Waiting for Tuesday: Suspicious Hearts Book Two

by Taylor Sullivan

  “DADDY!”

  Lisa squeezed my hand in hers, and Mrs. Eaton hugged me from behind, and everyone was crying. Then my daddy disappeared from view, and I started kicking and screaming.

  “DADDY! Where’s my daddy going?”

  Mrs. Eaton shook her head and pulled me into her arms, squishing my face against her shoulder. “It’s okay, baby, everything will be okay…”

  I shook my head, fighting against her arms and kicking my legs to get away. “Daddy! You said you would take me to the park! You promised!”

  The door closed again, and I couldn’t see my daddy anymore. Mrs. Eaton hugged me tighter, and I realized my daddy was gone.

  The tortured screams of a little boy played in my head as I sat down heavily on the couch. It was midnight, the screams still vivid in my head from my nightmare as I leaned over to pick up the envelope. The weight of the letter felt like a thousand pounds in my hands. A thousands pounds covered by the piles of dirt I’d piled on top of it trying to forget.

  I tore open the envelope open, took out the folded yellow paper gingerly with my fingers, and spread it out on the table. In my mind, I’d read it a thousand times. A thousand letters from him that never came. I wanted so desperately to know he hadn’t forgotten me. I looked down at his handwriting, elegant and beautiful, just as I remembered it.

  Dear John,

  I’ve written this letter a thousand times, but there are no words good enough to express how sorry I am.

  You were my little boy, and there hasn’t been a day that has gone by that I haven't thought of you. I’m writing this letter to ask for the chance to explain myself. Please give me the chance.

  Love always,

  Your daddy – Gabriel Mucci

  I squeezed my eyes shut. The pain and rejection experienced by a five-year-old boy surged through my blood. I gripped the letter tightly in my hand. A phone number, written in the handwriting I could still remember, followed his words. Elegant, structured penmanship that was so different from the drunk I remembered him to be.

  I didn’t know if I had it in me to see him again, but I didn’t know if I had it in me not to. Tuesday’s eyes flashed into my mind. Bright, green, and heartbroken… I put the letter on the coffee table, smoothed it out on the surface, and picked up my phone, not caring what time it was.

  “Hello?” A gruff voice answered.

  “Gabriel?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is John Eaton. I got your letter. When would you like to meet?”

  Chapter THIRTY-SIX

  John

  The park was empty as I sat across the table from my father. He looked the same. It had been nearly twenty-three years since I’d seen him, yet he was just as I remembered. Broad shoulders, full head of dark hair, good-looking.

  I was told as a child I looked like him, but until right now, I didn’t see it. We had the same eyes, so dark they were almost black, and the same chin, except mine held the mark he’d given me before I was finally taken away.

  He shifted in his seat, leaning forward to brace his forearms on the table. “I feel like I’m looking in the mirror, son.” He flashed me the charming smile that I used to love. The one that had women in and out of our lives all the years I could remember.

  My stomach twisted. This was the man I still had nightmares about, even at twenty-eight years old, but he wasn’t my father. I shook my head. “No. I’m not your son. You gave that up twenty-three years ago.”

  His smile fell away, and he nodded once. His gaze dropped to the table. “Fair enough.”

  I knew I was making him uncomfortable, but I didn’t care. He deserved it. He deserved everything that happened to him over the last twenty-three years. The DUI’s, the arrests, the jail time.

  I couldn’t help but think of Shelly as I sat there. She was the same age now as I was when he started doing those things to me. I was a helpless boy who was just being a kid. A defenseless child who loved him so desperately, in spite of all his faults. And even when he left bruises, I still forgave him. Because I still believed he was good. I still believed, even after all of that.

  He cleared his throat then pulled a tattered sweater box out of an old paper sack and set it on the table. A blue rubber band was wrapped around it, and he pulled a pocketknife from his pocket and cut it free. “I brought some old photos. I hope you don’t mind.”

