by LJ Evans
At the same time, I couldn’t hate her. She was part of me. She was the person that knew things about me before I knew them myself. Just like I’d known things about her. She’d been the person that I’d learned to surf with and played video games with. She was the one who held my hand when my first girlfriend broke up with me, and I thought it was the end of the world. She’d been the one to encourage me to learn the bass when Rochelle had huffed and puffed about it being ridiculous.
But she’d also been the reason I lost sleep many nights. I’d lie there worrying that she’d climb out the two-story window and jump. Or that she’d use one of the kitchen knives that Rochelle refused to lock up, even though she knew her daughter was tempted by them.
Mark and Rochelle had always seen Lita’s disease as a choice. Like she could just choose to not be depressed. Like she could just choose not to have the anxiety overwhelm her.
I knew that it wasn’t a choice. It was her reality.
But knowing that didn’t help me in L.A. And it didn’t help me now, as I was flying across the country with Edie. Looking down at her sweet face, I was a mix of exhaustion and love. I brushed a hand over her soft, silky hair, caught up in waves of emotion so strong that I didn’t know what to make of it.
Edie’s hair was blonder than mine. Much lighter, but it still had a hint of the red that Lita and I both sported. That Lita had always hated because our hair was so much more carrot red than gorgeous to-die-for red. Edie’s was almost the perfect color of strawberry blonde and that just made me think of another person that I called Strawberry.
I’d thought about Wynn a lot while I’d been in L.A. It seemed so heartbreakingly awful that life would give my screwed up sister a beautiful little girl that she refused to take care of when someone like Wynn kept losing babies. Babies that she’d already loved before she’d even seen them.
The plane landed, and Edie slept through it. She could sleep through an attack of the Hun Army. But trying to get her to sleep, that was another story. In the few weeks I’d had her, it had become a pattern. She’d fight sleeping till she literally fell asleep doing whatever it was she was trying to do. It was like she was afraid that if she fell asleep, she didn’t know what would happen to her. Or what she’d wake up to. It cracked my heart into pieces. But once she was asleep, she wouldn’t wake up for a long time.
I waited till everyone else disembarked before standing. I hadn’t wanted to fight the crowd with all the crap I had. I silently went through the list in my head: her car seat, the diaper bag, my bag. The rest would be at baggage claim. I pulled Edie’s dead weight tighter into my arms that were half asleep from the position they’d been stuck in.
I rounded the last corner after security, looking for Derek. And instead of my best friend, I saw her—Strawberry Shortcake.
I ducked back around the corner, and the security lady frowned at me until she saw sleeping Edie in her Wonder Woman cape. Then she melted like everyone did. Even the pissed off Asian lady on the plane. She’d turned to give me an earful when Edie had screamed after spilling ice water all over herself and me, but Edie’s smile had won her over.
I put down the car seat, dug out my phone, and texted Derek.
ME: WTF?
DEREK: ??
ME: I asked for your help. I DID NOT ask for you to send the Strawberry Shortcake.
DEREK: You can thank me later.
I took a selfie of me and sleeping Edie as best I could and sent it to him.
DEREK: Shit. Is that Edie with you?
ME: No, I stole some random kid off the plane. Of course it’s Edie, asshole.
DEREK: I’m sorry man. I had to go finalize our tour schedule with Asha. Wynn offered to help out. If I’d known, I would have come.
And he would have if I hadn’t been so goddamn closed off over the last month. He’d known I’d gone to see Lita. He’d known that she was in rehab. He’d also known that I was staying at Mark and Rochelle’s with Edie. But I hadn’t told him that I’d become the proud owner of an almost four year old. I hadn’t wanted to go into it because, knowing Derek, he would have flown out to L.A. to help. And I didn’t need to take him away from his new bride and the album that needed finishing.
My arms, that I’d always prided myself on being muscular, were aching from holding Edie and all the other stupid shit. I was worn out. I just wanted to be home. To be at my apartment where I could try to sort through what the hell I was going to do now. Until I could get Lita out of rehab and force her to put her life back together so she could take care of this beautiful little thing that she’d been granted.
DEREK: I’ll come over when I get back from Nashville.
ME: Bring beer. I’m pretty sure I’ll need my own six pack.
I shoved the phone back into my pocket, picked up the car seat, and headed back around the corner, steeling myself for the sight of her again.
It took her longer than expected to register it was me. Probably because she wasn’t expecting my baggage. Her face turned from a small real smile to her plastered on one in all of two seconds.
All I could think, again, was that she had lost two babies which she deserved so much to have, and that Lita had carried Edie without even knowing it until she was months along. Even then, she’d continued her messed up ways. Life was cruel.
“You have a child?” The pain and disbelief was reflected in her voice. I hadn’t expected that. For her to jump to the thought that Edie was mine. I should have. She looked so much like me.
I could see how that would hurt. If she thought I hadn’t told her I had a kid when she’d talked about her own babies. Hurt because she’d asked about my family several times, and I’d always shut it down. But she quickly hid all of that behind a fake half-smile.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I don’t know why I started with that instead of an explanation. Or thanks for coming to get me. Except that sorry was what I felt more than thanks. Sorry that she lost her babies. Sorry that she had to come get me. Sorry that I was a jerk who hadn’t told her about my screwed up life.
