Complicated Relationships (The Southern Devotion Series Book 3)

by McClung, Amy

  "That doesn’t sound stupid to me."

  "Really? She isn't going to remember me being her son, let alone remember that it's been a year since she saw me. I doubt she'll judge me on my choice of t-shirt and jeans as attire instead of a dress shirt and slacks." My tone illustrated the deep sadness that was surrounding me. At least it wasn't coming out as anger this time, I suppose.

  Without a sound, Lanie stood and walked to my closet. She pulled out a few plain colored t-shirts and nice jeans. Lastly, she pulled out a dark maroon button down dress shirt and black slacks. "It's not stupid, Tristan. She may not remember you, but you remember her. Saying goodbye is for you, in this case. If you put this stuff in your bag, I'll go check on Macy and see if she has the same dilemma."

  I went to check on the girls after my clothes were packed. The door was cracked open, and I stopped when I heard Lanie speaking softly to Macy. "Tristan would never make you speak to her if you didn’t want to. Tell him how you feel."

  Macy sniffed back tears, "I don’t want to disappoint him."

  "You could never disappoint him. He loves you more than anything in this world, Macy. He'd never make you do anything that would cause you pain. I'm going to tell you a secret though. If you go with him, it will give him the strength he needs to say goodbye too. He's more scared than you are."

  "He is?" Macy asked looking up at Lanie with confusion. Though I didn’t want to admit it to myself or anyone how afraid I am, Lanie had it right. She apparently saw through my tough façade on the entire thing.

  Macy asked Lanie to help her choose a dress to wear, so I eased away from the door and let them have a few private moments. Time ticked away as I sat on the couch with my bag packed.

  "Hello?" Mary Jane called out as she opened the front door. She saw me on the couch and came to sit beside me. "You ready to go?"

  "I thought Derrick was driving us to the airport?"

  "He wanted to, but I asked him to let me. I wish I could go with you. I hate that you and Macy are doing this on your own."

  "They won't be alone," Lanie commented as she came down the stairs.

  Mary Jane appeared surprised to see her and then replied, "Oh good. I'm thankful you're going with them; I had no idea."

  Lanie gave MJ a quick hug as she sat down next to her. "I decided last night. Like you, I couldn’t bear to see them go through it alone. Macy is upstairs finishing her packing, but I gave her a two minute warning."

  When Macy came downstairs with her bags, I took them outside to fill the minivan up. We each had only one bag for a carry-on because we only planned to stay down there for two days.

  Mary Jane let us out at the drop off spot in the airport. Lanie and Macy started inside with their bags, and I stopped to give Mary Jane a hug. "If you need to talk or anything, don’t hesitate to call me. I wish I could be there with you. I love you both."

  "We love you too, MJ. I'll call you after I see her. Don’t have that baby before we get back." I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and made sure she got back in the car and drove off without any issues before I ran to catch up with Lanie and Macy.

  Once through the security gate, we still had an hour before our flight. The holiday weekend brought quite a crowd in the terminal. Every restaurant had lines that contained at least ten to twelve people and they didn’t seem to be moving quickly. Lanie had thought ahead, and she pulled out a box of pop-tarts handing us each one.

  The seats at the gate didn’t allow for much cuddling, but Lanie still managed to wrap her arm around me and lean her head in staying as close as possible. It's what I needed right now to keep from falling apart. Mostly I was terrified of how Mom would react and whether this would be worse for Macy than not saying goodbye at all.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  A Mother's Love

  In Florida, we rented a car at the airport and loaded up there. We checked into our hotel, and Macy put on a dress while I put on my dress shirt and slacks. My hands trembled with nerves as I tried to button my shirt. Lanie noticed and placed her hands over mine to stop me. She finished buttoning my shirt and then smiled and whispered, "You look very handsome. You're going to be fine, and Macy will too."

  If I didn't love this woman before, I did now. She knew what I needed to hear. She grasped my hand, and as we were leaving I noticed she took Macy's too. She also offered to drive while I sat next to Macy in the back seat.

