Cross My Heart (17 page)

She really, really hoped so.

Claire had been putting strips of blue tape over the window trim. Now she stopped, turning to look at Jenna. “Then...is this the last time I’m going to see you?”

“No, of course not,” Jenna said quickly. “I’ll see you tomorrow before you go, and after that...well, we have email and Skype. There’s no reason we can’t stay in touch.”

When she saw the sparkle of tears in the girl’s eyes, she went over and gave her a huge hug. “Don’t be sad, kiddo. I’m in your life for good now. Like it or not.”

And then, suddenly, Claire was crying so hard Jenna could feel her body shuddering with sobs. Jenna hugged her harder, patting her back and murmuring “It’s okay, it’s okay.” She looked over her shoulder to see Michael looking helpless, and she frowned at him. “Come here,” she mouthed at him.

After a moment’s hesitation he did, putting his arms around Claire and holding her, a little gingerly at first, and then tighter. Claire was small and her dad was big, so Jenna was enveloped in the hug, too. She was caught off guard at how natural it felt—the three of them in an interlocking knot of care and affection, her arms around Claire and Michael’s arms around them both.

“Sorry,” Claire said after a minute, after her tears had subsided. Jenna stepped back to give her a little space, and Michael did, too. “You guys must think I’m such a dork. I don’t know why that happened. I mean, I know we’ll be in touch, Jenna. So I don’t know why I broke down.”

She took a quick breath. “Let’s turn up the music and get started.”

***

Michael tried to concentrate on a medical journal while he waited for Claire to get back from Ellie’s. She’d been gone since mid afternoon, which had given him plenty of time to second guess his decision.

He was going to ask her to stay.

Logic was against it. Logic said that uprooting a fourteen year old girl from her support system of friends and family was insane—especially when all he had to offer her in return was himself. A workaholic single dad without a single successful emotional relationship in his past. And while he could try to scale back at the hospital, the truth was he’d never be able to spend as much time with Claire as she deserved.

So, no, his decision hadn’t been based on logic. It had been based on instinct, on the fact that he knew in his heart that Claire belonged with him. And that if he didn’t at least try to be a real father to her, he’d regret it for the rest of his life.

He checked his watch for the tenth time in the last five minutes. He’d told Claire they needed to leave by six, and she was already half an hour late. Maybe he should call the Washingtons to—

The front door banged open, and Claire shot up the stairs like she was being chased by wolves. A moment later he heard her bedroom door slam shut, the sound reverberating through the house.

He went to the front door, which she hadn’t bothered to close, and checked to see if there were actual wolves out there. Seeing nothing, he shut the door.

He looked up the stairs. What the hell was he supposed to do now?

He sighed. If this was fatherhood, he supposed the only thing to do was wade right in.

He went up the stairs and knocked on her door.

“Go away!”

He tried the knob, and found she hadn’t locked it. He poked his head into the room and saw her face down on the bed, crying.

“Sweetheart, what happened? Are you all right?”

Claire jerked her head off the pillow and glared at him. “I told you to go away.”

He shook his head. “Not until you tell me why you’re so upset.”

She glared at him some more. “Why are you all dressed up?”

He’d put on a suit and tie for dinner. “I was planning to take you out to a restaurant in the city. But we don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

Her face crumpled up, and he couldn’t stand it anymore. He went over and sat next to her on the bed. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

Maybe she was sad because she was leaving. Maybe she didn’t want to go back to Florida. Maybe when he asked her to stay, it would make everything all right.

She sat up, scooting back so she could lean against the headboard. “I had a fight with Ellie.”

So much for his theory. “What happened?”

She swiped the back of her hand across her damp face, and he looked around for a tissue. There was a box on her night stand and he handed it to her.

She blew her nose and took a deep breath. “You know how her parents were supposed to be on vacation? It turns out they were seeing a counselor. To try and save their marriage or something. Only, it didn’t work, and they decided to get a divorce.”

His heart went out to the family. “Poor Ellie.”

