You have to stay strong, Ari. You can’t let her beat you.
I knew it was true. Petra told me time and time again not to give in to my daughter. Not to give in to her screaming and crying. But it was hard. Especially now, with her going through all the changes she was. We’d just moved into a new place and she was starting to ask questions about why she didn’t have a dad like all her friends did. I never knew how to answer that.
“Ready for school?” I asked as I slipped into the front seat.
“Yeah, I guess,” Macy said.
I paused. “You okay?”
She shrugged. “Yeah.”
“You sure you don’t want to talk about anything?”
She shrugged again.
I nodded slowly. “Then off to school we go.”
I dropped her off and watched her walk inside. She didn’t look back. She didn’t wave. She didn’t do anything to acknowledge my presence. Every time she did it, it broke a little piece of me inside. I climbed back into the car with tears rushing down my cheeks. I had to get it out before I got to work. They’d just promoted me to full-time at the cafe where I worked, and I needed to make sure I presented my best.
Because if I played my cards right, I’d be a manager with a decent salary come next year.
I wiped at my eyes as I pulled into my employee-assigned parking space out back. I drew in a deep breath before patting on some powder. Then, I sighed. I walked in through the back door and immediately saw Petra waving at me from the back office where she was planning the upcoming holiday menu and inventory. Thanksgiving was only a few months away with Christmas following close on its heels and she wanted to make sure we were prepared for the orders that would come in.
I waved back as I clocked in, but the look on her face told me she knew something was wrong.
I went and took up my station at the counter. I tapped the young boy on the shoulder, signaling that he could clock out and get to school. I admired the high schoolers these days, the ones who got morning or evening jobs to go to after school. Dad never let me do something like that. Said it would get in the way of my studies too much.
What a crock of shit, after all these years.
As I heated up displayed pastries and topped off cold coffees with sweet cream, I focused on the job ahead. A seven-hour shift of dealing with small-town customers who knew all of my business. Who asked how my daughter was with a sly grin. Who looked me up and down as they asked me if I needed any help. Or if I had “heard from him.” Or if I talked to my father much anymore. I hated that they knew. And yet, I couldn’t have expected anything else out of Hollis.
I tried not to dwell on what my life could’ve been, especially while working at the cafe. It wasn’t my dream job, by far, but it filled in the gaps and gave me extra money to set aside in between selling off my artwork.
Which didn’t happen as often as I wanted it to.
I breathed in deeply as customers passed me by. I worked like the robot I felt like most days, then got off with just enough time to go pick up Macy. I hated that I didn’t get time to talk with Petra today. We hadn’t gotten together for a girls’ night in a while. We’d been surviving off phone calls at night and text messages throughout the day, even though we worked at the same place. But the popularity of the cafe was kicking up, despite the way the customers complained, which meant truncated lunch breaks for those not employed full-time yet.
I got into the back of the car ride line and groaned. This line sucked. It backed up so quickly and took me forever to get through. By the time I picked my daughter up, she was cranky from waiting, and I was cranky from sitting in a car with no fucking air-conditioning. I didn’t have the money to fix it, not after the repairs the house needed once we moved in a few weeks ago. Plumbing that didn’t work downstairs. Carpet that needed to be replaced. The entire back patio concrete had to be re-poured, lest I risk my daughter slipping and falling onto sharp, jagged edges.
The girl loved to be outside.
I didn’t know why my father let the house go as much as he did. I mean, he was living in it, up until that point, anyway. He and I didn’t talk much nowadays, not unless it was about Macy. He moved out a couple of months ago to downsize and got himself a two-bedroom townhome on the other side of town, closer to the field for his regular pickup games he still played and near the bingo hall for his Friday nights out.
It took a great deal of persuasion for him to hand the house over to me.
My phone vibrating pulled me out of my trance. As the car ride line started moving, I pulled my phone out. I saw that I had a text from Petra and smiled. I opened it up, hoping it had words of comfort for me.
Girls’ night soon. I miss you like crazy. Let me know when you’re free.
I quickly texted her back as the line stopped again.
You know I run the same schedule Macy does. Free every single weekend! Let me know.
I tucked my phone away and heard someone honk their horn at me. I jumped before I slammed on the gas, lurching the car to life. I zoomed right up to the circle where the kids were supposed to be picked up and saw my daughter standing there with her arms crossed. Oh, fuck. That wasn’t a good look.
Macy didn’t have a good day at school.
“Hey there, honey,” I said.
“Hi,” she said hotly.
She slammed the door as she got in and fumbled with her seat belt.
“Stupid thing,” she murmured.
“Language,” I said.
“You say it. I can say it.”
“No, you can’t. Because you’re not an adult.”
“You’re barely an adult,” she murmured.
It took all I had not to fire back at her. I wanted to ask her what was wrong, but I knew she wouldn’t tell me. She never did. Every time I tried, it started a fight. And it was a fight I didn’t have the energy to work through right then. So, I drove us home in silence as my daughter sent steam shooting out through her ears in the back seat.
