The only clock in the small one-bedroom apartment glows blue from the old microwave on the kitchen counter. The numbers are fuzzy, and it often loses time, a few minutes every now and then, like it sometimes forgets to keep counting.
It reads 6:07 PM when I leave. (Yes, me. This part of the story is all mine. There's no denying it.) I’m not sure what time it really is, but around twelve hours have passed since you spoke those bitter words. It took half a day for me to gather the courage to walk out, knowing once I did, I wouldn’t be back. I spent most of those hours staring at the door, waiting for it to open, for you to walk back in, for you to tell me you didn’t mean it.
I tear a piece of paper from the back of my notebook and stare at the blank lines, lines that were meant to hold so much more of our story.
Goodbye.
That’s all I write. There are a million things I want to write, but I keep those words locked up tight. I leave the note on the kitchen counter, beside that microwave. I take only a few things, shoving some clothes and mementos in my backpack, before I go to the train station. I need time to think.
Three days later, I arrive in New York, no longer the lovesick seventeen-year-old girl that ran away with a boy all those years ago. I’m a heartbroken twenty-one-year-old woman now, one that doesn’t know where to call home.
The taxi drops me off along the curb in front of the two-story white house in Bennett Landing. I pay the driver every last penny in my pocket. I’m queasy, and exhausted, and I want to cry but the tears won’t fall.
Snow is falling, though. The world outside feels icy cold. My jacket is thin, and I'm shivering. The sun was still shining back in California.
As the taxi pulls away, the front door of the house opens. My father steps out onto the porch and stands there in silence. He’s not surprised. He knew I was coming.
“Kennedy? Is that you?” My mother bursts out of the house and hugs me. “I can’t believe you’re here!”
Her excitement makes me lightheaded. Haze coats my vision.
She drags me into the house, straight past my father, who still says nothing, yet his eyes say enough. My mother wants to chat. I just want to stop feeling like I’m about to pass out. “Can I lay down somewhere?”
“Of course, sweetheart,” she says. “You know where your room is.”
My room is just how I left it, except the bed is freshly made. They expected me, and not just on some ‘you’ll come crawling back someday’ level. Someone warned them.
I get under the covers, pulling them over my head, trying to find some warmth again. I don't want to think about who that 'someone' must be.
Another three days pass. I don’t move unless I have to. I’m sick, and I’m weak, and my mother keeps checking up on me, bringing bottles of water and forcing me to eat crackers and smoothing my hair and telling me it’ll be okay, doing all those things a mother does for her child. And I love her, and I know she does it because she loves me, but I want to scream at her, because how is it possible to love someone so unconditionally? How can she look at me and smile and be so happy that I’m here, that I exist, when she has every reason in the world to be angry for the trouble I’ve caused? All the sleepless nights she endured, all the stress and worry…
“How far along are you?” she asks that third night when she finds me curled up on the bathroom floor. Her voice is gentle as she sits down beside me.
I just look at her.
She smiles softly. “A mother knows.”
“I’m not sure.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I open my mouth to say no, because talking is the last thing I want to do. But the denial dies on my lips and comes out as a sob, and once it starts, I can’t stop. She pulls me to her, and I lay my head in her lap as I cry. And words spill out of me along with the tears, all the struggling and fighting, the lies and the broken promises, the resentment that grew when he got swept up in the hurricane and left me behind to battle the storm.
“He’s been calling here,” she says. “Drunk. Your father answered the first call. He wanted to know if we’d heard from you. Said he came home and you were gone, so he thought you might come here. And he kept calling back, but your father didn't answer again until tonight… when he told him if he knew what was good for him, he’d stop.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“You have nothing to apologize for,” she says. “I know what it feels like. Your dad’s the greatest man I know, but he was a terrible drunk. It changes people, and that doesn’t excuse anything, but it means there’s hope. They can get better, but you can’t change them. They have to want to change.”
“He doesn’t want to.”
“Maybe not,” she says. “Or maybe not yet. It took your dad a while. But no matter what he did, I knew I had to look out for myself… and for my kid. And I have no doubt you’ll do the same, because you’re my daughter.”
I feel better hearing that. Not completely, of course, because life is scary and my heart is still broken and the boy I fell in love with is gone, but enough to pick myself up and keep going.
Days pass. A week. A month.
A new year comes.
I gather the courage to see a doctor. I’m still in the first trimester. My father and I haven’t spoken much, but he knows I’m pregnant. He calls it the ‘lovesickness’.
More days.
