“Don’t you have other family? What about your parents?”
I shake my head. “Died years ago. I have another brother, James, but he’s really busy with his medical practice.”
“You’re busy. Or I assume you were. Why were you the only one helping?”
I feel a little guilty taking all the credit for her care. James did step up to the plate eventually, when she was finally able to sleep through the night. “I wasn’t the only one. James helped when he could. He took her some weekends after she was a few months old.”
“You said you had her for nine months.” He looks around the room. “I don’t see any baby things here. How old is she now?”
“Almost one. She’s been gone for a couple months now.”
“Gone? Where?”
“With her father. He took her back.”
Jake’s expression goes dark. “How is that possible?”
I have the strangest urge to assure him it’s all fine, that everything worked out. I’m not sure why, since my first instinct up until now has been to cry foul and complain how Cassie and I got screwed out of our life together. This internal conflict has me feeling decidedly uncomfortable.
“Jeremy got his shit together, I guess.” I shrug, still not sure I believe it. “Stopped the drinking and the drugs, started going to meetings, met a girl.” I try really really hard not to snarl at that last part, but I’m only partially successful.
“Ahhh, a girl.” Jake folds his arms. “I take it you and this girl don’t get along.”
“Why would you say that?”
“I don’t know. Just the way your face looked when you mentioned her.”
I shrug. “She’s nice enough. I met her before she met my brother. She’s an artist and… polite.”
He laughs. “Polite?”
I smile too. I knew it sounded stupid and petty when it left my mouth, but then it was too late to take it back. Damn. I really need to grow up. Jake’s been to jail and back; I can hardly mope around and talk about how much my life sucks. At least I don’t have a felony record following me around for the rest of my life.
“She’s nice. I had some long conversations with her when we toured some museums together, and I liked her. But after my brother met her, just a few weeks later, supposedly his life was back on track and he was ready to be a dad again. I didn’t buy it.”
“And now? How are they doing?”
I want to kick the wall in. “They’re doing fine, I guess.”
“You guess? Don’t you know?”
My face burns with shame. “No. I haven’t seen them in a long time. Since they got married, not long after they took Cassie.”
Jake pushes himself off the counter and comes over to wrap his arms around me. I stand there accepting his embrace but not returning the gesture.
He rests his chin lightly on my head. “Sounds like you’ve had to deal with some pretty serious losses over the last year.”
I nod, unable to speak without crying, hugging my ice cream dish to my chest.
“I can see why you feel like everything’s out to get you.”
I slide my arms and ice cream bowl around his waist to rest at his lower back. The smell of his shirt and warmth eases the pain in my heart. I slip the bowl onto the counter next to his.
“What I can’t figure out is why you bought that house in the middle of all of it. Are you a glutton for punishment or what?”
I laugh, surprised that he’s able to make me smile when I should be crying. “Shut up.”
He pulls back so he can look at me. “You’re a brave girl. And I don’t blame you one bit for being pissed at the world.”
“Thank you.” I release one of my arms from his waist to wipe under my eyes. They were just about to leak a tear or two.
“Can I share with you the things I learned from Father Carlos?”
I shrug. “I guess.”
“I promise I won’t preach.”
“Good. Because preachers get a one-way ticket out the front door.”
He pulls back from me and takes me by the hand. “Come sit with me on the couch. I’ll share my last secret with you before I go.”
I follow behind, wondering if he’ll really leave when it’s all over or ask me if he can stay the night. I’m not sure what I’ll say if he does.
Chapter Twenty
JAKE AND I SIT ON the couch and share a glass of wine between us. We’re positioned closer to one another than we were before, and there’s a sense of having made it through hard times between us. It’s totally crazy, of course, since he’s my plumber and I still hardly know him. But still, I like the sense of comfort he brings by being near. I’m not going to fight the things that feel good tonight; it’s been too long since I’ve felt truly happy, and here next to him, I’m almost there.
“Carlos was this guy who walked around covered in tattoos but with a light kind of shining out from inside him.” Jake smiles. “It was crazy, but everyone saw it. Even the hardcore criminals who were never going to get out of there. When Carlos talked, everyone listened. Not everyone internalized what he said, of course, but they at least let him speak.”
“Do you mean like a sermon?”
Jake shakes his head. “No. He never preached. That’s what I liked about him. He never quoted a bible verse or anything that I ever noticed. He never said anything about Jesus or whatever. He just lived like Jesus would have, I guess you could say. I know a lot of religious people say, ‘What would Jesus do?’ but I say, ‘What would Carlos do?’ and I always end up on the right path if I try to follow his example.”
“Huh.” I’m non-comittal because I can’t imagine a person being that good in this day and age. We all have our Kryptonite, and I’m sure Carlos wasn’t an exception. But still, if he had this much of an impact on Jake’s life, I’m interested in hearing what he had to say.
“Carlos talked a lot about choices. About how everything we do and see in our lives is a matter of choice.” Jake looks at me, handing me the glass of wine for my turn at sipping. “We’re all presented with situations every day where we have to make a choice. We can react one way or another. We choose which way we end up reacting, for better or for worse.”
