through with, it still didn’t erase how this all started, how what they had was nothing more than a physical connection.

  He didn’t love her. He couldn’t.

  Nancy’s voice started again, the words closing Layla’s eyes. It was a song about games, about love that started in childhood, about fighting and losing and never intending to win. It was Layla and Donovan—their arguments, their pranks, their coming back and leaving each other laid out in melody and rhyme that broke Layla down.

  She only opened her eyes when her phone chirped, more messages from Mollie, from Autumn, a group thread that had all three women worried about Sayo, about news that hadn’t come yet.

  Autumn: I feel like we should be there.

  Mollie: Sweetie, there’s nothing any of us can do. Besides, you know how closed off she can get.

  Layla: I’d want you all there if it were me. But then, I want you all here now.

  Autmn: Oh, honey… we can come over.

  Mollie: I can be there in twenty.

  Her friends’ hugs, their words of encouragement, saying things about how despicable Donovan was, how stupid and blind, would make Layla feel better, but they wouldn’t be true. They’d be a Band-Aid over a gapping burn.

  Layla: No. We should focus on Sayo.

  And that’s what Layla did for the next half hour. She said prayers, novenas, pleas to God, to the Saints, that Rhea would somehow pull through and if no miracles were handy, that Sayo and her family would find strength in each other.

  Layla was in the middle of another novena, this one to St. Anthony, requesting a wondrous miracle when she heard her father’s voice. She was just finishing, “Glorious Wonderworker, Saint Anthony, father of the poor and comforter of the afflicted, I ask for your help,” when that voice got loud, not shouting, but firm. He was speaking to someone Layla couldn’t hear but knew was male. And then those voices got louder, came closer and Layla sat up in bed, wiping her face dry when three soft knocks came on the wood door.

  Somehow she knew it was him. Something in her gut told her that much and so Layla tried to lower her heartbeat to less than exertive levels. She tried to shake the tremble from her fingers and then, she cracked open the door.

  Donovan held both arms out against the doorframe and looked a little unhinged, a little desperate, as though his hands tightening around the molding was going to keep him from touching her, reaching out to shake some sense into her.

  “Why are you here?” It was a stupid question, one that Layla thought she should have said, but Donovan seemed shocked, surprised to find her in her own home, hiding in her childhood bedroom. “Why did you leave?”

  She opened the door, waved to her father as Donovan rushed into the room, hoping that he wouldn’t insist that she keep the door open. It was a little too late for rules about any man but her brother and father being in her room. The worst damage a man could do, in her father’s eyes, had already been done.

  “Don’t let him upset you, sweetheart.” Her father nodded over her shoulder, shooting for a warning at Donovan that he didn’t quite manage and Layla swore she saw something else in her father’s eyes, something hopeful, something he tried to hide from her.

  Calm breaths, she told herself. Be strong. She turned to face Donovan, watching him hold the back of his neck. He swallowed thickly, as though he needed to clear his throat before he started interrogating her. “What are you doing…” Layla’s phone chirped an alert and she reached for it, stepping back when Donovan picked it up. “I need that.”

  “No, we need to talk.”

  Nostrils flaring, she jerked the phone out of his hand, scanning the screen at Mollie’s message to let her know if she needed her there. “Sayo is at the hospital.”

  “Sayo is always at the hospital.”

  Layla didn’t move her head, just her sharp, squinted eyes as she glared at Donovan. “She’s there telling her cousin goodbye.”

  Some of the desperate anger in Donovan’s features relaxed and he fell onto her bed, holding his head in his hands. “I hate hearing that.” Then, looking up at her with his jaw working, he nodded to the spot next to him, looking like he wanted Layla close.

  “I’ve been in that bed all day. I’m fine here.”

  She wasn’t sure what Donovan’s small grunt, what that tight line that formed his mouth meant. Layla thought maybe he was trying to calm himself, that he needed to look at her, to watch her reaction so he wouldn’t scream at her. “Why did you leave?”

  “You know why I left.”

  “Look, I know things have been awkward lately…”

  “Awkward?” She laughed, shaking her head because it was all she could think to do. Awkward? Was he simple? “Donovan you haven’t touched me, barely spoken to me since that… that night.”

  “I got a little freaked out.”

  “You wouldn’t have hurt it. I told you that.”

