The Beginning of Always (62 page)

“Or maybe it’s the truth. Have you ever considered that?”

I grunted in response. We were silent for several minutes as I worked to construct the sandwiches for us. Both of us were pensive, words on our tongues just shadows away from our lips.

Dad spoke first, quietly.

“I loved your mom, Florence, know that. But I couldn’t give her what she needed, what she wanted. In the end, she died a broken woman.”

My fingers stilled from fussing with the lettuce. I slowly raised my head up.

Dad’s eyes were distant, longing, reliving a difficult memory. “Camille loved someone else, this man she knew in college. I never knew the full details, but it didn’t work out and she got her heart broken. I don’t think she ever got over it. She moved back home, met me while I was doing my residency, and we married.”

He sighed, a long forlorn sound. “I couldn’t make your mom happy.”

“Dad.” My voice shook slightly.

Dad raised a palm up. “No. Don’t pity me, it’s fine. I’m stating facts, and perhaps it’s unfair that your mom isn’t here to defend herself, God rest her soul. However, truth is truth and the truth is, she always craved a different life. Something I couldn’t give her. Our marriage wasn’t broken, and neither of us strayed. It was one of those pitiful realities out there: married wrong, loved too little in life, died with wishes unfulfilled.”

Dad gave me a tender look, an expression at odd contrast with the visible pain in his brow.

“You and Nicolas were the best part of us, and I thank God every day for the two of you. But take it from me when I say that I have seen what happens when love goes unfulfilled. People get hurt when it’s impossible for the present to compete with the past. You and your brother know that as much as anyone, what it’s like to live with just a shadow of a person who never saw all that life has to offer. You can’t deny yourself joy in the now because of something haunting you.

“I’m not saying Alistair is your only chance at happiness, but you do have to be honest with yourself about whether you’re refusing him because you truly don’t love him, or if you love him too much. And if it’s the latter, you have to do yourself the favor of respecting that love, honoring that truth. You say that Bill is filling my head with ideas, but I do agree with him. Even when you two were young, it was plain as day.”

The sandwiches were forgotten, my fingers gripping the hard counter. “What was plain as day?”

“That Alistair loved you more than anyone could love anything. From day one he worshipped you. And you were the exact same way. You tell me if you can find that again, if that isn’t one of these once-in-a-lifetime promises that the heavens make to us. If you don’t respect that, is that just denying fate? Rejecting a gift? Love is always a struggle. We’re imperfect and flawed, but the core of love can never falter.”

Dad’s gaze dipped down, his shoulders slumping forward in defeat. When he spoke, it was at nearly a whisper. “I thought I could make your mom happy. I believed that she could love me the way she loved her past. But I was wrong. I couldn’t ever compete with that and when she died, she took all that I gave her with her.”

“You can love again, Dad. Her leaving wasn’t the end.” My voice trembled slightly.

“Who knows? Perhaps love is out there again, but if it’s for me, I don’t have the type of destiny to possess it. I’m an old man, kiddo. I’ve lived my life.”

I shook my head. “You don’t have to stop trying to be happy,” I said.

“I am happy. You make me happy. Nicolas makes me happy. My patients make me happy.”

“But is that enough?”

Dad gave me the saddest smile, the wrinkles of his face etched deeply upon his skin, as if all the hidden pain, all the unspoken tears accumulated over the years, clawed up to the surface in this singular moment.

“It has to be.”

Chapter 36

“Y
ou’re going to go through the attic today, right?”

I mumbled around my toast as I read the morning paper.

“Hey!” The newspaper was snatched out of my hands and I instinctively reached up for it. “Dad!”

“Kiddo, did you hear me?” He shook the wide newspaper at me, a frilly lace apron tied tightly around his waist.

“Yes, yes. Go through the boxes in the attic, you’re planning on finishing it this summer.” I hopped up out of my seat and seized the newspaper back. Dad let me have my prize and went back to the stove.

I shook out the paper indignantly, smoothing out the wrinkles. “What are you going to do? Make it another office or something?”

“Library. The books are taking up my office, so I’d like to move them up there. A reading room.”

The sheer number of books that Dad had piled around the house was enough to make the Smithsonian faint. “Just use one of our rooms. Don’t need to make this a construction zone and inconvenience yourself.”

“What’s going to happen if you guys both come back?”

“I’ll sleep on the couch or something.”

“No way, my kids get their own space.”

“It’s going to be roasting up there during the summer,” I pointed out.

“I’ll leave that to the contractor to figure out.”

“Did you ever plan to move to New York to be with Nicolas and me?”

“Nope.” Dad flipped the eggs in the pan and turned down the flame. “I wouldn’t be able to handle the city. It’s too wild and crazy.” He waggled the spatula in the air to prove his point. “Better leave it to you young folk.”

“Well, I’m back home now. I’m all wild-ed and crazy-ed out.”

Dad spooned the eggs onto two plates and looked over his shoulder to grin at me. “It’s great having you around, kiddo.”

And for the first time in a while, I felt that everything was going to be alright.

I tugged on the string in our upstairs hallway closet, and the attic stairs crashed down dramatically in a cloud of gray dust. I coughed, stumbling out of the closet while batting at my eyes.

This wasn’t going to be easy.

I retreated into the safety of the bathroom and washed my hands in a foolish bid to remain clean. I studied myself in the mirror as the water ran cool over my palms. The bags under my eyes were still there, but they weren’t as dark, even compared to last week. I had been sleeping a bit better recently. With things having settled down, for the most part anyway, a slow, soft voice within me reminded me to get a move on and get on with life.

All in due time, I answered silently back.

I peeked out into the hallway. The dust had dissipated and now clung to the old hardwood floors in a thin film of gray. The attic stairs loomed ahead, beckoning.

