Sandra was now sitting in Nicolas’s seat. Her dusty-blond hair was pulled into a messy bun, a contrast to the normally neat and proper package she always fought to project and keep together.
“Allie!” she cried. “What happened to your hands?”
“Oh.” White bandages bound my palms and snaked up to my wrists. “The mirror fell in the bathroom.”
Sandra believed my story just as much as the nurses had, but just like the nurses she didn’t probe the situation. My wet, red-rimmed eyes were proof enough I had gotten into a fight with a bathroom mirror and lost.
“Sit down,” Sandra said, patting the plastic chair next to her.
I collapsed in, too tired to care either way.
“Where’s Dr. Reynolds?” I muttered, glancing around. Maybe he would know more information—how she was, if she was going to be okay. The most I had gotten out of the nurses was that she was stable, but in surgery. There was no telling what that meant. Just perfunctory, meaningless phrases to tell a family.
“He’s talking to the doctors. Apparently he knows someone working tonight. He said he’d be back in half an hour.”
I nodded silently. I diverted my attention down to the ground, my elbows on my knees, legs splayed. I needed to do something, but the nausea of the night just wouldn’t go away and I couldn’t shake that rabid fear of the worst possible scenario. They’d said she was stable, but what if her situation took a turn for the worse? What if they were wrong? I needed to see her, need to touch her, to feel with my own hands and see with my own eyes that she was okay.
My body jerked. Sandra had placed a light hand on my arm. She smiled, her lips curving into a sympathetic expression.
“Are you okay?” she asked gently.
I shrugged, then shook my head, rubbing my cheek with a shoulder.
“Now, I know you have never been one for religion,” Sandra started. I glanced away, clenching and clutching my fingers together tight into a hard fist.
Sandra laid a gentle hand on mine and squeezed. Then she rolled her hand over and something was wound around her wrist.
“This was my mother’s rosary.” Sandra turned the string of wooden beads over in her fingers, studying them with curious intensity. “She gave them to me when I first married your father. When she gave this to me, right after she helped me put on my wedding dress, she told me something I have never forgotten. She told me that love requires faith, any kind of faith, all sorts of faith. Love is struggle and love is pain. Your father and I, we have gone through our fair share of struggle and pain in our marriage.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, concentrating on controlling my breathing. “Sandra …”
“Just … just hear me out, okay, love?”
When I didn’t respond, Sandra cleared her throat and continued. “Now, I’m not trying to blame you for anything or to make you feel bad, but when you first came to live with us, it was very difficult. As you may recall, I initially left for a couple weeks.”
I did remember my first weeks in St. Haven, how it was only Bill and me, no Sandra. Bill was quiet, sullen, upset the entire time. In that moment, I had assumed it was because I had arrived, that he didn’t want me just like my mother didn’t want me. But as I got older, I’d figured it out. Sandra had left. I didn’t know where she was or what happened, but years later, I realized Sandra had probably just packed her bags and hit the road.
Bastard son in, dutiful wife out.
It was a wonder Bill didn’t shove me into the streets or the foster care system.
“Why did you come back?” My voice was hoarse.
“Because I loved your father—I knew that much was true. And I knew from that love, I’d love you. I believed in that truth. Now, don’t get me wrong, I didn’t know the first thing about raising a child. I wasn’t even aware your mother or you existed. I don’t think your father really did either. It all happened so fast. Bill was only in New Orleans for a couple months and he barely knew your mother. He said she hadn’t told him she was pregnant before he left town. Of course, I don’t blame anyone at all really. But you can see how it was a shock. We weren’t together those years he was on the Gulf oil rigs, but when he came back to St. Haven, it was like not even an hour had passed.”
My mom had never told me about my dad, and I had barely known Bill existed before I had been ditched so suddenly and so anticlimactically in St. Haven. Likewise, Bill never talked about my mom. The best I could come up with was that it was a one-night stand gone wrong, or a very short-lived relationship that had dissolved as soon as he’d returned to the Gulf for another stint.
