Destination Connelly (26 page)

C
onn

I
f you had
to pin me down, make me give you one word that would best describe how I’ve felt without Nora all these years, that word would be: yearning. She’s a hunger I could never fill. A thirst I could never quench. An ache I could never soothe. As full as my life has always been, I’ve still had this shadowy hollowness inside of me that only her light has ever been able to penetrate.

When I saw Nora for the first time, she stirred something in me I’d never felt before. I was downright besotted and I fell in love so damn fast it would make your head spin. Every cell in my body was inextricably drawn to her, screaming for her. I never even tried to fight it because I knew I’d already lost. I was hers.

I remember in AP Psych, the one class we had together in our senior year, I’d watch in fascination as she’d repeatedly tuck her hair behind her ear, even though it hadn’t fallen out. And when she was concentrating hard on something, she’d unconsciously trace her lips with her index finger. Around and around. It was hypnotic and sexy as hell.

During those months when I was young and cocky and I tried to get her to talk to me, to pay attention to me, hell, simply to acknowledge my very fucking existence, I yearned. I ached. I craved everything about her. Her smile. Her light. Her devotion. I wanted it all. It drove me mad that I couldn’t have her.

I asked myself repeatedly…was it the chase, the game, the win? What was it that made me want her like nothing I’d wanted before? But every time I came back to the same answer.

Nora was my kismet. She was my destiny. She was mine.

I’ve done little else over the last few weeks but think. My mind is at war with my heart. Hell, my heart is at war with itself. It’s exhausting. I’m not sure you could find a man on earth more conflicted than I am right now.

On one hand, the time I’ve spent with my daughter has been incredible. Surreal, actually. I’m completely and totally in love with her already. She has me wrapped tightly and she knows it.

The day after we told Hazel about me, Nora and I worked out a schedule where I take her for a few hours two nights during the week and one day on the weekend. I spent all day with her last Sunday at the Children’s Museum. We had an absolute blast in the tinkering lab, but Hazel was naturally drawn to the Artabounds Studio so we spent most of our day there. Before we left, I bought a season pass so we could go back as many times as she wants.

We’ve been taking it slow. I agreed to those terms, but damn if it’s not enough for me. I want and
need
more. I want to spend every free minute with Hazel.

Which brings me to the other hand.

I’m in emotional agony over what to do about Nora. I love her madly and deeply. I feel dead inside without her…without her laugh or her touch or her challenging mouth. I need her to feel alive again, but I’m still so fucking hurt it’s difficult to even breathe. Pain stabs me fresh each time I see her, knowing everything I’ve lost and everything that’s been taken away from me.

The question I’ve been wrestling with for weeks now is how can I possibly overcome her betrayal? How can I trust her again? How can we build a future together? I want to. Jesus, I want to with everything in me. I just don’t know how.

Which is why I’m here. In Detroit. Sitting in my mom’s kitchen at eleven thirty at night. I drove up on the spur of the moment tonight right after work. I didn’t even bother to stop for a change of clothes. I always keep a few extra things here anyway.

“Sorry to just show up unannounced.” Maxwell, our eleven-year-old golden cockerdoodle, sets his head expectantly in my lap. Upon his silent command, I rub the perm-like curly hair between his ears, watching his chocolate eyes drift shut.

“You don’t have to apologize for needing your mother, Connelly.” She reaches across the table and takes my hand.

I’ve known I had a daughter for over a month now, but I haven’t yet talked to my mom about her. I know, I know. I’m close to my mother, all of us boys are, but telling her over the phone just didn’t seem right and I was too fucked in the head most of the time to get my jumbled thoughts out anyway.

“So you heard, huh?” Guess I couldn’t expect my brothers to keep their mouths shut. The danger of having such a close-knit family is that you don’t get a lot of privacy.

Her smile is sad and weary. “It accidentally slipped.”

“Who told you?”

“Now, Connelly, you know I’d never tell you that.”

“Asher and his big fu— mouth.” I almost swear but catch myself just in time to halt Barb Colloway’s verbal lashing for cussing. She just chuckles. I know I’m right.

“Your brothers mean well. They love you very much.”

“Yeah.” I know. “I’m sorry, Mom. I just…it’s been a lot to deal with.”

