by Kylie Parker
Those lips were still just as rosy as I remembered them.
“There were some… complications during my pregnancy,” she started.
“What kind of complications?” I asked.
I watched as tears formed behind Gracie’s eyes as she looked down at the child eating from her own breast, and I fought to keep my defenses up while internally I was roaring to wrap my arms around her. The woman who had captured my attention and mind had struggled during a time I should have been there with her, and part of me was shrieking with anger that she left.
But part of me was aching that she hurt.
“I uh… developed a tumor. In my –... my uterus while she was uh…”
Gracie sniffed and rolled her eyes before she turned her back to me and began looking out the windows and out towards the city below.
“I always loved this view,” she whispered.
“And it loved you,” I rumbled.
“But it doesn’t anymore?”
“Things that are abandoned have a tendency to do the same in return,” I spat.
I heard her let out a shuddering breath before she sniffed again and continued.
“Anyway; I left initially to have an abortion. But I just… couldn’t, I guess. My rising hCG levels were actually preventing the tumor from growing at the rate it should’ve, and the doctors told me I’d be able to carry Clara to term before things got serious.”
“Did things get serious?” I ventured to ask.
“Not until after I gave birth. Clara was a C-section and they removed my uterus and the tumor while I was opened up. They said I’d need a few rounds of chemo if the tumor was malignant and I’d be good to go.”
“But…?”
“But…” Gracie sighed heavily, “…someone mixed up the test results. It came back benign and I went home with Clara. Less than two months later I collapsed while feeding her, was rushed to the hospital, and had to undergo more tests before they figured out the first ‘test results had been wrongly assigned’ and that the tumor was actually malignant. It had spread to my kidneys and shut them down completely.”
“Where the hell were you staying that someone wasn’t looking out for you after a C-section?” I breathed.
But her pause told me everything I needed to know.
“You were staying with your mother?” I raised my voice.
“Sshhhh… Clara’s sleeping.”
Gracie turned with tears streaming down her face as Clara snored lightly against her chest. And then, I watched as she ran her hand through her hair, only to remove the wig that was sitting on top of her head.
And underneath was her smooth, bald head.
“I had to undergo some serious chemo in order to battle the growing cancer in my body, and mom was neglecting Clara’s care, per usual,” she spat. “So I had her drop Clara off here.”
“Your mother was the one that dropped Clara off?”
Now I was glad I had no idea who had dropped my girl off in front of my door, because if I’d have known it was Gracie’s mother, I would have chased her down. That woman had been nothing but trouble for Gracie since she was a little girl: she’d hopped from man to man and drug to drug, leaving Gracie alone from the time she was seven to fend for herself while she took random trips to Vegas with men she’d blow for blow before overdosing on blow and ending up in the hospital.
But I felt my blood boiling again as my fists clenched at my sides.
“And why the hell did you run to the likes of your mother instead of me?”
“Because: she’s my mother!” Gracie breathed.
“You know damn good and well I would’ve taken care of you!” I thundered.
And then Clara started crying again against Gracie’s skin.
“My god, are you always this loud with her?” she shrieked.
“I don’t know! Do you make a habit of having your mother toss her on random doorsteps?”
“How dare you use my medical condition against me? I was dying of cancer!” Gracie yelled.
“And after all the love I showed you, you still ran off to your druggie mother instead of the father of your unborn child!”
“That is enough!” Madeline roared.
She darted from the hallway and strode over to Gracie before plucking the child from her arms and cradling her close.
“The two of you get it out of your systems while I take Clara for a walk, and when I get back, she’s gonna go down for a nap. If the two of you aren’t done, then you’ll be the two kicked out onto the street until you are done.”
I could see the fire building behind Gracie’s eyes before I stepped in front of Madeline.
“Fine,” I breathed.
“Some strange woman isn’t taking my child anywhere,” Gracie glowered.
“Well she’s been your daughter’s only mother-figure for close to a month. You want to stay here? We duke this out now. I’ve got questions that deserve answers; and as Clara’s father I have a right to know them.”
And for the first time since I had known Gracie, I watched her back down and concede while she clenched her wig tightly within the palm of her hand.
18
I walked around for way longer than an hour. I held Clara in my arms while I stood in line for coffee, then I walked us around the block until I got to the park. I sat down on a bench underneath the shade of a massive magnolia, slowly drank my coffee, and let my mind swallow me whole.
Coming to live at Derek’s had been an emotional roller coaster: he had been cold, and then he had been hot. He had been fire, and then he had been ice. He could be a dick, and then he could be soft. He acted as if he knew what he wanted, and then he pulled back and practiced restraint.
And now Gracie was back, and of course she trumped it all. She was Clara’s mother! If she took Clara back, I had no job. If she stayed, there was no need for a nanny. Either way, I knew change was coming my way.
Change always came to me when I no longer wanted it.
I thought about how good it had felt to hear from him that morning. How the vibrating of my phone piqued my curiosity right before my heart fluttered at seeing his name. I couldn’t keep playing stupid about my own emotions any longer, like some childish schoolgirl who proclaimed to be stronger than she was.
