CHAPTER 14
Melissa
I hurry into my childhood home, a classic colonial located on one of the prettiest streets in Bryn Mawr. “Dad?” I call out.
Mae, the woman who used to clean our home years ago, hurries out from the kitchen wiping her hands. “Hello, love,” she says, in her sweet British accent.
I hug her warmly when she pulls me into her arms. I’d reached out to Mae a few days ago to tell her Dad was sick and asked her if she’d consider returning to the states to take care of him. After spending the last few years living in the small English town where she grew up, I thought I’d have to beg her to return. She didn’t hesitate and hopped on the first available flight. But Mae had always been good to us.
“How is he?” I ask.
Tears fill her soft hazel eyes and she forces a smile. “He’s had a rough day, love.”
My hand tightens over the handle of the paper bag I’m carrying. “He seemed okay when I picked him up from chemo yesterday. Tired, but in good spirits. How did he sleep?”
She hesitates to tell me, not because she doesn’t want me to know, but because she doesn’t want me scared. Mae is sweet like that. “He woke up a few hours after you left and spent the remainder of the night vomiting. I gave him some of the nausea medication the doctor prescribed. It helped settle the nausea, but he’s still not well enough to eat.”
“He hasn’t eaten all day?” I ask. My focus travels up the wooden steps and to the second floor.
“He hasn’t. But he’s drinking well and keeping the fluids down.” She squeezes my arm. “That’s a good thing.”
“It is,” I say, though my attention stays on the staircase.
“Have you eaten?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Not yet. I planned to eat with him. I made his favorite . . .” I swallow the lump building in my throat. It shouldn’t make me so sad to describe my father’s favorite foods, but it does. I hate that he’s hurting and so sick. And I hate that the doctors aren’t giving me more than “we’ll see how he responds to the chemo.”
“Melissa?”
“I’m sorry?” I ask. I’m so lost in my thoughts I didn’t hear a single word she said.
Mae looks back at me with all the heartbreak I carry. “I said I can heat up the soup in the kitchen if you’re hungry, but the smell might upset your father’s stomach. Don’t take it upstairs, all right? I don’t want to risk him vomiting again.”
I skipped lunch to handle a case Children and Youth had dropped the ball on, one that had Declan reeling. And I’d missed breakfast because he’d spent the night. I haven’t eaten all day and I was practically drooling the entire ride here, the smell of the Irish stew I threw together wafting through every inch of my car.
But I wanted to eat with my father. Now that I know he can’t eat, and how he’s doing, I’m no longer so hungry. “I’ll just have some juice.”
Mae lifts the paper bag from my hand. “Go up. I’ll bring it to you as soon as I call in a refill for your father.”
I don’t want to take advantage of her kindness and think I should just get my own damn juice. But God, I’m so tired, I’ll take any help that I can.
“Thank you, Mae.” I say, starting up the steps.
She’s such a gift. I wish her time with us hadn’t been so brief. She was only with us a year, but it was such a good year. I broke down when I picked her up at the airport, knowing she’d take care of Dad in my absence.
I reach his door and knock gently. “Dad?”
I poke my head in when he doesn’t answer. He’s lying in bed on an angle, a stack of pillows strategically placed along his back to keep him comfortable. He has a nurse that comes in four times a week, but today was her day off. This was all Mae.
He’s wearing his light blue pajamas that I bought him for his birthday. The thought of him not seeing his next birthday crosses my mind, but I quickly shove away the thought.
The T.V. is on, but his eyes are closed. “Daddy? Are you awake?” I whisper.
“Of course I am. It’s seven o’clock at night.” He frowns with his eyes closed. “Are you calling me old?”
I laugh because he wants me to, not because I feel like laughing. The chemo has turned his once fair skin a horrible shade of gray. I slip beside him. “Mae says you’re not eating.”
He shrugs. “I need to lose weight anyway.”
My eyes skim to his belly. The bulge once so prominent is now almost gone. He hasn’t been the same since the surgery. I didn’t expect an immediate recovery. But this chemo seems to be slowly killing him.
I shrug out of my coat and place it on the end of his four-poster bed, removing one of my hearing aids so I can cuddle against him and lay my head on his shoulder. “When you’re up for it, there’s Irish stew downstairs,” I tell him.
“Sounds good.”
