Of Literature and Lattes, page 26
“How can I—” Krista stood.
Jeremy stiffened and held out his hand again, whether to silence her or keep her from coming closer, he wasn’t sure. “I’m not walking away. I won’t do that to my daughter. And I’ll fight you if you try to take her from me. I may not be able to do anything in the courts, but I can fight you. I can keep showing up and poking holes in every lie you dish out . . . This isn’t about you anymore, do you hear me? It should’ve stopped being about you the minute she was born, but it stops now. So no matter what you do, that little girl in there”—he pointed behind Krista to the house—“will know I chose her, I love her, and I will fight for her. Do you hear me?”
“I do.” Krista nodded. “And I won’t lie. Not anymore.” At his snide chuff, she wilted. “I deserve that, but it’s true. And I know you have no reason to believe me, but I am sorry, Jeremy. Really I am.”
Jeremy didn’t move a muscle.
“It hasn’t been easy for me. I’m not trying to let myself off the hook, but I never meant it to go on like this. It took on a life of its own and I didn’t know—” Something in his eyes stopped her. She watched him a beat before continuing in a softer, more conciliatory tone. “And Becca’s been horrid since you dropped her off. I don’t think she heard anything, but all this tension . . . She blew up this afternoon in Target over a toy she wanted. A stupid toy for a baby. She’s seven.” Krista flopped her hands to her sides. “I feel like we’re coming undone.”
“Because we are. And of course she’s freaking out. She absorbs all this, and how do you think it’s going to come out? Over coffee and a scone?”
“I don’t need sarcasm, Jeremy. That’s not helpful.”
“I’m not here to be helpful to you, Krista.” He again looked up to the house. “I want to see her.”
“She’s asleep.” Krista raised her chin to meet his eyes. Jeremy watched as something almost vulnerable flashed through her eyes, and she backed up immediately. “Of course, of course you can see her. Go on up.”
He didn’t ask or comment on the change. He stepped past her, opened the front door, and paused. Krista’s parents had never warmed to him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to confront, greet, or chat with them now. What lies had Krista told them? And for his part, he had married their daughter within a month of meeting her and had only met them on his one short and tense visit to Park Ridge weeks after Becca was born. Despite everything Krista had done, he hadn’t left the best impression either.
Krista gestured inside. “They’re not here. Becca exhausted them too. They went to a movie.”
Jeremy walked up the stairs. He hadn’t been in the house in almost seven years, and even then it was only for that single dinner, with Becca sleeping in a bassinet next to the dining room table.
He paused on the stairs. The walls were lined with pictures. Krista’s parents’ wedding picture. Family Christmas photos with a young Krista smiling with pigtails . . . with braces . . . with vertical hair-sprayed bangs. Pictures of Krista morphed to pictures of Becca. Jeremy paused to search her face in light of his new understanding. Hints were there, perhaps, in the eyes and in the mouth. But not enough to be sure. She looked very much like Krista. Sure, Becca’s hair was darker and she was taller—but Jeremy always appropriated those attributes. Perhaps Krista had a “type,” he thought, and he was more like David than he ever wanted to know. He took the final four stairs in two quick strides.
Krista followed him and gestured to a cracked door on his right. He pushed it open and looked around the room, lit by a single night-light and glowing pink. He remembered when Krista posted a three-week Instagram series on the room’s transformation right before he moved to Winsome. She’d gotten a bonus at work and wrote that she was using it to make her daughter’s room “a sanctuary for creativity and fun.” She then posted short videos of painting the room, stenciling the flowers around the windows, and even arranging all the pillows and toys.
“Hey, Bug.” Jeremy perched on the edge of Becca’s twin bed. She was lying on her back, arms splayed out, buried beneath pillows and her giraffe named Mr. Tall. He shifted the mass of pink and yellow, then brushed Becca’s hair from across her face. She didn’t move. Only kids sleep with such abandon and trust, he thought. Watching her, he hoped she could and would sleep like that her whole life.
“Ladybug?”
“Daddy?” Her eyelids fluttered. “Why are you here?”
“I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by for one of your super-powered hugs.”
Without another word, his daughter popped up and hugged him tight.
“I love you, my Ladybug. I want you to know that.”
“Mmm . . . hmm . . .” Becca wiggled, and Jeremy reluctantly let her go. She flopped back into the pillows.
“You sleep now.”
She curled onto her side.
He walked out of the room and pulled the door shut save a couple inches. Krista waited for him in the hallway. “Do you want to come downstairs? We can talk some more.”
Jeremy shook his head. “Not tonight. What I said when I arrived still stands, Krista. You and I . . .” He motioned two fingers between them. “This is no ‘conscious uncoupling,’ this is no ‘respectful and mutual parenting,’ and I won’t pretend with you any longer. We’ll talk someday, but not now.”
“When?” she called after him as he reached the downstairs hallway.
“Someday.”
Chapter 40
Alyssa heard the front door open. By the light of the corner streetlamp she saw her mom step onto the porch. Janet paused in the dark, and Alyssa wondered if her mom could see her tucked into the porch swing.
“I’m here,” she said.
Janet turned to face her daughter. “I saw your car out back, but you didn’t come inside.”