  "You ok, squirt?"

  "I guess. I'm not sure what to say when we see her."

  "It'll come to you. I'm not sure what to say myself either."

  Macy grasped my hand and held it tightly for the remainder of the ride. When the hospital came into view, I heard her breathing speed up and noticed she had begun to panic a bit. "Kiddo, you can stay with Lanie if you don't want to do this."

  "No. I need to be there with you."

  "I love you, squirt," I whispered and then kissed the top of her head.

  The nurse at registration recognized me from when I would visit before. "Tristan? I didn't expect to see you again."

  "We came to say goodbye. Has she gotten worse?"

  The nurse placed her hand over mine and offered a sad smile. "I'm sorry, Tristan. She passed away an hour ago."

  Lanie turned to embrace Macy, who began to cry the moment she heard the news. The sounds intensified around me; machines beeped louder, Macy's sobs grew heavier, and I could hear my heart beating. The nurse's voice was the only thing I couldn't hear anymore. My head had spun with images of my mother before her diagnosis. Macy barely had much memory of that time, but I got a mother for the first fourteen years of my life.

  "Tristan!" my mother called out. I was supposed to be on the playground with my friends, but I wandered off into the woods behind it. Her voice grew more frantic as she called out my name. Finally, I came running out and saw her cheeks covered with tears as she looked around anxiously. She spotted me and ran over to snatch me up in her arms. She spun around holding me against her tightly, pressing my head against her chest. "Don't ever scare me like that again!"

  That night when she put me to bed she asked me why I'd run away. "You were talking to your friends and Tommy dared me to go into the woods with him. Since you were talking I didn’t think you'd miss me."

  "I'll always miss you when you aren't around. You're my little Tristan-bull."

  "I'm sorry I ran away today, Mommy. Do you still love me?"

  "Always and forever, Tristan."

  "Tristan?" Lanie's voice brought me back to the present. Her face crinkled with concern as she waited for me to answer. "Tristan, let's take them up on the offer of the private room where we can talk."

  The nurse had mentioned a private room for families to congregate, and she offered it up to us. I followed behind them silently, still lost in memories.

  My mother always picked me up after school. Normally she was the first one in the pick-up line, standing there smiling with her arms open as I ran to the car. One Thursday afternoon in third grade, she didn't show up. The teacher took me inside to the principal's office when I was the last one waiting for a ride. I sat outside in the hallway while they called my parents. She ran into the building. "Tristan! I'm sorry sweetheart. My car had a flat tire."

  "I thought you forgot me."

  "There is nothing that could ever make me forget you. You're my favorite special little man and all I think about is you."

  "Drink this," Lanie commanded, offering me a steamy cup of coffee.

  "Thanks," the first word I'd spoken since hearing the news. It shocked Lanie as much as it shocked me. Her face relaxed into a compassionate smile as I came back into the world with them.

  "Macy," I spoke her name realizing I hadn't checked for her reaction.

  "I'm fine, Tristan. I miss her, but she left a long time ago." The fourteen-year-old is taking it better than the twenty-four-year-old, I'd never felt like less of a man than this moment.

  "The nurse said that your mother is still in the room, waiting for transport. You
can go in and say your goodbyes if you'd like. Or you can wait for the funeral. We need to start arrangements, Tristan. I know this is hard, but I'll help however I can."

  "Thanks."

  "I'm going to leave you two alone and go check with the nurses about how to make arrangements." Lanie used the excuse as a chance to give me time to see how Macy felt. She loved Lanie, but hadn't known her very long and may have felt embarrassed to talk too much about her feelings.

  Before I could ask again how she was doing, Macy began to tell a story. "I have a couple of memories before Mom got sick. I was five, and I wanted one of those fancy dollhouses. She told me we couldn't afford one because they cost half her weeks pay. Instead, she gathered up shoe boxes from all her friends and glued them together to make rooms. She used the lids to form a roof and a patio. She covered the outside with construction paper and left the inside blank. When she presented it to me, she told me we'd decorate the rooms together. We made furniture from popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners. It ended up being the best dollhouse in the world."