  I clenched my jaw, fighting the urge to get up and leave. But I came here for a reason. I wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but after all these years, I needed to hear him explain.

  An image of a woman with long, brown hair sat on top of a large stack of photos. She had big, brown eyes and stood sideways as she smiled at the camera. She was pregnant, and the sight of her stirred feelings deep in my gut.

  “This was your mother.”

  I took the photo from his outstretched hand, breathless, my heart racing. I remembered seeing the photo before, but barely. She was so young. It was hard to believe she was my mother, but I knew she was. I could see myself in her smile. “How old was she?”

  He met my eyes, as though reading my thoughts. “Eighteen.” He handed me another photo, this one of her holding me in her arms. “That’s you. Eight pounds, four ounces.” He looked down to the stack of photos and kept flipping. “This,” he said, handing me another, “was the night we’d come home from the hospital.”

  It was of me and my mom sitting in a rocking chair. She was holding me in her arms, and I could see her profile as she looked down at my face. My tiny hand wrapped around her finger.

  “We were so in love with you. We had our baby boy and were on top of the world.” He picked up another photo and held it a moment. “We’d only been home for a few hours when she started complaining of a headache.”

  He grimaced. “ ‘Go lie down, you’re just tired,’ I said to her. I thought I knew everything…” He took a deep breath. “I tucked her into bed, took her a glass of water, then gave you your first bath.” He met my eyes and the corner of his mouth lifted. “You didn’t like it one bit.” Then his expression changed, and he looked over my shoulder into the distance as if remembering. “I promised you so many things that night…”

  His face grew somber, and he cleared his throat. “When I brought you into the bedroom that night, your mom was sitting on the edge of the bed, gripping her head. I laid you down, went to get her some Tylenol, but when I came back, she was talking funny. Slurring her words. That’s when I knew it was something more serious.

  “I should have called an ambulance. I should have known better but by the time I got us to the hospital, it was too late. She died an hour later of a brain aneurysm.”

  There was so much pain in his eyes I couldn’t breathe. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if the memory was too painful to keep them open, and I suddenly felt empathy for my father for the first time in my life.

  “It’s no excuse for the way I treated you, but I was lost after that. I was twenty years old, had a baby I needed to take care of all on my own. Your mother and I didn’t have family to speak of, so it was just me and you.” He met my eyes. “Believe it or not, those days were some of the best of my life.” He closed his eyes. “And some of the worst.”

  I looked away, unable to bear the pain any longer. I picked up a handful of photos and flipped through them one at a time. They were all of me. Me and my mother, me and my father, the three of us together, all taken just days after my birth. So many photos taken in such a short amount of time.

  “I loved you, Johnny. She loved you. I just needed you to know that.”

  I stopped flipping and stared at a photo of the three of us together, huddled in in the middle of a hospital bed. “What was her name?” It was a question I’d wanted to know for as long as I could remember, but I’d had no one to ask until now.

  “Kate.”

  I looked up at him. His face twisted in pain, and his hand gripped over his mouth. “I’m so sorry you never got to meet her.”

  His pain tore at me. I lower
ed my gaze and flipped to another photo—me at two years old, riding a wooden rocking horse. My throat grew so thick I could hardly talk. “I remember this.” My gut twisted in knots. I was so confused. I’d hated this man. I hated him for twenty-three years because he was the man who had left bruises on my tiny, defenseless body. But right now, I felt sorry for him.

  I turned over another photo, where yellow bruises could still be seen on both of my skinny arms as I gripped a teddy bear. “I remember a lot.”

  I slid the photo across the table, and he picked it up, running his hand over the picture of the little boy who still smiled because he didn’t know better. “I was a drunk, Johnny. It’s no excuse, but it was only then that I did it.”