“I can only imagine. But you don’t have to deal with it alone. Lean on the people who love you, Connelly.”

“I’m trying.”

“So, want to tell me about it?”

“I’m not sure where to start.”

“The beginning’s always a good place.” Her reply is soothing and full of encouraging love.

When I raise my gaze to my mother’s, I immediately know I should have made this trip weeks ago. I haven’t even said a word and I already feel better, the burden a little less to handle on my own. Maybe by the time I leave here I’ll have more clarity.

“Well, you remember Nora.” She nods, and during the next hour, I launch into my story. Every sordid, dirty detail of it, including my own betrayal of Nora back when I was nineteen. The cheating, the pregnancy scare, the loss of that life, and how relieved I was. She prompted me with questions along the way, but for the most part, I just talked. She just listened. It was cathartic.

When I was done, my mom sat there in silence, pondering all I’d told her. Staring out the window into the night sky. I was blown away when she finally spoke.

“I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told another soul, Connelly, some of it not even to your father, and I’d appreciate it if you kept this between us. It’s not something I’m proud of.”

“Okay,” I reply slowly, stretching out the word. I’m not at all sure I want to hear what she has to say. I have a feeling it’s very personal and I don’t know if can handle being saddled with someone else’s secrets right now. I already feel like a two-ton truckload of them sits on my own chest, weighing me down.

“A few months before I met your father I dated this man named Brent for a few months. I thought I knew what love was, but I was clueless until I met your father. Anyway, Brent and I broke up, and three weeks later, I met Frank Colloway.” The stars in my mom’s eyes shine brightly when she talks about my father. They were every couple’s barometer for a perfect marriage. But as they dim when she continues purging her secret, now I’m certain I don’t want to hear it. “You already know your father asked me to marry him just a few months after we started dating. What you don’t know is that we broke up for a short time because…I’m ashamed to admit I cheated on him. With Brent.”

“Mom,” I groan. “I do not need to hear this.”

“No. You do. It’s relevant, I promise.” Inhaling a lungful of air, she continues. I can feel how hard this is for her. “Your dad and I got back together and shortly afterward I found out I was pregnant.”

What. The. Actual.
Fuck
? My mother? Saint Barb? Cheated? Pregnant? Did I fall through a black hole in the universe? What does a son even say to that?

“What—”

“I lost the baby. At ten weeks I had a miscarriage. Your father knew about the baby, of course, and I told him I was certain it was his, but even I couldn’t be sure. And he knew it. I always thought my penance for that great sin I committed against your father was the loss of that child. I mourned for months. It took almost two years before I’d try again and then it was almost a year before we got pregnant with Gray and Luke.”

I’m speechless. This is not something you need to hear about your parents.

“Why are you telling me this, Mom?”

Except I already know.

Everybody
makes mistakes, even those close to sainthood.

Everybody
deserves redemption, no sin too great.

Even my mother.

And where would my family be if my father hadn’t forgiven my mother? We wouldn’t. I scrub my face in complete disbelief, my mind racing.

“Do you love her? Nora, I mean?” she adds, unnecessarily clarifying her question, ignoring mine.

Do I love Nora?

No. It’s so much more than a simple four-letter word. It’s a shared connection, a twining of our marrow, our cells, our very essences. It’s concrete and rooted and unbreakable. But is it enough?

“To my very bones. I am her. She is me.”

“Then get off your ass and get her back.”

Once again, I stare at my mom in utter shock. Secret revelations? Cursing? It takes me a while to get my bearings back to respond.

“I’m so mad, Mom. I’m not sure I can forgive her,” I confess almost in a whisper. “I’m not sure there’s a future for us anymore. I think it’s too late.”

She nods, turning down her mouth like she’s disappointed in me. “Do you know why I put my own sins on this very table for you to judge?”

“I…” This feels like a trick question. Even your own mother tries to trip you up sometimes. I think for a minute on what she’s trying to tell me. “It’s a story about Dad, not you. It’s about forgiveness.”

“Yes.” She beams just as she did when I came home with the first-place ribbon in the sixth-grade science fair. “Had he chosen not to forgive me, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you now, because there wouldn’t be a you. Instead of letting that mistake tear us apart, we let it drive us closer together. He was it for me like I was for him.”