The details didn’t matter to me, although Florence had bugged me for years to get to the bottom of it.
What was the use of hashing over old emotions and dead relationships?
A lapse in the story gave me pause. “Why did you return to Bill?”
Sandra smiled slightly. “My mother. She told me that true love never fades, no matter what the challenges. That yearning, it would never go away. There’s strength in struggle. That was a trying time, as you can understand. Just like this is going to be a trying time for you and Florence. But faith will carry you through; faith will save you.”
Sandra was right, I was never one for religion. I shook my head, not seeing how any of this was helpful. “Sandra, I don’t—”
She clicked her tongue. “Not that sort of faith. This isn’t a sermon. What I’m trying to say is that you have to believe in what’s natural for you. Have faith in your love for Florence. Have faith in her love for you. You two will get past this, I promise.”
Her grip tightened, her fingers clutching mine hard.
“We all need to believe in a higher power, a greater purpose for our time on this earth,” she said fiercely. “One of my purposes was to be Bill’s wife, to be your mother. You have to ask yourself, what is your purpose? Why do you live and breathe? If it’s to love that girl in there, to do right by her and to love her, then you accept that responsibility. You own that role and you hold on to it.”
I hung my head. “I got her pregnant. I was the idiot that did that to her. I’m such a screwup, and now she’s in the hospital because of me. How can I love her when my love is what’s hurting her? She was going to go to college. She wanted to be a journalist and travel the world. Even if … even if we weren’t here, all her dreams would have been destroyed.”
Florence never complained outwardly of St. Haven, but we were drawn to each other by the same fire of need within us—to be proven, to be loved, to know more than what was possible here.
“I shouldn’t have been away at school,” I said. “I should have been with her, I should have been there for her.”
Sandra took the rosary from between her fingers and pressed the warm wood into my palm. My hand contracted slightly, my instinctive refusal of her gift. But she wound the beads around my knuckles and grasped me tightly, curling my fingers into a fist around the rosary. Her palm was soft, her grip strong.
“Honey, no one knew. You were trying to do the right thing by getting your credits and finishing early.”
I shook my head, refusing her platitudes. “I was selfish. I was trying to finish while Florence was here—”
“And there’s nothing you could have done. We all agreed on what we needed to do to support this child. You had to finish your classes, Florence knows that. She understands that.”
“What if … what if I’m not good for her? What if I’m just holding her back, what if I can’t do right by her? What if … my love is what’s damaging her, instead of the opposite effect?”
Sandra’s voice was uncharacteristically hard. “Don’t paint yourself into that kind of corner. Florence is strong, she is bright, and she knows what she wants.”
That logical part of myself knew Sandra was telling the truth, but that other part of me, that emotionally barren, miserly aspect of me, it doubted. And in this moment, it dominated. “Her rationale is clouded. She’s never thought clearly when it c
ame to me.”
“Let your heart guide you. It will take you to where you should be. There are times the head rules and times when the heart rules, and many times when they’re in conflict. Just know, we allow our fear to influence the mind, but the heart, it remains pure. It’ll never lead you astray.”
Sandra pressed the rosary into my hand one more time, then pulled away softly.
“Have faith,” she said quietly. “Have faith in an imperfect love.”
* * *
The nurse smiled at me, her dark eyes kind. But the sympathetic edge of her look made me resent her, that cold, tired resentment that I knew bloomed from my own anxiety of judgment.
She knew I had done this to Florence and she hated me for it.
“She just woke up from surgery, so she may be a little groggy or unresponsive. It’s just the medicine.”
I nodded numbly, attention flitting from her gaze to the floor. The doorway was too narrow and my shoulders knocked against it as I stood there, motionless and unsure.
The nurse turned away from me, adjusting a machine standing next to the bed. Her wide body obstructed my view of Florence.
