All the Reasons I Need

by Jaime Clevenger

  The word “girlfriend” had little visible effect on Bernadette, but Kate felt it ripple through her chest. Girlfriend. Saying it aloud had a steadying effect which was strengthened by the fact that Mo didn’t let go of her hand.

  Bernadette showed them into the front room and then asked them to wait a moment while she went to tell Philip that they’d arrived. As soon as she stepped away, Kate took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Mo looked over at her.

  “You doing okay?”

  “So far.” Kate scanned the front room, crowded with expensive, uncomfortable furniture, and imagined what Mo might think of it.

  “I feel like I’m in a museum,” Mo said under her breath.

  “Well, most of the furniture was last in a castle so you’re not far off.”

  “Are little knights going to pop out of that dresser?” Mo chuckled.

  “Maybe. That bureau was a gift from some fancy duke to one of my grandfathers. I don’t think there’s any knights inside, but you could check. We might need one later.”

  Mo grinned. Although Kate didn’t know the history of any of the other furniture in the room, she recognized everything. From the red velvet settee to the high backed and uncomfortable love seat opposite it, nothing had changed since the last time she’d been in this room. Maybe her father had moved things in the other rooms, but she was certain nothing had been altered here.

  “He’s awake,” Bernadette said, reappearing in the hallway. “I’m afraid he’s not up for getting out of bed, but if you’d like to follow me…”

  “Of course.”

  Kate had never been in her father’s room before. She always had the guest room when they were in the city and since it was near the kitchen and the television, she had little excuse to explore further. As she followed Bernadette, questions swirled in her head. Was it weird that she’d never seen the inside of her father’s bedroom? Or was it only more evidence that what little relationship they’d had once had been too superficial to count? It didn’t seem right that someone she hardly knew had caused so much damage in her life.

  Unlike the front room with its museum feel, the hallway was almost homey. Along with a curio filled with pipes and other odd trinkets, framed pictures hung along the walls. One picture caught Kate’s eye. The shot had been taken at the lake house and she remembered the T-shirt she was wearing although the smile jarred her. She knew the picture had been taken that last summer. But it was before everything went wrong. For that brief moment, she was a careless thirteen-year-old enjoying a sunny day by the water.

  “That’s you, isn’t it?” Mo said quietly.

  Kate nodded. Bernadette didn’t hear Mo’s question, and she was already at the end of the hall waiting for them. It was hard not to wonder why her father had framed that one picture. Most of the other shots were of landscapes or people she didn’t recognize.

  Mo caught her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You can do this.”

  Kate looked over at her. Her stomach was a tight knot and she didn’t want to move, but she held onto Mo’s hand and started walking again.

  The drapes were drawn in the bedroom, and it took a moment to adjust to the dim light. As soon as she recognized her father, his feeble body propped up on pillows, the urge to leave hit Kate in the chest.

  “Kate.” His voice sounded strangely weak, hardly the man she remembered.

  She let go of Mo’s hand and stepped closer.

  “I would have liked to have seen you sooner,” he said. He shifted on the bed and grimaced. When he settled again, he squinted in the weak light, clearly appraising the stranger at his bedside. “You’ve changed… I remember a little girl.”

  Kate couldn’t think of what to say. Was she supposed to apologize for growing up? For not staying in touch with him? “I’m sorry you’re so sick.”

  “I’m dying. It’s my own doing.” He motioned to an empty bottle of vodka on his bedside table and then looked over at Bernadette. “Thank you for showing her in.”

  Bernadette took this as her dismissal. She turned to Mo as if she expected her to follow, but Kate immediately said, “She’ll stay with me.”

  Bernadette gave one nod and closed the door behind her. Silence followed and Kate wished that Bernadette had stayed. With more people present, this could feel like a business meeting instead of a personal matter.

  “I’d ask you to sit, but everything’s a mess. The nurse insisted on setting everything up like another hospital room.”