“I know. It’s a huge suck. She just found out today, and when I went over there she was crying like crazy. I stuck around because she asked me to, and we talked about stuff for a long time. Mostly she talked and I listened, because it seemed like that’s what she needed, you know? But then I wanted show her I understood, so I told her about you and mom getting divorced, and then, you know, how mom died, and—”

She gulped. “She started yelling at me, saying that it wasn’t the same thing at all, and how her parents could still decide to get back together. And I...” Her eyes filled with tears again. “I told her that probably wouldn’t happen. Because it probably won’t, you know? I was just trying to be realistic. I didn’t want her to get her hopes up and then...”

She trailed off.

“You know she was just upset. She wasn’t really mad at you. She just—”

Claire sighed. “I know all that, Dad. I just...God, I miss home.”

It took him a moment to realize that by home, she meant Florida. And just like that, the bottom fell out of his heart.

“You’re...looking forward to going back?”

She blew her nose again. “I miss my friends. My real friends. I thought Ellie was a friend, but...” She shook her head. “And I miss Nana. I miss her so much. And...and...I miss Mom.”

There was no fixing that. “Oh, sweetheart.”

And then she was glaring at him again. “Just save it. Okay? I know you hate it when I cry, and I swear to God if you draw a diagram of a tear duct or something I’m going to kill you.”

“I wasn’t going to—”

“Why can’t you just leave me alone? That’s all I want. I told you to go away and you didn’t listen. Nana would listen. Mom would have listened.” Her lower lip trembled, and then suddenly she was shouting at him. “I hate you. I
hate
you! God, I wish you were dead instead of Mom. Why did it have to be her? Why couldn’t it have been you?”

He tried not to let her words draw blood, but they did.

He didn’t know what to say, what to do. He never had and he never would.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll leave you alone.”

He went back downstairs. He paused in the foyer, looking at the front door. He hesitated just a moment before he left the house and headed for Jenna’s.

His jaw was set as he strode across his lawn and hers. She’d gotten him into this and she could damn well give him some advice now that it was all falling apart. If it wasn’t for Jenna, he never would have thought about asking Claire to move here. And now that she’d gone back to hating his guts for no reason that he could see, he needed to talk to a member of her species to get a little perspective.

He raised his hand to knock on her back door when it opened. Jenna was there, staring at him in surprise—and she wasn’t alone.

Derek. This had to be Derek. He had shaggy blond hair and blue eyes, and he was wearing jeans and a tee shirt. He had a tattoo that started at his left wrist, disappeared briefly under his sleeve, and continued up the side of his neck. His smile was easy and relaxed, which was more than Michael could say for himself.

“Michael! I didn’t expect to see you tonight.”

He kept his eyes on Derek. “Yeah. I guess not.”

“I mean...I thought you were going out with Claire. Is everything all right?”

He glanced at her, and saw the look of concern on her face. “Sure. Everything’s fine. I just stopped by to...” His mind was a blank. “To...borrow a CD.”

Borrow a CD? Jesus, he sounded like a high school kid. “But I can see you’re on your way out, so...” He looked at Derek again.

Jenna bit her lip. “I’m sorry, I should have introduced you. Derek, this is my neighbor, Michael. Michael, this is my friend, Derek.”

He resisted the urge to squeeze the other man’s hand until all twenty-seven bones cracked like twigs, and instead shook it briefly. “I hear you’re helping out Jenna’s band.”

Derek nodded. Michael was disappointed not to spot any overt evidence of evil, like shifty eyes or bloodstained fangs or horns sprouting out of his forehead. He seemed like a regular guy, in fact.

“Nice to meet you,” he said. Then he slid an arm around Jenna’s waist. “Ready to go, babe?”

And there it was. Overt evidence of evil.

He forced himself to take a step back so they could leave the house.

“Are you sure everything’s all right?” Jenna asked him after she’d locked the door behind her.

No, everything wasn’t all right. His daughter hated him, and the woman he wanted didn’t want him—and was heading out on the town with the ex-boyfriend who’d broken her heart.

 “Everything’s great. Have a good night, Jenna.”

