by Renee Dyer
I stop, wondering if what I’m saying is alright to say to him. Is it tacky telling him I love his woman? If it were me, I’d want to know she was loved. That she was being taken care of.
“I’ll take care of her, Alex. Always. I’m in love with her. I want to marry her. Not right now, because she’s not ready, but when she is, I want to know that you’re okay with it. It’s important for me to know that you are alright with me marrying her. She’s everything to me. She’s the light to my dark. She’s my reason for wanting to get out of bed each morning. Just knowing I’ll get a phone call from her each day makes me smile. And when I know I’ll get to see her, I can’t stop the excitement I feel. I love her more than I ever thought possible. I don’t just need her in my life, Alex, I want her there. Can I please have your permission to ask for her hand in marriage?”
Through the cold wind blowing around me, I feel a warmth go around my shoulders. It feels like an arm hugging around me. A tear slides down my cheek knowing Alex just gave his approval.
Through a choked up voice, I tell him, “I promise I’ll take care of her, until my very last breath, Alex. I also promise that I will never ask her to give you up. I understand that you were her first love and her best friend. I’m not looking to replace that. Thank you for teaching her what love is. Because of you, she’s able to be with me. I know she loves me, even if she isn’t able to say it yet. She shows me in dozens of little ways. It’s because of the love she had with you that she can show me this. I’ll be forever grateful to you for loving her. I hope she never stops loving you. Her love for you makes her the person she is, the person that I love. Please always look out for her, Alex. She needs you.”
With a happy heart and an angel’s approval, I head to see the woman I love.
Adriana woke me up with a special Christmas gift—her wrapped up in a big red bow. I enjoyed every second of unwrapping my first gift of the day. I may have to put her back in that bow just to unwrap her again.
We lazed around for a while in bed before deciding we had to eat. As usual, she has too much food in the house. She made Danishes and breads. There are muffins and she offered to make eggs. I was happy with what was made and some coffee.
Her family is coming for dinner, but until then we’ve decided to chill out and watch movies. I want nothing more than to snuggle on the couch with her in my arms. Snow has begun to fall outside and it’s so cliché, but it’s making my Christmas perfect. I kiss the top of her head as she snuggles into my chest.
Nothing could ruin a day this perfect.
Her doorbell rings and I figure one of our friends is stopping by to spread some holiday cheer. I don’t call them Adriana’s friends anymore. They’re both of ours.
“I’ll get it,” I say to her. “Why don’t you check on the turkey?” I kiss her lips quickly and head for the door.
I don’t bother looking to see who it is. Our friends are the only ones who ever stop by. I should have looked. Standing before me is Mikos. I swallow, much more loudly than I care to admit.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” he says, “but I couldn’t have you go one more Christmas thinking I didn’t want to be with you.”
My heart slams against my rib cage. Not from seeing him, but from the words that passed his lips.
“You can tell me to leave. Tell me you don’t want to hear what I have to say, but I think too many years have gone without you hearing the truth. That’s my fault. I should have come to you sooner. I’m not here to ruin your Christmas, but you had to know. I had to tell you that I wanted to be with you every Christmas since the day I left.”
I stand there in silence. What the fuck am I supposed to say? This is the man who abandoned me, left me wondering why he hated me so much, and here he stands, saying he wanted to be with me all that time. My brain can’t process this.
“Tucker, who’s at the door?” Adriana’s sweet voice calls out to me. It cuts through my confusion. I step back and offer to let him come inside. My heart is going crazy.
I walk into the kitchen and see the second her eyes fall on Mikos. Confusion clouds her eyes and I’m sure it mirrors my own. He was the last person I expected to see today. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around him being here when he hands her a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of wine. I hadn’t even noticed he had anything in his hands.
“Merry Christmas, Adriana. I’m sorry to barge in on your holiday, but I had to see my son. I needed him to know that he’s important to me.” She nods at him, but the look on her face is wary. She looks to me, but I can’t speak. “Is there somewhere we can sit and talk?”
He’s talking to me now, but I’m still at a loss for words. For years, I told myself if he showed up, I would throw him out on his ass. But, I can’t do it. He told me he wanted to be with me every Christmas and now I’m torn. What the fuck is going on in my head? This motherfucker abandoned me… after mom died. He doesn’t deserve any kindness from me.
Why do I want to know what he has to say?
“Why don’t you go sit in the living room and I can bring you drinks,” Adriana says, holding up the bottle of wine.
“No wine for me,” Mikos says. “If I could get water, that would be nice. Thank you.”
In a fog, I walk into the living room, assuming he’ll follow me. I sit on the couch and he sits on the love seat adjacent to me. With him facing me, I can see all the similarities in our faces and I don’t know that I’m okay with looking like him. Other than my blue eyes, everything else is all him.
He clears his throat and runs his hand through his hair. I hate that even our mannerisms our similar. When his eyes meet mine, there is so much pain there—years’ worth. The broken child in me wants to believe that some of that pain is for leaving me behind, but he’s been gone so long that I gave up hope a long time ago.
That’s what I’ve told myself.
But, here I sit, barely breathing, waiting to hear what he has to say. Waiting to see if he’s going to repair part of my heart or shatter it beyond recognition.