  "Wow, Macy. I don't remember that."

  "We worked on it the summer you went camping. You probably never paid attention to it in my room."

  "What happened to it?"

  "I tried to bring it when we moved. It fell apart when I tried to move it. I got angry and threw it away." Macy's eyes stared at the floor as she relived the sad memory.

  The door creaked open, and Lanie popped her head inside. "Hey, there's someone here who said he knew your mother. He'd like to speak to you?"

  I nodded approval, as I tried to imagine who was about to come in that door. When his face came into view, I stood up knocking the chair back. Lanie had caught it before it fell over. "What are you doing here?"

  My father stood there with a smile on his face as if we should be happy to see him. It began to fade as he realized we weren’t. "I left my number with one of the nurses and asked her to call me personally when your mother passed."

  "What!? So you wanted to be divorced from her and never see her again but wanted to make sure you knew the minute she was dead?"

  "Don't act like I'm the only one that left. You and Macy moved hundreds of miles away."

  "We were kids! We left to spare ourselves the heartache of a mother who didn't know us on top of a father who abandoned us! Don't pretend as though we are anything like you."

  Lanie moved to Macy's side. I hadn’t noticed she was crying. "I'm going to take Macy to the cafeteria. She doesn't need to be around this. You two need to sit down and talk this over. You're in a hospital environment. People do not need to hear such anger." She gave me a quick kiss on the cheek. "I love you. Text me if you need me back here."

  "Beautiful woman you have there. How long have you been together?"

  "That's none of your business. You lost the privilege to know anything about me when you walked out on us six years ago. You can't even imagine the hell Macy has been through because of you." It angered me that he assumed he could show up today and reenter our lives as though he'd done nothing wrong.

  The last time I spoke with him was the day he'd come to me with the paperwork. He handed me a manila envelope and said to sit down and read it over, and he'd answer any questions I had. He explained that taking care of my mother had taken a toll on him. He couldn't handle seeing her losing her mind, couldn't handle not having a wife waiting at home for him each evening. He never mentioned the consequence it might be having on his children. Taking care of Macy was too much for him alone. He loved her but felt that I could raise her better. He's a businessman with a steady job with tenure but felt that a kid just graduating high school with no job would be a better father. If it hadn't been incredibly pathetic, I might have laughed.

  He never even told Macy goodbye. Once I signed the paperwork, he walked away leaving me a note for Macy that read 'be good for your brother' and contained a check for ten thousand dollars to get us started. I stretched that money to supplement my income while I worked as many odds and ends jobs as possible. I'd graduated from high school at the top of my class expecting to go to college. Instead, I spent my life flipping burgers, waiting tables, picking up garbage, cutting lawns, and finally my job at Disney where I met Mary Jane.

  The job at Disney gave me the opportunity to take Macy there since she'd never been. It gave me a chance to offer her some semblance of a normal childhood. We visited Mom up until we moved. We began going three times a week, then it trickled down to once a week and finally to about once a month. Each visit I'd ask the nurse if our father had been by and every time it was the same answer. After signing away his children and divorcing his wife he never looked back. He was a coward, and I wanted nothing to do with him. Even being in the same room with him made me sick.

  I stood up and walked toward the door. "We're arranging the funeral. If you come, don't speak to us unless we speak to you. Stay away from Macy."

  "You can't keep my daughter from me, Tristan."

  "I'm not like you. I won't take the choice from her. As I was saying, stay away from Macy unless she comes to you. I'll ask her if she wants to speak to you. It's her choice, and you won't force yourself upon her."

  "Don't pretend to think you know why I left. You think you've been through hell? I have missed every moment of the last five years of my children's lives. The woman I've loved for thirty years died not knowing who I was, what we shared, or the two lives we created out of love. I've been through hell too."