My body had weakened for Derek Blake, and my heart was beginning to do the same.
He would stand tall and proud on most mornings in the rising sunlight within his own penthouse. His hair would be ruffled from sleep and his robe would always be just a little too loose. I’d catch a glimpse of the slope of his hip muscles, and the only thing I could think about was dragging my teeth across them. Whenever I showered, I wanted him to slip in behind me. Whenever I ate, I wanted him to be eating with me. Whenever I slept, I wanted to roll over and sling my leg over his body.
Whenever I trembled with want, I wanted to fall to my knees and beg for his touch.
Clara’s squealing giggle ripped my attention away from my thoughts; that’s when I realized how low the sun was beginning to dip below the horizon. My coffee was lukewarm and the chill of the shade was setting in, so I got up from the bench and tossed the coffee cup in the garbage.
I had to make my way back to Derek’s home and get Clara back to her mother.
I walked as fast as I could back to the complex that I had called home for the past three weeks, and Franz nodded his head and smiled. He opened the door while I clutched Clara close, and I couldn’t help but feel a mysterious rush of panic flow down the back of my spine. It clenched my lungs and made it hard to breathe, and when I finally stepped into the elevator I realized Franz had stepped in behind me.
“Going up?” he asked.
Tears rose to my eyes as Clara tried to turn around to see the dark-skinned man standing beside me, and just as they streamed down my cheek Franz’s voice wafted in the confines of the elevator.
“She that bad?”
I whipped my head over to him as my eyes grew wide, but before I could offer him
an answer the elevator whipped open. I cleared my throat and gingerly stepped out into the hallway, but when I turned to begin walking to Derek’s front door a sight that made me sick caught my eye.
My suitcase was sitting outside of the opened door.
I felt my knees begin to knock together while I slowly approached the door, and had I been paying attention I would’ve realized the elevator didn’t shut behind me. My jaw began to tremble and my neck was being bathed in my tears. When my body finally got around the corner, I saw Derek standing at his full-length windows with his shoulders pulled back tautly.
And Gracie was dragging another zipped luggage bag with the rest of my belongings.
“Oh, there you are,” she breathed. She kicked the bag with my things in it towards me before ripping her daughter from my arms, and my soul cried out for an explanation.
It cried out for Derek to do something.
“Derrie and I did some talkin’,” she began, “and since I’m gonna be staying, there’s no need for a full-time live-in nanny now that Clara’s got her mother.”
She’s staying.
Gracie was… was staying with… with him.
With Derek.
With the man I’d fallen in love with.
I nodded lightly before I swallowed down the last of my sobs. I didn’t want to cause a scene. Derek’s life had already been upended enough in the past month, and I didn’t need to cause any more heartache.
Mr. Blake.
I suppose I needed to start calling him “Mr. Blake” again.
“I’m sure Clara will love to have you back,” I managed to breathe.
“I’ve missed her so much…” Gracie trailed off.
“We’ll still need you Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Derek’s voice rumbled into the room.
“Derrie, there really isn’t-”
“I will renegotiate her contract with the agency, Gracie,” Derek commanded.
I meant – Mr. Blake.
Gracie pursed her lips before she slowly turned her head towards me. She wasn’t anything like I imagined or anything like Mr. Blake had described. From what little he had told me of her, she was carefree and free-willed; spontaneous and strong; always smiling and always needed, her own needs forced on her lest she burn herself out taking care of everyone else.
But the woman standing before me was none of those things. I looked into her sea foam eyes and she seemed … secretive… and … conniving.
As if she knew there was another ace stashed in the card deck, waiting, just for her.
“You’ll start next week,” Gracie nodded.
I analyzed Mr. Blake from where I was standing. His body was pulled tightly upright and his shoulders were rolled back, but he didn’t seem to be standing very tall. His head was slightly cocked and his hair was more disheveled than it usually was during the day, and I could’ve sworn I saw his hands trembling as they clasped behind his back.
“I’m sure someone from the agency will call,” she breathed before she reached out for the door and slowly began to close it on me.
The thump of the door shutting in my face jolted me from my trance, and suddenly I was alone again. The girl who dropped out of graduate school and took a job at a grocery store was slowly beginning to claw her way to the top, and the only thing I could think about was where I was going to sleep that night. Mr. Blake’s penthouse for the past three weeks held my bed, my bathroom, and my company. It held my food, my water, my safety, and my emotions for what seemed like ages.
And yet, it had only been three weeks.
“Idiot,” I cursed myself as I bent down to get my things.
But a dark, wrinkled hand came into my vision and clasped onto the handle of my rolling bag.
“Lemme help ya with that,” Franz said lowly.
I turned my gaze towards him but I didn’t have the energy to be stunned. His eyes were kind and worried, and they reminded me of a father’s eyes. Eyes a daughter should have during a time when she felt betrayed and abandoned.
