by Gina Holmes
That infuriated me as I stood among green grass and hummingbirds feeding from beautiful flowers. What did he know of losing the person he loved most in the world? What did he know of misery? He whose heart had never been broken. He whose parents both still breathed. He who would most likely live to a ripe old age. “He should have insisted she get checked out.”
David opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. I turned to Lindsey, trying my best to keep my hands unclenched and my volume down. But like every other time in my life when I felt slighted, a switch had been flipped and I was powerless to control what came out of my mouth. “Your father-in-law told my mother her fatigue and headaches were due to anemia. Without running a single test, he gave her prescriptions for ibuprofen and iron pills, which she took faithfully. Six weeks after that, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Three months after that, she died.”
Lindsey looked pleadingly to David.
He was more focused on debating me than offering her the refuge or explanation she sought. “Jenny, what do you want? Like I’ve said a hundred times, what’s done is done.”
“All my father ever wanted was an apology.”
“Right. What he wants is for us to raise her from the dead.”
I slapped his face and felt the sting on my hand. Shocked at my behavior, I clutched my hand to my chest to keep it from lashing out again against my will.
Lindsey stepped back, looking lost and unsure. David grabbed my other wrist. “You come to my house, accuse my father, then attack me?”
I pulled from him and rubbed the spot he’d held. Hot streams of shame trickled down my cheeks. “David, I’m sorry.”
His expression didn’t soften. “I’m tired of all the grief your family’s caused mine. I thought when we broke up, we could spend the rest of our lives avoiding each other. It’s a big world. You’d think you’d be able to stay on your side.”
I wiped the tears from my face. “I’d love nothing more than—”
“So do it,” he hissed. “Go. I didn’t ask you to come here. I’m married, Jenny. Married. It’s time for both you and your father to move on.”
I laughed bitterly. “Do you really think I’m not over you? I was over you the second I slammed the car door that night. You Prestons really think you’re something.”
“I want you to leave. You’re upsetting my wife.”
Lindsey looked embarrassed at her mention.
A tiny butterfly landed on the hammock David had been lying on, and finally I remembered Isabella.
This wasn’t about me or David or Lindsey or my mother or our fathers. It was about her. This idiot was her daddy. I needed to do damage control. For her sake.
“Listen, David, Lindsey, I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to hit you or to accuse your family. I came here to—”
“Save it.” David rubbed the red mark I’d left on his cheek.
“Fine,” I spat back. “You’re not good enough for her anyway.”
He whipped around and snatched the coffee cup and paper off the ground, then marched toward the house.
Lindsey stared at me, uncertain. “For who?”
“Never mind,” I said. Let his father tell him. Let no one tell him. I couldn’t care less. The last thing in the world I wanted after finding that David had turned into his dad was for him to be part of the upbringing of my precious daughter. Better for her to be raised by my father, half-present, than this pompous jerk.
Chapter Seven
Naked Barbie dolls lay strewn across the coffee table beside a heap of miniature clothing. Isabella was nowhere in sight. I listened for her but heard only the distant hum of the ancient refrigerator. No laughter or pattering of feet. Curiously, the house was silent.
My father’s Buick sat in the driveway and Mama Peg almost never left the house these days because of shortness of breath, which made me wonder if they’d taken to napping in the mornings.
If my mother were still alive, I would be seeking her sympathetic ear to lament that David’s words had ripped open the wound that had never quite healed. That I again felt his rejection every bit as raw as the night he told me he didn’t love me. But I’d long since learned to live without the comfort of my parents. I used to talk to God, but He’d never seemed as far away as He had in the weeks following my diagnosis.
Isabella was the only one who could give me what I needed at that moment—love, acceptance, and as many sweet hugs as it took to smother my pain. Nothing in the world brought me more comfort than to feel her warm breath against me, her soft cheek against mine, and to hear the only words in the world I could trust without question: “I love you, Mommy.”
My sandals clacked against the hardwood floor as I walked farther inside and called for her. Mama Peg’s bodiless voice shushed me from the kitchen. Following the raspy sound, I found her sitting at the table, a Bible and notebook set open before her. The breakfast plates had been washed and put away. The scent of lemon dish soap still hung in the air.
Looking up at me, she laid her pen on the table. “She’s taking a nap.”
“She stopped taking naps two years ago.”
“I think this morning upset her.”
I grimaced. As I considered how the morning’s altercation between my father and me must have sounded to my little girl, I felt shame for the second time in an hour. I wanted to ignore the voice in my head chiding me, but regret is not an emotion that whispers. “You think I should check on her?”
She shook her head, making the oxygen tubing jiggle from her ears. “Just did. Snoring away.”
“She sounds just like Dad when she sleeps.”
“He used to drive me crazy when he slept between his father and me.”
I slid a chair from the table, making a scraping sound against the floor. Mama Peg frowned at the scuff mark I’d left behind.
With my foot, I rubbed it away and sat across from her. “You let him sleep with you? You gave me such a hard time about that.”