She didn’t look convinced, but he turned and headed back to his house before she could say anything else.

Something familiar descended on him. A feeling of coldness, of distance. He found the sensation oddly comforting.

This was a state of mind he knew inside and out. A state of mind that didn’t confound him at every turn with the uncertainty and chaos of emotion, of feelings and impulses that led him down dead end paths.

This was the place he belonged.

Chapter Ten

Michael slept badly and woke up with a raging headache. He sat in the kitchen and tried to read the paper while Claire was over at Jenna’s saying goodbye.

When she came back he drained the last of his coffee and rose to his feet. “Time to go.”

Claire nodded without looking at him and went upstairs to get her suitcase.

A few minutes later the suitcase was in the trunk and Claire was sitting beside him in the passenger seat. She was slouched down, arms folded, her head turned away as she looked out the window.

He felt a moment of déjà vu. This was exactly how their visit had begun—the two of them in the car, not looking at each other, the chasm between them as wide as an ocean.

Frustration knotted his muscles as he turned the key in the ignition. The engine started up but he didn’t put his foot on the gas.

Nothing had changed between him and Claire. The last two weeks might never have happened. They were right back where they’d started—where they’d always be.

Claire glanced at him impatiently but didn’t ask why they weren’t moving. She reached out to turn on the radio, flipping through channels until she found a song she liked.

He realized with a shock that he recognized it.

It was one of the songs Jenna had played yesterday while they were painting. She’d informed him that he’d graduated to music recorded after 1990, and she’d played a wide variety all day, telling him to let her know when something clicked with him, so she could make a mix.

This was one of those songs. It was bittersweet, with a kind of raw tenderness at its core that something in him had responded to.

“Coldplay,” he said after a minute, remembering the name of the band.

Claire glanced over at him briefly. “Yeah.”

“This is a good song.”

“Yeah.”

He turned off the engine, and they sat in silence while it played.

A memory rose to the surface of his mind—a memory he tried never to revisit.

He was younger than Claire—ten or eleven, maybe. His dad had been home for a month but he’d left a few nights before to follow the poker circuit. It was summertime, which meant he’d been able to stay home with his mom after his dad was gone.

He’d been watching her like a hawk. Things were always better when his dad was home—she didn’t drink so much, and there was food in the house, and she even did some cooking. They watched baseball together sometimes, all three of them, and to Michael that was as close to heaven as he ever hoped to get.

It usually fell apart when his dad left, but this time he was determined to make things different. To take care of his mother, to take care of everything. He stayed with her every minute, hardly sleeping at night, and she actually seemed to be settling into a routine without alcohol.

Then, one night, he woke up to hear her moving around in the living room.

He was out of bed like a shot, and he caught her just as she was slipping out the front door of the apartment.

“Where are you going?” he asked, trying to sound casual.

She was wearing the half sly, half furtive expression he knew and hated. “I won’t be gone long,” she said. “Go back to sleep, pumpkin.”

“I’ll come with you.”

She tried for a light-hearted laugh. “Don’t be silly. I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

His parents both used that phrase a lot—
I promise.
He knew it didn’t mean anything.

“If you need something at the store, I’ll get it for you.”

She hesitated, and he knew she was searching for a lie to tell. They’d both pretended for so long that she didn’t have a drinking problem that it was automatic now, a habit they’d never be able to break.

“I’m actually meeting a friend, pumpkin. I’ll be back before you know it, okay?”

And then the feeling he hated most in the world was clawing through him—the scared little boy feeling that was his first conscious memory.

“Please don’t go.” He tried never to say that to his mother, because it never worked. It didn’t work now.

“Just go back to bed, angel. If you’re asleep you won’t even know I’m gone.”

She opened the door, and he grabbed her wrist. “Please, Mom. Please stay.”

He’d never done that before. Never begged her to stay after it was obvious she was going to leave no matter what he did.

His mother tried to pull away from him, but he hung on. He was crying now, tears and snot running down his face, and he didn’t even care. “Please, Mom. Please.”