I shake my head. “Sometimes people make the choice for you.”
“No, not really. Things happen, sure, but you make the choice how it affects you, if you think about it.”
I shake my head. “Not in my case.”
“Yes, in your case. In everyone’s case.”
He’s starting to piss me off. Clearly, he wasn’t paying attention to my story earlier. “Someone took my child from me. You’re saying I had a choice in that?”
He takes the wine glass from me and puts it on the table. “As I see it, Cassie was returned to her father. Is that right? From a legal perspective, I mean.”
I want to push him away from me, but I’m an adult and I can handle a difficult conversation without resorting to violence, so I don’t. But I do lean a little away from him. His closeness isn’t quite as appealing anymore.
“Maybe.”
“Okay, so of course it hurt your feelings and broke your heart when it happened. You probably felt like people let you down. People you cared about.”
He’s perceptive, I’ll give him that. I didn’t even tell him about the part Robinson played in the whole thing.
“Of course,” I say, slightly mollified.
“You had a choice about how to react to that. You could have focused entirely on the immediate emotional responses, like heartache and distrust and disappointment… or you could have focused on other things.”
“Other things? Are you kidding me? Apparently you’ve never lost a child.” So much for enlightenment. I’m starting to think this guy Carlos was a simple spin doctor, nothing more.
“Yes, other things. Like how joyful it must have been for her father to feel like he could care for his child, finally — the child he created with his wife who was taken from him much too early, much too yo
ung.”
Guilt stabs me right in the heart. I grit my teeth together to keep from saying anything rude.
“Like how good it will be for Cassie when she’s old enough to understand that she’s with her father, the man who loved her mother, who can share his love for her mother with her as she grows older.”
Tears start to build. I’m really starting to dislike Jake and his stupid philosophies on life.
“And like how it will be for you, to be able to continue with your life as it was, looking for someone to share your life with and maybe have children with if that’s what you want to do. Plus, you’ll have a much closer relationship with Cassie you wouldn’t have had otherwise…”
I stand, because I can’t hear any more of this garbage. “Stop. Just stop.”
“I’m sorry.” He looks sad. “Am I upsetting you? I didn’t mean to.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes, trying to get a handle on my runaway emotions and the headache blossoming from somewhere deep in my skull. I know he doesn’t mean to be destroying me with every single word; he’s just trying to help. I can’t hate him for that, but I also can’t be around him right now. He’s just another person making excuses for my brothers and Robinson, telling me I need to get over everything and suck it up.
“It’s fine. I have a headache. It kind of just snuck up on me. Do you mind?” I turn to face the door.
“You sure you don’t want me to stay and make you some tea or anything?”
I shake my head, dropping my hands and rubbing them on my jeans. “No, that’s all right. I’m just going to go to bed, I think.”
Jake follows me around the couch and takes my hand as I try to walk away.
“Hey. I’m sorry.”
I shrug, pulling my hand away. “No, it’s not a problem. Don’t apologize. I appreciate you sharing your stuff with me.”
“You weren’t ready to hear it, though.”
“Ready?” As if there’s a timeframe for acting like stuff didn’t happen the way it did. I want to laugh, but I realize he means well, so I won’t mock his personal philosophies.
“Ready to deal with the issue.” He elaborates. “Ready to face the music.”
My temper’s starting to flare, so I give him the best smile I can manage and walk to the door. “See you on the job,” I say as cheerily as possible. “Thanks so much for dinner. Again.”
“No problem. Anytime. Maybe you’d like to throw a frisbee in the park sometime.”
I can’t laugh at his joke; I’m liable to start bawling.
He pauses at the door like he’s contemplating asking for a goodbye kiss, and I get ready to slap him across the face for even asking, but both potential futures are stopped in their tracks when a buzzer sounds off just next to my face.
I jump, my eyes bugging out of my head. What the…?
When my brain connects the dots and realizes that horrible sound exacerbating my headache is someone calling me from downstairs, I step over and press the button on the intercom, wondering who in the hell is trying to buzz in after midnight.
“Who’s there?” I ask.
“It’s me.” The voice says, the words slurred. “It’s Robinson.”
I let out a long sigh and rest my head on the wall next to the intercom box.
Jake doesn’t say a word.
A moment later, I lift my head, press the button, and speak. “Stay there. I’m coming down.”
Chapter Twenty-One
THE ELEVATOR RIDE TO THE ground floor of my building will go down in history as one of the most awkward moments of my life. Jake has no place asking me who the man buzzing me in the middle of the night is, but I know he’s curious as hell. He keeps clearing his throat and looking at me and then the floor and the ceiling. I keep my eyes glued to the doors, praying Robinson will go away before I get there. What’s Jake going to say? I didn’t even tell Jake about him. Will he think I hid that detail on purpose? Did I?
Why did Robinson have to show up now? And why does it feel like he saved me from an uncomfortable situation? For the first time in months, a sliver of gratitude toward him sneaks in, and that just pisses me off more. I shouldn’t be looking at Robinson as my hero. Jake was just being a nice guy, trying to help me find a solution the way he did in his own life. It’s not his fault that it won’t work for me. I’m sure a lot of people would appreciate his efforts.
