The burly man looks conflicted, like he’s not sure he wants to meet us. Maybe he can deny our existence just a moment longer.
Chris pushes himself up from the wheelchair and I hold the chair steady as he offers the man his hand while standing on one leg. “I’m Chris.”
The man looks a bit annoyed by this gesture, but he takes Chris’s hand. “Brian.”
It seems both of them want to introduce themselves as Abigail’s father and I want to run away and never show my face again for what I’ve done to them.
I take a deep breath as I try to compose myself. I have to control the guilt. I have to get through this, for Chris.
I hold out my hand to Brian and he takes my hand. “I’m Claire… Nixon.”
Somehow, I feel as if saying my last name will establish a modicum of trust between us. I know Chris didn’t introduce himself as Chris Knight because he didn’t want to remind Brian of the reason they backed out of the meeting two weeks ago. I blame myself 100% for getting pregnant and having to give Abigail up. But, though I’d never tell Chris this, I do blame Chris Knight for that failed meeting.
“Lynette is in the room with Abigail,” Brian mutters as he nods toward the open door on his left.
Doctor Buchik smiles at me. “I’ll take you in.”
Buchik has thin lips and short gray hair, but I can’t decide if his gray eyes are filled with pity or skepticism. He knows this will not end well.
The room is small and a woman with light-blonde hair, lighter than mine, is hunched over the bed. Her pink cardigan hangs loosely on her shoulders and arms as if she’s lost weight recently.
I didn’t want to meet the adoptive parents when I decided on a couple to adopt Abigail. I didn’t want to know their names or even see a picture of them. I wanted to know nothing other than their stats. I didn’t want to be tempted to look them up.
“Mrs. Jensen?” Buchik whispers.
Lynette Jensen. Brian Jensen.
Abigail Jensen.
The woman turns around and she appears frightened at the sight of Chris. “Oh, my God!”
She claps her hand over her mouth and glances over her shoulder at the bed, probably to make sure she didn’t wake Abigail with this outburst. She turns back toward us and I can’t help but notice the striking similarities between Lynette Jensen and me: the blonde hair and blue eyes, the small frame, the pouty upper lip, the exhaustion. She’s at least ten years older than I, but she’s actually quite beautiful—much classier than Tasha Singer.
She turns back to us and I can see now that she’s star struck. “Chris Knight?” she whispers as she moves toward us. “Oh, my God. I can’t believe this.”
It’s as if I don’t exist.
She takes his hand in both her hands to shake it and I’m almost waiting for her to kiss his pinky, but she eventually lets go. Chris bows his head a little as he gives her a humble smile.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Lynette,” he says and I breathe a sigh of relief that I have Chris, and his fame and charm, to make this introduction smoother. “This is Claire,” he says, looking up at me.
He flashes me a quick smile, but I know in that one smile he’s saying, “You can do this. I’m here for you.”
I hold out my hand to her, to Abigail’s mother, and I feel the emotions building inside me, threatening to thwart me. I bite my lip to hold back the tears as I imagine all the times she probably rocked my baby to sleep, kissed her forehead, made her smile. I hold out my hand to her and she can see how difficult this is for me. She reaches her hand out slowly and I do something so stupid, but I can’t stop myself.
I pull her into a hug. “Thank you,” I whisper through the tears. She hugs me weakly and I know she wants me to let go. “I’m sorry. I’m just really grateful for… for this.”
I want to thank her for taking care of Abigail, but I’m afraid this might come across as patronizing since it’s their job to take care of her—because I wasn’t able to.
“You don’t have to apologize,” she says as she takes a step back so I can’t hug her again. “I was really scared about doing this, and Brian was pretty dead set against it, but I’ve been up many nights these past few weeks just… agonizing over what I’d want someone to do if I were in your position.”
Brian comes in and kisses Lynette’s forehead as he wraps his thick arm around her shoulders. Buchik steps forward so he’s standing off to the side between us.
“Would you like me to explain the procedure for the birth parents?” Buchik asks and I nod even though he’s obviously not asking me.
Lynette looks uncomfortable with this, but she nods.
“You can explain it to us out in the corridor,” Chris says, nodding toward the door.
I don’t want to go out there. I want to stay in here with Abigail. I haven’t even seen her yet. But I follow reluctantly as everybody shuffles out into the corridor where Buchik explains the procedure for correcting an AV canal defect.
“Does your family have a history of congenital heart defects?” Buchik asks us and Chris immediately shakes his head. Buchik turns to me awaiting my answer. Everybody is waiting for my answer, but I don’t have one.
“I don’t know.”
Is that what this was about? Did they ask us here under the guise of allowing us to see Abigail so they could find out our family history?
“I don’t have a family history. My mother died…. She’s dead. I never knew my father.” Stop it, Claire. “He raped my mother and she killed herself when I was seven. I don’t know anything about my family history. I’m sorry.” Chris grabs my hand and squeezes. “I’m sorry.”
I take off running down toward the exit door at the far end of the corridor.