  “I’m fine standing. Can I get you anything?”

  “I’m well looked after.” He shifted on his pillows and the pain on his face was obvious. With a nod to the vodka, he said, “They won’t let me have more than a little sip until I’ve eaten supper.”

  Kate wondered how much was allotted after supper, but she stopped herself from asking. If he downed the whole bottle, what did it matter now? A wave of pity hit her. This man who she’d blamed for so many things…

  “I’m sure you’re wondering why I asked you here.” He pointed at a stack of papers on a desk near the window. “I’ve already written a will and the lawyers will see to all of that, but there was something I wanted to ask you.” He cleared his throat again. “If you didn’t know me, how much would you ask me to donate to your cancer foundation?”

  “You know what I do?”

  “I’m not that much of a drunkard that I can’t use a computer.”

  Kate tried not to let her surprise show. She’d assumed he wouldn’t know anything about her life. “I research all potential donors before I approach them. I never ask without knowing how much they want to give. The truth is, I don’t know you as well as I know most of the donors I ask.”

  “That’s fair. Before you ever ask, you already know how much they want to give? How is that possible?”

  “Some of it’s intuition,” she admitted. “But I always do my research first.”

  “I’ll save you the trouble. I have a lot of money and I haven’t managed to spend it all on vodka. How much do I want to give?”

  Kate considered his question. She knew it wasn’t theoretical. But did she want to ask him for anything? “We want to develop a new program to help families with kids undergoing cancer treatments link up with other families in the same situation. Part of this would be an app that would connect parents as well as guide them through the process of a new cancer diagnosis… I need a donor to seed this project.” Kate hadn’t pitched this to anyone other than a few people on the board and yet the pieces were falling into place even as she spoke. “Five hundred thousand would get us started.”

  “What would you do with five million?”

  “A lot more.” Kate answered smoothly. She’d had conversations like this before with men who wanted to impress her with their money. If it was for a good cause, and she knew that it was, she didn’t care how much they preened. But this didn’t feel like preening. Her father wasn’t trying to impress anyone. He was dying and maybe only wanted to know that something good would come of it. She could give him that much.

  “We also want to expand the number of apartments we have near the hospital so parents can stay close to their kids. Most of the time they spend too much money and time travelling between their home and the hospital.”

  “Done. Will you hand me the phone?” He pointed to a cell phone opposite the vodka bottle. “I might not remember this later…”

  Kate waited as he made a call. Philip’s words were few and then he passed the phone over to her. She guessed the voice on the other end was a lawyer or maybe a banker. After confirming the amount, the woman asked for a number to reach her later so they could finish the details.

  “You’ve been keeping track of what I’m doing,” Kate said, replacing the phone on the nightstand. “Why didn’t you try and reach out sooner?”

  “A dying man can admit he’s made mistakes.”

  Kate wondered if she could accept this as the only apology she’d get. But maybe she didn’t need any apology. If he’d offered
her money straight out and not as a donation to the foundation, she would have flatly turned him down. As it was, she couldn’t say no. The money would help a lot of families. But was that really the only purpose of this meeting?

  Kate looked at her father again. She knew this was the last conversation they’d have and maybe she should simply say goodbye. But something held her in place. “You should have said something to him,” she started. “Why didn’t you?” Her hands shook so she squeezed them into fists, but there was nothing she could do about the timbre of her voice. “It happened right in front of you. You could have stopped him from coming over.”

  “He’d been a good friend for years…” He eyed Mo and then Kate again. “There’s no point in bringing all of that up now, is there?”

  Mo’s jaw clenched. “Do you have any idea how much you hurt—”

  Kate held up her hand, stopping Mo midsentence. Philip didn’t respond. Even if he heard everything, he’d deny there was any wrongdoing on his part. In his mind, she’d overblown the matter—that’s what he’d said before. He was right about one thing. There was no point in bringing it up again. “Is there anything else you wanted to tell me?”