  “Don’t―”

  He shook his head. “I was angry. I was angry about so many things, and I took it out on you. I was angry about trying to make it alone, losing your mother, having to take care of my boy alone. And when I drank―” He stopped talking, because there was no need to continue. We both knew our past.

  He gazed at the photo a moment longer, and then turned it face down on the table before he looked back up at me. “I sobered up when you were taken from me and put in that shitty foster home. I got you out, had you placed with the Eaton’s. You were all I had left, and I would do anything to get you back. I got a new job, was working sixty hours a week, I was working hard to make a life for you. For us.

  “But when I saw you with that family… They had so much I could never hope to give you.” He leaned forward, pushing his hands through his hair. “With them, you had a mom. And not just any mom… A mom who looked like Betty fucking Crocker. You had siblings, and a father who ran around with you on his shoulders… One who would never dream of hitting you.

  “When I left you―” He paused, gathering his words. “When I left you, it tore my heart out, but I did it for you. I did it to give you a chance. To give you the life I never had. To get you away from me.”

  He scrubbed his face with his hand and looked at me. “I disappeared because I was a chicken shit. I could have been there, but I was too stubborn to realize you could have had both.”

  My chest tightened painfully. “Why are you telling me this? Why now?”

  He shook his head. “Because it’s taken me this long to grow up.”

  The floodlights slowly flickered to life as I looked through the photos in the front seat of my truck. My father had left hours ago, yet still I sat in the same spot, looking at the same photos over and over. They were parts of my life that existed; yet, I didn’t remember most of them.

  Photos of my mother, barely more than a child in a wedding dress, pregnant with me, then holding me like I was the love of her life. She died only three days after birthing me. And my father, so young, lost, and overwhelmed. A young man trying to do the best he could as a single father. He gave them all to me—insisted I take them. Said he’d had them long enough…

  “Ah fuck…” I wiped over my face, feeling drained and raw. I spent most of my life hating my father, but it was evident from these photos that he spent all of his loving me. He’d been in and out of prison his whole life, yet somehow he’d managed to keep this box.

  But out of all the photos, what got me the most were the ones sent to him from my mother. Every Christmas, every birthday, high school, and college graduation. And the letters. Telling him about my life… Telling him how proud they were of me, and thanking him for trusting them enough to be my parents.

  I picked my cell up off the passenger seat and dialed a number I vowed to use more often after tonight.

  She picked up the phone on the first ring. “Hello?” The sound of her voice was familiar and comforting.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Hey,” she said. The faint sound of running water played in the background before she shut it off. “I was just thinking about you. You okay?”

  I nodded, gripping the bridge of my nose before answering. “I just saw my father.”

  She was quiet a second, and I could only imagine what was going through her mind. “How’d it go?”

  I picked up a photo of me and my family. Mom, Dad, Lisa, Penny—everyone. “It was good. He gave me a whole box of photos.”

  “Did he?” she said, and I could hear her voice thickening with emotion.

  “Yeah.” I swallowed. “Some of them I’d never seen before. I was a pretty cute baby.” I wiped my eyes, realizing she’d never seen me that way before. I was five years old when they took me in. They missed so much, but I felt like they’d been there my whole life. “I’ll bring them on Thursday.”

  I could hear that she was crying now. “I’d like that.”

  I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. “Mom…” I hesitated, wanting to ask in just the right way. “Why didn’t you tell me you’ve been sending him pictures all these years?”

  She was quiet a moment. “John, I―”

  “Mom, it’s okay. I’m not mad.”

  She took a deep breath. “Because he loved you. I could see it on his face every time he came to visit you. I could see it. And he did something I don’t know if I could have ever done. He gave me his son to raise. He gave me you. My son. I sent him photos because I wanted him to see that you were loved.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned my head back into the seat. “Thank you.”

  Tuesday

  Becky leaned over the counter and yawned as I pulled out the cash drawer from the register. “You should go home,” I said. I climbed down from my stool and grabbed my smoothie. “I’m just going to count this, print some invoices, and go straight to bed.”

