A Missing Heart

by Shari J. Ryan

  “We have to make this work somehow,” she says. “Maybe we can move here for a while.” Maybe that could be the best thing ever—just a silly little dream come true that I’ve wished for throughout the years.

  “Don’t you have a job and stuff?” I laugh.

  “I run my own practice and hired Casper to be an associate.” I want to punch the air with my fist and tell her how fucking proud of her I am, but she’s smiling in a way that tells me she already knew I’d be thrilled to hear this.

  “What about Casper, would he be up for the move?” I’m not trying to silently summon the demon away but it would make things easier for sure.

  I’ve been blocking out the thought of telling Tori any of this, and I’m going to continue doing that until I get home, hoping that sometime between now and then, I figure out how to dive into my past that I have kept as hidden as hers.

  I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone, searching through my pictures for a good one of Gavin. “Look,” I say, passing my phone across the table.

  “Oh my gosh, he’s beautiful, AJ. He looks just like you! Some pretty dominant genes you got there, buddy,” she says, holding her gaze on my phone.

  I watch as she scrolls with her finger, which is definitely the Cammy I remember, assertive and unafraid of offending. I’m guessing this is one of the many great qualities that made her into a successful attorney.

  “Who’s this little doll?” She holds the phone up, with Olive’s goofy grin taking up the whole display.

  “That’s Olive, Hunter’s daughter.”

  “He ended up with Ellie, huh?” she asks. “She looks exactly like Ellie with that blonde hair and all those freckles.” Cammy smiles at the picture for another second and passes the phone back to me. “How is Ellie? I loved her.”

  The same sensation I get every time anyone asks about Hunter and Ellie, or just Ellie, runs through my nerves, like I’ve just been wrapped up in a wet, frozen towel. “Ellie passed,” I say simply.

  Cammy places her fist up against her mouth as her eyes widen. “What?” Her one word comes out muffled, in disbelief.

  “During childbirth.” She wasn’t my wife or my best friend, but she was like a sister. While I don’t talk about my grief when it comes to Ellie, out of respect for the heartache Hunter lives with, it hurts like hell to mention her name or the fact that she’s gone.

  Cammy hiccups and gasps for air. “Oh my God, I don’t even know what to say,” she cries.

  “It’s been nine years,” I tell her.

  “I had no idea,” she says.

  “Life comes and goes during the blank spaces,” I say, reaching across the table for her hand. “We’re all okay. Olive is a spitfire and perfect, just like Ellie was. She is basically Ellie, so we all feel like she’s still around sometimes, you know? Besides that, Hunter is remarried to a great woman who also has a daughter, Lana, and the companionship for both Olive and Hunter has been perfect. Life for them is moving forward.”

  She squeezes her fingers between mine. “I’ve been thinking of moving back here for years,” she says. “D.C. has never felt like home and I miss that feeling.”

  “It’s funny, home didn’t feel like home to me for a long time. I’m not sure if it’s the location that makes a place feel like home, Cam.”

  Her golden gaze is locked on mine, and I know she can read between the lines.

  “I’d love to meet your wife and Gavin,” she says, pulling her hand from mine.

  “And I’d love to know where our daughter went,” I say, standing from the booth, realizing Ever has been in the bathroom for at least ten minutes now. I know there are no windows to climb out of in there, but I don’t know her well enough to judge what she’d be doing in the bathroom for ten minutes.

  “I was just thinking that,” Cammy says. She stands up from her seat and walks across the restaurant, strutting perfectly in her four inch heels, which shamefully, I realize makes her ass look way more perfect and mature than it once did. Cammy pokes her head into the bathroom and then walks inside.

  After a short minute, the two of them come out of the bathroom and Ever looks a little different. I squint as they come closer and notice that she washed her makeup off and took some of the piercings out.

  “You okay, kiddo?” I ask.

  She smirks with the corner of her mouth and shrugs her shoulders as she slides back into the booth. “I figured you two needed a minute to talk,” she says.

  “Ever, you don’t have to leave because of us,” Cammy says to her.

  “I know you guys are probably freaked out. Having me show up must be pretty crazy, but I think I just realized how much I need to beg you both not to send me back to that crappy foster home.” Ever sits back against the bench and slouches down, folding her arms over her chest like I keep watching her do. I see the child she must have been, and I see the adult she’s avoiding becoming.

  “Is that why you cleaned your face and took out some of those piercings?” I ask, and Cammy gives me a dirty look, warning me to cool it.

  Instead of answering my question, Ever leans forward, takes her large, red plastic cup full of soda and drinks half of what’s in the cup.

  “We’re not giving you up to anyone,” Cammy says. “We just need a plan.”

  Ever looks out the window we’re sitting next to, staring out into the manicured gardens in the park area across the street, where the town gazebo sits between a mess of trees and benches. People are walking their dogs and children, and I realize most places aren’t as picture perfect as this area is seven months of the year. The other few months, with all of their snow, can just go away for all I care.

  “Where did you live with your parents?” I ask. Her parents—still not getting any easier to say.

  “Philadelphia, right in the city. It’s crowded and loud.” This town is the exact opposite of that. “I like it here.”