  Philip shook his head. When he closed his eyes, it was clear the meeting was over. A minute passed and then another. Kate wondered if there really was nothing left to say. The sound of snoring jolted her from her thoughts. He’d fallen asleep.

  Mo held out her hand. “Let’s go.”

  Kate clasped Mo’s hand and let her lead them out into the hall. Bernadette was waiting in the front room. “He said that you wouldn’t be staying.”

  Kate stopped herself from saying that he’d never wanted her here. The photograph in the hall gave her pause and she understood her father even less now. “How long do you think he has?”

  “If he stopped drinking…” Bernadette sighed. “I don’t think it will be long. A few weeks.”

  As they headed for the door, Kate took one last look at the front room. Now she’d think of it always as a museum—full of secret tragedies and joys. But furniture that no one sat on or touched was worth as little as anything else that had outlived a purpose.

  They stepped outside and Kate took a deep breath. Mo looked over at her. “You okay?”

  “I think I will be.” If she could let go of all the memories and leave what happened at the lake house…

  “Should I call a taxi?”

  “I’d rather walk.” Kate had no idea how far they were from the hotel or any memory of the drive there. All she knew was that she didn’t want to think for the rest of the day. “Can you take me somewhere?”

  Mo pulled out her phone and brought up a map. She looked over at Kate. “Are you cold?”

  Kate realized then that she was shivering. “I think I’m just tired.”

  Mo slipped her phone in her back pocket and then took off her jacket. She hung it around Kate’s shoulders. “We need cocoa.”

  “Cocoa?”

  “You’d be surprised—a mug of hot cocoa fixes a lot of bad days. That’s what my dad always used to say anyway.”

  Kate wasn’t certain that any drink would work this time. “You find us cocoa and I’ll give it a try.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I want to help you on that app,” Mo said. “The one you were telling your father about. If I did it on my own, and you weren’t paying someone else, you could put more of his money to those family apartments you were talking about.”

  “I’d want to pay you.”

  Mo had slept for most of the plane ride back to the States, but she was awake for the leg from Atlanta to San Francisco and clearly she’d been thinking. “So I can help you? We can fight about the money part later.”

  Kate smiled. “I haven’t pitched the idea to the full board yet, but I’d love your help. I wouldn’t feel comfortable not paying you, however. Your company designs apps. It’s what you do.”

  “Do you know how much something like that could have helped my mom when she was going through everything with my dad? And it’d be more than a social app for connecting people… We could have a volunteer tab where folks could offer up rides or housecleaning services. Or even babysitting. Once you’ve been through something like that, you want to help other people who are in the middle of a crisis. Emotional support is great, but families need basic help getting through their day.” Mo paused. “I looked online yesterday to see what’s out there. We can do better.”

  “We? I don’t know anything about making an app.”

  “You’re the one with the idea.”

  “But I only came up with it because of your app. HeroToday made me think of all the things we could be doing better.”

  “Which is why we should work together on this.”

  “I want you to move back in with me,” Kate said. She’d spent the last day in Amsterdam thinking of a way to bring up the conversation but had lost her nerve each time she tried. Mo had taken care of everything since they’d left her father’s apartment. She’d held her as she cried herself to sleep that first night and now Kate didn’t want to think about sleeping alone. “It’s going to be hard sleeping alone tonight.”

  “Getting attached?” Mo tried to joke. She looked down at their interlaced hands. “I’ll stay at your place tonight.”

  It wasn’t enough, but Kate stopped herself from begging. Maybe it wasn’t fair of her to ask for more of Mo. “Thank you.”

  Mo studied her for a moment. “I hate when I make you sad. I just don’t want to rush this.”

  “I’m not sad,” Kate lied. “And I know you’re right. But I wish I were easier.”

  “Relationships are hard. It’s not just you.”

  “Yeah, but when you’ve been with someone else and things get hard… Usually you’ve had sex with them more than once. Then you don’t mind dealing with their crap.” Kate forced a smile. “You got everything the first week.”