Here goes nothing
. The ladder wobbled precariously, but steadied as I climbed up. My head popped up into the attic and I surveyed the mess.

Boxes and boxes, some sealed and stacked while others were half-open, their contents pawed through haphazardly. Something made a skittering noise in the far distance, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if there were mice up here.

I climbed the last couple of rungs and stepped hesitantly against the floorboards. I adjusted my weight to one foot and bounced up twice to test their stability. The last thing I needed was to plunge through the ceiling and break a leg.

I circled the attic slowly, taking in my project. The concentration of boxes was mostly clustered around the entry hole. Knowing Dad, he’d probably shoved the boxes up there, without rhyme or reason, just for easy access. The junk around the fringes wasn’t so bad—some old broken furniture, plastic bins, sacks of garbage bags.

With a sigh, I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and rolled up my sleeves, crashing down onto the floor, dragging the box closest to me and ripping the tape off. It was books. Of course. I kicked at it with my foot to push off to the left. That would be the book side.

Hours later, by the time I took my first break, the attic had grown musty and warm over the noonday sun. The air was a constant-flowing stream of dust and particles, and my eyes burned. I hadn’t made much of a dent in the sheer mountain of boxes, and I hadn’t found much to toss away. Most of the bigger boxes held books I knew Dad wanted to keep around, and I had spent my morning basically just pushing boxes from one side of the attic to the other.

I picked my way back to the entrance. I pushed a stack of boxes, three tall, to the far wall in order to get to the ladder back into the house.

The boxes were heavy. I strained against them, digging my heels into the floor and pushing with my shoulder. The topmost box wobbled threateningly, and with one hard shove of my shoulder, it fell over and spilled its contents all over a small hill of black plastic garbage bags. An angry cloud of dust billowed up, rolling over the surrounding area and straight into my face.

I sneezed, racking the back of my forearm over my watering eyes. I waved my open palm out in front of me, brushing aside the lingering puffs of grime that were still trying to work their way up my nose.

Grumbling, I sidestepped the now-lopsided stack of cardboard boxes and stooped down to scoop up the spilled contents. They were mostly picture frames and some linens.

Then I paused, my eyes trained on the blanket sprawled across the dusty black bags. The blanket was pink, with careful embroidery along the edges.

In one corner, the name Emma was spelled out in glittery thread along with a small heart.

Panic crawled up my throat as it dawned on me what this box was.

I remained there, frozen, unmoving, trapped in the moment. No. Please, no. I couldn’t handle this now. I couldn’t face this now.

I started to straighten up, taking a shaky step backwards. But a loud, crisp crack emanated from beneath my foot, and I jumped, twisting and looking down.

Picture frames were strewn out around me. Dusty, glass cracked on several of them, including the one I’d just stepped on.

I stared at my face. Young me. Pregnant me. In one, I was posed in front of our rosebushes and was giving a small smile with a hand over my swollen belly. Alistair had his arm around my shoulders and had placed his other hand to envelope mine, both of us hugging my stomach.

Our baby.

These were for our baby shower. We’d had it at seven months, in June, when Alistair was just back from school. Sandra had planned it, and it was an intimate backyard affair.

Nicolas had commissioned himself to take pictures of me through my pregnancy, and they were all there, still in the pink picture frames he’d bought to display for the shower.

Myself as my stomach got rounder and bigger.

A candid shot of me with my feet up, cradling a tub of ice cream. Frowning in my bedroom with my jeans pulled up to my knees, no longer suitable for my wide hips.

One of Alistair dangling a fast-food bag of fries over my head as I stood on my tiptoes, arm outstretched, trying to reach.

A printout of our last ultrasound, the grainy black-and-white shot circled with a heart.

My entire body shook as I pushed the edge of the box away from me in a bid to leave, but its contents tumbled out with the movement. Diapers, still in their packaging, from the diaper cake at the shower. Stuffed rabbits and bears I had cut the tags off of, ready for their owner once she came home. Baby clothes, clothes that were impossibly small and frail, sunken into the deep, dark box, cast off and forgotten for all these years in the shadows of the attic.

As Dad had sat in the hospital with me, Nicolas had packed up these baby clothes, all the picture frames and toys, all by himself. I was young when I had gotten pregnant, but Nicolas was even younger, barely out of middle school, when he had run out the house with me in his arms. I had struggled to keep my hands around his neck, but he’d pressed me hard against his chest. He had spoken to me in desperate tones.
It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay.
He’d sat in the back of the car as I bled all over him.

I’d never forget his face.

Nicolas had known he was watching his sister die.

And he kept saying,
it’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay.

He’d stroked my hair, patted my cheeks, fought to keep me awake. His hands stained red, the blood slowly drying.

“How was the cleaning today?”

After I had cried myself into a state of unresponsive stupor, I’d rolled myself across the attic floor and stumbled down the steps. The shower I had taken was so long, it was as if I was trying to drown myself standing upright.

My hair was still slightly damp and sticking to the back of my neck. Dad and I sat at the dining table, picking at the salad and pasta I had halfheartedly thrown together.

“I didn’t get much done. Sorry.”

“It’s alright, it’s a big job. No rush.”

I dragged my salad around my plate with my fork. The scraping of metal against porcelain rang out in the empty air. Just now, I realized just now empty this house was, how big, and how lonely.

No wonder Dad spent all his time at the clinic.

“Not hungry?” Dad’s eyes were worried.

“You know …” I trailed off. “Dust. Allergies.” I sniffed lightly to make my point, pointing to my nose with the end of the fork.

“Well, I have some masks in the garage if you need them. Don’t be breathing too much of that stuff in. I’m pretty sure we don’t have asbestos, but you can never be too careful.”