I felt betrayed and abandoned by a man I had started to learn to trust.
I watched as he rolled my suitcase behind him, and just before I went to go grab the other bag I could’ve sworn I heard the doorknob rattle. My entire body paused and I held my breath, secretly hoping Derek would open that door and tell me I was staying.
Tell me I was wanted…
Tell me I was loved…
But when the door didn’t open and Dere– I mean, Mr. Blake didn’t step out and proclaim his nonexistent undying love for me, I let loose the breath I was holding before a sob released itself from my chest.
I was crumbling, and I didn’t know how to stop it. I mean, how many times can you break a vase before the shattered pieces are too small to pick up? Sure, the first time you smash it, it has some bigger pieces, but the fracture lines get smaller and smaller, and soon those big pieces turn to dust and get swept up into a dustpan and tossed into the trash.
I felt myself wafting down the hallway like dust.
I shuffled slowly into the elevator as sobs poured from my body, and when the elevator closed Franz dropped my suitcase and enveloped me with his arms. I laid my head on the old man’s shoulder and soaked his work uniform, and the only words I could manage only served to make me cry harder.
“Where am-... I gon-... -na sleep?”
His hands rubbed with the strength of a worn-down father, up and down my back, and I felt my legs giving way as he held me close to him. What I wouldn’t have given for my own father to comfort me like this: to have my mother tell me what I did wrong; to have my father explain to me what Mr. Blake might have needed in order for him to let me stay.
If only I had a family like he now did…
“You ain’t got nowhere to go?” Franz asked lowly.
“Not... anymore,” I whispered.
“Then, you will come and stay with me.”
I pulled away in shock as I tried to steady myself in the elevator.
“No, no, no, I-I-I can’t do that,” I shook my head.
“I ain’t got much. But I do have an extra room if you don’t mind sharin’ a bathroom with an’ old man.”
“You’re not old,” I snickered.
“And you’re not weak,” he said lowly.
I sniffled hard before I brought my hands up to my eyes to dry my tears. He was right; I wasn’t technically out of a job. Tuesdays and Thursdays would still bring in a little something, and I could get a part-time job working at another grocery store or a gas station somewhere to make ends meet. I’d saved up most of the money I had already made, and while it was only a paycheck and a half, it was better than nothing.
“I couldn’t pay you much for rent,” I shook my head.
“Can ya cook?” Franz asked.
“I think I’m decent at it.”
“Then I’ll buy the food if you cook,” he smiled.
“I think she is,” I said lightly.
“You think who is?” Franz asked.
“In the elevator coming up here, you asked me if she was that bad.”
I watched Franz’s eyes turn down with a saddened expression just as the elevator doors parted on the main floor of a building I would no longer call home.
“And I think she is, Franz,” I breathed.
19
I didn’t feel right about what had happened with Madeline. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t feel right about it, but I didn’t. I mean, it made sense: Gracie was back to take care of Clara and a nanny was no longer needed. Gracie said she wanted us to be a family. She wanted to take care of Clara the way she knew she could, now that she was doing better. She said the concentrated dose of chemotherapy she had been given from her doctor was working well, and that her doctor felt comfortable transferring her to another doctor’s care.
She’d transferred her fucking doctor to come back here.
I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it: Gracie leaving, having a daughter, Gracie having cancer. It all seemed a bit too muc
h. It’s not that I didn’t believe her, I just–
I’m really not sure. Something just didn’t sit right. In the type of work I do, my gut is the thing I rely on the most. I’ve always believed that the body picks up on signals our brains might not process, and my gut has never steered me wrong: not once. It hummed with delight when Madeline showed up, and I never once had a reason to mistrust her with Clara. It buzzed with need at the last business I acquired before my life-changing vacation, and I nailed not only the business, but also a new client.
But there was something in Gracie’s story that didn’t sit right, and I had to pay attention to that.
“When do you go see your doctor next?” I asked lowly.
Gracie was wiping the sweat from her hairless brow before her eyes lightly fluttered up to mine.
“Oh, I have to make the appointment first. My prior doctor’s letting me do some research, and all I gotta do is call to have my medical documents faxed over.”
“You don’t have a doctor here yet?” I asked.
“Oh, I’ll have one before the end of the day. Don’t worry,” she smiled at me.
I don’t know. She seemed… too cool for someone who had just gone through a scare like she did.
“How’s your incision healing?”
“Hmm?” she hummed.
“From the C-section: where they removed your uterus. How is it healing?”
She eyed me carefully before she slowly stood up, and I watched as her hands slowly pulled the loose waistband of her pants down to reveal the glaring red and purple scar just above her pubic line.
“Proof enough?” she deadpanned.
She was always so perceptive of me. She knew when I was anxious or upset, and she knew when my gut was telling me something wasn’t right. On more than one occasion she would complete my sentences or verbally tell me exactly what I was thinking, and before all this happened I would have told you it was because we were so in-sync. I would’ve said it was because we loved each other and that she was the woman made specifically for a man like me.