  Mo didn’t laugh. “You think this week would have been easier if we were having a bunch of sex? This isn’t a typical relationship for either of us. I just got out of a relationship and then everything happened with your father. Don’t think that I want to take it slow because I don’t want to be with you. That isn’t it at all.”

  Kate knew Mo was right. That’s what had stopped her from bringing the conversation up earlier. But the doubts hadn’t gone away. “What if you get bored with what we do in bed?” She hated to ask the question, but the thought had crossed her mind more than once. She didn’t want to be a disappointment, and the reality was, even if she’d had no problems pleasing a guy, she wasn’t certain Mo would be satisfied for long.

  “You clearly can get me off. And even if you couldn’t, that’s why they make vibrators.”

  “There’s more to it than that and you know it.”

  Mo shifted in her seat. After a moment she said, “You’re right. And every time you snuggle against me I’m ready to beg you to let me touch you. But I can handle it. I want a relationship more than I want a night of hot sex.”

  Kate knew Mo wasn’t trying to hurt her feelings with the hot sex comment, but it crushed her anyway. “What if I want you to have both?” She broke her gaze with Mo, wishing that they weren’t sitting in an airplane. Kate feel caught in the tight space.

  Mo didn’t say anything and the silence stretched. Finally Kate said, “I don’t want to hold anything back from you. But I can’t let go yet, and the truth is I don’t know how long it’ll take me to get there.”

  “I’m okay waiting.”

  Kate wanted to say that Mo didn’t understand—that she might never get to that point with her—but she held back the words. Arguing wouldn’t help. Knowing how willing Mo was to wait for her only made Kate feel more insecure about dating at all. What she asked of Mo wasn’t fair.

  Peeves was so ecstatic to see Mo that he peed all over the doormat, which necessitated a spot of unexpected cleaning. Between that and rummaging through a nearly empty fridge for dinner, Kate mostly kept herself
from thinking of the conversation on the plane and the fact that Mo was only staying for the night.

  Mo put her suitcases in her old room and Kate stopped herself from saying how the room was waiting for her to move back. She thought of the night that she’d slept in Mo’s bed and the fantasy that she’d enjoyed then. In every fantasy, Mo was the one in charge. She wished her body would let that happen in reality.

  It wasn’t until after they’d both showered and Peeves had leapt excitedly into the center of the bed that Mo dropped any hints on if she’d changed her mind on moving back. She picked up Peeves, snuggled his head, and then said, “Sorry, little dude. You gotta sleep in your pink bed tonight. Tomorrow you can have my spot.”

  “I make him sleep in his pink bed every night. Otherwise he wakes me up. And you know he likes pink,” Kate said, more out of the habit of defending his clear preference for pink than anything else. Tonight. Mo hadn’t changed her mind. She would be back at Chantal’s tomorrow. Kate knew that was part of the problem. Mo wasn’t going back to her own place. She was going back to her ex-girlfriend, who was doubtlessly an easier lay than she’d ever be. It was crude to think of it that way, but her insecurities couldn’t help but remind her of it. She wished Mo could see her perspective.

  After Mo settled Peeves in his bed, carefully tucking his blanket around him, she looked over at Kate. “You put your pajamas on.”

  “Well, you got dressed after the shower. I thought that meant…” Kate’s voice trailed.

  Mo was wearing a loose tank top and a pair of shorts. When she moved, the armholes on the tank top showed the side of her breast, and Kate couldn’t help noticing the curves.

  “It’s been a long day,” Mo said. She went to the bathroom, rinsed off her hands, and got a glass of water. When she came back to the room, she walked up to Kate and kissed her forehead. “Don’t get me wrong. I like sleeping naked with you.” She handed the glass to Kate.

  Kate took a sip. She stared at the water for a moment, feeling exhausted and on the verge of tears even though she had no reason to cry. “You don’t find it frustrating? Tell me the truth.”