by Dina Silver
After my high-school spring break trip to L.A. was cancelled due to Nana Lynne’s hip surgery, she promised to re-gift the vacation when I’d finished college. I never thought much of it, but she must’ve had this master plan in her head for many years. She never once suggested that I contact her son, but she knew at that age I’d be mature enough to make the decision on my own, and I did.
“Yes, she did mention that to me,” he said, and I could tell by the tone of his voice, that my phone call was no surprise.
“Well, I guess it’d be best to catch up in person. Will Kate be joining us?” Kate was Kevin’s wife, and the mother of my two makeshift sisters, Lauren and Julia, both adopted. Lauren was eighteen, and headed off to the University of Texas, and Julia was seventeen and finishing her senior year of high school.
“She won’t be able to join us; it’ll be just me and you. Would you like to have dinner?” he asked.
“Sure, I love dinner.”
“Alright, then. I’ll make us a reservation somewhere nice.”
“No need to go all out on my account,” I said, and he didn’t respond. “Just kidding, anywhere is fine with me.”
“I will see you in a few weeks then, you can call me on this number when you get in, it’s my cell phone.”
“Sounds good, see you soon,” I clicked my phone off and ended a brief conversation with the one person I’d wanted to talk to my entire life.
A month later, I was on American Airlines flight number 465 to Los Angeles. We landed at LAX and I was instructed by Nana Lynne to take a taxi to her house in Santa Monica. I passed two In-N-Out burger locations, and recalled my dad telling me not to leave the state without trying their Double-Double. Patch had been dying to visit the West coast, but had never had the chance. Nor was he invited on this trip. I rubbed it in pretty good, too, because I’d never outgrown my desire to make Patch wish he were the illegitimate child.
I arrived at my Nana Lynne’s house around noon that day, and was surprised to see my three aunts standing behind her at the front door.
“Surprise, my beautiful Grace!”
“Hi, Nana,” I hugged her and inhaled her comforting scent. I’d only ever seen her in person three times prior to that day. But despite her distance, she’d gone out of her way to make me feel like family over the years, and kept a presence in my life. Not to mention sending fifty bucks every birthday, Easter and Christmas. Valentine’s Day only warranted twenty-five. My aunts, on the other hand, I had no recollection of meeting but my mom said they came to visit me when I was one or two. Apparently they showered me with gifts in hopes of creating a smoke screen around their brother’s shame.
We spent the day going through old photo albums and catching up, and I showed them pictures of Patch and some friends on my phone.
“I’m going to call my father now,” I announced around six o’clock, to which many glances were exchanged.
“I’ll get you my phone,” Nana said and hurried into the kitchen.
“I meant, Kevin,” I said to his sisters.
“We know,” his sister Katherine smiled.
Kevin’s sisters were adults, and all had families of their own. In fact, Nana Lynne was a nana to eleven grandchildren, including me. Make that ten and a half, I guess.
She called for me to join her in the kitchen.
“I thought you might want some privacy, dear,” she said, and handed me her cordless phone.
“Thank you,” I said and sat down on one of the eight leather-bound chairs that surrounded her enormous breakfast table. It was a rich mahogany, mission style table with a wrought iron chandelier hanging over the center.
No one ever gave people like me much credit. I could see it in their faces, the pity. They felt sorry for me because I had to leave the room and call my father, who’d abandoned me and left me to be raised by wolves. And nothing irked me more than enduring people’s pity. I was constantly being reminded that my life was different, and worthy of additional compassion. Why was it so hard for people to see what a great life I’d been given, and how lucky I was to have my parents? Sure I had my moments over the years where I felt sorry for myself, but the one person who made the biggest impression on me, was the person everyone assumed I’d feel the least connected to, and that was my dad. Not Kevin Hansen, but my dad who raised me. He never let me forget how lucky I was to have his love. Not in a boastful way, but in a way that made me appreciate my life regardless of how many hurdles I had to jump to get what I wanted. And everyone’s assumption that I hoped for some sort of future relationship with Kevin couldn’t have been farther from the truth. There was nothing I wanted from him but the opportunity to meet him face-to-face, and remove that hurdle from my adult life.
My second conversation with Kevin was almost as brief as the first, and he agreed to meet me at an In-n-Out Burger close to his mother’s house. He’d made a reservation somewhere nicer, near the beach, but I told him that my dad said these were the best burgers in town, and that’s where I wanted to go.
I arrived about twenty minutes late because the traffic everyone had warned me about turned out to be a reality. I recognized him immediately from the recent photos of him that were scattered around my nana’s house, and he stood up as soon as I walked in. I smiled immediately when I realized that he was about six-feet-five inches tall.
He extended his hand, and I hugged him instead. Nothing dramatic, just a quick, friendly gesture. He sat, and I threw my purse into the booth and scooted onto the bench opposite him.
“You look like your mom,” he said, staring at me with a tiny smirk of his own.
“I get that a lot.”
He nodded, and couldn’t take his eyes off of me.
“You’re not going to cry are you?” I asked.
He laughed. “I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Good, because I’ve never seen a grown man cry before.”
I was starving, and the glorious smell of fried food and fresh grease was giving me hunger pains, but I didn’t know how to properly break the ice and take the awkward focus off of me and onto the menu.
“I’m glad we have this opportunity, Grace, to meet and get together like this.”
“Are you?” I asked, surprised by my own question. I didn’t mean for it to come out as confrontational; I was truly interested.
“Yes, I am,” he said, unoffended.
“I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just that I’ve always wondered why you never wanted to meet me before this,” I said. “You made me initiate contact with you. Why?”
He sighed. “I wish I had the perfect answer for you, I really do. And there are many things I wish I’d done differently. I assumed you, and your mom, would’ve rather had me leave you both alone after the way I’d behaved so many years ago.”
