“Nah, they’ve got her all braced so she can’t move much, and they doped her up. You should have heard her ranting about the many atrocities of Jell-O. Like how food shouldn’t be able to be eaten with a straw, and that the only thing Jell-O is good for is a vehicle for Everclear. I wish I’d recorded it.” When I’d made my way to her, I cupped her arm, kissed her temple. “Sorry it took so long.”
“It’s okay. Can we sit?”
“Sure.”
We took seats on the couch, twisting to sit sideways so we could see each other. She couldn’t meet my eyes. Her gaze was firmly locked on her hands in her lap.
“I don’t know where to start,” she said.
“Most people say the beginning is a good place.”
“The end might be easier.”
My brows drew together. I didn’t press her, just waited.
“I tried to find you when you left.”
“You mentioned that earlier.”
“I know. Just … just let me ramble for a second, if it’s okay.”
I nodded. Tingling anticipation climbed across my skin—a warning.
“You were nowhere. Every way I had to get ahold of you disappeared. And when you came back, you left for Houston. I asked my cousins to find you, but without telling them why, they didn’t take me seriously, just teased me. They did look, just not very hard. I couldn’t tell them why, not until I found you. But I couldn’t find you.”
“I’m here now.”
She chanced a look at me, her face shaped with emotion. She tried to smile. “I know.” Her gaze dropped back to her hands. “The last time we saw each other feels like so long ago.”
“Five years.”
“Four years and nine months.”
I frowned, unsure what she meant. The only time anyone said nine months was—
My lungs emptied.
She couldn’t be about to say what I thought she was about to say. It was impossible. Unfathomable.
The look on her face said too much.
“Presley …”
She swallowed hard. Met my eyes. “We have a little girl.”
My vision dimmed but for a pinhole, my ears ringing too loud to hear anything else. But she didn’t speak. She sat there watching me with fear written in every line of her while my world came to a complete and total stop.
I couldn’t have heard her right.
A baby. A child. I have a child. A girl. I’m a father.
I’m a father.
I couldn’t breathe, my lungs locked tight, the sting of pain warning me to get them open. A deep breath that was too fast had me gulping another, slower this time.
A little girl of mine.
I imagined a little thing that looked like Presley wasting away in a hospital bed, even though she wouldn’t get sick until she was much older. I could see her gaunt with wires and tubes coming out of her like tentacles.
Stop. Don’t. You can’t change this. You can’t avoid this.
It’s done.
Visions of Presley flashed in my mind. I pictured her pregnant and looking for me. I thought of her alone and lonely, carrying all of this without telling anyone. She couldn’t have. I would have found out. And she knew what I wanted. She knew it wasn’t this.
No wonder she was scared.
She wasn’t the only one.
“I …” My voice cracked, my throat too dry. I tried to swallow. “I don’t know how … I can’t …”
Again, she tried to smile, this time through a chasm of pain. A tear slipped out of her eye and over the curve of her cheek.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to do anything.” Her breath hitched, but she meant what she’d said. “You needed to know. I don’t expect anything from you—I know how you feel about this.”
“Presley—”
“No, it’s okay.” Her tears flowed freely now, her smile brave. “We’ve done it all this time by ourselves. She doesn’t know who you are—no one does, and we don’t have to tell anyone. But I had to tell you now that I found you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The words broke with her composure, and she looked back down at her hands as she tried to get a hold of herself.
And I couldn’t stand seeing her break, not for one fucking minute.
She was in my arms with little more than a shift. Her body curled into mine, her head tucked into the curve of my neck and her palm on my chest. And for a minute, I let her cry. My thoughts pinged around my brain like a pinball, that bottomless black hole in me waiting to swallow me up.
How did this happen?
I remembered our last summer vividly, the memory worn from use. We’d been safe, or I’d thought. A couple times, we’d been impatient—I didn’t put on a condom until it was almost too late.
A child.
A daughter.
I’m a father.
I’d missed everything.
She should have found me. She could have, if she’d blown the secret.
But I played it out. Imagined the Blum sisters telling someone, even if it was just Mom. I imagined hearing it from her. From Abuela. From rumors.
“You should have found me.”
Her breath hitched, her body shuddering in my arms. I kissed the top of her head and closed my eyes.
“I didn’t think you’d want anyone to know. You didn’t want to be a … a dad.”
“I didn’t want kids. Never said I didn’t want to be a dad.”
A fresh wave of tears rocked her, but after a moment, she sat up and shifted out of my lap and onto the couch.
“What would you have done?” She swiped at her cheeks. “If you’d found out in Zambia, what would you have done?”
“I would have come home.”
She shook her head. “You would have sacrificed what you wanted. Neither of us wanted that.”
“Neither of us wanted this either.”
Silence hung between us.
“What did you give up so I could have my dream?” I asked. “School? A social life? What didn’t you have because of this?”
“There was no point in both of us making the sacrifice.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I wasn’t going anywhere, Bastian. Mom was too sick to work. I had to take care of her mortgage to keep the roof over our heads without a real job.”
“Waiting tables is a real job.”
She gave me a look. “You know what I mean. And I had Priscilla to take care of.”
My heart lurched, but a smile brushed my lips. “Priscilla, huh?”
She shrugged, smiled small, her eyes sweeping the ceiling. “You know me.”
“Can I … do you have pictures?”
“I might have one or two,” she said, reaching into her bag on the ground for her phone. For a second, she flipped through them before handing it over.
The picture on her phone hit me square in the gut. Her hair was black as midnight, long enough that I wondered if it’d ever been cut. Round cheeks, a strong little chin, a smile on rosy lips. And eyes so deep a shade of blue, they seemed bottomless.
She looked just like Presley. Judging by her tutu, worn-out sneakers, and her t-shirt that read “I need attention,” I had a suspicion she acted like Presley too.
I swiped. Then I swiped again. They were hearted—her favorites—and I swiped back through time. Through Christmases and birthday cakes, through playgrounds and selfies with Presley. Sometimes, I caught a glimpse of my mother in Priscilla, something about her smile or the shape of her eyes that struck a chord of familiarity in me. I knew this child. I knew her all the way back to the photos when she was just a bundle in Presley’s arms. Back to a moment in the hospital when they’d first met, Presley’s hospital gown hanging off her shoulder and her hair in a messy bun, tears in her eyes and chin bent.