“Andi is right. You aren’t Cal’s mother, and you are not equipped to be. If you were, you wouldn’t have forgotten about him. If you were, you would never have entrusted him to the care of a man you didn’t know. I feel sick to my stomach every time I think about what could have happened.
“Andi’s greatest fear has always been that someday this day would come, but I never actually believed it because I trusted that you knew your limits, that you knew, just as we do, how incapable you are of being a parent.
“I have made many, many mistakes with you, Emily. I indulged you and spoiled you, and tried to give you everything you ever wanted in the hope that it would make you happy, even when nothing ever did. I wish, God, how I wish, I had been firmer with you, but those days are over. This is not something I’m going to give you.
“I will not let you take our son. It’s just not going to happen. Frankly, I don’t care what explanation you give, how grown-up you think you are, or what you and your boyfriend’s plans are when it comes to Cal. You do not get a say. And you do not get to come back and ruin our lives.
“We are Cal’s parents, and I have had enough of…” And he sighs deeply and shakes his head, as if he can’t believe what he’s about to say, and when he says it, his voice is almost a whisper. “I’ve had enough of you.”
I can’t believe what he just said. I sit, stunned, like a deer caught in the headlights, my eyes wide with fear.
My dad’s voice is cracking now, and he sounds like he’s about to cry, and this has become the worst, the most painful, the shittiest day of my whole entire life.
“I’ve had enough of you, Emily,” he says again, and now I am swallowing the lump, and I feel like I’m in some kind of awful nightmare and have to wake up soon. Please let me wake up.
“I love you, but I cannot live with you. I love you, but I do not want to be around you. Not anymore. I will not let you disrupt our lives in this way; you are not taking Cal.”
“You can’t stop me,” I say weakly, but I’m not even thinking about Cal. Not anymore. I’m thinking about what he just said.
My own father.
He’s had enough of me.
“I can. And I will. We have already sought counsel, we have a lawyer in place, and are filing a petition in family law court to be appointed Cal’s legal guardians, for full custody. The court must do whatever is in the child’s best interest.”
My dad is now looking straight at me, but this time I can’t meet his eyes. I’m concentrating on a spot on the floor, willing myself not to cry.
My dad has had enough of me.
“The judge considers the character of the parties involved. Home environment and stability, financial stability, ability to care properly for the child. All past transgressions with alcohol and drugs will be taken into account. Our lawyer has already stated that there isn’t a judge in the country who would choose you over us. And just in case I have not made myself clear, let me say this. We will spend every penny we have to fight you on this. We will take you to court, and we will win.”
I can’t move. I am using every ounce of strength I have not to break down in tears, and never, ever, in a million years, did I expect my father to disown me.
My own father.
“I can’t believe you would say that to your own daughter,” I whisper finally.
“I can’t believe you would try and take our son away,” my dad says, and the sadness and disappointment in his eyes are like a knife twisting in my heart.
“You’re the worst parent in the world,” I manage to whisper as I stand up, my legs wobbly, knowing I have to get out of there before I break. I have to leave. Quickly. My voice is shaky, but I want to wound him as much as he has just wounded me. I want him to hurt, too.
“No, Emily,” he says sadly. “You’re the worst parent in the world. And we will prove it in a court of law. We have spent three happy years peacefully raising our son, without you. Your coming home has only brought drama and pain, and now you want to bring more. I won’t let you do this, and if you insist on trying, I will fight you every step of the way, and believe me, we will win.”
I can’t take it anymore; I have to get out; I don’t know what I’ve done.
The chair goes crashing to the floor as I run out, but I keep going, blindly heading for the car, and I don’t even know how I make it home because I’m crying so hard I can barely see anything, and I’m driving away from the pain except I’m not, and I’m praying that I have a crash, that someone drives into me, that something happens to stop this pain, and what have I done?
What have I done?
Fifty-five
Andi sits at the kitchen table, unable to move. She has been sitting here trying to make sense of her thoughts, but there is no way to make sense of them, as there is no way to make sense of what just happened.
Today she saw the very worst thing happen, and the very best. She saw Emily say the words she had been dreading, the words that would destroy her life, and saw Ethan, finally, saying no.
She cannot believe how Ethan has stood up to Emily. She cannot believe how firm he was.
And she cannot believe the worst-case scenario has come to pass.
Andi looks up at Ethan, his face still with bewilderment and pain. As they listen to the car screech away from the house, Ethan, suddenly, bursts into tears.
Andi gets up to stand behind him, wrapping her arms around his back, resting her head on his shoulder.
“Sssh,” she croons. “It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay.”
But she doesn’t know that’s true. She would cry, too, if she wasn’t shaking so hard, if she knew that Ethan was going to be the strong one.
He has been the strong one for their entire marriage.
Now it’s her turn.
She will not cry. She will be strong enough for both of them.
Fifty-six
The Prius pulls up outside the pretty cottage, and Brooke, after kissing John good-bye, turns and smiles at her house before walking up the garden path.
