Chapter Twenty-Four
Colton
Today, I saw my father cry for the first time in my life. General Andrew Bishop is an old school, tough as nails, didn’t shed a tear when he took a bullet through the chest, kind of man. When I came walking through baggage claim in the Yeager Airport, I saw tears streaming down his face. It took me by surprise. Growing up, the only emotions my father expressed were anger and disappointment, mainly aimed at me. Needless to say, I liked to push my father’s buttons. But what really shocked me was when he hugged me. My mom is the hugger in my family. Everyone who walked through our door got a hug, and she would just randomly hug you when you least expected it. The closest to human contact my father got was a hand shake. I don’t know what happened over the past ten years, but my father is a completely different person.
It took three phone calls to my mother, all of which she hung up on me when I announced I was her son, and one long, tearful Skype call for my parents to believe I was really alive. I would have had the same reaction if someone called me claiming to be my dead son. The following day I was on a plane back home to Charleston.
“I will have your stripes, Sergeant, if the idiot who switch my son’s records isn’t court marshalled by the end of the month,” my father barks into the phone, as he paces back and forth in the kitchen. It feels oddly comforting watching my father lose his shit. I never thought I would actually miss that.
“Andrew, go to your office.” My mother pushes him out the door she just walked through with an arm full of photo albums. She set the albums down on the table and walked around to where I am sitting. Her hands cup my face and my eyes fall closed. God, how I missed the warmth and love of her touch. All the way home she sat next to me in the back seat, holding my hand and crying. When she first laid eyes on me in the airport she looked like she had seen a ghost. We stood in the middle of baggage claim for a good five minutes while she held my face in her hands and studied every angle of my face. The whole time she whispered, my son, my son is alive. I held my hands over hers keeping them in place, needing more of her touch.
“I’m sorry I keep touching you. I have to keep reminding myself that you are real and not a dream.” She lets out a solemn sigh. “There is a fear that if I close my eyes, you will disappear again.” The tears begin to well up in her eyes again.
“I’m really here,” I assure her and rub my cheek against her hand. The fear she is feeling, I feel it too. If I close my eyes will I wake up not knowing who I am again? Another hit to the head and I could lose it all again, and I may never get it back.
“I’m mad as hell that we lost you for ten years, but I am damn happy we have you back.” She leans in and kisses my forehead and the top of my head before hugging me. It feels good to remember that she used to do that at night when she would tuck me in. It always made me feel so safe. It’s making me feel safe now. She kisses the top of my head again before pulling away. “I’m going to make us some coffee, we have a lot of catching up to do.”
She walks over to the coffee pot, and I take the opportunity to ask the question that has been plaguing my mind since I woke up. “Mom, where are Lucy and Bailey?”
She adds a couple scoops of coffee in the machine and turns it on, then turns back to me. She takes in a deep breath, using the time to figure out what she is going to say. “After the funeral, Lucy packed up Bailey and moved back to Seattle to be closer to her family. Your father and I offered to let her and Bailey move in here with us, but it was too hard for her to be here without you. We understood she needed to be with her family. She lets Bailey come visit us during summer vacation, and we fly up to Seattle for Christmas and Easter.” It shouldn’t surprise me that Lucy would go home to Seattle. We were going to move there after I got home from my final tour of duty.
We had long talks about it. She was going to open her coffee and book shop. I was going to handle the business side while she made the coffee and desserts. Lucy was never the best at keeping banking records, or being organized, for that matter, but she could make one damn good cup of coffee. We were going to have a permanent home where we could raise Bailey and future babies. I was going to be home more than a few months at a time to make those babies.
“I want to go see her and Bailey.”
“Sweetheart, maybe you should wait a little while. Get your bearings before you rush off to see them.” She sets a cup of coffee in front of me then sits across from me at the table.
“Mom, I don’t care if she’s moved on and has a husband.” That is slightly a lie. After ten years, I can’t expect her to have not moved on, but it would still break my heart to see her with someone else.
My mom reaches over and lays her hand over mine. “Losing you almost broke Lucy. It was a very dark time for her, and if it wasn’t for Bailey, she never would have survived. It took her a very long time to pull herself out of that darkness. Seeing you again could destroy her.”
“I know what you are saying is true, but it still doesn’t take away my need to see her. Lucy is my wife, we have a child, and we started a life together. Even if she is remarried, I just need closure and to know that she is happy. I want to see my daughter and have a relationship with her.” I just need to see my girls, no matter how hard it is going to be.
“At least let me and your father ease her into the fact that you are home, then we can work on you going to see them. Until then, here, look through these.” She slides the stack of photo albums in my direction. “These are all the pictures we have of Bailey.”
I take one of the books off the top of the stack. Inside, the first picture I see is the one of me holding Bailey on the day she was born. The memory of that day plays in my mind. Lucy and I were at the grocery store picking up dinner and the gallons upon gallons of rocky road ice cream that Lucy had been craving, when her water broke in frozen foods. We barely made it to the hospital in time before Bailey made her grand entrance. Bailey wasted no time coming into this world, she was almost born in the parking lot outside the emergency room. That was one of the happiest days of my life.
My heart sinks when I get to the picture of Bailey after her second birthday, after I was in their world dead. She looks so much like Lucy. The same sweet vibrant smile and bright blue eyes, but she has my nose and my dark hair. She is a perfect mix of me and Lucy. The further I get into the albums, seeing her grow up right before my eyes, the more it pains my heart that I missed it. I missed birthday parties, her first day of school, getting to tuck her in at night, and hugging her. I’ve missed everything and it’s killing me.
I know my mother wants me to wait, but I can’t wait another day to be in my daughter’s life. I’ve missed ten years already, and I don’t want to miss another second of her growing up.