  “So, I have to have a talk with Casper,” Cammy tells Ever. “And I’m sure AJ needs to have a talk with his wife, too, but we want to make things work, and maybe it would be best if that were here.”

  “But your job…and you have a house,” Ever says.

  “My job can move, and the house can stay there for now.” I guess when you have a lot of money, you can leave a house behind until you make a decision in life.

  The waiter returns and places our pizza down in front of us, handing us each a plate. The pizza looks and smells delicious, and Ever digs in first, shoving the first slice into her mouth as if she were starving. “Looks like you haven’t had pizza in a while,” I say, watching with amazement.

  “My parents wouldn’t allow anything that wasn’t gluten free into the house,” she says with a mouthful. “And this is full of delicious gluten.”

  Cammy and I both laugh as we watch her chow down. “I thought you said you loved pizza?” I ask her.

  “I had the school stuff sometimes,” she says, before gulping down the rest of her soda.

  “That is not pizza. That’s cardboard with sauce and cheese disguised as pizza,” I correct her.

  She smiles and takes another large bite. My heart has never hurt while watching someone eat, but seeing this little girl after all these years makes my heart break, as I think about all the years I missed.

  I lift a piece of pizza from the metal pan and place it on Cammy’s plate before serving myself.

  “AJ?” I hear from behind us.

  I turn around and find—oh shit. “Hey, Tori!” Fuck! “What are you doing here, babe?”

  “I—” she says, looking between me, Cammy, and Ever, “I was picking up the dry cleaning next door, and I saw you in the window.” My head has been in such a fog all morning. I didn’t consider that half of Tori’s errands occur on Main Street, right near here.

  “Oh right,” I say. “Um…” I take a napkin and stand up from the table, taking Tori by the arm, over to the other side of the restaurant.

  “What the he
ll is going on, AJ?” Considering she just found me in a pizza shop with another woman—an incredibly beautiful woman—and a teenage girl, she’s probably pretty pissed and a little confused…rightfully so.

  I breathe out slowly and run my fingers through my hair. “This is going to be a lot to digest,” I tell her. This is not how I was planning to tell her. I should have told her two years ago, before we got married and had a child together. But we had our stupid ‘no past rule’ which eliminates beautiful ex-girlfriends, children that were given up for adoption, and whatever the hell makes a person have nervous breakdowns. “My past has come back into town.”

  Tori crosses her arms and shifts her weight to one side, definitely more on the pissed side of things. “So what does that mean? What is she, an ex-girlfriend, wife, or something? You just decided to meet her for lunch today instead of working?”

  “It’s not like that,” I tell her.

  “Who’s the kid? Her sister?”

  “Her daughter,” I correct.

  “That’s impossible,” Tori snaps. “She must be a teenager.” I watch as Tori holds her focus on the back of Ever and Cammy’s heads.

  “It’s not impossible,” I tell her.

  “Okay great, so your ex-girlfriend and her daughter are in town, and you wanted to meet up. Are you bringing them home for dinner tonight too? Should I make extra?”

  “Make extra dinner?” I laugh. “When’s the last time we didn’t order out?”

  Tori’s eyes grow wide as if I offended her with the truth. Not that I expect her to make dinner every night, considering how busy she is with her errands and Gavin, sometimes, but this is a joke. “Actually, that’s a great idea. I’d love that. You can make one extra seat for her fiancé too.”

  Tori seems to relax with the last comment. “Oh,” she says. “I can do that. I can cook. I just—I was a little surprised to see you here with a woman who looks like…that.” Her focus has not left the table I was sitting at, and I get it. I should have told her what was going on before I came to lunch, I guess. “I’ll just go finish up my errands.”

  “Okay, I’ll still grab Gavin from daycare. How are you going to make dinner if you’re going to be late tonight?”

  “I’ll change my plans,” she says.

  “O—kay?” I say questioningly.

  “That little girl is beautiful,” Tori says.

  I’m staring right into Tori’s eyes now, even though she’s too busy looking at the table. My gaze holds long enough that she finally looks up at me. “Thank you,” I say.

  Her head jerks back a bit. “What do you mean by that?”

  I suck in my bottom lip and bite down hard before allowing the words to pour out of my mouth. “That’s my daughter, Tori.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I FEEL THE appropriate thing to do is let Tori yell at me at the top of her lungs for however long she finds it necessary. I peer down at my watch, noting it has been four hours since we stepped into our house and two hours since she started yelling at me. Besides a few pausing breaths and a brief break so I could put Gavin to bed, there hasn’t been a lack of words for her to hand me the piece of her mind I deserve.

  She hasn’t allowed me the chance to get in a word and if she did, I would only tell her that we agreed to keep our past in the past, and we never had a conversation about breaking that commitment.

  I was beginning to think she wouldn’t stop, but she has finally dropped down into a seat at the kitchen table. It’s now six at night and I never even got to work today. I haven’t had a moment to digest the fact that my daughter has stepped back into my life, or that my high school sweetheart, her mother, showed up out of the blue today. I haven’t had a chance to tell Tori I’m not sorry, but I don’t think it would be wise to tell her that right now.

