32
Bea
“Beatrice?”
A soft feminine voice called my name, and I moaned and kept my eyes closed, never wanting to get out of bed again. As soon as Damon had brought me into the hospital, the doctors had determined that our baby was fine, and upon hearing such amazing news, I’d experienced a happy rush of endorphins that had finally given way to pure exhaustion. I’d been sleeping in the hospital bed for what felt like hours now—the doctors were keeping me for observation overnight just in case—and now a very persistent doctor or nurse was trying to wake me.
“Bea?” the voice came again.
“Please…so tired…” I muttered before forcing my eyes open.
What I saw was enough to jerk me wide awake.
“Mom?”
My mother was standing by my bed, her face pale and tearstained. “Thank god…I thought we lost you,” she whispered as she reached out to stroke a loose strand of hair off my face.
“Is…”
She already seemed to know what I was going to ask before I could produce the words, and she nodded. “Yes, your father is here. He just went to get me a drink,” she said. “Oh, here he is.”
Although I knew that paranoia had led to me imagining a disappointing response from my parents during the trauma of my kidnapping, what I saw next really surprised me. My father had just entered the room with an expression I’d never seen before, or else could just not remember. It was the face of fatherly concern, very similar to that on Damon’s face earlier, when he’d taken me up in his arms, fearing a miscarriage. Similar except, like my mother, he was crying too, and I completely underestimated how seeing that would make me feel. There had been many times when I’d cried in my room, feeling no pity from my father, and at the time I had supposed that if the tables were turned on him that I would feel none either. But seeing those tears of regret and genuine remorse on his cheeks melted my heart, and I had to look away to hide my own regrets.
“Bea…oh my little Bea,” Dad said, hurrying closer to my bedside.
In response, I didn’t jump into my parents’ arms, but I didn’t shout at them either.
“You’re really here,” I murmured.
Dad nodded. “Of course we are.”
“I thought…I thought you didn’t care.”
He wiped his cheeks. “Bea, we shouldn’t have cut you off the way we did. It was wrong. I’m ashamed of how I acted when I found out you were pregnant, and I…I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself. I certainly don’t expect you to forgive me.”
“And not just that,” Mom cut in. “The way we’ve treated you over the years…it never really occurred to us just how much damage we were doing until we found out you’d been taken, and we might never see you again. And then we thought over everything we’d said and done over the years, and we realized how much it had all built up.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“We thought we were doing the best we could by controlling you and setting your life out for you,” Dad said. “I admit, I always resented my own father for treating me the same way, but at the same time, I turned out to be successful and strong. I thought I was molding you in the same way, so that you could be the best version of yourself.”
“And we knew you might resent us, but we thought you’d always come back to us,” Mom added. “And then we got the news that you’d been taken….oh, it was all our fault. We acted terribly by cutting you off, and they wouldn’t have been able to take you if we hadn’t done that. We’re awful people. Awful parents. I understand if you want us to leave right now, darling.”
I shook my head. “Don’t leave. We need to talk. And you’re right; it was pretty awful,” I said. “I just needed your support. Instead you threw me out.”
“I’m sorry,” Dad said, wiping his cheeks again. “I know it’s not enough, but I’m sorry.”
“And what about when I was taken? I felt like you weren’t doing anything to get me back.”
“We were doing everything we could. The police told us how to act and what to do. We had a professional negotiator on our team, and we were only a couple of hours away from figuring out where you were before Damon found you.”
“Damon…” I sat up straighter. “Where is he now?”
“He was arrested,” Dad said.
My heart sank. “But—”
Dad waved his hand. “We know he’s innocent, don’t worry. He was the chief suspect in your kidnapping, but we know now that he had nothing to do with it. It was a scheme by the heads of the Caruso mafia family to try and get to me. Damon was set up by them, and it’s all being sorted out as we speak.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “And the allegations they made about you and the drug smuggling…”
“Not true,” he said, vehemently shaking his head. “Just a vindictive smear campaign to stop me from running for President, because—as you’d assume from a bunch of gangsters—they didn’t like my War on Drugs campaign. But we didn’t come here to talk about my career, Bea….we came here to see you. We came to find out if you’d ever accept our apology for how awfully we’ve treated you. Not just in the last week or so; since you were a child. I’ve been far too harsh with you.”
“And I didn’t do enough to protect you from that,” Mom added.
I took a deep breath as their words washed over me, and I was silent as I mulled over my thoughts. They’d done a lot of bad things—like telling me to abort my own child and throwing me out to survive on my own—and I wasn’t ready to forgive them for that, but on the other hand, I knew that forgiveness was one of the most important things for me to manage, if I ever wanted to move on and be happy. I didn’t want to spend my life bitter and filled with regrets.
“Can I ask you something?” I finally said, my voice shaking.
“Anything.”
“Why did you tell me to abort my baby?”
My father’s face filled with genuine remorse. “We should’ve never said that. We were in shock, and you’re so young…and you made it seem like the father wasn’t going to be in the picture. But even then, that’s no excuse. We were being selfish. We were concerned with how it might reflect on my reputation, and that’s not the sort of person I want to be anymore. I don’t want to be that man who would treat his own family like dirt just to get ahead in the polls. I know it’s too late to be having this realization, but there it is.”
I nodded. “What if I hadn’t been kidnapped? Would you have still had this big realization?”
He nodded. “We already had it. That’s why I was trying to call you, just before you were taken. We knew what we did was wrong, and we were trying to get you to come and speak to us so we could beg your forgiveness.”
I sighed, remembering the three missed calls I’d had on my phone not long before I was drugged and taken by the man on campus.
“Bea?” Mom said gently when I hadn’t spoken again for a few minutes. “Do you want us to go now?”
I shook my head. “No. Not yet. I have a favor to ask.”
“Yes?”
“I know you know Damon wasn’t responsible for my kidnapping, but he still used a fake identity to get the Secret Service job. From what I remember, that’s a federal offence.”
Dad nodded. “It is.”
“Well, I know that you’ll be reserving judgement on him for a while, until you can meet him properly and see his sincerity,” I said, “but I’d rather not see the father of my child in prison. So I admit, I’m not ready to forgive you entirely yet, but if you want to start building bridges, any help you can give with Damon’s situation will go a long way.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he replied in a gruff voice, nodding. “Being the Governor does have some perks, after all. I think we’ll be able to sort out a deal where we swap prison time for a fine, in return for information on the Carusos.”
I nodded. “Okay. Thank you. I think…I think I need to sleep again now,” I said, a wave of exhaustion crashing over me again. “But when I wake up…it wouldn’t be so bad if you were both still here.”
Tears of joy filled my Mom’s eyes as I finished speaking, and both of my parents nodded as I lay back down and settled into the bed. I felt like I could sleep for a million years, knowing that everything was finally on its way to being better. It was going to take a lot for everything to really be fixed once and for all, but I was taking steps towards it; more and more every day.
When I finally got to sleep, I dreamed of the little beachside house again, with Damon and our baby playing together in the sandy garden outside, only this time, I was dreaming of it because I was happy, not just as a distraction while being held in fear by the mafia.
This time, I knew my dream was actually going to come true.