  “I also got pissed off because you keep calling our daughter ‘it’.” He stood then, towering over her, stepping so close to her that she could see the small beads of sweat between the stubble of his upper lip. “You aren’t attached. I get that. I get that you want to give her awa
y. I understand all of that.”

  “So why ignore me?”

  “I… shit, Layla, I have so many damn things in my head right now I can’t focus, I can’t concentrate, I can’t even play the game I love like I want.”

  And there was the lie she knew he kept, the small excuse that had been the catalyst to getting out of his home. “You play well enough that you might give New Zealand a shot.”

  “That’s not…” he stopped, stepped back from her like he’d just realized she’d unearthed his secrets. “How did you…” Donovan nodded, shot a look to her door, to where her father was beyond that threshold. “He told you.”

  “He mentioned it. He wanted to know if I’d go with you.”

  Something close to hope, maybe curiosity shifted in Donavan’s eyes and it was then that she realized what he wanted. It was then she was grateful for her father’s disclosure and his willingness to welcome her back home.

  “You’d go with me? If I went, you’d come with me?”

  God how she wanted to say yes. But what she needed before she could commit to anything was something she knew he was incapable of giving her. She wanted “I love you” she wanted forever. She wanted him to tell her he couldn’t live without her. She wanted promises and emotions and all the things Donovan swore he could never give her.

  Those words would never come. Not from him. Donovan was too jaded, too scared, too selfish to say them. She wanted a tomorrow that would never come.

  “No,” she finally said, holding her phone tight between her fingers. “I don’t want to move to New Zealand, Donovan. That’s your dream, not mine.”

  He moved his head, lips pressed together like whatever he wanted to say needed to be pushed back, kept silent behind his closed mouth.

  “You weren’t going to tell me.”

  “No,” he said, finally sounding like himself. “I wasn’t going to say anything until I knew what would happen,” he waved his hand in the direction of her stomach, “with everything.”

  “Everything?” He nodded and then Layla looked down at her stomach, finally realizing what he meant, finally understanding that it was the baby, not the mother that he wanted. It was him not so subtly saying that he was waiting for her to make a decision and stick with it. “You were waiting for me to change my mind, weren’t you?”

  “I…” again he fell to her bed, scrubbed his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know what I waiting for. Maybe, shit, Layla I don’t know.”

  And he never would, she realized. Donovan had spent his life letting others decide for him, whether by demands or actions, good or bad, it was what others did, what they suggested that made him finally move. Declan was going to New Zealand, taking Autumn from her home and he wanted Donovan with him. So, naturally, he’d go. His father had taken Jolie, they’d both betrayed him and it was that callous act that had made Donovan decide he didn’t want to love anyone ever again. Layla had come back to him night after night, wanting, asking and Donovan gave her what she wanted. Everyone led Donovan. Everyone insisted and he fell in line like a good soldier. And the one thing he seemed to want, the baby, their daughter, even she wasn’t enough to make him decide on his own. He wanted Layla to choose for him.

  And so, she did. She had already.

  “We found a family.” She knew her voice sounded rough, without a touch of gentleness in her inflection. And she watched as Donovan’s tether to calm broke. That press against his lips grew harder, turning the skin around his mouth white as he watched her, as those beautiful blue eyes of his watered and he breathed hard through his nose. “The agency called, this afternoon. They want to meet me.”

  She waited for him then, for his anger, but it didn’t come. Still, he stood, getting too close to her again, arms tight around his chest as though he needed that tension to keep his limbs still. “And that’s… that’s still what you want? To give the baby away?”

  Layla ignored the vibration of her phone, shrill chirp that kept ringing. She couldn’t take her eyes from the red streaks in his eyes or the glassy shine they’d taken on. But she knew if she relented, if she told him that the baby moving inside her, that her wanting to walk away from the life developing in her body was something she said, then Donovan would follow, like always. That’s not what she needed from him. It’s not what she wanted. She couldn’t lead. Donovan needed to tell her what he wanted. He needed to say the words.

  “I thought that was what we both wanted.”

  He didn’t answer and Layla grew nervous when he looked down, when she thought he tried to hide his tears from her but when he lifted his head, his face was dry and all the emotion was missing from his features.

  I don’t do emotion.

  Again her phone chirped, it kept chirping and Donovan nodded toward it, stepping back.

  “Do you… do you want to come with me to meet the adoptive parents?”

  When his eyes fell closed, when her phone started ringing, vibrating harder, Layla missed his answer, too focused on the words that blared ugly and brutal across the screen.

