I held my breath, afraid of this new feeling because, although the music wasn’t a physical thing that could touch me, it reached right inside of me and twisted something up that I hadn’t felt twist before, or maybe not for a very long time.
When he opened his mouth and started singing, a hard lump formed in my throat, making it difficult to breathe. Those tricky emotions rose to the surface again to make me feel things I didn’t want to feel for David. It was like some instinct or some long-ago promise, but everything about the way his voice made me feel felt natural. He played the song slow and with a kind of odd rhythm that reminded me of a clock ticking, counting down the seconds to the most heartbreaking moment of your life. He’d felt so much pain in his past, a fact made blatantly obvious in each rise and fall of his voice. A beautiful voice. I wanted to wrap myself up in it and exist as only a pair of ears. And at the same time, I wanted to wrap my arms around him and hug away all of his pain.
He rolled back and forth with the tide of the music, shaking his head as the words poured from his soul, his whole body a part of the tune, like he’d played here, alone, so many times before. Like he was playing alone now—calling to the angels, to the universe, to see him here on his knees and have mercy on him. Forgive him. Free him.
On the last note of the song he switched the tempo, slowed it down and rolled it into another one. A song I knew—had heard on an old CD of Brett’s—but the way David sung it changed the meaning for me. I actually started to like the song and made a mental note to put it in a playlist when I got home tonight. A David playlist.
The music stopped short of the end of the song then, and David looked up as the door swung slowly open across the room.
“Harry.” He jumped up. I noticed him wipe his cheek as he stood. “What are you doing up?”
I spun around to see the little boy there—dark hair, big blue eyes—about seven or eight years old.
“What are you doing up so late?” the boy countered, rubbing his eyes.
“I was playing a song for my friend Ara.” David inclined his head toward me as he bent to lift the kid off the ground. He looked tiny in David’s arms, and it completely changed the way I looked at David. The dorky, overbearing friend became a simple, loving guy.
Harry covered his mouth then and whispered something in David’s ear, which I heard a mile off.
David laughed. “Not everyone likes hugs as much as you do, Harry.”
Harry looked at me. I smiled awkwardly, not sure what to say.
“He uh…” David pressed his forehead to Harry’s, taking a very long and seemingly sad breath before looking at me again. “He wants to give you a hug.”
I opened my arms as I stood up. “I like hugs.”
Harry hopped down from David’s arms and threw himself into mine, wrapping them all the way around my waist. I’d never hugged a child before, never really seen one up close, but he was really warm and sort of floppy, or maybe not floppy, but just not as strong as a bigger person. His hair smelled like strawberry shampoo—an oddly-familiar smell—and as I hugged him back, I felt kind of warm in my heart.
Harry turned his head to look at David. “She’s skinny, Daddy.”
My eyes met David’s, both round with surprise. “Daddy?”
“Uh…” He went blank. “Um…”
“Uh oh.” Harry released me and stepped back.
“He’s your son?” I said, squatting down to study his face a bit closer. He had the shape of David’s eyes, but the color was brighter than any blue I’d ever seen, except mine, and even in the dim lighting of late night, I could see that he was way too old to be David’s son. Unless he got busy at a very young age.
“It’s a long story,” he said, taking Harry’s hand.
I stood up, frozen with shock, until David closed the door again, insisting Harry go straight back to bed. Another person, who I couldn’t make out from this angle, took the boy as David closed the door.
He turned around then, sober as a man in church, and dropped his shoulders with a heavy sigh.
“Multifaceted,” I said.
“Huh?”
“You have so many angles to you that just when I think I’ve figured you out, you throw a spanner into the works.”
He smiled, but he looked worried.
“So you had him when you were, what, eleven?”
“No.”
“Then how can he be your son?”
“Can I ask you not to ask that?” he said apologetically. “It’s a long, painful story, and I don’t want to…”
“Say no more.” I put both hands up, but I knew it would bother me deeply later on. I figured maybe David was sexually abused by someone and ended up caring for the child that resulted. That would be bad enough for someone not to want to talk about.
I looked at the door for a long moment, remembering Harry’s little face and sweet smile. “He looks like you.”
David looked back at the door too. “Yeah.”
“Is he like his mother?” I prompted.
David tensed, and it wasn’t the kind of tension I expected, which led me to think maybe he wasn’t molested. “Yes. He is.”
“Is she still around?”
He hesitated, but eventually answered with, “Yes.”
“Are you… still together?” I asked, and oddly found myself hoping they weren’t. I wasn’t sure why though. It wasn’t like I wanted David. Especially not if he had a kid. That was way too much responsibility for the life I had planned.
“No. We’re… not together.”
“But you obviously love her.”