  She frowned at me, but I could see the bags under her eyes and knew she was exhausted. She’d been here with me all week after working her normal job. I knew she was worried, but I’d gotten the all clear from the doctor yesterday, and frankly, I could use some time to myself.

  She started following me to the back room and I turned around, halting her. “I’m serious, Becky. If you come back here, I’m going to pour my smoothie over your head.”

  She grinned. “Sounds kinky.”

  “Ha, ha…” I smiled softly, knowing she loved me, but also how much I needed space.

  She let out a sigh. “Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pinky swear?”

  I grinned. “Pinky swear. Now go!”

  She dropped her shoulders, and I walked her to the door before locking it and turning around to face my empty shop. It had been open for five days, but right now was the first time I’d been alone. I was still too emotional to let myself think about how I felt about that, so I headed straight to my office to work. It had gotten me through a lot in the past, and it would get me through today.

  I set the drawer on my desk, leaned back in my chair, and unsnapped the bib of my overalls. My hand rested on my belly, and I closed my eyes. I’d heard the baby’s heartbeat again yesterday, and it had been just as emotional as every time before that. Even though I was still less than fourteen weeks into my pregnancy, the technician said she guessed that the baby was a girl. Just like in my dreams.

  This pregnancy was so surreal, nothing like I planned, but beautiful nonetheless. I blew out an exhausted breath, opened my eyes, and startled.

  John was leaning against the frame of my office door, watching me.

  I snatched up the bib of my overalls to cover myself. “What are you doing here? How’d you get in?”

  “The back door was unlocked.”

  But there was something in his voice that made me look at him more deeply. His hair was a mess, which was something I’d seen a thousand times, but his eyes… They were red-rimmed, searching my face as if he could see into my soul.

  “Is everything okay?” I whispered.

  He pushed himself from the doorframe and walked toward me. “I met with my father today.”

  My brows furrowed, trying to understand why that upset him so much.

  “My biological father.” He pulled the other chair
from beside my desk and sat down right in front of me.

  I swallowed because seeing him like this made my heart jump to my throat. He looked raw, and open—and scared.

  He took my hands in his and kissed my knuckles. “Things aren’t always black and white, Tuesday. I realized that today. I was abused as a child, and I spent most of my adult life hating the man who did it to me… but today…” He grimaced. “I’m not saying what he did wasn’t horrible… but today I forgave him. I forgave him because he was human. I forgave him because he was a man who lost the love of his life and had to figure out how to raise his son alone.”

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out two photos, and handed them to me. One was of a happy, young couple holding a newborn baby in a hospital bed. The next was of John, proud in a cap and gown, surrounded by his smiling family. His mom and dad and all his sisters at his high school graduation. He pointed to the first one. “That’s my mom and dad,” he said, his voice thick and quiet. “And that’s my family. They’re all my family. All of them.”

  I nodded, taking his face in my hands and kissing his cheek. “Yes.”

  He leaned his forehead against mine, shaking it slightly as he took my hands again. “I spent a lot of time thinking today. Then I called my mother. She’s an amazing woman, and I know there is a God because he sent me her. And then I came here to you. Because today I got a piece of my past back, a past I’d been running from for a very long time. And the first person I wanted to share it was with you. Because I want you to be my future. Please tell me you haven’t given up on me.”

  “Never.”

  Chapter THIRTY-SEVEN

  Tuesday

  Five months later

  I leaned back on the couch nestled in the middle of the product floor and adjusted my pillow.

  “Close your eyes, Tuesday. Don’t peek.” Becky had surprised me with a blessingway this afternoon, and everyone was here. All of John’s sisters, our mothers, little Shelly, and even the placenta encapsulation lady, who was my new friend. They had all just taken turns layering plaster over my eight-month belly, and now the cast was removed, and I was sprawled in the middle of the shop as Becky painted a henna tattoo on my stomach.