She didn’t respond. She just took the car seat, and I was grateful to have one less thing in my arms.
“It isn’t what you think,” I continued, trying to find the words to tell her that Edie wasn’t mine. But where the fuck to start that story?
“Do you need to pick up bags?” She ignored my comment. I thought maybe it was so that she could get a hold of her own emotions.
I nodded, and we headed toward the baggage claim.
“This is my sister’s daughter. This is my niece, Edie.” I finally found words to tell her once we were standing next to the conveyor belt.
“Your niece?” I swore there was relief as well as more pain in her voice.
I nodded again, wanting to kill Derek for putting us both through this. But it was my fault, I reminded myself. I hadn’t told him.
“I didn’t know you had a sister,” she said. The hurt was there again. She’d shared a lot. I hadn’t. I’d shut her down because talking about my family was never fun. It was never a lighthearted adventure, and I didn’t like going into it if I didn’t have to.
“She’s my twin,” I said just to get it all out at once. So there wouldn’t be anything else that I hadn’t said.
Instead of helping, I could see that my confession just made everything worse. Because a twin wasn’t a regular sibling, and everyone knew it. Twins were like an extension of you. Like having another version of yourself out in the world that you were tied to with an invisible tether.
“Wow. A twin. I can’t imagine a female lumberjack being out there somewhere,” Wynn said with her sass coming back to cover the bruises I’d left.
Edie finally stirred, putting her hand up against my face as if to make sure I was still there, even though she was wrapped in my arms. I looked down from Wynn’s blue eyes into a pair of soft amber ones.
“Nonnie?” she asked, even though she could see it was me. It was pretty m
uch our normal routine whenever she woke up: check to make sure I was there, check to make sure the cape was still on her back, and then she would smile. That’s what she did now. She fingered the cape and then smiled her sweet smile at me.
“Yep. It’s still me, Chicken Lips.”
“I’s hungry.”
“Well, we gotta get the bags and then drive a bit, but we’ll get something soon.”
“I can go grab her a snack while you wait for the bags if you want,” Wynn offered.
I was too beat up from this hell trip to do anything but accept. “That would be great,” I said with relief. “If you don’t mind.”
I went to dig out my wallet while still balancing Edie and the shit in my hands, but Wynn had already walked away, leaving the car seat at my feet.
“Down, Nonnie. I’s want down.”
“Not yet.”
She pushed at me, but there was no way I was putting her down in the chaos of baggage claim. For the hundredth millionth time on this journey, I wondered how single parents did it. I was in no way prepared for this, and I was terrified that Lita wouldn’t get her shit together enough to get Edie back.
I saw our two bags and hustled to fling them from the conveyor while people around me glared and groaned, and Edie wiggled like crazy.
“Down!” she whined, and I knew I was probably crushing her, but I couldn’t set her down and have her wander off.
“No.” And I knew it came out as a growl, but it was because I was at my wits’ end.
People started eyeing me like I was a kidnapper or child molester until Wynn showed up, and then they just looked away. As if we couldn’t be kidnappers together.
“It’s not much,” she said and held out a big bag of Goldfish crackers. Edie grabbed onto it for dear life.
“What do you say, Edie?”
“Tank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Wynn got a real smile on her face for the first time since she’d registered the sight of Edie in my arms. That smile hit me in my gut as it had every time she’d done it in my presence.
“Is this everything?” Wynn asked.
I nodded and picked up the bigger of the duffel bags, shouldering it along with the diaper bag.
Wynn picked up the smaller duffel and the car seat, and we headed toward the exit in silence with Edie munching on Goldfish and Wynn’s mask of politeness back on.
When we got to the lot, Wynn stopped by an old SUV that looked like it had seen the better part of a decade.
“Whose car is this?”
“My mama’s. Derek said you had some stuff, so she switched cars with me for the day.”
I felt bad all over again. That she’d had to go out of her way to come get me.
“Sorry.”
“Please stop. I offered to come get you.”
“But you didn’t know you’d be dealing with all this.” I looked down at Edie who had at least stopped wiggling as she munched on the Goldfish.
While Wynn and I struggled to get the car seat into the SUV, I put Edie in the driver’s seat where she promptly spilled some of her Goldfish. As I grabbed her from the front to buckle her in, Wynn pushed the fallen Goldfish out of the car. Thank God there were still some left in the bag, otherwise Edie would have shown Wynn her dark side.
“I’m sorry about the mess.”
“It’s no big deal.” I could tell she meant it, but there was still some awkward air between us that hadn’t ever been there before.
As we got on our way, I scratched at my unshaved chin. The beard that had grown in a month of pretty much not having time to shave was driving me nuts.
I glanced back at Edie. She still hadn’t asked who Wynn was. I suspected that she’d had a revolving door of people in and out of her life already. I knew Lita. She was my twin. I knew she’d never stayed in one place long. And she’d always found someone to take her in. Which was why my list of people that I’d left messages with trying to find her had been long.
