by Emma Scott
“Miller.”
The voice froze me in place. I hadn’t heard it in seven years. Hadn’t heard my name in that voice in seven years. Slowly, I turned. My own eyes stared back at me.
My dad stood next to a bench that fronted the labyrinth, hands in the pockets of his jeans too. I had a vision of myself in twenty years. His skin darker, from working outside maybe, but the resemblance was so stark, it was hard to look at him.
A thousand emotions battered my heart. A thousand thoughts swirled in my mind, none louder than this was the man who’d abandoned Mom and me and left us homeless. And yet, I nearly let myself soften to him.
“You look good,” he said.
“No, I don’t.”
“Okay, maybe not like you usually do. But you look good to me. Seeing you right now…” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been calling.”
“I know.”
“I don’t blame you for not wanting to talk. I don’t know where to start.”
“Neither do I,” I admitted.
He sat down on the bench, rested his elbows on his long legs. Exactly the same way I did.
“I read the magazine article,” he said. “How long have you had it?”
“Diabetes? Since I was thirteen. That’s something, as my father, you probably should have been aware of.”
“I know. I’m not here to ask for forgiveness. Or to take a piece of your fortune.”
“What do you want?”
“To help. My wife, Sally, read the magazine article. Sounded like you were in trouble.”
I winced, feeling like he’d punched me in the stomach with all the things about his life I didn’t know. “My mother is your wife,” I said acidly. “But I guess you forgot that.”
He glanced down at his hands in his lap. “Sally is the woman I left your mom for.”
“That’s why you abandoned us? Another woman?” My emotions were bubbling to the surface, but I willed them back, buried them under the anger, spewing venom at my father. “Jesus, you’re a fucking cliché. You couldn’t keep it in your pants, so you decided to follow your dick, leaving us homeless. Mom couldn’t pay the bills when you bailed, so we lived in the station wagon. Did you know that? Or did fucking Sally read it in Rolling Stone?”
“I’m sorry, Miller,” his voice gruff but hard. “I was young and stupid, and I did the wrong thing. But I fell in love with her.”
“You fell in love with her?” I barked a harsh laugh. “That’s supposed to make it all better? Marriages fall to shit because people fall in love with other people, but they don’t fall out of love with their kids.”
“I never did,” my dad said, his eyes shining. “I promise you I didn’t. And I expect nothing from you. Not one thing. Not even your forgiveness. But I have nothing else to give you. You don’t need my money anymore. You needed it a long time ago. I gave up my right to be your father a long time ago, too. But you’re sick and I can help you get better.”
I scrubbed my face with both hands. “Jesus, Violet said the exact same thing.”
“Your girlfriend?”
I nodded.
“She pretty?”
“Beautiful.”
“You in love with her?”
“She’s the only reason we’re talking right now. I was going to tell you to fuck off. Even if it killed me.”
“Stubborn,” he said with a proud smile, tears in his eyes. “Just like always. God, look at you. All grown.”
“Dad…” I swallowed hard. “Don’t.”
“Let me do this for you, and then I’ll go,” he said hoarsely. “You don’t have to talk to me or see me. You don’t have to invite me into your life. I just want to make sure you have one.”
“To make yourself feel better?” I asked, my voice cracking, tears threatening. I hated how his pain drew mine out, melting the hard armor of anger and leaving only the raw, naked wounds. “Is that the only reason?”
He got to his feet. “No. That’s not why.”
“Because it’s a good one, Dad. Only a jackass would turn it down. Did you count on that? That I’d have no real choice? Well, I do.” I felt cracked open, seven years of pain pouring out of me. “I can take your donation and still not forgive you. I won’t forgive you. I won’t…”
Wordlessly, he put his arms around me, and I was suddenly transported into a thousand childhood memories of my dad’s embrace. They overwhelmed me, and I clung to them, clung to him. Real and solid, flesh and blood.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his rough hands in my hair, grasping my shirt. “I’m so sorry.”
Over and over he said it, and each time, the words sank deeper.
Until I finally let them in.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I walked the overly-bright corridors, lit up like midday, despite it being near midnight. Night and day held no distinction in hospitals, which was fitting, I thought. Nor did it hold a distinction to the people who had loved ones lying in beds here. Hours melted together, punctuated by news—good or bad—that altered the entire course of the next handful of hours. Or a lifetime.
“You going to play something for us, Violet?” one of the nurses asked as I passed, Miller’s guitar case secure in my grip.
“You deserve better than that, Eric,” I teased.
He laughed, and I continued down to the end of the hallway, to Miller’s room. Margarite, the duty nurse that night, greeted me with a warm smile.
“It’s late,” she said. “Big day tomorrow.”
“I won’t keep him up. But we have a guitar lesson scheduled. Can’t miss it.”
“I’m sure.” She chuckled. “Have fun. But not too much fun.”
I smiled, though my chest tightened. No, not too much fun the night before major surgery. But Miller had asked me to come back after visiting hours, and I wasn’t about to leave, so long as he wanted me there.
He sat on the edge of the bed, on top of the covers; he hated the helpless feeling of lying down, and he absolutely hated the gown. Instead, he wore flannel pants and an undershirt, his eyes full of thoughts.
