In This Life

by Cora Brent

  “What are we supposed to do in the house all day?” Emma pouted.

  I stood and heaved Colin onto my hip. “When I was a little girl I used to build forts. We could do that.”

  “What’s a fort?”

  “It’s like a little clubhouse and we can build one right in the living room with some chairs and blankets.”

  Emma was intrigued. “Can you show me?”

  I smiled. “Sure.”

  Twenty minutes later we were all relaxing in the makeshift living room fort. Emma and I were lying on our backs and staring up at the yellow blanket that served as a roof while Colin enjoyed some tummy time between us. Roxie sat guarding the entrance, our ever faithful sentinel.

  “I like it in here,” Emma whispered.

  “I do too,” I whispered back.

  My phone rang. I’d been keeping it close, just in case I needed to dial 911 in a hurry, though I was pretty sure Roxie would go ballistic if anyone actually tried to get into the house.

  I felt a flood of relief when I saw the caller was Nash.

  “How’s the drive?” I asked him.

  “Long. Dull. How’s my boy?”

  I glanced at Colin. “He’s fine. He’s trying to lift himself up.”

  “Tell him I miss him.”

  “I will.”

  There was a long pause.

  “I miss you too, Kat.”

  My eyes closed and a fleeting second of happiness surged through me. It was exactly what I’ve been wishing to hear from him. Some hint that there was more to us than a practical arrangement. My heart wanted me to respond, to tell him how much I missed him too. I wanted so badly to feel his arms around me, to hear the comforting thud of his heartbeat as I rested my cheek against his chest after we finished enjoying each other’s bodies.

  My eyes opened. I couldn’t say it. Not now. Saying it would expose me to a potential level of hurt that I wouldn’t be able to bear. Because Nash knew nothing of the most important story I had to tell and how I’d been hiding from it for so long, lying for so long, I wasn’t sure how to do anything differently. He wouldn’t understand. Nash had little patience or forgiveness in his heart for duplicity of any kind. Nash assumed I was upstanding and honorable because I’d never given him any reason to believe otherwise.

  No, of course he wouldn’t understand. I was on my own.

  “I guess I’ll see you later tonight,” I said.

  I thought I heard a sigh of irritation on the other end. “I guess so.”

  “Drive safe.”

  “Bye, Kat.”

  Emma sat up in the little structure we’d created and stared at me. “Mommy, are you crying?”

  I swiped at my eyes. “No, Ems. There’s no reason for Mommy to cry.”

  The drive was monotonous, the miles and landscapes bleeding into each other. I’d been driving for more hours than I cared to think about and now I was somewhere in Nevada, a dry, brown segment of the state. The scenery reminded me of Phoenix, the place I was born and hadn’t returned to in over a decade.

  A rest stop exit beckoned and my bladder demanded some relief so I pulled off the highway and toward the squat building that housed bathrooms and vending machines.

  The trucker who’d just finished using the facilities acknowledged me with a quick nod. I took care of business, tried to extract a soda from the broken vending machine, then paused to take in the barren landscape. The long drive was playing havoc with my thoughts. When I wasn’t brooding over bad memories I was bothered by my earlier call with Kat. There was a tone in her voice, like something was wrong. She sounded sad, distracted. I knew her well enough to detect the change. Usually Kat was full of words and questions but this time she’d been quiet, not even responding when I told her I missed her. I hadn’t said it with the intention of applying pressure. I’d said it because she’d been on my mind so much, almost as much as Colin, and I thought she’d be pleased to hear it.

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she wanted to keep me at a distance after all.

  I ended my break and climbed back into the truck. The sun was starting to hang low in the sky. I’d started this journey fourteen hours ago and this would be the last leg of the trip. I was making excellent time and expected to be back in Hawk Valley before eleven p.m.

  A yawn fought its way out. It wasn’t my brightest idea to tackle this exhausting trip on three hours of sleep. The last time I made the drive I’d had no sleep but then I was running on shock and adrenaline. Now I was just weary and wishing for home.

  Home.

  Funny how I’d resisted thinking of Hawk Valley as home during the years I’d lived there. I thought of it as my father’s town, my father’s home. I convinced myself I didn’t belong to the quirky little place that seemed suspended in time at the foothills of the mountains. I belonged to it now. I just wanted to get back there and kiss Colin good night. I wanted to hold Kat and try to figure out where her head was. I knew where my head was. Somehow this trip had made it clear. There was nothing casual about what we had, not for me. I didn’t want her to be my friend and fuck buddy. I wanted her to be mine.

  Once I was back on the road my thoughts veered in a less cheerful direction. During this trip I’d been thinking too much about bitter topics. The things that happened between my dad and me. And Heather. The messy conclusion that possessed a Greek tragedy quality. But it hadn’t ended with Heather running out of the house and my brutal words to my father.

  After that night he was so remorseful it was almost pitiful. He bought all my favorite foods, stayed home every night in the hopes I’d say more than two sentences to him, opened his wallet to buy way more crap than I’d actually need to bring to college. The truce between us was tense but at least it existed. He hugged me on the day I left for college and I let him.