“Okay, sweetie,” the nurse said. She tucked the blankets around Florence, patting them securely in place. “I’ll be back to check up on you in an hour. If you’re in any way uncomfortable, you can press the call button.”
Florence murmured something to her, a sound so low I couldn’t pick it up.
The nurse nodded. “Of course.”
And then the nurse was walking towards me, coming faster than I had anticipated. She rested a gentle hand to my forearm and I jerked back in reflex.
“Take as much time as you need.”
She waited, giving me a curious look until I realized she needed to get out. I stumbled awkwardly to the side to allow her passage, and then she was gone.
It was just the two of us.
My heart was pounding. Hospitals weren’t exactly foreign to me since we’d spent so much time in them for Florence’s mom, but to see someone I actively knew and loved here, much less knowing I put her here, that fact made my skin crawl.
Florence was so small, so thin in the massive hospital bed. All her features were at extremes now—lips swollen and pale, skin ashen, hair yanked tightly into a bun at the top of her head, her exposed collarbones bony and sharp.
And beneath the blankets, her stomach was flat, the fabric gathering in a small dip at her waist.
The sight twisted my own guts.
Florence turned her eyes to me. Those were the only characteristic of her that gave any color, the deep blue of those wide eyes, and in them I knew.
I knew it immediately.
She wouldn’t ever be the same.
And I had done this to her. I was responsible for this pain. It was me and my foolishness and my irresponsibility that had led to this moment, placing her in this hospital room with tubes and needles stuck in her and coming out of her.
My heart broke into even smaller pieces, inconsequential fragments of the shattered heart I already had. I was dust.
I made myself sick and I wanted to vomit all over again.
But instead, I attempted a weak smile.
“Hi.” My voice held forced cheer.
Florence glanced away. “Hi.” The sound was soft, the flutter of a feather against the wind.
I took a shallow, tentative step toward. “How are you feeling?”
Florence tightened her lips and glanced down at her hands. “She’s gone,” she whispered to them.
Florence’s eyes watered and tears rolled down her pale cheeks, but she didn’t move to wipe them away. She just let them fall.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out.
I was at her bedside in two long strides. I crouched down on my knees, my hands to her shoulders. “It’s not your fault, none of this was your fault.”
Florence shook her head fiercely, in long, hard jerks that scared me in their insistence. “Yes. Yes, it was. I wasn’t strong enough, Alistair. I wasn’t strong enough.”
I pulled at her, wanted so badly to gather her up in my arms. She collapsed weakly into my hands, resisting any expression of comfort I could provide, her body curled down in despair.
“Stop. Please, stop. It’s okay, you’re okay now. Don’t worry about it.”
She continued crying, loudly, with sobs that wracked her entire body until it shook violently. “I’m sorry for losing her, Alistair. Don’t hate me, please don’t hate me.”
Now, I pulled her towards me so she fell into my embrace. I hugged her tightly, wanting to take her pain away, needing her to transfer that misery from her soul to mine. “I couldn’t ever hate you, don’t ever say that.”
Florence pressed her cold fingers into my sides, burrowing her face into my chest. She sobbed, “I knew how badly you wanted to be a dad.”
I shook my head. “I want to be with you. That’s all.”
So we remained there, locked together, clutching at each other, fighting desperately to share in each other’s pain. Florence cried silently, her tears wetting the front of my shirt. My own heart was close to bursting in pain and misery, but tears didn’t fall. I didn’t know why. I was hollow and at a loss for what to say, how to comfort her, how to make it all better.
Finally, when she had cried her tears out and she made no more noise, Florence rustled softly in my arms. “Is everything going to be okay?” Her voice was so soft, I had to strain to hear it.
I kissed the top of her head and whispered to her, “Everything is going to be just fine.”
I couldn’t do anything but lie. Because deep within me, I knew the answer.
I was no good for her. I’d ruined everything and with me, Florence would never ever be just fine.
Our imperfect love wasn’t enough.
