As I entered, I saw him immediately, sitting in a chair, a glass of Scotch hanging over the side with one of his hands. Callie sat down on the couch beside him, and his hand went to her, resting it on her knee.
“Where did you tell her you were going?” Aaron asked.
It was such a strange first question to ask. I didn’t understand why he was asking it, but this wasn’t about me. I didn’t have any fucking right to question why he would ask anything at all.
I just stood. I stood in front of them because I wanted the brunt of whatever was coming at me to hit me full force.
“She doesn’t know I’m here.”
Aaron nodded before taking a sip of his Scotch. “How long?”
I took in a deep breath, ready to breathe out honesty. “Since September,” I said.
His eyes narrowed at me. “That soon, huh? You work fast.”
“Aaron,” Callie said, squeezing his hand. “Let him talk. We know you’re hurt, beyond hurt, and believe me,” she said, flashing me a dirty look, “I am as well, but you know whatever happened, is happening, wasn’t done to hurt you on purpose.”
“Can I just…say something?” I asked. I pushed my hair out of my face. “Please?”
Aaron sighed deeply, shrugging his shoulders.
“I need you to try to understand,” I pleaded. “Separate who she was to you, just for a minute. I’m begging you.”
When he didn’t object, I continued.
“Have you ever fallen in love with the wrong person?” I asked. “You knew it was wrong, and you fought it and fought it, but it was there. That special fucking thing was there, and you couldn’t walk away. You knew if you did you’d regret it for the rest of your life?”
Callie raised her brows at him, but he wasn’t having it.
“But it wasn’t your ex-wife, the mother of your child,” Aaron said with a rough tone. “What happened with Callie and I was different.”
“He asked you to try and be objective,” Callie said. “Just do it.”
“Why is everyone ganging up on me?” Aaron asked. “I’m the one who’s been lied to.”
“No one is ganging up on you, Aaron,” Callie said. “But he’s asking you to listen, and if you’re not going to, then you will start carrying around another very heavy piece of baggage filled with anger and hurt. I don’t want that for you. I don’t want it for Delilah. So, if you can’t deal with this now, that’s okay. That’s your call, but we’re here now. Marshall is here now.”
Aaron shook his head before downing the rest of the Scotch in his glass. “What do you want me to say?” he asked, looking at me.
“I want you to say that you know, you fucking know, that we are like brothers, and I’d never do shit to hurt you on purpose,” I said. “I want you to say that you know I’d lay my fucking life down for you. I want you to ask me to stop seeing her and that you know I will if you asked me to because I would do that. I’d walk away from her, but I want you to say that you know there has to be something really fucking special between her and I that I’d do this to you, and that ultimately, you don’t want me to do that. You won’t make me choose.”
He leaned over, taking both of his hands, after removing one from Callie’s grip, and bringing them to his face. His elbows rested on his knees as he pressed the palms of his hands into his eyes.
“I won’t make you do that,” he muttered. “I’ve never, ever heard you talk or act like this about a woman before.”
“Thank you,” I said, my voice cracking.
A brief moment of relief washed over me, but I knew there was so much more to overcome.
“I want you to do something for me,” Aaron said, his eyes now on mine.
“Anything,” I said.
“I want you to set up a time tomorrow morning for her and I to talk,” he said. “I don’t care how you do it, but I want it to happen.”
“Okay. I can do that. I’ll make sure.”
“Because the thing is, Marshall,” he said, “she’s caused a lot of heartache, in a lot of lives, and it’s time it ended. I need to know why. Once and for all. I want to put this all to bed. For all of us.”
Chapter Twenty
Alexis—
I didn’t think I could do it.
I told Marshall I wouldn’t.
He told me I could and I would.
There was nothing in a handbook to prepare you for sitting across from your ex-husband, the father of your child, both of whom you left. There was no amount of “I’m sorrys” or reasoning to make it rational.
But as Aaron sat across from me at my kitchen table, I knew that I owed him something. I had owed him something even before I left. I wasn’t capable of giving him all of it at once, but I would give everything else I had.
I owed it to him. I owed it to Delilah.
And I owed it to others in our lives.
Leslie, Callie, Marshall, and even Abel and Daniel.
All of them deserved a sense of peace, but most of all, I deserved it, too.
“I could never explain during one breakfast why,” I said, twirling my finger around the edge of my hair. “I still don’t even understand myself. I’m working on it, though, and I can say this for certain. Knowing what I know from Marshall, you and Delilah are getting everything you deserved. The mom, the girlfriend, and the family you all deserve.”
He nodded. “I agree, but I’m sure I don’t need to explain that this…thing…between you and Marshall is less about you two being together and more about how I view you.”
“I understand that. I do,” I said. I pressed my lips together, carefully choosing my words. “But I want it all to end for us now. Today. And I know I have no right to ask you for that or for you to assume I’m asking for you to forgive me. I’m not because you have every right, with every fiber in your body, to hate me.”
He sighs. “I don’t hate you,” he said. “I don’t think I ever did. I mean, God! How could I? You gave me her. You gave me Delilah.”
Tears filled my eyes. “And that is one part I realized a long time ago. My purpose in her life was to bring her to you and then step aside.”
His eyes moved across my face, as he shook his head in disbelief. “God. You seem so…not you, different. You look like the old Lexie, but…”
“Because I am different, Aaron. You can’t do what I did, something that others would think is the most reprehensible, disgusting thing like abandon your own daughter, and not have that profoundly change you. But it was the right thing. You know that deep down. Remove the labels and all of the other bullshit, Aaron. I couldn’t and I shouldn’t have been a mom. You saw it. You knew. And when it got down to the end of it, I had to make a choice. One choice was to end my own life. The other was to leave. You had to have seen how bad it got, how desperate I’d become. It’s why I can say now suicide was my only choice for a while.”
“Shit, Lex,” he whispered, his expression, his voice so full sorrow. “Shit. I knew you were unhappy. I did know that, but I didn’t realize it was that bad.” He paused before continuing. “You were so…detached. I didn’t know what to do. I thought it was everything from postpartum to drug use. And I tried, Lex. I tried so hard to fix it and make it better, make you better. And then you were gone. It was all the unanswered questions, that was what killed me. I didn’t know if I should’ve tried harder, and the guilt of that buried me for years. That you didn’t trust me to tell me the truth. It all fucking swallowed me…for years.”
He was unraveling, and while it frightened me, I was going to be there because I owed it to him to not run away again.
“But like you,” he continued, “you don’t go through something like that and not come out changed. The anger ate me alive for years, but then Calliope came into our lives three years ago, and I knew what happened between us was all part of some master plan. It took me so long to get there, Lex, and I don’t even know if it came full circle until last night, but I realized where I am, where Delilah is, is right where we were d
estined to be. You and I? It was never there. We both can say that now, but I could never bring myself to regret because…Delilah. You gave me her.”
Tears of his own formed in his eyes, and it was enough for me to release mine because in all my years of knowing him, I’d never seen him cry.
It was all I ever wanted. Them both happy. They were.
And in the ultimate act of empathy, he was telling me he understood why and that he was almost grateful for it.
Maybe it wasn’t even “almost.” Maybe it just was grateful.
He cleared his throat as he rubbed at his eyes. “I will never not ache or carry around the burden of her not knowing her biological mother. I lie awake at night going over and over in my head how I will explain it all to her because that day will come. I know she’ll want answers someday, and I’m sure when she does so much of the hurt and anger I have for you will be there. But she’ll never know that. I’ll never let her see it because we’ve had to do what was best with what was given. She’ll need to learn that, too.”
It was hard to find enough breath to even speak, but when I finally did, it was something I should have told him a long time ago. “You are an amazing man, Aaron. You are an amazing father. You are enough for her to make up for the fact that her mom isn’t around.”
“But she does have a mom,” he said. “She has one hell of a mom that…holds the bucket when she vomits, and braids her hair, and is making sure she is a good, decent person. She has helped us both find spirit, and laughter, and a bond so profound, I can’t be anything but grateful for that.”
Grateful.
“That is…Aaron,” I sniffled. “All I wanted for you. For her.”
“I’m not going to thank you,” he said. “Hell, I don’t know if I can even forgive you because I don’t think I’ve processed this entire thing yet, but…it happened for the best.”
And there it was.
A painfully beautiful sliver of redemption.
It was like getting oxygen for a time after being without. All my senses seemed to heighten, and my entire body felt weightless. So much was lifted.
And while I knew there was much that I carried, especially about Sadie, that he’d never know, there was one final thing I needed to tell him. Something he had every right to know.
“It was your mom,” I muttered after a long silence. “She was the one that helped me.”
His eyes squinted at me in confusion at first before his jaw slackened. “Wait,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “My mom? She…helped?”
I nodded. “She knew. When the two choices became too much, she helped me. I’m assuming she never told you, and I’m asking you to please don’t be angry at her that.”
I saw no reason to tell him yet about the emails and letters throughout the years with Delilah updates. That was a conversation I was going to have with Leslie first.
We sat quiet, and it wasn’t awkward or painful or anything. It was the building of a reconciliation. There was good, no there was wonderful things between Aaron and I, even aside from Delilah. For the first time in seven years, or maybe ever, I think he knew that, too.
And then I got my answer to all of my questions and all that I wondered, by having Aaron ask me the one question I never thought I’d hear in my lifetime.
“Marshall and Callie, the two outside opinions that mean more to me than anything, think you should meet her. Do you want that?”
There was only one answer: yes.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Yes, I want that, but there is one more thing I need to tell you.”
He took a deep breath, preparing himself for whatever else I was going to say. “Go ahead, Lex. Tell me.”
“I had a sister. Her name was Sadie and she died.”
I didn’t wait for him to respond before I began my story. My life story. His eyes were confused at first, but the more I talked, explaining in painfully clear detail, the realization that I was telling the truth began to surface on his face.
He shook his head.
He didn’t want to believe it. He couldn’t believe it.