God, my life is so completely screwed up. If gravity reversed and I suddenly had to start walking on the ceiling, I wouldn’t be surprised. Par for the course at this point.
Of course my prayers for Robinson to disappear aren’t answered. No such luck. I can see his dark figure through the ice-frosted glass of the front doors as I step out of the elevator.
“I feel kind of strange about leaving you here with that guy,” Jake says, walking next to me. “Do you know him well?” We’re almost to the front doors when he stops and waits for my answer.
“Yes,” I say, feeling utterly defeated. Karma hates me. This I now know as a fact. “He’s our family attorney.”
Jake mulls that over for a few seconds before responding. “You mean the same lawyer who handled all the business with Cassie?”
“Bingo,” I say with false cheer. “Five points for guessing correctly.”
He looks out the window at Robinson and then at me. “And he’s visiting you at your place in the middle of the night? Drunk?”
His implication that Robinson and I are in a relationship is impossible to miss. I sigh loudly, and as the air leaves my lungs, literally collapse in on myself. My shoulders slump and my backbone turns to jelly. I wish I could just say it out loud, the thing that eats away at my heart on a daily basis: the man who I’ve loved for more than half my life, the same man who helped take my child away from me, is the one standing out there beyond the glass doors. But I can’t say that. Of course I can’t. I have to be a grown up and say what everyone would expect of me.
“He’s an old family friend. I’ve known him since I was a kid.” Rejection, rejection, rejection. Jake will never know the truth: that I was in love with Robinson for over fifteen years and he never even looked at me twice before destroying my life.
“I take it he’s an old boyfriend?”
My head jerks up and I’m instantly mad over even the suggestion that there was ever anything between Robinson and me. “What? Me? Us? No? Whatever gave you that idea?” I don’t even know why I wanted that for so long anymore. I must have been deaf, dumb, and blind to moon over him for so long.
Jake looks at me and then Robinson again. His head drops and he shoves his hands in his pockets. “No reason. Listen, I’d better get going. That guy’s probably freezing out there.”
The smoke from Robinson’s breath lingers all around him, and he’s got the Manhattan hunchback syndrome going, his body folding over on itself as he tries to stay warm.
“So what?” I say, feeling callously bitchy. “He can freeze his butt off out there for all I care.”
Jake gives me a bittersweet smile. “Yeah. Right.” He turns and heads for the door.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, pissed all over again. What’s he suggesting? That I do care about Robinson? Because I don’t. I seriously don’t.
“Nothing. See you on the job site.” He walks outside and holds the door open for a few seconds, getting Robinson’s attention.
Robinson turns his head as he grabs the door before it shuts, watching Jake walk out to the curb and hail a passing cab.
“Who’s that guy?” Robinson asks as he walks inside the lobby, still distracted by my visitor. I watch as Jake folds his tall frame into the back of the cab. He doesn’t even look over to say goodbye, but I can’t find it in me to care very much. Boomp, boomp, boomp, another one bites the dust.
“None of your business.” I turn my attention to Robinson and fold my arms, trying to stay warm in the suddenly cold foyer. “What are you doing here so late?”
Robinson pops up and down on his
toes, his arms stiff at his sides. “I don’t know. I was in the neighborhood. Thought I’d drop by to see how you’re doing.”
I stare at him, wishing I could read his mind. He stares back at me, his teeth chattering. It’s on the tip of my tongue to send him away, to put him back out there into the freezing cold night… but I don’t. Of course I don’t. The words won’t come out of my mouth, much as I want them to, and I can smell the liquor on his breath. Imagining him falling down and passing out on the sidewalk makes me worry for him. Instead of kicking him out to the street where he belongs, I turn back toward the elevator and press the call button.
“Can I come up?” he asks.
“Can I stop you?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
I shake my head, disgusted with us both. “Just shut up and get in the elevator.” The doors open and I step inside, waiting until Robinson is inside before I press the button for my floor.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“SO, YOU HAD A DATE over,” Robinson says as we ride the elevator up to my floor.
“That’s none of your business, I already told you.” I can’t look at him. I stare at the buttons instead. It seems like the elevator is going in slow motion.
“He that plumber guy?”
I glare at him. “I’m pretty sure none of your business means you have no right to try and identify him.”
“I’m just being friendly.” He tries to smile at me, but it slips when he loses his balance. It’s then that I realize how drunk he really is.
“No, you’re just being nosy. Who really sent you here? Was it James?”
“No.” He laughs and then starts talking in kind of a singsong voice. “In fact, your brother James is being very protective of you if you really want to know.”
The elevator doors slide open with a ding. I step out and turn around, holding them open as I study Robinson’s face. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Generally speaking, my brother James is kind of his own entity. He knows I’m his sister and everything, but I wouldn’t categorize him as overly interested in my life. We used to get together for dinner once in a while, but that’s the extent of our adult sibling relationship. There’s kind of a big age gap between us.