The breath that left him seemed to make his legs weak. He sat down on the armchair where he’d stuffed the picture frame, and put his head in his hands. A part of me wanted to comfort him, but it also felt a bit weird since I didn’t really know him that well. I had to ask myself if I would’ve rushed over to comfort Cal had this been him. And when I realized the answer was yes, I not only moved over to sit on the arm of the chair beside David, but also asked myself why it was easier to be friendly with Cal than it was with him. What was it between us that made me keep my distance?
“If you ever need to talk, David,” I said, rubbing his back in a gentle circle, “I’m a good listener.”
He turned his head from the cup of his palms and smiled sweetly at me. “I appreciate that.”
“Was it about her?” I jerked my head to the piano. “Is that who you were singing about?”
He buried his face again. “Yeah.”
My heart warmed, sinking down into a very comfortable spot in my chest, and all I could think was wow. “I hope someone loves me like that someday.”
He laughed and sat back, pinning my hand between his shoulder blade and the couch, resting his own hand on my knee. “I can promise you that they will.”
It was a sweet thing to say, but it all just made me feel ten years older than I actually was, and that just made me want to get out of here.
I drew my hand back and pushed his off my knee before standing. “I better get home.”
“I’ll walk you,” he said, standing up.
12
David
We walked home in relative silence. She kept her eyes on her feet, her thoughts a million miles away, and I watched her, trying to read her. In the dark, she looked younger than I remembered, and it was hard for me to believe she was the woman I once knew.
I could feel a part of me holding on tightly to the facts—that she was my wife and we had this entire past together—but a bigger part was sinking into a black hole of realization: it wouldn’t be as simple as telling her the truth. Falcon was right about that. She needed to adjust to life—to grow up, in a sense, before she would be open to the truth.
Seeing Harry tonight, learning that he was my son, it threw her. That much was obvious, and the fact that she hadn’t said a word to me since we left the house was further proof that she was better off left in the dark when it came to our past. At least for now. The husband i
n me wanted to stop her right here, grab both of her arms and tell her I love her. Kiss her and finally slip back into her life, but as I played that scenario out, knowing this girl the way she was now, I was certain she’d slap me and shove me away.
Eventually, she’d come around, maybe, but if she never did retrieve her memories, then our love, for the future, would only be what we built it to be—what we created now. If I forced myself back into her life by making it known that we were married, it wouldn’t be love bringing us together. It would be obligation.
But I did need to repair things that had been broken down tonight. She needed to fall for me—the me that her new mind knew—and I was certain a teenager with no life experience would not let herself fall for a guy with a kid. No matter how adorable that kid was.
“Ara?” I tried, laying proverbial planks down to build a new bridge.
“Mm?”
“I…” I started, but I just didn’t know what to say.
“Can we not talk about it?” she said, forcing a smile as she looked at me. “I’m trying to process.”
“Yeah.” I looked at my feet. “Sure.”
When we reached her house, she ran straight up the steps and in through the door, which had clearly been left unlocked for her, then she closed it and switched off the porch light without even saying goodbye.
I stood looking regretfully at the house for a moment, imagining a reality where I followed her inside and we sat up talking all night about old times, but I turned away instead, and left my heart there on her driveway, wandering home with my head down. I wished Harry had never come downstairs. But it wasn’t his fault. He was barely even eight years old. How could anyone expect him to hide the truth?
But what had been done had been done, and it simply meant I had to change tactics.
As I reached home, Mike was just getting out of the car, another bag of Em’s late-night McDonald’s tucked under his arm.
“How’d you go?” he asked, wearing an expectant grin, but it dropped as I got closer and he saw my face. “What happened?”
“Harry came downstairs—”
“Shit.” He almost dropped the bag. “Is he okay? Did he get upset—”
“He’s fine. But he called me Dad.”
Mike paled. “How did Ara take that?”
I couldn’t bring myself to speak the truth. I just hung my head and shook it.
“Aw, man.” Mike firmly cupped my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am. Falcon was right.” I swallowed hard, feeling a sudden and very unwelcome need to cry. “It was too soon for her to meet Harry.”
“We’ll think of something,” he assured me. “We can fix it.”
Not one cell in my body believed that. Ara was in a fragile state, and it would take a long time now to win her over. She didn’t know herself, didn’t trust her judgment or other people yet, so there was no way she could comprehend, or even envision, life with a kid.
But the Ara I knew and loved would not cast someone aside because of that either. I would need to appeal to that part of her and turn this new distance into guilt. Then, once she came to terms with the fact that I had a son, I would need some help to win her back again.
* * *
I rolled over and grabbed my phone off the nightstand. Elora would still be awake, probably just finishing her shift at the café. I dialed her number and it picked up right away.
“Dad! Is everything okay? Why are you calling so late?”
“It’s fine, sweetheart,” I said in a deep, hushed voice. Harry stirred though, his adjoining door left open tonight, so I rolled to stand and walked into the bathroom, closing the door.