“I know you must have a lot of questions for me, the biggest one being why, but it’s probably best if I just tell you the whole story from the beginning. I have to warn you, Tucker, this is not a pretty story and it doesn’t begin with the day I walked out on you.”
He drops his head into his hands and I wonder what the hell he’s talking about. Adriana walks in with our drinks. She hands them to us, forcing him to look up. He gives her a weak smile before she walks back to the kitchen. I don’t know if I’m relieved or not that she left the room. I know she can still hear what he’s saying, but she’s trying to give us the privacy she feels we need in the disguise of working on dinner. Part of me wishes she was beside me, holding my hand through this, but my pride would reject her doing that.
“Your mother,” he croaks out, “my Lily, she had cancer.”
“I know she had cancer. I remember that.” I don’t know why he’s rehashing this. If this is what he wants to talk about, then he’s starting this conversation the wrong way.
He shakes his head no. “Not what I meant. She had cancer before that. She got cancer when you were fourteen months old.”
I shake my head this time. I would have known if mom had cancer twice. Grams would have told me, wouldn’t she? Or is this the truth she’s been waiting for me to be ready to hear?
I can see he’s waiting for me to be ready for him to go on. After a minute, I raise my hand for him to continue. I’m not sure I’m ready to hear this, but now I need to know. I need to know what happened to my mom.
“The day your mom came home and told me she had cancer, I didn’t handle it well. My world fell apart. I loved her with every fiber of my being and all I saw was a death sentence when I heard that word. I didn’t hear what kind of cancer she had. I just heard cancer. I called your grandmother, asked her to come stay with your mom, drove to a bar the next town over, and got completely obliterated.”
Tears fill his eyes and he blinks rapidly. It’s weir
d to see the man I’ve feared since I was eight struggling to compose himself. One tear falls over and he quickly wipes it away. His brown eyes look so dark now and I wish he would tell me what the fuck happened. What was so bad that he is losing it in front of me?
He takes a few deep breaths. “The next morning, I woke up in a hotel room. I didn’t remember how I got there and a woman was dressed and starting to walk out of the room. I yelled for her to stop. She turned around and looked at me in fear so I worried that I forced myself on her while I was drunk. I’d never been that type of man, but I was so distraught over your mother that I could see myself turning into a monster. She told me that nothing happened between us. That I was wasted and she could tell I couldn’t drive so she helped me get to this room. She worried I may hurt myself in the state I was in so she stayed to watch over me. This is what she told me. I went home to your mom, apologizing for being an ass and asking how I could help her to feel better. What did we have to do to get her well?”
“Why do I feel like there’s a ball that’s about to be dropped on me? A big fucking ball?” I look at the man who fathered me and I see nervousness. I feel twitchy and wonder if I really want to hear the rest.
“Your mom beat the first bout of cancer fast. They caught it early. We thought she would go on to live a long and healthy life. We were happy. One day, the three of us were in Junction City. We had gone there for dinner and ice cream. Your mom was waiting in the car and I took you to the bathroom. You were about three and a half and I ran into the woman from the hotel. I vaguely remembered her, knew she looked familiar. Honestly, I wouldn’t have noticed her at all, except she gasped when she saw me and then I noticed him.”
Mikos’ stops talking and I see him struggling again to control his emotions. What the fuck does he mean by he saw him? Who the fuck is “him”?
“Tucker, I’m so sorry. I looked into the eyes of the little boy whose hand she was holding and I knew he was my son, your brother.”
“What!” I fly up from the couch and start pacing. “Brother! I don’t have a fucking brother. I always wanted one, but I’ve been all alone all these years. What the fuck kind of shit is this?”
“Tucker, please, please let me finish.” I don’t know why the pleading in his voice cuts through the pain in my heart, the hammering in my head, but it does. I look at him and the pain in his heart that I can see goes soul deep makes me want to hear him out.
“I looked at this little boy who was only a little over one and I could do the math. He had my eyes and he looked like you. I knew he was mine. Your mom couldn’t see us from where we were standing so I told this woman, whose name I couldn’t even remember at the time, that I wanted her name, number, and we were getting a paternity test. She begged me to let it go, but I refused. I didn’t tell your mom. I needed to know for sure.”
“Did mom ever know?” I had to ask because I never met my brother and I couldn’t picture my loving mom turning a child away.
“No. I did get the paternity test and it proved he was mine, but Gloria talked me into walking away. She told me she purposely took me to the hotel that night because she knew I wouldn’t remember what I had done and she planned to be gone before I woke up, but she fell asleep. She and her husband wanted kids desperately and it wasn’t happening. She had gone through testing and knew the problem wasn’t her. It would kill her husband to find out he was the reason they couldn’t conceive, so she set out to find someone with similar features and coloring. I fit the bill. She begged me not to break up their family. I thought of you, your mom, and the guilt I had over what I’d done. I chose my family over him. I knew he was in a family who loved him. It ate at me, but I couldn’t hurt your mom by telling her.”
“Does Grams know?”
