by Emerson Rose
King’s hand is on my shoulder again. I wish he would stop touching me.
“Holland . . .”
“Why isn’t she answering me?”
“Holland . . .”
“Juliette,” I say, loud enough to wake even the deepest of sleepers, but she doesn’t move a muscle.
Her shoulder rises and falls with every easy breath, but she doesn’t stir.
King turns me in his arms and squats down until we are eye to eye.
“She can’t hear you.” He places his hands on my shoulders and shakes his head back and forth.
“What?”
“She’s deaf, she can’t hear you. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. She was born with a profound hearing deficit. She’s never been able to hear.”
“No, she was fine when she was a baby. Nobody said there was anything wrong with her hearing in the hospital, and they test for that.”
He releases my shoulders and drops his arms to his sides. His face clouds with sympathy, or maybe it’s pity. I don’t know, but I do know I want to smack the shit out of him right now. I have no choice but to believe him. I wasn’t allowed to be there for her. I didn’t even know my baby girl was deaf.
I watch my hand slap King across the face as if it had a mind of its own. His head snaps to the side, freezing thereafter the impact of my hand. His eyes are closed, and I can’t resist the urge to have another go at it. I slap him again and again until adrenaline has consumed me and I’m pounding my fists against his chest.
“I hate you, I hate you so much! I wish you were dead!” I yell while he stands there, taking every bit of abuse without defending himself, until suddenly he grabs my wrists firmly to stop me.
“Stop,” he says, turning me to face the bed, where two very big eyes watch me with horror. When King knows I’ve seen her, he lets go of me and leans over to turn on the light next to Juliette’s bed.
He crawls across the bed and sits directly in front of her and begins to sign.
She watches intently until he stops, and then her eyes are on me again. God, I want to hold her and caress her skin, smooth her tousled hair away from her face, and kiss every inch of her from head to toe. But I’ve gone and messed things up by freaking out on the only parent she’s ever known.
Chapter 38
King
If Sebastián weren’t my father . . . well, you know. He fucking told her. I should have known. He’s been begging me to bring Juliette back every day since Holland graduated from Juilliard and won the auditions for concertmaster with the New York Philharmonic.
It wasn’t like I didn’t want her back in our lives. I did, I do, more than anything. I ache for her every single day. I tell Juliette how wonderful and beautiful and talented her mommy is, we look at pictures taken by the team of people who have kept track of her since the day I left, and we watch every one of her performances on video. Watching her play is bittersweet. I expected nothing less from her. I knew if we were out of the picture, she would blow the classical music world’s mind, and she certainly has, but the hole in my heart where she belongs grows larger every day we are apart, and the cruel irony of having a deaf child who will never hear the beauty of her mother’s gift gnaws at my conscience. I can’t help but think that maybe she was fine in the hospital, and when God saw me take her from her mother, he took her hearing away to punish me through her. I couldn’t let the past three years be for nothing by showing up right now. She’s been out of danger for eighteen months, ever since the dirty world of drug cartels learned that the Romero empire had no real heir. But her career was peaking, she was living her dream, and I didn’t want to interrupt it.
I sign to Juliette that her mommy is here to see her, but she is a little upset about something that has nothing to do with her. She signs back that Mommy is scary and that she wants me to stay with her until she’s gone. When she’s done using her hands to speak to me, she crawls into my lap on her knees and wraps her little arms around my neck, turning her face away from Holland.
I feel like the biggest shithead in the universe when I look to see how Holland is handling this. Her face is full of so much pain and longing that I have to look away too.
This isn’t how I wanted this to go. I wanted to ease them back together over the next year, introducing them in Puerto Rico where Juliette would feel comfortable. I wanted to tell Holland about our daughter’s disability. I’d hoped she would have an opportunity to learn a little sign language before meeting her so she could communicate with her right away. All of this would have been possible if Sebastián hadn’t gotten so fucking impatient.
I was going to call Holland in a few more months, but he didn’t believe me. Sebastián thought I was never going to let Holland see Juliette again. He could never see the big picture. Nobody could.
She fulfilled her half of our deal a million times over when she graduated from Juilliard in half the time allotted and became the youngest person in history to ever win the audition for concertmaster. I’ve never been more proud of anyone or anything in my life.
I’ve also kept my promise to get out of the drug dealing business. It was much easier when the word spread that Arturo Romero wasn’t my real father. Fifteen months after moving to Puerto Rico, I had millions of dollars squirreled away in offshore accounts. Suspicions were high for an entire year until the cartels relaxed and realized that I had no say in the matter. My connection was adamant: no true Romero, no supply.
When Juliette is calm, I tuck her back under the covers. I start to scoot off the bed to leave and she grabs my wrist. I sign that everything will be okay. I tell her not to worry, and that Mommy is a very loving person. She asks if her mommy will be here tomorrow when she wakes up, and I tell her I’m not sure, but probably not. Her full bottom lip slips out in a pout. I kiss her nose and leave the door open a crack in case she needs me.