I get a job at the grocery store, and I hate it, but they give me a lot of hours, and I need money.
More weeks.
I’m starting to show. I stare at myself in the mirror, rubbing my stomach, feeling the bump. It’s weird. There’s a life growing inside of me right now.
The doctor tells me it’s a girl.
You have a daughter, Jonathan, and you don’t even know. I feel the fluttering as she moves around, and my heart is soaring. I’m still scared, so scared, but when I feel her, this overwhelming sense of love flows through me, and I smile.
I’m smiling again.
It’s like I’ve finally figured out the point of it all, the purpose of our story—it’s her.
More months.
The world is thawing. Spring comes.
I’m six months along and sitting on the porch, in one of the rocking chairs, bundled up to ward off the chill, when you pop up. The black town car slowly pulls up to the curb in front of the house, and there you are. My mother has to stop my father from storming out of the house.
You look like yourself from afar, but as you approach, I see the eyes are all wrong. It’s early, the sun barely in the sky, and you’re still awake from last night. You linger somewhere in the gray area between drunk and hung-over, coherent enough to stand up straight but by no means are you sober.
Still as handsome as ever, though. You’re wearing a suit and your tie is tugged loose, a glimmer of a teenage rebel I remember.
“Can we talk for a minute?” you ask, stopping near the porch, and I almost laugh at your choice of words, because that’s what I asked, too.
I say nothing, staring at you.
“I’m sorry,” you say, your voice cracking. “I’m so sorry, baby.”
Something you’ll never know is at that very moment, as you say those words, I forgive you. I don’t even know what you’re sorry for, but I forgive you for all of it. I don’t tell you that, though, because I don’t do it for you.
It’s for her.
I still stare.
You talk some more, going on and on about how wrong you were and how much you miss me and how you haven’t had a decent night’s sleep, how hard it is not having me to come home to, and all I can think about as I listen to your words is how much growing up you have to do, Jonathan, because every sentence from your lips contains ‘I’ or ‘My’ or ‘Me’, but you can’t be the center of the universe anymore.
Not this universe.
“So it’s true?” you ask. “You’re pregnant?”
I avert my gaze and nod, because you deserve to know, but I can’t find the words I need to tell you anymore.
“I can tell,” you say. “You’re glowing. You’re so beautiful.”
I look back at you when you say that.
“Come back to me,” you say. “I need another chance, just one more. We can’t let it end this way. We’re having a baby, and I don’t even know… is it a boy? A girl? When are you due? I don’t know anything, but I want to. So come with me. Please. I’m making money now, and I can take care of you.”
If anyone’s actually reading this, and I don’t know if anyone ever will, this is the moment where I’ll lose them, where they’ll rant about that stupid character messing up the story. And I get it, because so much of me yearns for you to be my happy ending, but I can’t apologize for doing what's right.
I shove out of the rocking chair and step off of the porch. Your gaze goes right to my stomach, as do your hands. I don’t stop you, though my chest feels like it’s caving in. Your eyes are lighting up, and I know—god, I know—you’ll make a great father, one of the greatest, and you’ll love this little girl with every part of your soul.
But that can't happen until you’re ready.
“I love you,” I whisper, three words you haven’t said, as I put my hand on top of yours on my stomach. “More than everything… except for her.”
You meet my gaze. “It’s a girl?”
I nod, and hesitate, before I kiss you, lingering, letting you have this moment, and if I’m being honest, it’s just as much for me.
I need this moment to gather my courage.
And when I do, I pull back and say, “I need you to leave.”
You look at me, stunned.
“I need you to go and not come back until you get better,” I say. “I’m asking you… no, I’m begging you… don’t come back here like this again. She’s going to need a father, a real one, someone who can love her more than everything. There’s no place in our lives for an addict. So, please… leave, Jonathan.”
I go inside, because I can’t stand there and look at him, shoving past my father. I sit on the couch. I sit and sit and sit. My father still hangs out right there, watching. And an hour later, he says, “He finally left.”
It took you an hour.
After you’re gone, my mom says, “I’m proud of you. I know that must’ve been tough.”
“I’m surprised the son of a bitch respected her wishes,” my dad says. “He never respected mine when I told him to stay away from my daughter.”
“Michael,” my mom warns. “Now’s not the time.”
He holds his hands up.
“I’m not surprised he listened,” she continues. “He’s a good guy.”
My dad lets out a loud laugh.
“He is,” my mom says. “He’s just an addict, and your daughter was his first high. That boy would’ve run right into traffic if she said she needed him to.”