“I understand,” I nodded at the stranger across from me. I felt no connection with him, even as the conversation got personal.
He continued. “I apologize to you for not making an effort, and I owe your mom more apologies than I can count.”
“I can pass that on if you’d like?” I offered.
He folded his oversized hands on the table and continued. “I’m not proud of how I acted towards her all those years ago, but I’ll be honest with you, I was not ready for a child and I was angry at her for trying to decide my future without my consent.”
I sat and listened.
“We both made the same mistake, no offense, yet I had no say in the outcome. She’d made up her mind, and I wasn’t about to stay and let her tell me how I was supposed to live the rest of my life.”
“It’s okay, really, I’m not looking for an explanation…”
“Please, let me finish,” he stopped me. “But now, looking back, and raising two daughters, I have an entirely different perspective on the man I was back then, and I am ashamed of how I treated your mother. I really am.”
“I will add that to the apologies.” I made a check mark in the air.
“Well, I’m glad y
ou can make light of it, but it was important for me to let you know that I am sorry for how I handled things.” He pursed his lips. “Your mom has obviously done a fantastic job of raising you, and it’s my honor to be here with you today, thank you.”
I smiled at him. “Your welcome. I really didn’t mean for this to get so heavy,” I said. “It’s kind of weird, sitting here with you, and meeting the source of my size eleven shoes. I mean, everyone thinks that I have all these expectations of you, and I really don’t. It’s really been more of a burning curiosity than anything. You’ve been such a vague, inaccessible figure my whole life, and all I ever really wanted was to simply make the connection.” I held my grin. “And now I have,” I said. And I really had no intention of making him squirm or apologize, all I ever wanted my whole life was to meet him, and see him, and unite with him on any level.
“So, how about that Double-Double?” he slapped the table.
“I thought you’d never ask!”
Patch picked me up from the airport when I landed back in Chicago, and drove me home to Glenview, where we lived. It was a Sunday night and my parents were out to dinner at a friend’s house for their weekly supper club. I loved that no one made a fuss over my encounter with Kevin. I’d already called my mom the night I met up with him for dinner, filled her in on everything, and patiently answered her horde of questions. She was silent when I told her all the remorseful things he’d said, and I could almost hear her grinning.
My dad came in my room around midnight when they got home from their dinner party to see how my flight was.
“Was Patch there on time?”
“Yeah, he’s a little rusty on the expressway’s though.”
“We’re working on that,” he said. “So, how’s big Kev?”
We smirked at each other. “Oh, you mean my father?”
“Yeah.”
I was sitting on my bed with my laptop resting on my outstretched legs. “He may be six-foot-five, but you’re a much bigger person, Dad,” I said and gave him a wink.
“Smart girl,” he smiled, flashing his chipped front tooth.
“I Love you, Dad.”
“Love you too, Gracie.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Sydney
It was Christmas Eve, and Grace was almost two years old. Midge left the Intercontinental to work for a property in Scottsdale, near her ailing mother, and Keri and I were promoted to co-supervisors. Trevor had left months before to work for Playboy, in the promotions department of their Chicago headquarters, so Keri and I had a staff of three new college grads. It was tempting to put them through the same misery that we endured when we started, but neither she nor I could pull it off.
The holidays were always much more fun with Grace around. Everyone in the family lived vicariously though her and her overwhelming excitement for all things swathed in wrapping paper. My mom bought her a doll that came with a miniature tea set, doll-sized table and chairs and two outfits with matching shoes. She individually wrapped every piece in the set, each cup, each shoe, each saucer, etc. And Grace had the time of her life tearing through the pile. After dinner with Kendra and my parents, I took Grace over to the Reynolds’ house to have dessert with Ethan and his family. His mother opened the door and led me to another ridiculous pile of gifts for my daughter, but all Grace really wanted anytime we went over there, was my high-school nemesis, Sparky.
“Barky! Barky!” Grace would yell as we entered Ethan’s childhood home.
Mrs. Reynolds reached out her arms, asking Grace permission to carry her, but Grace shook her head, no. “Alright then, hold my hand, and we’ll go look for Sparky.”
They didn’t have to go very far, because a second later he exploded into the living room, his nails clicking along the hardwood floor as he ran.
“Barky!” her eyes lit up.
“There he is!” Mrs. Reynolds squealed with her.
Ethan appeared at the entry to the room and waved for me to quietly escape with him.
“I’ll be right back, okay?” I said to Grace and Mrs. Reynolds, but they were long gone.
Ethan took my hand and I followed him downstairs to the basement, where he’d made his own buffet of sweets for me, along with a coffee and Baileys.
“Does your mother know you’ve pilfered her dessert buffet?”
“She’s busy with Barky,” he said.
I took a sip from the warm mug in front of me. “You have my word, that I will never buy a dog for Grace, no matter how hard she begs or how many tears stream down those pudgy cheeks of hers.”
“Sure you won’t.”
“I won’t, I am just not a dog person.”
He leaned back into the chenille couch. “Well, maybe I’ll buy her one then?”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
He scooted closer to me, and had a stern look on his face that made me shudder.
“What’s the matter?” I asked, and placed the mug back on the table.
There was an awkward pause.
“I want to adopt Grace.” His eyes were glistening.
The words were both comforting and confusing, even though they were quite clearly spoken. “What do you mean, why do you want to adopt her?”
“I want her to have a father, one that she deserves, and I love her,” he said without removing his eyes from my face.
“I don’t know what to say,” I choked up. “She loves you too…I love you.”
“Say, yes, then,” Ethan reached under the couch in front of me and pulled out a small, velvet black box. A signature of his. “I did a little research though…and you’ll have to marry me first,” he smiled.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgements
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT