“Fine.” She steps away from the doorway and drops the cat to the floor. With a mew, he scampers off and runs down the hallway behind her. “Come in. Wait here. I’ll go check on him. Bob is working and asked not to be disturbed, but he’s in the office downstairs.” She blinks. “Who do I say is calling?”
“Morgan McLean,” I repeat.
“That’s right.” She nods as I step inside, and she gracefully rounds me and closes the door behind me. “I’ll be right back.”
Her feet glide along dark hardwood, and she disappears down the hallway, out of the front foyer, around a corner. I glance up. The ceiling is high, and a huge chandelier hangs right over my head. I step off to the side, suspicious of the bolts. Down the hallway, a door opens and footsteps traipse down the stairs.
My body starts to shake. Inside and out. Even my bottom lip quivers. And then my mind trips. I want to run but force myself to stay still and calm.
There’s another mew. The cat is back, sitting close to the corner wall, watching me. Staring. Disapproving. He’s close to a dining room with French doors, which I only know because the twins talk about construction and house design. The doors are thrown open, but instead of inviting, it has a premeditated and staged aura. Dark hardwood flows into the dining room without a trace of dust or even cat hair. The furniture inside looks unused; everything about the house suggests lots of dollar bills. I shuffle my feet on the plush entry mat, breathing deeply to keep myself from keeling over. I’m tempted to take out my phone. I wish I were all alone, chatting with online friends or transported through time to the tweetup we keep talking about but never seem to make happen in Seattle. I wonder if I’ve gotten new followers. I wish this stupid plan had never occurred to me.
A low hum travels up the stairs from the basement. Voices meld together and muffle, and it’s impossible to hear actual words. And then footsteps. Two sets. I breathe deep. Deny. Deny. The power of denial is my superpower.
I wipe my hands on my jeans. The door opens. A tall blond man steps out, around the corner to the hallway. The cat purrs and prances toward him. My eyes don’t leave him. His nose has a bump just like mine. He even has a dimple on his cheek where my cheek puckers in. Our eyes are the same shade of brown.
He’s wearing jeans and a golf shirt, trim and fit for an older man. I can’t take my eyes off him. He’s so familiar looking. He’s a stranger. There’s no doubt I’ve found my dad. I swallow and fight an urge to cry.
“Yes?” He walks a few feet in front of me and stops. Stares at me.
My face burns. “I’m Morgan.” I cower, just a little, but shake it off and stare at him.
I wait for it. His anger. Maybe some excuses. A reaction to having me show up on his doorstep without warning. Eighteen years later. His daughter.
“Morgan?” He glances back, and I realize his wife followed him around the corner. She stoops over and scoops up the cat. His gaze returns to me. “Have we met?” he asks.
There’s an audible breath of relief from her mouth, and it softens the crow’s feet in the corner of her eyes. She stands taller and touches his back for a moment and then goes back to stroking the cat.
He hasn’t told her. About me. She doesn’t know. To me, keeping quiet is the same as lying. I frown. Apparently she doesn’t know him as well as she thinks she does. Her boyfriend? Her husband? I squeeze my fists together.
“We haven’t officially met. But you know that already.” I speak methodically, trying to mask the anxiety in my gut. My mind is black. I want to punch him in the gut. He doesn’t even care enough to acknowledge me? Not exactly what I was hoping for.
“You do look familiar.” His eyebrows crease and push together, and then he crosses his arms.
Familiar? I clench my teeth to keep my damaged pride pouring out. “What exactly can I do for you, young lady?” His tone is less amicable now.
The hairs on my arm stand up. “Well, you haven’t done anything so far.” How can he look at me like that? He has to know I’m the daughter he abandoned. Even I can see myself in his face. He has to see himself in mine.
“What it is you want?” He uncrosses his arms and steps in front of the woman and cat, as if he’s protecting them from me. Me? Unbelievable.
“It’s me,” I say. “Morgan.” My voice cracks on my name.
Nothing.
“Morgan McLean.” My fingernails press into my skin as I wait.
He shakes his head and glances at the woman beside him, and their eyes speak without words. He’s suggesting I’m a lunatic.
“Maggie McLean’s daughter,” I spell out.
“Maggie? Maggie McLean?”
Ah-ha, Einstein. Catching on now?
I brace myself for his outburst.
“From Seattle?” He frowns and reaches into his pants pocket and takes out a tube of ChapStick. I stare at him, kind of shocked, almost laughing, while he smears it on his lips. Nature versus nurture debate teams would have a blast with this.
“The one and only.” The clock in the dining room ticks loudly.
“I haven’t talked to Maggie in years.” He tilts his head, studying my face. “How is she?”
“She just had heart surgery.” I unclench my fists and lift my chin so he won’t see how much it’s quivering.
“I knew your mom a long time ago. I haven’t seen her in years.” He glances at the little woman with him, as if he wishes she’d rescue him. “She’s okay?”
I stare at his face—the face that was never there for me. The face that never wanted a child, never wanted me—still isn’t embracing me now. “She’s fine. She actually thought she was going to die. And that’s when she told me how to find you. She’s protected you all these years.”
“Protected me?” He glances at the woman. The cat stares at me, not blinking.
I put my hands on my hips, hating the cat, wanting to hiss at it.
“Your mother broke up with me over eighteen years ago. I haven’t seen or talked to her since. I’m sorry she’s been sick, but…?” He raises both eyebrows and glances at his watch, but his face is getting visibly paler by the second.
My stomach hurts and my hands shake but it’s impossible to tell if it’s from anger or fear. I could easily throw up. “She’s not,” I tell him, “going to die.”
“Um. That’s good?” He rubs his lips together and looks at the woman, his eyebrows raised.
I stare at him. This isn’t what I’d braced myself for. I expected excuses. I hoped for regret—but not disinterest or impatience. It’s actually worse.
“I’m eighteen,” I say.
He stares at me long and hard, and then his eyes wrinkle more in the corners and his back straightens.
“When were you born?” he demands.
“December.”
He presses his lips together, frowns, and rubs at the back of his neck. The woman puts her hand on his arm.
“My mom raised me. Alone. Well, me and my older twin brothers.”
“Jake and Josh,” Bob says.
“Yes,” I reply, though I want to shout Obviously!
There’s a sudden awful taste in my mouth and a whoosh in my ears as my body goes ice cold, as if the heat has been sucked out with a vacuum. “You were aware that she was pregnant?”
He blinks, clears his throat. “Pregnant?”
Oh my God. What has my mom done? An urge to laugh tickles at my stomach and then my breath is sucked out again. “You didn’t know?” I manage, and it’s both a statement and a question. Heat rushes through my body and I sway with dizziness.
“What are you saying?” His words sound as though they’ve been dipped in horror and fear.
“She was pregnant.” The cat mews. The clock ticks. I can barely breathe. “With me.”
“Camille,” he says, not taking his eyes off of me. “Camille?”
I’d
almost forgotten the slight woman. I’m afraid I’m going to pass out. Drop and fold to the ground. He’s got a hand on his heart. Camille quickly puts down the cat. “Bob, are you okay?”
“She says she’s my daughter.” He doesn’t take his eyes off me.
“Bob?” She looks back and forth between us.
“Maggie McLean. You remember? The American who sent me off with no explanation. About a year before we met.” He looks away from me to Camille and his eyes are wide.
“You didn’t know?” I whisper again, but I don’t even know if they hear me. The realization punches me in the gut. I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand. This is worse.
“Why’re you here? Why now?” Camille says. Her voice isn’t angry, but it’s firm. Bob blinks and blinks with his mouth hanging slightly open.
I focus on Camille. Someone rational. A stranger. I want her to help me. Intervene. Tell me what’s going on. “I never knew who my dad was. I never even knew his name. My mom never told me. Then she had heart pains. She thought she was dying. So she told me where to find the info. So she wouldn’t go to the grave feeling guilty.”
“Oh dear,” Camille says softly. A phone rings but no one even glances toward the noise.
Oh dear is right.
“Your mom knew I was here?” Bob asks, blocking the real issue. My mom had his baby eighteen years ago. Me. And she didn’t even bother to tell him.
“Apparently she’s good at keeping things to herself.” I’m able to breathe by concentrating on it. In. Out. In. Out. I remember getting punched in the stomach in sixth grade. By Kim Stevenson. I can’t even remember why, but I remember how it felt—exactly like this. “You didn’t know?” It comes out in a whisper.
“You think you’re my daughter?” His voice is higher pitched and creaks at the end. The phone rings again. My phone beeps, letting me know I’ve received another text.
My nose tickles as if I need to sneeze. The sensation that my chest is being crushed gets stronger. “I thought you knew. I thought you left us.”
I realize that I’m an idiot for believing my mother in the first place. Truth has never been her thing. And it hits me with force. He didn’t even know about me. I’ve been beating myself up for being unlovable, unwanted, and he didn’t even know I existed.
How? How could she do this?
And then I begin to lose the grip I’ve been holding on to since I found out his name. I came here to see the man who gave me up without a fight. But he didn’t fight because he didn’t even know. I think of her frantic texting. That’s why she’s been trying to get ahold of me. This truth is worse. He didn’t reject me. He didn’t have the chance.
My eyes spill tears and my nose leaks. How could she do this? For so many years.
Camille slides over and puts an arm around me. But even now, even in this, I can’t shake the feeling that somehow I’m the one who caused this mess.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Bob says and then spins on his heels and stomps out of the hallway. The sounds coming out of my body get louder. I shrug Camille off and hug my arms around myself, wishing I could disappear. She pats my arm then gently leads me into the den.
It’s carpeted and cream colored and thick under my shoes. I try to protest that they might be dirty, but there’s no way for me to talk like a rational person. Camille looks like the sort of person who would care about dirty carpets, but she doesn’t say a thing or even seem to notice.
She guides me to a chair, takes my purse, sits me down, and then puts my purse on my lap. I take out my phone. A text from my mom.
Call me. Please.
She’s fine. It’s not her health. It’s this. She’s been trying to stop this. Too late. I delete her message.
“Bob really had no idea,” Camille says softly. “It’s a shock. Give him a few minutes, okay?” She slips out of the room.
My hysteria dies down. My cheeks burn with humiliation. I’d been judging him for being a man who would abandon his own daughter. But he didn’t even know.
When Camille returns a few minutes later, she’s holding a glass of water and a box of Kleenex, and she hands both to me. “You okay?” She sits on the chair beside mine and smiles ever so slightly. Her legs are slim, tinier than mine even.
I move my head up and down and blow my nose into a Kleenex. “So where do you live?” she asks.
“Tadita. Outside Seattle. Where my mom met…Bob.”
My voice is scratchy and high-pitched. I think about standing and walking out, walking through the front door and continuing on until my feet bleed. Maybe walking all the way home, but my butt is Velcroed to the cushion.
“Is she here with you? Your mom?”
“No. I came with…friends.” And then, in spite of everything, a tiny smile tugs at my lips. Amy and Adam are friends. Real friends. And I know, when I return to the hostel, they’re going to be there for me. They’re going to help me get through this. “They’re at the Stingray Hostel. That’s where we’re staying.” I should have let them come along.
She nods. “Are you in college?”
“No. I start my senior year of high school in September.”
We stare at each other.
“I didn’t know,” I say, “that Bob didn’t know about me. My mom…” It sounds stupid. I sound stupid. I am so over my head here, it’s not even funny. I stand up. “I should go.”
I have the real story now, and it’s certainly not the story I thought it was. I’ve seen him. But the truth is, you can’t leave someone you don’t know about.
She scoops up the cat and stands. “No.” She touches my arm. “You shouldn’t go. Let me talk to Bob for a minute. I’m his wife, by the way. I’ll be right back. Sit.” She points at the chair, and as if I’m a puppy in obedience school, my butt drops back in the seat. She walks out again, and I hear a low buzz of voices outside the den.
I have no idea what to do. I wring my hands together and glance down at my purse. I want to take out my phone. Tweet this moment. Make it funny, less traumatic. The stupidity of it all. My mom and her lies. Omission is lying. Only bigger. Way bigger. Now I know why she’s been frantically texting me. But she let it go too long. Again.
I imagine ways I can turn this horrible, embarrassing encounter into a tweet my followers will enjoy. Camille pops back into the den. Her face is impossible to read. She walks over and sits in the chair beside me. “How long are you here?” she asks.
“We’re leaving Sunday.”
“He’s going to want to talk to you, to see you. But…” Her lips press tight and something flashes in her eyes. Anger? “He’s gone for a run.”
I stare at her, blinking. “Pardon me?”
She sighs. “He runs when he’s stressed. He’s pretty overwhelmed.” She laughs, but the sound is tinged with bitterness. “I have no idea how long he’ll be gone. Could be half an hour. Could be four hours. He does marathons, so he can run a long time.”
“He left?” I shake my head. It makes no sense. I stand up, put my purse over my shoulder, squish my eyebrows together. Bob White just found out he has a daughter so he’s leaving to go for a run. It’s perfect. Exercise to Bob must equal wine to Mom. He may not have abandoned me when I was a baby, but he certainly did just now.
“Can you leave me some contact info so we can call you later? I know he’s going to want to talk to you. He just needs…to process.”
An inappropriate giggle tickles the inside of my nose. Maybe my mom was right to not tell him about me. Maybe he would have run off the first time. It’s ridiculous. I’m more than a little freaked out myself, but I’m not running away. “No,” I tell Camille, and the urge to laugh vanishes.
“Morgan,” Camille says. “He’ll come around.” She walks closer, puts her hand on my shoulder. “This is a big deal. Leaving wasn’t the best idea. But this is how he deals, with exercise.” She shakes her head. “
It’s a shock after eighteen years. He needs to process it. Neither one of you is the bad guy here.”
I duck away from her hand and retrace my footsteps toward the front door. She’s implying my mom is the bad guy, and that’s certainly what every arrow is pointing to. But despite what she’s done, despite it all, she’s still my mom. How am I going to deal with that? Everything is mixed up. This scenario is so different from anything I imagined or even tried not to imagine, I don’t know how to process it.
“Maybe she had a good reason for not telling me about him,” I say to Camille. “Maybe he would have taken off like this the first time.”
“No. This is different. He’s not gone forever. He’s gone to think. Listen, he’s not perfect. Who is? But he’s not a bad man.”
I hurry toward the front door. She’s right behind me. “The twins’ dad is in their lives. So why did my mom choose not to tell Bob?” My mom stayed. She raised me without any help. I put my hand on the front door handle.
“There is nothing about Bob that should worry you. I promise you that.” I turn the knob. “This wasn’t his fault. Morgan? Can you leave me your number? Please?”
I push the front door, wanting to say no, but I can’t. I ramble off my cell number but she doesn’t write it down, she only nods. I wonder how she’ll remember, if she’ll forget or mess it up. I’m hopeful she will and worried she will at the same time.
“I’m sorry,” she says, and there are tears in her eyes. “For both of you. He’s a good man, Morgan. And you seem like a nice girl.”
“Thank you,” I manage and close the door behind me. I pull out my phone and write a tweet.
My dad didn’t even know I was born.
And then I glance up and stop on the sidewalk when I see what’s outside.
chapter sixteen
10. Never rely on a backup system.
#thingsithoughtweretrue
A horn blasts. Amy’s bright yellow Mazda is parked on the opposite side of the road from Bob White’s car. In this neighborhood, it looks like a kiddie bumper car from the amusement park.
16 Things I Thought Were True Page 14