“Hey,” I said, sitting down beside him, his guitar case resting on my knees. I kissed his cheek, his lips, brushed his hair back from his eyes. “Thinking about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow and every day after,” he said. “If I have them.”
“You will,” I said fiercely, a shiver skimming over my skin.
“I shouldn’t talk like that to you, but…”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m scared too. But they’re going to take care of you, and when it’s over, you’ll have a new life.”
We’ll have a new life.
Miller unlatched the case and retrieved his guitar. “We’ve been here before. Seven years ago. That was the day you saved my life. Feels like a lifetime.”
“I think you saved mine that day too,” I said. “That’s when I knew I was in love with you. A pretty big revelation for a thirteen-year-old. I didn’t know what to do with it all.”
Miller turned to sit with his back against the mattress, raised all the way up.
“Come here.” He made room for me as I climbed onto the bed, my back to his chest. He set the guitar in my lap, his arms reaching around me. “I don’t know what to do with it all, either. Or mess it up with words. I want you to feel it, Vi.”
I leaned back against him to give him room, his cheek brushing mine. I could feel his heart thump against me, a steady beat that kept time. The first notes of our song reverberated through me, joined by Miller’s singing, low and rough, as he strummed the guitar gently.
“You know, you know I love you so…”
Miller’s playing stopped abruptly, and he pushed the guitar away. He wrapped me up in him and pressed his face to my neck.
“I’m here.” I held him, trying to be the anchor he’d so often been for me, when my world felt like it was coming apart. “Are you…scared?”
“Only of leaving you.”
I closed my eyes. “You won’t. I won’t let
you.”
His chest rose and fell against my back in a heavy sigh. “I want to marry you, Vi. I want to grow old with you. I want to celebrate wedding anniversaries with you that make people stand up and applaud when they hear the number. I want to tell people that you’re the love of my life and that I knew that was true because I met you when I was thirteen years old. And that was it. There was never going to be anyone else.”
I turned in the circle of his arms, a tremulous smile on my lips. What are you asking?
He read my thoughts as he so often did. “I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow, so I’m just putting it out there to who or whatever’s listening that if I get the chance, I’m not going to screw it up again.”
“Neither will I,” I said. “I’ll just put that out there too. To who or whatever might be listening.”
Happiness shone behind Miller’s eyes. Elusive. He never trusted it to stay, and I vowed to do everything in my power to give it to him, every day.
He kissed me, and despite the fear, a lightness swelled in my chest. Hope. I fed it instead of the fear and smiled into our kiss. A pact that sealed the proposals and vows permeating that hospital room but waited for another day to be made real.
I knew that day would come. Miller and I ebbed and flowed, but we always came back. Inevitable as the tide and beautiful in the end.
Epilogue
Three years later…
I see her the minute I take the stage. Even among a thousand faces in the festival crowd and wearing a floppy hat to protect her fair skin, I recognize Violet immediately. She’s standing with Sam. He’s getting taller, filling out more from the skinny boy we fostered six months ago. He has a camera up to his eye, snapping photos of the crowd, the festival tents, and me and my band on stage.
My family.
We didn’t plan for this to happen so soon. Violet still has her residency to complete, but Brenda from Helping Hands International called me and said it was an emergency. The foster family that Sam had been staying with was moving and they weren’t taking him with them.
I could only imagine how that felt. Like a family pet left behind, too inconvenient to take with. It wasn’t the foster family’s fault, necessarily. That’s how the system works; people coming and going in Sam’s life so that he knows not to get too attached. But Jesus, he’s eleven years old. He shouldn’t have to protect himself like that.
That’s a parent’s job.
It was supposed to be temporary, until the agency could find a permanent placement for Sam. But it became pretty obvious, pretty quick that Violet wasn’t going to let him go.
I can’t either, but God, I love how she loves him. We’re young and she’s busy as hell, working her ass off at UC San Francisco, but she made room for Sam in our home and in her heart immediately.
She’s still on track to be an endocrinologist, even though the transplant I received from my dad essentially turned me into a former diabetic. But Vi didn’t change her course solely for me, anyway. She just found her passion. I like to joke that she started med school when she was thirteen, taking care of me. I know she’s going to be an incredible doctor, and I have been doing everything in my power to make sure that her runway is as free of obstacles as possible.
After the Seattle concert three years ago and my hospitalization, I took a lot of time off. The plan was to stay in Texas while Violet finished her studies at Baylor, but she missed Santa Cruz too much. Reluctantly, she allowed me to take over her tuition so that she could go to UCSC just like she’d always dreamed. She finished her undergrad and then began medical school in San Francisco. We got a place in the Marina district with views of the Bay and Alcatraz, and I wrote an album. If you can call lyrics scratched into a notebook an album. But that’s how I started too. Thirteen years old, putting Violet in my music.