“You don’t really sound all right.” Her voice was soft, soothing. “What happened?”
“Your mom found out about Harry.”
“Found out what about Harry?”
“Just that he’s my son.”
“And how did she take it?”
“She was a bit…”
“Freaked out?”
“Yeah.” I laughed, feeling lighter admitting that to Elora, as if she understood Ara better than Mike did. As if Elora understood how detrimental this was to our plan. “She was a bit cold to me after that.”
“That’s normal, Dad!” She laughed. “She’s a teenager with a lot of her own problems, and she just found out you have a major walking-talking one of your own.”
“Harry is not a problem!” I said firmly.
“Not to you. And not to my mother, either. But Ara’s not my mother; she’s not your wife; not even Harry’s mom. You can’t expect her to take this in her stride, Dad—”
“Then you’re saying I’ve lost her.”
“No,” she said softly but firmly, “but she will need time to process—”
“That’s exactly what she said.”
“Then, in the meantime, you just have to keep showing her how amazing you are and how you enrich her life, and she’ll come around. I know she will.”
Her certainty made me feel more certain. I mustered a smile. “Can you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Pick me up from school on Monday—meet her again and maybe befriend her sooner than we planned. I need help here. I feel like I’m swimming in an ocean without a life raft—”
“Sure.” She laughed. “I’ll see what I can do, but it can’t be Monday. I’ve got some stuff to take care of. How ’bout I send Ali instead—”
“Either of you will be fine. I just need reinforcements.”
“They’re on the way, Dad,” she said, lifting some of the weight off my chest.
13
Ara
When the weekend came, I declined all invitations for movies, shopping or sleepovers, grateful instead for a bit of me-time and a short hunting trip with Brett. We talked about all the things I’d experienced this week, but for some reason, I left out the bit about David kneeling down beside me in class, and the way it made me feel. I think, in a lot of ways, that moment was so unique to all the others I’d ever felt that I didn’t want anyone explaining it away with rationality. And though it was not my story to tell, I also told him about David’s son.
“Harry! You met Harry?” He seemed shocked, but not as shocked as I was to know that he already knew of Harry.
“How did you know about him?”
“Vicki,” he said simply. “We talk.”
“And that’s why you were so insistent that I befriend him?” I nodded to myself, facing forward again.
“He’s been through a damn hard time, Ara. He needs some good friends—people that won’t turn their back on him because of his past,” he explained. “I knew you were that kind of person, which is why I encouraged you to be friends.”
I felt bad then for deciding almost instantly after meeting Harry that nothing would ever happen between David and me. “I’ll take care of him,” I said.
“But you don’t like him?” It sounded more like a statement.
“I like him.” And there had been moments where I thought maybe I liked him like I like Cal, but finding out he had a son kind of did cement my already fluctuating notion that he wasn’t entirely right for me. “But not like he likes me.”
Brett grinned, turning his head to look at me. “You think he likes you?”
“I know he does.” I laughed, and he laughed too.
“So what don’t you like about him, Ar?” He seemed genuinely curious, as if he’d expected me to fall for David immediately or something.
“Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice guy, but he’s… it just seems like there’s something dark about him.” I thought about that in more detail. “Like he’d be sweet and lovely and then, one day, he could just turn and become really nasty if you pissed him off.”
Brett laughed loudly. “He does have a dangerous air about him.”
I nodded in agreement, recalling more about my dream. “He showed up in my dream last night.”
“Yeah?”
“Mm.” I
nodded, going back over it in my head. “It was really weird. We were in this place with old furniture—like from another time—and he was telling me that he set his wife on fire for burning a casserole. And I laughed with him!” I declared, still disgusted in myself.
Brett’s knuckles went white on the steering wheel. “That’s a pretty strange dream.”
I looked away from his hands, brushing off his odd reaction because I couldn’t explain it. “Yeah. It was. And I think it’s a warning to stay away from David. At least from falling for him, anyway.”
“But you said you trust him—feel safe with him.”
“I do.” I tried to understand what I felt, but again, I just didn’t have the vocabulary to put it in words. “It’s complicated. It’s almost like I want nothing from him but another part of me is looking for more, and that part keeps making me trust him and care for him.”
“Maybe you should trust your instincts then. Maybe he’s not so bad.”
“Or maybe I should trust the part of me that’s saying he is.”
“Touché,” he said, rolling his window down as we approached the farm entrance, where the big sign that directed tourists to the fun maze around the back also directed Lilithians to the hunting maze and bushland on the opposite side. It wasn’t as authentic as I imagined real hunting and killing would be, but since we were at peace with the vampires, these game centers, where we chased but didn’t really hunt, were as close as it got.
“Oh, that reminds me,” I said, thinking about skills. “I turned blue last night.”
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