Chapter 26
Florence Reynolds, twenty-nine years old
I was sitting at a roadside diner, spacing out with a mug of cooling, average-tasting coffee, when my phone vibrated. It shook me out of my stupor and even before I read the text, I knew who it was.
Alistair.
Where are you? Are you okay?
I stared at the screen for several seconds too long, and then typed a response before I could change my mind.
I’m at that Mimi’s Surf Diner off PCH. Getting breakfast. Can you come here?
I barely waited ten minutes before the jangle of the wind chimes on the door clanged his arrival. Alistair’s hair was properly rumpled, and he was wearing a pair of aviator sunglasses and an outfit of t-shirt and jeans hastily thrown together. I wondered vaguely where he’d even begun to find t-shirt and jeans in that business-formal closet of his, but before I afforded that any more consideration, the reflective lenses of his glasses glinted in my direction and he spotted me.
In conjunction, my hair was pathetically finger-combed into a wavy jumbled mass over my shoulders. When I’d rushed out this morning, I had pulled a sundress and flip-flops fished from the bottom of my suitcase. I was makeup-free and wondering if I appeared as exhausted as my soul felt. If I really was as old as every bone and muscle in my body told me I was.
I held my palm up in a small wave and gave a bare smile.
Alistair’s expression was grim as he made his way over. He sat down opposite me, suddenly taking up way too much space. He removed his sunglasses.
He didn’t appear to be mad like I’d thought he’d be. A bit worried, maybe frustrated. But not mad.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” he said.
I shrugged and lowered my gaze to the cracked Formica tabletop. I hated this; I was completely undone in Alistair’s presence. All the strength and resolve I’d built over years seemed to mock me, telling me my growth had been nothing.
I was sixteen all over again.
“Aren’t you supposed to meet with Thomas and everyone?” I was fishing wildly for a topic, any topic that didn’t involve us. “It’s almost eleven.” I waved a weak finger to his watch to reinforce my equally
weak point.
Alistair’s fingers clenched into a fist. “I already told them I was taking the day off, so they’re having meetings in my stead. But that hardly matters.”
I nodded but didn’t meet his stare.
“Flor—”
“Hey, there, kids, what’ll the lad have?” The waiter came rolling up to us, heralded by the snap of his gum between his teeth.
Alistair’s left eyebrow rose a bare couple of millimeters at that tone. The waiter was younger than us, with holes in his shirt, and appeared as if he’d slept the night on the beach.
“Coffee, black. No sugar,” Alistair said after a pause. “And whatever the lady is having.”
The waiter turned towards me, but when I shook my head, he said, “Lady didn’t order breakfast yet.”
“Then just coffee for now,” Alistair said.
The waiter walked away and I turned to Alistair, producing a sad smile. “We look ten years younger.”
It was true. With our casual clothing and halfheartedly prepped appearance, we could be any young couple who’d just rolled from their beachside cottage into a late breakfast.
“Florence,” Alistair said. I didn’t budge. “Florence, look at me.”
I tilted my eyes up and was met with hazel-colored concern.
“Are you okay? Are you sorry about what happened last ni—”
I cut him off. “No. I don’t regret last night. I don’t regret anything. I just don’t know where we are, what’s to happen.”
“Then why did you leave this morning?”
I licked my lips. “I went to the drugstore.” I turned and rummaged through the plastic bag next to me. I pulled out a box and threw it in between us.
Both our gazes homed in on the hastily opened box of morning-after pills that sat there. And at that exact moment, the waiter’s gaze also fell onto the table.
My face heated just as the waiter’s eyes widened. But if he was going to say something, Alistair’s death glare got in the way and the waiter hastily threw down Alistair’s coffee and scampered away.
Alistair turned in his seat to watch the poor kid’s escape, but when he turned back around, I continued in a low voice. “We can’t be having sex without protection. I mean, it was both our faults we got carried away last night but …” I fisted my hair and shook my head. “That was so stupid of me. I can’t believe myself. I can’t believe I didn’t stop you or ask about a condom.”
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