Holland isn’t in the bedroom anymore, so I search the living room. Empty. I look in the bathroom and the dining area before I decide that she must have felt so out of place and unwanted that she left.
Fuck, I want to punch my father right now. I pace the length of the living room several times and decide there is nothing I can do right now. I can’t leave Juliette in the hotel room alone to try and catch her downstairs. I’m going to have to wait for Sebastián to get back to go to her apartment.
I turn off all the lights and toss toys and books into a wicker basket that we drag along with us everywhere when we travel. I check on Juliette one more time and find her sound asleep exactly how I left her—with one exception. Holland is wrapped around her little body, spooning with her face buried in her hair. It’s impossible to tell where Holland’s wild mass of waves stops and Juliette’s begins. Seeing them together makes me stumble, and I grab the doorframe for support.
I don’t know how long I stand there watching the two most beautiful people in my life take breath after breath. It’s surreal. Mother and child reunited. It’s the third most moving moment of my life. Number one was when I saw Holland dancing at Ecstasy and fell in love with her at first sight, and number two happened while watching her deliver our daughter.
When my muscles begin to ache from standing in the same spot for so long, I leave the door open a crack and pad into the living room to call Sebastián.
A sense of wellbeing radiates through the suite. Knowing that Holland and Juliette are sleeping in the next room together is so incredibly right that I’m struck with the realization that the past three years have been more off-balance than I thought. But how could that be? Holland is everything she ever wanted to be, famous, world-renowned, a Juilliard graduate. She fulfilled every dream she worked her entire life for.
Sebastián picks up after only one ring. He was waiting for the call.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
I sit on the edge of the couch with my elbows propped on my knees, caught in this tight situation with my father.
“King, I couldn’t let you do this again. My granddaugh
ter needs her mother, and you need Holland. She’s a star. Isn’t that what you wanted? It was time to give her her life back.”
“Give her her life back? What I wanted? She has the life she dreamed of, Sebastián. I may have had my doubts at first, but when we found out Juliette was deaf, I knew I was doing the right thing. Holland would never have gone back to playing. She would have devoted every ounce of herself to Juliette. She wouldn’t have gone to college, and she never would have played all over the world in so many orchestras. It had to be this way.”
“All right, King. I know I’ll never make you see that what you did was wrong. The past is the past, but those two need to be together now, and in the future. You were taking too long. I couldn’t watch another birthday go by without them knowing each other.
“You don’t see what I see. She may be famous and accomplished, but she’s hollow. The music doesn’t fill her up like it used to. The only thing that can fill the void in her life is Juliette, and God willing, if she can ever forgive you, she needs you too.”
I sink back into the couch and stare out the window at the lights of the New York skyline. She will never forgive me. I sacrificed her motherhood for her career, and it wasn’t my choice to make. I knew she would never forgive me the moment I left our house in Houston and got on a plane to Puerto Rico with our baby.
“Where is she now?” he asks.
“Sleeping with Juliette.”
“She’s still there? How did it go?”
“It was rocky. She rushed in before I could tell her, and Juliette woke up scared. I thought she slipped out when I was tucking Juliette back into bed, but when I went back in, she was curled up with her.”
“And Juliette didn’t get upset?”
“I never heard a peep from the bedroom, and they were both asleep when I found them, so apparently not.”
“You got lucky, son. Things could have been so much worse.”
“She loves her, so much. I saw it in her eyes tonight, and it made me doubt myself. I messed up, I was wrong. But I’ve been telling you I was going to contact her soon. You just had to push, didn’t you?”
“Your way isn’t always the best way, King. In fact, your way has pretty much sucked for the last three years. Somebody had to show you that you were wrong. Guess it was me.”
“Well, it’s done now. There’s no going back. I don’t know what the hell is going to happen in the morning, but you’d better be here bright and early to help if I need you.”
“I’m right downstairs. Call me for anything.”
“I will.”
We hang up, and I toe off my shoes and lay down on the couch. What now? I have no idea what to expect from Holland tomorrow, or Juliette, for that matter. I get up and check on them one more time. Holland is under the covers, and Juliette is facing her now with her hand on Holland’s cheek; both are still sleeping. Tears well in my eyes for the first time in years. They are so beautifully meant to be together. I can’t believe I ever thought she was better off without her daughter. The dam of guilt that’s been building for years breaks free, flooding me with regret. I was wrong, so, so wrong. Now I have to make it right. Somehow, I have to find a way to put Holland’s life back together.
Chapter 39
Holland
I couldn’t just leave. Seeing her for those few seconds lit a part of my heart that has been dark for so long. I needed to touch her, smell her, and feel her warmth close to me to believe she was real.
While King comforted her, I slipped into the bedroom next to Juliette’s and tiptoed back in when he went looking for me.
She is already asleep, and since she can’t hear, I’m able to sit in a chair behind her and watch her for a few minutes, but I can’t stand it. I press my knee into the mattress, and the movement wakes her. She rolls over and I freeze. She gazes at me for a few seconds, and just when I’m sure she’s going to yell for her daddy, she reaches out her chubby little arms, inviting me closer. She’s seen me in pictures and on video. I’m not a complete stranger. Our hearts and souls know one another. She lived inside of me, she kicked and grew, and she felt my love for her.