“I wasn’t ready to come in, and it’s nice out here . . . I went to Mirabella.”
“How is Lexi?” Janet crossed the porch and perched in the chair next to the swing. Alyssa shrugged away the feeling of loss. It was mingled with regret and tinged with responsibility. She knew, if given the choice, her mom would have sat beside her.
“She was too busy to talk. I didn’t want to anyway. I just wanted to be . . .”
“Someplace safe?” Janet interjected.
“Something like that.” Alyssa pushed her foot against the porch floorboards and set the swing into motion.
“What happened today? It’s more than what you said.”
Alyssa looked at her mom.
“It felt personal,” she added.
Alyssa stayed silent.
Janet talked on, unfazed. “I blew up at your dad tonight. I called off the wedding.”
“You didn’t.” Alyssa shot straight up.
“I did. Then I went to his apartment and we talked some more and it’s back on. But do you know what he said when I called it off?”
Alyssa shook her head again.
“He told me to ‘figure it out’ and to stop using him as a safety net. Then he asked who’d flipped out on me, you or Grandma. Those were his two choices. All these years . . .” Janet laughed, a short, sad sound. “Part of me is annoyed he never let me in on it before, and part of me is stunned he figured out what I never could. But maybe I was too close to see. And I probably would have attacked him for even suggesting it.”
She sat back and Alyssa noted her head tilt up to the porch ceiling.
“I’ve spent the past five months trying to make amends, ask for forgiveness, and experience all that grace, joy, and good stuff I know exists. You weren’t around last February, but I hit rock bottom—which was a new low because I thought I’d hit rock bottom the night your dad left . . . Anyway, as I said, I’ve spent the past five months imagining a new way to live, but never once did I take a step back to recognize I would, despite my best intentions, keep making mistakes—daily—nor did I examine what ran, like an underground river, beneath certain situations and certain relationships. Currents that needed to change.”
Janet leaned forward and dropped her focal point to Alyssa. “They change tonight.” She let the sentence settle between them before continuing. “And while I hope you’ll stick around and get to know me, and let us change this dynamic between us, you’re an adult. You should move to where you want, work where you choose, and know you will always be welcome here. You will always be loved here. You are my daughter, and despite how you have ever felt, I was always on your side. Most of the time I had no idea how to best show you, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true. However . . .”
She paused, and Alyssa felt herself lean forward in anticipation.
“No blaming me for your choices any longer. They are yours. You get to own them. So if you stay, stay. If you leave, run toward something. Don’t run away convincing yourself I drove you to it. And if you want to talk, I’ll ask you once again . . . What happened today?”
“I can’t . . . I can’t talk about it.”
“Okay, then.” Janet stood and stepped toward her. Alyssa detected the notes of jasmine and lily she’d caught in her mom’s studio that day. She breathed deeper and felt herself unfurl with the promise of sunlight, hope, and summer—everything Janet’s perfume held within it.
Her mom kissed her forehead. “I love you, sweetheart. Good night.”
The porch’s wooden planks creaked as Janet stepped toward the door. The screen screeched slightly at her pull. Time was running out . . .
“I tried to rationalize it away, convince myself that what XGC did wasn’t as bad as, say, what Theranos did, but I was wrong. Maybe it was even worse. And I’m responsible for that. I was part of that. And look at me—a celiac who spent her career working predictive analytics against autoimmunes and didn’t catch her own. And I’ll be okay. But after what I did, some people will never be. Never.”
Janet nodded. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
“What?” She asked the question softly, wanting an answer more than an argument.
“A little Shakespeare for you . . . You always say numbers tell a story, but it’s not a whole story, sweetheart. We’re more complex than that. You may not have been a celiac three years ago when you handed in your own lab tests. And in the end, here, maybe you did find what you were looking for all along. You can’t see the whole picture or even how scenes, strivings, events, moments, desires . . . They all overlay one another. As for others, I don’t know. My heart breaks that anyone was hurt by this, but you can’t know their whole stories either. To take that on, to take that blame, is a hubris beyond anything imagined.”
Alyssa felt her lips part and pressed them together. “How did I ever think I understood you? I have no idea what you mean there.”
“The point is, you do what you can, and the rest, you must now let it go.”
“How? I can’t make it better. To do what I can is tiny, insignificant. It’s too big. And even how I got there . . . You were right. I blamed you and I ran. Then, even after I left and how I left, you supported me. You got practically the whole town to sign up with XGC. I liked that, by the way. I never called and thanked you, but I knew it was you who did that for me. It was promoted all around the company. I was so proud—and look what happened. All those people. Some here in Winsome. I’m responsible for their pain.”
Janet crossed back to the swing and sat on the end. Her weight sent it into a slight sway. “That’s too much. You must see that.”
Alyssa shifted her gaze from her mom. “I don’t know how to forgive myself. I don’t know how to stop fighting and pushing and kicking. It’s all I do, but it’s not me. It feels horrible and it’s exhausting. I just want to be myself again. My real self again.”
The words sat between them. Alyssa didn’t even know what they meant so much as what they might feel like if they became true. She also knew where she’d read them. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble.