When I’d met with the CPS lady again before I’d left to sort out the temporary custody paperwork, she’d told me that Edie would have attachment issues. That she’d probably have a lot of issues that they hadn’t even identified yet. My gut had clenched. Lita had screwed up so badly this time that I was finding it hard to stomach it, let alone forgive.
“Am I not supposed to ask why your niece is with you?” Wynn asked nonchalantly.
I didn’t want to clam up again like every time she’d asked me something about my past, but I wasn’t sure what to say. Where to start with a lifetime of messed up that I had always tried to let go?
“It’s a long, fucked up story,” I sighed, leaning my head back on the headrest and rubbing my arm muscle.
“Okay.”
I knew she wouldn’t ask again. I knew she wouldn’t because she was too goddamn polite. I had to say something before I was racked with more guilt at being a dickhead when she was just trying to be nice.
“My sister is in rehab. Again,” I started.
“That’s hard,” Wynn said with a mix of sympathy and sadness. I didn’t know who the sadness was for: me, or Lita, or Edie, or even for herself and what she’d lost.
“What about your parents?” she asked.
“They refuse to get involved.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice.
“But…she’s their granddaughter.”
I laughed coldly. I then worried that maybe she’d think I was laughing at her, so I apologized. “That wasn’t at you. Sorry. It’s been a shitty couple weeks.”
“Language,” she said with a weak smile, but it wasn’t her fake one, so I knew I was at least partially forgiven.
“Lita’s had issues for a long time. My parents washed their hands of her when she got pregnant. Now…now they say they’ve already raised their kids, and they deserve to have a retirement, not a second family. The sh—the stupid thing is they didn’t raise us at all. If they had, Lita probably wouldn’t be as messed up as she is.”
We let that settle in between us for a moment. She was surprised I’d said all of that. I was, too. But I was tired, and I didn’t have the energy to filter it.
“What about the father?” she asked.
Wasn’t that the question of the year? Well, longer than that. Nearing four years.
“Which one? Lita didn’t list one on the birth certificate. She wasn’t sure who it was. She could have had them all tested, but she knew none of them would give a rat’s butt cheek anyway.”
Wynn laughed. I knew it was at my rat’s butt cheek comment instead of ass. As tired as I was, I was still glad that I’d made her laugh.
I turned my head to watch her as she drove, the laugh leaving her pink lips slightly turned up in a way that just made her all the more stunning.
“Mia is going to have to give me a list of acceptable expletives if I’m not going to be able to cuss anymore,” I teased, hoping to keep the smile there a while longer.
“Boiling butterbeer is her favorite.”
“Yeah, but I remember liking whale bits a lot,” I said, adding my tired grin to hers.
“Nonnie?”
I turned in my seat to look at my beautiful niece. She looked a bit like me because she looked like my twin. But she had a beauty to her that I’d never be able to identify in myself.
“Yeah, Eeds?”
“Tirsty.”
I dug through the bag I’d thrown at my feet and came up with the sippy cup that the flight attendant had filled with water for me. A month ago, I hadn’t known what a damn sippy cup was; now I was an expert on not going anywhere without it.
I handed it to Edie. “Don’t take the lid off!”
“Tay,” she said, and when I handed it to her, she tried immediately to take the lid off, and all I could envision was water all over her and the car seat like it had been when she’d done it on the plane. Changing her in the tiny bathroom had been an exercise in geometry I never wanted to repeat.
“Edie!” I warned, and she looked up at me with a smile that stopped hearts already. Especially mine.
“I’s teasing.”
She’d picked that up from me in the few days we’d been together. I eyeballed her and the cup, and she smiled at me again.
“Little turd.”
Edie giggled.
“Lonnie!” Wynn exclaimed.
But she smiled at me when she heard Edie’s giggle, and she could see that I was smiling too. Her smile got bigger till her little quirk appeared at the corner of her mouth, and that made me happier than I’d been in days.
I knew, right then, that coming home to Tennessee had been the best decision I’d made in almost a month.
When we pulled up to the apartment, I sighed. I wasn’t even sure what I was going to do with Edie. I had two bedrooms, but one of them was full of all my band and photography gear. I didn’t have a bed for her. Or toys. Or even enough frickin’ clothes to get us through a day or two without doing laundry.
Wynn didn’t even ask. She just helped me carry all our shit up to the apartment, took the keys as I struggled to get them in the lock, opened the door, and helped us inside.
She took a look around my space while I put Edie down on the couch and carried all our gear to my bedroom. When I came back out, I stood next to her, both of us watching the little girl who’d come home with me.
Edie hadn’t moved, but she was taking it all in, too.
Both redheads were judging my bachelor world.
“You okay, Chicken Lips?” I asked Edie. She just nodded.
“What’s with the Chicken Lips? Chickens don’t even have lips,” Wynn chortled.
I grinned. “Only a Southern girl would know that.” She pushed against my shoulder with her own. “Honestly? I don’t know. My uncle used to call all us kids that. And when she used to pout at me, it was all I could think of calling her.”
“Do you have anything for her to eat?” Wynn asked.
I nodded. “I have some mac and cheese I can make.”