My dad looks at me. “I’ll pay you fifty bucks to do it.”
“Michael!”
“Geez, okay, don’t bite my head off, woman,” he says, squeezing my shoulder as he says, “I’ll throw in some free babysitting, too.”
My mom laughs. “You’ll be babysitting for free as it is, Gramps.”
He makes a face, mumbling, “Gonna need a better nickname.”
Before my dad can walk away, I ask, “What made you get better?”
He sighs. “You did, kiddo.”
“Me?”
“I ruined your birthday,” he says. “Forgot it was your birthday. Came home wasted, ate your cake before you could, passed out on the couch and pissed myself. Your mother snapped and tried to kill me for it.”
“I didn’t try,” my mom says. “What your father is leaving out is that I kicked him out that morning, but he didn’t respect my wishes to stay gone.”
“In my defense, I got drunk and forgot I wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“How is that a defense?”
“Guess it’s not.”
“Anyway, I threatened him so he wouldn’t forget again.”
“I woke up to you pouring liquor on me,” he says. “Then you pulled out matches and threatened to light my ass up!”
“Exactly,” she says. “I threatened.”
I vaguely remember the cake thing, but I don’t remember that. “So mom scared you sober?”
“Oh, no, as scary as she can be, that wasn’t it,” he says. “After she put down the matches, I apologized to you. I told you I was sorry, and you said…”
He trails off, so my mom chimes in. “You told him you didn’t care about his sorry because he wasn’t your dad anymore, you decided you didn’t want a dad because all they ever did was stuff to be sorry for, so he could go.”
“You were only five,” he says. “You weren’t mad. You were just done.”
“That did it? But almost being set on fire didn’t?”
“Your mother tried to kill me because she loved me and wanted her husband back,” he says, ignoring her when she again says she didn’t try. “You decided you didn’t want me anymore. I was like a broken toy that you never liked, so you were okay with your mother tossing it out. I loved you, but I’d never given you a reason to love me. I had to make a change.”
“Which Jonathan will do, too,” my mom says.
“We’ll see,” my dad says. “But hey, if he doesn’t we never have to see him again, so win-win?”
“I swear, Michael, I should’ve just struck that match.”
They’re both joking. It’s nice, seeing them happy, knowing they survived everything thrown at them. I can’t imagine a life where we aren’t a family.
I rub my stomach, feeling those soft nudges as the baby moves around.
Six months turns to seven and then comes eight. I work, eat, and sleep. Wash, rinse, and repeat. Before I know it, summer is upon us. I’m nine months pregnant, those soft nudges full-blown roundhouse kicks.
My water breaks the morning of my due date, right on time, but it still feels too early for me. I’m nowhere near ready. I’ve got a crib and diapers and all the things she'll need, but I’ve yet to figure out how to be a mom.
And I’m terrified. I’ve never been so scared in my life. My mother’s beside me, and my father’s in the waiting room, and your sister shows up, because she’s excited to be an aunt, but you’re not here, and I knew you wouldn’t be. I told myself that every day. But as the pain tears me apart, and people are yelling at me to push, push, push, there’s nobody in the world I need more.
I can’t do it without you.
I can’t.
I can’t.
I can’t.
But then she’s here, and she’s screaming, and I’m crying, and the second they hand her to me, the world tilts again. And that’s it. I know for an absolute fact that I will love this beautiful little being for the rest of my life. Until my dying breath, I’ll fight to keep her happy, to protect her heart from breaking, because she’s the greatest creation that’s ever existed, and we made her.
She’s born at 6:07 in the evening. Exactly. Born on the fourth of July. They tell me you came to the hospital the next morning, as the sun was still rising outside. Our little one was in the nursery, and I was sleeping while I had the chance. You went straight to see her, staring through the glass as she slept.
You asked about signing her birth certificate, about putting yourself down as the father, but they told you to go through me. So you came to my room—or so they tell me, because I never saw you. The door was open, and you stood in the doorway for a long while, watching me sleep, before you walked away.
You left without holding your daughter.
You left before finding out her name.
So you don’t know this, but that girl? That beautiful little one wrapped in pink in the nursery? Her name is Madison Jacqueline Garfield, and someday, you’re going to know her. Someday, she’s going to call you her daddy. And when that happens, she’s going to steal your heart, and you’ll get that chance you asked for. But you need to be ready, Jonathan, because she’s here, and she's waiting. Don't make her wait too long before finding your way home.