“And who is that?” Her mom leaned over and lifted a strand of hair from across her forehead and tucked it behind her ear.
“Someone who doesn’t feel anxious and angry all the time. Someone who doesn’t mess up everything she touches. Someone who doesn’t pick fights when she doesn’t even want to. Someone who can do good things . . . Someone who feels joy. Someone who can stay.”
Janet laughed. “Oh, sweetheart, you aren’t that first person and you can be and are the second. You’ve been through a lot, and you don’t mess up all the time, and we’ve both picked plenty of unnecessary fights, but that can change too. And you do ‘good things,’ as you call them. And . . .” Her mom stalled so long Alyssa shifted to see her better. “Give yourself a little grace. That’s where you need to start. Recognize you didn’t single-handedly create the problems at XGC—that’s your hurt pride talking, and I get that—but you need to let it go. Trust the FBI to see it through.” Janet shifted closer to her daughter. “Come home and stay. Because despite all the bad, it feels right for you too. There’s been good these past weeks.”
She offered the words with an upward lilt, as if unsure of their reception.
Alyssa soaked them in.
“It was never the perfect plan because I wanted it; it was the perfect plan because you wanted it. And despite any misgivings, you sure stepped into it. Ask Lexi, Jeremy, or Eve . . . Ask me . . .” Janet tipped back against the swing’s wood slats. “And of course you’ll still mess up. I certainly learned that tonight. We all do.”
Alyssa sputtered out a laugh. “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“It should.” Janet reached an arm around her and pulled her close. “Recognizing that is the most freeing thing in the world.”
Alyssa snuggled closer to her mom and felt it.
The fight was over.
Chapter 41
The next morning, Alyssa found her mom making coffee in the kitchen and her grandmother sitting stern and silent at the island.
“What’s going on?” She looked between them.
“Grandma came to check on you, and she thinks your father and I are rushing this wedding.”
“I didn’t say that,” Grandma barked.
Janet pressed her lips shut and filled the coffee maker’s glass carafe with water.
Alyssa manufactured a laugh to cut the tension. “It’s not like they weren’t married for almost thirty years, Grandma. I doubt they’ll have many surprises.”
If she expected that to smooth ruffled feathers or warm the kitchen’s interior frost, she was wrong. Her grandmother stared at her, and her mom worked the coffee maker with such focus one might think it brand-new rather than ten years old.
“Why don’t you share your thoughts?” Grandma lifted her chin to Alyssa.
Janet’s eyes flashed to her, and a torrent of conversations, some years old and some days old, rushed at Alyssa. Calls to Grandma to complain about her mom, heedless as to whether the charges were true; feeding the discord between her mom and grandmother because it kept the focus off her; her comment only weeks ago at her dinner with Grandma that Mom had manipulated Dad again—she always gets her way.
But that was before, Alyssa thought, before she listened. Before she understood. It didn’t matter. She had said those very words.
“I was wrong.” She placed her hands on the island in front of her and spoke only to her grandmother. “I said I thought Mom was manipulating the situation.” She glanced to her mom. “But that was when I had a vested interest in believing that. If I could point the finger at her, I didn’t have to look at me.”
“Now don’t go blaming yourself, dear. That’s not what we’re talking about here.” Grandma reached over and covered Alyssa’s hand with her own.
“But we are.”
Alyssa slid her hand out from under her grandmother’s and walked over to her mom. She hugged her from behind, facing her grandmother over Janet’s shoulder. “And I say it’s going to be a gorgeous wedding, just what they deserve, and Lexi and I are going to finish planning it.”
Janet spun. “It’s going to be small and it’s all set.”
“You’ve got Pastor Zach coming to the living room and a booth at Mirabella. I don’t think so.”
Janet stared at her. Her expression tender, eyes glistening. Alyssa nodded. She understood. The currents were changing.
Grandma cut across the moment. “That’s all it should be. Anything more would be inappropriate. This is a second wedding, to the same person. We don’t celebrate indiscretions.”
A shocked “Grandma” and a “Mom” issued simultaneously from Alyssa and Janet.
Alyssa looked at her mom, who stepped away and turned back to her coffee making.
“Grandma, we are celebrating a marriage. And I hope you’ll come ready to have a good time, because it’s going to be beautiful . . . Excuse me, I’ve got to go call Lexi.”
As she walked out of the room, she heard her grandmother huff. “Fine. Have it your way. You always do.”
Alyssa glanced back. Her mom’s eyes were fixed on her own. Her face beamed.
Neither replied to Grandma.
Alyssa watched Lexi pour champagne into a dozen flute glasses as she crossed Mirabella’s dining room. “I’m sorry you’re working and not enjoying this.”
“Are you kidding me? I’m having a blast.” She slid the flutes to Liam one by one. He poured fresh peach puree into each, transforming them into his famous Bellinis. “To see your parents so happy. This is the least I could do.”
“We actually pulled it off.” Alyssa twisted to look out into the restaurant. She now saw what they’d been too tired to recognize at 3:00 a.m. What they thought veered toward kitschy and simple, homemade and underwhelming, looked beyond lovely—and felt like the first “good thing” Alyssa had done in a very long time.