“CLAIRE!” Chris calls after me, but I keep running.
My legs fly across the floor as silent as my past. Not a single secret given up. No history to speak of. I’m a ghost. A phantom. A flicker of an actual soul.
The exit doors slide open and I rush out onto the pavement then into the parking lot. I don’t stop until Senia grabs my arm and I’m wrenched backward.
“Claire!”
I cover my face in shame. “Get me out of here.”
“I thought you wanted—”
“Just get me out of here!”
I don’t want to face the judgment. The look in their eyes when they realize I gave up Abigail because I’m no better than my mother. Lynette and Brian didn’t really care about letting us see her. They just wanted to know our family history. Well, now they know. And now they can go home and breathe a sigh of relief as they realize how much better off Abigail is without us.
Senia throws her arms around me and I lose it. “You’re a good person. You deserve to know her.”
“Please just take me home.”
I ignore Chris’s phone calls and texts on the ride home. I keep telling myself it’s over now. They will never want us around Abigail. Now I just have to focus on school. I have to study for a test. I have to write a term paper on the importance of the father in the family unit. I have to call Adam.
I need him so much right now.
Chapter Twenty
Adam
I’M WOKEN BY THE PINGING sound of a voicemail message. I glance at my phone on the bedside table and see the screen is lit up. I slide it off the table and squint at the screen as my eyes attempt to adjust to the brightness. Claire just left me a voicemail at one in the morning.
I touch the screen and it automatically plays the message in my ear: I’m sorry to call you at this time. I just need to hear your voice. Call me later.
I can hear the anguish and uncertainty in her words. She has to be upset if she’s calling me at six in the morning, her time. I should never have come here.
I call her back right away and she picks up on the first ring. “Adam?”
The way she says my name with such relief is both comforting and worrying. “What happened?”
I’ve been going over our next conversation in m
y head all day, thinking of how I’m going to break it to her that I think we need a break from each other, to get things straightened out in our lives. She has so much going on and I want to be there for her, but I can’t. She needs someone there. If it can’t be me—fucking hell—it should be him.
“I just wish you were here,” she whispers.
“You don’t want to talk about it?”
“I think I just needed to hear your voice.”
Fuck. How am I going to do this?
“I love hearing your voice,” I say as my stomach clenches with anticipation. “I wish I was there, too.”
“You sound tense.”
I take a deep breath and sit up in my bed. This room is a lot bigger than my bedroom in Wrightsville Beach. Most people think that they want spacious homes, but they don’t realize how the emptiness of a large room just amplifies the emptiness in a broken heart. And we’re all broken, in one way or another.
“I am tense.” She’s silent as she waits for me to elaborate. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“When am I ever truly okay? I’m a mess, as usual.”
I want to say, “You’re my mess, and that makes you a beautiful mess,” but I don’t want to get distracted. I need to get this over with before I lose my nerve.
“Claire, you know I love you, don’t you? You know I’d do anything for you?”
She pauses for a moment, probably trying to figure out where I’m going with this. “What are you doing?”
“I’m trying to talk to you. I’m trying to talk about what’s best for you.”
“What best for me? Are you trying to talk to me or are you trying to tell me what’s best for me?”
She’s not going to make this easy, not that I expected she would. I can hear each of her breaths, soft and quick on the other end of the phone and it’s killing me. She can already anticipate what’s coming.
“I don’t want to be another distraction. You need to focus on school. You can’t keep failing tests and losing sleep. You need to be healthy, physically and emotionally, if you’re going to get through this semester and all this stuff with Abigail. I just want you to have everything you need.”
“And you think that I don’t need you? How could you ever think that this would be the solution?”
“Because I can’t do anything for you from here and it’s killing me. I don’t want to worry that you’re not getting everything you need. I want to know that you’re okay. I want to know that you’re being taken care of.”
“And dumping me is supposed to ensure that I’m taken care of? Are you handing me off to Chris? Is that what this is? You’re tired of dealing with my shit so you’re just pawning me off?”
I grit my teeth as I climb out of bed and make my way to the window. I have a view of the ocean from here that’s much nicer than the partial ocean view in my Wrightsville apartment. But no ocean view is beautiful enough to paint this ugly moment pretty.
“I’m not tired of your shit. How could you even say that? And I’m not pawning you off. I’m just trying to be mature about this. This was really bad timing for me to come here. You need to focus on school and I need to focus on this project and the competition.”
My muscles are wound up so tight I could probably punch straight through this wall.
“I don’t fit into your world. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Her voice is small and dark with despair.
“Claire, you are my world, but that world is crumbling and I’m just trying to do what needs to be done to stop it.” I take a deep breath as I watch the waves roll in and out. “I’m trying to throw you another lifeline.”
The sniffle on the other end of the line makes my stomach ache. I’ve gone over this conversation a thousand times in my mind since we talked yesterday. In my mind, she got pissed and hung up on me.