“What would you like for dinner?” I asked.
“I don’t care,” she said.
“You want spaghetti?”
“I said, I don’t care.”
“Pizza?”
“I don’t care, Mom.”
I sighed. “At least give me some clue as to what you want.”
“What I want is for you to leave me alone!”
I drew in a deep breath. “Then you can go do your homework in your room. And when you’re ready to address me without the attitude, you can come downstairs and eat.”
“I hate you. I hate you so much!”
She jumped out of my car, and I watched her stomp onto the porch, trying to open the door before she turned back out toward me.
“Mom, can you unlock the door?”
So much for the diva stomp off.
I got out of my car and gathered my purse.
“You want to try using your manners this time?” I asked.
She sighed. “Can you please unlock the door so I can go upstairs?”
“Of course.”
I expected her to rush upstairs and slam her door. But when I opened the front door of my childhood home, she calmly walked inside. I furrowed my brow as she stood in the foyer. I closed the door behind us and made my way into the kitchen. I started pulling things out for spaghetti and garlic bread, craving nothing more than a massive bowl of meat sauce and yummy noodles.
“Mom, why don’t I have a daddy?”
And as the question slapped me across the face, I dropped the glass jar of pasta sauce to the floor shattering it into a million pieces.
4
Simon
I leaned back in my chair as I sat at my desk. My alma mater. The desk my old coach used to sit at. I stared up at the ceiling as I ran through my head all the things I needed to do before this season started. I needed to work on the schedules for the practices for the spring baseball season. I needed to get the practice schedule out for the men’s and women’s volleyball team. I need
ed to put in a requisition to the campus to have the gym floor professionally buffed and cleaned before practices started. And I needed to pick the Dean’s brain about resanding the outside volleyball practice courts.
But instead, I stared at the ceiling as my phone clattered to the floor.
Cancer. My father had cancer. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t even know if I was still breathing. Tears welled in my eyes, and it grew hard to catch my breath. My father had said it so calmly. So rationally. As if he were expecting his life to pan out this way.
“Cancer,” I whispered.
How the hell could Tommy Redman, the strongest man I’d ever known, have cancer?
The chair slowly brought me upright, and I reached for my phone. Tears fell from my eyes, but I remained calm. Being the head coach on staff at my alma mater in Connecticut taught me lessons in patience, in finding my own peace and accepting things as they were and not fretting over what I couldn’t change. They were lessons I tried passing down to my players over the years. Even though I didn’t have my personal hands on every sports team, I tried to have a personal influence over them at some point in time. I wanted to make a difference here. I wanted the kids of this university to walk away feeling proud of something.
Like I had once I graduated.
I looked around my office before I picked up the phone. I dialed the extension for the Dean’s office before sitting back in my chair. I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, trying to get a grip on myself.
“Please tell me you’ve thought about my offer.”
Dean Langley’s voice came over the phone, and I snickered.
“Still going on about me taking that sabbatical?” I asked.
“It’s a paid sabbatical. And you’ve earned it.”
“I’ve only worked here for eight years, sir.”
“Don’t you ‘sir’ me. I’ve known you ever since you were a sophomore here.”
I sighed. “I know, Michael. I know.”
“You haven’t taken an ounce of vacation. If you’re not coaching, you’re volunteering in classrooms. Organizing marathons around the campus. Helping us advertise. Attending faculty meetings you don’t need to be part of. I’m offering you a paid yearlong sabbatical. Just like I gave LeRoy when he was in your position.”
I paused. “Is that why I essentially ran this department my entire senior year of college?”
He snickered. “What the hell did you think it was all about? LeRoy about jumped at the opportunity, and it groomed for us one of the finest coaches we’ve ever had.”
“Yeah, and he retired less than two years later.”
“So, we hired you. What’s the problem?”
“Are you expecting me to retire after this? Because you’re not getting rid of me that easily, Michael.”
He barked with laughter. “Nonsense. I know you’ll still be back and forth doing something, even though I tell you to do nothing. No, you deserve this sabbatical, and I have a few things up my sleeve I want to get accomplished in your absence.”
“Like?”
“I know you’re always battling with Finance over the supplies you need. I have a feeling I can make a good case for them upping your budget if you’re not around to constantly breathe down their neck about things.”
“Then, who will if I’m gone?” I asked.
He chuckled. “I will, and that’s the point.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“Look, our Sports Management department has grown because of your influence. But you do so damn much around here that we don’t have enough senior internships to go around. You can take the year off, with pay, and that’ll free up the internships necessary to get this graduating class—well—graduated.”
I licked my lips. “Sounds fair enough.”
“It is. And, it’ll give us time to pick through who you’ve personally educated along the way to see who we can take on part-time once you return.”
“Now, wait a second. I don’t need—”
“I know you don’t need anyone. But we have the funds to hire you someone part-time. So, why not? Look, it’s a win-win for everyone. You come back to the budget you deserve for all your teams, you get a year off, and we get the internships around here we need to get this graduating class out of here. Which gives me a year to figure out what we’re going to do about the next graduating class.”