I quit touring to recuperate from surgery and my dad kept his promise. Once the surgery was over, he went back to Oregon to be with his wife. We email now and then; he likes to joke that he’s checking in to see how his internal organs are doing and scold them if they’re giving me a hard time. For the most part, they’re not. I have to take immunosuppressant drugs, but he was a near perfect match. Thanks to him, my life has become vastly easier. A tremendous gift and a bridge toward the two of us maybe someday having a relationship outside of an email or two.
But there’s no rush. I’m taking my time and letting it unfold as it should. Not holding back but not throwing myself forward either.
When I was well enough, and when the songs I’d been writing began to take real shape, I flew down to Los Angeles to record an album. But no touring. This festival in Mountain View, California is the first performance and the last performance I’ll give for a while.
I can’t just takeoff now. I have a family to think of.
The thought nearly makes me burst out laughing with crazy fucking happiness into the mic before I greet the crowd. I look down at Violet standing with Sam and a huge swell of love washes over me. Love mixed with fear, the kind that prompted my father to come out of hiding to help me. The love of a father for his son.
From under her big floppy hat, Violet gives me a knowing smile as her arm goes around Sam’s shoulders. I wonder how I’m going to make it through the set.
Me and the guys, my band that had toured with me three years ago, play a set of songs off the new album mixed with some old standbys. I don’t sing “Wait for Me” much anymore. I don’t need to.
Our set ends, and it’s clear three years of relative quiet didn’t diminish the enthusiasm of my fans like I thought it would. They stuck with me through that quiet time of recovery and I’m so grateful for that. I’m finally able to appreciate everything that comes with this crazy job. I give them everything I have on stage, but they give it back to me, tenfold.
A bunch of the other guys are going to hang around and watch the other bands.
“Do you want to come?” Antonio asks. “There are some killer acts here.”
“No doubt,” I say, “but I have plans.”
A ball of tingling excitement expands in my chest, completely different than anything I’ve ever experienced before, and more powerful than what I feel when I take the stage in front of twenty-thousand fans.
I slip out from behind the stage tent into a hot afternoon, and my security team and assistants hustle me into a waiting car to take me to the hotel.
“Who’s got Vi and Sam?” I ask Franklin, my head of security.
“Morris is going to drive them over, ten minutes behind you.”
“Awesome. Thanks, man.”
At the hotel, Tina meets me in the lobby and she’s already beaming. Tina became my indispensable right hand now that Evelyn is off working her way up in a PR company based out of Los Angeles. I have no doubt she’ll will be a huge success. She has a way of bending the universe to conform to her will.
Inside the hotel room, a gift wrapped in blue paper with a green ribbon sits on the coffee table, a thick white envelope on top of it.
“It’s the kind he wanted, right?” I ask Tina.
“Canon EF 24,” she says.
I nod and rub my hands together to give them something to do.
Tina reads my nervousness and wordlessly hands me a bottle of water. “He’s going to love it.”
“Thanks, Tina. I hope so,” I say, but it’s not the camera lens that’s making my stomach tie itself in knots.
I want Sam to have the best. He’s only eleven but his talent is already apparent. Some people just know what they’re meant to do early on. I did and so did Violet. But so many others have to toil at jobs they hate to make ends meet while their true passion stifles and withers for lack of use. So I started a foundation that helps fund arts programs for underprivileged kids. I would love to give the finger to the idea that one has to be lucky, or rich, or have the right set of circumstances align in order to make someone’s passion their job.
Twenty minutes later, Violet and Sam arrive. I clear everybody
out and Violet crosses to me immediately, taking off her hat and glasses. The same nervous excitement that’s roiling in me lights up her eyes.
She kisses me. “Are you ready?”
“No.” I laugh. “Are you?”
“I don’t know,” she says honestly. “But I’m going to do my absolute best. It’s all we can do, right?”
“It’s what you always do,” I say. “It’s what you’ve given to me.”
“Same, love,” she says. “We take care of each other.” We both turn and look to where Sam is hovering around the coffee table, circling the gift uncertainly. “Now we’re going to take care of him.”
An ache grips my heart, watching the little boy study the present. The label has his name written clearly on it and he’s still not sure it’s for him.
“What is this?” he asks.
Violet and I join him at the table. “Why don’t you open it and see?” she says.
Sam starts for the thick white envelope. “You’re always supposed to start with the card before the gift,” he says solemnly because he’s a solemn little kid who’s trained himself to be as polite as he can be in the hopes whoever is fostering him will keep him longer. Slow to laugh, cautious about letting in too much happiness. I could relate.
“Not this time, buddy,” I say and take the envelope away from him, hoping he won’t notice how my hands are trembling. “This time around, you start with the gift.”
“Okay,” he says and slowly, meticulously unwraps the present, careful not to tear the paper. To save it or maybe because he thinks he’ll have to rewrap it when he’s done and give it back.
I see Violet’s thoughts are following the same train, her eyes shining, watching the little boy hesitantly open a present that he should already know is his.
“Oh, this is a very nice lens!” he says, almost formally, his eyes wide and a smile finally breaking over his face. “Just what I needed. It’s the best one too. Thank you so much.”
He hugs Violet and then me, quickly letting go. In the few months he’s been with us, he treats us like the wrapping paper too; gently, careful not to tear anything, careful not to make us angry for fear we might send him back.