How I love this house, she thinks, leaning down to snap off the dead geranium stalks as she walks past the pots. It has been a wonderful few days in Mexico with John. Idyllic to drift around the hotel’s infinity pool like a couple of honeymooners, lying on the beach with a stack of good books; the hardest decision of the day being whether to have a virgin strawberry daiquiri or a piña colada.
Brooke hadn’t had a real vacation in years. She had mentioned this to John, in passing, and three days later he had presented her with a brochure and plane tickets. She forgot to mention she really didn’t like going on vacation, hence the reason she had not done so for so long, but it would have been churlish to confess when he was watching her reaction with such devoted expectancy.
The truth was, she didn’t like the idea of vacations. Once there, she loved it, but she was perfectly happy at home and always homesick after four days.
Home, she thinks with pleasure, opening the front door, then pausing as she hears what sounds like crying.
“Emily?” She drops her bag and dashes upstairs, finding Emily in her old bedroom, lying on the bed, heaving with sobs as she realizes her mother is home.
“Emily!” Brooke sinks on the bed and gathers Emily in her arms. “What is it? What’s happened? What’s the matter?”
Boyfriend trouble, she thinks, recognizing the soul-wrenching sobs from her own teenage years. This is what happens when you have been dumped.
Emily is so like her. So emotional. Brooke could go from zero to a thousand between dates one and two. She never merely liked someone, she was madly in love, just like Emily. When Brooke was dumped, it wasn’t something she could just put behind her; it was heartbreaking. World-ending. Produced exactly the same sort of crying that she is hearing now from Emily.
That Michael Flanagan, she thinks, pursing her lips as she strokes her daughter’s heaving back. She liked him, but he was too good-looking. The problem with heartbreakers, she thinks
, is that they break hearts. She isn’t surprised Emily has been dumped. If anything, she is slightly astonished it lasted as long as it did.
He certainly pulled the wool over her eyes, though, she thinks. At first she was convinced he was just using Emily, but when she saw them together, she actually thought they might have something there. He seemed to adore her, but that must have been false charm.
Poor Emily.
“Poor baby,” she croons. “He isn’t worth it. I promise you you’ll find someone much better. I always knew he was too handsome for his own good. I know it feels like it’s the end of the world, but it’s going to get better. You’re so beautiful, and you have your whole life ahead of you. It’s going to be fine.”
Emily has stopped sobbing, and is now hiccuping madly, looking at her mother in disbelief through red-rimmed puffy eyes.
“It’s not Michael.” She heaves.
“It’s not?” Brooke sits back. Oh, God. What is it? Sophia? Cal?
“What is it?” Brooke’s voice is a whisper, her heart clamped in a vise of fear.
“It’s Dad. He said he wants nothing to do with me.” Her eyes well up again. “He hates me!” And she dissolves, once again, into tears.
* * *
Brooke stirs the water in the bathtub, easing herself up to get Emily, leading her gently in, almost like a child, wrapped tightly in Brooke’s own favorite robe.
“There,” she says soothingly. “I’ve filled a lovely hot bubble bath for you, with some lavender bath oil. You sink in for a while, and I’ll go and make some tea. When you’re ready, come downstairs, and we’ll talk.”
Emily nods like a little girl as Brooke gently closes the bathroom door, her feet as heavy as lead.
She managed to get the whole story out of Emily: How her father hates her, has threatened her, is going to take Emily to court—Emily wailing for hours that her own father has abandoned her.
Brooke left the room only once. She told Emily she had to go sort out an issue at the store, but that she’d come straight back as soon as she resolved it. Instead, she drove around the block and called Ethan to get the other side of the story. Brooke loves her daughter, and knows her tendency for histrionics, for making herself the victim.
She knows because, prerecovery, Brooke did it herself. For years.
Ethan tells her what happened, and Brooke nods sadly, for it is exactly what she had thought. There were no threats, just Ethan telling Emily what he would do if she tried to take Cal away.
Brooke loves her daughter. She wants to support her daughter. But Cal is her grandchild, and she, all of them, must do what is best for him. This is why she is sitting numbly at the kitchen table, waiting for her daughter to finish her bath and come downstairs to join her.
This is why she gets up, after a while, and phones her sponsor. She needs some help on how to handle this, how to handle Emily. She needs some help with the right words, the words that will enable Emily to hear.
Brooke is certain that Emily doesn’t want Cal. Emily might have spent a little time with Cal since being home. She might have talked about how cute he is, but she hasn’t demonstrated an overwhelming need to be with him.
In fact, Brooke would go as far as to say she hasn’t seen any maternal instinct at all.
She has watched Emily with him, and Emily, true to form, gets bored very quickly. It is fun to play at being mother for a while; but the minute Emily wants to do something else, she will hand Cal over to whoever is closest at hand.
Even, Brooke shudders, to Manuel. Not that there’s anything wrong with Manuel, who has a family of his own and seems sweet enough, but the fact that Emily allowed someone to pick up Cal whom Cal didn’t even know, whom any of them barely know, fills Brooke with horror.
Thank God he could be trusted.
Unlike Emily, who is as mercurial today as the day she was born. Emily as Cal’s full-time caregiver? It’s unthinkable. A child raising a child. A child who has neither the patience, commitment, nor stability to raise Cal.
A child who doesn’t even want a child of her own.
