Darlene
The next day, Monday, I struggled through my shift at Serenity. My foot throbbed with a second heartbeat and by three o’clock, I was fighting back tears. Whitney, my supervisor, was more concerned that my boot was ‘unsightly.’
“If it’s too much, maybe you should stay home tomorrow,” she said in the break room as I readied to head out.
I took up my cane and limped past her, my chin up. “I’ve dealt with worse.”
The Muni home was blessedly empty. I put my aching foot up on the seat beside me and fantasized about three Advil, my bed, and maybe a Sylvia Plath poem or two.
As I was making the arduous block-and-a-half trek to the Victorian, my phone rang with a number I didn’t recognize. I rested on someone else’s front stoop and answered.
“Hello?”
“Darlene Montgomery?” an older woman’s voice asked.
“Yes…?”
“This is Alice Abbott.”
I froze, a bolt of anger-laced fear ripping through me. “Yes? What is it? Is Livvie okay?”
“She’s…upset. She didn’t sleep well last night. Or at all, really.”
“Why not?”
A pause.
“She misses Sawyer. I wondered if we might come over to his place for a bit? So that she can play with her toys there and maybe sleep in her own bed.”
I pressed my lips together. The poor woman sounded tired and more than a little sad, though she tried to hide it. I was caught between wanting to comfort her and wanting to chew her out.
“Come over,” I said. “I think I can get a key from Elena.”
“Thank you, Darlene,” Alice said, and I heard Olivia’s plaintive cry in the background. “Thank you so much.”
Elena gave me Sawyer’s spare key, and I waited in his place. I scattered a few of Olivia’s blocks out on the floor in case she wanted to play with them.
Twenty minutes later, the door buzzed and I limped over to let them up. I left the door ajar, then started the journey back to the sofa. Footsteps, voices, and Olivia’s little cries stopped me. She pushed the door open first and my heart broke at her distraught expression and tear-stained cheeks.
“Where Daddy?” she cried, looking around her home. Her blue eyes, shining with tears, found mine. “Dareen. Where Daddy? Where Daddy?”
“Oh, honey, come here.”
She hurried to me, bypassing the blocks on the floor, and I picked her up and held her close. Her little body shuddered with sobs, and I glared daggers at the Abbotts coming in the door behind her.
But my anger burnt out with one glance at their kind faces. They both looked exhausted and worn out; identical defeated expressions of the best intentions gone awry.
“We didn’t know what else to do,” Alice said, and Gerald put his arm around her.
“She’s very…astute for such a young child,” Gerald said. “None of the diversions our supervisor told us to try have worked.”
“She doesn’t want a diversion,” I said in a low voice. “She wants her daddy.”
I limped to Sawyer’s chair at his desk and sat with Olivia against my chest.
“Where Daddy?” she sniffled against my neck. “Wan’ Daddy.”
“I know you do. He’ll be home soon, sweat pea. Soon.”
I rubbed her back and rocked her as best I could. The Abbotts sat at the kitchen table, watching me as if I were a lion-tamer or magician. Olivia’s crying tapered away to hiccupping sobs, and then she fell asleep.
“Should I put her down in her bed?” Alice whispered, rising from her chair.
“No, I want to hold her,” I said. “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to.”
Gerald and Alice both stiffened, looking both chagrined and defensive at the same time. Alice sat back down.
“I’m just being honest,” I said. “I know you’re doing what you think is right, but it’s hurting people I love.”
“I know,” Alice said tiredly. “We’re the bad guys, aren’t we? But Molly…she was our only daughter. And Olivia is our last tie to her. She’s our family.”
“She’s Sawyer’s family too,” I said.
“Are you sure about that?” Gerald asked.
I didn’t answer. I held and comforted Olivia for long moments in the strange silence between the four of us, until my arm—already sore from massaging all day, began to complain.
“My arm’s getting numb,” I said. “I’m going to put her down after all.”
With effort, I hauled myself out of the chair and carried Olivia to her bed. I set her down and she whimpered and stirred like she was going to wake up. But within moments, her little chest rose and fell, and the splotchy red of her cheeks from crying had faded.
I limped back to the kitchen and sat down at Sawyer’s table, with the Abbotts. The air between us was thin and tight, and I, who usually burst out the first words that came to mind, knew that I had to choose them carefully. To help Sawyer if I could.
Don’t fuck this up, don’t fuck this up, don’t fuck this up…
“How did you injure your foot?” Alice asked.
“It wasn’t from chasing my next high,” I said, and inwardly winced.
Good start, Dar. That should do the trick.
Gerald bristled. “Our attorney suggested we find out precisely who is living in the same house as our only granddaughter.”
“You have to understand,” Alice said. “We hadn’t seen her in two years. Her calls and texts became more sporadic and then stopped altogether. We lived in fear of one of those visits from the highway patrol, or the phone call in the middle of the night.”
“And then we got one,” Gerald said. “Our baby was gone, but her friend told us she’d had one of her own.”
Alice’s eyes filled with tears. “I’ve never been so scared and…lost. Our only child was gone and her baby—a helpless, little baby—was in the hands of a complete stranger.” She composed herself and met my gaze steadily. “We had to act. To find her and protect her.”
“We thought Sawyer would be happy to see us,” Gerald said. “Or at least friendly enough that we could get to know each other. To work together and…maybe build something.”
“But he thought you were coming to tear everything down,” I said softly. “Aren’t you?”
Alice’s hands twisted on the table, her brows drawn together. “I hate that I feel this way. That we’re trying to do the right thing for Olivia, as we should, and yet it feels wrong too.”