I sighed. “At least have my assistant coach look after things.”
“Who the hell did you think I was going to talk to next?”
I grinned. “Well, I guess if it’ll benefit the students graduating this year…”
“Can I take that as a yes?”
I nodded. “Yes, sir. Consider me officially on sabbatical.”
We talked through the logistical details, and then I hung up the phone. I heard my assistant coach’s phone ringing in his office, and I grinned to myself. Might as well get out of there anyway. I gathered my things and tucked them all away. I cleared off my desk before closing the blinds to my office. I typed up an email, informing everyone who needed to know that I’d be away on sabbatical this year and to route their concerns through Dean Langley and my assistant coach.
Then, for the first time in nine years, I headed home.
I went back to my place to pack everything I figured I might need, then resolved myself to buying whatever I left behind once I got to Hollis. I tossed everything into my truck and cranked up the engine, taking one last look at my shitty one-bedroom apartment.
It looked like hell, but it was cheap, which was great on my kind of a salary.
As the miles between campus and my hometown started to lessen, it hit me. I was going home. Going back to Hollis. A place I hadn’t stepped foot in since I was nineteen years old. After the “summer of Ari,” I hadn’t gone home. Not once. Dad came to see me for all the holidays and birthdays, and I used my work-study-internship thing on campus with the teams as a reason to bunk in the dorms during the summer and winter holidays. I always had a place to stay, the cafeteria always had a hot meal for me, and the miniscule amount of money that lined my pocket always seemed to be enough to get me by.
It was easier that way.
Less painful.
I still hated Mr. Procter’s guts. Even after all these years, I still fumed every time I thought about it—when he’d tossed me out in the cold, rainy weather, him fighting with my father in the kitchen, trying to pin some sort of assault on me simply because he was pissed that his daughter had a sex drive. It made me fucking sick. If I ever had a daughter, I’d let her know how beautiful she was and how accepted she was with me. I’d let her know she was free to be who she wanted, and that if she had sex for the right reasons, I’d accept that about her life. I wouldn’t punish her for it or pressure her into a life she didn’t want to live.
I’d love her, not control her.
But the second I breached the city limits of Hollis, guilt set in for never saying goodbye. I mean, she’d never reached out to say goodbye, either. But at least she had an excuse. For all I knew, her father never told her I left. For all I knew, she simply thought I’d skipped town early and left her in the dust.
“I should’ve fucking reached out,” I murmured.
Being back home wouldn’t be easy. But for my father, I’d do it. He deserved at least that much from me. Especially after everything I’d put him through that summer, and beyond. I hadn’t taken to my internship kindly and resented it for the first year. Even after I fell into enjoying the job, I tried painting it to my father as if I didn’t. He always knew better, though. He always called me out on the joy in my voice as I talked about practices and schedules.
A man after his own heart, he called me.
I wish I felt that way, though.
I’d never be as strong or as good as my father. I’d never be as understanding, or as patient. I swear, if he was Catholic, they would have deemed him the patron saint of dealing with other people’s nonsense. Because he was good at that. He was good at
talking people away from the ledge.
Darkness began to set over Hollis, but it didn’t bother me. Even after nine years away, I could’ve navigated to my childhood home in my sleep. I pulled into the driveway and sighed. My father’s truck was parked there, and I chuckled as I pulled up next to it. Truck to truck. Him, a retired sport’s coach. Me, a budding sports coach. Him without a good woman in his life. Me, without a good woman in mine.
Maybe I was a lot more like him than I thought.
I turned off the engine and shut down the lights. I climbed out of the truck and reached for one of my smaller bags, an overnight bag I’d packed so I didn’t have to haul all my shit up the stairs the second I got here. I walked up to the front door, and it seemed smaller than I remembered it being.
I took in a deep breath of the clean air and noticed a crispness in it. I thought back briefly to all of the holidays I’d spent in my childhood home, running downstairs Christmas morning to all the gifts under the tree and nothing but crumbs on the plate of cookies I’d left for Santa. I supposed it would be nice to spend Christmas at home again.
Approaching the door I knocked instead of just walking in.
“Coming!” I heard my father call out.
I put on my best smile as he opened the door. The screen door stood between us as he emerged into the moonlight. His eyes widened as he swung the door open, causing me to take a step back. And as he stepped out onto the porch, his lips parted in shock.
“Simon,” he said breathlessly.
“So, I’m on a sabbatical right now,” I said.
“From the university?”
I nodded. “Yep. The whole year.”
“You’re really here.”
I dropped my suitcase. “I’m here, Dad.”
Tears fell down his cheeks as he wrapped me up in his arms. I buried my face into the crook of his neck and clapped his back soundly. My breathing came in shuddering pants. I sniffled as I tried to hold back my own tears, and as my father openly wept against my neck, I felt my tears wetting his shirt.
Daddy’s Secret Baby Page 3