  "You didn't have to leave," I stated through gritted teeth.

  "I did. That woman you love out there, do you want to marry her?"

  "I told you that was none of your business," I repeated my earlier statement.

  "Let's say you do love her. Imagine for a moment that you go to see her one day, and you mention a memory of your first date. She doesn't remember it. You may shrug it off as no big deal and move on without a second thought. One day she leaves your six-year-old daughter on the playground by herself for hours because she forgot that she had brought her there. You get a call at work from the police officer who found her crying on the swings late at night. You have to fight child services to prove you aren't a neglectful parent. Then you have to make the decision to put the woman you love in a hospital so that she has constant monitoring. You go to see her every day. You take her a bouquet of her favorite flowers and play the song that's been yours for twenty years hoping to see her smile. Instead, she smacks the flowers out of your hand and screams for the nurses that a stranger is in her room. I hope you never experience that, Tristan. I hope that you get to live to a ripe old age with the love of your life. I pray that she remembers every second of your time together. You can call me a coward, and I agree. You're stronger than me, and Macy needed someone strong. Don't begin to think I don't know what kind of pain you've gone through though."

  His words stabbed at me. I knew that pain because I'd experience it from a different angle. It didn't justify the fact that he abandoned his two children in my eyes. I couldn't feel sorry for him and forgive him that easily. "I have to go. I need to get back to Macy."

  In the cafeteria, Lanie and Macy had their heads together in a serious looking conversation. Macy glanced up at me and ran over to embrace me. I kissed the top of her head and held onto her. "You ready to go back to the hotel, squirt?"

  "Is he coming?" she asked with fear in her eyes.

  "No. I told him not to speak to you unless you came to him first. I won't keep you from talking to him if it's what you want, but I won't force you to talk to him either."

  "You've been a better dad to me than he would have ever been, Tristan."

  My voice caught in my throat as I choked back tears. I struggled to take care of her for the past six years and had always been scared she'd resent me, thinking I hadn't done enough.

  "Why don't we go to the hotel and take advantage of their indoor pool. We need a little relaxation," Lanie suggested.

  "Sounds great to me," I replied.

  Chapter Twen
ty-Nine

  So many emotions

  Macy changed into her swimsuit and grabbed a towel the moment we stepped into the hotel room. "Can I go on down while you guys get ready?"

  "Sure, kiddo. I need to talk to Lanie a moment. We'll be down shortly."

  The door shut, and I turned to Lanie, who looked concerned. "We need to talk?"

  "Talking isn't what I need. I need you," I pulled her against me and pressed my lips to hers. Our mouths moved together as our hands pulled at our clothes. My hands fiddled with the clasp of her bra as my mouth moved to her neck. Lanie's hands moved to my boxers, pushing them down before she moved towards the bed.

  Propped above her, I wrapped my arms tightly around her as I left the world of emotional despair and entered her world of ecstasy and love. She rolled over on top of me, and I laid back to enjoy the ride. When we both reached our peaks, she fell forward pressing her face next to mine. Lanie whispered in my ear, "I'm here. Let everything out." I enveloped her in my arms and held her tightly as I released the emotions inside. My chest shook as the sobs came from me.

  Her skin felt soft against mine. As I let the emotions out, I ran my hands over her porcelain skin, relishing the feel of her body on top of me. I wanted to get lost in passion with her again instead of feeling this pain. I rolled over and began to make love to her again. She cried out in surprise as I entered her, and the next noise from her mouth was a sigh of pure bliss as we disappeared together again. I grabbed the headboard and held on as I pushed deeper, flew higher.

  After the second round, we were both spent. We lay on our backs gasping for air as we stared at the ceiling. I rolled over and pressed my lips to her shoulder, "I love you, so much, Lanie. I couldn't have gotten through this trip without you here."

  "I love you, Tristan. We need to get downstairs to be there for Macy now."

  I jumped up, "You're right. I didn’t mean for us to be up here so long."