by L. D. Davis
I fought back emotions as I offered him my finger, before remembering that I had touched all kinds of gross things since leaving my apartment and I didn’t want my fingers in his mouth.
“You didn’t come,” Emmy blurted out.
I felt bad for her for a minute. It must have been torture for her as she waited for me to respond. She must have thought that I didn’t want Lucas, and I couldn’t imagine how that must have felt.
“Yeah, I'm sorry,” I said. “I was out of town. My sister just happened to be in my apartment dropping off some things I left in her basement when the letter came. I didn't read it until this morning when I got in.”
I looked at her, hoping she believed me.
“I understand,” she said, shifting Lucas from one arm to another.
“Can I hold him?” I asked.
“Of course.”
Carefully, Emmy passed Lucas to me. Again I had to fight back emotions as I looked at this perfect baby boy that I helped create. I had a great relationship with all of my nieces and nephews, and at one point in my life I had wanted children, but after what I went through with Emmy, I didn’t think about it anymore. However, only moments after meeting Lucas, I knew I’d never be the same, and I felt so grateful to hold my son.
***
I stayed with Emmy and Lucas all day that day. I played with him, I talked to him, I held him, I changed him, and I only released him long enough for Emmy to feed him. I should have looked away when I saw how uncomfortable she was to breast feed him in front of me, but it wasn’t about her. It was about Lucas. Everything about him was perfect and I couldn’t take my eyes off of him, even though he was feeding off of his exposed mother.
I had only been with him for a short time, but I could not imagine just leaving and having to deal with child custody agreements and the distance that would surely be between us when Emmy went back to wherever the hell she came from. Moreover, if she was with Kyle, I was going to have to fight to make sure that Lucas knew who his father really was. The idea that I would have to go up against Kyle again for someone else I loved infuriated me. I let him win last time, because Emmy stopped being worth the trouble when she allowed the situation to continue, but I wasn’t going to let him win my son.
As the day wore on, I became angrier and angrier with Emmy for keeping our son from me. It stirred the pot of negativity I had been carrying around for her. When Lucas took a nap, I threw myself into my work, virtually ignoring her so that I wouldn’t snap, and I was very close to snapping. I had never in my life hit a woman, but the urge to put my hands around her throat and squeeze was pretty damn overwhelming. My sense of right and wrong and the fact that our child was sleeping a few feet away are what saved her from my wrath that day. I couldn’t even look at her, but I chanced one glance and immediately regretted it.
Beside the fact that she looked like a scared, trapped, and scarred animal, Emmy was breathtaking. Her hair had grown significantly and the extra pounds she put on from her pregnancy gave her curves she had never had before. Her skin looked so soft and I so badly wanted to touch her to find out, but instead I made some ridiculous comment about her hair growing out and the sound of Lucas waking from his nap stopped me from saying anything further.
I went back to virtually ignoring Emmy until Lucas went to bed for the night. Still seething mad, I turned to her to confront her but I bit my tongue when I saw the look on her face. She was actually pouting a little. What the hell? I scratched my head trying to figure this out, but then I realized I had completely taken over all day and Em didn’t get much time with Lucas herself. I couldn’t blame her. He was a remarkable kid.
“I'm sorry. I totally took over today,” I said.
“I'm not used to sharing him,” she said, looking at her hands in her lap. She had not looked me in the eyes since I first saw them in the lobby earlier in the day.
“I'm going to go pick up some dinner,” I said, moving towards the door. “We'll talk when I get back.”
She probably wasn’t going to like what I was going to suggest, but I had to make some kind of effort to hold on to Lucas.
“Hold on,” she said and hurried into the bedroom. She held out a room key to me. “You can let yourself back in. I'm going to take a shower.”
When I took it from her, my fingers grazed hers. I was pissed off at the tremors of electricity that shot up my fingers and through my arm. I was pissed that she still had that effect on me after all she had done. I quickly pulled away and rushed out of the door.
When I returned later, Emmy was still in the shower. I set the food down on the coffee table and pulled my phone out of my pocket. Claire had called several times during the day, and there was no way I was in the mood to sort through her many text messages. I made sure the phone was still muted and put it down on the table before going into the bedroom to check on Lucas.
I leaned over the crib and watched as his little mouth made suckling motions as he slept. I couldn’t believe I had missed not only the first five months of his life, but all of the time that he was growing inside of his mother’s womb. I missed sonogram pictures, measurements, and most of all his birth. I would have given anything to have been there when he was born. The fact that Emmy denied me all of this made me want to snatch my son out of his crib and take him from her so she would know how it felt, but I pushed those irrational thoughts away and just thanked god I still had a chance, albeit late. I looked at his little fingers attached to his little hands, and the wisps of blond hair across his forehead. His little chest rose and fell easily and his soft snores made me smile.
The bathroom door opened and I heard Emmy’s sharp intake of breath when she saw me.
“Sorry,” I said and glanced over at her, taking note that she was wrapped in a towel. I looked back at Lucas. “I’m just…amazed. He’s perfect.”