“So what are we supposed to do now? Just go on with our lives as if we never knew each other? Am I still going to know you? If we break up now, we’ll never see each other again, even when you get back. Wrightsville is a hundred miles away.”
“When I get back, I’m moving to Raleigh as soon as I help Cora find a new tenant. I would love for you to wait for me, but I don’t expect you to.”
She’s full on sobbing now and my arms ache with the thought of holding her. I want to soothe her pain and make her feel loved. I want her to know that this is not permanent because I fully intend to fight for her and for our future when I get back. But we will have no future if we don’t get through this separation.
We will definitely not get through this if I have to keep hearing about all the things she’s doing with Chris and how he doesn’t give a shit about her failing a test. I don’t actually know if he doesn’t give a shit, but I get the impression that he’s less concerned with her doing well in school than he should be, probably because he never had to go to college.
“I don’t want to wait for you. I want you here now. I need you here now,” she whispers.
“Hey, let me tell you a story.”
“I don’t want to hear a story.”
“Please?”
“A story about what?”
“When I was eight years old, there was this little girl, Victoria, who used to ride her bike up and down our street every day. She would do this for hours sometimes and one day I asked my mom why Victoria always rode her bike alone.” I pause as I try to remember the exact words my mom replied with. “My mom told me that sometimes being alone is more desirable than being in a roomful of people who aren’t there. I thought I understood what she meant by that, but it turns out I didn’t really understand it until now.”
I get back in bed and lie down as I await her response.
“Are you going back to sleep?” she asks.
“Not a chance. Did you sleep okay?”
“I haven’t slept at all and I have a class in two hours.”
I don’t say it aloud, but this is exactly why we need to break up. She already has enough to worry about without having to worry about what I’m doing or if I’m going to be pissed about what she’s doing.
“I would tell you to take a day off and get some rest, but I know you won’t.”
“I don’t want to go to class.”
She sounds like a child when she says this, fragile and frightened of what awaits her. I know we have to end this conversation before I change my mind, but I can’t bear the thought of hanging up the phone. She has to be the one to say goodbye first.
“Can I tell you a secret?” I say, trying to keep my voice from wavering. “I chose to move in to Cora’s building because of you.” She lets out a soft whimpering sound and I continue. “I drove down Lumina a few times searching for rental signs and I spotted you walking home from work. You were pretty lost in thought, like you were carrying the world on your shoulders. You reminded me of Victoria, like you just needed someone to be there, completely, but everybody was gone. Now I realize why you looked like that.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re the one who was gone.” I listen for a few minutes as she cries softly. When she’s finally quiet, I speak up. “I love you. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you believe me when I say that I would never do anything to hurt you?”
“Adam, you’re not hurting me, you are killing me right now.”
“Please don’t say that.”
“It doesn’t matter. This was inevitable. And I totally get why you’re doing this, so you don’t have to keep trying to make me feel better about it. I know you wouldn’t do this unless you truly believed it was for the best. I just happen to disagree with you on what’s best for me.”
I pull the pillow out from under my head and throw it onto the floor as I lie back on the mattress and stare at the ceiling through the darkness. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make sure you get the future you deserve, babe. Even this.”
She lets out a loud sigh. “I guess I should let you go so you can ge
t some rest or train for your competition or whatever it is you’re going to do now that you’re free.”
“I’m just going to lie here and regret this for a while before I go to the beach.”
“I’m going to get ready for class and try not to think of dozens of ways of murdering you.”
I chuckle, but it’s a weak laugh, weighed down by this impending sense of sorrow. “Before you start plotting my death, can I tell you a blonde joke?” She sniffs loudly and I know she’s crying again. “Why did the blonde get excited after she finished a jigsaw puzzle in six months?” I wait a moment, but she doesn’t ask why. “Because the box said 2-4 years.”
She lets out a congested chuckle. “Oh, God. I can’t believe this is happening.”
“I’ll be back in less than two months.”
“I have to go.”
Before I can respond, she hangs up. The silence left in the wake of this conversation is louder than the crash of a thirty-foot wave. It presses in on me and I hold my breath as I wait for a sound, any sound, to break the silence. But I’m all alone here.
I get out of bed and head for the garage where I wax my surfboard for far too long, lost in the rasping noise as I rub the wax back and forth over the surface. It doesn’t take long to realize this is just the first hour in a series of hours that I will have to fill with things that don’t involve Claire. Knowing that she was waiting for me to come back was all that kept me going these past few days.
At least Remmy will get here soon and I can throw myself into training. Remmy will kick my ass and pretty soon I’ll be too exhausted to think. And if that doesn’t work to shut off my mind, then I’ll have to consider the possibility that I made a huge mistake. Then I’ll consider going back.
Chapter Twenty-One
Claire
I SQUEEZE MY FIST TIGHTLY around the heart-shaped locket dangling from my neck. I have a strong urge to rip it off and chuck it across the room, but something stops me. Instead, I lie down on my side and curl my knees up. It doesn’t take long before the bed squeaks behind me and Senia wraps her arm around my waist.