  “Oh God. No.”

  Donovan was at the door, his hand on the knob when she looked back at him, telling her with one look that she didn’t have to say the words.

  “She’s… Rhea… she’s gone.”

  And Layla barely noticed Donovan stepping in front of her, his chaste, brief kiss on her forehead before he left her room throwing a soft “I’m so sorry,” over his shoulder before she was alone, crying into her hands. Later, when she had calmed, when Autumn informed her and Mollie that Sayo wanted a day alone and Layla rested on her bed, silent in her dark bedroom, then she realized what Donovan had said, what that dismissed response was when she asked if he wanted to meet their daughter’s parents.

  “No, Layla, I don’t.”

  And for the first time in months, Layla thought, maybe she didn’t want that either.

  Wexford Heights was the largest, most exclusive neighborhood in Cavanagh. Donovan’s father once told him that the large Greek revival with the large spindled columns at the end of the street had once been home to Mickey Cavanagh, the town’s founder. It was said, Cavanagh chose this spot, where the highest peaks of the mountains could be seen, where the Falls ran just three miles from the property line, because it was the quietest, the most peaceful spot in the town.

  The century moved by with industry and growth, houses built, roads settled all around Cavanagh’s mansion because others wanted a touch of that quiet serenity. When his parents first married, they chose the second largest home in the Heights—a Colonial, taller than Cavanagh’s home, but simpler, with soothing cool gray exterior and a row of oak trees that lined the property. His parents’ house was often hectic especially when Donovan’s brothers were home. When he was alone Donovan spent many nights on the top floor balcony trying to jump from the railing and onto the largest limb that brushed against the roof. By the time he was ten, he’d broken his left arm twice and sprained the right wrist.

  But Donovan had never felt the peace, that long sought serenity others coveted at his parents’ place. Most nights, before his father sobered up, he only heard screaming and the shattered glass aimed for his father’s head when his mother had discovered another woman he’d bedded or a debt he’d earned while drunk playing poker with some of the town’s shadier characters. Until he was eighteen, that quiet had not come to Donovan and after that, he no longer sought it.

  He’d come here, sifting through his old bedroom trying to find his passport. Declan hadn’t returned his call, but Donovan knew his best friend would be excited, happy that he’d decided to go with he and Autumn in June to check out Auckland and scout the area for try outs and housing. Rhea’s death would put everything on hold for a few days, but he’d needed a distraction, something to keep his mind off of Layla, off their baby.

  But Donovan hadn’t found his passport. He’d found one of the scrapbooks his mother kept after transforming Donovan’s bedroom into storage. There were boxes and trunks lined up al
ong the walls, carefully organized with Donovan’s name, with his parents’, his brothers Michael and John. And it was the old scrapbook, from a trip they’d taken with the Mullens family ten years before that put an end to Donovan’s fruitless searching.

  It was Ireland, that year, back home to Baile Bhúirne where all of Donovan’s family had started out before his great-great grandparents had left the tiny town, seeking refuge, looking for opportunity in another town that wasn’t much bigger than the one they left behind. Donovan was fifteen that summer, Layla nearing the same age and in the photo, they both stood on the highest tip of the grass and moss covered hilltop with a dark, mystical gray sky above them. They stood feet apart from each other. Donovan had been lean and cut, just developing his muscles after two years of serious rugby play, but Layla had yet to develop. Her face was round and her tiny waist curved nicely into the tuck of her jeans. He pulled the picture closer to his face, weaving his long legs through the slats of the balcony railing to catch the light and stare down at the picture.

  After an hour with his forehead against the railing and a teenage Layla staring up at him, her nose pinched as she stuck out her tongue at the camera, Donovan took a break, only to return to the balcony, to that picture, this time with a bottle of his mother’s tequila stashed between his legs. If he could not be with Layla, with them, then he would chase away the thought of her smile and the hope that his daughter’s was the same with that biting clear liquid.

  “God bless Mexico and her mind-numbing tequila.”

  “It’s never good, son, to drink alone.” His father walked onto the balcony, casual, relaxed in his dark slacks and sports jacket. He looked like he’d just come from dinner, maybe a meeting, which he seemed to always be running off to. When he noticed Donovan’s eyes moving over him, his father shrugged, and groaned when he squatted next to him. “Just came from an AA meeting.”