Gerald covered her hand with his.
“We were prepared to let the judge read the paternity test results,” he said. “In fact, we were fairly certain, even before Sawyer spoke, what the outcome would be.”
“But then Sawyer spoke,” Alice said, picking up where her husband’s thought left off with the ease of two people who have been married for decades. “He spoke and I had hope that he was the sort of man who would let two strangers—family and strangers both—share Olivia’s life. But after the hearing, he was cold again. So cold.”
“He’s not cold,” I said. “If he’s an asshole it’s because he’s scared you’re going to take Olivia from him. Doesn’t he have every right to fear that?”
“Is he her father?” Gerald asked, with a directness that said whatever his occupation had been, he was used to being in charge.
I lifted my chin. “Yes,” I said. “He is. By every standard that matters.”
They exchanged pained looks. “I just wish we’d seen more of him as he was at the hearing. If we had assurance that he…was loving and kind, that Olivia felt cherished by him…”
“She is,” I said softly. “God, she is. I wish you could see them together when he thinks no one is looking. How he smiles at her, or makes her laugh; how he cooks her healthy food and makes sure she eats her peas, while he heats up a frozen dinner for himself because he’s working so damn hard to create a beautiful life for her.”
I wiped my cheek, and shook my head. “How you saw him at the hearing is who he really is. Underneath the prickly armor, he’s full of love and humor and goodness, and he would never let anything hurt that little girl.” I inhaled a ragged breath. “He wants to protect her because he knows what it’s like to not have a mom.”
Gerald sat up straighter, and Alice’s hand went to her throat. “He does?”
“He got the same visit from the highway patrol that you did. A drunk driver killed his mother when he and his brother were little. His entire world fell apart. His family fell apart, and I know that he wants Olivia to have more than he did.” I leaned my arms over the table toward them. “He wants you in her life, I swear it. He won’t shut you out, but… he wants full custody too.”
They bristled at this and I ventured to touch Alice’s hand. “Isn’t that a good thing? He doesn’t want to be a part-time dad. But that doesn’t mean he wants to do this alone, either.”
“Olivia seems quite fond of you,” Alice said. “Will you be a part of her life too?”
“I’d like that,” I said. “I’m quite fond of her too. And I know what you must be thinking about me. What Holloway dug up on me is true. I was arrested and did time in jail. But what his investigation didn’t show you was how hard I’ve worked to get past that. I’ve been clean for a really long time, and I’m never going back. Not only for the people I love, but for me too. Especially for me.”
The Abbotts were quiet, though it seemed as if they exchanged a thousand thoughts with one look.
“Does that couch fold out?” Gerald asked after a moment, nodding at the sofa.
Hope bloomed in my chest. “Only one way to find out.”
The couch did fold out and Gerald went back to the condo to pack a few things for Olivia and Alice to stay through until Wednesday.
“Do you think Sawyer will mind?” Alice asked. “We’re invading his space…”
“He won’t mind,” I said, “because Olivia is home.”
Alice met my eye. “I think it’s important you know that our being here doesn’t mean we’re giving up our petition, necessarily.”
“I know,” I said. “But I’m glad you’re here.”
Her eyes widened and a small smile lit up her face for a fleeting moment. “Are you? I’ve been feeling like the evil witch in a story.”
Her pain was there, just beneath the surface of her coiffed and elegant exterior and I realized that on top of everything, she was mourning her child.
“I’m sorry about Molly,” I said.
Tears filled her eyes at the name; the name that she’d said a million times over her child’s life, and was now imbedded in her soul. It had meaning and conjured memories only she could know.
“Where did we go wrong?” she whispered, more to herself than me. “We did everything right. Good schools, opportunities, and we loved her. God, we loved her.”
In my mind, I saw Max leaning against a pillar, arms crossed, smiling at me expectantly. I drew in a breath.
“When I was sixteen, I was in the running for a dance scholarship to an academy in New York. My parents weren’t one hundred percent on board, but a scholarship meant something to them. They were proud of me, in their own way. And my teachers and friends were sure I’d get it. But I was petrified. I felt like I was so close to catching something I’d wanted even before I had a name for it.”
I toyed with the cuff of my ratty gray sweater.
“The night before the audition, I went to a party. Some guy offered me Ecstasy and I took it, even knowing it would keep me up all night and wreck me for the audition in the morning. I took it because that euphoria was right there and I didn’t have to do anything but take a pill. I wasn’t scared any more. I didn’t have to care so hard about…everything. The desire I had in me to be, and do, and dance…I filled it up with that drug. Of course, I blew the audition, and once the X wore off, the pain of that failure swooped in. So I did the only thing I could think to do to make it go away.” I shrugged my shoulders. “I took more.”
I looked up to see Alice watching me with a mother’s eyes; full of concern and care, and I wished, just then, she’d had the chance to talk to her own daughter like this.
“I can’t speak for Molly, but maybe she was chasing something too. Something in her she couldn’t catch and she filled that emptiness the best she could.”
“We could have done more,” she said. “We should have tried harder to find her.”
“Addicts don’t always like to be found,” I said. “Sometimes it’s just as simple and awful as that.”
Alice stared at me a moment, then wiped her eyes. “Darlene, I’d like to hug you right now. May I?”
A sudden warmth spread through every part of me. My head bobbed. “Sure, yeah,” I whispered.
She pulled me into a warm embrace full of her expensive perfume, but beneath that her arms were soft and I held her tight.
She hugged me for long moments, then pulled away, laughing sheepishly. “Well. I’m suddenly very hungry. Shall we have dinner?”
I grinned. “How do you feel about tuna casserole?”