She pauses, taking my hand between hers and makes sure I’m listening to each and every word. “Holding on to resentment is like wearing cement shoes, Connelly. It weighs down your entire being. Body, mind, and spirit. It will drag you down into the bowels of bitterness, and that’s a lonely place to spend your life. Everyone makes missteps, son. Everyone deserves forgiveness, a second chance. Even Nora. You have every right to be mad at her for what she’s done and I’m not telling you that you don’t. What I’m telling you is it’s time to start getting over it. Forgive her and free your heart to love her. You are full of so much love, Connelly, just like your father. If that love belongs to Nora, then you owe it to yourselves, and your daughter, to try.”

I reach out and tug her to me so she doesn’t see the moisture fogging my vision.

“Time is not guaranteed to us, Connelly,” she whispers in my ear. “Don’t waste any more of it holding on to needless resentments. It’s never too late. You both made mistakes. Don’t make any more.”

We both made mistakes. She couldn’t be more right.

“Thanks, Mom.” I squeeze her tight as my throat works to swallow my racing emotions.

“Anytime. Now it’s time for this old woman to hit the hay. I have a breakfast date in the morning.”

I laugh, kissing her forehead as we stand. “And would that date be with one Bob Monroe?” Bob Monroe, Luke’s fiancée’s father, and my mother have been “dating” for months now. I think they’re both past the point of trying to say it’s anything but that.

“It would indeed,” she beams, starting toward the stairs. Maxwell follows.

Again with the beaming.

“Are you happy, Mom?”

She stops halfway, turning back around. “I loved your father, Conn. More than I ever thought possible. And when he died, I accepted that I’d lived a happy and full life with my soul mate and that you only get one of those in a lifetime. Sometimes, though, we do get second chances.”

I nod, unable to speak. No one wants to see my mom happy more than I do. She’s such an incredibly amazing woman with a wealth of love to give. I’m glad she found someone else who is worthy to accept it.

She smiles softly. “And when we’re blessed with another chance at happiness, well…it would be foolish to squander it, don’t you think?”

As she walks up the creaky stairs, I get the distinct impression she’s no longer talking about her and Bob Monroe.

C
onn

I
knock
on the door and wait. When she doesn’t answer right away, I knock again. I rarely just pop over unannounced but I needed to see her. I need someone to talk to.

At last, I hear her footfalls and the light shining through the peephole dims. When she hesitates I don’t think she’s going to let me in. Then the door opens.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Her smile is sympathetic and I know things between us will be okay. Other than the first date with Hazel, I haven’t talked to Ella since the day I stood in her apartment and looked upon my daughter for the first time. Things were too awkward, given the fact she’s Nora’s sister and Hazel’s aunt. If she’s anything like my family, family sticks together. Period.

I give her sweat-clad body a quick once-over, but it’s different now than all the other times before it. All I see is the sister of the woman I’m in love with, not the beautiful one I’ve been attracted to all this time. “You busy?”

“Nah. Come on in.” She steps aside to let me enter. “You want a beer?”

“I’d love one. Thanks.”

I take a seat on her plush white couch. Soon enough, Ella returns with two cold brews in her hand. She sits on the other end, tucking her bare feet beneath her.

“No hot date tonight?” I ask, taking a long swallow.

“Just with my hand.”

That makes me choke and I spray hops and barley all over myself. “Jesus, Ella.” I set the bottle down and wipe myself off.

She smirks. “Hmmm, guess things have changed between us, huh?”

I sigh heavily, knowing she’s right. Normally we’d banter back and forth off each other for a good fifteen minutes over a comment like that, most of it sexually charged, yet I just practically chastised her for it. It feels more than wrong to even think about doing that now. “I guess they have.”

It’s been a whole week since I talked to my mom. Another week of thinking, soul-searching. Another week without Nora in my arms or my bed. Another week of bitter loneliness. I’m starting another interminable weekend without her. At least I get to spend the day with Hazel on Sunday.

“I’m glad, you know.”

“Glad about what?” I pick up my beer and lean back, putting my feet up on her coffee table. She scrunches her forehead in annoyance but doesn’t tell me to take them down, so I don’t.