“Yes, he is,” she agreed softly.
I looked up at her again. Her wet hair clung to her bare shoulders. The towel didn’t hide her curves or the swells of her full breasts. If things were as they should have been, I would have relieved her of her towel and made love to her damp body. But things weren’t as they should have been. Emmy cheated on me for months after I had given her my heart. Even after I told her that I hoped that Kyle broke her heart and made her choke on it, if she would have dropped everything and everyone and came after me in Chicago, I would have given in and I would have taken her back, but she didn’t, and that crushed me, too. Then she hid her pregnancy from me, probably had plans to raise my son with that dick Kyle. She hid Lucas’s birth, and for five months of his life denied him his father. I never did anything so horrible as to deserve this disgusting treatment from Emmy. I did nothing but love her and then let her go so she could be with that asshole, and yet she punished me relentlessly. My heart was breaking all over again as I looked at her in that towel, and this time the pain was so much deeper because my absence from Lucas’s life was also heartbreaking.
I did what I needed to do so that I wouldn’t do anything I’d regret with Lucas in the room. I turned away from this woman, the only woman in the world who had the power to break me.
Chapter Two
Emmy squeezed herself into the corner of the couch, trying to shrink away from my harsh words. It looked like the couch was eating her. She looked so defeated. I was being downright cruel and she didn’t even defend herself, not even a little bit. The Emmy I left behind in New Jersey wouldn’t have let me verbally abuse her, whether she was in the wrong or not. This woman just sat there and took it. I never believed in fighting someone unwilling to fight for themselves, so I changed course.
“You do love Lucas, though,” I said, pulling my anger in. “You’re a good mother, I will give you that.”
She nodded, but didn’t meet my eyes. She stared at the wall on the other side of the room, willing herself not to look at me, and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I was so angry with her, yet so hurt by her, and I even felt sorry for her. This couldn’t have been ea
sy, even if she put herself in this precarious position in the first place by withholding such pertinent information. If I didn’t hate her right then as much as I loved her right then, I would have tried to soothe her, but then I didn’t really think she deserved soothing. I moved on.
“Anyway,” I sighed and looked away. “I have to put the past behind me, for Lucas's sake. I want to be part of his life. I just started my own firm, so I'm not really in a position to do too much traveling right now. I don't know anything about your situation,” I paused, unsure if I really wanted to know the answer to what I was about to ask. How much was I going to have to fight to get her and Lucas where I needed them? “Do you have your job to get back to in Philly…or anyone…waiting?”
Her green and brown eyes widened as she shook her head. “I haven't been in Philly since January. My family packed up the house and sold it.”
“You loved that house,” I said, surprised to hear this for the first time. Another fact Samantha failed to reveal to me.
Emmy tried to shrug it off, but I could hear the pain in her voice when she spoke. “Whatever sentiment I had attached to that house was obliterated.”
What the hell? What the hell happened in that house after I left? My first instinct was that Kyle Sterling did something shitty, but now wasn’t the time to ask.
“You say your family packed up—where were you?” I asked.
“The French countryside.”
The French countryside? Who the hell does that? Who the hell just picks up and moves to the French countryside? She made it seem like she had just went to the beach for a few weeks or something.
“Is that where you live?”
“Oh, no. I've been stateside since a month before Lucas was born. I'm not really tied down anywhere.”
“No boyfriends or anything?” I asked carefully.
“If you're wondering about Kyle Sterling, I haven't seen him since I left Philly.”
“I was curious, but it wasn't just about him,” I said, though it really was mostly about him. I had to know if there was some other man in my son’s life.
“I'm completely single,” she said dismally.
I was relieved. I was able to breathe a little easier, but then I had to tell her what I’d been thinking.
“I've been thinking about this most of the day,” I said, running a hand through my hair.
“Thinking about what?”
“I want you and Lucas to move in with me.”
Emmy shifted uncomfortably. I knew what I was asking her was a lot, but she owed me this. In the very least, she owed me this.
“It will be good for Lucas to have his parents raising him together, at least at first. It gives him the best of both worlds, and just developmentally speaking, he will do well to have us both there at once. We'll both be able to participate in the everyday little things that parents get to experience with a child. I don't want to miss anything,” I said firmly, even though my voice trembled. My hands balled into fists as I waited for her response. I needed her to give me this.
“What if you start seeing someone?” she asked. I noted how she didn’t ask the question of herself.
“I'm not seeing anyone, not really.” There was no need to bring up Claire. “That's a bridge we'll have to cross when we get to it.”
Emmy scrunched her nose up for a brief second. It was an analogy she hated, but I had forgotten until now.
“You won't have to worry about anything,” I said. “I'll take care of the bills, buying the diapers and whatever either of you need.”
“That won't be an issue. I can take care of me and Lucas.”
“Then take care of yourself if you insist, but I want to take care of my son.”
She sighed. “How big is your apartment? Lucas needs a crib, and some other things.”
“It's only a one bedroom, but you and Lucas can have my room. I'll take the couch. We can look for a bigger place later. Does this mean you'll do it?”