“You’re lying.”
“You’re right, it sounds awful,” he grumbles. “Damn nausea.”
I smile against him, mostly because I’ve always liked feeling close to him. My smile falters when I inhale and smell the pungent odor of medicine. There’s nothing left of his familiar aroma that hints of home and comfort. All that’s there is the reminder of the cancer he’s battling.
A battle I’m not certain he’ll win.
I kick off my heels and curl closer, shaking off the negative thoughts. Instead I focus on all the good things that make my father who he is, and everything that makes lying against him so special. He feels as warm as always, and I fit as perfectly against him as I did the first time I allowed him to hold me.
“Do you remember the first night we became a family?”
“Of course,” he says. “I still have the scars to prove it.
I laugh, this time meaning it. “Sorry, I bit you.”
“Yeah. It shows.” He laughs now because I’m not the frightened child he attempted to welcome into his home.
When we met, I was so taken by his soft brown eyes and how safe he made me feel, even though I couldn’t understand him. But when the social worker dropped me off at his house, I thought she was shoving me into the arms of a man who planned to hurt me, exactly as my mother had. I kicked and screamed, and yes, also bit him.
Dad, bless his heart, backed away, holding his bleeding hands out and mouthing words I couldn’t understand. I curled into a ball, sobbing in the corner of the living room. Even after all these years, the memory is so vivid.
I was hysterical and cried myself into exhaustion. When I woke, I had a warm blanket around me. Dad was sleeping a few feet away on the floor, wearing the suit he’d worn to work.
He fed me Cheerios that morning. To this day I always smile every time I see a box in the store.
“I’m surprised you didn’t send me right back into foster care,” I confess. That first night with him was one of many nights I’d freaked out on him.
“Oh, believe me, I thought about it more than once,” he admits.
“Daddy!”
He laughs, stroking my arm. “It’s not that I didn’t love you right away.”
“It’s that you didn’t like me,” I finish for him.
He pauses. “Yeah, you kind of sucked.”
I throw back my head, laughing. He laughs right along with me, kissing my head. “Melissa, I knew I couldn’t let you go from the moment I saw you. But I was in way over my head and doubted whether I was the best parent for you. All the men I knew told me I was crazy, and all the women regarded me like a creep who belonged on some list.”
I giggle, that much I knew. “Except for Grandma and Grandpa.”
“Yes, God rest their souls.” He angles his body so he can look at me. “Every night I came home, I begged your Grandma to stay, knowing you were more trusting of her than you were of me. But every night she left me and told me to get to know my daughter.” He winks. “I’m glad that I did.”
“I’m glad you did, too,” I say, remembering how it took several months before I’d allow him to hold me. “When did you know we were going to be okay?” I ask.
He thinks about it for so long, I start to wonder if he fell asleep. I glance up almost at the same moment he begins to speak. “You’d been letting me tuck you into bed for a while.” He shifts beneath me. “Do you remember? I’d sign to you that it was bedtime. Like a good little girl, you’d stop coloring, or whatever you were doing, and follow me upstairs. I’d watch you brush your teeth―by the way you kind of sucked at the teeth brushing thing, too.”
“Oh, the truth finally comes out,” I interrupt.
“And your taste in clothing was only so-so.”
“Dad, I was six.”
He chuckles. “Anyway, I’d wait for you to get into bed and lightly place the blankets around you. But I wouldn’t get too close, and avoid direct contact. One night, I took a chance. I signed, ‘goodnight, I love you’ like always, but this time I kissed your head. Your eyes widened like you were scared. I walked out, thinking I made a big mistake and probably set us back.” He pauses for a moment. “But in the morning when I woke, you were lying asleep beside me. That’s when I knew we would be okay.”
My eyes burn as I recall that memory. “It’s because I didn’t know what love was.”
“What?” he asks.
“I didn’t understand love. I knew the word by signing it because it was one of the first words you asked the ASL teacher to teach you. But I didn’t know what it meant until you showed me.”
“Oh.”
It’s such a simple word he says. But I feel the tears behind it, just like I feel the ones filling my eyes.
Mae walks in, carrying my juice. She takes one look at us, places the juice on the table, and runs away sobbing.
“Nice. Way to make Mae cry,” he says like it’s my fault.
I wipe the tears that manage to escape, although by now I’m laughing. “You started it.”