  I left Cammy and Ever at the pizza shop without a promise to follow up, or any word for that matter. I don’t have Cammy’s phone number, and I realize now that beyond showing up at her hotel room, I have no way to find them again. Not that I’d be allowed to leave this house long enough to do something like that right this second anyway.

  Tori’s been quiet for a long three minutes, and she’s staring through the tiled floor as if it were glass. I’m not sure if I should wait to hear her next thought or if this is the time to speak up.

  I walk over to the countertop and rest my hip against it. “I never thought I’d see either of them again,” I tell her. She doesn’t respond, so I continue. “Those two made me who I am today, love me or leave me, and I just left them in the middle of a goddamn pizza shop because my wife and I, who know nothing about each other, needed to come home and have this fight. How fucking normal is that, Tori? Oh, and just to make things worse, it’s my daughter’s birthday today—the first one I was going to be able to celebrate with her since the day she was born. This, though, this is way more important.”

  “They made you who you are?” she asks, narrowing her eyes at me. Of course, that would be the only part she heard.

  “Yeah, Tori, that’s not something you’re going to hold against me. And you want to know why?”

  She stands up from her seat for the first time in hours, and my nerves cringe with the thought of what she might be doing. The last time we had an argument this big was last year, to the fucking day. “I don’t know what you want me to say or do, AJ.” She opens the refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of water. “Do you want me to reopen my wounds so you can see the blood for yourself?”

  Her words are sharp and unexpected, and while I would like to say yes to her question, the way in which she worded it would make me sound like an asshole for agreeing. Though, it only seems fair to let me in, even if it’s just a little, now that she knows about my past. “I want to help you,” I offer.

  “Well, you can’t,” she says, sitting back down with her water.

  “Tell me something, Tori. Give me a piece of what your mind is comprised of right now.” My legs are getting tired from standing inside this one kitchen floor tile for so long. All I want to do is go back and find Cammy and Ever so I can ask them the millions of questions that have been popping into my head over the last few hours, as well as share a birthday cupcake with Ever.

  “Giving you a piece of it, AJ, would cause me another emotional disruption. Is that what you want?” she asks calmly.

  “Maybe that’s what you need, Tori. Have you considered that keeping all of your shit bottled up for so long might be what’s actually destroying every single part of you?”

  “Look, just because your past has come back to grace you with its beautiful presence just to show you that dreams really do come true, you don’t get to sit here and act all holier than thou for it. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Great,” I say, pushing myself away from the counter. “That’s fine. We’ve dealt with the baggage from your past since the day Gavin was born, but I guess it’s too much to ask you to deal with mine for one day.” I grab my coat from one of the dining chairs and drape it over my shoulder. “Don’t wait up.” Nothing is going to stop me from being with my daughter on her birthday. Nothing.

  “Where are you going?” she snaps. “Have you forgotten you have a child?”

  Her words piss me off like nothing else she has ever said to me. Have I forgotten I have a child? “You’re kidding me right now, right?” I turn to her with anger coursing through me. “How about for once, you take responsibility for him?”

  Her face turns red, and her eyes widen as if she’s about to unleash. With my next thought, I run up the stairs to Gavin’s room and take him from his crib, where I find him awake and gazing up at his mobile with a smile on his face. I can understand, considering I put him to bed an hour early tonight. I change his diaper, load up the diaper bag, dress him for outdoors and scoop him up into my arms. I sling the bag over my shoulder, take Gavin, and walk back down into the kitchen, past Tori. “Where are you going?” she snaps.

  I
continue toward the front door as I inform her, “To be with the people who want to let me in.”

  “You want to go sleep with her, is that what you want?”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Tori?” I shout. “Have you lost your damn—” I choke with a quiet laugh. “Never mind. I already know the answer to that.”

  She chases after us, trying to pull the baby bag off of my shoulder. “Why are you so mean to me?” she shouts.

  I place Gavin down in his high chair behind me, handing him a toy in hopes of shielding him from whatever wrath she’s planning for the moment. “You know what’s funny, Tori? You hear these stories all of the time about men and women flipping some invisible switch after they get married and they let their true selves finally show. It’s a joke. People make fun of these stories. If I had any idea you were going to act or become the way you are today, I never would have started anything with you. You tricked me. And it’s disgusting.”

  “Tricked you?” she cries out. “It must have been the same as when my mother tricked my father into having a second child. She tricked him good, AJ. Let me tell you. She tricked him so fucking good that he got up and left us the day before my sister was born.”

  I close my eyes, trying to digest the middle of a story she’s giving me. “Hold on, are you talking about Millie and Ralph?” Because up until a year ago, I thought those two were her birth parents. I know now that they aren’t but she calls them Mom and Dad.

  She laughs, that laugh I hate, the one that tells me she’s falling into a dark hole again. “No, I’m talking about the two people who put me on this sick earth and gave me my messed up life.”

  “Tori,” I utter, placing my hand over her trembling arms. “Talk to me.”

  “Why?” she cries. “It’s not going to change the past. That’s why we don’t talk about the past, AJ. Remember? Our pact?”

  I shake my head in disagreement. “Talk to me,” I press.