“Jack refused to sleep on his own until he was six. Why do you think I tried to warn you?”
I grinned. “Is that why he’s an only child?”
She tugged on the hem of her blouse to straighten it. “You laugh, but it’s true. And see? So is she.”
“That’s not why she is. I thought if I ever did it again, I’d do it right.”
Her thin lips curled downward at the mention of what would never be.
I pulled a ragged edge of paper off the notebook and rolled it between my fingers. “I hate that she’ll never have any sisters or brothers.”
“Builds self-sufficiency,” she said. “Besides, you don’t know she’ll be an only child. David might give her a sibling.”
I worked the paper between my fingers, bunching it into a tiny ball, not daring to meet my grandmother’s gaze.
“Did you find him?” she finally asked.
I nodded slowly.
“And?”
I laid the paper ball I’d made on the table and ripped off another corner of paper. I worked this scrap, too, into a ball and placed it beside the first one.
She took a long, deep breath. “By the look on your face, I’m guessing it went over about as well as a turd in a punch bowl.”
I wanted to cry but figured I’d let my pity party go on long enough. It was time to put my daughter first. Her future depended on the decisions I would make. The actions I would take.
“You guessed right. He’s a total jerk,” I whispered.
“Runs in the family,” she said matter-of-factly. “Hard to believe that sweet angel has Preston blood running through her veins.”
I ripped off another corner, not answering. I balled it up and added it to the pile I’d begun.
I was reaching to tear off another piece when a warm, shaky hand grabbed mine. “So did you tell him about Bella before his father did?”
I looked up into my grandmother’s foggy eyes. “He still doesn’t know.”
She scrunched her face, giving her the appearance
of a fleshy prune. “What? Why the dickens not?”
“He was so abusive. I couldn’t tell him.”
“Abusive? or angry?”
I shrugged. “How do I know he won’t be that way with her?”
“How do you know he will? It’s not your job to control the results, only to relay the message. He has a right to know he’s a father.”
“He hates me.”
She squeezed my hand. “It doesn’t matter if he hates you, hates Jack, or hates me. He’s her father. Her father, Jenny. If he loves her, then that’s all that matters.”
“His father will tell him,” I mumbled. “I’m sure he probably has already.”
“He should have heard it from you.”
I slid my hand from under hers and wrapped my arms around myself, feeling suddenly cold. “He should’ve let me speak. Besides, I don’t want my daughter being raised in that family.”
“That’s not your decision.”
Not my decision? Having metastatic melanoma was not my decision. The headaches, fatigue, palpitations, and mood swings I’d been suffering from were not my decision. David’s breaking up with me was not my decision. My mother’s dying was not my decision. Mama Peg’s emphysema was not my decision. My father’s coldness toward me was not my decision. But this? This was one of the few things that was my decision. “She’s my daughter. While I still have breath in my body, I have a say.”
I looked down at the pile of tiny paper balls I had made, then closed my eyes. It’s time, I told myself. After months of worrying about what would be best for my daughter, all choices but one had vanished. I now knew what Isabella’s future would be and it was time to meet fate halfway.
I stood and swept the mess I’d made into my palm.
“Where are you going?” Mama Peg asked.
“To tell Dad.”
“Tell him what?”
I walked to the sink and emptied the scraps into the garbage disposal, then turned around. “What do you think?”
She went into a coughing fit. I grabbed a glass from the dish rack, filled it with tap water, set it before her, then set out to find my father. As I neared the stairwell, I started to call his name but remembered Isabella sleeping.
Standing before my father’s closed bedroom door, I clenched my fist and gave a light tap. Not surprisingly, no reply followed. Of course he wouldn’t be in his room. All he did in there was dress and sleep. Most of his time was spent in his office teaching himself the banjo or in the basement studio painting, or rather, trying to. The truth was, he was even less talented in the visual arts than he was at music.
I made my way back down the stairs and found Mama Peg waiting for me. Her skin appeared ashen and her breathing resonated louder than usual. “You can’t tell him today,” she managed around coughs. Cyan outlined her lips.
“You don’t look well,” I said.
“You’re perceptive.”
“I mean more not well than usual.”
The slamming of a car door in the driveway turned both of our heads toward the window. I walked over and drew back the curtain, revealing a blue pickup in the driveway with Allen Landscaping stenciled in white letters on the door.
“Who is it?” Mama Peg asked.
“Craig.”
She frowned. “What’s he doing home already?”
He leaned against the truck with a cell phone to his ear.
I shrugged, let the curtain drop, and turned around. “You think Dad’s in the basement?”
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“I can’t tell him. Why not?”
She grabbed the stairway post to steady herself. “To everything, there is a season.”
I let out an exasperated breath. “First you get on my case for not telling him; now you’re telling me not to tell him?”
She opened her mouth to answer but hacked instead. She continued to cough until her face turned an alarming shade of purple. I took the handle of her tank in one hand and with the other I led her to a chair to sit. Pink returned to her skin as she sucked in several breaths.