“No. You did,” he says, coughing as he chuckles.
I push up and sit beside him, worried he’s not as comfortable with me so close to him. “What’s new at the office?” he asks.
“The usual: violent cases, a rotating door for repeat offenders, and the staff cracking inappropriate jokes to get through it.”
He waits before asking, “How’s Declan handling it?”
I think about everything Declan has taken on, and how he makes running the office and juggling his caseload appear effortless. The staff, as much as they were hesitant to approach him as acting D.A., as if somehow afraid that they were betraying Dad, all but run to Declan now. He’s earned their respect by working hard and supporting his team. It’s only when we’re alone that I see the toll the responsibilities have taken on him. But I don’t tell my father as much, keeping my response brief. “He’s doing really well.”
“Good,” he says. “I knew he would.”
“And we’re sleeping together.”
Oh, and there’s that dramatic pause I was expecting.
“That’s great, honey,” he says slowly.
“Dad . . .”
“No, really, it’s what every father wants to hear.”
“Daddy.” He reaches for the remote and flips the channel. “Are you seriously going to watch ESPN now?”
“Yup,” he answers, turning up the volume.
It’s the same thing he did when I told him I lost my virginity to Samuel Hudson. “You wanted this,” I point out. He turns back to me, raising his brows. “Okay, maybe not all the sex.”
“All the sex?” he asks, making a face. “How long has this been going on?”
“A few weeks.” Actually, several times a night over the past few weeks, but Dad is already looking ill enough. No need to share the dirty details. Although . . . if he weren’t so sick, I might have told him how Declan showed up at my door dressed as a hot pirate the other night.
“Argh,” he’d said, right before I pounced.
“Are things serious between you?” Dad asks.
They’re serious for me, but that’s definitely not what my father needs to hear. “I’m not sure. We spend a lot of time together, inside and outside of work, but . . .” I shrug. “No one at the office knows. We’re keeping it quiet―”
“Mae and I have been having sex for years,” he blurts out.
I can actually feel my jaw unhinge.
“The first time was when you were fourteen. You were away at camp. I came home early and found her on her hands and knees scrubbing the bathroom floor. One thing led to another and―”
“You had sex with Mae on the bathroom floor!” I cover my mouth when I realize how loud I’m being.
He bats his hands, shushing me. “It’s just one of those things that sort of happened,” he says.
For as green as he appears, there’s no squelching that twinkle in his eye. “‘Sort of happened?’” I gasp.
“Yes.” He gives it some thought. “The next few times were in the cabana, and a couple of times in the pool. Oh, the kitchen was also another favorite.”
“You were busy that week I was at camp,” I say, trying really hard not envision all the places they defiled in my absence.
He shakes his hand out. “Oh, no, those moments came later that summer. We’d take advantage of the times you were out with friends, or fishing with your grandpa. But yes, your week away made for some interesting adventures.”
“‘Interesting adventures? You tramp,” I say, cracking up.
He sighs. “She always looked good in that apron.”
I slump back against the headboard. “Golly gee and wow, Dad, how many time did you and Mae hike up Smut Mountain?”
“I told you, years,” he says like I’m not paying attention.
“Years?” I repeat. “But she was only with us the one year.” My voice trails when I realize what happened. “Oh, my God. Your trips to Europe, when I was at college, they were to see Mae, weren’t they?”
“They were,” he admits, his voice growing distant.
“Why didn’t you ever do anything about it?”
He tries to smile, though this time it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “Because her home was in England, and mine was here with you.”
My heart stalls as I work up the courage to ask him what I already know. “If I weren’t around, would you have followed her to England?”
“I don’t know,” he answers.
It’s what he says, but I don’t believe him.
Mae walks in, pretending as if she hasn’t spent the last few minutes bawling her eyes out. I thought she cried for me and Dad. And maybe she did. But I realize now that maybe she cried for them, too.
“Miles,” she says. “It’s time for your medicine, dear.”
He sits up as she hurries to his side of the bed. He smiles at her as she fills a medicine cup with a thick brown liquid. I catch a fondness between them I’ve never noticed. But I see it now. It’s probably always been there.
Despite everything we talked about, it’s their interaction that causes me to lose my composure on the drive home.
My father gave up so much.
Including his happiness in exchange for mine.