“That nothing happened between us.” She drops her gaze briefly. “I wouldn’t be able to look at Nora if it did and…well, I need her in my life. Hazel, too. So…”

So do I
, I think. Jesus, so do I.

“I’ve missed you, Ella. I’ve missed talking to you.”

“Me too, playboy, but Nora’s my sister and I…”

When she leaves her sentence hanging, I rescue her. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain. I get it. You don’t want to watch her get hurt.”

“I don’t want to watch
any
of you get hurt, Conn. I care about all three of you. A lot.”

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, Ella. Tell me what to do,” I beg quietly.

This is why I came here. My mom gave me so much to think about, but I still feel a little lost and I guess I was hoping to gain some insight from the person closest to Nora besides Hazel. Hell, I should be talking to Carl, not Ella, but there’s no way in hell I can do that. He’ll probably gut me, then sink my empty shell to the bottom of the Ohio River.

“No can do, amigo. Only you can figure this out, Conn.”

“This is such a pile of shit,” I mumble, letting my head fall against the cushions behind me.

“You know,” she starts, “My grandpa ran a cattle farm in rural Iowa. When I was growing up, my mom would drop me off there for three weeks out of the summer. I loved my grandparents, but I used to hate going there. They made me get up early, like at the ass crack of dawn, and do all kinds of chores. The one I hated the most was cleaning out Deguello’s pen.”

“Deguello? What the hell is a Deguello?” I’m from Detroit. We don’t have farms there.

She looks at me with a twinkle in her eye. “Not what. Who.”

“Okay, who the hell is Deguello?” And what the hell does he or she have to do with my current predicament with Nora?

“Deguello was my grandpa’s prize bull. He was treated like a fucking king, let me tell you. I half expected to see him draped in a purple velvet cape when I got to his pen. Anyway, my job in the morning was to scoop his shit. From the age of twelve to sixteen part of my summer ritual with my grandpa was to scoop cow crap.”

I start howling with laughter until tears run down my face. I cannot imagine this prissy woman sitting next to me hauling cow dung.

“Anyway,” she shouts loudly, trying to shut me up. “You can imagine how much I complained about that. So one day I asked my grandpa why we had to scoop up Deguello’s shit—I used that exact word mind you—and he stopped me from what I was doing and said, ‘You may see shit, Mirabella, but do you know what I see?’ I knew he was about to tell me something insightful, something I’d remember until the day I died.”

“What did he tell you,” I prod when she hesitates, knowing she’s about to pass down the same insight to me that I’ll also remember until the day I die.

“He said ‘I see vegetables on a family’s dinner table that will feed their kids the nutrients they need to grow up strong and healthy. I see the energy I need to run my lights and heat my water and power my entire farming operation. I see gold, Mirabella. And if all you see is a pile of shit, then you’re missing an entire world of lost potential and opportunities.’ Then he went back to work like we hadn’t spoken a word.”

“He sounds like a good grandpa,” I say eventually, cutting through the silence around us as I digest the words she just spoke.

“He was.”

Was
. I didn’t miss her sorrowful use of past tense.

“So…you’re saying my shit pile is really a gold mine then?”

We laugh for a couple of minutes before sobering again. Ella reaches over and takes my hand. “Twenty-four karat.”

A burn starts in my eyes. I blink it away. “I love her, Ella.”

“I know.”

“God, I miss her. My entire being aches without her.” I’m in fucking agony.

“So does hers.”

I swivel my head and look at her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she replies softly with a sad smile on her face.

Sitting back, she quietly nurses her beer. I’ve learned more about Ella in these last few minutes than I have in the year that I’ve known her. I wonder what else is lurking under the layers she uses to keep herself protected?

“You’ve never told me stories about your childhood before.”

She looks thoughtful before answering, “That’s because before, you were just the hot guy next door who kept unsuccessfully trying to get into my bed.”

I smile. It was true. At first. “And now?”

One shoulder comes up. “Now you’re family.”

Family
. Regardless of where Nora and I end up, there is that.

She squeezes my hand once before letting go. “Feel better?”

I nod slowly. “Getting there.”

She curls her fingers and blows on her knuckles before pretending to shine them. “I have a gift like that.”

A light chuckle escapes. “Thanks, Ella.”

“Anytime, playboy. Anytime.”