I sat on the armrest and rubbed her back. “In case you forget that my time is short, I’m reminding you. I have no other options. I need Dad’s promise to raise Isabella. I know he’s not the world’s greatest father, but at least he won’t abuse her and will provide for her physical needs. I need to get my ducks in a row now. I have to tell him.”
When she started coughing again, I walked back through the kitchen and descended the stairs. Unlike the ones leading to the second floor, more than just the last step of these creaked. Every other one squalled under my weight. The sound was familiar and comforting. I had long ago memorized which ones would shriek and which would merely groan as my weight passed over them.
A wave of soft music met me at the bottom. It was a song that stopped my heart. “Sea of Love.” It was her song, or rather, theirs. The song my parents danced to at their prom, then wedding. The song my father softly hummed over my mother’s casket as he leaned in to kiss her one last time.
My insides knotted as I remembered today’s date. July 10—the sixth anniversary of my mother’s death.
I crept toward the studio door, which stood open just a crack, and peeked in. A portable CD player sat upon a rustic wooden shelf, serenading my father with the mournful tune.
He had his back turned to me, and I could clearly see the canvas he was painting on. The portrait was amateurish at best. If he hadn’t made the woman’s dress lavender, I might not have known it was her. Lavender had been my mother’s favorite and the color of the dress we buried her in. Seeing my father mourn her anew flooded me with crude emotion. Grief tore at my heart like barbed wire. Why did she have to leave us? It made everything that was right in our family wrong.
The steps creaked behind me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off my father long enough to turn around and look. Craig whispered my name, but I didn’t answer. His hands turned me around. I hadn’t realized I’d been crying until he wiped the tears from my face. My shoulders trembled as he pulled me to him. There was solace in feeling his chest rise and fall against my cheek and his strong arm wrap around my shoulders. He smelled of pine and hard work, and that too comforted me somehow.
When I pulled away, I caught a glimpse of disappointment in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m sorry you’re sorry.” He drew me against him once again and held me.
I patted his back twice to replace any notion of romance with one of friendship, then stepped backward. “Why aren’t you at work?” I glanced at my father through the cracked door. He continued on, either oblivious to our presence or ignoring us.
Craig ran a hand through his hair, making it spike. “I know today’s a hard one for your dad. I just popped in to check on him.”
Craig’s remembering the anniversary only served to make me feel worse for forgetting it. He rubbed his neck and peeked in at my father. “At least this year he got out of bed.”
It seemed strange to me that this man who had been a mere acquaintance of mine would now be so intimately connected to my family, so intimately connected to me. It struck me as more than a little odd that while most people our age had left home or were anxious to, Craig would take up residence with my family. Curiosity got the best of me. I had to know what his deal was. Besides, I told myself, he might stick around awhile. I needed to learn more about him for my daughter’s sake. “Have you got time for a cup of coffee?” I asked.
He seemed taken aback by my question and threw a glance at his watch. “I’ve got at least three hours’ more work to do on this job. I promised I’d have it wrapped up today. How about if I take you and Bella to dinner when I finish?”
“Make it pizza at Chuck E. Cheese’s and you’ve got a deal,” I said.
He slapped a hand over his heart as though he’d been shot. “Only for you would I agree to that torture. I’ll warn the old lady she doesn’t need to cook for us.”
Normally someone ref
erring to my sweet grandmother as old lady would get my dander up, but Craig said it with affection.
He told me good-bye, then bolted up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and disappeared out of sight.
It of course dawned on me that Craig might have felt more than brotherly toward me. I had entertained that same assumption a few times back in high school when I’d turned around in class and found him staring.
He was handsome, intelligent, hardworking, and all the other things I would want in a man, but romance was the last thing a dying woman needed. And the last thing a young man in his prime needed was to develop a crush on a dying woman. I decided, for his sake, I would tell him everything over dinner.
For my father, the truth would have to wait. I leaned into the doorjamb, resting my shoulder against it as I watched him. “Sea of Love” faded to silence. He set his paintbrush on the easel, walked over to the CD player, and hit a button.
The song began again.
Chapter Eight
I stood next to Craig as he studied the lit Chuck E. Cheese’s menu hanging above the glass counter.
Taking Isabella’s face in my hands, I guided her to look at me. “Do you want plain or pepperoni?”
“Pepperoni!” The way she bounced around, I’d have thought she needed to use the bathroom if I hadn’t just taken her.
The teen behind the counter pulled a loose thread from her red polo shirt as she waited.
I stepped forward and ordered the family value meal. Turning to Craig, I asked, “Do you want anything besides pizza?”
He tilted his head as though considering his choices, then said no. The teen set four paper cups on the counter, a small sandwich board with a number twenty-three on it, and a cup full of gold coins. Isabella snatched them up, bent her neck over the cup, and shook it. She jangled behind us as Craig and I made our way toward the empty booth straight ahead. While I filled Isabella’s pockets with tokens, he slid into his seat.
A dark smudge ran under Isabella’s left eye like Indian war paint. I licked my thumb and rubbed it away before she could protest. “You want me to come with you?”