Why would he? All those years, all that we’ve been through, and I never told him.
I don’t know precisely when the tears came from either of us. And I’m also unsure when his hand took mine and I sat sobbing onto his chest.
“I’m so sorry, Lex,” he repeated.
Over and over and over again.
And I believed him.
* * *
I had it all laid out. I agonized for hours about what to make with her. Without knowing a thing about seven-year-olds and not much about Delilah herself, I was torn.
Would she prefer to make cupcakes or brownies? I didn’t do a lot of sugar cookies and such to decorate, but I certainly could. Would she have wanted to do that?
I recalled one of the last emails Leslie sent me and how she mentioned that her and Delilah had made apple strudel together. Maybe Delilah thought cupcakes and cookies were…amateurish. Maybe she was beyond that and was into pastries or breads. I just didn’t know.
In some ways, this was the most important day of my life, aside from the day she was born, because for me, she was being reborn to me. It was never going to be a mother-daughter relationship. I made that decision a long time ago, and that hadn’t changed. What did change was the fact that the guilt I’d held on to for so long because of it was breaking apart. It was crumbling in pieces like a crushed cookie. It could never be put together whole, but you could enjoy what was left.
I was being given a gift, and what I did fear was that I would do something to ruin it.
“What are you doing?” Marshall asked, entering the kitchen.
I shrugged. “Obsessing.”
“No shit, Al,” he said. He came up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist before resting his head on my shoulder. “I can’t imagine all the thoughts running through your head. I mean, I’m borderline freaking out.”
“I know this is enormous, but what, specifically, has you worried?” I asked.
He ran his chin against my shoulder, the fuzz from his beard tickling the side of my face. It was oddly comforting. He was comforting. Just his embrace, while so basic, slowed my heart rate. It calmed me. Not completely, but enough to know I could make it through this because he was literally standing right behind me, telling me I could.
“I’m not really worried,” he said. “I know this is beyond huge, you know? But I think what’s fucking with my head is that it’s all come together so amazingly dysfunctional.”
I turned to face him, gripping his hips to bring him in close. “Amazingly dysfunctional, huh? That seems apropos, but a bit confusing. Explain, please.”
His hands dragged up my arms before he slid them across my face, cradling it in his hands. “Aaron, Delilah, and you are the loves of my life.”
There were no words, no expression of emotion for me to reply with. There just wasn’t any that would fit the beautiful ache in my chest; such a new and powerful feeling was radiating throughout my body. I’d never known real devotion, complete trust, and acceptance, perhaps ever in my life. Marshall was giving that to me, and delivering it to me with such reverence, it made me wonder how I would ever be able to give him back what he was giving me.
I pressed my lips against his with a chaste kiss. “You’re my Superman,” I said against his lips.
“And you are,” he said, grabbing my ass and squeezing it, “my insanely hot woman.”
I giggled and pushed him away with a playful shove. “Help me decide what to make with her, please. I don’t know what she likes or what she would think is fun or anything.”
“Well, I’d deviate from the ones injected with booze.”
He couldn’t be serious.
“Please tell me you’re joking and that you don’t think I didn’t already know that,” I said.
A large grin, the one that made my insides and lady bits ache, spread across his face. “Of course I am. I just like seeing you get
all serious and offended.”
“You are so twisted and…screwed up,” I said.
“Wicked, gorgeous,” he said with a wink. “And I have no idea what you should make with her. Whatever it is, she’ll have a ball. The both of you will. Promise.”
I gripped the end of my hair that was styled in soft waves and twirled it around my finger. As I went through my mind’s recipe box, my nerves began to take hold again. What if she didn’t like me? What if, for some reason, she figured something out? What if Aaron changed his mind, and it wasn’t going to happen at all?
Marshall rummaging through my pantry brought my thoughts back to the moment at hand and not the what-ifs. I knew what he was doing. He was looking for extra treats.
“Just ask,” I shouted. “Like I’ve told you a hundred times before.”
“Don’t you have any of those doughnuts? The chocolate-glazed ones with the bacon?” he asked.
“The ones with the maple bourbon glaze?”
“Yes!”
“No.”
“No, you don’t have, or no, I can’t have one.”
“Both. I don’t have any so you can’t have any.”
“Fuck.”
“And watch your mouth when Delilah gets here,” I said.
He snort-laughed, emerging from the pantry and closing the door behind him. “You think that girl hasn’t heard my filth since birth?”
“Oh, I know she has. I seem to remember you dropping a f-bomb when you first saw her in the hospital after she was born.”
“Probably. Shit, I wanted one of those doughnuts. Oh! There it is. Make doughnuts with her.”
That was an idea. A simple glazed with maybe a chocolate-dipped top. I had tons of different colors and kinds of sprinkles she might like.
“Hmm,” I said. “That’s probably a good idea. I hope—”
A knock at the door stopped both my words and heart. Looking toward the screen door, I could see Aaron standing on the opposite side, running his hands through his already messy hair, his brows furrowed together, just like he always did when he was stressed.
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