  Heather had resigned from her job. I didn’t see her around and didn’t care to. We must not have been as invisible as we thought while making out on a blanket at the park because someone had seen. The rumors reached me and I refused to confirm or deny them. In fact I refused to participate any conversation that included her name.

  Heather was more than just some girl I’d messed with. She might have ended up meaning something to me.

  Or maybe not.

  Maybe I would have just fucked her and tossed her aside to go chase something better a thousand miles away. Either way my most significant memory of her now was what she looked like lying naked on my father’s bed. I couldn’t forgive her for putting that in my head. She left me some voicemails of the ‘blah blah never meant to hurt you’ variety until I blocked her number. On graduation day I thought I caught a glimpse of her blonde hair on the edge of the crowd but when I looked again she was gone.

  Once I was in Oregon I didn’t think about her much. I had plenty to keep me busy. There was no shortage of girls around and sometimes I’d meet one I kind of liked. But I was finished with being careless with girls’ feelings. I finally knew how it felt to be discarded and I didn’t want to inflict that on anyone. I tried out a few relationships and discovered I wasn’t good at them. They accused me of being closed off, detached, unwilling to let go, unable to let anyone in. They said I was a stone cold motherfucker who had nothing to give. I didn’t argue. And still I refused to talk about the furious fire that burned inside of me, how it led me to seek out violence even though I despised violence. I would never cause hurt just for the pure hell of it. But the sight of anyone being mistreated, especially a woman, set off a chain reaction that ended with my fists.

  There was therapy. There were support groups. Court ordered anger management. But it was all a waste of time because there was no mystery behind my actions. Every outburst had been preceded by a situation that in my mind was tied to the murder of my mother.

  On the plus side, as soon as I moved to Oregon my relationship with my father took a turn for the better. It was easy to get along with someone you hardly saw and spoke to maybe twice a month.

  In the fall of my third year of colle
ge my dad asked me if I was coming home for Christmas. I hadn’t the year before, preferring to remain at school. The truth was the holidays bugged the shit out of me, all that tinsel fakery and phony smiles. But my dad sounded really earnest and over the last year I’d only visited Hawk Valley for a total of three days over the summer. He was pleased when I said I’d be there.

  “There’s something I want to tell you in person, Nash. Something that I hope will be okay with you.”

  His words were odd but I didn’t dwell on them. Maybe he was throwing in the towel and closing the store. As far as I was concerned it would be about time. In any case I was determined to get along with him. I could make that happen for a few lousy days.

  Within an hour of arriving in Hawk Valley I changed my mind.

  “You’re doing what?” I couldn’t believe what I’d just heard.

  He was nervous, kept staring at his hands. But he met my eye when he confirmed the news. “I’m marrying Heather Molloy.”

  My brain struggled for a reaction but no words came out so Chris Ryan saw this an invitation to keep talking.

  “She moved back here about six months ago to take care of her mother. We got to be friends. Then it turned into more. Nash, this doesn’t have anything to do with past mistakes. We both still feel awful about that. But what we have now, the people we are now, this is different. I hope you’ll understand.”

  “I understand there’s something really fucking wrong with both of you. That’s what I understand.”

  “Nash, please.”

  “Please what?”

  “She cares about you. She wants to be your friend.”

  I thought that was funny. “Oh Jesus, that’s rich.”

  “She wanted to be here to talk to you. But I thought this needed to be between us.”

  I paced the floor of the living room, disgusted. “Of all the women around, that’s the one you pick.”

  He stood his ground, remaining where he was. “I love her.”

  “Fuck that. You don’t love anyone.”

  He looked hurt. “That’s not true. I love you. I’ve loved you since the day you were born.”

  I stopped pacing. “You sure picked a special moment to say that for the first time.”

  “I thought you knew.” He ran his hand through his hair. He’d hit his fortieth birthday this year but his hair was still thick and black, like mine. “I was just never good at saying it. I should have been better at making you feel loved. I should have been more like your mother.”

  I whirled on him, practically snarling. “Don’t you fucking dare talk about her!”

  “We should have talked about her more. That was my mistake.”

  “You always hated my mother.”

  My father was shocked. “No, son. I didn’t hate her, not ever. Your mother gave me so much. She gave me you.”

  “Yeah. And I figured that was what you hated her for the most.”

  I hadn’t seen my dad cry since the night he woke me up to tell me the person I loved the most was dead. A tear slid down his cheek now.

  “No,” he repeated hoarsely. “I loved her for that. We never got along but I always loved her, if for no other reason than because you were part of her.”

  I didn’t want him to say these things. Not when I was hell bent on being furious.

  “You’ve got to stop, Nash,” he said. “You’ve got to stop blaming yourself, for feeling guilty about something you never could have prevented. You’ve got to stop the way you lash out, thinking you can right all the wrongs in the world. You weren’t built for violence and it takes a piece of you every time. It will destroy you if you let it and my son, my beautiful boy, you are so much better than you pretend to be. Someday you’ll wake up and understand that.”

  I didn’t want to listen. “Strange words from a man who spent so much effort tearing me down.”

  He flinched. “I wasn’t always the best father. I said and did things I shouldn’t have. I own that completely. I’m asking you to forgive me.”

  I picked up the duffel bag I’d left by the door when I walked in here only a short while ago. “I don’t want to hear it. Go on. Marry her. It doesn’t fucking matter to me. We’re done.”

  “Wait!” He stood up and covered the distance between us. My hand was already on the door.

  “I want you to stay,” he choked out. “I want so badly for us to start over. But I won’t stop you from going if you need to. I’m just asking, no I’m begging, please don’t cut off all contact. Please, Nash.”

  Instead of answering his plea I slammed the door in his face.

  Until two months ago, that emotional Christmas Eve was the last time I set foot in Hawk Valley. Fortunately some of my father’s words had sunk in. It took me some months to cool off but eventually I did pick up the phone and call him. I wouldn’t go to his wedding or come visit or even welcome a visit from him but I did what he asked. I stayed in contact.

  When Colin was born I was sorely tempted to visit. I’d always hoped and wished for a brother when I was a kid and now I had one. My dad sent photos every week and I found myself looking at them often, wondering when I’d meet my brother, what he’d think of me.

  I never would have guessed even in my worst moments of dread that it would happen the way happened.

  But that was the random fucked up nature of things in this life. Things happen that we couldn’t possibly plan for. And fate can deal a cruel and unforeseen blow no matter what we intend, no matter what we want, no matter how much we wish for more time.

  Nash had told me he’d be home before eleven. After I put the kids to bed I couldn’t sit still so I embarked on an overzealous cleaning spree throughout the entire first floor of the old house.

  All day my thoughts had been battling with each other and I still had no clear plan. Steve Brown was a family friend and a capable lawyer but I hesitated to involve him. Or anyone. Returning to Hawk Valley pregnant, alone, and without a degree had caused a ripple of gossip. I was Kathleen Doyle after all, the goody goody brainiac who left here with every intention of making a name for herself.

  Instead I returned with nothing but a vague story about a failed relationship that didn’t begin to touch the truth. Emma was given my last name and I refused to list the father on the birth certificate. It wasn’t until I received a copy in the mail when the baby was six weeks old that I learned my mother had paid a visit to her friend in the county vital records office and changed my response.

  The name Harrison Corbett stared back at me in bold typed letters.

  “Stop howling, Kat. I was trying to protect you and Emma. You might change your mind someday and want child support.”

  She meant well so I couldn’t be angry. She had no idea that the explanation I’d given her was missing some key elements, the largest of those being the name of Emma’s real father.

  Cleaning was therapeutic. Getting on my knees and washing the hardwood floors by hand succeeded in calming the turmoil in my head. Roxie seemed offended when I booted her out of her corner so I could clean there. She watched me with puzzled doggy eyes and then plopped down in a huff when I set her soft bed down on a different area of the floor because it was already dry.

  In the kitchen I discovered the crumpled piece of paper that had disturbed me so much this morning. It was exactly where I’d dropped it underneath the table. All day I’d avoided retrieving it because I knew I’d be unable to resist the pain of smoothing out the creases and looking at it again.

  The three people in the picture were so young. Impossibly young. They hadn’t yet been touched by anything terrible and it showed in their arrogant smiles.

  “Randall,” I whispered, touching his face and wishing I had the power to step through the web of time and warn him he only had a year to live. The game he played in that night was the last one before his knee injury. After that came the surgeries, and the addiction to pain medication, the desperate and futile effort to reclaim his life, and finally the fatal overdose.

/>   I was about to tear the paper into tiny pieces so I couldn’t look at it anymore when I saw something in the bottom right hand corner. A phone number had been neatly written. It was probably the same one that had been left on unheard voicemails and listed at the bottom of discarded emails.

  I snatched my cell phone and dialed before I had a chance to reconsider. The three rings took eternity and my heart thudded the entire time. He picked up on the fourth ring.

  “Kathleen. About goddamn time you called me back.”

  Hearing his voice after all this time immediately summoned a feeling that was something like being kicked in the chest.

  “I’m only calling to order you to stay away from me,” I said coldly. “There will be legal consequences if you don’t.”

  He sighed. “Can’t do that. I told you we needed to talk.”

  I struggled to keep from shouting. I couldn’t wake up the children. “We do not need to talk! Stay away. Stop stalking me or I’ll have you arrested.”

  He chuckled. “No you won’t.”

  “The hell I won’t.”

  “We’re not doing this over the phone, Kat. I’m here in town, staying at The Hawkian Hotel on Garner Avenue. You don’t need to tell me where you are. I already know. Expect me there in ten minutes.”

  He ended the call, leaving me standing there in the kitchen, dumbfounded and staring at my silent phone as if it were a venomous snake. I could make good on my threat. I could call the police, claim he’d been stalking me, file a restraining order. But that would turn into a very ugly spectacle.

  A car pulled up to the house ten minutes later. I wished I’d taken a moment away from my inner turmoil to throw on something more substantial than a long nightshirt with no shorts but it was too late. The moment was here. The only thing to do was to meet it head on.