Very slowly, she nodded. I breathed a sigh of relief and actually found myself smiling at her. She tried to smile back, but failed. Instead, she just looked plain scared.
***
I walked into my sister’s house, unannounced and without knocking. It was almost midnight, but I knew I’d find Lena in the kitchen sipping on a cup of hot cocoa. Even when she was at her sickest, she didn’t deviate from this nightly ritual. She waited until all of the kids and Chuck were in bed or otherwise occupied and made her cocoa the old fashioned way in a pot on the stove with real milk. She didn’t care about the calories or the sugar. It was her way of unwinding and it was one of few things she gave to herself. Rarely did I ever interrupt this ritual, but these were special circumstances.
“Hello, little brother,” she said from the kitchen table. She didn’t look at all surprised to see me as she pushed a second steaming mug in my direction. “I was expecting you. Sit down.”
I hesitated before sitting down. Was she expecting me because she saw that I had a letter from Emmy or was she expecting me because she knew about my son before me? Lena and Emmy’s mom Samantha were very close. I hated it at first, when she pushed herself into my family after Emmy had broken my heart, but she and Emmy’s dad Fred Sr. were such a large support system for my family. I’m not sure how well any of us would have done without Sam’s big mouth and need to nurture.
I sat down across from Lena and looked into her blue eyes. Her eyes and my sister Lorraine’s eyes weren’t as shockingly blue as my own, but they were close. Lena’s were a little duller after battling breast cancer, but they were still alive and they still seeped into my mind and soul like no one else’s in the world. Five years my senior, Lena never treated me like a pesky little brother as most older siblings did. She was my best friend growing up, the person I could rely on to play with me when I had no one to play with, help me with my homework when my parents were working, and to bandage my knees after I’d fall while skateboarding. She attended all of my sporting events, drove me and my friends around when she got her license, and she gave great advice when girls began to become a factor. When I broke it off with Emmy, she didn’t offer her opinion on the matter. She was sad for me and she was sad for Emmy, and she was sad for the family, because everyone had really liked Emmy. I knew she wanted me to give Emmy another chance, but she didn’t push the issue. She was just there for me, even though she was fighting for her life.
“He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” she asked quietly as she looked at me.
I dropped my eyes to my cocoa. It hurt me badly to know that Lena knew about Lucas before me. “You’ve seen him before then?” I asked.
“Just in pictures. I was giving her the benefit of doubt. I knew she’d eventually come around and tell you on her own.”
“You should have told me just the same,” I said bitterly.
“I was afraid that if anyone else told you but Emmy, you would overreact and then she would overreact, and possibly run. Everything could have turned into one big pile of shit if things had happened that way, but they’re not a big pile of shit now. Right?”
“Right,” I said grudgingly, knowing that she was right, but it still didn’t feel good to be the last to know. “Does Mom know? Lorraine?”
“No. They don’t know. Just me and Chuck.”
She sipped on her hot chocolate and I followed her lead and sipped on mine. I was relieved to know that my entire family had not been keeping the big secret from me.
“I asked Emmy to move in with me,” I said after a few quiet moments.
“Did she say yes?”
“Yes. If I could keep Lucas without her, I would, but I’m not that cruel,” I said sourly.
“She did what she thought was best, Luke.”
“Then her thinking is obviously flawed, Lena.”
“I understand that you are hurt and angry, but you are going to have to deal with it. You have to show your son how to treat women, even if it’s the woman that broke his heart.”
I sighed and nodd
ed in agreement. “I understand.”
“How do you feel?” Lena asked.
“What do you mean how do I feel?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “I’m angry and I’m hurt. I missed five months of my son’s life—that’s if you don’t include the nine months he was in the womb. I feel this huge gaping hole inside of me that I didn’t have before, and I know I shouldn’t really feel this way today, but missing that chunk of Lucas’s life is killing me, Lena.”
Lena pushed out of her chair and walked the few steps to me. I immediately wrapped my arms around my sister’s waist. I was shocked and ashamed when I felt the tears sliding out of my eyes.
“I didn’t even have time to get my shit together,” I sobbed. “She didn’t even give me the time that she had during the pregnancy to come to grips with being a parent. I have no fucking idea how to be someone’s dad, Lena!”
My sister didn’t try to hush me and she didn’t tell me everything would be okay. I always appreciated that Lena was not a bull shitter.
“No kid comes with a manual, Luke,” she said with a small laugh. “Whether you had nine months or nine years, you’ll be trying to figure out whether or not you’re doing the right thing for your kids for the rest of your life. We’re all grown up and Mom still questions some of her decisions involving us. You just have to do the best you can do, put your best foot forward and always put Lucas before yourself, before his mother, before anyone else in the world.”
“I don’t know how to do that and deal with Emmy, too. I fucking hate her and I fucking love her. Being so close to her breaks my damn heart all over again, and I am so damn angry.”
“You will find a way to deal with it,” Lena assured me. “You need to try to prepare for Lucas’s homecoming.”