“No. The only person who knows is Cal Senior. He wanted me to file charges because he said what she did was rape, but I could never bring myself to do it. I felt like some part of me must have known what was going on. Cal says I was too drunk to know. To this day, he’s pissed off at me that I didn’t, but that would have meant hurting your mother. I just couldn’t do that.”
“Do you know where my brother is?” I don’t know why I ask. Maybe I’m in shock. I don’t even know what I’ll do with the information.
“I don’t know where he is now. I don’t even know what their last name is, but I have a picture of him when he was thirteen. It was the last picture Gloria sent to me before I asked her to stop. She found out your mom died and thought it would help me to see pictures of him. If you want me to, I can ask Cal to find out where he is.”
I’m not sure what I want. This is too much to process. Him being here at all is too much.
“I don’t understand why you left me.” My voice is softer than I intended.
“How do I put this so you can understand?” He pauses. He looks me in the eyes and I respect him for that. “When your mom got sick again, I thought it was karma coming back at me for being with another woman. But, I thought she’d beat it like she did the first time. She was the strongest woman I’d ever met, even stronger than your Grams. So, when she died, I knew it was karma kicking my ass for walking out on my son too. Karma was telling me I didn’t have the right to love anyone because I tainted everyone I love. I truly believed I was the reason your mom died, that I was the one who took her away from you. I thought if I stayed in your life, I’d find a way to hurt you too. I left to protect you from me.”
Tears fall down his face now and I want to go to him, but I can’t. It’s ingrained in us to comfort our parents, but he broke that bond between us.
“I’m so sorry, Tucker. I missed you every day I was away from you. I was so proud when you started acting. I went to every play you were in during school. You never knew I was there. I sat in the very back row and left as soon as it ended because I didn’t want you to be upset by my presence. I’ve watched all your movies and I wish I could say I’ve watched your show, but honestly, I hate vampire shit.”
I laugh at that. I can’t help it. His honesty is shocking.
“Happy birthday, Son.” I don’t correct him. “There are so many birthdays I missed that I should have been there for. I can never apologize enough times and I’m not asking you to forgive me. I just want you to know that I never, not for one second, stopped loving you. Loving you is what saved my life.”
“Saved your life?”
“There’s so much you don’t know, Tucker. I became a horrible drunk. I was trying to kill myself with the booze. I thought it would be easier for you to mourn me than deal with a father who left. I’d drown myself daily in whatever alcohol I could get my hands on. Your grandmother tried to save me. Cal tried to save me. Nothing worked. But, one night, before I got into the bottle, I swear your mother came to me and told me to make amends with you. I swear, she said to remember my love for you. I dumped out every ounce of alcohol I had and never touched a drop since then. I went to find you that night, but you had already left for L.A.”
“Why didn’t you go there?”
“I figured you had started a new life and didn’t need the baggage from your old life tying you down. Once again, I thought karma was laughing at me. Do you know my favorite memory of you as a child?”
He smiles through his tears and I shake my head no.
“You were twelve, I think. I had really let myself go, full beard, rarely showered or washed my clothes. It was Christmas and your grandmother was expecting me to show up, but I knew I couldn’t go looking the way I did and I was too distraught to clean up so I watched you from the window. You saw me and you asked your grandparents if you could invite the homeless man in for Christmas because no one should be alone for the holidays. I knew they were raising you right and I had made a good decision for you.”
“I still needed my dad,” I say, feeling choked up.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Silence stretches out between us for a few seconds before he says, “I guess I should head out and let you get back to celebratin
g your day. Merry Christmas, Tucker.”
He stands up and starts to walk away. Something in me just can’t let that happen. “Wait. Do you have plans for dinner?” I know we have more than enough food and room for an extra person.
“No.” Hope flares on his face.
“Would you like to stay?”
“I’d like that.”
“Can you show me the picture of my brother?”
He takes his wallet from his back pocket and pulls the picture out. He hands it to me and I have to use every bit of acting technique I have to keep a straight face. Even as a teenager, I know these eyes, know this face that’s smiling at me.
Holy shit! I know who my brother is.
Chapter Fifty One
Adriana
I was so proud of Tucker when he asked Mikos to stay for dinner. Things weren’t perfect with them, but they talked about memories of Lily and were able to smile together. I could see some mending happening for both of them.
The rest of the day was chaos, people coming and going, good food, and lots of laughs. I think Tucker’s favorite part was having the boys over. He got so excited to give them their gifts. I hadn’t realized how much playing with them meant to him until he gave them their gifts. He had a whole pile of gifts that he told them were for all of them, so the boys divvied them up and tore through them in seconds.
My heart warmed when I saw the entire Imaginext castle set. I think Tucker bought every dragon, knight, and piece he could find to it. It was a little babyish for Kale Junior, but he didn’t say anything other than thank you. When Kaleb asked to open the castle, Tucker sat right down and started opening it without waiting to see if the boys had any other gifts to unwrap. He opened all of the toys he bought them and played with the boys until Dee and Kale said it was time to go.
At one point, Mikos slipped from the room. I followed, afraid he was leaving without saying goodbye to Tucker. I found him in the kitchen, staring out the window. It was obvious he was emotional, but I wasn’t prepared for what he said to me.