Please, God. She shuts her eyes for a few seconds and prays. Show me what you want me to say.
Fifty-seven
“How are you feeling?” My mom slides a mug of chamomile tea over the table, and I take it gratefully, exhausted from all the emotion, and sadder than I have ever been. I warm my hands around the tea as I lean my head down to take a sip.
“Are you ready to talk about it?” says my mom gently.
“About how my father hates me?”
She shakes her head. “He doesn’t hate you.”
I look up sharply. “You weren’t there. You didn’t hear him!”
“Emily. I know you heard that he hates you, and I understand that’s how it feels. I think he was shocked and scared, and he probably said some terrible things that he didn’t mean.”
“He meant it,” I whisper, wincing at the pain of the memory. “You didn’t see the look in his eyes. I saw hatred. He doesn’t want anything to do with me. My own father!” Tears start to well up again as I think about it.
“He loves Cal,” Mom says. “He was simply panicking at losing Cal.”
“He said he would fight me for as long as it took.” I look at my mom, waiting to see her reaction, and I want her to feel angry on my behalf. I want her to stand up for me. I want her to protect me.
“Which bit hurts more?” she asks softly.
“What?” Of all the things she could have said, I was not expecting that.
“Which is harder for you? That you think your father hates you, or that he’ll fight for Cal in court?”
“Both. He’ll fight me. That’s the same as hate.”
“It isn’t, Emily. It isn’t about fighting you. Okay, let me ask it differently. Does it hurt more that you think your father hates you or that you might lose Cal?”
Wow. Talk about getting to the crux of the matter. I know what I should say. I know what I should feel. I just don’t know if I can say it out loud.
“It’s important, Em,” my mom coaxes. And I wonder suddenly if she knows what I really feel.
“Both,” I say finally, because I don’t know how to say it, but my mom pushes me.
“And if you absolutely had to pick one, if your life depended on it, which one would you pick?”
I look up at my mom. “Cal?” I say, and I can’t help asking it in a question. I can’t say it as a statement because I know it’s not true, and I am sure that somehow she’s psychic, and she knows it’s not true.
“So it hurts more that you could lose Cal than that your father hates you?”
“Oh my God!” Diversionary tactics are called for. “You just said it yourself! You said it yourself. He hates me.”
“No. I’m trying to understand what’s really going on here. Em, you adore your father. You’ve always adored him. When you were a tiny baby, he was the one you always wanted to go to.” Her face softens at the memory of me as a baby, and I sit rapt, because the one thing I love more than anything else is hearing about when I was a baby. “I’d walk into the room, holding you in my arms, and as soon as you saw your father, your face would light up, and you’d stretch your arms out to go to him.”
More. I want more. I need more. Especially now.
“Your first word wasn’t, like all the other babies, Mama, but Dada. And you’ve always been inseparable. I imagine that thinking he hates you must be incredibly painful.”
I nod. I can’t speak because there’s suddenly a huge lump in my throat, and my eyes start to drip big wet tears silently, and I lay my head on my arms, on the table, and squeeze them shut.
“And I imagine”—my mom lays a hand on my arm—“that’s even more painful than the thought of losing Cal, isn’t it?”
For a while I don’t move. And then I nod. Almost imperceptibly. But I do. Because she knows.
“I think you feel an extraordinary amount of pressure, now that you’re home, to be Cal’s mother. I und
erstand why you’ve stayed away, and I understand that in coming back, you have to revisit your past even when you might not want to.”
“I do want to be with Cal.” I lift my head then and look her in the eyes.
“I know you do,” my mom murmurs. “And you should. But being with him as a beloved aunt, or a sister, is very different from being a mother. Let me tell you something, Emily.” She sighs. “Not wanting to raise a child doesn’t mean you don’t love him.” She closes her eyes for a second, almost as if she’s praying, before continuing.
“Michael loves you, and I know you love him. It’s very easy, when you’re first in love, to get swept away in romantic fantasies of what your life will be like.”
I smile slightly. That’s exactly what we’ve both been doing. I’ve been fantasizing about a wedding, and Michael? He’s been fantasizing about Cal.
“Some of those fantasies, I’m sure, involve Cal,” my mom says, and I honestly don’t know how in the hell she knows. “The three of you forming an instant happy family. Going off to London now! So exciting, and you must be thinking of all the things the three of you can do!”
I nod, because that’s exactly what Michael’s been talking about.
“Fantasies aren’t reality, Emily. I could sit here and tell you how hard it is to raise a child, particularly when you’re living far away from home and haven’t got your mom around to hand the baby over to when it all gets too much. I could fill your head with horror stories, but I won’t, because I think you’ve got swept up in pressure, and fantasy.”
“I haven’t,” I say. Weakly.
“I think you feel obligated to take Cal even though you don’t really want to. I think you are caught up in a fantasy, but that deep down you know it’s not going to work out.”
I know she’s staring at me, but I can’t look her in the eye.
“Listen to me, Emily. Leaving him here doesn’t mean you don’t love him. It also doesn’t mean you’re abandoning him. We all love him, we’re all playing a part in raising him, and you can, too. Sometimes…”