I crawl closer, and she takes my hand and rolls back to her side until we are spooning. She fits perfectly in the curve of my body. She feels like home. I bury my face in her hair and breathe her in, and she wiggles closer to me. Lord, I’m in heaven with her in my arms again. The planets align and the stars are all in their proper place in the sky. Every molecule of my body relaxes when I melt against her. The exhaustion and worry of three long years without her falls away, and a peace I have never known blankets us both.
Her breathing is slow and regular, her grip on my hand relaxes, and the steady beat of her tiny heart lulls me to sleep.
Before I even open my eyes in the morning, I feel the calm in my soul. I slide my hand across the sheet, half asleep, in search of her, but find a cool, empty pillow instead. When I jerk awake and sit straight up in bed, I’m face to face with a wild-haired three-year-old sitting on her knees in soft pink fleece pajamas, watching me intently. She raises her hand to wave hello, and I do the same and smile. She smiles back.
I don’t know what to do now. I have no way to communicate with her. I don’t know sign language, and I have no idea if she reads lips. Do deaf children read lips?
Juliette touches my lips with the tip of her finger, as if to answer my question.
“Do you read lips?”
She nods her head up and down and holds out her fingers as if to say just a little. Well that’s something.
“Do you know who I am?”
She nods again, and I scramble to think of a way she can respond other than nodding. She’s too young to text back and forth with. There’s an app for everything. There must be an app for this. I sit up to retrieve my phone from my back pocket, and she surprises me by crawling into my lap.
“Oh . . .” My arms move to make way for her, and she snuggles in, pulling the comforter around us both. It’s sort of strange that she’s so comfortable having a semi stranger in her bed. King has done a good job familiarizing her with me.
When she’s settled, I hold my phone in front of us both and search for some sort of app that helps the hearing and deaf communicate, and voilà, there it is. She recognizes the app’s logo and turns to smile up at me. I pause and look into her eager eyes until she returns her attention to the phone and impatiently taps the screen, but suddenly I realize that I don’t need an app to say what I want to say. I turn her in my lap and point to myself and cross my arms over my chest, and then I point to her.
Juliette’s eyes light up like the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. She repeats the sign and throws her arms around my neck in a long overdue embrace.
I hold her so tightly that I can’t believe she doesn’t fuss. The emotions I’ve been holding back for so long come rushing to the surface, and I begin to cry. My shoulders shake, and she turns around and places her hands on my wet cheeks. When I open my eyes, her face is full of concern, and I watch as she flicks her index finger up, raising her eyebrows. She’s signing something, so I search the bed for my phone to learn what she’s just said. I wish I knew how to tell her that these are happy tears. She finds the phone first, though, and scrolls until she finds a picture of a woman shrugging her shoulders in question and turns the phone to show me she is confused.
Explaining via sign language that I’m overwhelmed with happiness because I didn’t ever think this day would come seems too difficult, so I just smile and sign I love you, I love you, I love you until I can’t sign anymore because my hands are full of her.
“Ahem.”
King is standing just inside the bedroom door, watching us with tears in his eyes.
Good.
Asshole.
“I can help you if you’d like.”
Juliette notices my rigidity and turns to see what I’m looking at. When she sees her daddy, she leaps off the bed and into his arms, taking my heart with her. The pain her reaction causes m
e is unintentional, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less, and it’s totally not her fault—it’s his. He is the monster I used to live and breathe for, the man who I would have given anything, the man who ripped out the lifeline feeding my soul, the man who singlehandedly ruined the best part of my life by making decisions for me that were never his to make, the father of my little girl . . . King.
He swings her into his arms and hugs her tight. I take the opportunity to speak freely while her face is turned away. I don’t know how good she is at reading lips, and I definitely don’t want her reading what I’m about to say.
“You’re an evil, vile monster. I don’t need your help. You’ve done enough already. The only thing I want from you is my little girl. Nothing else. You make me sick. I can’t imagine hating someone more than I hate you.”
That’s not all true. The sight of him feels more like a KitchenAid mixer set on high, with a bread hook blending all my insides together. I hate him, yes, but miraculously, somehow I don’t think the love I once felt for him is completely dead. Can that even happen? Can I love and despise the same person at the same time? I think I can. I think I do. I also think it doesn’t matter.
“I’m glad to see you two are getting along.”
“Fuck you, King.” I swing my legs off the bed and walk around him so Juliette can see me. “Are you hungry?” She reads my lips and nods yes.
“Why don’t you order some breakfast, King, and I’ll get acquainted with my daughter?”
I smile for Juliette, but my tone is full of venom. He’s not used to being told what to do, and he’s never seen me angry.
“Holland, I’m not going to argue with you in front of her. We can have breakfast, but after that we need to sit down and figure out what to do next.”
“There’s nothing to figure out. You’ve deprived me of her for three years. I want back into her life . . . permanently.”
“Like I said, after breakfast. Sebastián is coming up. I’ll order for him too.”